Where Are We Going?

When You Don’t Know….

What follows is a transcript of the sermon from January 1, 2023. Do to the visionary nature of the sermon and its not being available on Podcast, we wanted to provide this blog.

Did anyone else enter the vortex that is the week between Christmas and New Years?

You don’t know which day it is or how long leftovers have been in the fridge or the last time you checked email? Show of hands? Who had to keep working and your week was nothing like that? Every day this week – I just confess– I had to work so hard to convince myself to do the next thing. Make the next meal. Work toward the next task.

The Kitsap House staff didn’t take off this week because today is a significant milestone. As of today, in the eyes of the state, Kitsap House is officially its own entity! So by today we each - Larry, me, Kirsten, Maddy - took on insurance and banking and payroll and business license and EIN and bi-laws and switching final administrative things from our sending church, Chapel Hill, to Kitsap House. Some of you are committing to the community here as our charter members- something the state and the church require to be official. This is all leading toward an official ceremonial beginning of Kitsap House on February 5, 2023. Exciting!

And all that is causing me particularly but also our Session and maybe you to ask – where are we going? What’s the future for Kitsap House? It’s not just a Kitsap House question. It’s also a question for the New Year. Any resolution fans out there? Where are you going? It’s a short-term question – what are you doing this week? It’s a long-term question – where is your life headed? And it’s a question that is such a joy to take to God’s Word. Because God is a God of love for you and for us, the God of wisdom and discernment, of vision, and of the everyday.

I’ve been drawn to Abram, also known as Abraham. God called him and over his life introduced the journey of a life of faith to him. We’re going to spend this month of January with Abraham as we lead up to the birthday of Kitsap House and ask both for us and for us as individuals – Where are we going? So let’s read how God first called Abram.

We’re reading from Genesis. Genesis just means “beginnings.” We’re at the beginning of God’s story. Hear God’s Word, Genesis 12, beginning with verse 1: “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. And 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. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We’re taking our direction for where to go from God. What do we know about him? He makes a BIG ask of Abram to leave everything he knows and follow him. What does Abram have to go on? Now there’s nothing to indicate before this moment that Abram worshiped the LORD. Abram lived in an area that archaeology shows in the 1900s BC was deep in pagan worship. Maybe many of you can relate to Abram - you weren’t raised in a family of faith. Imagine being 75 and suddenly a very specific God named Yahweh begins talking to you and tells you to leave and go somewhere I’ll show you.

All Abram might have known about Yahweh at this point was what had been passed down by oral tradition from generations past. Right before this passage, Genesis 11 made it clear that Abram descended from Noah – as in, the guy who brought the animals into the ark two by two. So we can assume he’s heard stories of Yahweh who responded to seeing a world in which “every intention of man’s heart was only evil continually” with both judgment- the flooding of the earth - and a very selective deliverance of Noah and his family. We can assume Noah carried forward the stories of Adam and Eve in the garden. The story of people wanting to go their own way. God responded then with judgment - they were cast out of the garden - and deliverance as God covered their shame with clothes. Yahweh has a brief but consistent reputation of moving toward disobedient people with justice and deliverance. God’s consistently looking to deliver people who will help him bring his justice into the world.

So in the 1900’s BC when people had lost their way and built ziggurats to the gods of earth and land and sky, God moved toward his people again and found Abram. This is who God is who asks, simply, “Go where I will show you.” And Abram’s willing to go.

What makes Abram willing to go? What would make you willing to go? Was it about his stage of life? Abram was 75 - and you know, that’s a great age for a fresh start! I know some amazing 75 year olds out there. I know one very special 74 year old and her husband who are backpacking 75 miles in celebration of a 75th birthday. I’ll give you a hint who it is: she’s here. So maybe Abram was the kind of 75 year old who was game for a new adventure.

