Sojourning

Exodus 2: 21-22,     Hebrews 11: 8-16

 

          You know, the Bible is loaded with sojourners. Sojourners are people who are only staying temporarily. They consider their home to be another place. Noah was a big time sojourner. He was never really home even in his home country. One day, he sailed away in an ark and landed in a new world where he was asked to repopulate it with his extended family. Abraham was a major league sojourner. God asked him to pick up everything and start going. He didn’t even know his destination when he left. I suppose my daughter Emily is a kind of sojourner. She has spent almost a decade in Africa, but in at least three different countries. Now she’s been gone so long, she’s a sojourner even when she comes back home. I guess she’s a long term temporary.

          In the second chapter of the book of Exodus, we find Moses has killed an Egyptian and has fled from Egypt for his safety. He travels to the land of Midian. It’s not clear how far away that was from Egypt, but it was far away enough to be safe. There, Moses befriends Jethro, the priest of Midian. The scripture says that Moses was content to dwell there and that Jethro gave Moses his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. They had a son and named him Gershom, which means “stranger there.” Moses said he gave his son that name because “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.” Though Moses stayed in Midian for fifty years before he returned to Egypt, one gets the feeling that Midian was still to Moses a foreign land.

          The book of Hebrews also talks about sojourning. We know chapter 11 as the great hall of faith, where the pastor writer offers a list of notable faith warriors down through the ages. But the writer is about much more here than giving us a hall of heroes. He wants us to understand about faith…and perseverance in that faith. I say pastor because that’s the way I have come to see the book of Hebrews. It speaks to me as if I am listening to a carefully and caringly crafted sermon, although much longer than the ones you hear from me. We don’t really know who wrote it. Paul or Barnabas have often been given credit, but the writing style differs from that of Paul enough to cause substantial doubt about that authorship. So we don’t know.  I will call him the pastor.

          The pastor talks about Abraham’s call to a place. It is the place where he was to receive his inheritance. By using the word place, the writer seems to be pointing us not to a physical address, but more to an eternal dwelling place. We know he went to the land of Canaan; the place the pastor calls the land of promise. But notice how he lived. The pastor tells us that Abraham lived as in a foreign land, in tents. Now many of you folks are people of the land. Even if you don’t farm anymore, you live on family land here in the eastern Sandhills of South Carolina. The land has been your sustenance for generations. Even now, as brothers and sisters die, you make efforts to buy their share of the land to preserve that inheritance. The land has been and remains part of your identity, so much so that many of you commute for long distance to jobs in more populated areas, yet choose not to move closer to your work.

          Compare your feelings for your family land to that of Abraham. You build houses and barns. Abraham raised his family on the move. You put down roots. Abraham put down tent stakes. Even though he was called, and called to a place, Hebrews says that he and his son Isaac and then his grandson Jacob, lived as in a foreign land. Why? The writer of Hebrews gives us the answer. He says that they were looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God [v.10].

          In verse 13, the pastor talks about these generations of God’s people dying, not having received the things promised. And yet they had received God’s promise, hadn’t they? Abraham was promised land, and he went to and settled in a new land, a land rich with blessings for him and his family. Abraham was promised seed, and certainly he was blessed with that, as Jacob gave his grandfather twelve sons.  And yet, Hebrews says that the promise was not received. The writer of Hebrews is pointing out to us that the promise, the real promise of God, is not land, but rather that heavenly city whose designer and builder is God. He was talking about something that you can’t see or touch, but that is more real than all the dirt in the Carolina Sandhills.

          This is why the pastor of Hebrews refers to these faithful as sojourners. He says that they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. They had seen the promise, but only from afar. Now if the inheritance were as simple as the land, then these people would either have gone back home or they would have made their new land their home. But that is not the promise to which God refers. God calls us to that which lives in our hearts, a place where all longing is forever satisfied. The writer of Hebrews put it this way in verse 16: “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefor God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”  

          There is a price to pay for this kind of faith. We are never going to be completely at home where we live on this earth. We who call on God as our Lord and Savior live our lives with a different point of reference.  Theologian Gareth Cockerill says it this way: “By deciding to journey toward the eternal ‘City’ in answer to God’s call, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob chose to be strangers and aliens in the unbelieving society of this world.” The end result for the Christian is that he or she is going to be accorded a sort of “alien” status right in the middle of what we call home. Should we really be surprised? Jesus himself was run out of his home town, saying that “no prophet is acceptable in his home town.” If we are going to seek residence in that eternal city, our pilgrimage must start here and now, and it will be met in some quarters with hostility; in others, downright contempt.

         It seems to me that what all these passages are pointing to is that while we all come to know that life is a journey, what we have to figure out is the path for that journey. There is a vast difference between pilgrims and wanderers. We have all met wanderers. They are interesting people. They often have been many places and seen many things. But usually, their stories have a common thread. They are aimless in their wanderings and have no more reason to go to the next place than to stay at the one where they are.

          Pilgrims are a different sort of folk. Their journey has purpose. They are seeking something which will bind the threads of their life together in purpose. Noah and Abraham and Moses and all of our biblical sojourners are an example not of wanderers, but of pilgrims. We are reminded at the beginning of this Thanksgiving season that our American heritage points to the pilgrims of the Mayflower. They left their homes with a purpose. They sought a new land to practice that in which they believed. Invariably, pilgrims are going to find themselves sojourning in a place for a time on the way to their real destination. Such is the way of the Christian.         

          Growing up, my sister and brother and I used to play the board game Monopoly on rainy days. I remember that on one corner of the board, there is a square that is the jail. The whole center of that corner is a jail cell with a guy behind bars. If you drew a “Go to Jail” card, then that’s where you went for a while. But if you just landed on the square, there were edges, margins, all around it, that said “Just Visiting.” That was fine. If you were “just visiting,” you could move on without being held back. Just visiting on that Monopoly board is sort of like what I’m trying to describe here about life as a Christian.

          We are in a very real sense, sojourners in a foreign land, the land of the already but not yet. Jesus has come. We know the gospel.  We can see the way to salvation. This is the province of the already. But he sits at the right hand of God, not yet ready to close the age, not yet willing to end his loving pursuit of each and every one of us. This is the land of the not yet.  So we press on toward the mark of that upward call. And in the meantime, we persevere. We do not build our permanent homes in this world. We are sojourners, living for that heavenly city he promised.