Get thee gone!
That striking command is the first word that the Lord offers in this morning’s Scripture lesson: Go, leave! Hit the road, Jack! How harsh and jarring that must have sounded to its intended audience, the elderly Abram and his equally mature wife, Sarai.
Why would they want to go anywhere? Abram and Sarai have settled in, put down roots. They have an established home on a successful estate; they quite likely live comfortably. This is the place where they plan to die and be buried. No regrets. But as is so often true, the Lord has other plans – rather vague and surely frightening intentions: “Leave and follow me to a land that I will show you.”
If Abram wrestled with the notion of forced relocation to a mystery destination, if packing up lock, stock, and barrel was a hard sell to the missus, the Old Testament text does not say. Apparently no questions were asked – or at least none recorded in Scripture. They just went.
Yet the couple nonetheless bears suitable reason for anxious concern. Truth is, they never again will be as embedded in a community as they are in Ur, a bustling city in what is now southern Iraq. Not even close, in fact. Their entourage will travel hundreds of long, grueling miles, and indeed God eventually will show them the land of Canaan – and offer assurance that their descendants will inhabit the vast swath of biblical ground that today composes Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
But sure fulfillment of those heavenly promises is still a dozen chapters ahead in Genesis – part and parcel of the Lord’s epic story of doing what was and is necessary to save his fallen Creation. And God’s plan of redemption requires Abram and Sarai to leave. So they do, venturing forth on a wing and a prayer of God’s three promises: a place, a people, and a purpose – the basic spiritual necessities of every man, woman, and child.
Belonging and purpose! Everyone needs some sort of place where it feels like he or she truly belongs. Everyone needs a purposeful means to be productive and fruitful with the time and talent that the Lord provides. And for Abram and Sarai, their divinely inspired role will be establishing in a strange land a great nation of great people who do great things. So they simply go! Unconditionally and without prejudice!
Listen to the Word that God speaks at the start of Genesis chapter 12. The Lord said to Abram –
“Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a people who will do great things. And I will bless you, and I will make your reputation great, so that you will be a blessing. 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.”
So Abram went, as the LORD told him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed. 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, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.
When they had come 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 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. And Abram journeyed on by stages southward. (Genesis 12:1-9)
What an astounding prediction: All the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abram’s descendants.
And here’s what’s equally breathtaking: Their greatness will come not by accumulation of wealth, not by acquisition of political power, not by glorious victory in battle. The progeny of Abram and Sarai will be great blessings purely because the Lord grounds his people in ways to ensure their gracious hospitality to outsiders. Such warm, lavish welcome will become a hallmark of biblical Israel. Since God welcomes into the heavenly kingdom the broken and fearful lot that includes us all, God’s people in return are supposed to be all about the business of making room for strangers and outsiders, too.
Even the eventual set of unfortunate events that land Abram’s descendants in Egyptian slavery for 400-plus years gets rolled into this identity of hospitality. The Israelites know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a nasty, inhospitable nation’s whims. So when God eventually establishes laws that command Israel to make extra provisions for aliens, and strangers, and immigrants, God always grounds those commands in recollection: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” Remember that! And then be sure you never turn around and do the exact same thing to another.
Of course, the Israelites struggle to remember that. They too became ethnically insular and put on airs of superiority toward outsiders. Fast forward to the New Israel that is the Church of Jesus Christ, and you find the same struggles. Certain dark corners of the Church still want to set firmly the boundary markers of community to ensure supposedly safe enclaves of like-minded folks – conveniently forgetting how Jesus came to us in the first place: The Father tells the Son “go,” and he leaves. God sends Jesus far from home to a strange land where he would be regarded a stranger.
In the beginning the Word was with God, the Gospel of John begins.
Jesus, the Word, was well-rooted at home – in heaven. Then he wasn’t. And although he created the whole world, when he arrived, the world didn’t recognize him. He comes to his own people, and they receive him not. The living Word in human flesh become a stranger on this earth. Yet that is how we receive our salvation, and it provides our model for reaching out to the whole world through the Church to this day.
The virtue of hospitality has a surprisingly high profile in the New Testament. You bump into it left and right. And with good reason: We have Abram as the founder of our faith, and we have Jesus as the perfecter of our faith. Abrah and Jesus bookend the Christian story as two immigrants who relied on the hospitality of others. So much of our belief and practice is packed into that one tiny word. Go!
To live out the truth of our calling, God dares our listening to one voice that speaks of both challenge and comfort. Sometimes the voice says “leave” and at other times the same voice says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” If we are to live out our lives with authenticity and sincerity, listening for God’s calling voice means our lives are not so much about choosing as they are about being called.
That kind of thinking runs contrary to cultural norms and conventional wisdom. We are so accustomed to charting our own course and making our own way that yielding our lives to God brings genuine struggle. Yet the consequences of not engaging the struggle also can be devastating. Ask the young woman who married the “right man.” Or the man who pursued the “perfect career.” In many cases you will find that, although they made all the right choices (the lucrative career, the dashing or beautiful spouse, or whatever), their lives remain empty, because they have no purpose and guide greater than themselves.
Instead, we must listen and respond to the only voice that can redeem us. God will visit us where we are. Which is both exciting and terrifying – rather like riding a roller-coaster. You eagerly wait in line, but once you sit down in the car and feel the pressure of the safety bar lowered upon your chest and shoulders, an uneasiness in the pit of your stomach reminds that you’re in for the ride of your life.
Abram hears the voice of the Lord and follows that voice to a place he had never-ever seen or even imagined. He accepts God’s gracious call even though he does not have all the details at the get-go. When he packs up his family and departs from Ur, he takes his first steps on the journey of redemption. And whether or not he knows it, he is in for the ride of his life.
So also do you and I feel like we’re in for rides of our lives, too: I into retirement, you into a time of pastoral transition. Yet I go, leaving a blessedly familiar and rooted place, with every confidence that God goes with me – while also God remaining here in this place with you: Here and there extending loving hospitality to all of us, as we all here and there extend hospitality to friend, neighbor, and stranger. This congregation does that very well, and I expect that you’ll carry on that tradition after I leave. When all is said and done, we’ll all be just fine, as long as we all remain hospitable to the movement of Spirit.
Please join your hearts with mine in a place of prayer –
Long before the change of name,
before the first signs of new life
showed the beginnings of promises fulfilled,
You asked Abram to make his home among foreigners,
and share the blessing that was to come.
And now, O God, you ask the same faith of us:
The faith to count ourselves among the least,
to find our place alongside the poor and broken;
The faith to trust in your mercy and your promises,
and to share what we have received;
The faith to wait expectantly for your reign of justice and equity,
together with those who most need its gifts.
Teach us to be children of Abram, sharers of the blessings we enjoy:
The blessing of plenty shared with those who have need,
The blessing of healing shared with those who are sick and wounded,
The blessing of joy shared with those who celebrate
and of tears shared with those who grieve,
The blessing of friendship shared with those who are excluded,
and of solidarity with those who fight injustice,
The blessing of peace shared with those in conflict,
and of confrontation shared with those who bring harm;
And in some small way, may our faith and our sharing,
help to bring your promises into being in our world.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, Junly 26, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Rebecca Abts Wright, Stephen Cook, Scott Hoezee, Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Neal Plantinga, and Prince Raney Rivers inform the message.