June 22, 2014
Pentecost 2
Genesis 21:8-21
Matthew 10:24-39
(prayer)
When Jesus was asked what he considered the greatest commandment in all of the Torah, he brought up two:
1. Love God with all your heart, soul and strength;
2. Love your neighbour as yourself.
He said that the entirety of the Torah hung on these two commandments. Presumably that included the ten commandments, including Exodus 20:12 "Honour your mother and your father."
That being true, I have to admit that I find today's lesson from Matthew tough to understand. Jesus says that he had come to set a son against his father, a daughter against her mother. In fact, having a deep love for one's mother or father might making a person 'unworthy' of Jesus.
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I must admit that a lot of us clergy-types often choose to ignore such tough lessons when they come up in the Lectionary. We look for easier options. The psalm reading for today (Ps 86) is a prayer of praise and devotion that invites God to be gracious. That would be a less tough lesson to preach on. And the New Testament reading from Romans is a reminder that resurrection is the climax of Jesus' story, not suffering. That's more hope-filled than tough.
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But avoiding...or ignoring... the tough lessons because they are tough can be seen as selling short the depth of our faith.
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So, I offer for our consideration this morning, tough lessons:
- the rejection of Ishmael and Hagar, and
- Jesus' insensitivity to the family unit.
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When Abraham was 75 years old, God called him to journey to the land of Canaan. Although he and Sarah had never had any children, the call also included a promise that Abraham would have many descendants.
The family of Abraham prospered in this new land.
About a decade after arriving in Canaan, Abraham had his first child: a son named Ishmael. The mother was Hagar, Sarah's servant. Now, before you assume that it was a soap-opera-type scandal, it was actually Sarah's idea. She was just being pragmatic - Abraham was supposed to be this father of many and she was almost 80 years old and barren... some alternative plan was needed. With Hagar, Abraham had his promised son.
End of story, right?
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At age 90, Sarah became pregnant, naturally, miraculously, laughably. Abraham was almost 100 years old when Isaac, his second child, was born.
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That's where we picked up the story this morning. Young Isaac (2 or 3 years old), playing with his teenage half-brother Ishmael. There is nothing in the text of Genesis that indicates that Ishmael was anything but a devoted son to Abraham and brother to Isaac.
But... there was apparently a conflict among the mothers. In fact, just after Hagar became pregnant, she 'rubbed' Sarah the wrong way - whether intentional or not, Sarah assumed Hagar as harbouring a 'look what I did that you couldn't do' attitude. Sarah certainly still viewed Hagar as her slave-girl - not a sister wife.
Sarah treated Hagar so badly, that the pregnant woman ran away.
In the wilderness an angel compelled her to return.
Now, in today's reading, sixteen (or so) years later, Sarah's anger and jealousy rose up again as she saw the brothers playing so well together. And so, she forced Hagar (and Ishmael) out for good. Sarah wanted the family legacy to rest solely with her son. She wanted Hagar's son to have nothing - now or in the future.
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It is hard to hear that one of the heros of faith, Sarah, could act with such malice and cruelty. More so, it is presented as all part of God's plan. What does it say about God to map out a situation where Hager and Ishmael are banished to die in the wilderness: Hager - who was only dutifully following the wises of her mistriss, and Ishmael - who was only playing kindly playing with his little brother, are tossed aside so that the second-born son could lay claim to the inheritance and family legacy.
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Several decades after Jesus' resurrection, a Christian author would write that God is love, and that in our ability to be loving will allow us to know God (cf.1st John 4:7-8). How am I supposed to find love in God's plan requiring the near starving of Ishmael? Or the near sacrificial stabbing of Isaac, for that matter (cf Genesis 22)?
How is God 'love' in those times?
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How is God love when Jesus says there are limits to how much you can your family?
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My normal preaching style, at this point would be to delve into the precise context of each passage. I would find the nuanced hope in some remote corner of the scripture and discover a glimpse of divine compassion.
I could do that with the Hagar and Jesus lessons - those glimpses are there (Hagar and Ishmael is rescued and Jesus is not saying hate your family as much as he is saying love your call to be a disciple at least as much), but I'm not going to do that today.
I want to sit with the discomfort for a while.
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It is fair to say that both of today’s scripture passages were written down and shared long after the events they describe. Certainly that is true with Matthew - that gospel was written in the mid 70s - more than 40 years after the life of Jesus. And it is quite certain that (although an long oral tradition preceded it), the book of Genesis was written long, long after the life of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac.
One of the things we can glean from that knowledge is that these passages were written to present a lesson to the original readers/hearers of the stories they present. These passages are not simply, dry history - they are messages for the people of faith reading them, based on part of the history they hold dear.
