Stumbling Block

Matthew 16:21-28

September 3, 2023

 

            It is late in the second half of the musical, Hamilton, and the tension on the stage and in those of us watching is sky high. A song begins. What has happened before this moment has broken the hearts of Alexander and Eliza Hamilton. It has broken the hearts of those of us watching.

            The song is It’s Quiet Uptown. The Hamilton’s have moved uptown where it is, according to the song, quieter, maybe a little more peaceful. They have relocated because Alexander Hamilton has revealed publicly that he has been unfaithful to his wife, Eliza. That was heartbreaking enough, but their oldest son, Philip, has just been killed in a duel defending his father’s honor. And it is in this song that we feel the fullness of this grief.

“There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name.

You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable.

The moments when you’re in so deep It feels easier to just swim down. The Hamiltons move uptown and learn to live with the unimaginable.”

            It is a beautiful and heartbreaking song. I suspect all of us could name some loss that seems unimaginable, even a fear of loss that we think we cannot wrap our imaginations around. We claim our feared loss is unimaginable, not because we can’t actually imagine it, but because we don’t want to. It is unimaginable because imagining it is too much to bear.

            I wonder if this is how Peter felt when he heard Jesus speak of what it meant to be Messiah. I wonder if Peter could imagine Jesus’ words being true. Maybe he could imagine them too well, too vividly. And that’s the reason he began rebuke Jesus for what Jesus was saying. He could imagine the Messiah going through what Jesus was telling them the Messiah must go through. But Peter didn’t want to imagine it. He couldn’t bear to imagine it. To imagine what Jesus was telling them was true was to overturn his every belief in what the Messiah should be and do. Maybe Peter could imagine it, but he didn’t want to, he couldn’t bear to, he refused to imagine. He refused to hear Jesus, believe Jesus.

            From building rock to stumbling block, Peter traverses at lightning speed the distance between being praised for his confession of Jesus’ true identity as Messiah to being rebuked by Jesus as the embodiment of Satan when he failed or refused to grasp what Jesus was telling him about the true meaning of Messiah.

            Surely, it wouldn’t take much imagination to understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus is not just hinting at what may happen, possibly, if he continues his current trajectory. Jesus is not speaking in riddles. Jesus is not giving the disciples clues to a word puzzle they must decipher. No, Jesus tells them plainly, from that time on that he must go to Jerusalem. Once in Jerusalem, he must undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and that suffering will lead to him being killed, and on the third day after he is killed, he will be raised.

            Say what?!

            Peter cannot believe what he is hearing! He has just told Jesus that he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and Jesus told him that he was correct. Jesus told him that God worked through Peter to reveal that truth. Jesus told him that he will be the rock on which his church will be built. But now Jesus is saying terrible things about going to Jerusalem and suffering and dying and something about rising again, which makes no sense, because dead is dead.

            I can imagine how Peter must have looked at hearing these words. He must have become agitated, shaking his head, clenching his fists. Maybe he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as though he could force the words Jesus spoke not to take shape in his mind if he didn’t see Jesus with his eyes. I imagine there was something like a roaring sound in Peter’s ears; wave after wave of denial. It’s not true, nottruenottruenottruenottrue. Then an even greater wave of anger and fury rushes over him. What Jesus is telling us cannot be true. What Jesus is telling us will not be true!

            No! No, Jesus! No, no, no, no, no!

            Stop saying these things. Stop saying these words. You are the Messiah. I just said it. I just confessed it. You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. I said living God? Living not dying, not dead. The Messiah is not supposed to suffer. The Messiah is supposed to make our enemies suffer. The Messiah is not supposed to die. The Messiah is supposed to put our enemies, the ones who have oppressed us for so long, to the sword. No, Jesus, no!

            “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

            But Jesus is not messing around, He is not playing games. He is not trying to make them guess what will happen next. He is trying to make them understand, to see, to imagine the full truth of what it means to really be the Messiah.

            “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

            From building rock to stumbling block. The Greek word for stumbling block is skandalon. It is a deadly snare, a moral trap. Can you hear the word in English that we get from this? Scandal. What Peter said was scandalous. Jesus rebukes Peter just as Peter rebuked him, and he calls him a skandalon. By refusing to imagine, by seeing what the Messiah must be as unimaginable, Peter is not only something that will trip up others, but he will also serve as a deadly snare that will misdirect others to his wrong way of thinking. Peter can only see human things. He cannot see divine things. And in this instance, the divine things are what we as humans most dread: suffering and death.

            But this was not the end of Jesus’ rebuke. Listen, he told the disciples,

            “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

            This is finally where the rubber hits the road. This is finally where the disciples must come to grips with the fact that if they truly want to follow Jesus, if they truly want to learn from him and walk in his steps and witness to his message of the kingdom of God, then their fates are inextricably bound with his own. He will go to the cross and sacrifice his life for the children of God, and they are going to have to deny themselves and pick up their own crosses and do the same. You want to save your life, Jesus tells them, then you’ll end up losing it. But if you are willing to lose your life, you will end up having more life than you could have ever dreamed of. You could turn away from me now and gain the whole world, but in the end, you will forfeit your everything. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine that these are the divine things I am speaking of?

