Unfortunately, I made a nonsense and failed to record the main sermon - probably just as well, since I hadn't much voice! It is almost identical to the one I preached on this Sunday three years ago, the text of which may be found here.
Once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy – well, a country, anyway – far away, there lived a man with two sons. Not unusual, of
course – there are lots of people who have two sons, my daughter
does. But these two boys, and their dad, feature in several of
Jesus' stories.
Daddy was a farmer, we are told, and
one morning at breakfast-time, he said to the boys, “Right, lads;
busy day today, I'm going to harvest the big field. Either of you
free to come and help?”
The younger boy shakes his head.
“Sorry, Dad; I'm booked, I'm afraid. Told Sammy I'd go round to
his today.”
“Not a problem,” said his father.
“What about you, Joe?” to the older boy.
“Yes, I can come!” says Joe. “What
time do you want me?”
“Oh, make it about 10:30, we'll be
able to use you then. Great. See you later!”
All very well and normal, you might
think. But then what happens? Joe, in the hour or so between the
end of breakfast and 10:30, when he said he'd be at the field, begins
to have second thoughts. It's a horribly hot day, he could go
swimming with his friends; Dad wouldn't really mind, there were
plenty of other helpers.... and eventually, his brother sees him
heading off with his trunks and a towel under one arm, obviously not
heading for the harvest-fields.
So the brother does a bit of thinking
himself. Yes, Sammy was half-expecting him, but harvest was harvest,
and it was pretty sure he'd be wanting to help his Dad, too. So he
grabs a passing servant and sends him round to Sammy's with a message
that he couldn't come, after all, and heads off down to the field.
Well, that's the story Jesus told. And
one of the reasons he told it was to tell us that it's never, ever
too late to change your mind, not in this life. If you've not been
quite sure about God, about being Jesus' person, you can still change
your mind.... it isn't too late!
I was unable to record the children's talk as my MP3 recorder decided to die on me; luckily I had another one (more reliable) to record the main sermon, the text of which can be found here. The text below is roughly (allowing for heckling from certain Swan Whisperers - who did apologise afterwards) what I said to the younger ones, and the recording is of the main sermon: powered by podcast garden
So, you younger ones.
Do you have to help at home?
What sort of jobs do you do?
Perhaps you make your own beds,
or keep your bedrooms tidy,
or do you help Mum in the kitchen?
I expect some of you help with the
cooking sometimes, too.
My older grandson likes to help making
pastry and cakes,
although as he is only four there's not
all that much he can do.
But he doesn't like to help clear up
again afterwards,
and sometimes we have to get a bit
cross to get him to help clear up after lunch!
When my daughter was little, she had to
keep her room tidy,
and she had pet mice,
so she had to keep their cage clean
and make sure they had enough food and
water and so on.
And later on she used to cook sometimes
–
she's a great cook, and I love going to
meals round at hers.
When I was a little girl, we had to
make our own beds and help with the washing-up after meals –
my parents didn't have a dishwasher
back in those days.
But sometimes, when you try to help,
things go wrong, don't they?
I remember several dropped plates when
I was trying to dry the dishes –
that wasn't very helpful.
And I vividly remember burning a panful
of sausages beyond recall, which was also not helpful –
I didn't know how to cook them, and
guessed wrong.
Can you think of some times when you
tried to help and it all went wrong?
In our reading, Peter was trying to be
helpful, and it didn't quite work.
And I'll be looking at some more ways
in which we can be unhelpful after the hymn.
Our Gospel reading this morning is a
very odd sort of story, isn't it? Here we have Jesus telling his
disciples that what goes into your mouth doesn't matter, it's what
comes out of it – what you say, even, perhaps, what you think –
that matters. And then he goes and says something that everybody,
certainly today and, I suspect, throughout a great deal of history,
finds incredibly offensive.
Well, the first bit is easy enough to
understand. Jews and Muslims both have very strict dietary rules,
and believe that breaking them makes you unclean, and unfit to be in
God's presence. And they also have strict rules about washing
yourself before worship, being clean on the outside before, one
hopes, being made clean within.
But Jesus was able to see, as his
followers couldn't, that what you eat doesn't actually matter. Many
of the rules – about not eating pig, or shellfish, for instance –
made sense in an era where there was no way of refrigerating food.
