Even when we forget

Genesis 12-21 

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah

I spent several days this week gathered in Maine with pastors who have been in a grant together for three years called “From Relevance to Resonance,” seeking to orient our lives and ministry work around the action of God. We gathered to talk about how fast our world moves, and how what keeps us human is not striving to keep up but receiving the resonant moments of uncontrollable aliveness that awaken us to the world and reconnect us to God and each other. And we discussed how we want to lead in the church to help each other pay attention to God. But even these people, who were literally there talking about trusting that God is real and really does stuff, found ourselves forgetting that God is real and really does stuff.  

It’s so easy to slip into thinking that it’s up to us – whatever it is. That we are supposed to make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future.  This is a foolish and dangerous mistake, but nevertheless, there you go. We all keep making it.

And with that, we turn to our ancestor, Abram.  God promises Abram that his descendants will number the stars, and through Abram’s line the whole world will be blessed.  But there is no way for Abram and his wife Sarai to fulfill this promise – they can’t create a multitude, let alone a single child. This blessing has to come from God. 

The covenant God made with all creation back with Noah, to never give up on the world, gets legs in the covenant God makes with Abraham. God chooses one family to know God and be in direct relationship with God, so that through them God might gather the whole beloved world into God’s Shalom, fullness of life.

So, leaving everything they know, all the ties and security they had, uprooted and wandering, Abram obeys. They go where God leads them, with only God’s promise holding them. 

But if you’ve read the whole scripture texts we’re covering today, you’ve seen that they keep on forgetting God is the one leading. And God has to keep reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world.  

God didn’t choose Abram and Sarai because of their great character or their unique skills. They were not especially worthy or extraordinary.  They became the people in whom God’s story is concentrated because God’s goodness and mercy can be revealed in any life, every life. God chose these people to be the ones through whom God would bless the world and so that is what happens. 

But it’s a really long wait. Really long, and even though God keeps reminding them their offspring will number the stars and will bless the world, instead of trusting God to fulfill the promise through them, Abram and Sarai get tired of waiting and take things into their own hands. They attempt to produce what God has promised to provide. 

A sure sign we’re NOT living in the covenant love of God is when we instrumentalize others.  When other people are not siblings in the human family who belong to God and to us, but obstacles to resist or despise, or objects to use or discard, we have turned our back on God and each other and made this about saving ourselves. 

So they make their slave-girl into a means to an end. They try to transcend their own limitations and their own embodiment by using her body to do God’s work for God.

Only once this thing they’ve schemed - that denies their belonging to God and violates their belonging to each other - achieves what they’d hoped it would, things get ugly. 

When the pregnancy begins to show suddenly it’s no longer like placing an order from an online shopping site. They are human beings, all, in this together. The way sin plays out, if we remember Adam and Eve, is that when we forget that God is God and we are in God’s loving care, when we violate our belonging in mutuality to one another, what comes next is shame, blaming, hiding and competing. We’ve moved ourselves to the center of our story, so the people around us become a threat. God cannot be trusted, we are lost in the consequences of our sin, unable to free ourselves from the cycles of fear, anger and selfishness that got us there in the first place. We are unavailable to God or one another, and the life-giving moments of resonance that reconnect us cannot be received. We are cut off from the life we are made for, life in relationship. Inaccessible and isolated, we only relate to the world through aggression. 

Remember, in the days of Noah, humankind became so violent, and ‘pursued only evil continually’ that they lost their humanity, and wreaked destruction on God’s beloved creation. This grieved God so badly that God almost wiped everything out, returning the world to nothingness to start over. But God’s deep love for creation and God’s mercy prevailed, and God committed to never give up on us. 

When Sarai abuses the girl she flees to the wilderness, which was like plunging into nothingness, into non-being. It’s the untamed wild where, centuries later, the Holy Spirit will drive Jesus, right after he is baptized. Barren, desolate and dangerous, the wilderness is the physical location of utter isolation. At that time deities were always attached to people and places, so to head to nowhere was to go literally into godforsakenness, to go where the gods don’t even go, to lose the groundedness in time and space that define us as creatures. She is fleeing to most certainly die.