Peter, the building rock, was focusing only on human things. He could not grasp that the Messiah had finally come, only to be told that the Messiah would ultimately die. He could not, would not imagine that life would come from death, that resurrection would come from a cross. He could not, would not imagine that in denying himself and picking up his cross, he would gain everything. Jesus may have predicted that Peter would be a stumbling block, a skandalon, to others, but in this moment, he was equally a stumbling block to himself. My question is, are we our own worst stumbling blocks as well?

Like Peter, I don’t want to hear words about death or denial or suffering. I don’t want to be reminded that to truly follow Jesus, I have to pick up my own cross and bear its weight. I just don’t. I want to hear about happy things and words that are filled with sweetness and light. I can imagine the other, I just don’t want to. That is a skandalon. That is a stumbling block.

This dramatic scene between Jesus and Peter and the other disciples is not the first time that Jesus has shown his true self. Jesus has been showing them his true nature all along. They have seen it in his healing of so many people, in his teaching and preaching, in his willingness to sit at table with people no respectable rabbi would ever dine with. They have seen it in his willingness to speak truth to power, and to buck the letter of the Law so that the spirit of the Law can be fulfilled. They have seen Jesus walk on water and still storms. These were not parlor tricks. These were not done just to get their attention. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And because Jesus is the Messiah, that means that everything he has said and everything he has done, and everything he will say and do, is about revealing what the divine things truly are. He has been stretching the disciples’ imagination all along. The kingdom is already here, in your midst, he’s told them. Can you imagine it?

The kingdom of God is not based on human values of success, it is based on love, God’s love. Love that is a verb not a noun. Love that does the hard work of truly loving others, even the ones who are the most other of all others possible. God’s kingdom is based on compassion and mindfulness and making sure that everyone is fed, and everyone has enough. God’s kingdom is where the meek and the poor and the mourning are blessed and loved and comforted.

Can you imagine it?

The kingdom of God is where both justice and mercy reign. It is where righteousness, not self-righteousness, abides. The kingdom of God is not where the oppressors finally make room at the table for the oppressed, but where a whole new table is created for everyone. The kingdom of God is where the abundance of God and God’s love and grace and mercy is finally understood and realized. Can you imagine it? Can we imagine it?

Jesus’ words are good news. Because they call us to imagine what the world might look like if we did what he said we must do: deny ourselves and pick up our crosses. Jesus calls us to imagine beyond the suffering and death, beyond our belief that the kingdom is only found on another plane of existence, and to see it right here and right now. Can we finally imagine these divine things? Can we imagine?

There is a final verse to the song, Its Quiet Uptown, that does not erase the heartbreak of the unimaginable, but that offers hope in the midst of it.

“There are moments that the words don’t reach, there’s a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable. They are standing in the garden, Alexander by Eliza’s side. She takes his hand. It’s quiet uptown.

Forgiveness. Can you imagine? Forgiveness. Can you imagine?”

            Can we imagine?

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

            Amen.

 

Wrestling

Genesis 32:22-31

August 6, 2023

 

            Phoebe and I saw the Barbie movie yesterday. When I first began to prep for this sermon, I had a completely different beginning in mind, but then Phoebe and I saw the Barbie movie, and I felt compelled to share a little bit of what I gleaned.

            Now, I don’t want to wade into the controversy that apparently is swirling around this movie. I will say that both Phoebe and I loved it. This was Phoebe’s second time seeing it and my first, but I would like to see it again. It was fun and silly and unexpectedly poignant. I won’t give away the plot, but essentially Barbie and Ken experience the real world outside of Barbie Land. Going into the real world causes Barbie, and Ken too, to have an existential crisis.

            They find themselves questioning who they are and why they are and what really matters. And if there are two characters who you would never expect to have an existential crisis, it’s these two. But that’s what makes the movie so compelling and thought-provoking. And I realized as I watched it that in this existential crisis Barbie was wrestling with herself. She was wrestling with what she thought life was supposed to be. She was wrestling with her previous expectations and understanding. If you have ever experienced that kind of wrestling in your life, than you know a little of what Barbie was going through.

            And if you add God and faith and call into the mix, then we also can get a glimpse of understanding into the wrestling that Jacob experiences in our story from Genesis this morning.

Jacob, our trickster, our grasper, our scoundrel, has done well for himself. He met his match in his father-in-law, Laban, who tricked him into marrying first his oldest daughter, Leah, then the true desire of Jacob’s heart, Rachel. Jacob has had children with both women, and their maidservants. There are eleven offspring at this point. But Jacob has made the decision to leave his father-in-law’s home and try to make peace with his brother Esau. While this sounds as though Jacob has mellowed some, the old trickster still had some tricks up his sleeves.

