PROPER 14-C, AUGUST 8, 2004

On Tuesday Arlena and I are off on vacation, well, sort of. We are off to visit family: our mothers, our brothers and sisters, our daughters, our grandchildren. We will have a wonderful time, of that I am quite certain because we always do on such visits. But to be honest, visiting family is not my idea of a vacation. For me a vacation is relaxing somewhere on a beach.

On Wednesday afternoon we are going to meet up with the Journey to Adulthood group in Washington, DC. We will be staying at the College of Preachers close by the National Cathedral. We will spend a day-and-a-half with them in Washington taking part in the activities they have planned as part of their pilgrimage. They will have come from several days of camping out, visiting religious communities and white water rafting on the New River in West Virginia. After they leave Washington, they will go to Cedar Point Amusement Park on Lake Erie in Ohio. The two nights in Washington will be the only two nights they will sleep on a bed inside a building. The rest of the time they will rough it in tents. My idea of roughing it is a Holiday Inn without a pool.

Sleeping under the stars, white water rafting, riding roller coasters and rides that turn your stomach upside down and inside out – none of that is my idea of fun and is certainly not on my agenda when it comes to taking a vacation. Maybe I need to be a little more adventurous. I know my wife and my children think so. But it isn’t in the genes. To be honest, I’m a chicken at heart.

Of course, listening to the news these days makes one wonder if even staying at a Holiday Inn is safe any more. The Homeland Security Agency has us on yellow alert, or something like that, meaning that the enemy may be lurking behind the next bush. On Wednesday and Thursday, when we are in Washington, DC, we will be under orange alert, meaning, I guess, that the enemy is indeed hiding close by.

Robert Young Pelton has written a book he titles The World’s Most Dangerous Places. He believes that a place is often less dangerous than one’s state of mind. He says danger is relative. In fact, he thinks traveling to Tikrit or Baghdad or even the jungle may be safer than sitting at home watching Dan Rather file a report about it. The dangers that travelers face are, he says, "infinitesimal" compared to the potential hazards of life anywhere in this country. "We don’t think about dying at the 7-11 or watching our kids soccer game or even watching Leno propped up in bed," says Pelton. "But ask any cop – that’s where they find dead people all the time."

The fact is that the real discomfort most of us feel when travelling comes from the internal, namely our own fears, rather than from the external, namely, real things of which to be afraid. So it seems that many people are like me: we try to cut down the odds, thinking that by avoiding the dangerous places, like the rapids of the New River, downtown Jerusalem or downtown Baghdad, we will be safe and cheat death. But the stone-cold fact is that we are all going to die sometime. Given that reality, says Pelton, the secret to life well lived isn’t hiding out but getting out, even if there is some risk

Exercising and eating right are still important, but people who travel and indulge their sense of adventure seem, at least statistically, to outlive those who play it safe. Pelton says this: "There are a lot of wry octogenarians out there [who]…stay out of the house as much as possible, fully understanding that the home is the worlds’ most dangerous place for people over the age of 75. And they don’t let a lot of doomsday books and warnings slow them down."

All of which brings me to today’s second lesson and Abraham, perhaps the first wry octogenarian who did not let age get in the way of adventure. Here was a man who "was as good as dead" when he set out on his journey of faith, who did not have the foggiest notion of where he was going or of the dangers that lay ahead.

He was not travelling first class, not even coach. His ticket was one of uncertainty and certain discomfort – sleeping in tents, living as a foreigner, dealing with the unknown every minute of every day. Our young people may be getting a sense of some of what Abraham’s adventure was like, but only a small part of that. I hope not to even come close to such experiences.

Not only did Abraham and Sarah’s great adventure begin when they were already old and retired, God added to that adventure by blessing them with a son. I shutter to think about having a child at my age. I know they were thrilled about the birth of Isaac. But I remember what it was like taking the girls on vacation when they were Isaac’s age. Believe me, it was no vacation. But that was Abraham’s and Sarah’s life! God bless them. And God spare me!

But you see, Abraham and Sarah saw their home to be wherever they were; because wherever they were, that is where God was. No matter where God was calling them to be, no matter how difficult or uncertain or dangerous the journey, they were unafraid. They believed they were where God wanted them to be and that God was with them and would protect them every step of the way – which gives a different meaning to homeland security, does it not?

Chapter eleven of the Letter to the Hebrews is often called the "faith chapter" because it recounts the journeys in faith of our spiritual ancestors and reminds us that these brave and strong and faithful men and women did not play it safe. In the words of Jesus in the Gospel, they were always dressed for action. Their lamps were lit and they were ready to go wherever God would send them next.

Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel all freely chose to follow God. They could have done otherwise. Rarely did they know precisely where God was leading them. And even if they could have had one of those GPS devices to tell them exactly where they were, where they were was less important than why they were there. They were where they were because that is where God wanted them to be at that moment in their lives.

Our journey in faith, yours and mine, is not a vacation, not even a working vacation. It is not a time for rest, even though we must make time for rest and relaxation, as Jesus always did. And it is not a pilgrimage to chosen places with chosen outcomes, even though living out our faith will often take us to places we do choose. Rather, our journey in faith is more like a long-distance trip whose destination is heaven.

Living out our faith, following God’s lead like Abraham and Sarah, like some of those wry octogenarians we all know, may indeed bring us to new points on the map. On the other hand, we may never move geographically. But living out our faith as fully as we can will lead us to shifts in our relationship with God and move us to new understanding and growth. We will begin to see as God sees. That journey in faith starts with a first step and not with a particular destination in mind.

Faith, if you will, is an open-ended ticket, an invitation, an adventure that starts but never really ends. If we think about it, the church is really a travel agency, helping us book our trip, our journey in faith, inviting us to follow God wherever God might lead: to a foreign country, to the back alleys and slums of the city, to our next-door neighbor, or simply to a new way of living.

Our journey in faith is neither vacation nor pilgrimage. It is an adventure, as we have all discovered, a never-ending journey to discovering God and discovering where God wants us to be and discovering what God wants us to do wherever God leads us. Enjoy the trip!