The God of Abraham, Rebecca, and Jacob

This summer, I have been offering reflections to preview the Old Testament readings for "Track 1" that come to us from the Book of Genesis. You can find next Sunday's readings here. This week we will meet Rebecca. These reflections are offered early in the week as a way to "prime the pump" in preparation for both preaching and hearing this text preached on next weekend. 

This Sunday, we get a love story, of sorts. It's more complicated than that, as love often is. But in the end we are told that Isaac loved Rebecca and there is no reason I can think of to doubt that. It's a transitional story as well; Sarah has died and it's time for Isaac to marry. We know him - a little bit anyway. Today we meet his spouse, Rebecca.

We have been taught to speak of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But in my preparations for this post, I came across a piece by Rabbi Jane Litman entitled The Light in Sarah's Tent...and Mine. I commend it to you. Rabbi Litman is reflecting on her daughter's upcoming bat mitzvah. She shares these words from her thirteen year-old daughter, Sophie, writing for her drash (speech) on this text.

Rebecca is a young woman of generosity, compassion, energy, and courage. When Abraham's servant is tired and thirsty, she takes the time to bring water to both him and his camels. She looks after the welfare of a stranger and mere animals. She has a sense of adventure and is willing to journey across a continent to find her destiny.

I also commend this piece from My Jewish Learning on Rebecca as well. One of the things we learn when we study Holy Scripture with others is that it matters where you stand. This sometimes makes people nervous; they want Scripture to speak objective truths, not subjective ones. But regardless of how "high" our view of Scripture is, we still have to stand someplace. We hear the texts from a slant. All of us.

I read, mark, learn and inwardly digest as a middle-aged white male mainline ordained progressive Episcopal Christian. I live, and read, from that place of privilege. A lot of the commentators I normally read also look like me. I'm trying to be intentional about changing that. With Old Testament texts, one place to begin is by reading Jewish commentaries that aren't interested in "leaping" to Jesus.

So what happens when I listen to the voice of a thirteen-year old Jewish female feminist? Well, that's easy. I hear and see things I would otherwise miss. This is a gift and this is also what makes God's Word come alive. It's not scary; it is encouraging. Even all my training can keep me from seeing certain things. This is why we need to read Scripture in community.That is why listening is an exegetical skill; so too, being curious about what you might not see from where you stand.

Left to my own devices (and many of the commentators I have come to trust) this post might have focused on Isaac. Yet one doesn't need to be a feminist to realize that Rebecca is the much more interesting character here. She is where the energy of the text is. What happens when we pay attention to her and notice (even in her patriarchal context and ours) how she navigates her way in life? Turning our full attention on Rebecca, we do indeed notice that Sarah has died in the previous chapter, and that Isaac and Rebecca will be the second-generation patriarchs. They are not Abraham and Sarah. They are not Jacob and Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah.

They are Isaac and Rebecca. And there is no doubt that Isaac is a bit of an odd duck and kind of quiet in the text. Born late in his parents' lives, bound on Mt. Moriah (who recovers from that?) he is soon to be outwitted by Rebecca and Jacob (and again as on Moriah, on his back, now as an old man.)

Rebecca, on the other hand, is a strong and dynamic woman. So both pieces I commend to you are written by Jewish women. I do hope you have already clicked on those hyperlinks or will. But the phrase I came away with in particular is about how we might really more honestly speak of the God of Abraham, Rebecca, and Jacob.

There is a line in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (written before the Episcopal Church was thinking much about inclusive language) that uses the phrase (in Eucharistic Prayer C) about this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Many who preside at the Eucharist (including me) have tried to rectify this omission by adding the women's names. Which can be clunky when you get to Jacob - who not only had many children but many mothers of those children. Most often I divide them up at least, and say: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. But that omits the other mothers of the other children of Jacob. Why? Because they were servants? Omitting them because of social class is problematic. Another way at this is to come up with three other women's name who are strong in their own right rather than the wives of the patriarchs: so it becomes something like, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Miriam, Esther, and Mary..."

But here is my big takeaway from today: I found myself wondering what it might be like (and to see how a congregation might react) to pray to the God of Abraham, Rebekah, and Jacob. I don't know if I'll do that or not, but I like the simplicity of it and I may just try to sneak it in next time I am using Eucharistic Prayer C.

And they called Rebecca, and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will.” So they sent away their sister Rebecca and her nurse along with Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebecca and said to her, “May you, our sister, become thousands of myriads; may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.” Then Rebecca and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man...

One more thing. As mentioned above (because I did not want to bury the lead) - we are told that Isaac loved her. I find myself wondering if she might have been the first person who ever really, truly, loved him. 

The Binding of Isaac

The Track 1 Old Testament reading for next Sunday is one of the hardest, and most terrorizing texts in the whole Bible: the binding of Isaac.

The Word of the Lord—thanks be to God? Like Pavlov’s dogs we’ve been well trained, and the response rolls off of our tongues. But it’s difficult to be truly thankful for this strange word that comes to us today from the twenty-second chapter of the Scroll of Genesis. It’s the kind of text that, when we really do hear it, it will begin to haunt us, if it doesn’t already. It famously haunted Soren Kierkegaard, among others. (See Fear and Trembling.)  

Do we really want to teach people “blind obedience” to every voice they think they hear and identify as “God’s will?” I much prefer the texts where Abraham, and later Moses and Job and so many others argue with and even challenge God. Why doesn’t Abraham say, in this text, “are you nuts, God? No way! I must be losing it because I thought you said...")

Now let’s be clear: Isaac is not sacrificed. The story we hear is correctly named the binding of Isaac, and of course his life is spared when the story ends with the sighting of a ram in the thicket. God sees to that. 

But still—at what cost? What scars will both Abraham and Isaac carry around for the rest of their lives because of Abraham’s “obedience?” So if it all happened that way, it makes me a little crazy that it did. And crazier still to wonder what kind of a faith community would continue to tell such a story. This is one instance where I kind of wish the lectionary committee would just ignore a text—leave it alone—try to forget it ever happened.

But of course that isn’t possible. It is not possible to forget a story such as this or to sweep it under the carpet. Given that fact, the only thing for us to do is to ponder it, to wrestle with it, to struggle with it. And yes, argue with it and about it. Maybe when faith comes too easily for us and we can tie it all up and figure it out and reduce it to bullet points, then maybe that isn’t really faith. At least it’s not Biblical faith. This was Kierkegaard's main point, as I read him.

Maybe in a society that craves instant answers and simplistic solutions, one of the tasks for people of faith is to keep on telling difficult stories. Because genuine faith has got to be bigger than us. It's got to be more difficult than making jello. It has to surpass our understanding. If texts like this remind us that we are not God and that we don’t have all the answers, and if they bring us to our knees and remind us that we still see through a glass dimly, well then maybe that’s reason enough to haul this text out every now and again and consider it in our journey to be followers of an inscrutable God.