When he and Laban agreed to part company, Laban told him he could take some of the livestock that bore certain physical traits. Jacob engaged in what might be understood as an example of the earliest genetic engineering and manipulated quite a few of the animals that would eventually be taken by him. Rachel must have learned from her husband, because before they left her father, she stole some of her father’s household gods.

Laban, realizing they were gone, took after them. Jacob did not know any of this, so he encouraged Laban and his men to search the tents. But Rachel had hid them in such a clever and such a sneaky way, that she proved herself to be just as cunning as Jacob.

But now we come to our part in the story. Through messengers, Jacob let Esau know that they were coming. The messengers have reported back that Esau is advancing toward them with 400 of his men. Jacob fears the worst, so he divides his group into two, and works out a plan to make Esau think that he is better equipped for a fight than he truly was. And now, he has sent his wives and his children across the Jabbok, and he is alone. Without any pause in the narrative, without any hesitation or explanation, a man begins to wrestle Jacob in the darkness.

The wrestling that Barbie went through was emotional rather than physical. But the wrestling we read about in our story is very physical and deadly serious. The unknown person and Jacob wrestle until daybreak. They seem to be an even match, because neither one can overcome the other. Finally, as the light of the new morning begins to creep out from its bedclothes, the man realized that he could not stop Jacob. So he strikes Jacob on his hip socket. Jacob’s hip is immediately dislocated, and I would suspect the pain would have been excruciating. But Jacob was not named for his grasping tendencies for nothing. He holds onto his opponent. The man demands to be let go because the day is breaking. But Jacob won’t release him until he receives a blessing. The man asks Jacob his name.

The man asks Jacob his name. You would think that the man would throw some tricky move into the mix and release himself from Jacob’s grasp, but instead he asks Jacob his name.

This was not a moment of introduction. In the near Eastern culture, names were not just designations or unique identifications. To know someone’s name was to have a power over that person. It was as if knowing someone’s name was to hold that person’s soul, that person’s innermost being, in your grip. Asking for Jacob’s name was not just a getting to know you kind of question. To know Jacob’s name was to make Jacob vulnerable. But Jacob responds. He tells this man, this man with whom he has wrestled and struggled and grasped, he tells him his name.

“Jacob.”

The man says,

“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”

The man gave Jacob a new name, and then this person blessed Jacob and the wrestling match was over. Jacob did the same as when he had the dream of the angels and the ladder, he named the place where he stood. He named it Peniel, which in Hebrew translates to seeing God face to face but not losing his life in the process.

Jacob wrestled with God. He wrestled and received both a blessing and a limp. Jacob wrestled and although he did not prevail, the person he wrestled did not either. Jacob wrestled and came out of the encounter transformed, with a new name and a thigh that would never fully heal. He left his encounter with God with a blessing and a limp.

Now, I have never physically wrestled in my life, unless you count the wrestling that occurs when you’re trying to get a squirmy toddler into clothes. But I have wrestled with myself, with who I think I’m supposed to be. And I have definitely wrestled with my call and with my faith. I have spent long nights wrestling with God, demanding both to be left alone and to be blessed. In that way, I have done more than my share of wrestling.

Maybe that’s why this story of Jacob wrestling with this unnamed person, with God as it turns out, all night long resonates with me so deeply. I get it. Some people seem to find their way into themselves easier than others. Some people seem to walk their life of faith easier than others. But some of us have to wrestle. I have often looked at my friends and colleagues who seem so easy and solid in their faith, who seem to just accept without question what they read and hear and understand about God. But I don’t do that. I question and struggle and wrestle. Figuring out who I am has never been easy. It wasn’t made any easier when I discerned my particular call. In fact, it got harder. Part of my call, it seems, is to wrestle even more than I did before. I understand the wrestling that Jacob experienced in this story, and I suspect throughout his whole life.

I am not alone in my resonating feelings with this story either. Theologian and essayist, Debie Thomas, writes that she is deeply indebted to this story. It allowed her, as she writes, to “bring my whole turbulent self before God, and to engage with the Divine in ways that feel contentious before they become consoling.” Jacob is alone and vulnerable and in a desolate dark place. And it is in that state that this stranger comes to him and wrestles with him. How many long, dark nights have I spent wrestling with … self-doubt, fear, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, anger, shame. But even if my wrestling was not directly linked to God, in those long nights of the soul, God has always been there too.

Maybe that is where the blessing lies in this story. Yes, there is wrestling. Yes, there is struggle, but maybe it’s not about winning and losing, but about refusing to let go. God doesn’t let Jacob go, no matter how hard Jacob fights. Perhaps the dislocation of Jacob’s thigh was not to defeat Jacob but to end the struggle, to end Jacob’s relentless pushing back against God. We don’t get through our lives without scars, and having faith does not change that. Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. We may walk with scars unseen. But God refused to let Jacob go. God refuses to let us go as well.