But instead of becoming nothing, nowhere, we’re told exactly where Hagar is. “God found her by a spring of water in the wilderness- the one on the way to Shur.” 

God found her because God was looking for her. God looks for us. God goes where no decent god goes, into the wilderness and nothingness, to find us. God calls Hagar by name-  the first time she’s addressed that way in the story.  God says, Hagar, slave girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? 

Why does God ask questions? It’s not like God doesn’t know the answers. When Adam and Eve hide naked from God in the garden and God asks, Where are you?  Of course God knows right where they are. So why ask? God asks questions to invite us back into the conversation. God brings us back into relationship and response. God addresses us as persons, and summons us back to the belonging that holds us.  

 “I am running away,” Hagar answers God. 

God meets Hagar in her despair. Tell your story to me Hagar, so it will no longer be what has power over you.Let me bear with you your experience of nothingness so that I may heal you and restore you to your true identity as one whom I care for who is called to care for others.  

After God hears Hagar and ministers to her, God tells her to go back. Not to a place, but to a person, Go back to Sarai. Humbly submit to her.  Instead of Sarai forcing her slave girl to submit, Hagar, seen by God, is going to Sarai in freedom and offering to care for Sarai. It’s Jesus’ Turn the other cheek–  a self-emptying action that requires that you see me as a person with agency, choosing to address you, another person. 

No longer as an object to use, or an enemy to despise, they must encounter one another as persons. From the nothingness of despair, Hagar is restored to personhood and agency, and sent to minister to Sarai, who is trapped in her own wilderness of regret and rage.  

 Then God makes a covenant with Hagar, giving her a future and a promise greater than any wrongs done to her. Her story will live on through generations too numerous to count – a promise mirroring the one given to Abram and Sarai. 

God pulls us out of nothingness and gathers us into the future God is bringing into the world. This is God’s future, not ours. So we don’t get to decide when or how it comes. We get to watch and join in as it comes.

Finally God gives Hagar the name for her son, swaddling him in promise before he’s even born. Ishmael means “God listens.” Then something quite marvelous happens: Hagar names God.  She is the first person in scripture with the boldness to name God. She calls God The God who sees.

Hagar returns to Sarai, and ministers to her in her despair. She shares the story of being found by God; she comes trusting in the promises of a God who sees us.   

Fourteen years later Sarai conceives, and at 90 years old her waiting finally end. God’s promised blessing is fulfilled through utter impossibility, because it’s God who acts, and not we who make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future. And Sarai, whose name meant ‘Princess’ will become Sarah, ‘Mother of Nations.’ alongside Abraham, “Father of a multitude of nations.”

And wouldn’t it be great if human beings just got it and stayed in right connection to God and each other all the time? But we don’t. Abraham and Sarah’s story continues, and they do a lot of dumb stuff with bad consequences. They keep forgetting God is the one leading. And God keeps reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world. And our bible includes all of that because this is not about extraordinary people doing great things, it’s about the God who chooses ordinary people to participate in God’s healing and trust in God’s promises together. 

So often in life things feel impossible and hard. But this God moves in impossibility. This God goes to the desolate places where the gods of this world will not go, and asks questions that set us free. This God listens, and sees, and calls us to minister to real people, and live into God’s future with hope. This God is so committed to loving and saving the world that God comes into this world as one of us, vulnerable and weak, and then plunges into the godforsakeness of death, so that not even that death separate us from God. 

God’s covenant with us means God’s grace comes first, before we mess up, claiming us for love. And God’s grace comes last, after all is said and done, claiming the world for love. And in the middle as we muddle, God’s grace continues claiming us for love. 