When we gather for worship and this is one of the readings for the day, the preacher has three options. One is to ignore it completely. But it lingers in the air and I suspect when we do that no one hears a word we say that day. It's like we punted. The second option is to try to explain the text away. The usual path on this one is that there was child sacrifice in the neighborhood and God is now saying, "no child sacrifice required" to worship me. Perhaps.The third option and I think the work we are called to embrace is to explore it. To let it haunt us a little. No doubt it is what Phyllis Trible once called a "text of terror." Maybe we need to let it be just that.

Some of the rabbinic teachings interpret this text allegorically, focusing on Isaac as a representative of the Jewish people. Isaac is both bound and silenced. Jews know what it means to be bound and silenced, especially after the Holocaust. So the text tells an awful and painful truth: it turns out that being a chosen people isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, or as someone has noted “if this is how God treats His friends, I’d hate to see how He treats His enemies!”

In a similar fashion, some Christian scholars also interpret this text allegorically, as a kind of foreshadowing of the Cross. Abraham is not required to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac. But another father, God the Abba, will in fact sacrifice his son, his only Son, Jesus, on another hill, far away (where there stands an old rugged cross.) What God does not require of Abraham, God chooses for the sake of the world. 

I will admit that generally speaking I'm not big on allegorical interpretations. I get both, but they feel a bit like cheating to me. Theologically I am sure that they are both right, by the way. But for what it’s worth, for me they move too quickly away from the horror of the text itself to sermonizing on the text. They may be right, but for me it is necessary to linger a while longer with the text itself.

What does it mean to say that God tests Abraham? Walter Brueggemann points out that you find “testing” in the Bible whenever the dangers of syncretism are greatest. That is to say, God tests people of faith when the stakes are highest, when it is easiest to sell out to the dominant culture and to create false gods and graven images. It’s as if that is when God’s people especially need to be clear about not compromising the faith.

“Testing” may sound to many of us like a primitive notion, like an "Old Testament" theme. But don’t forget there is a lot of testing in the New Testament too. Jesus was tested in the wilderness. And the early church felt tested daily as it tried to be faithful in an empire hostile to its message. The prayer we pray every week asks God to “lead us not into temptation” but that can just as easily be translated, "save us from the time of trial.” Don’t test us, God—not like you tested Abraham! When we do face times of trial it feels to many of us like we are being tested: whether by God, the devil, or life itself it is sometimes hard to tell. But when the doctor says “cancer” it still feels like some kind of test.

In both testaments, the Lord is a jealous god: God wants all of us. That’s what we’ve been hearing about from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel over the past few weeks as well; about how hard discipleship is. God wants our whole hearts and our whole minds and our whole souls. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, we blithely sing. But first means first. First means God even above family relationships. And certainly above nation. 

So Abraham is tested. Where does his trust lie now that he has a son, now that God has delivered on the Promise? Is the future all secure and settled and resting on Isaac’s shoulders? Or is God still the only One who deserves Abraham’s trust, since the future still belongs to God?

Abraham has to wrestle with a profound faith question that to a lesser extent all parents must wrestle with on some level. Isaac is the one; he is (as the text reminds us) the only one left. Remember Ishamael? What an amazing burden that must have been for him! What tremendous responsibility! But as parents, no matter how much we love them, we must learn (sometimes the hard way) that they are not ours. 

Imagine being Isaac and being told the story of how mom and dad left the land they knew behind, left kin, because of the Voice of God—because of a Promise. And now he is the fulfillment of that Promise. That kid literally has the weight of the world on his shoulders! The ancestors don't live next door. And he's (at least since Hagar and Ishmael were sent away) the only son. It’s hard enough to be a kid in this world, but what a terrible weight that must have been when all Isaac wanted to do was go out and play with the other kids in the neighborhood. I wonder if Abraham and Sarah weren’t just a tad bit overprotective of this son of theirs, born to them late in life. (Who could blame them if they were tempted to be helicopter parents?)

“Mom, can I go over to Johnny’s this afternoon?” No…I want you to stay here and play in the yard, where I can see you, Isaac. “But mom, I’m thirty-four years old!!”

So maybe it is his attachment to Isaac that Abraham has to let go of. Maybe Isaac has his own dreams, his own hopes, his own gifts. If we can learn to see parenting as a ministry, as a kind of stewardship, then we begin to grasp that while there are no guarantees there is at least a chance that we will not stifle our kids with our own agendas, our own neuroses, our own fears. (All of us need to be reminded of this when our kids are looking at colleges, or preparing for their wedding day.) We are told so little about him: he's basically just the link from Abraham to Jacob/Israel - the son of his who will wrestle with God. But that is to get ahead of the story. We are told so little about Isaac, so we can linger on our own ruminations, and projections, and imaginations.

Or to put it another way: the job of being God is already taken. God is still the one with the weight of the world on Her shoulders—not Abraham, not Sarah, and not Isaac. Not you or me.

Maybe Father Abraham helps us to remember that we must not sacrifice our kids on the altar of the culture’s ideas of success, or the altar of some lesser god. And in a sense, when we baptize our children we are in a very real way climbing Mt. Moriah. We baptize them into the death of Christ, so they can be made alive to God. We give them back to God. We let them go. And then God turns around and entrusts us (with God’s help and with the faith community’s help) to “raise them into the full stature of Christ.”

Let me offer one more word—I hope that in the midst of this very difficult text it is a word of grace and hope that gives us the courage to keep on struggling with it. While it may be difficult for most of us to read past verse one—to get beyond the notion of God testing Abraham—we need to keep on reading to the end. There we read that “the Lord does provide.” This is a very difficult translation. The Jewish Publication Society says that “there is vision.” Everett Fox says “Yahweh sees."  

What's up with that? What does seeing have to do with providing? A clue is provided to us by Karl Barth, who pointed out that the Latin root for the word provision.  Pro-vision—get it?—is literally “to see before.” Or better still, “to see to.” On Mt. Moriah, God “sees to things.” God sees to it that there is a ram in the thicket. God has the vision here—even before Abraham can see it clearly. God provides the means for faith to grow and to deepen.

I wonder if that isn’t an even harder act of faith sometimes than being tested; namely, to see a way out when it is provided. To look and to trust that the Lord is to be seen there. That the Lord is seeing to what comes next, even when we can’t.

Jesus said, “consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.” That is—see the world! Really see it! See that the Lord does provide for your needs, does provide a way out, even when you are being tested. When the Israelites faith is tested in the wilderness, the Lord "sees to it" that there is manna and water. When Jesus is tested in the wilderness, the Lord "sees to it" that there are angels to minister to him.

