Ten years ago history was made in the broadcast of a television show. The show was Roots. As you may remember, Roots was a documentary of one man's search for his ancestry. Black author, Alex Haley's hunger to know his identity led him to record his own roots, his own heritage, first on paper, then on the screen. And the significance of this T.V. show? This mini-series attracted more viewers than any other television program in history. With eighty-five million viewers, this story of the black man's struggle in the Old South easily surpassed the former record-holder for an audience, a show which, ironically enough, portrayed the white man's supremacy in the Old South - the famous movie Gone With The Wind.

Of course, the audience record set by Alex Haley's story is not the greatest significance of Roots. For many years now, increasingly large numbers of Americans have become fascinated trying to find where they came from. Genealogical societies in this country are hard-pressed to keep pace with the demand of Americans eager to learn of their personal heritage. Famous English genealogical societies, the kinds that construct family crests and keep track of Britain's nobility, now give their services to very middle-class Americans. Even the Boy Scouts have gotten into the picture, giving a merit badge for those boys who can trace a family history. It seems, the question on the lips of many Americans - a question symbolized by Roots - is "What is the heritage that I can claim?"

As a people, we're being driven back to the family picture album, and beyond, to learn our personal history. And at the heart of this migration into the past is the oldest of all quests - the search for identity. "Who am I?" seems to be the unspoken, ever-present question. "When all the facades are down, when the image I seek to project is removed, who am I? And where do I fit?" The book which came of Alex Haley's quest is so successful because it presents an archetype for our own self-understanding.

So does another book. The Bible, the best selling book of all times, is, also, a personal history book. You, undoubtedly, have heard the play on words "history" is actually "his story," and his story and his story - a story common to all. That's why we often read, in the Bible, words such as "Uzziah beget Jotham, and Jotham begat Ahaz, and Ahaz begat Hezekiah, and Hezekiah. . ." We fit in there, somewhere. "And Joe and Hazel begat Jim, and Jim and Dorothy begat Michelle," and so on down the line. The Bible is the story of God's creative participation in our lives, our history. It's our story.

The Old Testament lesson for today is very important. The story about God's call of Abraham is the beginning of the story of your family in faith and of mine. Here are our roots; this is our heritage and our identity.

Moses put this story in perspective. In speaking of Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses said, "A wandering Aramean was my father." Moses was establishing the roots of all God's people. "A wandering Aramean was my father" is an announcement of who we are - it locates us in the scope of history. You might say it's the Old Testament version of the Apostles' Creed - it defines us. As such, the statement reminds us of the divine promise received from our Lord.

The statement is also a confession. "My father was only an Aramean, a nomad unwelcomed anywhere but in the swamps and the barren desert, a gypsy quick to borrow the ideas (and the property) of others but with nothing much of value himself." This Old Testament creed places us solidly in the Divine's history of mankind, but it admits our place is not too attractive and not really praiseworthy.

If Alex Haley's story, Roots, has a drawback it's that it glorifies, out of proportion, the nobility and strength of its characters. Our common story and confession, as Christians, doesn't repeat this mistake. Arameans are dirty; Arameans are devious.

As an inheritor of an ancestry, it's important to know our common past is valuable. But it's also important to know it's not always beautiful. We should know we have the value of living in a long line of the faithful, but the ancestors of even the best of us seldom are something to brag about. Otherwise, we would think we are only pale successors and could never measure up to them.

In the wake of the televising of Roots, historian Kenneth Thomas published an account of the other side of the slavery story. He wrote a brief, factual history of a southern white family. It was a history of an English indentured servant of the early 1700's whose offspring became slave-owners. Some of the offspring were brawlers and shady owners of a carnival. Some were killers. Few were admirable. Yet, Thomas explains, this was the ancestry Jimmy Carter had to carry to the White House.

We are what our ancestors have left us to be. But, if that's all we are, then we're in sad shape. The painful truth is, although we have roots and they are valuable for our self-understanding, our roots usually are not very pretty. Many of our ancestors are worth little as models for us to imitate. That's even true of our religious 'ancestors.

Look at some of our ancestors in faith, those wandering Arameans we claim as fathers. They were more sinners than saints.

Abraham seemed forever clumsy. Once, while in Egypt, he tried to pass off his wife, Sarah, as his sister so a Pharaoh with a wandering eye would not become jealous and kill him to get her. The Pharaoh was insulted that Abraham would even think such a thing. Another time Abraham had to divide the land God had given him with his nephew Lot. Using the old formula of children, "I'll cut

- you pick," Abraham allowed Lot to take the prime bottom land, while Abraham got only scrub brush. Frederick Buechner has said, "If a schlemiel is a person who goes through life spilling soup on people and a schlemozzle is the one it keeps getting spilled on, then Abraham was a schlemozzle." (Peculiar Treasures, p.3) Yet he's our family.

