The Promises of God

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus in Aotearoa?

There was once a time when we felt like we understood this question.

Europeans settled the land

Missionaries brought the Gospel to the Maori

Churches were established, including our own:

Scottish, Presbyterian, civilised.

A particular style of worship and common attitude towards the world - to transform society from the inside out. To be a good Christian is to be a good citizen, and vice versa.

All of these things are true.

But as live in an ever changing world.

That change just seems to be speeding up, and up and up.

we are realising more and more that these things do not hold so true as they once did.

We are realising more and more, that on their own, these things are not enough to answer our question.

What does it mean to follow Jesus in Aotearoa/New Zealand?

This is a big question.

It has to do with identity

It has to do with faith

It has to do with how we understand ourselves, how we understand the world in which we live.

It’s risky.

It’s dangerous.

But it may also be where God is leading us.

God’s promises call us into the unknown

Scripture is overflowing with promises from God for his people. All the way from God’s benediction on humanity in Genesis chapter 1, through Abraham and Moses, Rebekah and Rachel and Ruth, David and Elijah and the prophets, through teh life of Jesus and the work of the Spirit in the early church, right through to the apocalypse of John, all the way through God assures and reassures his good purposes for humanity with promise after promise, benediction after blessing.

But perhaps the cornerstone, the archetype of all of these promises is God’s call to Abram and Sarai.

This promise begins with a calling.

This calling leads Abram into the unknown.

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

This call resonates with us, I think.

Here we are, in the antipodes, the ends of the earth. Each of us called to this land that lies off the edge fo the map, maybe through our whakapapa, maybe through our family history, or for many of us, through our own individual choice. But each of us is called to this land.

And right here, in the very roots of our faith, we hear the call of God that is echoed in all of our lives.

The thing is, I don’t believe that God’s calling is finished with us yet.

Maybe there are not any more promised lands beyond the horizon, but there is always further, deeper to go in our understanding of the life that God is calling each of us into.

Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah

In his Narnia stories CS Lewis describes heaven as going “further up and further in” to Aslan’s country.

In Phillipians 3 The Apostle Paul describes us as citizens of a heavenly country, in his first epistle Peter describes us aas sojouners in a strange land. They are not describing a phyusical journey such as Abram and Sarai undertook, they are describing a spiritual understanding that says that we always have more to learn to understand and to fulfil the promises of God in our world and in our lives.

But this transformation, this renewing ofour minds has a cost to it.

It means leaving what we have known behind.

If Abram had remained in the land of his fathers, he would have remained Abram. If Sarai had turned back from God’s calling, she would never have become Sarah.

It’s tempting for us to think, as the whole world changes araound us, that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. That we are living in evil times, and we need to hold on to what we have got.

We see and hear that in the world around su, don’t we? Over the last few years, as our whole world has been through trials and tribulations, the voices that shout “It’s all gone wrong! Turn back! Fear the unknown! Resist change!” These voices have grown louder and louder, and nastier too.

The temptation, as Christians, is to circle the wagons. To cling on to those incomplete truths that I mentioned in the beginning of this sermon, and hold on to what we have got.

The promises of God don’t work like that.

They are risky.

They are dangerous.

They are the only place we can find our ture selves. Our true identity.

It is the promises of God, the assurance they give us of who we area nd whose we are that can lead us into the calm in the midst of this storm of life we’re living through.

God’s promises are a blessing

A couple of weeks ago I was preaching on the theme of blessing - God’s blessings to us, and our blessings to one another.

I thought that I was moving on to a new topic this week.

I was looking for a passage of scripture that summed up God’s promises to us. I was looking for that anchor that could hold us firm in our identity in an ever-changing world.

I thought I was heading away from the lectionary.

But then, as I was scanning the lectionary for an appropriate Psalm for our call to worship I found that today’s scheduled Old Testament reading was this one - the call of Abram in Genesis 12.

And as I read this passage I felt God at work.

Not only wass this reading perfect for the theme that I had in mind, but it gave me a fresh insight into the promises of God.

Because God’s promises to his people, to humanity, to creation are not simplt edicts or declarations, they are by their very nature words of blessing and benediction.

Listen to these words again:

Genesis 12:2–3 (NIV)

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

God has blessed, will bless, is blessing us with his promises and his calling on our lives. A calling and a promise of something new, that leads us further up and further in to the goodness, the riches, the everlasting love of God. Like Abraham and Sarah, it is in this blessing that we will find our truest selves. And this blessing is not only for us, but we are called to be a people of blessing to others, to all the peoples of the earth.

And in this land of the long white cloud, in this land at the ends of the earth, where tangata whenua and and tangata te ao mingle and meet. In this land where we are searching for a sense of identity that affirms our faith and affirms our unique place in the world, God’s promises of blessing are good news indeed.