So, too, with us. There will be times in our lives when our faith is tested. Times when we feel we are in the wilderness with no options before us.  I can’t explain that or understand it fully—and I wish it were not so. I wish we all were always saved from the time of trial. But I know better than that. The truth is that the deeper we go into the heart of God, the more likely it is that we will find ourselves in some measure climbing Mt. Moriah.

We will most definitely find our faith tested. But when we do, it helps to remember that the God we know—the God we love, and who loves us—does provide. God does “see to things” envisioning a brighter future before we can. Even when it does sometimes seem to come at the last possible minute. Even when it does follow the long and lonely and arduous climb up the Mt. Moriahs of our own lives.

God sees. The Lord provides. Our job is simply to look up, so that we might see for ourselves. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Celebrating the Life and Witness of Karen B. Safstrom

I took this photo at Karen's Celebration of New Ministry at CTK- Epiphany and told her it took
two bishops, one Episcopal (Doug Fisher)and one Lutheran (Jim Hazelwood) to keep her in line. 

Today it was my honor to preside and preach at the funeral service for my friend, The Rev. Karen Safstrom. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, we held a small private service at Miles Funeral Home in Holden for family and close friends. At a later date there will be a Memorial Service to celebrate Karen's ministry led by the two bishops shown above. Printed below, with the permission of Karen's family, are my sermon notes from today's service. 

My name is Rich Simpson. From 1998-2013, I served as the rector of St Francis Episcopal Church, just around the corner from here.

At some point, I am honestly not sure when, this person used to show up on Saturday nights at our 5 pm service. And I knew she was clergy because, you kind of always know. That’s how I first met Karen who was there quietly but not quite anonymously. And that’s how I learned that she was a Lutheran pastor but at the time working primarily as a pharmacist.

After some time passed – I really don’t remember how long that lasted, but it happened that I was looking for a new Associate Rector. I immediately thought of this Lutheran pharmacist who would appear from time to time on Saturday nights, and the rest is history. I won’t spend a lot of time telling you that she was an amazing colleague and I had so much respect for her; I trust that everyone here today knows that already. She was a hard-working, gifted, pastor. The congregations she served, across two denominations and most recently at Christ the King- Epiphany in Wilbraham, were the beneficiaries of those many gifts. Karen was made for that job in Wilbraham, being fluent in both Lutheran, her native tongue, and Episcopalian, her second language. And among the many griefs I feel these days one is that she put in the hard labor in the vineyard there, where there will be much fruit resulting from her faithful work. 

Because of the pandemic our options are limited today. This liturgy is spare, but I pray that it is enough for now at least, to get us through this day and this week. I was going to try to put together something that was kind of Lutherpalian. But to be honest, after I asked a Lutheran friend to send me the Lutheran service, I really couldn’t find anything that felt like it needed to be changed. We really do share not only “bonds of affection” for one another but we are very close cousins liturgically.

There was, however, one difference I decided that I liked very much in that Lutheran liturgy which we have used today, and I admit to you that I experienced a kind of “holy envy” about it.  It’s in the precise wording of that welcome which helps us to get clear on why are we here – wherever we may come from:

We are gathered to worship,

to proclaim Christ crucified and risen,

to remember before God our sister, Karen,

to give thanks for her life,

to commend her to our merciful redeemer,

and to comfort one another in our grief.

Those active verbs are what funerals are for, and we sometimes get confused about that. But in truth we come together to worship, to proclaim, to remember, to give thanks, to commend, and to comfort. Those verbs bind us together today.

Even in the face of the death of one so young as Karen was, we gather here to worship and to proclaim the good news of Christ crucified and risen. We picked a double-gospel reading today to make this point. Both of these readings may be familiar to many of you, but I’ve never heard them read together as we did a few minutes ago. Yet they are part of one long day as the fourth gospel writer tells the story: from early Easter morning when it was still dark out until the end of the day when Jesus comes to breathe on the disciples who are locked in a room. (And then, because Thomas was out getting milk, we get the postscript of what happened one week later.)  

We gather here to proclaim that the Lord is risen indeed. This does not make the death of those we love any easier. But it may take away a little bit of the sting to trust that love is stronger than death, and to know that life is changed, not ended, when our mortal bodies give out. Even in the midst of the unfairness and sadness of it all, we dare to make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

But don’t take my word for it. I came across a sermon that Karen preached in this very place, almost exactly two years ago, at the funeral of her friend, Melissa Tuttle, on June 27, 2018. In that sermon, and I know that some of you were here to hear it, Karen quoted one of her heroines, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. Karen said:

In her book Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People I think Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber describes what this love can be like for us when she shares the story of her friend who was not a fan of Christianity telling that she was having a crisis of faith because she suddenly found herself believing in Jesus. Nadia’s response to her friend was (and pardon the swear word, but I know Melissa would want me to keep it in), “I’m so sorry, but sometimes Jesus just hunts your ass down and there’s nothing you can do about it.” That’s what God’s love in Jesus is like. It finds you no matter where you are or what you do to avoid it. It accepts us for who we are however flawed or screwed up and won’t let go of us or give up on us.

Truth be told, it wasn’t just Melissa who wanted to keep that word in there, let’s be honest! The God who “hunts our asses down” is the God that Karen gave her life to. That love found her, and it would not let her go. (I will just add that I’ve heard both Nadia and Karen preach and both are good, and Karen surely held her own.)

Those women who came to the tomb early on that Sunday morning expecting to find death and to deal with that, were surprised by life. It came with the sound of Jesus’ voice, whom Mary first thought was the gardener. “Mary,” he said, and in that moment she knew. And that encounter changed her life for good. It marked her. Faith is a journey and it includes lots of doubts and questions and struggle. Karen embraced that part of it which I think is found in the Thomas story. God meets us where we are and Karen met people where they were too.

Karen worked hard to meet those for whom Church just doesn’t work and eventually that led to an exciting new ministry at St. Francis: unCommon Ground. I bet some of you know the kind of clergy (I know some of them myself) who kind of make you feel like they are so super-holy, so that maybe you feel you aren’t in the same league. You may look up to them, and maybe they are rock stars in the faith and they just can’t help it. But what I can say with confidence is that Karen was not that kind of pastor. That’s what she loved about Nadia, and Questioning Thomas and because of that, she gave permission and invitation and space to people to question and to seek and to engage and to grow.

I will miss Karen, beloved child of God. But perhaps even more I will miss that kind of embodiment of what ordained ministry can look like. She was good at so many aspects of ordained ministry: preaching and teaching, pastoral care and above all loving God’s people, even the difficult ones. She listened and she prayed. But I think her favorite part of ministry was in letting people be real with their questions and their doubts. She could do that because she lived it. In between, in that space of being both pharmacist and pastor. In between, in that space between Lutheran and Episcopalian. In between the space inside and outside of church walls. She lived in those boundary places and we are better for it. The Church is better for it. The world is better for it.  