Humans can be horrible. And humans can be amazing. We can be courageous and loving, kind and brave. And we can be selfish and awful, calloused and uncaring. If the trajectory of the world were up to us, clearly, we’d be doomed. It’s easy to go down that path and assume that’s where it’s all headed. But God is real rightnow, and does stuff right here, in our very own lives, and way over there in the lives we can only watch from afar with sorrow and helplessness. God is real and doing stuff in the world.  We’re invited to trust this and join this.

Today we will baptize Imogen into the covenant family of God, this family that includes Isaac and Ishmael, Hagar and Sarah, Abraham and Noah and Eve and Adam, and you and me too. Her middle name already means “grace” in Japanese, and when we make the sign of Christ’s death and resurrection upon her, her new first name will forevermore be “Beloved, Child of God.”  

And the God who is real will really do stuff in Imogen’s life.  And we are here for it. We’re here to help her watch and join in. We’re here to listen to her stories, and encourage her in ministry, and be open together to those resonant moments we can’t control when we taste the fullness of it all. We’re here to live into the promises of God together, and practice trusting God to fulfill those promises through us. We get to practice living bravely into God’s reality even when it’s impossible, or especially then, seeing the world in all its beauty, and not shying away from its pain, because God comes into nothingness to minister to us and sends us there to minister to others.  

And because we all forget and remember together, one day, Imogen will undoubtedly remind you in some way or another of God’s grace, the love that claims us, and in this way, like those before us, we will continue to live in God’s covenant of shalom that gathers us and holds the world forever. 

Amen. 

 

Where the light is

Oh, friends. 

More death. More violence. And our tender hearts can barely take it.  Anger, sadness, confusion, despair.  It’s all swirly and urgent and raw.

But I want to tell you a story.

Yesterday was Maisy's Baptism Day.  The anniversary of the moment eight years ago when she grabbed the pastor's lapel mic in both chubby hands and wailed into it with gusto while water was poured over her and the truth about her was declared: Beloved. Child of God. 

All day yesterday she wore this awareness like a gossamer garment - regal and peaceful, a secret happiness.  Beloved. Child of God.  Slipping from my car and marching into school, she kept this reality inside, curled around it to warm her throughout the day.

When she got home that afternoon, she found a gift dropped off by her godmother sometime during the day.  It was a tiny fairy garden in a clear, glass basket, complete with a smiling gnome, a red, spotted mushroom and a miniature black horse, with a string of colorful prayer flags stretched between living plants, all nestled on a bed of soft moss and beautifully polished rocks. The note on it said, Happy Baptism Day, Maisy!  

She stood silently gazing at it, and finally whispered, "Oh! I LOVE it."

Upstairs she went, and clearing her bedside table of all accumulated detritus, she made a special place in her room for her new fairy garden.

While I watched the news.  And freebased Facebook. And fretted and raged and grieved. Again. And in between, I made dinner and helped with homework. It was a busy night. Daddy was out of town. We ate pulled up to the counter on stools and standing around the kitchen. I kept checking in on the noise. I kept pressing on the bruise inside to feel the ache.

But then her voice broke through my stewing.  

“Mommy, what about my baptism candle?"

So we lit it.  

And then she asked, “What about the water?”

And she guided me to the little bowls and watched while I took one down and filled it.  Then she dipped in her finger and raised it to her forehead, and nodded for me to do the same, tracing the mark of our baptism, the cross on our foreheads which the ashes will make visible not too far away from now.  

“What about a prayer, Mommy?”  

And she stood in front of me, the glow of the candle falling on us, and placed both her hands in mine. With absolute peace and confidence, she raised her face toward me, closed her eyes, and waited.

Thank you, oh, thank you, God, for this precious child.  She belongs to you forever and ever.  Today we celebrate. Today we remember. No matter what, and always, we belong to your love. Amen.

Then she nodded, satisfied, turned and blew out her candle, and scampered off to another room.

I sat down at the kitchen counter, grabbed my phone and sent this text to my friend Jodi, 

There is light in this world. And it’s busting inside my chest right now and leaking out my eyeballs.

