In the Wilderness

Genesis 21:8-21

June 25, 2023

 

            In any good story there is the main character or characters. They are usually the protagonist, the person or persons who are the heart of the story. A main character would be Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter in any Harry Potter book, or Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In any good story there are other characters who move the story along. There are antagonists. Antagonists raise the level of conflict and tension in the story. If you have ever read a story that has no conflict or tension, you know that it’s actually pretty boring. I would say that Ebeneezer Scrooge might be the antagonist as well as the protagonist in Dicken’s classic Christmas story. Lord Voldemort was definitely the antagonist in the Harry Potter series, and Mr. Darcy, who was both the foil for Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice as well as being her love interest. Along with these characters, there are tertiary characters and minor characters. A minor character is one who is mentioned because there is some need for them in the bigger plot unfolding, but a minor character doesn’t really affect the overall story in any significant way. When Ebeneezer Scrooge flings open his window on Christmas morning, a changed man after his encounter with the three ghosts, the young boy he encounters is not a major character. That boy is not a secondary character or an antagonist. He is a minor character but is needed there to help Scrooge fulfill his part of the story. The story could have been told another way without the boy, and Scrooge would have still gone forward with his new life.

            For many of my years on this earth, I have believed that Hagar and Ishmael were but minor characters in the story of Abraham and Sarah, and certainly minor characters in the larger arc of God’s story with humanity. I’m not alone in believing this. Hagar and Ishmael have been presented to me through interpretation and tradition as minor characters. Maybe they were necessary to show that God’s promise to Sarah and Abraham would not be circumvented, but they were minor characters when it comes to the story of God.

            Now, before we go any further, let me state emphatically that when I talk about the story of God, I am not referring to something that is make believe or made up. I love good stories, and I’m more than fine with stories that come solely from the imagination of a writer. Stories are powerful. They engage our hearts and our minds. Jesus used the power of story. But to say that we are talking about the stories of God or God’s larger story is not to say that these stories are just creations of a human’s imagination. I believe that they are stories about God told by the people who were directly impacted by God and as a way of conveying their experiences with God. But they are told as stories, so we have the same aspects of story in these divinely inspired ones as we do in other stories. There are characters. There is a plot being advanced, etc.

            And as I said, I believed for a long, long time that Hagar and Ishmael were minor characters in the overall story of God and God’s people. But I have come to learn that sometimes what seems a minor character to one person is a major character to another. As I understand it, in the Koran Ishmael is anything but a minor character. As God promised in these verses before us, Ishmael would also be the father of a great nation, the nation of believers that became Islam. But beyond that, Hagar is also a major character to Christians. To our Black sisters, Hagar is anything but a minor character. She has been and continues to be a source of hope and inspiration to theologians and folks in the pew alike. She is seen as a woman of courage and great strength, a witness to God’s promise, and one who not only finds God in the wilderness but names God in the wilderness.

            In chapter 16, the first time we meet Hagar, she is introduced to us as the enslaved Egyptian woman in the house of Abraham. She is Sarah’s maidservant. And even though God has promised Abraham that his descendants will be vaster than the stars in the sky or the sand beneath his feet, Sarah continues to experience the heartbreak of infertility until she is well past the age where a woman could conceive and have a baby. So, Sarah takes the promise into her own hands. She “gives” Hagar to Abraham. Hagar has a baby, and Ishmael is born. There is a son. There is an heir to the promise after all. But while Hagar is pregnant, Sarah thinks that Hagar is looking down on her. Hagar can have a baby, but Sarah can’t. And all this fury and rage and resentment builds up in Sarah. She goes to Abraham and complains about Hagar’s attitude, but he just tells her to treat Hagar however she wishes. And Sarah takes that literally. She is brutal and cruel to Hagar. Our translation of Sarah’s action toward Hagar is weak to say the least. What we read in chapter 16 as “treated harshly” is an understatement. Sarah is as brutal and violent to Hagar as the Egyptians will be to the Israelites when they become the enslaved ones.