In those long nights of wrestling, God has never not been there. Maybe in those long nights of the soul that I’ve experienced the only one who was doing the wrestling was me. Maybe God’s arms were around me not to contend with me, but to hold me as I wrestled with my demons, my very self.

Perhaps my take on this passage is all wrong, and if so, I hope grace abounds. But whether or not I have or haven’t, I know that God calls us to be who we are, not who we think we should be. God calls us as we are and works through us so that we are transformed and that others are too. God worked through Jacob, trickster and heel grasper that he was. God worked through Jacob to bring blessing to the whole world. God transformed Jacob, yes that lifelong limp, was part of the transformation, and gave him a new name. God refused to let Jacob go. God refuses to let us go as well. So, if you wrestle, keep wrestling, and trust that God is right there with you, contending, consoling, transforming. Thanks be to God.

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

Amen.

All In

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

July 30, 2023

 

            The story goes that he was just the weird, eccentric old man of the village. Every day at dawn he would go into the hills with his shovel, and he would not return until sunset. He never told anyone why he went up there or what he did. He just went, day after day, year after year. One day the strange old man did not wake up. He died peacefully in his sleep. After he was buried, the villagers decided to go up to the hills and see if they could find what he had been doing all those years.

            This village was in a remote location on one side of a steep hill. To get to the closest city that had a hospital, you had to take the road which wound its way around the hill. It took hours, and someone could die in route. That is how the old man’s wife died. She was sick, and he was trying to get her to the hospital for treatment. But the road around the hill was too long. She died before they could reach help.

            What had this old man been doing all those years? He was digging a road through the hill. He was digging a road through the hill. It was wide and smooth, and it shortened the journey from the village to the city from hours to one, from many kilometers to four. The strange old man was not so strange after all. He did not want anyone else to suffer what his wife suffered. He did not want anyone else to lose their loved one so needlessly, as he had lost so needlessly. So, he took his shovel and dug a road through the hill.

            No one knew what he was doing. They assumed he was just eccentric and strange and went off by himself to do whatever eccentric, strange old men did. No one apparently asked him, or if they did, he did not answer. But he took a small thing and made it large. He did something in secret that became a visible blessing. The kingdom of heaven just might be like this strange old man.

            Sometimes when I start a sermon, I struggle because it feels like I don’t have enough to work with. But these verses caused me to struggle because there is so much information to contend with, it’s hard to know where to begin. Jesus told these parables in rapid-fire succession. The first two, the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast, Jesus told to the crowds gathered around him. The last three Jesus shared only with his disciples.

            The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows from its infinitesimal size to a large and flowering bush that welcomes birds of every kind. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who hides yeast – yes, that is the literal translation. She is not “mixing in” yeast, she is hiding it – into three measures of flour. That is an enormous amount of flour. It’s estimated to be about fifty pounds! That would make enough bread to feed an entire community. I imagine that looking like that scene from I Love Lucy when Lucy attempts to make bread, and a gigantic loaf bursts out of the oven and pushes her across the room.

            After Jesus left the crowds and was gathered with his disciples, he told them that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that was hidden in a field. When a person finds that treasure, he joyfully goes and sells everything he possesses to buy that field and obtain that treasure. The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great value. A merchant, when he finds that one magnificent pearl, sells off all his other wares just to own that pearl. And the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that hauls in fish of every kind. When the dragnet was full, it was hauled to shore, and the fish were sorted. The good fish were kept and put into baskets. The bad fish were thrown out. That will be what happens at the end of the age. The good will be kept. The bad will be thrown into the fire, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

            When Jesus finished telling these parables, he asked his disciples,

            “Have you understood all this?”

            They answered, “Yes.”

            In previous sermons, I’ve read the disciples response as “Yes!” Yes, with an exclamation point. But this time around, I wonder if they didn’t respond more like this,      “Yeeesss?”

            As though the disciples were trying to understand what he was saying, but weren’t entirely sure, and they were going to have to discuss it later when he wasn’t around. It would be like someone asking a question that you don’t understand, but you say yes until you have time to google it later.

            I’m not convinced that the disciples fully understood what Jesus was telling them about the kingdom, and I know I’m struggling to understand as well. Because these parables seem to cause more confusion about the kingdom of heaven, rather than less. The kingdom of heaven is a plant that will grow fast and quickly overtake all the other crops that have been planted? The kingdom of heaven is something that is hidden? Why did the woman hide the yeast? In other passages in scripture, yeast has a negative connotation. Beware the yeast of the Pharisees. It can be a corrupting influence. But for bread to rise, yeast is necessary. Unless that bread was supposed to be unleavened, like matzo bread. Finding yeast hidden in that dough would be quite a surprise indeed.