Here’s what I want to say: A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, will not, ever, overcome it. Remember. 

So listen to the wisdom of my friend Meta, who said to us all last night, Don't spend too long in the rabbit hole tonight, friends. Call someone to say "I love you". Make weekend plans to be in community. Prepare brave kindness for a stranger tomorrow. Then go to bed. We still belong to each other for the sake of the good.

Yes. This.

What about you? Where are you seeing the light?

That kind of story, that kind of God

This is the third in a chronological narrative series through Genesis, which began with Creation and the Fall.  This reflection spans Genesis 6-9, and the story of Noah.

Excerpts from Genesis 6-9

Sometimes a story is so overused, so adapted to the wrong context, that you stop hearing it altogether.  And then if, for whatever reason, you decide to give it a second look, you are utterly horrified at what you see, it’s not at ALL what you thought it was.

I think, for example, of nursery rhymes sung to children, ring around the rosie, pocket full of posie, ashes ashes, we all die of the black plague, is what that’s really about.  Or tearing down a monarchy and having the children sing, “down will come baby, cradle and all!” 

And so often when we’ve stopped hearing the words or remembering where they came from and we pass them onto the children without a second thought.

Let me be clear right off the bat.  Noah and the Ark is NOT a children’s story.  So let’s leave the two-by-two wallpapered nursery and stuffed playsets and first say it like it is.  This is a really disturbing story of what looks like God giving up on creation and destroying the whole entire world and everything in it, but saving one guy and his family to start over.  Right? Even in the best light, is this what we want our kids looking at from their cribs?

At first glance, real glance, this seems like an awful story. At least to me. There are any number of things in it I don’t like, not least of which is the idea that God gives up on what God had just declared “good”, and lets the whole rest of creation get sunk along with humanity.  Or that God is so abidingly upset about how violent the world has gotten, that God violently washes it away. 

And then there’s the nagging question, What made Noah so saveable and everyone else so damnable? 

And what exactly is the promise here? I always heard it in Sunday school as God promises not to destroy the world by FLOOD ever again. Phew, I thought at the time. That eliminates ONE method. Of course, God may use any other means God desires, but at least flood is off the table.

From the point of view of the people who bit the dust, this story sucks. From the point of view of Noah and his family, it’s nice to be saved, but beyond that, not much better.  It can’t have been a pleasant task. 

And most of all, from our point of view, what on earth are we supposed to do with this thing?

To be honest, I am still wrestling with this story. I don’t like it.  It’s not a nice story. It’s not an easy story. And part of that is because it is a story of God’s judgment. At least in part.  There is judgment in this story, God deems something unacceptable, some people unacceptable, and punishment – or what feels like it – follows.

And so, we hear the words of our song earlier, O Sinner Man, where you gonna run to?  This God gets the last word.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake, because you’ll be held accountable in the end.

But, if I might be so bold as to say this is what is so great about the bible, and about our faith.  These things are hard to understand, and we are invited to wrestle, like we’ll see in a few weeks Jacob wrestling the angel, and to leave blessed but limping from the exchange. You can’t enter into this dialogue with any honesty and not be changed.

So while we haven’t made easy friends, this story and I, I’ve come to discover there is far more than meets the eye. And I’ve actually had something of a change of heart.

It came when I remembered, finally, that this story, which is part of a much bigger story, has a primary protagonist, and sister, it isn’t Noah.  (In fact, just in case we begin to think Noah is some perfect person, the story is immediately followed by a bizarre incident involving alcohol, nudity, humiliation and disproportionate rage. So, no saints here). 

The central character of this story is God. This is a story about God. And we’ve already seen that this God who wields the power to create an entire universe out of nothing, has also opened Godself to these creatures made in God’s own image and invited them to share God’s love and care for the world and one another.

