Faith: A Journey into the Unknown

My boss had worked in Boston when HIV/AIDS first emerged in New York City and came back with the latest tools and techniques in diagnosis and research. The department’s energy, time and effort focussed on the immensity of this crisis and other work had to be set aside somewhat. 

Through the three years I experienced significant moments and transitions in my life – I was engaged and married and moved into a new, rental home. My mother was diagnosed with terminal illness and died just as I was completing my time in the project. I was in my early twenties and finding my sense of identity. I had become more significantly involved in the life of the local church since my late teens, leading youth groups, playing music, lay preaching and asking lots of questions. The youth ministry exposed me to some broader issues in the lives of young people, especially through some young blokes who joined the group and opened us to deeper and darker experiences in their home and social lives. I was also encountering the breadth of responses to people living with HIV/AIDS. Through work there was the compassionate and caring dimension, dealing with human suffering and pain. In broader society and parts of the church, there was judgement and fear.

I was trying to figure out what I would do next – gain more education in science, be redeployed within the department or find a job elsewhere. That is, where was my career in science headed? How would I nurture it and move forward, as this was the assumption from myself and the wider society? I applied for and was accepted into a part time post-graduate course but closer to commencement felt it wasn’t right. My deep heart and passion weren’t in it, but where were they?

I visited my minister at the time with ideas, questions and confusion. He looked at my list of possibilities and homed in on ministry roles. I had felt a desire, a yearning, to do some theological education and grow in my understanding. Perhaps move into bioethics, where science and theology might intersect. He took it deeper and suggested that he felt I was called into ministry within the church. Such ideas had floated through my mind but had been dismissed as I searched through a range of other possibilities. I left our conversation with the sense that perhaps this was where I was headed and should be open to it – but how? What did it mean? I went for a walk with the dog and prayed: ‘God, not sure what this means but if this is something I should do and you are in it, then let’s do it.’ Something like that and I instantly felt a sense of deep peace and assurance. It was as if God was saying, ‘Yes!’ I talked it over with Susan and engaged in the church’s process, which involved telling my ‘call story’ over and over to different groups and committees.

It felt like a huge and counter-cultural decision. I would be giving up work and an income for three years, and we would live off Susan’s income. That would also mean delaying buying a house, starting a family and the usual things newly married couples of the time considered. It also meant going into a sphere that was so different from anything I’d contemplated or experienced in our family, who were not really involved in church. It felt very strange and foreign. We didn’t know where we’d end up or what it would mean. There was so much that was unknown and surprising.

This week we read a story that keeps recurring for me. It feels like an archetypal story that continues to challenge and confront, as well as inspire me. It is the story of the ‘Call of Abraham’ in Genesis 12. Abram and Sarai, as they were originally called, lived in Haran (modern day Türkiye). The simple story states that God called to Abram to pack up everything and go to where I will tell you. They are to leave home family, community and the known world of their lives and journey out into the unknown. They let go of security, comfort and the world and life that they have some sense of control over to venture out into an unknown world to meet people who are different in every way. It is a life of faith, and it is challenging.

We are not told how God spoke to Abram, simply that God did, and Abram believed this mysterious God was calling him. Were there audible words (some people have shared such personal experiences with me – they are not my experience)? Was it through the words of others or was it the deep sense of yearning, deeper than the feelings and ordinary compulsions of life, something that is deep and becomes all-consuming? That has been my experience at different times. I resist and resist until I can’t any longer.

Abraham’s world was very different. Faith and trust in gods were paramount and obedience unquestioned. Never-the-less, Abram heard and went. The story of Abraham and Sarah continues through the book of Genesis and is the story of journey. Their life was a journey with no definite destination. They made mistakes, messed up, resisted the ways of faith and were always picked up, brought back and loved by this God who called them and calls us. When they let go, they grew and discovered the presence of Sacred Spirit and Divine Love flowing around and through them. When they clung and held on to control, power, privilege and wealth, the flow stagnated and love diminished, becoming hatred, anger and rage. They cling and something in them dies; they let go and life flourishes in, through and around them. The same for us!

As I read and re-read Abraham and Sarah’s story of journey I can see elements of my own life there. I recognise how I have been drawn into new things that feel strange, different, against the flow of culture or society – or what seems reasonable and logical. I have stood in places that feel very insecure and where I feel impotent and out of control – I don’t know what to do and can only surrender into the grace of this God who I believe (and hope) is in the midst of everything and is leading me.

As I ponder my own sense of call through the years, I am aware of the stories of others that have nurtured and inspired me in so many ways. Such inspiration helps me understand an alternate way in the world that opposes a culture grounded in violence, exclusion, the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. I find encouragement to try and live into the radical way of Jesus, whose life was grounded in love and justice, inclusion and generosity, equality and sharing – especially with the poor and impoverished of the world. He lifted up the little ones and gave them real hope and welcomed all into a community that is prophetic and grace-filled, peace-making and reconciling. It is a community grounded in relationship and love that flows out to influence the world around.