Genesis 12:1-7
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. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. …In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
4 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. 5Abram 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 in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.
Sermon: Lekh Lekha
When I graduated from high school, I immediately enrolled in a university in Seoul, the capital city of Korea, and left my home in Gwangju, the fifth biggest city in Korea, the birthplace of Kia cars and Keumho Tires. My family and friends had long been aware of my intention to leave; my hometown was a place of oppression and protest, where a thousand students were openly killed in the streets by a military dictatorship, just a year after I was born. I wanted to leave that city, because I did not want to go through one more day of envisioning the streets wreathed in tear gas thrown by the police and the Molotov cocktails thrown back by the protesting students. So, moving to university was my first experience of “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1)
In today’s story, Abram (He would be given his new name, Abraham, by Yahweh later) is called to leave his homeland, Haran, and move to the unknown region of Canaan. Unlike travelling, moving (in this case, also migration) entails the aspect of uprooting. Abram set forth to Canaan with partner Sarai and his nephew Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered and acquired in Haran. But would be life the same as living in Haran, even if he brings everything with him to the new region?
Min-Goo and I migrated to Canada from Korea after two years of marriage. I count that as my second “Leaving Haran”. We first settled in Burnaby, BC. Before we decided to leave Korea, I knew that if I did not make changes, I could be marginalized in the patriarchal family system of Korean society and the church, as a young mother with no job and the wife of an ordained minister. The ordained minister could become a prince at church, while their wife gets buried in the patriarchal expectations of becoming a silent, smiling angel. Min-Goo and I decided together to leave Korea to experience more open systems of church and society. After some searching, Min-Goo was called to be a youth minister in a Korean United Church in Vancouver. Then, I quickly enrolled at the Vancouver School of Theology. God’s calling is mysterious; the immediate reason for my enrolment was not only the desire to start myself on a track to ordination, but our need for a student visa, so that Min-Goo could obtain a spouse work permit, to sustain our family’s finances. Since then, I’ve made many “Leaving Haran” decisions, including moving back to BC to join BVU.
The immediate reasons for moves could be due to job changes, to join family, or because we are seeking milder weather. Upsizing, downsizing, retirement, university, there are many different reasons to move. Some reasons remain mysterious to others, like my family leaving BC for Winnipeg. In 2014, Vancouver and Vancouver Island had been the only regions I lived in. I did not know Canada was so wide, and assumed that every other place in Canada was not significantly different from Southwestern BC. But I still believe that the land and the history called me to the prairies, at that time. Because of my innocence, I could laugh and sincerely enjoy the farewell party that Chemainus United folks threw for me and my family.
In the skits, they showed me two things and said, I will need both in Winnipeg. The blue line paint colours in winter: Keep yourself warm so that your face doesn’t turn blue. If it turns this shade of blue, it’s no good! And the mosquito net for summer to cover my entire head and face… Some reasons are easy to understand, like my family moving back to BC after eight years in Winnipeg - no more mosquito net.
Some of us make moves for reasons beyond our control. The diaspora of African-descent peoples… Natural disaster or climate change diaspora. Economic collapse, war, genocide. A few years after I left Korea, there was a very difficult economic depression. Young people, especially, struggled because of unemployment and insecurity. They called those years “Hell Choseun.” Choseun is a dynasty’s name in Korea. Korea was in real trouble; it felt like the country was stuck in Hell. Many chose to emigrate in those years.
People decide to leave their country to seek human rights. I have known LGBTQ people in the world, leave the culture they grew up with, their families, everything they’ve known, for freedom and safety.
In the Bible, we can find many who make moves. Our spiritual ancestors migrate or become refugees. Hagar, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Jesus, and the disciples, almost everyone we know in the Bible, or at least the ones we find most interesting, have displacement in their stories. The reasons for their moving are different. Years of flood, drought, hunger. Becoming captives. Becoming slaves. Escaping from slavery. They seek liberation; they choose diaspora. What the ancestors in our stories have in common is that on the crossroads of life and death, they deepen their understanding of their relationship with God - through covenant and promise - and listen to God’s call. For Abram, today’s story is the first moment of being called. In Genesis 12:1, God says, “Go from your land, from your family, to where I will show you.” What is interesting about this call and covenant is that, in Hebrew, it begins with “Lekh Lekha”. And the repetition of Lekh Lekha is unusual because both words are in the second person. So, this call of, “Abram, Go, Leave” literally translates to “Abram, you go to you”. (Thanks, Janet Ross)
God’s call to Go, Leave, Move, is not about WHERE you go. Not the destination, the final location. “Abram, Lekh, Lekha”, God’s call to Go, Leave, Move, is about “Go, to you, Go and know yourself.” You must be you. Abram, Ha Na, Shelagh, Kyla, Micia, Broad View, First Met, you go to you to follow my/your call. The blessings that accompany our going, leaving, moving, are not about continuing offspring like the number of stars in the night sky, a promise of future prosperity, but Abram’s first and fundamental call from God is to know yourself, journey with yourself, to recognize who you are, your potential, your liberation, and your call to become you. You go to you is presented as the first step of following one’s call.
So, my invitation for you today, Broad View and First Met, is to find your Lekh Lekha call from God, or from within, to know that, whether it is your voluntary choice, or a mix of diaspora transition and dislocation, the first call to Go, Leave and Move, is to find ourselves, establish ourselves, lift up ourselves in the original blessing of being Beloved. To follow God is to become you, to be beloved for who you are, and make ourselves whole. It is to journey with you, the core of you. Lekh Lekha! You go to You.
Through changes, moves, migration, dislocation, everything that can both challenge us and bless us, what does not change is that you are in the moment. You are in the movement. You are accompanied with God’s call to go to you, to find, establish, liberate the original blessing within you, and with you, to be beloved.
It is about seeking liberation towards the original blessing that is more beautiful, true and good than the forces that restrain you and oppress you. God calls you into the process that moves you into a state where you can love yourself. Yesterday, I had a dream, and in it, someone asked me, “What if the understanding of the direction of my life comes later, belatedly? What if I only come to know the reason for God’s call after all of this?” So, I responded, “The Word of God is called ‘logos’. ― Logos is like lekh Lekha ― . The logos moves. The logos is here. The Word of God, the logos, is present throughout all of space and time, and it is also, always, presently, now, accessible to anyone. The Lekh Lekha (“You for you”) is moving within you, living with you, right now. What we can do is to listen.
I have faith that the call has moved my journey through moving to Canada, moving to Winnipeg, moving back to BC. I have been accompanied by the call. Even outside of my knowledge, it never left me for one second.
When Sarai and Abram left Haran, the story notes that Abram was seventy-five. Perhaps the Ancient Hebrew math for calculating human age may be different from ours now, but it is certain that Abram was not young. God was calling him to have a youthful mindset, though – to be willing to move, to change, to adapt. Even after Abram and Sarai moved to Canaan, they still needed to make another move - moving into Egypt, due to famine. (In the meantime, God gave him a new name, Abraham, meaning Father of Many).
The womanist theologian Emilie Townes beautifully says that the fullness of liberation is a process. “Liberation and freedom are not the same. Liberation is a process. Freedom is a temporary state of being. Liberation is dynamic. It never ends.”
BVU and First Met, now becoming a young church, and yet still old, the call is within us, moving, and living with us, calling us to Go to You, leaving Haran, the familiar, in favour of the call towards the beloved unfamiliar.
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