But the relationship is broken. And the brokenness affects God.  The brokenness does not exist simply between human beings or between them and God, it is carried inside God.  The grief of a parent over her child destroying himself and rejecting her, and any love or help she seeks to give him, standing on the sidelines where he has thrust her, watching the inevitable destruction he is hurtling himself towards cannot begin to touch the grief within God’s own heart over what is unfolding in this creation God poured God’s soul into.  And the devestating fracture runs deep between God and these ones God has planned to share life with who have utterly turned their backs on God and devoted themselves to the violent tearing down of one another at all cost.

And I wonder if at some point, amidst the grief and the anger, God doesn’t take it on Godself: this is God’s own failure as much as it is theirs.  God made it, and clearly they are unable to pull themselves out of the death spiral, so God’s going to fix it.  Wipe it out and start over.

So God reverses creation.  In language paralleling the creation story, the dome of the sky that separated the waters collapses and the deep that was pushed out by land wells up again and everything is returned to the chaos from which it was liberated and created.

Except God can’t quite do it.  Can’t quite obliterate all of it.  It was so beautiful. so good and God loves it so much. Perhaps it could be good again? Perhaps it can be saved?  So God chooses this one little family out of everyone else to save, to begin again.  And a sample of every kind of animal as well; maybe it wont be an utter loss.

 And then God rages and weeps and releases all of the wrath and sadness and anger, and creation is violently dismantled and returned to nearly the nothingness from which it first emerged, except for this boat, bobbing on top of it all, this odd little remnant of hope. 

It’s a tragic and horrifying scene, a heartwrenching scene:

²¹And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; ²²everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. ²³He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. ²⁴And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days.

Then after this purging and cleansing, the time of recreation begins:

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; ²the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, ³and the waters gradually receded from the earth.

And finally the ark comes to rest and the inhabitants pour out into a brand new world.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you… that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’

¹²God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth….¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’

And here’s the kicker.  Here is where the story turned and grabbed me, where I realized I don’t hate this story at all. This is a marvelous story, an astounding story, a deeply and beautifully true story:

God began the story seeing no other way but to write it all off and begin fresh.  But when all is said and done, and everything is dead and gone, and the earth goes back to its watery formless state, something happens inside God.  Because by the time the water recedes and the naked and fresh earth is exposed, and it is ready to begin again, God is in a different place altogether.  You might say God has gotten some clarity and made some decisions. 

God realizes that over and over again humanity is going to choose death instead of life, choose hatred instead of love, choose to cut off from one another and from God, instead of live in the connection that God created us all for, that even flooding the whole earth hasn’t washed away sin from the hearts of humanity.  But even seeing that, despite all of that, God hangs God’s bow in the sky, the weapon of a warrior God puts down, and pledges to all creation never to wipe out the whole earth again. 

...the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind… nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. 
²² As long as the earth endures,
   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
 shall not cease.’

What does this mean?  What is God promising?

Nathan Nettleton says it beautifully:

This story is telling us that God neither gives up on us, nor clings to the right to wipe us out if we get too out of hand or the pain we cause becomes too great for God to bear.

It tells us that God voluntarily gives up some freedoms; voluntarily accepts some new restrictions on what God can and can’t do. God signs away the right to simply treat us as we deserve; to dish out punishments that are simply direct and proportional consequences to the crimes.  God swears off such options, and makes an irrevocable commitment to wildly disproportionate generosity and mercy.  And God does this with open eyes, knowing that such a commitment means signing on for continual betrayal and heartbreak, continual grief and frustration and pain.

But that is a price God is prepared to pay. God makes a personal commitment to be open to the pain, to enter into the pain, to absorb the pain, and to go on loving without limit.

This God, I want to know more. This God I want to see at work in the world and feel in my own life.  I want to recognize this God in the lives of those around me, and hear within the stories of those far away that I will never meet but who share this same world with me signs of the unquenchable love of this God.  

 This God gives me hope.