So, trust me, I could preach long sermons on both of the back-to-back gospel readings and I could talk about Karen all day. But I am going to let that be enough, because I know I’m preaching to the choir today. When we lose someone we love, it is so painful and so confusing and challenging and there is such a hole left. But we pray that like Mary and Thomas that we come to see with our own eyes, so we too might cry out in our grief: Rabbouni! My Lord and my God! And that like Mary and Thomas and Karen we will know, and be known, by the one who will not let us go.

We gather and we proclaim so that we can hold our pain and our loss and our grief at the foot of the cross, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. We remember and we give thanks for Karen’s life so that we can commend her to the God who created her in love. But in so doing, I would be remiss if I did not say that before Karen was ordained she was baptized. She was daughter, and sister and aunt and friend and pharmacist before ever preaching her first sermon. Martin Luther understood that vocation is never just about the clergy and Karen got that, too. Anyone who has ever had two half-time jobs knows what a joke that is; it’s really two full-time jobs with half-time pay. Especially for someone as diligent as Karen. Yet I think it was living in that space, and especially in the times when she was bi-vocational, that I think gave her such insight and shaped the kind of pastor she was as she straddled those different worlds.

As we commend her to the God of love, we seek to comfort each other, and especially on this day we seek to be a comfort for Cynthia and for Lynn and Scott and Ryan and Lauren. In that same sermon that Karen preached here two years ago she also spoke about community and the need to be present for each other, family and friends who grieve the loss of those whom we love but see no longer.

It is so much harder to comfort one another in this peculiar time in which we are now living with social distancing. It is hard because so much of comfort is not in the words spoken but the ones left unspoken when a hand is placed on a shoulder, or we embrace with sighs too deep for words. We will do that again. But for today, we can still offer signs of comfort to one another. I pray that this space, however imperfectly, provides room enough for comfortable words and especially that Karen’s family feels comforted by this gathering. That does not take away the hurt and the sheer bewilderment we feel that she is gone. Yet relationships do not die when our mortal bodies give out. Love never dies. Karen offered so much comfort to so many as a faithful pastor. Today we do our best to channel some of that to comfort one another in our sorrow. We have gathered, we proclaim, we remember, we give thanks, we commend and we comfort one another. It’s a lot. But we don’t do it alone. We do it together, in the presence of our crucified Lord, who is risen indeed. Alleluia.  

The God Who Disturbs and Vexes Us

Disturb us, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency;
Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance,
the quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat,
the bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans.
Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false Shabbat which gives us
the delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and hatred;
Wake us, O God, and shake us
from the sweet and sad poignancies rendered by
half -forgotten melodies and rubric prayers of yesteryears;
Make us know that the border of the sanctuary
is not the border of living
and the walls of Your temples are not shelters
from the winds of truth, justice and reality.
Disturb us, O God, and vex us;
let not Your Shabbat be a day of torpor and slumber;
let it be a time to be stirred and spurred to action.
(from The Amidah for Shabbat)

I first prayed this prayer a decade or so ago. It has stayed with me ever since and has been on my heart and in my head these days of pandemic and of social unrest and dis-ease.  

My ordained life began on a college campus as Protestant Campus Minister; I was blessed to have a Roman Catholic priest and a rabbi as close colleagues. Since then, and especially because of my deep affection for the Old Testament, I have continued to be blessed to be near rabbis and to find ways to collaborate. I value those friendships. 

A decade or so ago I attended the retirement celebration for Rabbi Seth Bernstein in Worcester; Seth and I had done some team-teaching in both of our congregations and for a Worcester Senior Education Program called W.I.S.E. for a dozen years or so by then. He was committed to interfaith work and he was an esteemed colleague. Anyway, this prayer was part of the liturgy to say goodbye and I kept the bulletin and I've had a kind of "holy envy" of this prayer ever since. Asking God to "vex and disturb" us is so Jewish! It's not completely un-Christian to be sure but I think that it's a bit more jarring for most Christian pieties. (We tend to ask God to ground and center us and quiet our minds...which also has a place, for sure.)

Lately, this has been calling to me in an even deeper way as I reflect on white privilege and the racist structures upon which it has depended for four centuries. I need God to disturb...and vex [me] at times when I am tempted to ignore what is happening in our world. I need God to disturb and vex our politicians, and Church people. We need to feel annoyed and frustrated and worried enough to channel all of that into action and change. 

In my "day job" as Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, I have to deal with angry Episcopalians from time to time. (Not as often as my boss, the Bishop.) But when bishops speak out (as the New England bishops recently did, for example, about the revolting display of false piety by the president at St. John's Episcopal Church, holding up a Bible like a prop) let's just say they sometimes take it on the chin from the "faithful." The "faithful" don't like being vexed, or disturbed. They don't like their bishops to be too "political." 

I am so glad I'm not a bishop! Really. I don't mind conflict or push-back or healthy disagreement, but I do not always have the patience to go back to the very beginning. Back to "thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" and "Jesus is Lord" which is to say that Caesar is not. Which is to say that Christianity is not about a disembodied spirituality that has nothing to do with the city, i.e. the polis.  This is not a new idea. It goes all the way back to the Book of Revelation and the new Jerusalem and to Augustine who wrote The City of God. I want to be able to not simply thank these people for sharing but tell them that faith that is disconnected from the real world is not faith at all; it's the opiate of the people. I want to say that when the president of the United States of America clears a peaceful crowd that includes Episcopalians handing out water bottles with tear gas for a photo op in front of their church, with a Bible held high, that he has moved into our territory. Literally. He has moved politics into the religious sphere. He walked onto our porch...

And that is very dangerous. That is what the First Amendment is really about: protecting people of faith from the politicians trying to manipulate and use religion. I find myself wondering if we prayed more for God to disturb and vex us if we'd be better prepared for bishops and canons and preachers to follow suit, in the name of the living God.

I wonder, if we learned to pray this kind of prayer if we might remember that religion is not a-political. In normal circumstances, it is non-partisan. But let's be honest here: nothing about these days feels normal. This is not about democrats versus republicans. This is about human decency. This is about the moral courage to say "enough is enough." This is about respecting the dignity of every human being and working for peace on earth and good will to all.

This is about standing together against a man who is is dividing this nation rather than helping us to bind up the wounds of a nation. And naming that is holy work, even when it is hard work. 

Disturb us, O God. Vex us. Stir us to action! Do not let those who think spirituality can be separated from respecting the dignity of every human person control the theological debate. Wake us up! 

Blood Brothers - Proper 7.5 (Bonus Post on Genesis 25:7-23)

When I was a D.Min. student at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, I co-led a chapel service on July 11, 2003 with the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor. Yep. That was pretty cool. At the time I was taking her course on the Mystics, which partly explains how Rumi makes his way into the sermon re-posted here. We two Episcopalians in the land of Presbyterians decided to use The Book of Common Prayer to celebrate Holy Eucharist in the chapel.

