June 25, proper 7 “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”  (Teihard de Chardin)

The Rev. Deborah Hawkins

The reading from Genesis this morning can be a difficult one hear let alone sit with. It is not the only one in the Bible that people find disturbing. Next week’s is even worse. That’s the story that is called the ‘Binding of Isaac.’ 

We won’t actually read it in Church next week. On the first Sunday of each month we shorten the number of readings at the 10 o’clock service from 3 to 2 and make a special effort to make the readings, the sermon, and the music particularly inclusive for our youngest brothers and sisters here in the congregation. We will be focusing on the gospel lesson next Sunday. Because of that, I’m going to include the Binding of Isaac in what I talk about today.

This morning I want to take a brief look at the slow work of a lifetime as seen in some of the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. People wonder why we read these stories. They are from so long ago and their actions sometimes seem strange and horrible. But we do need to read them. They are our spiritual ancestors. As such, their journeys with God are our journeys with God. Their struggles are our struggles. They help us learn about who we are, who we are becoming, and how we are to live in the world. They help us learn about the God who sets us on this journey, travels with us, and has made promises to us. 

It was Teihard de Chardin who said, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” In reading these stories I have discovered it is not the slow pace of God getting me what is promised that is meant. It is the slow, careful work of making us a people, a people who are a blessing.

The saga is long and detailed. The stories are as messy as the people they are about. As with any family stories, some of the ‘facts’ and the ‘meanings’ vary depending on who is telling the story.  

As our story begins Abram’s father Terah has died. Abram heard God tell him it is time to leave home and kin behind and go where God leads, promising:

descendants more numerous than the stars in the night sky, 

land – a place they will know as home, 

and purpose – to be a means blessing for all the peoples of the earth. 

So Abram, his wife, Sarai, and Abram’s nephew, Lot pack up and gather all their possessions. They set out for Canaan. 

When they get there, God points out the land that will be theirs. Abram sets up an altar and gives thanks to God and for now, since there are other people living there, sets out toward the Negeb. 

We will skip the parts about the famine and going down to Egypt and telling Pharaoh Sarai is Abram’s sister, and just say that in Egypt Abram learns things he didn’t know before. 

He learns that pharaoh has a relationship with God. Pharaoh is concerned about the consequences of his actions on his people. Pharaoh has a moral compass. Abram didn’t know that before. In learning it, Abram returns from Egypt a much wealthier man. 

We will also skip the part about Lot taking his share of the wealth and heading toward the green pastures around Sodom, and all of that part of the story including the part where Abram raises an army and goes marching off to rescue Lot. An aspect of Abram we don’t often consider.

And we will skip God repeating God’s promises of land and offspring and blessing, and the covenant ceremony because all that will be repeated later. 

We pick the story back up with Abram back in Canaan with his flocks and his tents and Sarai. There is one big problem. Time is going by and Sarai and Abram don’t have any children. 

Sarai has an idea. Perfectly legal and customary. She says, “Abram, I have this Egyptian slave girl, Hagar. Take her and go get me a son.” 

So he does. Sounded good, but before the child is born predictable problems arise. Hagar is pregnant. Her mistress isn’t. Who is the important one now? 

Sarai is incensed. She storms over to Abram. Did you hear..? I’m…!  Abram throws up his hands and says, ‘it has nothing to do with me. She is your problem. Keep me out of it.’ 

Sarai treats Hagar so severely, Hagar runs away, into the wilderness. I must confess I am not too fond of either Abram or Sarai right now but they can help us learn that both avoiding conflict and ramping it up can cause real problems.

In the wilderness, Hagar, weeping by a spring, is found by the angel of the Lord. Long story short Hagar is told she should return to Sarai. It is not a good option but it is the best one given the circumstances. Sometimes we are faced with these choices. They are never easy and regrets and second guessing with their attendant fears and anxieties can fill us. 

Before she leaves the wilderness, though, Hagar receives promises.  She, too, will have descendants too numerous to count and the child she is carrying will be a son. He will be named Ishmael, which means ‘God hears’ because God has heard her cries. 

