Hold On Loosely – sermon on June 25, 2017
Genesis 21: 8-21 Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Matthew 10: 26-39 Jesus said, “Have no fear of those that threaten you; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For ‘I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.’ Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Sermon: Hold On Loosely by Rev. Doreen Oughton
A certain preacher decided to do a sermon series called, “IWish Jesus Hadn’t Said That.” I would be tempted to follow it up, or precede it, with “I Wish God Hadn’t Done /Said That.” Todays passages would certainly fit in with such a series. I mean, you come here to hear the good news, right? And here we have, in the Genesis story, God approving of a plan to evict a son and his mother from a household, a plan whose impetus was resentment against the very woman Sarah had given to her husband to ensure he would have an heir, and resentment of the child conceived now that Sarah had her own child. She wanted only her own son to get the inheritance promised by God. Not enough blessing to go around, so she believes. And God okays the plan.
The story tell us something about Hagar’s distress, and we can only imagine. That she was banished was bad enough, but her child, Abraham’s child to be cast out like this! It must have infuriated her. Perhaps as Abraham gave her the bread and water, he assured her that God said it would be okay. I can imagine how much use she had for God at this point. There was probably some cursing going on there when she wasn’t panicking over the dangers of the wilderness and the quickly emptying water skin. So when she cries out, it is not to God. It is simply a cry of anguish that she expects will be carried away with the wind. But Ishmael had a different perspective. Perhaps his father spent time with him, teaching him the faith. Ishmael was part of the household when God introduced the covenant through circumcision, telling him stories of how God called him, shared about the promises God had made him. Cast out of his home by his father and under a bush by his mother, he lifted up his voice to God, and God responds.
It is a happy enough ending – water found, a boy learns wilderness skills, then marries a woman from his mother’s homeland, has 12 sons who each lead their own tribe, and a few daughters too. God does indeed make a nation of him. But still, I wish God hadn’t done that, given Abraham the okay. I bet Abraham wished so too. He made his wife happy, and he trusted God to look out for them, but still he must have worried about them out there in the wilderness. And he must have missed his son. I’m not sure he ever saw Ishmael again, though Ishmael was with Isaac when they buried Abraham.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, I’m not sure that things happened just this way. But this is how the story was passed down through the generations of Israelites. The whole book of Genesis is telling a people about how they came to be. First there is the primeval history – creation, early civilization, then the flood, re-creation, and advancing civilization where they build the tower of Babel. Then there is a genealogical bridge to Abraham, a man chosen by God to lead a people set apart to be a blessing to all nations. The stories follow the style of folklore found in oral cultures. It tells stories about ones own nation and the other surrounding nations – how they came to be. They explain connections and differences, or divergences. This is one divergence, where Ishmael becomes father to a nation. Another divergence is through Isaac’s two sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau was thought to found a few nations including the Edomites, while Jacob’s twelve sons founded the twelve tribes of Israel. Unfortunately, these stories have not been used generate mutual respect, admiration and a sense of kinship. Instead they have been used to justify discrimination and religious wars and scapegoating.
And then we have the Gospel story where Jesus, the so-called Prince of Peace, says he did not come to bring peace but a sword. He says came to set family members against each other, and tells people they are not worthy of him if they put their family first. Man I wish he hadn’t said that! But again, I’m not sure he did say just that. The writer of this gospel, referred to as Matthew, writes from a Jewish perspective at a time when there was great tension in the faith. The Temple, which had been at the center of the faith, had been destroyed, and the people were figuring out how to adjust without that center. What laws and traditions would be most important in guiding the people forward? Matthew was asserting that the Way of Jesus was the best way forward, even though your closest family and friends may see it differently. He can write about the divisions that happened in Jesus’ time, about the warnings Jesus gave his followers when he sent them out to tend to that great harvest. And that part about “son shall turn against father, daughter against mother,” etc., well that is a scripture quote, a line from the prophet Micah. The context of that line is, the tone, is not to put one’s trust in friends or family, as they usually prove to be untrustworthy. Micah says, “As for me, I will wait for God.” I believe that the sword Jesus refers to is not a sword taken into battle, but a sword used to sever ties that bind too tightly, that keep people from following him.
It is tempting to dismiss these stories, to see the first as ancient folklore, a mythology that spoke to people at one time, but is irrelevant to us; and the second as specific advice to a particular time and circumstance, again irrelevant to us. But as Christians we assert the primacy of this holy scripture. We assert that God’s word of truth and light transcends all such human circumstance and explanation. These stories are folklore AND the word of God, time bound and timeless wisdom and truth. They can be relevant to any people at any time and place, and one of the tasks of our faith is to wonder what the wisdom and word are for our time and place, for our lives. The thread that ties these stories together is the letting go of family. Does Jesus, does God, mean that our family ties are not important? Are people who cast off from their families more available to follow Jesus, to make more room in their lives for God to work? Certainly there is some sense that this is true – the cloisters and abbeys and convents full of people who sacrifice family life to devote their lives to God. Are families a necessary distraction – simply a means of being fruitful and multiplying so that there are more of us to praise and worship God?
Personally, I don’t think so. I believe that families are a gift from God, and that we are meant to practice the way of Christ first in our own homes, showing love and mercy and kindness and care to one another. Families provide a means of glorifying God, which I believe is our end purpose – to glorify God. We can do this by living well first in our families, then in ever widening circles of people and creation. The problem comes when we mistake the means for the end. In putting our families, or anything else, first, before God, before the way of Christ, we make idols of them. These aspects of life that were meant to provide a context in which we can glorify God instead begin to lead us away from God and away from the core truth about who and whose we are. Maybe it is family, maybe our work, our money, our bodies, our comfort, our religion, even our wish for peace, especially if it is a peace that comes from silencing dissent. I think we are meant to hold those things, but to hold them loosely, to see them as things to be loved perhaps, all the while remembering that God is the love itself. And they are meant to be loved the way Jesus showed us – self-giving, liberating, generous love. Not the clutching, limiting, selfish ways we sometimes try to bind ourselves with others.
These are challenging texts and teachings, and I think it is important to ponder them. And I think it is important to read and listen to the perspective of others. There might be others who wish Jesus hadn’t said what he did about welcoming the foreigner, about turning the other cheek, about going the extra mile, about feeding the poor and freeing the captives. But we can’t just dismiss what feels uncomfortable to us. And we oughtn’t glom on to scripture that seems to align oh-so-perfectly with our political and philosophical stances. After all, scripture has been used to justify the casting out of the vulnerable through the ages, has been used to justify slavery and oppression, discrimination against LGBTQ people, colonization and crusades. We’ve got to help each other to discern and listen, listen to the still speaking God.
I thought a lot about the story of Hagar and Ishmael this week. It occurred to me that Ishmael was conceived through Sarah’s mistrust of God. God promised Abraham descendants as numerous as stars in the sky. But Abraham and Sarah couldn’t see how that could happen so late in their life. Sarah decided to help God out, to make the plan happen, by setting Abraham up with her servant Hagar. But she couldn’t hijack God’s plan. God had planned for Isaac to be born to Sarah and Abraham, and it was so. And still, this human-devised alternative was declared good by God. God did not cast out Ishmael and Hagar; God attended to them, saved them, kept them. In what ways do we try to “help” God along, using our limited understandings to decide what is supposed to happen? Let us continue to seek understanding of God’s word, but let’s hold on loosely even to our understandings. For there is always more truth and light to burst forth from God’s word. May it be so.