Eating them might give you a tummy-upset, but it wouldn't be the end
of the world if you did. What goes into your mouth, says Jesus,
eventually passes through and comes out the other end, but what comes
out – well, that just shows what kind of a person you are!
And then a few days later – we don't
know the exact date, that wasn't the kind of thing that the first
gospel-writers thought important – a few days later he's off in a
non-Jewish region, and he is so incredibly rude to the woman who
comes begging for healing. What is going on?
Of course, the traditional explanation
is that he was testing her. Well, that may or may not be the case, I
don’t know, but it’s what people often say because it’s what
they think Jesus is like.
The difficulty is, of course, that we
can't hear the tone of voice he was speaking in. Did he snap at her,
which is a bit what it sounds like? He had ignored her for some time
until the disciples asked him to deal with her or send her away. Was
he trying to be funny? I wonder how you “hear” him in your head
when you read this passage, or one of its parallels.
I tend to hear him as being thoughtful,
trying to work it out. You see, in the time and place when he was
brought up, he would have learnt to assume that the Jews were God's
chosen people, and nobody else mattered. Some things, it would
appear, given the situation in Gaza today, never change. But the
point is, Jesus didn't know any better, which I think today's
Israelis ought to.
It might sound strange to say “Jesus
didn't know”, because after all, He is God, he is omnipotent and so
on. But we believe – or at least we say we do – that He is also
fully human. Unlike the various gods and goddesses of Greek myth, he
wasn't born already adult, springing fully formed from his father's
forehead, or something. He was born as a baby.
Think about it a minute. A baby. Just
like (if there's a baby in the congregation, point to it) or my
younger grandson. My younger grandson is eleven months old, and just
learning to crawl and to pull himself up to standing. And, of
course, he has to learn what he may and may not play with, and what
is and is not appropriate for him to put in his mouth – although he
is beginning to outgrow that habit. And I bet Jesus had to do the
same. He will have chewed on Mum's wooden spoon when his teeth were
coming through, and when he was of the age to put everything in his
mouth – and later, he will have discovered that it makes a lovely
noise when you bang it on the table, and have to learn that not
everybody enjoys that noise!
And so on. He had to learn. We are
told he grew in learning and wisdom. Remember the time when he was a
teenager and got so engrossed in studying the Scriptures that he
stayed behind in the Temple when everybody else had packed up and
gone home – and then, when his parents were understandably cross,
he said “Oh, you don't understand!” Typical teenager – and, of
course, Jesus was learning the whole time about the Scriptures, about
who God is, and, arguably, maybe a tiny bit about who He was.
And here, perhaps, he is learning
again. We can't rely on the Gospel-writers' timelines, they tend to
put episodes down when it suits their narrative. And here is Jesus,
perhaps having slipped away for a few days' break into Tyre and
Sidon, where he was less likely to be disturbed than in Galilee. And
then this woman comes and will not go away.
We don't know anything about her, other
than that she was a foreigner – Mark says she was Syro-Phoenician,
Matthew, here, calls her a Canaanite. Either way, she was basically
Not Jewish. An outsider.
You know, the Bible is full of stories
about outsiders coming to know and trust Jesus! Just off the top of
my head you have the centurion whose servant was healed, the other
centurion who Peter went to after his dream to tell him it was okay
to do so, and the Ethiopian treasury official. Oh, and Onesimus,
Philemon's slave. Philemon himself, come to that, but I think by the
time the letter was written, it was becoming more widely accepted
that non-Jews could be Christians, as well as Jews.
But at the time, these people were
outsiders. No good Jew would have anything to do with them. And
Jesus ignores the woman, until his disciples ask him to get rid of
her. And even then, he doesn't heal her daughter. Instead, “It's
not right to take the children's meat and give it to the dogs!”
But I wonder. Do you remember the
wedding at Cana, which we are told is his first recorded miracle?
And his mother came to him and said “Disaster! They've run out of
wine!” His first reaction was basically, “So what? What's that
got to do with me?” but then he went and got the servants to fill
those huge amphorae and the water turned into wine. He changed his
mind. His first reaction was not to do anything, but if there is one
thing he appears to have learnt, it is to listen to the promptings
of the Spirit.
And in this case, too. The woman,
consciously or not, said exactly the right thing: “But even the
puppies are allowed the crumbs that fall from the children's table!”