There was a catch, though. BBT said that she got invited to preach at lots and lots of places but almost no one ever invited her to come and preside at the Eucharist. So she said, "you preach, I'll celebrate." Yikes! Oh yeah, and Walter Brueggemann sat in the front row. It was pretty intimidating. 

Anyway, it was less than two years after 9/11 and I was thinking a lot (as I still do) about deepening relationships and mutual understanding among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Even though we were Episcopalians leading worship, I broke free from the lectionary that day... These many years later, I offer this sermon without editing it - as a "bonus" post to follow on yesterday's post about Hagar and Ishmael. I do still feel that story-line is worth pursing in interfaith conversations. 

Genesis 25:7-23

7 This is the length of Abraham's life, one hundred seventy-five years. ⁸Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. ⁹His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, ¹⁰the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah. ¹¹After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac. And Isaac settled at Beer-lahai-roi.  

12 These are the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's slave-girl, bore to Abraham. ¹³These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, named in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, ¹⁴Mishma, Dumah, Massa, ¹⁵Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. ¹⁶These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names, by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes. ¹⁷(This is the length of the life of Ishmael, one hundred thirty-seven years; he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people.) ¹⁸They settled from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria; he settled down alongside of all his people.

19 These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham was the father of Isaac, ²⁰and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. ²¹Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. ²²The children struggled together within her; and she said, "If it is to be this way, why do I live?" So she went to inquire of the LORD. ²³And the LORD said to her,

     "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."

One of the most powerful things I get to do as a pastor is to preside at funerals. Whether the deceased is a long time parishioner or a person who hasn’t been to church in decades, I try to follow the same pattern. I sit down with the surviving family members, and I ask them to tell me about the deceased.

It’s a kind of practical exercise in post-modern epistemology, because very rarely do the stories I hear fit neatly together. What we know is so profoundly shaped by where we stand. Two children grow up in the same household, and yet have very different experiences and memories about what that was like. Even if they are now in their forties or fifties, there are glimpses of what it was like for that person to be twelve, or six—just in the telling of the stories.  I love it when an oldest child tells a story that the younger ones may never before have heard, or known; or at the other end of that continuum, when a youngest child can speak of those moments in the kitchen, late at night, after all the older ones had gone off to college or gotten married. I never cease to be struck at what a great mystery we are to one another, even (and maybe most especially) among those you would think might know us best. It is an amazing privilege to be present in those moments. 

On occasion, I have presided at the funeral for a family where one or more members of that family have been estranged from one another, perhaps for years or even decades. It’s such a hard thing to bear witness to: as people choose different corners of the room or cross their arms or perhaps speak to one another by directing their comments to me. I won't say it happens often. But it happens.

It’s with these eyes especially (more than with the eyes of a great Biblical scholar) that I come to the text before us today. I find myself watching Ishmael and Isaac, these two grown men who have come together to bury their father. The last time we saw Ishmael he was a teen-ager—being sent away with his mother.  We know only a little more about what has been going on in Isaac’s life. Our only real encounter with him—the one that we (and certainly he) can never forget was on that horrible day when he and his father climbed Mount Moriah.

And so I catch myself watching these two brothers and wondering what it would be like to be their pastor in this moment. Looking for clues about the kind of men they have become. Wondering whether this shared grief will bring them together or whether it will re-open old and painful wounds.  Wondering, even, if they are yet able to grieve, given the terrible memories each has about his relationship to this father who was larger than life, this man who staked his life on the Voice. (If you think it’s hard to be a “PK,” just imagine what it would have been like to be Abraham’s kid!)

I find myself looking for a simple gesture. Does one or the other put an arm on his brother’s shoulder? Or is that simply not possible? Do they gather back at Isaac’s tent afterwards for hummus and olives and pita and wine? Or is that invitation not extended to Ishmael? 

I have no way to answer these questions, of course. All any of us can say for sure is that as far as the Biblical narrative is concerned, Ishmael disappears after the funeral. The future belongs to Isaac, and to his son, Jacob, and to his twelve sons. He’s the one whom we are told is “blessed by God.” He’s the one we tell our children and our children’s children about in Sunday School.

I do realize that the narrator’s questions aren’t necessarily mine. And yet there’s no getting around the simple point that Ishmael is there. That the narrator makes a point of telling us he is there, even when it would have been easier to just say: “Abraham died, after a good long life, and he was buried in the cave of Machpelah.”

But the narrator insists on telling us that both of Abraham’s sons were there. And then, as so often happens at weddings or funerals when we see long-lost relatives we haven’t seen for years, the narrator turns to us, almost in a whisper, to say:

You remember Ishmael…the one whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s slave-girl, bore to Abraham.

Yes. How could we forget? 

And then, before the story can continue, before the narrative can move forward to those twins in Rebekah’s womb and to the twelve sons of Jacob who will be called Israel…these twelve sons of Ishmael are named:

…named in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemeh, by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes. (This is the length of the life of Ishmael, 137 years of age…[his people] settled from Havilah to Shur, opposite Egypt, in the direction of Assyria.)

You could go to Church your whole life, and if like mine the lectionary has virtually succeeded in replacing the Bible, you will never hear this text read aloud. You will never hear about all those cousins who settled opposite Egypt, in the direction of Assyria. In fact, it took a journalist named Bruce Feiler, in his remarkable book, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths to get me to take a closer look at this text.

Before I traveled here for what has been my last required course for a D.Min from this seminary, I sat one morning and did my best Karl Barth imitation: the Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other. On the front page of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette that day were two photographs that I’m sure you all have seen, whether these or ones like them. One was of a group of Palestinians grieving the death of a child killed by the Israeli government. And the other was of a group of Israelis grieving the death of a child killed by a suicide bomber. Grief and fear were so apparent in both pictures, and I could only imagine what it be like to sit down in a room with any of them to plan a funeral.

Once upon a time these photos would have felt very foreign to me. But since 9/11, if is very easy for me to imagine a third photo next to the other two—one taken, perhaps, at Ground Zero on that clear September morning in lower Manhattan. So that the looks on the faces in all three pictures are virtually indistinguishable, all these children of Abraham, separated by fear, and by fundamentalisms of various flavors, and by terrible grief and violence.

After centuries of estrangement from one another do you think these children of Abraham—Christians, Jews and Muslims—will ever find the path to reconciliation? Or will an “eye for an eye” indeed make this whole world blind?

Surely the covenant God has made with us in Baptism compels us to be peacemakers: to enter into conversations that may yet lead to forgiveness, and healing, and hope. Surely it matters, now more than ever, how we speak in our congregations, and how we who are pastors (or are training to become pastors) help our congregations to speak.