            So, Hagar runs. She runs away to the wilderness. She is young and pregnant and alone, and while she is in the wilderness God meets here there. God sends her back to Sarah and Abraham. While that seems terribly unfair and unjust of God to send her back to the person who treated her so horribly, the wilderness was surely no place for a young woman alone to give birth. It would be better and safer for Hagar and the unborn baby to be in the larger community where she could be taken care of when her time came. So, Hagar goes back to Sarah and Abraham and the larger family around them. She goes back, but not before she names God. Hagar, this person that I’ve always believed to be a minor character, names God. She calls God, El-roi, the God who sees because God saw her and she has seen God and walked away from the encounter still alive.

            And now in today’s lesson we come to this part of Hagar’s story. Hagar has given birth to Ishmael, and Sarah has given birth to Isaac. God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah was kept. And when Isaac is weaned, Abraham throws a feast in celebration. But in the midst of these joyful festivities, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac. Traditional interpretations have insinuated that Ishmael was teasing Isaac, or that something was happening that was inappropriate. But the word that is translated as playing shares the same root with the word that inspired Isaac’s name – laughing. Ishmael was laughing. There is nothing nefarious about it. Ishmael was laughing with his brother. So maybe while we’ve been taught that this minor character was threatening or hurting his little brother, and Sarah stepped in to protect her son, maybe something else was happening instead. Maybe Ishmael’s real transgression was that he was, as one commentator wrote, “Isaacing.” There was too much similarity to Isaac. Sarah saw that this eldest child of Abraham would be entitled to first born rights and privileges. Ishmael would be entitled to at least half of Abraham’s wealth. So, when Sarah saw him laughing, Isaacing, she saw not two brothers enjoying the party, but one true heir and one illegitimate son threatening the true heir’s place and position. And Sarah won’t have that.

            She goes to Abraham once more and demands that this woman and her son be cast out. Get rid of them, Abraham! That woman’s son will not take the place of mine. Abraham is distressed, but God tells him to do what Sarah wishes. Early in the morning, Abraham gives Hagar and Ishmael some bread and a skin of water and sends them out into the wilderness. Hagar fled to the wilderness once before because the dangers of the wilderness seemed better than the cruelty she received at home, but now she and her boy have been banished there. And she believed that she and her son would both die there.

            But the God who sees is also the God who hears. God hears the cries of Ishmael, and God is not a passive listener. God hears, and God acts. God saves Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness once again. God told Abraham, just as God told Hagar, that Ishmael would also be the father of a great nation. Just as God kept his promise to Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child, God keeps his promise to Hagar and Ishmael. God was with them just as God was with Abraham and Sarah.

            Perhaps, Hagar is not just a minor character after all. Maybe when it comes to God’s story, there are no minor characters. Maybe there are no insiders and outsiders, just God’s people, God’s children, different from us, strangers to us, but who are loved and cherished by God as much as we are. It seems to me that is the underlying theme of God’s story. It is the heart of the plot, but we miss it over and over again. We see others as minor characters and ourselves as the only main characters. We put people into categories. We create labels. We think that there are main characters and that the ones we see as minor characters don’t matter as much. We all do it. We all try to structure the world in this way. But if as we read in Matthew’s gospel that God watches over a creature as small as the sparrow, then not only does God watch over us, but God watches over all his children. It seems to me that Hagar and Ishmael are as much a part of the promise as Sarah and Abraham.

            There are no minor characters in God’s story. That is good news. That is the good news of the gospel. God sees us, all of us. God hears us, all of us. God is with us, all of us, in the wilderness and beyond. There are no minor characters in God’s story. May we remember that and give thanks.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Don't Laugh -- Father's Day/Presbyterian Men Sunday

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7

June 18, 2023

 

            Writer and Biblical commentator, Dan Clendenin, wrote that in his family they laugh at a joke three times. The first time is when they are initially told the joke. The second is when the joke is explained to them. The third time they laugh is when they finally understand the joke that’s been told. I would say that formula was often played out in my own family. One thing that my brother, sister, and I all agree about our parents is that they both had wonderful senses of humor. But neither one of them could tell a joke if their life depended on it. I don’t remember my dad trying all that often, but my mother would. Her mis-telling of jokes, especially the punch lines, is legendary. And there were definitely times when my mom needed a joke explained to her, even though she’d laughed when it was told.

            But with or without jokes as the impetus, I grew up with a lot of laughter. My mom was seriously silly, as am I, and my brother missed his calling as a comic. When I was a kid, he would get me laughing so hard at the dinner table, I would have a hard time holding onto whatever utensil I was supposed to be holding onto.

