The Hard Stories Part 1
Text: Genesis 21:8-21
There is a darker side to human nature that we would all care to forget about, and pretend that is not there. We would like to think that we are good people, and that we are not capable of those monstrously evil things that we have experienced through human history. Yet it is important that we do pay attention to it: we acknowledge it in history, we hear about it in both story and song. In literature, it is known as tragedy… the ancient Greeks were very good at it, and Shakespeare gave it life some five hundred years ago. Today we have the very timely example of the latest Star Wars film. Revenge of the Sith bears a much closer resemblance to Greek tragedy than it does to the standard cinematic blockbuster formula. The transformation of Anakin Skywalker into the Sith-Lord Darth Vader has shown us that these stories do resonate with us. These stories are compelling… because they draw us into those dark places in our own soul, and reveal them to ourselves that stuff we don’t always like to hear. In an unusual way, these types of stories complement and complete the larger picture, and like the end of this Star Wars film, they point to a new hope.
But before we go off on some tangent, claiming that as Christians we have no place in tragedy, we should not be so hasty to judge. Both this week and next deal with some of the dark stories that come out of the Bible, and they take us places that we need to go, that we need to hear… but let’s be honest… they are not comfortable places to be. The Bible has many of them… but there are two such stories with just Abraham and Sarah alone that really catch our attention.
Last week we encountered the joyful, laughing Sarah. Translated from Hebrew, Sarah means “princess” or “noblewoman,” and she is very much living up to the joyful side of her name. She laughs at the prospect of having a child of her own, and then out of a sense of wonderful irony, she names the child Isaac, meaning “laughter.”
This week, we see a much different side, a much darker element that we really don’t like to see. We prefer the rejoicing, laughing Sarah. This week, we see her brooding and jealous, growling and browbeating all those around her to get her way. After Isaac is born, Sarah sees a problem: the boy Ishmael and his mother Hagar.
The back story on this is fairly simple. Prior to their encounter with the God in last week’s story, Abraham and Sarah had tried to pre-empt God’s promise by involving their slave-girl Hagar. Sarah handed Hagar over to Abraham as a way to have children… a surrogate mother… we get the impression that Hagar really did not have much to say on this matter. When she discovers that she is pregnant, Sarah becomes rather jealous, and Hagar flees in fear. Yet with some assurances from God, Hagar returns to the camp, and eventually gives birth to Ishmael: a name that means “God will hear.”
All seems to be well for the time being, until of course, the arrival of Isaac.
Once again, Sarah displays her dark side, and this time with much more permanent consequences. Angered that Hagar and Ishmael might make claim to an inheritance that is due to Isaac, she orders her husband to have Hagar and Ishmael cast out into the wilderness. This could not have been a pleasant encounter. After all, Ishmael would not have been around had Sarah not conjured up the idea in the first place. Now Sarah, it seems, was trying to erase her mistakes, and pretend that they never happened. Hagar and Ishmael are sent out of the camp, this time never to return. It is implied that being cast out of the camp was tantamount to a death sentence.
As a bit of a relief, we are told that God continues to look after both Hagar and Ishmael, even on the brink of starvation. God promises to make a great nation from them as well. Today many Arab & Islamic cultures trace their lineage back to Ishmael.
But that still leaves us with an angry, jealous, brooding Sarah. This is not a good example for us, this is not the way we expect our Biblical heroes to act. Abraham is just as guilty, because while he may feel some remorse, he does nothing to intervene. No one is there to tempt Sarah in the way she behaves… there is no devil to blame it on. One week we see her laugh, and rejoice in God’s grace, and in the next we experience this… dark side.
Stories like this help us acknowledge that there is a dark side there… and helps us to take our own responsibility for it. It’s not a place that we want to be… especially on a day like this where the secular world celebrates Father’s Day… a day where we are dedicating these windows of faith in this sanctuary. Today is a day where we mark the completion of a significant story in the life of this congregation. After forty years, these windows are now complete. It is something to be celebrated, something to be treasured and honoured. Yet echoing from scripture is this darkness, a voice of caution that maybe we also need to hear.
