Life Is Random and Unexpected

What follows is my sermon from Shabbat Lecha Lecha about Abraham’s call.

This week we read about the call of Abraham. Seemingly out of the blue God calls to Abraham and says to him, “Lech Lecha—Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12) There is no reason given in the Torah why Abraham is called. The rabbis assume that there can only be one reason why God called out to him. It must be because God saw something extraordinary in him. It was because of his character.

And so, our tradition speaks about the character traits that merited this call. Moses Maimonides imagines that Abraham looked up at the stars and said that there must be a Prime Mover who sets the stars, the sun and the moon in their places. God must be that grand artist. Maimonides saw Abraham in his own image as an Aristotelian philosopher. Likewise, the rabbis saw him after their own image and wrote the famous story about Abraham working in his father Terah’s idol shop. Everyone is familiar with this tale. One day when young Abe was working in the idol shop, he realized the absurdity of praying to idols. He smashed all the idols except one. When his father returned and berated him for all the damage, Abraham pointed to the one idol said, “I did not do anything. He did it.” Terah shouted, “That’s ridiculous. An idol has no power to do something like that.” And Abraham responded, “Exactly.”

In both instances there is the assumption that Abraham merited the call. There was something unique and special about him. This is why God singles him out.

I prefer however to believe the call was random. Abraham was not a hero who merited the call. Instead, he became a hero because of the call. He rose to the occasion. Our greatest moments are not when we are doing what is expected but when we summon the courage to face the unexpected. We spend our time planning, but life is a series of unexpected and random moments that set our course and our shape our destiny.

Let’s examine a few examples. This week I visited all the Religious School classes for Ask the Rabbi questions. They had many questions some about God, but most were their attempts to get to know me better. In addition to our students offering worry and concern about my health, many asked me why I became a rabbi. Their questions reminded me of the story of how I got to where I am today. Here is that story. It begins in college. I went to Franklin & Marshall College for two reasons. 1. Because they had an amazing pre-med program and I planned on becoming a doctor and 2. They had a competitive swim team, and I wanted to compete on a varsity swim team in college. As you know I still swim but obviously I am not a doctor. Here is why.

F&M made me take a Bible class in my first semester. The school had just instituted a distribution requirement, and everyone had to take a religion class and a writing class. I protested vociferously. Being the over-confident and somewhat obnoxious eighteen-year-old that I was then I marched into my advisor’s office and said, “I am going to be a doctor. I don’t need to learn the Bible. I don’t need to learn how to write. I am only going to be signing my name on prescriptions.” Of course, my advisor also happened to be the Bible teacher I would be studying with so she would have nothing to do with my excuses. And once I settled into the class, I found I was fascinated by the Bible. And once my writing professor coaxed a few sentences and then paragraphs out of me I never stopped writing. I soon decided to become a Religious Studies major and then eventually, after struggling through all those pre-med classes, I decided that I what I loved about medicine was helping people and that if I was a rabbi, I could help people and still study the Bible. And that is how your rabbi came to be a rabbi.

My Christian colleagues speak about their call to the ministry. And perhaps I can imagine my convoluted path to the rabbinate as a call, but the most important and beautiful part of the story is its mystery. The call was unplanned and unexpected.

I have collected similar stories about the wedding couples whose ceremonies I officiate at. There is almost always some unexpected and mysterious turn for how they end up together. It is often something like this. She reports, “I said, ‘I can’t go out with him again. He is in between jobs and he is not sure what is going to be doing next.’” And my friend said, “Do you have any other plans tonight? Was the first date a bust? Go out with him for a second date. It can’t hurt.” And now they are getting married this year. These are the stories that unfold in my office as a couple holds hands and laughs together as we plan for their upcoming wedding ceremony.

The call comes out of nowhere. It is unexpected and even random. But it sets a person’s, and a couple’s, destiny for a lifetime.

And one more example. Grief and loss also shape our lives. We do not choose the time. The death of a loved one comes like a blow out of nowhere. Even if the doctors advise us that it is to be expected, it shocks us. We understand that grief is the price of love. They go hand in hand. If we love someone deeply then their death calls to us out of nowhere. And we say, “Why me?” Over time we may begin to see it as Abraham saw his journey. We can begin to see it as a call to go forward to some new place. It may very well be an uncharted and unplanned destination, but we are now called to this new destiny. Like Abraham we can become a hero.

When we examine Abraham’s story, we can also read it as a journey of grief. But we have to look to the concluding chapters of last week’s portion to understand it in this way. In the last verses of that portion, we read that Terah first charted the course to the promised land. The Torah states, “Terah took his son Abraham and his daughter in law Sarah, and they set out together from Ur to the land of Canaan.” (Genesis 11) They stop along the way in Haran where Terah dies. After mourning and grieving for his father, Abraham continues the journey his father charted.

The rabbis want to suggest that Abraham’s call represents a break from Terah and a departure from his mistaken idolatry. This is part of the reason why they divided the portion in this manner. But I prefer to see it as a continuation of his father’s journey. Abraham journeys forward while shaped by his grief. The call gives meaning to Abraham’s journey.

He did nothing to bring this about. That’s not why God called to him. Instead, he chooses to see his new, unplanned journey as blessed by God. And this offers him meaning and rescue. Believing he was called gives him the power to keep marching forward.

There are things in life that are chosen for us. We become heroes when we answer these random and unexpected calls. We each have the strength to heed the call of Lech Lecha.