And to Jesus, that was God's answer.
Yes, he could and should heal this woman's daughter. So he did.
With the comment that right then, her faith was probably greater than
his!
You know, the first time I heard this
sort of interpretation of this story, my immediate reaction was “No
way!” Jesus couldn't be like that – he couldn't have got things
wrong! You may be thinking the exact same thing, and I really
wouldn't blame you!
But, you know, it wouldn't go away.
Like a sore place in one’s mouth, or something, I kept on thinking
about it and thinking about it. Why was this so totally alien
to my mental image of Jesus?
Then I realised that, of course, it was
because I was confusing “being perfect” with “never being
wrong”. There’s a difference between being mistaken and
sinning! And, as I said, Jesus had to be born as a human baby,
to learn, to grow. And he may well have learnt, consciously or
unconsciously, that as a Jew, he was one of the Chosen, and thus
superior to everybody else. But he had already learnt, as we found
in the first part of our reading, that keeping the Jewish Law wasn't
what made you clean or unclean – so perhaps it wasn't such a huge
leap to discover that being Jewish or not didn't actually matter.
God still loved and cared for you, whoever you were.
And in the end, I found this thought
very liberating. It made Jesus far more human.
I realised that, while I had always paid lip-service to the belief
that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, in fact, I’d never
really believed in his humanity! For me, he had always been a
plaster saint, absolutely perfect, never making a mistake, never even
being tempted. I realised I’d envisaged him overcoming those
temptations the gospel-writers talk about with a wave of his hand,
not really tempted at all. But, of course, it wasn’t like
that! St Paul tells us that he was tempted “in every way that
we are”, and if that doesn’t include really, really, really
wanting to do it, then it wasn’t temptation!
But if Jesus could be mistaken, if he
sometimes had to change his mind, if being perfect didn’t
necessarily mean never being wrong, then that changed everything!
Suddenly, Jesus became more human, more real than ever before.
The Incarnation wasn’t just something to pay lip-service to, it was
real. Jesus really had been a human being, with human
frailties, just like you and me. He had had to learn, and to
grow, and to change. Suddenly, it was okay not to get
everything right first time; it was okay not to be very good at some
things; it was okay to make mistakes.
And, what’s more, it meant that the
Jesus who had died on the cross for me wasn’t some remote, distant
figure whom I could aim at but never emulate, but almost an ordinary
person, someone I might have liked had I known him in the flesh,
someone I could identify with.
As I have frequently said, these
Sundays in Ordinary Time are when what we think we believe comes up
against what we really believe. Do we really believe that Jesus, as
well as being divine, was also human? Do we think of him as having
had to learn, to grow, to change. Do we think of him as having made
mistakes, having to change his mind, having to – to repent, if you
like, since that basically means changing one's mind because one
realises one is wrong?
And if that is so, if Jesus is not some
remote plaster saint, but a human being just like us – how does
that change things? How does that change our relationship with Him?
And how does it change things when we make a mistake?
Well, that was not a very nice story,
wasn't it? I don't know how well you know the story of Joseph, and
I'll be going into a bit more detail in a little while, but what you
need to know is that he had ten older half-brothers, and one younger
full brother, and his father loved him very much. I'm sure he loved
the older brothers, too, but he was a bit silly about Joseph and made
him a special coat, which none of the others had. And Joseph had
dreams about his family bowing down to him, and because he was a bit
spoilt, he told all these to his brothers, and infuriated them! And
in the end his brothers took action to make him disappear.
Do you have a little brother or a
little sister? They can be a right nuisance sometimes, can't they,
especially when they are naughty and you get into trouble for it.
Like when they snatch your toys and insist on playing with them, and
you get told to share nicely..... I dunno. My family all tell me
that having a big sister is horrible, too – I wouldn't know
because, you see, I was the big sister, and of course I was lovely –
well, some of the time. But no matter how infuriating my brother and
sister were – and trust me, your younger siblings don't stop being
infuriating at times even when you're my age. Do they? Anyway, no
matter how infuriating they can be, we wouldn't really want to get
rid of them, would we? Not seriously, not like Joseph's brothers
did. Of course, when we get really, really angry with them and
scream “I hate you, I hate you!” at them, at that moment we might
wish they didn't exist, but not most of the time.
But being angry can hurt a person!