When Gordon and I were talking with the reporter from the Mississauga News about these windows earlier in the week, we noted that this far more than the completion of the story of Christ… There are many stories of many people within this congregation wrapped up in the dedication of these windows. Some of these stories are fond memories, and others of them are ones of darkness and tragedy. It is my understanding that in this now completed set, three of these windows are dedicated in memory of boys who died far before their time… one at age 6, one 15, and one at age 20. Tragedy, as we experience it, is certainly part of our own lives even as Christians. We are not immune to it, nor can we expect to be.
In seeing Sarah’s jealousy and anger, her dark side, there is an insight… a glimpse into ourselves that we may not like to see. Sarah was so convinced that God’s blessing was exclusively on her that she was willing to throw out those who didn’t conform to that idea. What we learn from Sarah is that at the moment that we assume we can do no wrong is the moment when we are capable of the greatest evil. The fancy name for this is hubris… having such assurance, pride, and ambition that it leads to our own downfall. To pretend that we are not capable of such dark things is the beginning of hubris.
Finding good news in the midst of this might seem near impossible… but we are fortunate that this dark tale is not the end… either for Hagar, Ishmael, or Sarah. It may indeed be a dark time, but in this story and in our own lives there is something that points towards hope. The complete story is that in spite of all this, God still loves us. God is still with Hagar and Ishmael as they are cast out into the desert. In spite of their hardship, they survive with God’s help. God is still with Sarah in trying to raise her son Isaac. Above it all, God is there pointing to the whole story, pointing to hope.
What helps us in the hard stories is to understand them as part of the greater whole. It doesn’t downplay those times of darkness that we experience, but they serve as a reminder that it isn’t the whole picture. We need to hear them to get the complete story. At the end of the latest Star Wars saga, as dark and as tragic as this film is, there are scenes that point towards the beginning of the original film, which is appropriately subtitled “A New Hope.” We know how the next trilogy ends. In the dedication of these windows, while some of them remind us of the hard, tragic narratives, they work together to collectively point to the whole story of God’s good news. The complete story is that God loves us in spite of the darkness and tragedy that we may face in life. The complete story is that tragedy is not the final say, and that there is a promise of something more. The complete story, as we see in these windows, is that in Jesus Christ, it ultimately points towards hope… even in the midst of the hard stories.
Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday June 19th, 2005;
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church, the Rev. John Crowdis
There is a darker side to human nature that we would all care to forget about, and pretend that is not there. We would like to think that we are good people, and that we are not capable of those monstrously evil things that we have experienced through human history. Yet it is important that we do pay attention to it: we acknowledge it in history, we hear about it in both story and song. In literature, it is known as tragedy… the ancient Greeks were very good at it, and Shakespeare gave it life some five hundred years ago. Today we have the very timely example of the latest Star Wars film. Revenge of the Sith bears a much closer resemblance to Greek tragedy than it does to the standard cinematic blockbuster formula. The transformation of Anakin Skywalker into the Sith-Lord Darth Vader has shown us that these stories do resonate with us. These stories are compelling… because they draw us into those dark places in our own soul, and reveal them to ourselves that stuff we don’t always like to hear. In an unusual way, these types of stories complement and complete the larger picture, and like the end of this Star Wars film, they point to a new hope.
But before we go off on some tangent, claiming that as Christians we have no place in tragedy, we should not be so hasty to judge. Both this week and next deal with some of the dark stories that come out of the Bible, and they take us places that we need to go, that we need to hear… but let’s be honest… they are not comfortable places to be. The Bible has many of them… but there are two such stories with just Abraham and Sarah alone that really catch our attention.
Last week we encountered the joyful, laughing Sarah. Translated from Hebrew, Sarah means “princess” or “noblewoman,” and she is very much living up to the joyful side of her name. She laughs at the prospect of having a child of her own, and then out of a sense of wonderful irony, she names the child Isaac, meaning “laughter.”
This week, we see a much different side, a much darker element that we really don’t like to see. We prefer the rejoicing, laughing Sarah. This week, we see her brooding and jealous, growling and browbeating all those around her to get her way. After Isaac is born, Sarah sees a problem: the boy Ishmael and his mother Hagar.
The back story on this is fairly simple. Prior to their encounter with the God in last week’s story, Abraham and Sarah had tried to pre-empt God’s promise by involving their slave-girl Hagar. Sarah handed Hagar over to Abraham as a way to have children… a surrogate mother… we get the impression that Hagar really did not have much to say on this matter. When she discovers that she is pregnant, Sarah becomes rather jealous, and Hagar flees in fear. Yet with some assurances from God, Hagar returns to the camp, and eventually gives birth to Ishmael: a name that means “God will hear.”