At a bare minimum, we need to find ways of getting re-acquainted with these long lost cousins, these children of Ishmael who settled “from Havilah to Shur, opposite Egypt, in the direction of Assyria.”

One of these “distant cousins” of ours whom I am only beginning to get to know is the 13^th century Sufi mystic, Rumi, who was born in what we would call Afghanistan in 1207. I decided earlier this week to “Google” Rumi, looking for a way to conclude this sermon. Among other things, I found myself “surfing” to a twelfth-century “illumination” on one of those sites dedicated to Rumi. It was an image of “Father Abraham,” and he had all of his children—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—sitting on his “large enough for all” lap.

It’s that image of hope that I want to define the kind of Christian I am becoming, an image beyond the terror of those photographs of Christians, Jews, and Muslims separated by their fear and their grief.

We gather, in just a few moments, at the Table of our Lord. As we share bread and wine we participate in one of the two sacraments that most uniquely defines us as “separate from” the rest of the world. It makes us different from Muslims and Jews, a people called to be salt, and light, and yeast to the world by Jesus the Christ. We claim through this sacrament that this same Jesus is alive, and here; now, in our very midst. We remember who we are, and whose we are when we take and bless and break and share the one bread, and the one cup. 

And yet—and for me this is one of the great mysteries of our faith—our host is the very One who ate and drank with just about anyone who wanted to come. Even the “dogs” who wanted only to gather up the crumbs under the table. He reached out his arms of love not just to the Church, but to the whole world, that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. The paradox, I think, is that what makes us most unique is also that which makes us most radically aware that the resurrected Christ cannot be contained by us or by our theologies.

If that is so, then perhaps it is not to dishonor Christ but to claim his truest nature by looking for his face and listening for his voice wherever our travels take us in this mysterious and broken world—even beyond those who claim his name. I offer in that spirit the words of one of our long-lost cousins, the Sufi poet, Rumi, in bidding us to gather and to be fed yet again:

                                    Come, come, whoever you are.

                                    Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

                                    It doesn’t matter.

                                    Ours is not a caravan of despair.

                                    Come, even if you have broken your vow

                                                a thousand times.

                                    Come, yet again, come, come.

Ours is most definitely not a “caravan of despair.” Thanks be to God!

Hagar and Ishmael

I’m wondering how many of my readers know this story from Genesis 21, appointed for Sunday, June 21. It's a difficult one. As we embarked on this journey into Genesis, I probably shared more about my thoughts on the lectionary than even most clergy care to know. But in part, this is the reason for the rant: this text never appeared in the Episcopal lectionary. Never. There was no way to make a "thread" to any gospel reading, apparently. And I am fairly sure it wasn't in most Sunday School curricula either. So it's only since Episcopalians moved to the Revised Common Lectionary fifteen or so years ago (and only if we use Track 1) that we hear this text read in our common prayer. Ever.

It has the feel, almost, of a Jerry Springer episode which may make some relieved that we didn't read it. Yet there is so much pathos and hurt here that to miss it is to miss, I think, one of the crucial themes of Genesis. The "family values" here are, well...complicated.

One father, two mothers, two sons. The man, even if he will one day be called "the father of faith," is torn and in many ways paralyzed. The mother of the younger son (she is the one, I hope you remember, who came up with the plan for surrogate motherhood in the first place; or at least so says the narrator) can no longer stand to have her own sweet, dear boy in the same room as his half-brother Ishmael. Actually that doesn’t quite get it right: to name him, to name the relationship is more than Sarah can bear. So the narrator refers to him only as “the lad.” That son of Hagar...playing with her own dear sweet Isaac. Enough!

I think some of us tend to carry around in our heads a kind of picture of Bible-land: a world of smiling people dressed in flowing robes and painted with pastel colors. A world that seems very distant from us and even unreal to us. But the truth of the matter is that this is partly so because our reading of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament, has been so selective. The truth is that the people in the Bible are far more like us than we usually dare to admit. Saul’s lust for power, David’s lust for Bathsheba, Solomon’s lust for wealth—the stories of those politicians could be ripped from the day’s headlines.

That is also the case with today’s reading, a rather ironic one for Father’s Day Weekend, I think. This is a family in crisis. The father is passive, weak, and paralyzed. Sarah is Hebrew, married, rich, and free; while her counterpart Hagar is Egyptian, single, poor, and a servant. And yet Sarah had, until the birth of Isaac, spent the better part of her life with the label “barren.” She certainly isn’t getting any younger and this is clearly going to be her only child. Hagar, while powerless in every other way is young and fertile. (Abraham practically looked at her and she got pregnant!)

In the scene before us today, baby Isaac has just been weaned. Anyone who has ever nursed a child (I have not!) knows that such an event is a bit of a mixed blessing. Glad in part to be done with that, maybe. But there is also a sense of loss as well. Moreover as with all changes in our kids lives there is this dreadful reminder that there is no stopping the process; each stage seems to pass by much too quickly. There is, I suspect a sense on that day for Sarah that if she blinks Isaac will be going off to college. And there is nothing she can do to stop it.

On the day that Isaac is weaned, Abraham throws a great party. And all hell breaks loose. Sarah looks at the two boys playing together, her own precious boy and “that lad” of Hagar’s and she just kind of loses it.

She sees Ishmael laughing. Now the text is ambiguous. The Hebrew word is a kind of pun on Isaac’s own name. The NRSV skips over the pun and just says the two boys were playing together. It’s hard to know what Sarah saw, hard to know if what she saw given her own inner turmoil was accurate. Is Ishmael laughing at the kid named “Laughter?” Is he picking on him or even bullying him? Or is he just laughing with his little brother? The text seems to be intentionally ambivalent. We don’t know. The story isn't focused on what happened; the story is focused on Sarah's reaction.

So what the text does know is that Sarah tells her husband, Abraham, that she wants "that woman" and her son gone! And Abraham reluctantly follows through on that, trusting that God will somehow be with Hagar and Ishmael as they depart. Abraham seems at least good at trusting God, even if he never seems to act on his own.

So: that’s the story.

But what does it mean? What might a preacher say? Well like any good story, it may have many different meanings and multiple layers. So if you need to let your mind wander from here that’s okay. Write your own sermon, make your own connections. Perhaps you grew up in a "blended" family and lectio divina on this text is going to take you in some clear directions about the challenges of family. I'm just glad for readers to know this is even in the Bible because it changes, I think, how we think about the Bible if we take it seriously. It reminds us there is no "Bible-land" and the Bible is no book of rules for how to be nice to the nice. It's about the challenges of being human, and the complexity of human relationships, and about choices. And also about hurt and shame and betrayal. All wrapped up into one little scene on the day that Isaac was weaned, that impacts on not just everyone in the story but everything that will happen in the rest of the Bible and in the Middle East today. It's big!

