Perhaps you know the old story of the wise Arab Judge A shopkeeper complained to him of several burglaries. The judge oddly called for the shop door to be taken off its hinges and delivered to his court. Hundreds gathered as he ordered that the door be given fifty lashes for not keeping out the burglar.

At the end of the ordeal the judge put his ear down to listen to the door and said, “The door declares that the man who burglarized the shop has a cobweb in his turban."

His house was searched and the goods found.

Little acts of impulse can reveal who we really are.

When push comes to shove, who are we?

Abraham is traditionally considered a “paragon” of faith. That is clearly based on SOME Biblical evidence-

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.

And God took Abraham out clear summer night and said, "You will have children as many as the stars in the sky and the sand particles oin the sea shore.

Abraham believes God and went left everything in Haran, his home and settled in Palestine. But soon there was a famine and Abram took his family to Egypt where food was abundant.

And the Bible tells us that Sarah was a beautiful woman, and Abraham, fearing for his life, said to her:

" Tell Pharaoh you're my sister that it might go well with me because of you, and that my life might be spared on your account."

Had God chosen Abraham because he was truthful and honest, brave and dependable? Not at all. How much faith did he have, how much stock did he put in God's providence? No more than we do. The writer of Genesis means to disabuse us right away of the idea that Abraham was chosen because of his faithfulness. In fact we learn early on that Abraham was well paid when Pharaoh took Sarah to his tent.

Do we merit God's choosing? No way.

"And for Sarah's sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels."

. . . but he did not have Sarah, he had sold her to Pharaoh. What has become of God's promise? Abraham is rich but Sarah is now another man's wife !

Abraham feared Pharaoh's power more than he believed in God's providence. Pharaoh gets the divine message about her through afflictions. And Abraham must endure the humiliation of an ethics lecture from Pharaoh himself.

Pharaoh: "Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.”

Years go by, decades and still there is no heir.

And Abram. reminds God of the promise. A distant cousin, Eliezar of Damascus, is his only heir. ??? And he is a Syrian. He isn’t even a Hebrew. And the text says that God took Abram outside again and showed him the stars once again.

Time passed. Now it was Sarah who grew impatient. She told Abram to go ahead and have a child with her beautiful handmaid, Hagar. And a child was born. They called him Ishmael.

Anyway, Abraham fell in love with the boy and forgot all about the business of having a child with Sarah. So now it was God’s turn to remind Abram of the promise.

And Abram fell on his face and laughed and said: "Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old. Shall Sarah who is 90 bear a child? Let Ishmael live in thy sight"

Now, the last time God had taken Abram out to see the stars it said that Abram. believed God and "it was counted to him as righteousness." But now that he is a hundred it seems to be a different story. When all human means of fulfilling that promise are exhausted Abr. sings a different tune and says, "Why not Ishmael?"

Abram. is full of love for his son, but full of faith, he is not.

When God comes and visits Abram. at a place called the Oak of Mamre and says that by that date a year from then they would have a son Sarah laughs. And Isaac's name, which means laughter, will stand forever as a reminder to these two that they laughed at God in disbelief.

In Abraham we see so perfectly our human tendency to believe that the future depends on God's gifts, rather than God the giver of those gifts.

And this story is here in scripture to say to us that whenever we are tempted to believe that the future depends on our idea of the future, or or say the church depends on the church alone then have we mistaken God's gift for the giver?

Abraham loved Ishmael and then Isaac, as well he should We should love God's gifts but we have this temptation to believe that the gifts have an independent existence of their own and a guarantee of their own. We want to believe that the gift is its own giver.

Abraham was right to love Isaac with all his heart but he would learn that he would be wrong if he thought the future depended utterly on Isaac's life.

One day Pharisees came to Jesus and said, "We are children of Abraham. And Jesus, showing how thoroughly he understood the Bible said, "God could make children of Abraham from these stones." "Don't get uppity. God is bigger than you think.”

Now, in summing up and this theme of fear versus faith I want to read a portion of a letter that comes from a young woman some of you may know named, Erin Roden. Erin lived here for several summers and was stage manager of “The Green Show” at the Oregon Shakespeare festival. A life long Presbyterian, she was part of our church during those summers. She writes this email:

On February 19, 2007, I am flying to NYC and after a short visit... walking back.
I am 26 1/4 and have no children or spouses or as much as a dog, so it's now or, honestly, never. Most people ask why. Why would such a clever young woman attempt such a fool hardy endeavor? Is it for a cause? Is it with a group? Why not on a bike? Why not go to Europe? Anything but the slow, lonely drudgery of the United States.
I first imagined this a decade ago, though what I wanted then I don't really remember. This is what I want now. I want an adventure. I want all of the things that I cannot predict or prepare for. I want to test myself with difficulty and learn something about myself from the struggle.
I am moved by every story I read about families taking this same trek in the dust-bowl, gleaning corn from abandoned fields, poor Irish children gathering coal from the lanes and surviving on sugar water. The people who brought this country into being, from those who picked biscuit-root on the hillsides, those who picked cotton in fields, those who had to leave their belongings in Europe because they wouldn't fit on a boat, those who had to leave their belongings along the trail, because they wouldn’t fit on the wagon, those who had to leave their families in Mexico so that they might cross in greater safety- they survive with something to say for it. In comparison, my little trek with my bank account and health insurance and gps unit will never know even this hunger or hardship or danger, but this much at least, I must do. For me it is not a trip with a goal, but a pilgrimage. It is about the journey.
I will be un-safe. That gives many of you pain and I know that. But part of this mission is to accept my un-safety. So much effort is put into making ourselves feel safe when we surely never are, no matter what we do. I will be more safe than you, by refusing to get into a car- think of that! But more do I feel that it is not only my right, but my duty to be unsafe. This push for safety has turned to sterilization and barricades and fear and it turns us away from each other. If we see a person on the side of the road, whose instinct is to pull over and ask if they need a ride? If we see a person bleeding, whose instinct is to rush in and help?
It is not for a cause. In that pilgrimage sort of way, it is very selfish. If on my worst day when I am sunburned and covered in mosquito bites and haven't been sleeping well and the rain soaked all of my belongings and even the rice is soggy and I've had my cell phone stolen, I might just say 'screw breast cancer, and damn the starving children in Africa with AIDS, I'm going home.' But if that day came and I felt so bad, all I can say is, who will I be? Will I cut and run or will I keep on? ...
I want to fall in love with America, step by agonizing step. Now, you don't have to love America, or even like it. That's our right, being Americans! It may not be the greatest country, some may even think that it's one of the worst, but it is mine.

I'll leave New York about the first of March. (If you live in or near the city, we'll have a party down at Coney Island for my official dip-my-toe-in-the-water send off and you should come.) I'm going to cut west in to NJ and perhaps to see my Great Aunt in Sussex, then across Pennsylvania through Harrisburg and Gettysburg, skimming one of the skinny parts of MD and into Virginia. I'll be heading down the west side of Shenandoah and then cutting back east to hit Roanoak, VA and joining with the Appalachian Trail and riding that into the Great Smoky Mtns. I'll then head west through Knoxville and on to Nashville, TN and cut up through Land Between the Lakes, barely clipping KY and IL and crossing the Mississippi at Cape Girardeau into Missouri. I'm veering across MO to Independence, where I hope to be on July 4th! Hooray! . . . From there I will be following the Oregon Trail as closely as I can through KS, NE, and to Casper WY where I'll split, heading west to upper Teton NP and through Yellowstone into MT through Big Hole Battlefield and then to a new sort of adventure in Idaho. I lived for several years as a little tyke in Elk City ID, which is unfortunately the end of the road. In all ways. So I'll take Forest Service roads, really going back country from about Darby MT into Elk City. Here I am leaving myself a choice. . . . I might go straight to Walla Walla and take old 14 across the North side of the Columbia for a bit, or I might hit Hells Canyon and do more of the Eastern Oregon Blue Mtn . . . and head through Madras to Corvallis and over to Newport where I will probably drop exhausted into the Pacific.
The other thing which is most often asked and which I am cautious to bring up with my friends and which gives my mother the most pain is... Are you going by yourself? The answer is of course yes. Honestly, no one else wants to do this. But here I must speak openly. You are my friends. You are all of them. If you found somewhere in your heart, in your life or in this imperfect email and are inexplicably drawn to this adventure, you are invited. If you have a week's vacation and want to have an adventure, or if there's a certain part of the trip you'd like to enjoy with me, I can certainly provide more info about where I'll be and make efforts to meet you at a place and time. All you need is a sleeping bag and a water bottle and a good pair of shoes. I have a two person tent. My mother would love you forever. And I would really appreciate the company. It would mean a lot to me.
What I'm going to ask you to do is give of yourself. Give small and give time. My frustration with how we as Americans and we as America deal with the world comes from us trying to solve all of the problems ever. Remember that thing about pointing out the speck in your neighbors eye and ignoring the debris in your own. We do that.
For just this year, while I'm gone, if you're worried about hunger, don't try to fix all of Asia's problems. Go, your very self to the closest food bank and donate. Put yourself physically into the closest trouble to you. Volunteer to help LOCAL school children with their reading. For just now, don't try to liberate the women of the whole middle east, don't try to house everyone in the gulf coast region. Volunteer at a local women's shelter, see what you can do to support the homeless in your own town. Honestly, we should all start a little closer to home even than that. Contact the family member that you haven't spoken to in ages. Read with your kids instead of watching the TV. Tell your father that you love him. Make art. Clean up your heart. Strengthen your family. A strong family can give heartily to the community. One healthy community can lend support to another. And right here in America we could begin to be a country worth loving. A country of people that have faced our problems and didn't divert them or run away from them and prevailed. A nation that might then offer help to another.
So that's the email. I hope you made it this far. I'll send more info about how to contact me and keep up with me.
And don't be afraid. -Erin
Amen