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.
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?
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…”
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.
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.
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