I will admit this today, that I still don’t completely understand these old stories of our faith, the prehistoric ones that were carried by heart and mouth from generation to generation and finally written and passed down to us today.  But I’m willing to wrestle with them until they bless me. And I’m willing to go away limping as well - rearranged, humbled.  Because these stories are part of my story.  I belong to this God.  These people - whether the ones in the stories themselves ever existed as we see them here or not, whether the drama depicted ever unfolded this way or not - these people are my people, and this God is my God. 

And it helps me to see and live in the world, claiming this story.  It helps me notice the ways I choose death over life, and gives me a way to grieve and even rage over the violence we do to each other and creation. 

And then it quiets me in the awe of a God who goes on loving without limit.  Who “neither gives up on us nor clings to the right to wipe us out if we get too out of hand or the pain gets too great.” 

Who begins here, with Noah, to live in a covenant with humanity, a kind of indestructible commitment to humanity that culminates in plunging right into this world with us, alongside us in utter solidarity and taking onto Godself the darkest and most broken parts of us in a relentless resolve to share life with us, and tenaciously work towards restoring us to the wholeness we were created for. 

So I press on in the story, and I invite you to as well.  Dig in, wrestle, question, open yourself and press on. Together we’ll watch what comes next.

On Words mattering

My friend, Chris Duckworth, a minister in Arlington, VA and blogger at The Lutheran Zephyr, shared this in his sermon this morning, and I would like to share it here.

A few months ago,
    when comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a rally on the Mall,
    a lot of people dismissed their efforts as little more than a publicity stunt
    and thinly-veiled politicking just two weeks prior to the election.
Part satire, part political demonstration,
    these comedians lampooned our nation’s broken politics,
    and assailed its hateful, vitriolic political rhetoric.
Comedians did this, because few others had the guts to do so.

And perhaps as many as two hundred thousand people attended,
    to take a stand – and have a laugh doing so –
    calling for our nation to turn down the rhetoric of vitriol and animosity,
    to stop labeling political opponents as enemies and
    to stop characterizing politics as warfare,
    as if our elections were a matter of life or death,
        as if one party were the path to socialism and the other to fascism,
        both roads to ruin and death.
Give me a break.
We’re all Americans, these comedians said,
    and they bid everyone – particularly the news media – to just calm the freak down.
Though it is not clear what motivated Jared Lee Loughner
    to target Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords yesterday at a Tuscon, AZ, event,
    early indications are that politics were at least a contributing factor.
Our political discourse is sick, it is terribly sick,
    and the environment in which Jared Loughner acted is terribly polluted with
    violent imagery, false us/them dichotomies,
        and extreme language that only hurts our country
        tears its people apart.
The way we talk about those with whom we disagree has consequences.
They things that TV and radio star commentators say,
    on the left and on the right, have consequences.
The bumper stickers we place on our cars
    and the links we post on Facebook have consequences.
The fear that the media feeds on for ratings has consequences.
The polarization of our nation into red and blue
    rips at the fabric of our flag and denies our unity as We the People,
    seeking a more perfect union.


Words are powerful things.
We Christians should know this more than most,
    for we follow a Word made flesh who speaks words of hope and of life,
Jesus, the living Word of God, died so that death would have no more power over us;
    He is the Word of Life that silences words of death and hatred and violence.
God has spoken his Word into our world and into our lives …
    but it has not yet been fulfilled, completely.
Just a look around will make that truth abundantly clear.
God’s living Word promises to come to us again and to make things new,
    in the blessed future when Christ comes again to usher in his Kingdom.
For that we wait in hope and we live in hope,
    speaking words of life and of hope now,
    witnessing now to the gifts of life and love that Christ gives to us,
    knowing that our Lord is present in the suffering of this world,
        and that suffering is not the end of the story for him or for us.
We are confident in what Christ has done and what Christ promises yet to do.
And so may we speak words of life and of hope into the world this day,
    echoing the Living Word who took on flesh and dwelled among us,
    who did not let death defeat him, but who rose again,
        the first fruit of the new creation promised to us all.