Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, June 7, 2026
I had heard stories like this before. God calling people to do God’s will. I had heard whispers of names like Moses and Noah, like Miriam and Aaron. But I couldn't believe that God's voice came to me. And God didn't just start by asking me, "How are you?" God didn't start with a simple, "Hello, it's good to see you, Abram." The first word that God said to me was, "Go."
My wife Sarai and I had been traveling for what felt like forever. We had actually tried to get to Canaan. And we were leaving the land of and we were on our way when we got stalled in Heron and had to set down roots there for now. But then my dad died. He had been alive for 205 faithful years. And in that land I lost him. So it was just me and my wife Sarah and we were childless, still struggling with infertility. I was 75 years old and she was 65. Just me and her and the nephew that we had taken in, Lot, my brother's son, who had lost his mom and lost his dad.
God didn't just ask me to leave my land when God called me. God didn't just ask me to leave my kindred and my clan when God called me. No, God said, "Leave your home, too." God used these words that I hadn't heard before. Leah, go forth alone. And God said this to me. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and your name will be great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
At 75 years old, I was too old to be called. God called young guys. God called young women. I didn't even know what God was talking about. From my family, we could bring a blessing to others for those outside of this chosen community. Protection from those who would curse us or mistreat us.
The sacrifice felt impossible and the call felt undeniable.
Don't look back on the past. God seemed to be telling me, "Don't regress out of nostalgia. Don't mimic or copy something that you've already experienced. I'm inviting you into the unknown. Into a land that you don't even know the name of yet, into a journey that you couldn't even begin to perceive. Go."
And I have struggled with a lot of things in my life, but I haven't struggled with faithfulness. And so I went, but I didn't go forth alone. That's where I disobeyed God just a little because how could I leave my companion, my wife, the woman who had journeyed with me, who had experienced pain and joy with me, Sarah. I brought her and we brought our nephew, parentless. There was no way we were going to leave Lot behind. And I brought the people that I had acquired in that land. And I brought possessions and I went.
When we got to Canaan, I felt this holy nudge telling me to go to this big oak tree at Mora. And I went and I heard this voice of God. Kind of like the story I had heard of God and Moses by this bush. As I stood under this tree, God said to me, "To your offspring, I will give your land." So I built an altar right then and there, not to any human that I worship, but to a God that had led me this far in safety. And I kept moving and moving, pitching tents and building altars as I went, showing people what it meant to be a blessing, showing people the God who blesses us each day.
I trusted the one who called me by my name. When that one said, "Go."
You won't hear my voice in this story because I felt like I didn't have one. My husband gets to talk to God directly and I don't have one conversation with this divine being. And not only does my husband have a conversation with God, which I'm not a part of, then Abram doesn't even have a conversation with me before he makes the decision to go. There is no calculation on his part. There is no including me in this decision. As his wife, as his wife who has been with him every step of the journey, he said yes before he even took a breath. He said go before he even took a beat.
Did he think this was going to be an easy journey? This wasn't like the roads were lit. This wasn't like if he got hurt, there would be some emergency of folks who showed up to help us. And what if he died? What if he died on that journey? I was no longer a potential matriarch. I was a woman who could have been a homeless vagabond. I could have been a slave. I could have been taken advantage of. Did he even think about that?
And no baby, still no baby. This wasn't just a journey into the unknown. This was a journey of life and death. We were going from a place where we had really come to belong to a place that this God had called us to and said that this land was unknown to us. God didn't even give us the name of it before we left. And when we arrived, my husband Abram picks up and begins traveling again, moving from place to place, building altars and pitching tents, leaving me to what? Follow him along, stay put where we went. There was no road map for the wife of the one who was called.
Did this God have my back, too? This voice that I had never heard from. Would this God protect me from the same curses? Would this God bless me in the same way? Would this God finally give me a baby?
I had heard the word offspring. What offspring? From who? I wanted to have faith. I really did. A promise. But I felt like faithfulness was reserved for the one who had heard from God directly and not for me.
