Moving in Faith

Most of us, at some point in our lives, have endured the process of moving. I myself did not move much in my childhood—

just once, when I was eleven, and that was just a few miles across Ruston, where I grew up.

When I went to college at Louisiana Tech, I moved into a dorm

and a house, but I was still relatively new to the concept of moving.

Since then, however, I have moved many times—from one

apartment to another many times, and from one state to another several more times.

Moving is confusing in so many ways.

Our typical patterns are disrupted.

We are living in a new space.

Even the early morning trip to the kitchen to find the coffee pot

can be confusing.

Our stuff is in boxes, we are sleeping in different places.

The sunlight comes through the windows differently.

The sounds are different.

The smells are different.

It takes a while to recover from a move, to settle in,

to create new mental pathways in our brains

that help us make sense of our new environment.

Then there’s driving in a new city.

Especially before GPS, driving in a new city was often exciting but

bewildering.

I remember when my sister moved from Ruston to Houston

in the early 1990s.

She bought a large orange notebook called a “key map”

that had the entire area mapped out in around 200 pages.

When you got to the edge of one map,

you would follow the directions

to the page number of the next map.

If you took a wrong turn, especially the wrong highway,

you would have to pull over, examine the map,

recalculate the route yourself, and then get started again,

hopefully in the right direction this time.

But perhaps one of the greatest challenges in moving is becoming

acclimated to a whole new society.

A town or city is a society all on its own,

with its own people, its own customs, its own priorities.

Some communities are openly friendly—

places where you’re expected to wave or say hello to people you

pass;

others may think you’re strange if you even make eye contact.

Some places may have plenty of parks and green spaces;

others may have nothing but concrete for miles around.

Some may prioritize foot and bicycle traffic;

others may flourish on wide and speedy freeways.

It is inevitable that we compare one place to another when we move.

Almost always,

we will have some regrets

about the places we have left behind,

even as we seek something redeeming, hopeful,

and exciting about our new home.

And with children,

we have to fight even harder to put on a brave and

optimistic face,

even when we ourselves may be unsure about the

move we just made.

Migration seems to be a universal part of the human experience.

People have always been on the move, and almost always,

those moves are made

out of a sense of hope that a better life awaits.

After all,

to leave behind the certainty of one place

to embrace the uncertainty of another is an act of faith.

It’s no accident that the author of Hebrews

uses moving as the primary way

of describing what it is to have faith.

One of the most foundational stories of the Bible has to do with moving,

with Abraham and Sarah following God’s calling

to leave behind everything they knew

and embrace the uncertainty of a new land.

Even when they got there,

they weren’t given guarantees of permanence.

They had to live in tents—temporary dwelling places.

The writer of Hebrews uses the story of Abraham and Sarah

to point out something pretty profound;

something that should be obvious to us every day,

but something that we choose to ignore most days of our lives.

We are all strangers and foreigners on the earth—

all of us sojourners,

all of us pilgrims,

all of us always on the move.

Even if we stay in the same town our entire lives,

we are always moving—changing, growing up,

growing older, learning from our successes and failures,

coping with whatever life throws our way.

God has put a longing in our hearts for the better country,

the true homeland,

the heavenly city.

No earthly city will ever satisfy this longing,

for the earthly city has different priorities than the heavenly city.

The earthly city is competitive;

the heavenly city is cooperative.

The earthly city is violent;

the heavenly city is peaceful.

The earthly city is often

ugly, chaotic, and unforgiving;

the heavenly city is

beautiful, calm, and full of forgiveness and grace.

The earthly city is focused only on “success.”

It only admits those who fit into a narrow set of categories.

It divides humanity into “us” and “them.”

The heavenly city embraces all;

failures, rejects, cast-offs,

the miserable, broken, beaten down,

the victims of violence and hatred and war.

And finally, the earthly city may have borders and limits;

but the heavenly city is an invisible reality,

snaking through the streets of our earthly cities, in between,

under, and over barriers,

joining the people of God to each other across all

humanly-created barriers of race, class,

culture, ethnicity, and language.

In our Gospel for today, Jesus promises to give us that heavenly city.

Jesus calls on us to make our investments in the invisible city,

not the visible one.

Remember, in the earthly city, we are mere strangers and pilgrims,

sojourners all.

The earthly city, as we all know, is temporary.

It is susceptible to all kinds of dangers—

flooding, damaging winds, earthquakes, violence,

economic hardship and loss.

The earthly city seems like it is a permanent home,

but as many of us have experienced at some point in our lives,

it is not permanent.

What if, Jesus says: what if?

What if there were a way to invest in the heavenly city?

What would that investment look like?

For starters, it looks like baptism.

Baptism is the down payment on our investment in the heavenly city.

Our baptismal covenant,

a beautiful set of vows right in the middle of our prayer book,

asks us how we will make our investment in the heavenly city.

How we plan to move, in faith, from the earthly city

to the place that God has already prepared for us,

the place in which we unpack our heavy burdens

and lay them at Jesus’s feet,

the place where we call each other “sister” and “brother”

because we have become part of God’s blessed family.

Elizabeth and her family have the chance to make that investment today.

It’s an investment that Jesus talks about in Luke’s Gospel when he says “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Baptism is a way of placing our treasures, our very selves, into God’s hands.

When we are baptized, we are clothed in Christ, being “dressed for action,”

ready for God’s grace to burst into our lives

in so many ways that we can’t even fully grasp.

Ready to build the heavenly city.

But the task of building the heavenly city is a daunting one.

None of us can do it on our own.

That’s why we say “with God’s help” in our baptismal covenant.

We have the desire to move,

but we often need help to get over

our faults, fears, and insecurities.

That’s why Jesus tells us not to fear;

God wants to give us the kingdom. It is a gift.

What is required to receive a gift?

An open hand and an open heart.

We come to baptism just as we are,

and God receives us and gives us the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

Likewise, we come to the Altar just as we are,

with open hands,

bearing nothing but our expectation

of the gift of God’s own body and blood.

We come to the heavenly city

with open hands and hearts full of expectation.

We rest in the promises of God;

we rest in God’s love,

and we ask for the grace to see the invisible city;

for it is that city to which we are called as true citizens. AMEN.