Would feeling like your career needed a change make you willing? That definitely wasn’t Abram’s motive. Clearly he’s wealthy. It’s as if he’s at the helm of a multi-generational business and goes to his staff of 350 and says, we’re just going to relocate. Where? I’m not sure. I’ll know it when we get there. So he’s probably not career-change motivated. He’s established in a lot of ways. And just as the more rooted we become, the less open we are to change, I imagine that didn’t factor into Abram saying yes.

So why does he say yes and go? Think about that as I read more about what unfolded:

“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. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 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. From there he moved 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 called upon the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.”

Why did he go? I think there’s only one obvious answer. He believed God. He believed him. He had enough to go on from Adam and Noah to know God consistently made good on bringing justice and blessing and saving many by delivering a few. But certainly – it wasn’t just tons of concrete, objective evidence that Yahweh could be trusted. It doesn’t even seem to be that Abram had other personal experiences of God, any subjective experiences that we know of to fall back on. He believed God. Trusted what he did know and believed what he didn’t yet. We see him build altars and call on God’s name. He took to this life of faith, of communion with God in worship, and he sought God. And he waited for him to direct him.

He believed God when he said he would show him a land. He believed God when he said he would make him - a barren man- a great nation. He believed God when he said he would bless him and through him he would bless the whole earth. He trusted him when he said if he runs into people who dishonor him, he’ll curse them.

Do you know what we call this kind of belief, this way of being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you can’t see? We call it faith. Hebrews 11:1 – a letter written 2,000 years after Abram lives, will still be telling the story of Abram’s life and the crazy way he took his wealth and his career and his family and said, yep! I’ll go somewhere else, you can show me where later. I’m in. That story made it to “The Hall of Faith” and it launches this way, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen…” and then it gets pretty quickly to Abraham saying, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”

We know life with God is a life of faith. We’re wired for faith. To be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we don’t see. If you google Superbowl 2023 winners right now, Google says the LA Rams. That’s built on faith. We are certain of what we hope for. But who or what is the anchor point for that security? For the RAMS, it’s their track record. Perhaps God once had a track record with you but something shook that faith. Can we find that bedrock of certain hope again?

This Word of God is one of bedrocks. We have a lot more stories of Yawheh to pull from than Abram did. The stories Abraham heard by oral tradition that made it another 4,000 years into the future are only a couple pages for us. We now have all these other stories, 4,000 years of written testimonies in the Bible and another 2,000 years of testimonies in the history of the church after that. And God is remarkably consistent. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. And every true story that has ever been told points to how true Yahweh is in the person of Jesus. His life showed us God in the flesh. Just as it was God’s M.O. in the beginning to select one person through whom all the families on the earth would be blessed; just as through one man, Adam, sin and judgment entered the world; so too – and even more!-- through one man, Jesus, God in the flesh, has come God’s grace, the forgiveness of all who would believe in him (Romans 5:12-21).

We have his objective word. We also have subjective experience. When we bring the two together in community, we can learn the way of Yahweh. We can ground our souls in a way that we are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. My biggest encouragement to you if you feel as though your faith is not secure is to press into these 2 foundations for faith: God’s Word and others’ testimony of how they know God is real.

When that belief is restored, we can ask the question – where are we going? And set off, as Abraham went, not knowing where he was going. That’s where I want to land today. Where are we going? We are staying on the Way… Stay on the Way… We’re not making up anything new. We’re keeping on keeping on. My favorite verse for today is Genesis 12:9 “And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

We know where we’re still going to, and so did Abram. The end goal, from day one, was not a place on a map. The end goal is a promise. The promise itself is the end goal. God said that all the families of the earth would be blessed. It was God’s intention in Eden, and it’s still God’s intention as he calls out Abram. All the families of the earth will be blessed.

In some ways, this promise to Abram has already been fulfilled and in others, it has not yet been fulfilled. This is a key Kingdom principle with God. Already… and not yet. Already, every family on earth through this family of Abram has access to the grace of God, the forgiveness of our sin, and the eternal presence of God’s Spirit – even now! Abram’s family line continued all the way to Jesus. It’s why there’s so many list of names in the Bible. They’re all making the point – this promise has already been fulfilled, literally. Through this one man’s kids, God has arrived in the person of Jesus, and now grace is extended through Jesus to all who believe. Already.

