Have you seen them yet? Or heard them? I always know when they are flying overhead because my dogs hear their honking and announce that they are passing by. And yesterday, I almost ran off the road over by the forest preserve as I saw their V coming together as they set off for the next leg of their journey. The movement of the wild geese ... migrating north ... marks the transition into spring that we’re beginning to feel and see all around us. In the fall the journey of the wild geese is about getting to a place where there will be food enough for the winter. And the ones who come over Wisconsin and northern Illinois fly from Hudson and James Bay in northern central Canada, to wildlife refuges in Kentucky and Tennessee and even southern Illinois. In the spring they are making the return trip: heading north ... heading home ... following the urgent need to nest and produce offspring. It is a part of their make up ... of how God has made them ... to make these long journeys toward food and toward new life.

It is also a part of our make up ... to seek nourishment and to seek new life. Though we don’t "migrate" annually in the same way that some of the creatures God has made do, it is certainly a part of our the human experience to move toward adequate supplies of food and nourishment and to be part of the generation of new life. It is how God has made us ... to be fruitful and multiply is the instruction given to the creation ... and so we sometimes name this reality the call of God. And in the Biblical narrative we discover God’s call to migration and fruitfulness is very particular in the story of Abram and Sarai. Some of you heard Rev. Han preach at the Interfaith Service last fall and you may remember his identification of Abraham and Sarah as the first immigrant family, leaving their home and setting off to a world they cannot see.

By the time we get to the encounter between God and Abraham today, there have been two previous times that they have met. The first is that original call recorded in the 12^th chapter of Genesis .... go out from the place that you know ... from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And there is a promise given beyond place. It is to be a blessing ... that you and your descendants will become a great nation that blesses all the families of the earth. It is a call to leave what is familiar and to trust that God will show the way. And Abram ... not yet called Abraham ... goes. He is seventy-five years old when he sets out. He has no legitimate heirs ... no map ... no idea of what this is going to look like. But he trusts God, gathers the persons and property he does have, and heads off into the future God has promised.

Soon enough eleven years have passed. Abram is 86 years old when God again appears. In a dream Abram is assured of God’s protection, and again he is reminded of the promise of descendants. Abram isn’t so sure how this is supposed to work. He asks for a sign, which he is given, but then he and Sarai take matters into their own hands. The slave girl Hagar is enlisted to produce an heir. And though marital tensions ensue, the family eventually settles down and organizes itself to support Ishmael’s growth.

Thirteen years later ... Abram is 99, Sarai, 89 and Ishmael is soon to be 13 years old ... God appears again to Abram. It is here that we find the lesson for today ... a story of covenant making, of changed names and a further revelation of who this God is that Abram trusts. God begins the encounter with the declaration that, "I am El Shaddai!!" God Almighty is the way this is usually translated. I am God Almighty .... God of the Mountains .... or some suggest, God of Many Breasts. The point being: I am sufficient for you ... all-sufficient. And as I am all sufficient ... the only God you will ever need ... you are to walk before me, walk in my ways, with all your heart.

This is an outrageous and radical declaration on God’s part. Not because there is any doubt in God’s mind ... but against the backdrop of the many gods worshiped in the ancient near east during this period ... that one god would claim to be all sufficient, all powerful, over all, would have been shocking. And further, that this all-sufficient and mighty God would deign to choose and then commit to a singular and particular people, binding God’s very self to them, seems like a contradiction in terms. I am almighty ... all sufficient ... and I choose you, an old, childless couple and your descendants .... it is in your community that I choose to live, to abide, and through you, whom I will be made known in history on the earth.

In case there is any doubt, this story ... this story we read and tell and preach and study ... this whole story that we call scripture ... is all about God and God’s commitment to us and all of creation. For the covenant God offers is God’s doing, not ours. Abram and Sarai ... and their descendants called the people Israel... aren’t chosen as the location of God’s presence and power because of something they have done or some quality about them that makes them deserving. God chooses them .... shows faith in them ... and they learn to trust this God by trusting in what God is doing. It is a covenant of grace and it changes everything.