Jesus tells us not to be angry with people in a destructive way,
putting them down and calling them a fool and an idiot, even if they
are. Well, Jesus doesn't actually say even if they are, he says
firmly not to do it at all. So what can we do when we get really,
really, really angry with our brothers, or our sisters for that
matter? We aren't allowed to leap on them and bash their heads on
the floor, no matter how much they deserve it. All we can really do
is go and hit a pillow somewhere and tell God all about it. God
understands – after all, they wouldn't have put this story about a
seriously irritating younger brother in the Bible, otherwise. The
thing is, you can always tell God about how you're feeling, even when
you're absolutely incandescant with rage. God always understands.
Amen.
This is similar, but not identical, to the sermon I preached on this Sunday three years ago. Link to permanent podcast.
Two weeks ago, when I was last with
you, we looked at the story of Isaac and Ishmael, and we saw how God
was with Ishmael and his mother Hagar, even in the middle of the
desert when all hope seemed lost. I don't know what you looked at
last week, but if I'd been here, I'd have been talking about what's
called “The binding of Isaac”, when Abraham almost sacrificed
Isaac, but God sent a ram just in time – did you know, because I
didn't until I began reading around for these sermons, that Muslims
think it was Ishmael who was nearly sacrificed, not Isaac? Or some
do. And now, this week, we come to a nearly-grown-up Isaac, and his
search for a wife.
Scholars seem to think that these
stories of Abraham, which had been an integral part of the Jewish
tradition, were collected together and written down during the 5th
and 6th centuries BC –this, you remember, was when the
Israelites were in exile, the Temple had been destroyed, and they had
no king of their own. Only a very few Israelites were left in
Jerusalem, and they had rather lapsed from their traditions and
practice. So the various stories were collected and written down,
possibly somewhat haphazardly, in case it should all be lost.
Abraham himself is thought to have
lived in the early part of the 2nd millennium BC.
Apparently the earliest he could have been born was 1976 BC and the
latest he could have died was 1637 BC. This was in the Bronze age
–he would have had bronze tools, not iron, and possibly still a
flint knife.
When Robert and I were in Italy a few
years ago we visited the town of Bolzano, where they have the museum
where the body of Oetzi, the ice-man, is stored. You may remember
that he was found in the Alps about 20 years ago, having been
preserved in a glacier for over 5,000 years. The point is, this was
even longer ago than Abraham – he only had a copper axe, as they
hadn't discovered about bronze yet. But the things that were found
with him – his axe, his coat, his trousers, his bow and arrows, his
knife and so on, you could see just how they were used, and he was
really a person just like you or me! That makes Abraham feel less
remote, as he, too, would have worn clothes we recognise, and carried
tools we'd know and so on.
Abraham had felt called by God to leave
his home-town of Ur in the Chaldees, which in his day was allegedly
highly civilised. They had, apparently, nineteen different kinds of
beer and a great many fried-fish shops, if you call that being
civilized! However, they did enjoy other kinds of food, such as
onions, leeks, cucumbers, beans, garlic, lentils, milk, butter,
cheese, dates, and the occasional meal of beef or lamb. Just the
sort of food I like!
There was wine available, to make a
change from beer, but it was expensive, and drunk only by the rich.
They played board-games, enjoyed poetry and music, which they played
on the lyre, harp and drum, and were generally rather well-found,
from all one gathers.
The only thing was that without many
trees in their part of the world, they had to do without much
furniture, and tended to sleep on mats on the floor, for instance,
instead of beds. But definitely a sensible and civilised place in
which to live. When you hear it described, it doesn't sound all that
remote, does it? They were people like us, and had similar tastes to
us.
But Abraham had felt called to leave
there, and to take his family and household and to live in the
desert. And they had all sorts of adventures, and sometimes things
went very wrong, but mostly they went all right.
And now Isaac has grown up and Sarah
has died, and it is time for Isaac to marry. Abraham is urgent that
he marry a woman from his own tribe, not a local Canaanite woman, who
wouldn't have known about God, so he sends his servant back to Ur, to
find a suitable relation for Isaac to marry.
The servant explains, rather earnestly,
how he asked God to show him which the right woman was –would she
offer to draw water for his camels, or not? That wasn't an easy task
– camels, which can go four or five days without water, like to
drink A LOT at one time, so she'd have needed a fair few bucketsful!