            Why is the kingdom of heaven like a treasure that is hidden in a field? It seems kind of dubious. It makes me uncomfortable to think of the person who found the treasure buying the field from the owner and not telling that person about the treasure. It makes me think of all the people who live on land that is rich with minerals of various kinds, only to have the land bought by others for a fraction of what the land is worth.

            The kingdom of heaven sounds like it caused someone to make a bad business decision. The merchant sold everything he had in order to own that one pearl. That pearl was splendid, but if you sell off all your merchandise, you are no longer a merchant, you are a collector.

            The dragnet seems the most familiar to me because it hearkens back to what I learned about God as a child. God is the God of fire and brimstone. Be good or watch out!

            All in all the kingdom of heaven as Jesus describes it sounds unlike anything I would ever expect. Where are the angels? Where are the perfect people wandering around in robes with halos and harps? Where are the endless blue skies and the perfectly green, green hills and the fluffy white clouds, outlined in gold? Isn’t the kingdom of heaven supposed to be about perfection? If so, then what Jesus describes seems far from perfect.

            But Jesus was not describing a geographical location that we reach only when we die. Nor was he describing utopia. What I think Jesus was describing was a kingdom that was already in their midst. And although it might have started small and hidden, it would grow and flourish, and spread with abandon.

            One other possibility to ponder in these parables is that Jesus was not only describing the kingdom of heaven, but he was also describing the response to the kingdom of heaven. One member of our lectionary group said that the behavior of the person who bought the field or the merchant who sold everything off for one pearl is almost like describing people with addictions or obsessions. The only thing that matters is that treasure or that pearl. While on the surface, this kind of behavior seems troubling to our modern ears, maybe what Jesus wanted the disciples to understand was that if you are going to work for the kingdom of heaven, you have to be all in There is no room for halfhearted response. There is no time for lukewarm. You have to be, you must be all in.

            And as we know, we who know the rest of the story, the disciples will struggle with this until after Jesus’ death and resurrection, until after the coming of the Holy Spirit. They will struggle to be all in as his followers, even though they have left family and livelihoods behind. They will wrestle with Jesus’ teachings about what being the Messiah means. They will argue amongst themselves. They will vie for power and position in their ranks. They will misunderstand and mishear and just miss the point more often than not. Just as we do. Right?

            But just as the kingdom of heaven starts small and grows, just as it begins hidden and is suddenly revealed, the disciples will also grow and discover more in themselves than perhaps they believed was there.

            Maybe that is what Jesus’ final admonition to them in these verses is hinting at. One day, you will be the teachers of this kingdom, and just like the head of a household has to discern what part of their treasure is old and new, what should be kept and what should be let go of, you must do that as well. The kingdom of heaven requires those who will follow to be all in. It requires a complete giving of one’s heart, mind, body, and soul. It seems to me that when Jesus tells these parables about the kingdom, he is not just describing he is asking. Are you all in? Are we?

            The kingdom of heaven is unlikely and weird and unexpected. The kingdom of heaven is like stories that seem to have no end and music that seems to have no resolution. The kingdom of heaven does not provide answers, only more questions. The kingdom of heaven requires a wholehearted response, and a willingness to follow based on trust rather than on seeing the end of the journey. The kingdom of heaven requires us to be all in? May it be so.

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

            Amen.

Birthright

Genesis 25:19-34

July 16. 2023

 

            When Phoebe was born, cell phones were not yet a thing, so a video camera was required to live action record the new baby. Phoebe was my first, so I had a lot more time to document her every move, facial expression, turning of her head, waving of her hands, blinking. Whatever she did, I tried to get it on video. And then I copied those videos and sent them to the grandparents so they too could see Phoebe’s every move, facial expression, turning of her head, waving of her hands, and blinking.  By the time she was a year, I had at least four full video tapes of just her.

            Then Zach was born, and life was much more hectic. Not only did I have a new baby, but I had a toddler too. So, I tried to take as many videos of Zach as I could, but I wasn’t able to document everything. I don’t think I have a video of Zach blinking. Plus, when I would pull out the video camera to record Zach, Phoebe also wanted to be in the movie. It’s just the way it was.

            But at one point when the kids were a little older, they were looking at the different cassettes with their names on them, and Phoebe saw her name on the first four tapes that were made when she arrived in this world. Then she looked at the rest of the tapes which said Phoebe and Zach. When she realized that she had four all to herself, she turned to her brother and said,

            “I have four tapes, Zach. Four.”

            I’m not trying to make Phoebe out to be a bad kid. She wasn’t. She was just being a kid, the oldest kid in her family, and she realized as every child does that this was an advantage that she had over her little brother. Thankfully, Phoebe and Zach’s sibling rivalry, which was quite intense at times, has faded and they have become really good friends. I don’t think she would turn to Zach now and rub it in about having more solo video tapes of her babyhood than he has. But Jacob might.

