"A Holy Adventure"
Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly, Westmoreland UCC
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-12, 16 and Genesis 12: 1, 4-9
August, 10, 2025
Plus ultra, or further beyond, proclaims the motto of Spain, and Plus ultra, further beyond, is also the motto for our journey of faith as followers of Jesus. According to some historians, before the discovery of the Americas, European cartographers affixed the words non plus ultra, “there is no more,” at the edges of their maps, indicating that nothing lay beyond the horizon of their current explorations. After the voyages of Columbus and others, the maps were revised to announce Plus ultra, “there is more,” even though the European explorers knew little about the continent — its native peoples, mountains, prairies, and rivers. Nor did they have the spiritual maturity to treat the indigenous peoples of the Americas as equals. Thousands of years earlier, other adventurers crossed the Bering Sea, motivated by the same promise, Plus ultra, “there is more.”
Today’s scriptures chart our spiritual journeys and invite us to embark on a holy adventure even if we stay put in the DC area. Faith never stands still, nor is faith content with our known world. The great adventurers of faith yearned for more, and challenged the known, including accepted orthodoxies and doctrines, in their quest to follow God’s way in their time and place.
According to the author of Hebrews 11, “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Inspired by a vision, childless senior citizens venture forth from their known world to a promised land. When Abraham and Sarah heard God’s call, no doubt they didn’t immediately respond. Perhaps God’s call came as an inner restlessness, and dissatisfaction with the status quo despite their affluence. Perhaps as they gazed at the heavens, Abraham and Sarah glimpsed the grandeur not only of the cosmos but of the world in which they lived. They felt the presence of a Personal Reality beyond themselves and the gods of their homeland urging them forward. Challenging them to let go of their familiar world and lean toward the vision of the unknown and never fully knowable God calling them forward to new horizons.
Faith moves forward, and yet often we yearn for the security of a familiar and stable past. We choose the familiarity of the status quo, and not the adventure of God’s quest for love and justice. According to political and religious researchers, there are a growing number of Gen Z males in their twenties who are finding meaning in what is described as the “new traditionalism.” Faced with a rapidly changing world, growing religious, ethnic, and sexual diversity, and the changing roles of women and men, they are seeking meaning and security by returning to the golden age of the past — traditional male-female roles, formal liturgies, ancient creeds, and clear boundaries in sexual identity. While I don’t wish to disparage their quest for a still point in the changing world or a comfort zone where boundaries are clear, relationships are well-defined, and traditional rites and dogmas provide security, I don’t believe our personal, spiritual, congregational, or planetary future is found in looking backward.
While past, present, and future are in God’s hands, the witness of faith calls us to embrace God’s future vision, even if the horizons are unclear to us. We won’t find God by returning to the 1950s or 1850s when “men were men and women were women,” everyone knew their place even if that place meant the closet, and we could find prosperity through hierarchical relationships, tariffs, and drill, drill, drill.
I appreciate the quest for stability and love for tradition, but I believe that there is a better way to find God and respond to the chaos of this present age, and that is the path of holy adventure, the journey of Abraham and Sarah and Jesus’ first followers. People who followed God into the wilderness and discovered the promised land of divine companionship and love.
Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan once stated that traditionalism is the dead faith of living persons, while tradition is the living faith of the dead, inspiring our own faithfulness in our time. Plus ultra, “there is more,” and we will find that God who was our help in ages past will also be our hope in years to come. And the One who comforts the agitated will also agitate the comfortable.
A healthy life, a living faith, and a dynamic congregation honors our good ancestors in the faith. We learn from the traditions of faith, the biblical stories of women and men who transformed the world, and the mystics, theologians, and activists who defined the boundaries of faith. These good ancestors knew that faithfulness often meant going beyond the known, trusting that God is more than we can ever imagine, and that the God who is faithful and adventurous invites us to imagine ever widening circles of faith and spirituality. Building on their wisdom and fidelity, we venture toward new horizons in our time and place.
Any adventure requires the right supplies for the journey. Abraham and Sarah remind us to be prepared for the challenges of the path forward. They also give us practices for the journey ahead. Wherever they stop on their journey, they build an altar. For them, the altar is worship, giving thanks and recognizing God is God and they aren’t. At first, I suspect that Abraham and Sarah built altars to draw the God of the Journey to their camp sites. Later, they built altars to awaken themselves to God’s companionship right where they are.
Today, I believe that our altars are prayer, meditation, and attentiveness to the needs of others. While I won’t go into detail, the simplest prayer form, as Anne Lamott says, is “wow, thanks, help.” That is, wonder and amazement at the beauties of the earth and the persons around you. Gratitude for the gift of life and the opportunity to serve. Guidance for our next steps in our own personal growth. I would add “respond” with inspiration and energy to serve those around us near and far.
In this troubled time, we need guidance in our quest to present an alternative to the dogmatic, closed-minded, and harmful marriage of religion and politics. We need wisdom and energy to sustain hope for the long haul, when the future of the nation and planet is in doubt. “Ask, seek, knock” — and then listen for God’s wisdom and follow the guidance you receive for yourself and this community.
Perhaps, you’ve heard the story attributed to spiritual guide Henri Nouwen describing two fetuses experiencing the birth bangs of labor. They ask each other, “Is there life after delivery?” The first fetus muses, “I believe beyond the womb there is more, there is a different life, and it is more than we can imagine.” The second asserts, “This is all we know. There can’t be more. What we don’t see simply doesn’t exist.” In response, the first imagines a world of walking and running and being held by loved ones. The second scoffs, “How can it be? What is walking anyway?” “Whatever it is,” the first rejoins, “Mother will take care of us. Even if we don’t fully know our Mother, she surrounds us, nourishes us, and her will guide, protect, and care for us beyond the womb.”
We can never fully know our personal future, the future of our loved ones, the future of our church or the future of our nation…or our life beyond death. But, like Abraham and Sarah, we can have hope in the unseen. That God will supply our deepest needs. That God provides bread for the journey. That God will give us all the wisdom, courage, and power we need to be God’s companions in healing the world as agents of adventure and love. That Mother will take care of us. And, beyond this lifetime, whether we live or die, we are in God’s hands, and nothing in all creation — tyrants, disease, death — can separate us from the love of God and the glorious future God has planned for us on a Holy Adventure, where there is neither sunset or dawn, but love eternal in fellowship with Jesus, our loved ones, and all of God’s children. And so, we pray:
Guide my feet while we run this race,
Guide my feet while we run this race,
Guide my feet while we run this race,
for we don't want to run this race in vain!