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For Genesis, let’s remember that it is written by (and for) the descendants of Isaac, not the descendants of Ishmael. So, of course Isaac is the child that fulfills the promise.
There is a major religious movement in our world today that looks at the same stories from Ishmael’s point of view and their interpretation of history is that Hagar’s son, Abraham’s first born was the child of promise.
There is a major religious movement in our world today that looks at the same stories from Ishmael’s point of view and their interpretation of history is that Hagar’s son, Abraham’s first born was the child of promise.
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Matthew’s purpose is to teach the ‘church’ how to be The Church as much as it is to tell stories about Jesus.
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In Genesis, to move the story of the Hebrew history from Abraham to Isaac and on to Jacob and Joseph and eventually Moses, Joshua and the others (which is the way their history unfolded for them), there must be no doubt that Isaac is Abraham’s rightful heir. And the way the story does that is to remove Ishamel from Abraham’s life and family. The side-effect of telling the story that way is that God comes off looking really bad - insensitive, petty, cruel.
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In the mid 70s AD, one of the issues the Jesus Movement was having is that an entirely new generation of believers made up the church by that time - only the most senior members might have had personal memories of Jesus in the flesh. And so the level of commitment to the movement was an issue - especially after the unsuccessful revolt against the roman occupation in Jerusalem that left the Temple in ruins. As a result families were divided, discipleship was being tested.
Matthew needed to address the commitment of the people in the church.
That’s what the passage in chapter 10 is all about - how much do you love Jesus? Today’s
passage reads like a threat: If you are not 100% behind him, you need to admit that and make your choice.
passage reads like a threat: If you are not 100% behind him, you need to admit that and make your choice.
Of course, the side effect of expressing that point makes Jesus look really bad - insensitive, cruel, dictatorial.
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I wonder if it was a conscious intent for the authors of Genesis and Matthew to put the character of God and Jesus in such questionable light - or if that was an un-intended side effect of trying to send a message to the readers about themselves and where they needed to see themselves in their time?
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I think that there is the tough lesson in that for us today. We need to watch how we tell our stories, and how we relay our faith - to be sure we are not sending an unintentional message.
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It was a big issue 30, 40 years ago in the United Church as people began to appreciate the power of gender specific language when it comes to speaking about God and people. Many of you lived through the struggles of the ‘inclusive language debates’. It really began in the late 18th century, but in the 1960s, 70s and 80s our culture really began to be challenged to move beyond millennia of patriarchy, where it made sense to use the word “man” when referring to the human species - both male and female, and to use exclusively male pronouns and images for God, as if God had male genitalia between God’s legs.
What message were we sending to people who could not see ‘father’ as a positive word because the father in their life was only a source of violence, cruelty and pain? Did we not see the language conflict between talking about God as a mother hen, but then saying we are protected under “his” wings.
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Think of this - if you have had some great event happen in your life, maybe the birth of a
child or even having an illness go into remission, you might feel incredibly grateful and you might want to praise God for these fortunate experiences. But, if our language is “God answered my prayer”, what are you saying to the mother who had a miscarriage or the family whose loved one lost the battle with cancer - are you really saying that God ignore prayers for them - or worse that God answered it with a flat out “no, not for you”.
child or even having an illness go into remission, you might feel incredibly grateful and you might want to praise God for these fortunate experiences. But, if our language is “God answered my prayer”, what are you saying to the mother who had a miscarriage or the family whose loved one lost the battle with cancer - are you really saying that God ignore prayers for them - or worse that God answered it with a flat out “no, not for you”.
When we appreciate the connection we have with our God through the wonder and mystery of Jesus and feel a deep faith in this means of experiencing the divine, are we really intending to discount every single other person, who may have brushed up against a thin place of spirit simply because it didn’t explicitly involve Jesus for them.
If we do want to profess that God loves my child more than yours or that my love one’s illness qualifies for prayerful healing and yours does not or that the holiness of God can only be known through an explicit appreciation for the Jesus, then that kind of language might make sense.
But if we are just trying to express an appreciation for a moment of wonderful experience, we should be able to do so without discounting the experiences of others.
Learning how to share our faith; how to express our love for the spirit that binds us is a challenge and it may be a very tough lesson to learn, but… the tough lessons are often the most life changing and fulfilling.
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So, let is not shy away from the challenges to understand what it is we desire to know about God and how we can best share that good news with others.
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Let us pray:
Holy God, we will not forget that you are love and that your greatest commandment is for us to love. Guide us to share this in all we say and do. Amen.
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