Sermon Title: "Ordinary People"
Author's Name: Rev. Alex Knight
(Gen 12:1-9 NRSV) Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. {2} I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. {3} I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." {4} So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. {5} Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, {6} Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. {7} Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. {8} From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD. {9} And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
(Mat 9:9-13 NRSV) As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. {10} And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. {11} When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" {12} But when he heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. {13} Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."
There is a tendency to think of the people in the Bible as extraordinary people whom God sought out to work for Him. Actually, it's the opposite. They are ordinary folks like you and me. God did extraordinary things through them because they believed God. We see two examples of ordinary people in the text we read this morning. One was Abram who later had his name changed to Abraham. Abram was working his father's business and was quite successful. Abram had an encounter with God. He had a sense that this God was calling him to leave his home and go to a place that Abram had never been before. Abram believe God would provide for him and God would make him to be a blessing for his family. Abram believed and he left his family and off he went to this land of Canaan.
Another ordinary man was Matthew. Matthew was not well regarded in his community. He was a collaborator with the enemy, the Romans. He was collecting taxes for them. It was generally understood the tax collectors would extort money, especially from the weaker people who could not fight back against them. Tax collectors made a pretty good living that way. They weren't accepted by the Romans. They weren't accepted by their own people. Yet Jesus saw something in Matthew others could not see and Jesus asked him to follow Him.
What I hope we can see is these two ordinary men is that God calls folks just like us. He does not call folks just to be ministers or pastors. He calls us to become His people. To have a re-orientation of who we are, at the core of our identity. This was made clear with Abram. Abram's name was changed to Abraham. He took on a whole new identity. One of the ways that you see that identity being worked out in Abram's life is when he denies who he was.
Do you remember that story? A famine comes into the land. Abram and Lot have many cattle and sheep. They needed healthy pastures. Because of the famine they moved out of Canaan and end up in Egypt. In Egypt, one of the rulers sees Sarah, Abram's wife, and thinks she is very beautiful. Abram is afraid that if he says "That's my wife you are talking about" the Egyptians will kill him and take her for their own. So Abram lies and says that Sarah is his sister. He figures the rulers will be nice to him and keep him alive. (Can you see Abram was not an extraordinary person. He was human and he was frail and had feet of clay.)
Abram denied his identity. He denied the core of who he was as God had called him to be the man to go into the land and to establish the people of God. But, God did not forget who Abram was. All sorts of calamities begin to befall the ruler of Egypt because he was trying to take Sarah as his own. Finally this ruler is able to put two and two together and figure that all of these bad things began to happen when he tried to take Sarah into his own home. He goes back to Abram and he says, "Who are you really?" Abram confesses and the ruler says "Will you please take her and leave?" And he does. Abram then models how we can act in extraordinary ways when we respond to God's grace. Abram realizes that part of their problem is that God has called him but he also brought Lot along with him. All of Lot's people and all of Lot's stuff and there also. There is just not enough land for all of them to be together. They need to separate. As a measure of the generosity of spirit that is in Abram, because he understands that God will provide for him, Abram lets Lot pick first. Abram says, "Lot, you decide. I will go over to the other side of the mountain and you can stay here in the valley, or I will stay here in the valley and you can go on the other side of the mountain. You have first pick because I trust that God will provide for us." At that point, Abram was beginning to understand this new identity that God had given him. He was a child of God. God had His hand on him and God was leading him to do great things for the Lord. Abram began to live in that new identity.
The same thing happened to Matthew. As Matthew began to follow Jesus, he realized that he was no longer a tax collector, he was no longer an outcast, but truly he was a child of God. One whom God had called to walk with the Lord and become a blessing to people as he made a record of all that Christ had done. Matthew was able to be a witness for God because he understood that he gave up his old life, and began to live out a new identity.
Abram and Matthew understood the great secret of life is understanding who we are. Knowing who we are allows us to begin to ask ourselves, "Does our life reflect our true identity? Are we living out of this new identity?" If somebody were to ask you, "Who are you?", is your first response to give a family name that they may recognize? Is your first response to associate who you are by where you live? Is your first response to talk about the kind of work that you did or that you are still doing now? Your profession, your vocation? What is there that you believe gives you the core identity of who you are? We all have a sense of who we are. If you think about this you begin to see what is important to you. Maybe it's where you went to school. or where you work or where you go to church.
The Lord would have us to know, that the truth of our identity, is that we are His children. He calls us to live out of that identity in all of our relationships: within our family; with our circle of friends; with our neighbors and where we go to work. We ask ourselves who we are? God has called us to be His children, and that gives us a new identity.
This new identity involves risk because we always do not know where we are going. Often, if not all the time, God asks us to say yes to Him before He tells us what we are to do. What we are to do with that identity will be revealed to us in time. In 1976, I am sure that the peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, believed that God's will for his life was that Jimmy would be President of the United States. If you were to ask Carter in 1996, what God's purpose for his life was, he would probably say building houses for Habitat for Humanity. As we go through life, little by little, God reveals to us His plan for us. What He would have us to do. Many times it's hidden from us until the right moment and then God want's to show us what He want's to do with our life.
I hope all of us can see that God has something that He wants us to do. It begins with claiming our identity. One of the sources of encouragement to all of us in claiming our identity, is knowing God wants to use us to be a blessing. When God called Abram, He said I am going to bless you and then He said I am going to make you to be a blessing to others. God wants to bless us and then He is going to use that blessing in our life that we might be a blessing to others. Paul puts this so beautifully in 2nd Corinthians, the first chapter when he sings praises to God,:
{3} Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, {4} who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. {5} For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ." (2 Cor 1:3-5 NRSV)
God blesses us and then we pass the blessing along to others.
It all begins when we hear God call our name. We listen for that call. None of us are here this morning by an accident. God has called all of us to be a part of a group that has gathered here in this place, on this day, and on this occasion. It was not our idea. It was God's idea that we be here. God has a plan for all of us. He has called each one of us. The church will claim it's true power and it's purpose in life, when all of God's people realize that all of God's people have been called. Then we can take this calling into our homes, into our vocation into our professions, Into our neighborhoods. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, help each of us to hear you as you call our name. We do believe that you have a plan, a will and a purpose for each of us as individuals, as well as a plan and a purpose for this, your holy church that we call Bethel. Heavenly Father, give us ears to hear and the will to obey your call on our life, for this we pray in Jesus name. Amen.