Rebecca's family would have liked a few
days to get used to the idea, but the servant says he needs to get
back as soon as possible, and Rebecca agrees to leave next day. So
she and her various maidservants – one of them may have been her
old nurse – got packed up and ready, and set off. And eventually
they get home safely, and there is Isaac coming to meet them. And
they get married, and live more-or-less happily ever after!
We sometimes get alarmed about arranged
marriages these days; we know that in those communities where they're
still more-or-less the norm, things can go horribly wrong – think
of those so-called “honour killings” we hear so much about! Even
in this day and age, it isn't always easy for someone to escape an
abusive situation if they don't know where to go. But as I
understand it, an arranged marriage can be every bit as happy and as
successful as one where the bride and groom have chosen one another;
we all know that you have to work at being married, whether you knew
your husband for years beforehand or whether you met him a few days
or weeks before the wedding – or even at the wedding!
I think Rebecca was very brave going
off with Abraham's servant like that; she had no way of knowing who
or what was awaiting her at the far end of the journey. The servant
had bigged up Abraham's – and thus Isaac's – wealth, and had
given her lots of gold jewellery, but was he telling the truth?
But one thing stands out about this
story and that is that God was involved from beginning to end! And
God led them all to a happy ending.
I wonder how much we actually believe
that God is really involved in our lives? I know we say we do, but
these Sundays in Ordinary Time are very much places where what we
think we believe tends to come up against what we really do believe!
After all, not all of our stories have happy endings, do they? Some
do, many do, and for these we give thanks, but what happens when they
don't? Does God get involved in our lives? And if so, how does this
work, and how can we work with God to ensure a happy ending?
Well, the Bible definitely tells us
that God is involved in our lives, and I am sure most of us could
tell of moments when we were perfectly and utterly sure of this. But
equally, most of us could tell of moments when we really struggled
with it! Where was God when this or that bad thing happened? Does
God really care? We thought about this a bit two weeks ago when we
looked at Ishmael and Hagar in the desert. And we found that God was
there with them, even though it hadn't felt like it.
Many of us have lived through enough
bleak times to know that one comes out the other side. We know that,
when we look back, we will see God's hand upon it all. God may not
have led us to a happy ending, exactly, but we can see how God has
worked all things together for good for us.
It's not a matter of God waving a magic
wand and producing the happy ending we want; we all know God doesn't
work like that. And it's not a matter, either, of God having set the
future in stone so that nothing we can do can change things. Nor is
it a matter of God simply sitting back and letting us struggle as
best we can, although everybody feels at times that this is what is
happening.
It's more as if God is working with us,
moment by moment. Sometimes we – or other people – do things
that mean the situation can't come out as God would have wished. God
has a detailed plan for creation, but his plan for our individual
lives isn't – can't be – mapped out in moment-by-moment detail
since we are free to make our own choices. But God truly wants the
best possible life for each one of us. The idea, I think, is to stay
as close to God as possible, trying to be aware of each moment of
decision and what God would like for us to do.
But, of course, as St Paul points out
in the letter to the Romans, that isn't actually possible! We're a
bit crap at actually doing the right thing, no matter how much we
know we want to! It was impossible for Paul to keep the Jewish law
in its entirety, no matter how much he wanted to. And although we
know we're, and I quote, under grace not under the law, we do tend to
find it easier to try to follow a set of rules and regulations than
to follow Jesus! And, of course, we don't follow those rules and
regulations perfectly – how could we?
But Jesus points out that his burden is
light! Sometimes we don't feel as though it is. “Come unto me all
you who are burdened, and I will give you rest!”
I am sure Abraham's servant must have
felt incredibly burdened when he went back to Ur to find Rebecca.
But the servant, at least, spent his time moment-by-moment in God's
presence. He trusted that God would lead him, step by step, to the
right woman and that God would bring the whole journey to a happy
conclusion. “Come unto Me all you who are burdened, and I will
give you rest!” Abraham's servant trusted God.
I wonder how much we trust God? It
isn't always easy, is it? Last week's story, how God asked Abraham
to kill Isaac, was very much about trust. Abraham didn't even argue
with God – he just went ahead and did as he was told, leaving it
very much up to God to do the right thing! Even Isaac didn't
struggle – he was a young man at that stage, not a small boy, and
he could easily have overpowered his elderly father. But no – he
allowed himself to be bound and laid upon the altar.And God did do
the right thing, as it were, and produced the ram.