All seems to be well for the time being, until of course, the arrival of Isaac.
Once again, Sarah displays her dark side, and this time with much more permanent consequences. Angered that Hagar and Ishmael might make claim to an inheritance that is due to Isaac, she orders her husband to have Hagar and Ishmael cast out into the wilderness. This could not have been a pleasant encounter. After all, Ishmael would not have been around had Sarah not conjured up the idea in the first place. Now Sarah, it seems, was trying to erase her mistakes, and pretend that they never happened. Hagar and Ishmael are sent out of the camp, this time never to return. It is implied that being cast out of the camp was tantamount to a death sentence.
As a bit of a relief, we are told that God continues to look after both Hagar and Ishmael, even on the brink of starvation. God promises to make a great nation from them as well. Today many Arab & Islamic cultures trace their lineage back to Ishmael.
But that still leaves us with an angry, jealous, brooding Sarah. This is not a good example for us, this is not the way we expect our Biblical heroes to act. Abraham is just as guilty, because while he may feel some remorse, he does nothing to intervene. No one is there to tempt Sarah in the way she behaves… there is no devil to blame it on. One week we see her laugh, and rejoice in God’s grace, and in the next we experience this… dark side.
Stories like this help us acknowledge that there is a dark side there… and helps us to take our own responsibility for it. It’s not a place that we want to be… especially on a day like this where the secular world celebrates Father’s Day… a day where we are dedicating these windows of faith in this sanctuary. Today is a day where we mark the completion of a significant story in the life of this congregation. After forty years, these windows are now complete. It is something to be celebrated, something to be treasured and honoured. Yet echoing from scripture is this darkness, a voice of caution that maybe we also need to hear.
When Gordon and I were talking with the reporter from the Mississauga News about these windows earlier in the week, we noted that this far more than the completion of the story of Christ… There are many stories of many people within this congregation wrapped up in the dedication of these windows. Some of these stories are fond memories, and others of them are ones of darkness and tragedy. It is my understanding that in this now completed set, three of these windows are dedicated in memory of boys who died far before their time… one at age 6, one 15, and one at age 20. Tragedy, as we experience it, is certainly part of our own lives even as Christians. We are not immune to it, nor can we expect to be.
In seeing Sarah’s jealousy and anger, her dark side, there is an insight… a glimpse into ourselves that we may not like to see. Sarah was so convinced that God’s blessing was exclusively on her that she was willing to throw out those who didn’t conform to that idea. What we learn from Sarah is that at the moment that we assume we can do no wrong is the moment when we are capable of the greatest evil. The fancy name for this is hubris… having such assurance, pride, and ambition that it leads to our own downfall. To pretend that we are not capable of such dark things is the beginning of hubris.
Finding good news in the midst of this might seem near impossible… but we are fortunate that this dark tale is not the end… either for Hagar, Ishmael, or Sarah. It may indeed be a dark time, but in this story and in our own lives there is something that points towards hope. The complete story is that in spite of all this, God still loves us. God is still with Hagar and Ishmael as they are cast out into the desert. In spite of their hardship, they survive with God’s help. God is still with Sarah in trying to raise her son Isaac. Above it all, God is there pointing to the whole story, pointing to hope.
What helps us in the hard stories is to understand them as part of the greater whole. It doesn’t downplay those times of darkness that we experience, but they serve as a reminder that it isn’t the whole picture. We need to hear them to get the complete story. At the end of the latest Star Wars saga, as dark and as tragic as this film is, there are scenes that point towards the beginning of the original film, which is appropriately subtitled “A New Hope.” We know how the next trilogy ends. In the dedication of these windows, while some of them remind us of the hard, tragic narratives, they work together to collectively point to the whole story of God’s good news. The complete story is that God loves us in spite of the darkness and tragedy that we may face in life. The complete story is that tragedy is not the final say, and that there is a promise of something more. The complete story, as we see in these windows, is that in Jesus Christ, it ultimately points towards hope… even in the midst of the hard stories.
Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday June 19th, 2005;
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church, the Rev. John Crowdis
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