Hagar, in turn, names God El-roi, or God of seeing. Others may see her as nothing, as disposable, but God sees her and knows her, knows her to be as worthy of receiving God’s promises as Abram. She returns and Ishmael is born.

Now God again enters into a covenant with Abram who is renamed Abraham to mark a change in him. Details are worked out. Abraham is to walk with God, following a particular path. There will be descendants, there will be land. Circumcision is instituted. 

Sarai is renamed Sarah to mark a change in her. She will have a son and ‘kings of peoples shall come from her.’ At this point Abraham starts to laugh because that doesn’t seem too possible and, besides, he says, ‘I already have this great son, Ishmael.’ God replies, ‘He is a good son and he will be the father of a great nation, too, but this covenant, this one, is about you and Sarah and Isaac.’ 

And lest we begin to think this covenant is more important than any others God has made, and these people, our ancestors, are more important to God than any other people, we should think back on the story so far. People we think are unimportant, are, people we think have no relationship with God, do.

We don’t know if Abraham ever told Sarah about this encounter but some time later when a messenger of God tells Sarah she will have a son, she laughs. 

There is a side story about Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a side story about how King Abimelech, who also follows a code of ethics derived from his walk with God, just like Pharaoh. Huh. Who knew? 

How often we think we ‘know’ something about someone only to find out later, when the damage has been done, that we don’t ‘know’ them at all. 

And Isaac, the one named ‘Laughter’ is born. 

Here we are, at today’s portion of the story. Isaac has reached an age where the odds of his surviving childhood are pretty good and there is a celebration. He is playing with his brother. The Hebrew word used for ‘playing’ carries the connotation of laughter but is it playful laughter or taunting laughter? We don’t know but we do know we often hear what we want to hear or expect to hear. 

Once again, Sarah erupts in anger. 

Her reaction to the son of an Egyptian slave, is one of the factors that will result in her descendants becoming slaves in Egypt. Our decisions can have consequences long after we are dead and buried. 

Abraham puts up a weak defense of the boy but he hears God tell him all will be well, and Sarah, in a blind rage, drives Ishmael and Hagar out and into the wilderness. 

The God we meet in this story is not the God who compels someone else to move their car so we can have the parking place we so desperately seek. 

This is the God that James Finley describes when he talks about his experiences of family trauma. This is the God who is a loving presence that protects us from nothing even as it mysteriously sustains us in all things. And this is a God who somehow, someway, keeps promises. 

God hears the cries of the boy, just as earlier God heard the cries of Hagar. The angel of God sees and speaks to Hagar, filling her with enough calm that now she can see the well, with its life sustaining water, that was right there all along. 

Our fears, anxieties, and rage can overwhelm us blinding us to what is right in front of us, the one thing that is most critical for us in that moment. It is the sustaining love of God that slowly carves out a space of peace within our hearts so that we might have eyes that see and ears that hear.

And then the next story. Abraham and Isaac, “his only son,” God says, are to head up the mountain. I wonder if this means that at this point Abraham and Sarah have no idea of what has happened to Hagar and Ishmael?

It is striking, in this part of the saga, that Abraham and Sarah say nothing in response to God. Perhaps they are so shocked by what they learned about themselves, and so horrified by what they did to Hagar and Ishmael, they have no capacity to keep from doing it again. It can happen. 

As they head up the mountain, Isaac asks his father, ‘Where is the lamb? We need a lamb.’ Abraham tells the boy God will provide. Does Abraham believe that? 

At the last moment they do find what they need. Indeed, God has provided, but it is not a lamb, it is a ram. Not a youth, an adult male, a ram, stuck in a thicket, ready for sacrifice, who Abraham is finally able to see.

After this Abraham leads a much more quiet life than before. It may be he no longer feels the need to bang his head against the walls of reality in quite the same way. Sarah dies. Abraham remarries and has 6 more sons. Go figure. 

Each of them is sent peacefully on their way by their father to become fathers of great nations of their own. We will hear more about Isaac and his descendants in coming weeks.

Thanks be to God for our ancestors in the faith who walked the path before us, bless us with their stories, journey with us as we walk with God, and whisper in our ears, each step along the way, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”