Leaving behind, going ahead

 

Genesis 12: 1-9
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 7, 2026

Photo of the bow of a weathered canoe heading toward a small island covered with fir trees, on a calm lake at either sunrise or sunset.  The sky is pale blue, with some clouds that are lavender, peach, pink, and dark gray.

Whether we live with God or we make our own way, being human in this world means a life of comings and goings. It may look like we’re staying put for a while, but God and life are always getting us ready for the next leg of the journey. Like a garden or a forest or an ocean or a galaxy or a human body, there’s a lot going on that we don’t always see or pay attention to, but things are changing and moving, nonetheless. Everything, everything is on its way to somewhere else—constantly—always moving, always changing. It only looks like we’re standing still because time seems to move so slowly. The universe is about 15 billion years old and it’s still evolving, still growing, and our knowledge of it is still expanding.



Yet when we look back on our lives, a speck of years in the span of existence, it feels like all of it has occurred in the blink of an eye. How quickly have the years gone by, when we knew our graduates as children, as babies, knew ourselves 20, 30, 40 years younger, and yet while we were in the middle of it all, didn’t it seem like this day was so far away? Inevitably, leaving is part of the plot, at some point in time, in whatever way. The narrative of this church began with leaving. Eventually we all leave what is known and go into the unknown.



When God told Abram and Sarai to “go”, God wasn’t telling them to go, so much as to leave. Leave behind all their family, their familiar fertile land in Sumer, in the delta of the Euphrates; leave behind the inheritance of his father’s land for a land that God would show them, an unfamiliar place, a land in which they would be strangers.



For many of us this is not good news. Leave? Just because God said so? Leave for a place far away, with no idea what it will be like, giving absolute trust to a God who only a few chapters back destroyed almost all of creation and humankind with a flood, then scattered a burgeoning human race by confusing their language.



But now God makes promises of blessing and descendants to Abram, and God makes good on those promises. We see the relationship between God and human beings change and grow. And so, at the age of 75, Abram and Sarai leave everything they know, taking with them their nephew Lot, all their possessions, animals and slaves and set out for the land of Canaan. And they don’t make the journey in one huge push but they go in stages: one step, one day at a time. Ever since then, God’s people have been on the move, whether for survival or exile or to return home or to leave once more.



Leaving and going are spiritual practices that take us through our entire life. How we say hello is just as important as how we say goodbye. We can’t wait for the world to change before we embrace it, before we embrace ourselves.



Each day we are opening a door and crossing a threshold to a world, a place yet unknown. Each day we are given the opportunity to leave behind the sacred altars that no longer serve us, to let go of what could have been so that we can go ahead towards something else. Sometimes we’re having to let go of pain, sometimes we’re having to travel with pain. Sometimes the invitation is a hopeful open future, the road stretched out ahead of us. Sometimes it’s illness or injury or heartbreak that knocks us off our feet, rerouting us from one path onto another we’d rather not take. And yet as the poet Anthony Machado reminds us, “Traveler, there is no road. The road is made by walking.” The journey is what it is by our courage and will to make the path we travel.



But before we go, and as we travel along, we are invited to this Table, to take, eat, drink, and remember. Remember that we do not travel alone. Remember that every table is not only a meal but an opportunity to encounter fellow travelers, build relationships, make community. Remember that life is always calling us to disrupt our lives for others, that our paths might converge and intertwine.



Theologian Henri Nouwen reminds us that our God is not one to stay home, refuse to budge, or expect her beloved children to come to her. She leaves the house, disrupting her life for us, ignoring her dignity by running toward us, paying no mind to apologies and promises of change, and instead she brings us to the table.



To be beloved is to live in another’s heart. All of us are beloved—to God, to each other, to those who came before us. We live even in the hearts of those who are long gone. There will come a time when we will leave this building, this New Ark, and go ahead on the path that we are creating together. You who have graduated from one path and moving on to another—you are coming to awareness of your lifelong journey of leaving and going. Through all of it, the reluctance and the resilience, remember your belovedness that lives inside you and goes with you. Amen.



Benediction – Wendell Berry, "Mad Farmer Liberation Front" (adapted)



Friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

As soon as [those who think they’re in charge]
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.