And not yet. After Jesus died and rose from the dead we received the promise that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The WHOLE EARTH will be full of his glory. And we have not yet seen that.

So we, at the start of 2023, where are we going? – the end goal hasn’t changed. All the families of the earth already have been and will be blessed through this one man, Jesus. God’s promise to Abram was that he would be blessed, and he would then be a blessing. We, my friends, already have the promise; we know the blessing of the unending presence of God. And if you don’t think you know that yet, ask God for it right now. He is already yours.

AND every family in your neighborhood has not yet connected with or even heard of the one true God. We at Kitsap House are a church that exists for our neighbors. We want to bring God's shalom – his peace, his wholeness, his way to our neighborhood. We are blessed to be a blessing. Our end goal is not a place we will build a building for Sunday morning services; our end goal is a promise that every family in Kitsap County will be blessed by knowing Jesus as King. Do you have that goal in mind? Have you considered that having an anchored faith yourself is part of the picture of how God blesses the people who live and work around you?

Abram never laid down a foundation for a building in the promised land; instead, he spent his life prepping for the FAITH of the next generation. Hebrews 11 says, “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” It was the promise itself that was where he was going. And Abram’s life was about demonstrating as he went from Haran to Canaan to Shechem to Bethel to Ai and continued on to the Negeb that the destination was never a place. It was a person and the goal was to journey toward him.

It was the promise of God’s blessing– not a house on the land– that he would hand down to his kids. His faith was the strongest foundation he built for the rest of his family plus four thousand years of descendants to build on. That relationship with God is what he spent his life investing in, and it was the most precious gift he blessed his kids with when he died. How to listen to God. How to worship him. How to build altars as they moved from place to place. Where was he going? Wherever God was. And that journey was his legacy.

Friends, we have a legacy of faith that we must keep anchored in and that we must pass down. Where are we going? The same place the church always has been – to that moment where every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Yes, but where are we going next week? We’re staying on the Way. Staying in the Word and practicing the Way of Jesus –unlearning what we have learned from the world about life and success and inheritance– and learning the way of Jesus – walk with me, work with me, watch how I do it, learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

And we’re going to share our experiences of Jesus as a community. I know we talk a lot about Port Orchard because the heartbeat of who we are collectively exists in address form at 703 Kitsap St. where we have a residence for young adults and shared ministry and serve the city of Port Orchard. That’s a space we can be in together. And that front door of 703 is where we practice how we, then, live in our own homes in our own neighborhoods in Port Orchard and Belfair and Gig Harbor and Bremerton. Extending God’s shalom into our own neighborhoods.

I believe Port Orchard has a role to play in eternity. And this is where God has us. I’ve spent the last four months walking Port Orchard and praying out with God what are his 30 year dreams- the inheritance we would give to the next generation. Imagine it, 2052. Reed and Keifer and Naomi are in charge of the major industries here. I’m the 70 year old planning the next adventure. Maybe Kitsap House has built a space we worship in that the community needs. In fact, probably. It certainly seems like as nomads we’ve explored all the tent options Port Orchard has to offer. How can we work in God’s justice, his shalom, into our communities with our lives? What can we do now because we believe that in Jesus all the families of the earth will be blessed? Journeying on, still going toward the Negeb, because we are looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. What does that look like concretely next week to stay on the way? To pass on our faith?

As our kids come in, let’s let our minds expand for a moment into this year. First – Do you know the final destination? What’s the state of your faith in Jesus?

What will it take for you to stay on the way? Do you want to learn more about the way of Jesus this year? Do you need more connection with God’s word or with people who have experienced him? Are you passing on this faith with as much dedication as you’re passing on other skills and hobbies and resources?

Pastor Megan