Even the names of all the players are changed .... as they are in many of our more contemporary covenant ceremonies. In some traditions children are given baptismal names, and we all receive the name "disciple" or "Christian" through the baptismal covenant. Some immigrants who become citizens take a new name at the time of their swearing in. At marriage, there is frequently a change in name. Even Yahweh God has a new name in this story ... this is the first time El Shaddai has been used in Torah. Abram becomes Abraham ... instead of exalted father or ancestor, he becomes father or ancestor of a multitude. And Sarai is included in this covenant that God is making ... and becomes Sarah. New names imply a new purpose and new relationship. It is something like wedding ceremonies even unto this day: I, El Shaddai, take you, Abraham and Sarah ... to be my covenant partners and with you I will abide through all the days of your lives.

But marriage changes things. I met with a young couple on Thursday about officiating at their wedding this spring. They’ve been together 8 years ... and living together for 4 of those years. They have this sense that their wedding is just a kind of party and that marriage won’t be all that different. But it just isn’t true, is it? I was clear with them ... marriage changes things. Even if the woman doesn’t change her name ... her title and role changes. She becomes wife instead of girlfriend, or fiancee, or lover, or roommate. And the man gets the parallel designation of husband. Being husband and wife is different than being boyfriend and girlfriend, lovers, or house-mates. It changes how people see you and it changes what you expect of yourself and each other. With God’s blessing, ultimately you are transformed, becoming the thing you’ve pledged yourself to be.

Well, God’s choice of Abraham and Sarah ... and of us ... changes things. Walk before me, and be blameless, God Almighty declares to them, to you and to me and to all those who are descendants of Abraham some 4000 years later. God’s grace and love ... God’s choice to be made known through us ... changes us, too. Where we are barren ... there is the potential for fruitfulness. Where there is isolation ... there is a living together in covenant. Where there was abandonment ... there is the reality of being cared for.

Walking before God and being blameless isn’t so much about being watched and tested to see if you are perfect. It is about knowing that you walk in God’s sight at all times and in all your ways and that you are growing in your openness to God’s love. Someone put it this way .. we are who God says we are ... not who we appear to be, who we believe ourselves to be, or who others say we are. Walking before God is about this covenant journey ... living conscious of God’s presence and covenant with you, and with us as God’s people.

Hear is the translation of this text from the Hebrew in the Torah ... a Modern Commentary published by the Union for Reform Judaism ... I am El Shaddai – walk along before Me and be pure of heart and I will set a covenant between us and multiply you exceedingly. It is the language of the heart that speaks to me here and challenges me and us all ... to live wholeheartedly ... with an undivided heart .... wholly devoted to God. John Wesley sees this as the essence of holiness. In his "Plain Account of Christian Perfection" he describes scriptural perfection as "pure love filling the heart."

Living with an undivided heart isn’t all that easy, of course. We even see Peter, the rock upon whom the church would be built, divided in his loyalties in the gospel story for today. Jesus has been teaching them that suffering and death were in his near future, were indeed a part of what his mission entails ... and Peter rebukes Jesus for such an idea. Immediately before our reading, Peter had affirmed his recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, but his conception of Messiah didn’t include anything about suffering and death. He believed that the Messiah would come to deliver the people from Roman oppression and to claim David’s throne from which to rule the nations with power and with might. But Jesus will have none of that talk. He turns on Peter with a vengeance and proclaims, Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things, not on the things of God but on the desires of humanity.

Walking before God with whole-heartedness can only be done by the grace of God ... but by and through God’s grace it is possible to live your life in the consciousness of God’s presence, in fellowship and companionship. For a life walked before God is a covenant journey ... with God’s walking with and even ahead of us toward the suffering and death that comes to us all. The spiritual practices of Lent and of the other seasons of our lives are not efforts to make ourselves perfect but to connect us to one another and to God in ways that increase our receptivity to God’s presence and to God’s love. We do this best in community ... in formation, as we head toward home.

The poet Mary Oliver captures this in her amazing poem, Wild Geese.

And so, as we continue through this 40 day journey of Lent, consider the nature of God’s covenant with you.

Upon what does that relationship depend?

What do you trust to give you life?

Where do you find your heart divided?

If you were to receive a new name from God, what might it be? And what would be the new purpose which it signifies?

With these questions in our hearts, let us pray and sing together ...