Sarah's story

Sermon for Trinity 8.

Genesis 18: 9 - 10a. They said to him, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ 1Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’

There was news recently that women over forty are having more babies than the under twenties.

Today’s story from Genesis introduces us to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who was promised a baby at the ripe old age of 90.

In a year when we have celebrated another remarkable 90 year old woman, our own Queen Elizabeth II, it is time to trace God’s purposes through the 90 year old wife of that great patriarch Abraham.

Why do we do this?

Why do we trace the story of Sarah today?

We do it for the same reason that people trace their family history.

Your family history matters because it gives you roots.

Our faith in Jesus Christ is rooted in the Old Testament and the way God brought about his purposes through individuals who were flawed – just like he does through us.

So we go back in time today, back past Elijah and Elisha to the time of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, whose family story you can read in Genesis.

The names of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tend to run off the tongue because they are the patriarchs.

But what of the matriarchs?

Sarah was the first of those, and her story today appears to be a classic example of how God cares about the individuals that are left out.

The sense of feeling left out of the story is something our new Prime Minister sought to address in her first speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street this week.

There is some evidence that many who voted to leave the EU felt left out of the story of the UK, the story of others’ prosperity and others’ opportunities, not universally shared

Those who feel so left out of the story that resentment and hatred are burning quietly away, have a habit of suddenly gaining the headlines, which can be a very sinister thing, as our TV screens show us.

So listening to those who are left out of the story may be the most important thing we can do.

In fact, as if to underline how left out Sarah actually is today, the Lectionary compilers, in their infinite wisdom, have actually themselves left Sarah out of her own story (the reading ends at verse 10a)*

Let’s have a look at that story.

Abraham is settled in the land God had promised him. However, 25 years have past since the promise of a son, and now he and Sarah are, to be blunt, past it.

Or as the bible delicately puts it, physically they are as beyond the kind of pleasurable activity that leads to the conceiving of a child, as Sarah is beyond the bearing of such a child.

In this hot Middle Eastern landscape, the shade of a tree in the middle of the day was absolutely vital.

Here we find Abraham in the heat of the day.

He sits at the entrance of his tent, master of all he surveys.

But where is Sarah?

We don’t know; we presume she’s in the tent kitchen.

Visitors arrive.

Abraham looks up and sees three men, who have clearly travelled far and must be sorely in need of refreshment.

Middle Eastern hospitality dictates that their feet must be washed, they must rest and they must eat.

We might recall Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.

And here perhaps we have a little comedy going on: Abraham bowing ceremoniously to the ground as the three visitors approach.

Here are three extremely important men - commentators normally cite this visitation as a ‘Theophany’, an appearance of God in the Old Testament in the form of a man; the other two visitors presumably angelic messengers, also in appearance as men.

So this is no ordinary visitation.

Abraham bows down to the ground and asks that he might have the great honour of providing them with refreshment.

And of course, this is where Sarah comes in.

The scene I imagine is Abraham solemnly bowing to the men and being terribly polite and deferential and calm and dignified, then rushing into the tent and shouting for his wife to grab the ingredients for the baking.

He then runs to the field, slaughters a cow; the servant hastens to prepare it then reappears with the meal, suddenly all calm and decorous.

I looked this up and it probably takes 7 hours to roast a calf, so we might imagine that while Abraham and Sarah prepare the food the divine visitors sit calmly in the shade of the great oak trees, the sun slowly descending into the cool of the evening.

Abraham and Sarah have waited a long time for this intervention.

It always seems a long time when God plants an idea, a hope inside us, because then we have the do the work of waiting.

And waiting can be very hard.

Maybe you’re still praying for someone, for a situation, after 25 years?

After 50 perhaps…

Don’t give up.

God will bring his purposes about.

After the long, slow meal, the question. 

‘Where is Sarah?’

(Not sharing the meal, that’s for sure).

‘She’s there, in the tent’, answers Abraham

There, so often in the background, but now called forth by God.

This is her moment.

‘I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son’, pronounces the divine visitor.

*And that’s exactly where the Lectionary ends the story -

without Sarah’s own, very human, personal, very understandable reaction.

Because if we read on, beyond the set reading, we get her reaction: she laughs!

If we read on, we discover her in fact listening at the keyhole, metaphorically.

It’s classic picture of women in the Old Testament – listening at keyholes, off at the side, while the men get the main parts.

But God is no respecter of gender.

Thankfully the accounts of family life in Genesis are very human and touching, and honest, especially about the things that go wrong in families.

There is no attempt on the part of the writer at covering up her reaction – because our reactions reveal our hearts and God is interested in hearts.