And now God did show the servant his
choice of wife for Isaac. And so was born the Kingdom of Israel. We
never know the consequences of our choices – they may be far more
far-reaching than we expect. But we do need to practice involving
God in our everyday lives, otherwise, when the crunch comes, we'll
find it much harder than it need be to rely on him. “I will give
you rest,” says Jesus, but if we don't know how to come to him for
that rest, how can he give it to us? Amen.
Permanent podcast link I wonder how old you were when you
first heard the story of Isaac and Ishmael. I can't have been more
than 6 or 7 when it was part of my primary school Scripture
curriculum. Of course, as a child you only notice the superficial
parts of the story, and I don't think I've ever looked at it in any
great depth before. But it's an important story, because it echoes
down to this day.
So, then, Ishmael. The older child.
The one Abraham conceived on his slave girl, Hagar, because he didn't
see how else he was going to have a child – Sarah, he thought, was
long past child-bearing. Hagar and Sarah didn't really get on –
Sarah had been very jealous of Hagar when Hagar was carrying Ishmael,
and Hagar, one gathers, hadn't exactly helped by showing she rather
despised Sarah. Hagar had had to run away from Sarah when she was
pregnant, but the Lord had come to her and told her to go back, and
that he would make a huge nation from Ishmael.
And the years went by, and they all had
loads of adventures which you can read about in Genesis, including
fleeing from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally Sarah
becomes pregnant and Isaac is born. And now Sarah sees Ishmael
playing with Isaac – some translations say he was playing, others
that he was teasing or tormenting or mocking him, and we have no way
of knowing what he actually was doing. He may even have been doing
both – started off by playing, but unable to read Isaac's body
language to know when he'd had enough, and ended up with Isaac
crying, and Ishmael laughing at him, the way young people do with
very small children.
And Sarah is absolutely furious. This
had been a special party, to celebrate Isaac's weaning – he would
have been somewhere between 2 and 4, I think, rather like Samuel was
when he was taken to the Temple. Anyway, this special party, and now
Ishmael has upset the boy and made him cry. Is it always going to be
like this? And what if Ishmael really meant to harm Isaac?
You can understand Sarah's anger and
concern, of course. She is well old to have a small child to look
after, and this older half-brother is always going to be perceived as
a menace. So for the second time she demands that Abraham send her
away, and, heavy-hearted, he does so.
God tells him not to be too upset –
his promise is to go through Isaac, but Ishmael is also Abraham's
son, and so he, too, will father a vast nation. Ishmael is about 16
at the time. We know, because we are told he was 13 when they were
all circumcised, and that was about a year before Isaac was born, so
if Isaac is around three, Ishmael has to be 16. But the story makes
him sound as though he was younger, and still very dependent on his
mother.
Anyway, Abraham loads up a backpack for
Hagar, and sends them both off. And they appear to have no idea what
to do next, so wander rather aimlessly around until the water runs
out. And then when Hagar is despairing, Ishmael resting under the
one and only bush, God intervenes, and miraculously provides a well,
or a spring, so they are saved.
According to some Muslim traditions,
Paran, where they settled, is identified as Mecca, which is one of
the reasons why it is a holy place for Muslims today. Because, of
course, Ishmael is the father of the Arab nations.
I am not going to go into details about
which tribes he fathered and which he didn't – the sources are
unclear and nobody seems to really know. However, tradition has it
that he had twelve sons, all of whom became tribes, and their
descendants are, of course, the modern-day Arab nations.
Actually, you know, that's really
depressing! Because if there has not been peace between them ever
since, how many millennia is that, and what hope is there for peace
today? People don't change! The tribes of Ishmael and the tribes of
Isaac have never been able to live in peace. Just pick up your
newspaper or go online and look at the BBC headlines. A lot of what
is happening in present-day Israel doesn't get reported by the BBC,
but I have a friend who keeps an eye on things and she often posts
news stories on her Facebook page that don't make happy reading. The
tribes of Ishmael are still outcast in today's Israel.
And elsewhere, as the news bulletins
make horribly, painfully clear, they are divided among themselves.