            Even though they were fraternal twins, and Jacob was the youngest, I suspect that if Jacob and Esau had been born in contemporary times, Jacob would have found a way to dominate the videos his mother recorded of them. And he would have made sure to let Esau know it. Four, Esau, four.

While Phoebe and Zach have become good friends and confidants as they’ve gotten older, Jacob and Esau had a long standing sibling rivalry that went on into their adult years. It’s not a leap to understand why this was true. Rebekah and Isaac both played favorites, something most parents try never to do. If contemporary Jacob were to dominate the family movies over and above his older brother, it is because Rebekah helped and encouraged him. Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Welcome to the book of Genesis, the book that contains the stories of our faith’s patriarchs and matriarchs, our spiritual ancestors, stories that if we read them carefully, should give us pause. Perhaps they should make us question what we mean when we refer to the “family values” that are supposedly based on scripture. From Abraham and Sarah on, this is one dysfunctional family.

            This summer, we’ve heard the stories about Abraham and Sarah’s struggle to have a child, the child that God promised them. We’ve read about Sarah’s cruel treatment of Hagar and of Abraham casting out Hagar and his firstborn son, Ishmael, and God’s intervention for them. We’ve struggled to understand the story of Isaac almost being sacrificed, and the good news of the unnamed servant praying to the Lord for wisdom when it came to finding Isaac a wife and realizing that wife was Rebekah.

            Now we’ve come to the next chapter in the story. Just as Sarah and Abraham dealt with the pain of infertility, so did Rebekah and Isaac. But finally Rebekah is pregnant and with twins! Rebekah is pregnant, but it is a difficult pregnancy. The text tells us that the babies “struggled inside her.” She is so uncomfortable that she wants to know why she just can’t die instead. She goes to the Lord to ask for an explanation or some understanding of what is happening within her, and she receives a peculiar annunciation. There aren’t just two babies fighting for space inside her, there are two nations.

            “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”

            Even in utero the destiny of dysfunction seems set. Esau and Jacob are born, Esau the oldest and Jacob the youngest. Esau’s name in Hebrew is a play on the word for hairy. He is covered in an abundance of red hair. Jacob’s name also has meaning in Hebrew. It is a play on the words heel and supplant. Jacob was born grasping his brother’s heel.

            And as I said, Isaac and Rebekah play favorites with their sons. Isaac loves game, and Esau is a skilled hunter and he can provide his father with the game that he loved. Jacob is quieter. He stays closer to home, and he has clearly honed his cooking skills. It is Jacob’s savory stew that starts a world of trouble between the two brothers.

            Jacob is making a stew of “red stuff,” probably beans and grains. Esau comes in from the fields and he is, “famished.” He asks Jacob to give him some of his stew, and Jacob agrees, but the younger brother seizes this moment just as he seized his brother’s heel at birth.

            “Sure Esau, I’ll give you some stew. But first you give me your birthright.”

            Esau does not want to think about birthrights … or consequences. He is hungry. He is famished. He just wants something to eat, so he willingly gives up his birthright for a bowl of beans.

            One commentator pointed out that this may not have been just a random moment between the two brothers. It’s quite possible that Esau often came home from the fields ravenous with hunger. It’s possible that Jacob had observed this many times, and realized that if he played his cards right, he could use Esau’s hunger against him. Jacob had an incentive, then, to make a good stew. Maybe it was no coincidence that he was cooking a stew at the same time his brother was expected back. If you’ve ever been really, really hungry after a long day’s work, you can imagine what the aroma of stew must have done to Esau. I can imagine Jacob fanning the scent toward Esau as he walked up, just to make sure that Esau could think only of his stomach and nothing else. Jacob knew the time was right to strike a deal. You want food, brother, fine, but give me your birthright.

            There are many directions that we can take at this point, many questions about this story that we can pursue. The first might be just how dumb was Esau? Perhaps dumb is not the right word, but I think “doof” fits. Really, Esau?  Surely other food was available to you. Yet you sold your birthright, you sold out your family heritage, because you had to have food at that moment?  Consequences anyone?

            A second thought is why was Jacob so mean, so calculating? Is this just the younger brother motif? I mean, Jacob, this is your brother for Pete’s sake! Just give him some food. It makes me think of every corny family sitcom where one sibling needs a favor from another and has to promise to give up allowance or do chores or some other menial tasks in order to get the favor from the first sibling. But this goes far beyond a favor. This is about the birthright of the firstborn son, which was everything in that time and context. It was about leadership in the family and inheritance. Yet sibling rivalry can be a dangerous thing, and in this dysfunctional moment, in this dysfunctional family, Jacob knew he could outwit his older brother. Esau, thinking only about his immediate gratification, falls right into the trap. 

            Unfortunately, the lectionary skips the next part of Jacob and Esau’s story. Not only does Jacob take his brother’s birthright. He also tricks Isaac out of the blessing meant for Esau. Jacob wrangles for Esau’s birthright on his own. But when he tricks his father, disguised as Esau, it is done with the help of his mother. Rebekah again plays favorites.