Then there's King David. We usually remember David for his battle against Goliath, his beautiful psalms, his mighty kingdom. But David was also a philanderer - he chased other men's wives. And when he caught them, as he did Bathsheba, he wasn't above knocking off the husband so he could marry the woman. Not exactly the ideal ancestor to imitate.

What about the prophet Elijah? Strong and brave, to be sure, but also a bit crude. The Bible says one day some city boys followed along behind the aging Prophet, calling him "Baldy." Elijah promptly summoned two she-bears who tore forty-two of the city boys limb from limb. He then continued on his way to keep an appointment at Mount Carmel. Our great-grandfather in faith, Elijah

- are you sure you want to boast about him?

Then there's Jacob. With Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, he is a Patriarch and at the very base of our family roots. What we often forget is Jacob's nickname was "tricky Jacob." He was sly and cunning. He cheated his brother out of their father's inheritance. He even ambushed one of God's angels in an effort to blackmail God to give him more blessings. By rights, his picture would never make it to the mantel in the family homestead. Yet he, too, is an ancestor in faith.

We are what our ancestors have left us to be: that's the message of the show Roots. But, we hope, there's more to us. We hope our story and our value as individuals doesn't come from merely adding a few more years of painful, aimless living to a common story; there's not much glory in adding one more gnarled limb to a sickly, scraggly family tree.

We are what our ancestors have left us to be. But that's not all we are. There's one more element to our heritage, at least our religious heritage. Our ancestors in faith left us not only a name, not only a history, but also a blessing - God's blessing. "I will bless you," says the Lord to Abraham and his descendants, "and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." What makes the heritage of the faithful, to which we belong, different from any other family tree and story the genealogists can dig up, is not that we're better than anyone else. Abraham, David, Elijah, and Jacob show we're no saints. What makes us different is we're blessed by God. God claims us. We are part of his clan. He made that investment in us; he established his kinship in Exodus when he said, "You will be my people, and I will be your God." And he demonstrated his involvement in our clan when he sent his Son to struggle and die on our behalf. It's not out of respect for our heritage God accepts us; it's out of involvement in our past that he loves us and stays involved in our present. It is why, in the Lord's Prayer, Christ permits us to say, "Our Father," when addressing God. This is a family affair.

"A wandering Aramean was my father." When we announce that, we remind ourselves we're part of a long line of the faithful, people who have been blessed by God. When we confess with those words, we remind ourselves we need this blessing of God.

Notice one other thing. This statement about our ancestors says more than our fathers in faith were dirty, devious Arameans. Our heritage is that of a wandering Aramean. We have no land, no property we can truly call our own. Abraham never did settle down in one place. Our life as God's children is a journey, always searching for a Promised Land where life is simple and good, but always enduring, in the meantime, the world we pass by - the confused world, the troubled world, the doubting world. And the irony is, it's not in that future land God promises to be with us, but in this present journey. It is the wandering Aramean who is our father and God child - not the settled, respectable, prosperous Aramean, but the searching one who was given God's blessing. In this life, we will never arrive at a Promised Land which, today, we see not so much as a place, but as a dreamed-of condition of wisdom, comfort, wealth, or security. This is the way God meant it to be. The creed of faith, which links us with our ancestors, never loses sight of the fact that the faithful are always wanderers, always pilgrims.

Even knowing our heritage doesn't give us security. We can't hide behind Abraham's robes. Indeed, the greatest irony here is, having roots, we are yet rootless. Having this heritage only reminds us we have no home. Examining our roots is not a nostalgia trip from which we can return to a comfortable secure present. It's a recognition that our present has no security in anything temporal. Wandering means lacking home, lacking many possessions, lacking even a country. As God's children, we inherit nothing except his blessing, his name, and his promise to be with us and help us make sense out of a senseless world.

Having roots in God's family means our roots cannot be in the world we see around us today. The starkness of that reality is demonstrated poignantly in a well-known movie of the 1960's -- Fiddler on the Roof. As you may well know, this is a story of a village of Russian Jews. They're faithful Jews; they, too, can confess, "A wandering Aramean was my father." For them life was good; their village of Anatevka thrives and, in their prosperity, they see God's blessing. Then comes the pogrom, the government persecution. Now they must move on; they must lose their prosperity. But they manage to see that the blessing of God, greater than their prosperity, is the promise he made to them - the promise to be with them, to comfort them, to give direction to their wan1ering. At movie's end, these Jewish peasants pack their carts, singing mournfully of Anatevka, the abandoned home. But they conclude by sighing, "We'll find a new Anatevka; God will lead us. After all, he led our fathers!"

"A wandering Aramean was my father." When we announce and confess that, we know our roots and our identity. And we know we broken, but blessed, people are not rooted in a time or a place. We are rooted in a promise, in a faith, in a journey.