The awful situation in Syria, which is leaking out into its
neighbours. It's too ghastly – there simply isn't an easy solution
to be found. At least we can pray for the situation there – I hope
you do pray for Syria, because the more of us who pray for her, the
better. It's an impossible situation – but then, we believe that
nothing is impossible with God!
So it's all very depressing, and it's a
depressing story for a summer morning, isn't it? I wonder what, if
anything, we can learn from it.
One of the things I do like about the
story is that it shows the people concerned to be real human beings,
with human faults and failings. Many ancient myths and stories
depict the people involved as in some way super-human, all too
perfect, or with amazing super-powers that they can call on in time
of need. Genesis doesn't. The people here are human, they have
human problems and human failings.
We can empathise with Sarah, I think.
At least, I can. We can't, and shouldn't, excuse her behaviour –
she was wrong to cast them out like that, and I expect she knew it.
But we can understand why she felt the way she did, and why she
reacted the way she did. She obviously had a huge problem with
jealousy, and if Hagar was youngish and pretty and, above all,
fertile, while she, Sarah, wasn't.... well.... And then with Ishmael
playing with, or teasing, or mocking – according to your
translation – the 3-year-old, who may have been over-tired after
the party.... you can see where she was coming from. And she wasn't
having “that bastard” inherit any of Abraham's wealth, thank you
very much.
And Abraham, too. He has proved
himself far from perfect – read some of the stories about him in
Genesis when you have a moment. He twice introduces Sarah as his
sister – she was, in fact, his half-sister – instead of
clarifying that she was his wife, and nearly led important people
into sin. And he didn't believe God that Sarah could have a child,
which is how come Ishmael was conceived in the first place. But at
least here he shows himself unwilling to let the family go. And he
gives Hagar a backpack of food and water, and relies on God's promise
to look after them.
And God does look after them, we are
told. They were thrown out for no fault of their own, they were
facing almost certain death in the wilderness, and then God was
there, in the middle of the mess, providing water for them and
ensuring their survival.
And because God intervened, Ishmael
went on to become the father of many nations, just like his brother.
Yet Ishmael wasn't the child God had originally planned for Abraham
and Sarah, and his sons were not to be “the chosen people”,
although I daresay our Muslim friends would disagree with us on that
one! But God still looks after him. God is there, in the middle of
the desert. God is there, in the middle of the injustice and
unfairness that caused Ishmael and his mother to be cast out. God
is there in the thirst and the heat and the despair.
And that is true for us, just as it was
true for Ishmael. Ishmael was not a child of the covenant, but God
still cared for him. The people of Syria, many of them, are not
children of the Covenant – although there is a very strong
Christian tradition there, too. But God still cares for them. We
ask where God is in the middle of the Syrian disaster. We ask where
God is in the middle of the brutal treatment of the Palestinians by
the Israelis. We ask where God is in the middle of our own personal
tragedies.
And the answer is the same as it always
was. God is there, redeeming us, in the middle of unfairness and
injustice and tragedy.
Perhaps you are suffering that way
today – in a desert place where it feels as though God has
abandoned you, and certainly everybody else has, and that you are
going to die of thirst any minute. I don't mean literally,
obviously, but there are times when it does feel like that, doesn't
it? And yet God is always there. Sometimes God does intervene to
improve matters. Other times, perhaps more often, things don't
actually improve, but God gifts us with the skills and grace we need
to cope with them. Hagar and Ishmael went on living in the desert,
but they learnt how to do this on their own.
God never abandons us. When we call on
him, he is there. Sometimes it doesn't feel like that – sometimes
we really do feel abandoned, and that our calls are just echoing back
from an empty sky. But that is only what it feels like, not what has
happened. I don't know why it sometimes seems to take God forever to
answer our calls – I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons we'll
learn about in Heaven – but I do know he does answer. Sometimes
“Be patient, be strong!” is the only answer – but the strength
and the patience grows.
The story of Hagar and Ishmael is not a
happy story. But it does have one happy and shining outcome – God
was there with them in the desert. And God is with us in our
personal deserts, and in the global crises and tragedies of today.
God is with us. Emmanuel. Amen.
Welcome! I am a Methodist Local Preacher, and preach roughly once a month, or thereabouts. If you wish to take a RSS feed, or become a follower, so that you know when a new sermon has been uploaded, please feel free to do so.
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