            When my sister and I really get tickled at something, we laugh the same way, without making any sound. We just shake, and we both put our hands on our chests, as if to hold ourselves together because we’re laughing so hard, we might come undone. We do make some sound, it’s just high up on the noise register. Some have compared our laughing to the cartoon dog, Mutley, if any of you remember him. My friend, Deb, used to imitate me laughing in seminary, which would get me laughing so hard that she would have to imitate me some more.

            All of this is to say that I’m grateful I’ve had so much laughter in my life. Laughter is a blessing. Laughter can be healing. Finding the humor in difficult situations can help us cope. But not every laugh is a joyful guffaw at something humorous and light-hearted.

            Sometimes a laugh is more about nerves in the face of something difficult or uncomfortable. And sometimes a laugh can reveal bitterness or sorrow at a deep-seated hurt. I think the laugh that we hear in today’s passage from Genesis is that kind of laugh. I suspect that Sarah’s laughter came from a place of hurt and sadness and bitter disappointment, rather than finding humor in the moment or roaring at the punchline of an unexpected joke.

            Last week we heard the story of God calling Abraham. Much has happened to Abraham and Sarah in the verses between last week’s story and the verses we read today. God has continued to reiterate the covenant with Abraham that his descendants will be vast and will bless all the families of the earth. In desperation for an heir, Hagar, the enslaved maid of Sarah, was used as a surrogate and Ismael was born. But God has told Abraham that while Ishmael will be the father of a nation as well, the covenant will be made manifest through the child that Abraham and Sarah have. In chapter 17, Abraham laughs at this news. Now, in our story today, it is Sarah’s turn to laugh.

            Abraham is sitting in the entrance of his tent in the hottest part of the day. He looks up at the approach of three strangers. He runs to meet them, bows down before them, and offers them hospitality and respite from the sun with shade, from the dust with water to wash their feet and from hunger with bread. Hospitality was not just an important custom in that culture, it was also a means of survival. The men agree and Abraham runs into to tell Sarah to make up three cakes. He runs out to his herd and finds a calf and tells a servant to make it ready. Then Abraham set curds of cheese, milk, and all the other food that had been prepared and set it before the men. While they ate, he stood under the tree where they were sitting.

            As the men were working on their meal, they asked Abraham where Sarah was. Abraham pointed to the tent and said that she was inside. Then one of the men said,

            “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”

            Sarah was listening at the door of the tent, and when she heard this startling promise, she laughed. She laughed because she and Abraham were old. She laughed because she had been waiting and waiting and waiting for years to have a child, and surely it was too late now. She laughed because her barrenness would have been considered her fault, some punishment by God for a sin unknown. She laughed because she had hoped and dreamed, and her hopes and dreams had been disappointed. Sarah laughed, but I don’t think it was a rollicking laugh of glee. I think it was a bitter laugh that spoke more of her loss and sorrow than any words she might have employed.

            Sarah laughed.

            The three strangers that Abraham entertained under the tree are now referred to as the Lord, and even though I suspect Sarah tried to muffle her laugh, the Lord heard it. The Lord heard it and asked why. Why did Sarah laugh at the idea that she and Abraham were too old to have a child, too old to have the pleasure of welcoming a baby into their household.

“Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Sarah, understandably upset and frightened at being heard laughing at the promise of God, tries to deny that she laughed at all. But the Lord responds, you did laugh. Oh yes, you did laugh.

Sarah laughed. And in response we hear the statement that is at the crux of this passage.

“Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Somewhere in my study of this passage this week, I read a commentator who talked about people who believe in God, proclaim that God exists, but they don’t actually believe that God does anything in the world. Maybe God is the creator of the world, but any intervention in human lives beyond that just doesn’t happen. The commentator wrote that the person who believes in God in this way is a “functional deist.” This is functional deism. Yes, God exists. Yes, I believe, but that’s as far as it goes.

And I think that the question that the Lord asked of Sarah is one that gets to the heart of whether we believe that God is the living and active foundation of our lives, or whether we are really functional deists.

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Well, maybe not in theory … but …

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Well, I’d like to believe that, but I don’t see it playing out in real life, not in my real life anyway.