For my own part, I want to simply offer two possible trajectories for this text, two possible meanings: one more global and theological and one very local and more personal.

First, I think is is helpful to be reminded that God is bigger than the Church. We follow the narrative from chapter twenty-one through Isaac, and through his second son, Jacob—and from there to Joseph with his amazing technicolor coat. With our Jewish friends we tell the story as it moves toward the fulfillment of the Promise—to Exodus and King David and to Exile and Homecoming; ultimately to Jews waiting for Messiah to come, and Christians waiting for Messiah to come again. But we should notice at the end of this vignette that God’s mercy and God’s grace and God’s blessing are not limited to Isaac and to Jacob. The narrative is taking us that way to be sure. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But we don't get there before the narrator is clear that God is also going to make of Ishmael a great nation too. (And so also,  by the way, ditto with Esau as we’ll read later on in Genesis.) God doesn’t leave human beings discarded by the side of the road. Even when we do. In today’s story, God takes care of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness—just as one day God will care for the Hebrew people in the Sinai Desert. The text seems (at least to me) to be suggesting that God can do things beyond the scope of the Bible. That God does do things beyond the scope of the Bible. There are story-lines that will continue in different directions than the story we tell. We have every right to tell our own story, but we needn’t limit God’s grace to this one particular narrative. God was with the boy. And he grew up...

I know that makes some Christians freak out, but I see no way around it and for me it is very good news that I did learn in Sunday School, even if we didn't study this text: God loves all the little children of the world. God will not simply discard Ishmael. Christians are called by our Baptismal Covenant to commend the faith that is in us: to be evangelists and to share the “good news” with others. But we need to do that always with a sense of humility and also with a willingness to seek Christ wherever Christ may be found, even in the religion of the stranger. Sometimes in serious theological conversations with others who see the world from another angle we have the greatest chance to grow in our own faith and commitment to Jesus. At least that has been my own good fortune on various occasions.

It therefore matters to me a great deal that the Bible wants to insist that in spite of all the turmoil in the Middle East that has gone on for centuries that there is also this deep awareness that Iraqis and Iranians and Syrians and Egyptians and Israelis and Palestinians are all cousins. all part of one big odd dysfunctional family. And that God is somehow present in the midst of all of that. Genesis 21 shows us the wideness of God’s mercy—the love of a God that extends beyond those included in the Promise, and specifically of a God who is present to Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.God was with the boy...and he grew up...and his mother found him a wife in Egypt. 

But there is another way to go with this text, and maybe it is even more relevant for most of us as we try to make sense of the Bible in our daily lives. I think about my own family, and the families that make up every congregation I know. The two I got to know best as a pastor were both in relatively affluent suburbs. Yet even there, I am aware how so many feel they don’t measure up. Sometimes people feel like if others knew our little dark family secrets then we somehow wouldn’t be accepted in those nice suburban communities. But let me tell you this, if I have learned anything at all from being a parish priest in those communities, it is that every family has their secrets. Every family has at least one story like the one in Genesis 21. And those moments, when the decision is made but could have been otherwise, haunt people for the rest of their lives. I assure you that Abraham and Sarah were never the same after that day. Not to mention Hagar and Ishmael. And of course Isaac himself. If you like lectio divina then try imagining and telling this story not from the perspective of the narrator but from the perspective of each of those characters. Jews call it midrash. We read not to create doctrine, but to find meaning. Stories generate stories. One could preach this whole story in the voice of Isaac - who of course wasn't yet speaking when it happened. But he knew something happened. He knew he had a brother, and then the brother was gone one day...

The really great thing about the Bible is that it turns out that none of these characters are painted in pastel colors. Rather, all the dirty laundry is there for generations to read about. We speak of “Father Abraham” and all the rest, and that’s great and it’s true. But the stories like this one are also there for us to see him and his family in all their complexity and all of the challenges they face. The same holds true for the great King David, specifically the fact that his affair with Bathsheba is not covered up, but also in the ways that his family life even beyond that is described.

I joke about how dysfunctional these people are. But I hear in that very good news for all of us whose families are more like the Gallaghers (Shameless) than the Cleavers (Leave it to Beaver.) That doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to strive for health. It does mean we don’t have to strive for perfection. And it clearly means that God has been in the business of using people who are far from perfect for a very long time now to bring good news to the world.

Most of us are probably not worthy—or at least we don’t feel worthy—so much as to gather up the crumbs under the table. And yet God keeps on pouring abundant grace and love over us. And that is precisely the point. The Church isn’t supposed to be in the business of feeding and reinforcing perfectionism (which is in fact I think may be one of the really great sins) but in the business of remembering God’s love and God’s grace offered to imperfect people in an effort to make them more whole. When we allow shame to rule our lives, we disregard the power of God's love to heal us.

For us, though, the time has come to say goodbye to Hagar and Ishmael. We leave them in the wilderness knowing that God at least has not forgotten them, that there truly is a wideness in God’s mercy. If we want to hear more about their story we have to listen to our Muslim friends.

But let me add just one more thing, and say that this is not the last we see of Ishmael in the Scroll of Genesis. So I am going to offer a follow-up post on this one in a couple of days, that does not come up in the lectionary. We'll call it Proper 7.5.

And then we'll be able to move on to tell the rest of our story, the future for Jews and by God's mercy, for Christians too: the story of this little boy Isaac, the boy called Laughter. When we see him next, he and his dad will be climbing Mount Moriah, and it will be our task to wrestle with one of the most haunting and difficult texts in all the Bible.

Stay tuned...

Birth and Babies- Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:1-7

The appointed readings for next Sunday can be found here.  As I posted last week, I am going to be focusing on the Genesis readings throughout these summer months and into August. I invite you to come along with me to take a closer look at the first book of Torah. 

The birth of a child—of any child—changes lives. The birth of a first child, in particular, changes everything.

I don't say this because I am a first-born son. Nor do I mean to suggest this is somehow superior than being a middle or youngest child. But generational shifts matter, just as it matters at the other end of life when the last surviving sibling of a generation dies. In both cases there is a generational shift and therefore a shift in identities. Firstborns represent that moment when an adult child becomes parent; and parents become grandparents; and grandparents become great-grandparents.

Today at the oaks of Mamre the Genesis saga continues to unfold. In many ways the story we read here tells itself, and there is little for a preacher (or a blogger) to add. But it helps to remember how this came to pass. Earlier in the story, a promise had been made to Abraham and Sarah. That promise involved both land and descendants.But...the promise was delayed. Abraham and Sarah  have been unable to conceive a child. They ended up going the surrogacy route. But now, it seems, Sarah herself is pregnant. In her old age with her first son - and Abraham's second.

Last week as I offered reflections for Trinity Sunday focusing on the Council of Nicaea. I was trying to unpack a complicated doctrine. This story is complicated, too, but for a very different reason. It's complicated (and messy) the way that life is messy. The way that people are generally and that families are especially.