If you’re interested enough to read on you will find Sarah’s reaction to God’s angelic promise of a son.

She laughs.

Her laughter is not the laughter of joyful acceptance.

It is not Mary’s may it be to me according to your word.

It is the laughter of someone who’s heard it all before.

It’s the laughter of a woman who’s seen it all before, but who’s not felt personally included in the story.

God’s promise was delivered to her second hand, via her husband.

But now it’s her turn to face the music.

After all, Abraham can’t have the son (God may do the impossible, but he generally respects biology).

It has to be Sarah who finds herself pregnant, not her husband.

It’s when things get personal with God that we finally feel included in the big story.

Because if God isn’t experienced as personal, he isn’t God.

So Sarah laughs.

She doesn’t believe.

In fact the text says ‘she laughed to herself’.

So perhaps it wasn’t even an audible laugh.

But God knew her on the inside.

The speaking visitor asks Abraham ‘why did Sarah laugh?’

This supernatural knowledge is verging on the spooky for Sarah.

The visitor wants to know, doesn’t she realise nothing is impossible for God?

But Sarah is now afraid.

She denies her reaction.

‘I didn’t laugh’, she says.

‘Oh yes, you did’, answers the angel.

‘Oh no I didn’t’.

‘Oh yes, you did’.

Oh no I didn’t.

It’s comedy again.

There’s no judgment though – just the observation that, in fact, she did laugh.

And then, a year later, Isaac is born.

And Isaac means laughter.

God takes her reaction and weaves it into the story of the patriarchs, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Judah, from whom would come the Lion of Judah, the saviour of the world.

By then, I imagine, Sarah’s laughter was joyful, unbounded, hilarious and full of gratitude.

From being outside the story, she was now in the centre fold.

God’s big story is so wonderful, so crazy, so expansive.

May we who are nurtured by the roots of our faith in the Old Testament stories of God’s people, continually find ourselves in the centre of God’s story, and especially if till now we have felt somewhat outside of it.

Gracious God,

Sarah laughed long ago.

You made her laugh.

You showed her

that there is no distance between her and you.

Please, God,

make us laugh, too.

Come close to us,

and let us see your miracles

in our lives.

Amen.

When God asks the impossible.

5^th of Easter, Sunday May 6^th 2012

Genesis 22:1-18 and John 15:1-8

When God asks the impossible

It’s time to engage with the Old Testament again and it’s a tough story today.

God (apparently) commands Abraham, his faithful follower, to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, as a test of obedience.

There are different ways of looking at a story, and it’s the same with this one.

I’d like to offer a theological and then a personal look at the story.

In one sense the command to sacrifice Isaac is a 'set piece' in the collective Judeo-Christian canon - a ‘type’ of sacrifice which is fulfilled ultimately in Christ’s own death and resurrection.

(Artwork - Roussimoff)

Both Abraham and God are fathers who are willing to give up their only sons.

But this analogy is probably a bit crass from a Trinitarian point of view.

Yes, God the Father gives up his only Son, but in another sense, God became flesh and was wholly involved within himself in the mystery of the Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

2 Corinthians 5:19 says

‘For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.’

So it wouldn’t be right to draw the conclusion, as some atheist commentators have done, that God is a sadist in sending his Son to die, whilst remaining unaffected himself.

God the Holy Trinity is not divided.

So here is the theological version of the story of Abraham and Isaac:

Faithful Abraham is asked to give up his son; his actions prove his obedience; God intervenes and provides the offering himself; God now knows that Abraham really is faithful.

It would be similar for Job.

But is the theological take on it enough?

When we read the bible we may have a number of reactions.

We may read the stories in isolation from our experience, as standalone bible gems that do not touch our lives at all.

Or we can read them from a ‘what if this happened to me?’ angle.

When Jesus told stories they provoked a reaction from his hearers.

He asked awkward questions:

‘Who do people say that I am?

‘Who was a real neighbour to the man?

In the same way, God would have us engage with the stories of the bible personally.

‘One of the bigger mistakes people make in reading Scripture is that they read it as a spectator. For them Scripture is a collection of stories and events that took place thousands of years ago. True enough, we are reading historical accounts. But, truth be told these ancient stories are our stories. We are in the narrative. You are Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Deborah, Jeremiah, Ruth, Peter, Paul, Magdalene, Mother Mary, and, if you are prepared to accept it, you are also Jesus.’

(Washington Archdiocesan blogsite) http://blog.adw.org/2010/03/answer-the-question-one-hundred-questions-that-jesus-asked/

So this is a personal story involving real people and a real situation.

What is our personal response to it?

Your answer to this question will depend on how you reacted when you heard it read just now.