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Well, I’d like to believe that, but the world certainly doesn’t reflect it.

This question is the crux of this story, it is the turning point. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Do we believe it, do we trust it, or not?

There are times when I do, and there are times when I am less than sure. And when it comes to the sorrows of life, one thing Abraham and Sarah’s story speaks to is infertility. There are many couples, many women and men, who would have longed to have children and it didn’t happen. There was no divine intervention on their part, no miraculous child born when it would have been considered too late. On this day when we celebrate fathers, we have to remember that there are plenty of folks who would have liked to be fathers and did not get that chance.

That’s why the question, “Is anything too wonderful for God,” is challenging to say the least. Sometimes the disappointments and heartaches of life make us wonder.

But I think that this question goes further than Sarah having a child well past menopause. I think this question is about trust – trust in God and trust in God’s promises. Do we trust God? Do we trust that God is here in this world with us? Do we trust that God keeps God’s promises? Do we trust that in the end there is nothing too wonderful for God?

The last part of this story read today gives us the answer to the question asked of Sarah. She and Abraham have a child, Isaac, a name that is a play on the Hebrew word for laughter. Sarah’s laugh may have been bitter and disbelieving, but in her son, she finds a new source of laughter – a laughter born of joy and delight that nothing was too wonderful for the Lord.

Many years later, another woman, confronted by an angel and told she will bear a child who will turn the world upside down is asked a similar question. Is anything impossible for the Lord? Is anything too wonderful?

What will our answer be? Do we trust that nothing is too wonderful for God? Do we believe that God is still turning the world upside down? Do we have faith that nothing is too wonderful for God? All I can say is this, when it comes to the promises of God, when it comes to God making the world new, when it comes to God doing what the world says can’t be done, don’t laugh.

Don’t laugh.

Let all of God’s children say, “Allelua.”

Amen.

Called Together

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

June 11, 2023

 

            “My heart is full.”

            That’s what my dear friend, Alisa, wrote to our planning committee at the end of our high school reunion last weekend. We were in a group text, thanking one another for the hard work, time, and planning that went into making the weekend happen after planning for just a few short months. Due to some last minute hiccups, Alisa was only able to make it to the Saturday and Sunday events, taking a quick flight into Nashville Saturday afternoon, and another quick flight out on Sunday night. So, she was especially grateful that she had gotten to see us and our classmates. And as she wrote to us, her heart was full.

            I understand her sentiment. I’ve felt the same way all week. My heart has been full. My heart has been full of gratitude – not just because we pulled it off and people enjoyed themselves at each gathering and more and more people attended as the word spread. My heart has been full of love for the people I traveled with through school. One friend came only on Sunday, and we hadn’t seen each other since graduation. But we were in school together every year from kindergarten through senior year, and we couldn’t believe that we hadn’t seen each other in so long. It was so good to see him and talk with him and see where our lives have taken us.

            That’s a big reason why my heart has been full. It’s been 40 years since we graduated, but on Sunday at the picnic in the park, I was talking to people and taking pictures and at one point I looked around and saw all these different, diverse folks gathered together, laughing, eating, celebrating, enjoying the day and one another, and it felt for a moment like we were in this timeless place. I know that sounds strange and weird, and it’s difficult to explain what I mean by that. But for a second the years we’d all lived fell away and we were once again the teenagers we used to be.

            Yet at the same moment, I could see all the life we had lived too. 40 years is a long time, and life has happened to all of us. The powerful thing about coming together after 40 years is that what divided us in high school, the cliques and categories and labels that we pinned on one another, the walls we built around ourselves back then don’t matter so much anymore. Life has happened to all of us.

There have been divorces and deaths and disappointed hopes. There have been failures and successes. We’ve struggled to raise our children and we’ve cared for aging parents. Some of our classmates didn’t live long enough to make it to this reunion. Some of us have grandchildren, some of us have no children, and some of us have families somewhere in-between. Some of my classmates have moved far away, and others never left Nashville. But there we were, in this place, in this moment, called together by our memories and our shared experiences, and our gladness at still being here, still kickin’ after 40 years. For a moment, I was able to look around at all the people gathered in that place, and I caught a glimpse, a small one to be sure, and as quickly gone as it came, of what the kingdom of God might just look like – people of all races and genders, ethnicities, and classes, gathered at picnic tables, laughing and talking and grateful to be together. My heart is full.

