A Hard Story (Redux)
Note: the original version of this sermon was preached on Sunday, June 19, 2005. This is a substantial re-write and update of some of those original ideas.
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 personally are good people, and that we are not capable of those monstrously evil things that others have done. We don’t have to look that far in the news. A mother in Nova Scotia charged with having murdered her own daughter… a Father in this city who is accused of doing the same late last year has his charges upgraded this week to first degree murder. We view them and brand them as monsters… and do all that we can to distance ourselves from genuinely despicable acts. Shut it out, label them as inhuman and put them away and conveniently lose the key. That way we don’t have to deal with it.
Yet it is important that we do pay attention to it: it’s in the news… 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. Even some of today’s blockbuster films delve into tragedy… character flaws, and our own capacity for doing evil. Even thought they’re based on comic books, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk are both films that delve into these areas… These darker stories are compelling… because they draw us into those dark places in our own soul, and reveal them to ourselves that stuff we really don’t like to hear. In an unusual way, these types of stories complement and complete the larger picture of what it is to be human, and tell us something about our relationship with God.
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 this close to the summer months. We want something light, something uplifting, something we can take home with us.
Yet echoing from scripture is this darkness, a voice of caution that maybe we also need to hear… because our relationship with God is not completely about the bright and happy things in life. The cross that hangs in this sanctuary is a weekly reminder of that… and each of us knows full well that tragedy is something that is part of life even as Christians. All of us have encountered it at some point in our lives… whether it is ourselves in a personal experience, or it’s someone we know. 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. Yet we know that the larger story is one of hope. The hard, tragic narratives work together with the bigger picture to 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.
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 personally are good people, and that we are not capable of those monstrously evil things that others have done. We don’t have to look that far in the news. A mother in Nova Scotia charged with having murdered her own daughter… a Father in this city who is accused of doing the same late last year has his charges upgraded this week to first degree murder. We view them and brand them as monsters… and do all that we can to distance ourselves from genuinely despicable acts. Shut it out, label them as inhuman and put them away and conveniently lose the key. That way we don’t have to deal with it.
Yet it is important that we do pay attention to it: it’s in the news… 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. Even some of today’s blockbuster films delve into tragedy… character flaws, and our own capacity for doing evil. Even thought they’re based on comic books, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk are both films that delve into these areas… These darker stories are compelling… because they draw us into those dark places in our own soul, and reveal them to ourselves that stuff we really don’t like to hear. In an unusual way, these types of stories complement and complete the larger picture of what it is to be human, and tell us something about our relationship with God.
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 this close to the summer months. We want something light, something uplifting, something we can take home with us.
Yet echoing from scripture is this darkness, a voice of caution that maybe we also need to hear… because our relationship with God is not completely about the bright and happy things in life. The cross that hangs in this sanctuary is a weekly reminder of that… and each of us knows full well that tragedy is something that is part of life even as Christians. All of us have encountered it at some point in our lives… whether it is ourselves in a personal experience, or it’s someone we know. 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. Yet we know that the larger story is one of hope. The hard, tragic narratives work together with the bigger picture to 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.
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