Did you think: ‘Oh I know this story’ and immediately switch off?

Did you sit and think ‘That is a barbarous thing for God to ask’?

Or did you leap to the personal and say ‘I wonder what God might ask me to give up for Him’?

Is it barbarous of God to ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son?

Is sacrifice ever good, ever desirable?

As a parent I find it a very difficult story, not least because it contains a command to do something which was against Jewish Law anyway.

Child sacrifice was characteristic of the Pagan societies around Israel but expressly forbidden by the God of the Israelites.

Maybe Abraham was comforted by this fact.

He says to his travelling companions, ‘Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you’ (Gen. 22:5).

Perhaps he was so convinced of the righteousness of God, that he was pretty certain he wouldn’t have to go through with the terrible deed.

But doesn’t that negate his obvious willingness to go through with it, which God identifies as faith?

As they approach the place, Isaac says to him ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’

Abraham’s answer reverberates down the centuries into this Eastertide: ‘God himself will provide the lamb…’

‘Behold the Lamb of God…’ (John 1:36).

However, and this is the hard part, Abraham does get as far as binding Isaac, laying him down on top of the wood and raising his knife above the young body of his only beloved son…

This is the part of the story where I find my reactions becoming most personal and least theological…(or perhaps they are not at odds with each other…)

Can you imagine how Isaac felt at this moment?

How he would forever recall the moment when his trust of his father wavered to the point of terror?

This really is a story of faith tested to the limit.

James, in his epistle, says there’s no real faith without actions.

Do you follow Christ and love his church?

Prove it!

Do you want to serve others in this community with the love of Christ?

Prove it!

Faith is like an elastic band which cannot prove its worth until it’s stretched and stretched (but hopefully not to breaking point!)

God is not a sadist.

We know from the New Testament that the testing of our faith brings a harvest of righteousness.

Talking of harvest, our gospel also speaks of fruit.

What are the links between the command to sacrifice Isaac and the command to abide in Jesus?

John 15:4 - ‘Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.’

Abraham so abided in obedience to God that he trusted even when God seemed to demand the impossible.

How can we abide?

For some it will be through the contemplative worship of Evensong.

Some will 'abide' through daily bible study.

We all need some diet of bible and prayer in order to abide.

Nurture groups help us abide – maybe we need one of those…?

We abide through feeding on Christ at Holy Communion.

We abide through letting God speak through creation; through letting the stranger teach us; through finding Jesus outside, as well as inside, our comfort zones.

When we abide in him we discover he prunes us, just as an effective gardener prunes a vine.

That way lies growth.

If our branches have become unproductive, we go back to Jesus for a remedy.

In the life of any Christian, and in the life of the local church, there is always pruning going on where Jesus is at work.

Pruning is good.

Pruning leads to growth.

Pruning may mean laying things down which are not growing any more.

It may mean looking for new shoots, shoots which seem at first to be fragile.

Pruning can feel a bit like sacrifice.

But whatever sacrifices are asked of us, those very sacrifices will be the means by which, like Abraham, we will know God’s abundant blessing, grace and new wine.

Amen.

4. Rebekah - have nose-ring, can travel.

As far as the Israelites were concerned I guess the first born males had it quite bad in the pre-anaesthetic department (I'm thinking foreskins and flint) but can anyone shed light on how you get a nose ring through a total stranger's nostril on meeting her at the local well? This is Rebekah's story and she seems a remarkably together young woman to leave everything at a moment's notice for a life of wifely obedience in Cana (the fact that she turns out to be quite a dab hand at wheeling and dealing herself comes later...)

You really have to get into Ancient mindset here. It's not so much 'Would you like to leave your family and come away to a foreign land to marry a man more than twice your age, whom you have never met?' more 'It would seem you have been divinely chosen to be honoured with wealth, status and marriage to your first cousin once removed, not to mention receiving a whacking piece of gold through your nose.'

Amazingly for a society where ownership of women was an entirely normal concept, there does appear to be some leeway offered to her with regards to the wife-hunting project: 'Let's call the girl and ask her about it' (Genesis 24:57). But she is game and off she goes.

Now I'm a terrible romantic, so here's how the episode ends: 

The camels, weary from the long journey, slow to a halt as they approach the field where Isaac, fresh from the Negev, is 'meditating' ('Gosh, I'll need a bath sometime...') Rebekah, getting down from her camel, spots him walking across the field (a bit like the end of the Kiera Knightly Pride and Prejudice film...swelling music...) Rebekah asks the servant 'Is that HIM?' and when told yes, veils herself, being a modest young woman. Isaac is quickly informed, 'By the way, this is your bride.' And the text says 'Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.' (Gen. 24:67).

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.