            I come to this passage from Matthew’s gospel today with my full heart and my infinitesimally small glimpse of God’s kingdom, and I wonder if the kingdom can be found here as well.

            At first glance, this does not seem to be a series of stories about the kingdom of God in particular. We read both a call story and stories of healing.

            Jesus is walking along, and he sees Matthew, a tax collector, sitting in his tax booth. As one commentator wrote, he may have been sitting near the place where the fishermen would gather after selling their catch. Before they could use whatever small amount of money they earned to provide for their families, Matthew the tax collector was there to make sure Rome got its take. But Matthew’s dubious profession did not prevent Jesus from calling him. Jesus called Matthew and Matthew followed.

            After this, Jesus, and his disciples, which now includes Matthew, are eating dinner with many tax collectors and other assorted sinners. The Pharisees who saw this asked Jesus’ disciples why he ate with such people. Jesus answered,

            “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

            Then we move forward, past what we don’t read today, the lesson Jesus gave about new wine into old wineskins, and a synagogue leader – a man who would have been of great status – stops Jesus, kneeling before him, pleading with him to bring his young daughter back to life. The man called to Jesus and Jesus responded as Matthew did. He followed. While they were on the way to the synagogue leader’s house, the house where his little girl lay dead, a woman came up behind Jesus. She had been bleeding for 12 years, and she only wanted to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak, knowing, trusting, that just touching a small part of Jesus’ clothing would make her well.

            But if the woman thought she could escape Jesus’ notice, she was wrong. Jesus turned and saw her, and said,

            “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”

            And she was well.

            They reach the leader’s house, and the mourners are already there offering up their best mourning wails and tears and gnashing of teeth. Jesus tells them all to go away. This girl isn’t dead, he says. She is only sleeping. They laugh at him, but their laughter doesn’t stop him. He sends them out of the house, and he takes the little girl by the hand. At his touch, the little girl got up, as alive as you and me. I suspect that when her father saw her, his heart was full, full of love and thankfulness. I suspect that when the woman was healed after bleeding for over a decade, her heart was also full, full of hope for a better and different future. It seems that anyone at that dinner party who heard Jesus’ words about being there for the sick, about being there for mercy, left the meal with hearts that were full; full of wonder at this man’s teachings and preaching and full of hope that they were also included in the promise of God. And I would think that when Matthew, a tax collector, was called by Jesus to follow, to be one of his disciples, his heart was also full for all the reasons given above.

            Maybe the kingdom is here in these stories after all; not stated outright or proclaimed, but here just the same. People leaving behind their old way of living and following Jesus – isn’t that a glimpse of the kingdom? People who are otherwise categorized as not welcome sitting at table with Jesus, basking in the mercy of God, isn’t that the kingdom? Two people, one a religious leader, the other a woman of unknown status, might have had little in common in their daily lives, but sickness and death, heartache and grief, placed them on common ground. Faith that Jesus, by one touch, could bring about healing brought them together. Surely this healing and wholeness, new life, new possibilities, new futures, are all signs of God’s kingdom on earth as well as in heaven!

            In Genesis, we read of Abram being called away from all that he knew and promised by God that his descendants would be vast, and through him all families of the earth would be blessed. And in the gospel, we read of Matthew’s call by Jesus, and even more of Jesus fulfilling the promise of mercy, of healing, wholeness, and new life. It seems to me that both stories remind us that just as Abram and Matthew and so many others were called, we are also called. God calls us together to follow, to trust, to receive mercy and, even more importantly, to show it.

            That is part of the work of the kingdom, and we are called together to do that work, to lay aside what divides us, and to increase and grow the common ground on which we stand. We are called together so that together we can recognize the glimpses of God’s kingdom that are right here in our midst. We are called together to follow Jesus, and we are called together to trust that Jesus also follows us into the heavy places and sad places of our lives, the places where grief and suffering lives. Jesus walks with us in those shadowed valleys.

            We are called together into remembering our past, living joyfully and mindfully in the present, and into the promise and possibility of God’s future. Let us give thanks that we are called together into God’s kingdom on earth and in heaven, and may our hearts be full of hope and faith and love. May our hearts be full together.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.