            You would think that with all this dysfunction, this scheming and usurping and backstabbing that God would step in and restore Esau back to his rightful status as the firstborn. Shouldn’t the story of God’s people continue through Esau? That is what we would expect, but God rarely does what we expect. The covenant began to take shape through the second born, Isaac, and God continues the covenant through Jacob, Jacob the grasper, the trickster, the scoundrel. The one who should be least likely to carry the promise of God is the one who is chosen. 

            Yet even though Esau is not the one chosen to continue the covenant of God; he is still the father of a nation. He is blessed with descendants and wealth. And Jacob, the trickster, has the tables turned on him by another trickster. He will be tricked by his father-in-law, Laban, into marrying the oldest daughter Leah before he can marry his beloved, Rachel, the younger daughter.

But it still smacks of unfairness that the one least likely to be an instrument of God’s promise and God’s grace is the one chosen. Yet isn’t that the way of grace? Throughout scripture, we read that God chooses the unlikely, the underdog, the flawed and the dysfunctional to bring God’s promise to fruition. Yet, in our own lives and in our own churches, we act as though the opposite is true. We tie God’s grace to piety. If we are just good enough, just pious enough, just righteous enough, then we will be close to God.

Except I’ll be honest, I rarely feel good enough or righteous enough. But if these stories in Genesis – and the stories in the books that follow – teach us anything it is that goodness and grace are not cause and effect. To paraphrase Paul, this doesn’t mean that we should intentionally seek to be scoundrels so that God’s grace is heightened. But it does mean that God’s grace is not dependent on our goodness.  And that is good news. It is good news because our flaws, our failings, our quirks, and our dysfunctions do not deter God. If anything, God works through them. God works through us, dysfunctional, broken, flawed beings that we are. 

I did not touch on the story of the Sower and seeds from the gospel lesson today, but one point that I have also intuited from that passage is this: the Sower did not neatly plant seeds in tidy rows. The Sower flung seeds, everywhere, into all kinds of soil. The Sower flung seeds, seemingly without thought for how many seeds were being hurled or where they might land. The Sower flung seeds extravagantly. And extravagant is the word I associate with God’s grace. God shows us extravagant grace, even though we don’t deserve it, we cannot earn it, we will never be righteous enough to win it, and if we could it would not be grace. No, God’s grace is extravagant because God’s love is extravagant. God works through our flaws, our dysfunction, our mistakes, and our unlikeliness because God loves us extravagantly. Despite our failings and our weaknesses, God loves us. We are beloved in God’s eyes. And through unlikely and quirky people, God’s promises are still coming to fruition. God’s extravagant grace covers us, in spite of ourselves.

Let all of God’s quirky, eccentric, flawed, and dysfunctional children say, “Alleluia!”  Amen.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

July 9, 2023

 

“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.

Find me a find.

Catch me a catch.

Bring me a ring, cause I’m longing to be

The envy of all I see.

For Papa make him a scholar,

For mama make him rich as a king.

For me, well I wouldn’t holler

If he were as handsome as anything!”

            You get the idea. This week I read a commentary about our passage from Genesis entitled something like, “Does God Have Time to Be a Matchmaker?” If that’s not quite right, it was something along those lines. Anyway, it was referring to a question asked by a rabbi about God being a matchmaker between Rebekah and Isaac. And the point of it is, with all God’s responsibilities, should matchmaking be on the to-do list?

            I read this essay. It was good food for thought, but when I hear the word matchmaker, I can’t help but think about this song. And if I think about this song, I can’t help but sing it. And when I sing it, I not only think about the musical of it is origin, Fiddler on the Roof, one of my favorites, but I can’t also help but think about that classic moment in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. If you know the moment I’m referring to, then you know. If you don’t, you should.

            But aside from the fact that I love this song and this musical and the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, when you read the actual story that is before us, it’s challenging to see God as matchmaker because God is not overtly in the story at all. In our previous stories, God has been a key player in the action. God spoke directly to Abraham about the covenant he was making. When Hagar ran away to the wilderness to escape Sarah, God came to her and reassured her. When Sarah had Abraham cast Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness, God spoke to Abraham about what he should do. God has been audibly present in these previous stories. But in this story God seems to be the object of prayer only. How is God acting as matchmaker when God does not seem to have an obvious presence in the tale? Who is doing the matchmaking?

            Chapter 24 is 67 verses long, and it is all based around the story of finding a wife for Isaac. The designers of the lectionary realized that including all 67 verses would be a lot, so they distilled it down to the verses that have been read this morning. That makes this story a little easier to manage, but it is still helpful to know the larger context around the verses that we read.

            One thing we need to know is that Sarah has died. The story of her death and burial was told in chapter 23. God has kept God’s promise with Abraham and Sarah about them having a child and that child is Isaac. There was a question as to whether the promise would continue with the binding of Isaac, the story that we read last week, but Isaac was spared from being a sacrifice and he is now a grown man. He needs a wife, and with Sarah gone, it is up to Abraham to ensure that he has one.