You won't hear my voice in this story because I was speechless. I was speechless. I had lost my parents. I had lost my granddad. I had lost my sense of home. When my uncle came up to me and said, "We're leaving. Go." And I said, "Where?" Forward. I know you want to look back. He said, "I know you want to dwell on what happened. I know you want to sit in the heaviness of your grief. And I am asking you to come with us. A land that is a blessing and a promise. A land that will be ours, and it will be yours, too. God has not forgotten you, and neither have we. We can settle there."
I missed my granddad. I missed my parents. I don't know what choice I had. If I stayed behind, who was going to take care of me? Who would I turn to? My uncle and aunt, they really had cared for me very well and treated me like the son that they never had. But I'm going to be honest, I wasn't their son. Why did I have to leave the few friends that I was starting to make? Why did I have to leave the olive trees that I walked by on my way to their home? Why did I have to leave the streets that were starting to become familiar to me, that crossroads and that one? Why did we always have to move as a way of showing our faith?
Church, it's me again. And this may feel like a very ancient text with nothing that we can quite relate to. This may feel like a text that has pharaohs and plagues. This may feel like a text that has altars and pitching tents, that has giant floods and arcs. But this book, as I read it again, is a book about family. And family is complicated. There are new couples like Adam and Eve who are naked and unashamed still. And that happens today. There are brothers like Cain and Abel that hate each other. And that happens today still. There are drunk fathers like Noah who embarrass their sons and that happens today still. There is infertility. There are strained marriages. We lose our parents. We lose our grandparents. Some of us move in with families that are not our nuclear ones. And all of this is in Genesis 2.
And in this story, we hear of this call to pick up and move, to start a journey that we've never been on, to move to a land that's unknown. And maybe you have felt that, too. Many of you have experienced this. Now, in our days, we work jobs that take us all around the country. We move for schools. We're displaced from natural disasters. We move for our spouse's work. We move to serve overseas. We're grandparents who move closer to our kids or grandkids to take care of them. We are adult children who move closer to our parents who are dying.
We are called to pick up and leave. Some of us are forced out, kicked out of families because of our sexual and gender identities, torn from our families, and deported or detained. And in the leaving, we don't just leave the land we're familiar with. We don't just leave the kindred and the clan that we're familiar with, like that sports league or those colleagues that you get drinks with or that house that you loved or even your own church. But you leave home. You leave belonging. You leave behind the ways that you have felt seen and heard and known in your own context to set out for something new.
Abram's call from God, as you heard, is filled with promise. It's filled with blessing. That word blessing is used in Genesis 88 times. As if God really has something to say to us about how much of a blessing each of us are to the God that loves us.
And as we journey through Genesis this month, I hope that you will come back. I don't often tell people come back to church, but I hope you will to hear yourself breathed out of these stories. Some of you who have been called into the unknown and the families that are impacted by that call and the resentment and the hard conversations and the processing, or maybe the lack of that, is in here too.
When God has called you to pick up and go and leave the familiar behind, what do you do? And who do you turn to? And are you faithful like Abram? Or do you feel a lack of faithfulness like Sarai?
I hear in this text whispers of a blessing and a promise and a God who holds all of it with us. A God who wonders with us what it looks like to go. A God who lets us off the hook when we say, "I don't want to go alone." And maybe this is a cautionary tale, church, for us to spend more time discerning with our families, with our friends, with ourselves what we should do. Or maybe it's an example of sacrifice that we give to the ones that we love.
And maybe today it's just part of our religious history. And so I'm inviting you to dive into it with me. Whether this story touches a wound, whether you can't relate to it at all, this is a book that is rich with life and that is rife with it. It's a book that we don't read alone. It's a book that we speak and listen to together.
Where are you in this story? Where are you in Genesis? I promise you're in there. Even if it's just because you had an apple for breakfast.
Amen.