Narratives generate meaning and in Genesis, as we turn from the part about creation and then floods, we meet a family. They have some issues. All of them. They are not perfect people. But we are invited to hold a mirror up to them and see something of our own issues as well. I think we are not so much meant to judge them as to come along for the ride, and realize that family is always complicated, even in the best of circumstances.

When I was a parish priest, I used to do a monthly Eucharist at the Holden Nursing Home. One time (obviously around this same time of year) the reading was this one. And so I read it aloud and then I asked the women in the room (most of them are usually women in Nursing Homes): what would you do if you found out today that you were pregnant?

There was of course laughter, at least from those who could hear me. Just as there is laughter in this story, even when Sarah wants to back off from that. She did laugh. Of course she laughed. This is a regular riot! I bet she cried, too, at some point even if only from the hormones. But also because she must have wondered, as Abraham must have wondered: what kind of God have we put our trust in who always has to do things the hard way? 

The birth of a child—of any child—changes lives. But this is no ordinary child and no ordinary birth. This kid, named Laughter, has the Promise of worlds on his shoulders. The fact that his parents are senior citizens only makes the text that much more fascinating. God’s Promise-delayed serves as a reminder that God is in the business of doing laughable things on God’s own timetable. “For how can this be?” Sarah delicately had asked, trying to be ever so careful not to insult male pride but finally unable to say it any other way: “my lord is old!” Moreover, “the way of women had ceased for [her]”—which is just a polite way of saying she was post-menopausal. And yet God brings Laughter into their lives, in their old age. “Is anything beyond the Lord?” the narrator asks. That question lingers, making it clear there is a larger point even than laughter in old age (as if that were not enough!) With God all things are possible. 

Back in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, God had made a Promise to Abram and Sarai: to be with them and to make their lives a blessing, and through them to bless their descendants. In chapter fifteen, God reiterates that promise. But the reason that promise needs reiterating is that it isn’t yet fulfilled. There is (as of that moment) no child, and you can’t have descendants numbering like the stars when you don’t have any children! So Abraham prays to God: 

Hey God, I did what you asked me to do! I left family and friends and home behind in order to do as you asked…to go to a land I had not yet seen. But you said I’d have someone to pass it on to. You said I’d have a son…

To which God responded: “I am God…you are not. So you’ve got to trust me on this. In fact, you’ve got to trust me with it all.” Centuries later when St. Paul would write to the first-century Christians in Rome, this is what he was getting at when he spoke of the faith of Abraham. That and the whole Mount Moriah, thing. But we'll get there in due time. We have all summer.

Waiting is always hard, but it's hardest when we aren't sure what is going to happen. When we wait for Christmas morning or to reach our vacation destination, we mostly already have a pretty good sense of what it will look like. So our waiting is anticipatory. But there are other kinds of waiting, also. Waiting right now, in the midst of a pandemic and knowing as things begin to open back up there could be another wave of sick people and of deaths. Waiting, as the dream deferred again and again and again for people of color feels elusive and we seem to have made so little progress in dealing with America's original sin.

Waiting when we don't know how the story will end has been the hardest kind of waiting for me, and I suspect for others. It certainly was for Sarah and for Abraham. So when the answer to their prayers and yearnings doesn’t seem to come on their timetable, they take matters into their own hands. It’s Sarah (according to the text) who comes up with a plan for surrogacy: “Take my maid, Hagar,” she tells her husband. “You know what to do, Abe…”

And so in chapter sixteen of the Book of Genesis, Hagar gives birth to a son. He is called Ishmael. That birth may make us blush a bit since it doesn’t fit as easily with suburban middle-class values. It isn’t generally taught in Sunday School. But that birth is especially important for Muslims because it is through this other son that Muslims trace their lineage to Father Abraham.  It’s also important for us; it to represents a “word of the Lord” and for that reason it’s a story we mustn’t neglect to tell…

What does the birth of these two half-brothers mean for Christians thousands of years later? Well for one thing, the text wants to insist that in spite of centuries of fighting in the Middle East and elsewhere that the children of Ishmael and the children of Isaac are cousins.

We are family. We are all “children of Abraham”—Christian, Jew, and Muslim. Now I’m fully aware that there are within each of these three Abrahamic traditions some who would deny the love of God to the other two (and even the "heretics" within their own traditions) and insist on their own exclusive claim on the Truth and on what it means to be a child of God. I know there are some Jews, Christians, and Muslims who feel they are the only ones who have inherited the Promise made to Abraham. But the text itself says that the Promise is made to Abraham, of descendants numbering the stars and of becoming father to many nations. Or as the wisdom writer, Sirach puts it, “Abraham was the great father of a multitude of nations!” (Ecclesiasticus 44:19) I think that means to speak of the generosity of God and the wideness of God’s mercy and the abundance of God’s grace.

There is a book I read (or at least bought) years ago called "Has God Only One Blessing?" It's a rhetorical question; the answer is no. God has enough blessing for everyone. God loves all the cousins. I am also fully aware that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are not the same. But I want to insist that we are nevertheless related. The Biblical metaphor is that we children of Abraham are like a big extended family sitting around the table at Thanksgiving and representing different political and theological points of view and a multitude of nations; and that even if it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, we still remain cousins with a common ancestor in Abraham.

In a messy divided world we have a greater obligation than perhaps ever before before to remember that and to keep talking to each other, for it is not hyperbole to say that the life of the planet may well depend upon it. Certainly peace in the Middle East depends on it. Certainly Palestinians cannot be uninvited as if there is no more room at the table. 

The birth of a child—of any child—changes lives. The collect for today is direct and succinct. It goes like this:

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This is the prayer in every generation. In my travels around our diocese, I hear a lot of talk among vestries that says things like "we are like a family." Depending on the moment, I sometimes respond with something like, "oh boy, you must be a mess!"If I had the power, I'd get rid of the word "family" for congregations and use the more Biblical word that this collect claims: household. It doesn't carry the same political or emotional baggage. It doesn't exclude people. (Is there any worse place in the world to be than a date at a family reunion?) In any case, the prayer is that God will keep the household in God’s own “steadfast faith and love.” Always we are being called to respond to that love by living more fully into the promises and the responsibilities of holy baptism.

This weekend as we reflect on the birth of Isaac, we must not disappear Ishmael. The story we tell matters. This is the second-born son of Abraham, and the first-born son of Sarah. Life is like that sometimes; complicated. As we reflect on these two sons of Abraham born two chapters apart in the Scroll of Genesis, I wonder if the Spirit of the Living God that falls afresh on us may not also be leading us to pray an even bigger prayer, with equal fervor and boldness. Perhaps something like the collect on page 840 of the Prayerbook, which goes like this:

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.