            Abraham calls his servant, a servant whose name we never know, and makes him swear to the Lord God that he will not get a wife for Isaac from the women in the land where they are living but will go back to Abraham’s homeland and find a wife for Isaac there from Abraham’s kindred. The servant makes this promise to Abraham, but he is worried and nervous. How will he know the right woman to choose? What if she will not return with him? What if he cannot fulfill the promise he has made to Abraham?

            But the servant does not let his fears stop him from doing what he has sworn to do. He takes ten camels and a slew of the finest gifts a girl could want, and he sets out. He travels to just outside the city of Nahor, and there on the outskirts he makes the camels kneel by the well. The well is where the women of the city go in the evening to draw water for their households. It is by this well where the servant prays to the God of Abraham. He prays that God will grant him success in his quest for a wife for Isaac. He prays that the girl to whom he says,

            “Please offer your jar that I may drink, and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’ – let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”

            And that is what happens. Before the servant had finished his amen, Rebekah comes to the well with a water jar on her shoulder. She filled her jar with water from the well, and the servant ran up to her, asking for a drink. She gladly gave him a drink of water and then offered to water his camels as well. Genesis tells us that while Rebekah did this, the servant stared at her in silence, trying to determine if this young woman was the answer to his prayer.

            She was! Rebekah was not only a pretty young woman who graciously offered him and his camels water, she was kinfolk! She was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah. This was Abraham’s family! This was the wife for Isaac.

            Our part of the story begins with the servant telling all of this to Laban, Rebekah’s brother. We’ll hear more about Laban later. But in this moment, this unnamed servant will not eat or rest until he has told them why he has come to them. After hearing his story, Rebekah’s family agrees that she should be Isaac’s wife. Even more importantly, Rebekah agrees that she will be Isaac’s wife. She leaves with the servant to travel to a strange country and meet her husband, a man she has never met before, an arranged marriage to be sure.

            Isaac had settled in the Negeb, and he was out walking in the fields in the evening when the servant and Rebekah approached. When Rebekah looked up and saw him, she slipped quickly off her camel and asked the servant who that man was walking to meet them. When she hears that it is Isaac, her intended husband, she does what any proper young bride-to-be would do. She covers her face with her veil.

            As a quick aside, our translation tells us that Rebekah slipped quickly off her camel. One commentator pointed out, however, that the Hebrew is clear that she fell of her camel not gracefully slipped off as we might imagine. Maybe when Rebekah saw Isaac, she felt that rush that comes when you see someone that you know is going to be important in your life, that rush of first attraction and even first love that makes you clumsy and nervous and uncoordinated.

            I suspect that Isaac was not immune to this rush either. When he hears the servant’s tale, he takes Rebekah for his wife. It may have been an arranged marriage, a match made for them, but at the end of today’s story, we learn that Isaac loved Rebekah. He loved her. They moved into Sarah’s tent, and Rebekah gave him comfort, comfort in his grief over his mother, the comfort that comes from a good marriage, the comfort that we seek when the world becomes too much to bear, the comfort that brings true rest for body and for soul.

            So, there it is. This is the story of how Isaac and Rebekah met and got married. It was an arranged marriage, true, but it was also a love match. You might even call it a meet cute. And if you’re like me, it’s always nice to hear how two people find one another. But was God the matchmaker? Yes, I think God was.

            God certainly answered the prayers of the unnamed servant. God certainly showed his steadfast love to Abraham, and with the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah the promise God made to Abraham would continue in its long, generation spanning fulfillment.

            But does God really have time to be a matchmaker? The rabbi who asked the question in the first place seemed to think so. He seemed to believe that matchmaking was some of God’s most important work. I think the rabbi was right. I think God is all about the business of matchmaking, not necessarily romantic matchmaking, but bringing people together into relationships. And why shouldn’t God bring us into relationships? God is a God of relationship. The Trinity is a doctrine of relationship, God in community, God in relationship. What did Jesus do but build relationships, especially with people living on the margins of society, people who had been left out of relationship.

            God’s promise to Abraham was not just about the birthing of babies and new generations being born in one family line, but about the whole world being blessed through relationship. God is the great matchmaker, matching us with others, matching others with us. God brings people into our lives for reasons we cannot always fathom, and in turn, we are brought into others’ lives in the same way.

            Not every relationship is about true love, and not every relationship lasts, but it doesn’t mean that God did not do the matchmaking behind the scenes. God created the world and us for relationship – relationship with God, relationship with each other, relationship with creation. How much better would our world, would our lives be, if we could just remember this and act accordingly. But just as God showed steadfast love to Abraham, God shows that steadfast love to us, matchmaking, relationship building, continuing the promise from generation to generation.

            “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.”

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

            Amen.

 

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.