This is a sermon that I preached at Church of the Way in Winnipeg on Sunday June 18, 2017. It is based on Genesis 18: 1-15. It has been edited prior to posting on the blog. I'm grateful for the invitation to join this congregation for worship, and for their warm hospitality!
God had already appeared to Abraham four
times as our text today picks up the story. Not just anybody can claim a resume
like that!
The
first time, the Lord spoke to Abraham out of the blue, or at least so it seemed
to Abraham. “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to
the land I will show you,” God said. “I will make you into a great nation and I
will bless you.” So Abraham set out, filled with faith and hope and eager
anticipation, along with his wife and his nephew Lot. Together they left behind
family and neighbours and set out on a grand adventure, headed for the land of
Canaan, the land God had shown them.
Then
a severe famine in Canaan led to a detour into Egypt, before Abraham and his
family eventually returned to Canaan to the land God had shown them. But the
land wasn’t rich enough to support both of them, so Lot parted ways with
Abraham and set out on his own. It was then that the Lord spoke to Abraham a
second time, the words even more unlikely than the first: “All the land that
you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring
like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your
offspring could be counted.”
There
was, however, one problem. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, remained childless.
There were no offspring to inherit the land that God had promised him. Yet
Abraham trusted the Lord. He began to imagine what it would be like, to have
the children that he and Sarah had so longed for, but had thought were not to
be. He imagined himself, children and grandchildren gathered around him,
listening to him tell them the story of this amazing God and the rich blessings
he had poured out upon their family.
Fast
forward a few more years, and Abraham receives the word of the Lord once again:
“Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield, your very great reward.”
This
time, unlike the times before, Abraham speaks up—and his words reveal his growing
frustration with God’s big promises that remain so very empty. As the years
have passed, the hopefulness has faded, and the discouragement and
disillusionment have set in. “Sovereign Lord,” Abraham says, “what can you give
me since I remain childless and a servant will inherit my estate?” But God
responds: “A son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. Look
up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. That’s how
numerous your offspring will be.” And Abraham believed the Lord.
And
yet, still more time passed, and Abraham and Sarah remained childless. Sometimes,
there comes a time to recognize that a dream may be just a dream, and Sarah had
certainly arrived at that point. She was ready to shift her hope from dreams of
impossible joys to the more achievable, the compromise that she could hold in
her hand. And so, the time came when, believing that she was not meant to have
children of her own, Sarah had Abraham sleep with her servant Hagar, and Hagar
bore him a son who was named Ishmael. Finally, a son that she could see, hear,
touch and smell for herself!
But taking things
into their own hands had complications, and in yet a fourth conversation with
God that followed, God laid out in no uncertain terms to Abraham how his
promises were to be fulfilled. Sarah herself was to bear Abraham a son, who was
to be named Isaac. God would bless Ishmael, but he was not the one
through whom the covenant would be passed along—this boy was not the son God
had promised Abraham. Abraham and Sarah might have given up on God and God’s
timing, but God had every intention of bringing his promises to fulfillment.
I wonder what it
was like for Sarah, to listen to her husband’s unlikely but earnest stories
about his visions from God over the years. I wonder what it was like for Sarah,
as the years went by, to hear Abraham tell her about God’s promises that he
would have a son. I wonder what it was like, when the day came that Sarah
realized that the son whom Abraham continued relentlessly to talk about might
not come from her, when she decided that if Abraham were to have his son, she
would have to relinquish her own longings for a baby boy that was her own flesh
and blood, and instead encourage him to have the son through Hagar, her
maidservant. I imagine the frustration that Sarah must have felt, when Abraham
reported back to her that Ishmael wasn’t the promised son, and once again re-opened
the old wounds, insisting that Sarah yet would give birth to a son.
Sarah had already not
been young when she followed Abraham on the journey that led them from the
homeland of their families to this strange new land that God had told Abraham
would be his own. And a full twenty years more had passed since then. That dream had become an impossibility a long
time ago. Sarah had come to terms with what was not to be for her, those dreams
of rocking her own sweet smelling baby boy in her arms. Sure, there had been a
time when she would awaken at night, Abraham snoring beside her, with the tears
still wet on her cheeks, aching with dreams of the child she had longed for as
long as she could remember.
But those years were so very, very long ago.
Sarah is by now 90 years old, going about her daily routine in the tent
that is her home—preparing the food for the meal that would come after the hot
sun faded for the day, tidying, cleaning, and when she could, snatching a
moment of rest to sit and give her weary feet and aching back a bit of relief.
She heard Abraham coming into the tent in a rush, and wondered what had
happened—whether he was coming with some kind of bad news to share. Instead, he
entered in a fluster, telling Sarah exactly how to bake the bread that would be
shared with their unexpected guests—as if Sarah needed his instructions about how to bake bread after all these years!
Something about these three strange men had certainly gotten Abraham all
excited, that much Sarah could tell as she silently laughed at Abraham while
kneading the dough and preparing it to bake. The finest flour, no less!
Sarah’s curiosity was aroused, and when Abraham had hurried outside with
the fine meal to serve to the visitors, she quietly moved to the entrance of
the tent, enjoying the gentle breeze, curious to see (or at least to hear) for
herself these men who had created such a stir on what had been an otherwise
normal day in Mamre.
Her ears prickled as she heard the strangers speak her name: “Where is
your wife Sarah?” How did they know about her? She was merely Abraham’s wife,
unseen by these male visitors. It was unlikely that Abraham had told them about
her; such things just weren’t done. But if not him, then how?
The stranger continued, “I will surely return to you at this time next
year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now, Sarah was no fool, and as a woman she knew her body very well, and
understood certain realities about how such things worked. She knew better than
anyone the impossibility of what these strangers were predicting. Perhaps they
had mistaken her for some younger woman, some other Sarah. But this Sarah—there
was no way her old bones and aging body were going to bear a son.
Sarah laughed to herself at the absurdity of it all. Even if she could,
Abraham her husband was also well advanced in years, and if children had been
meant to be surely it would have happened years ago, when they were young and
in love, newly married to one another—not now, both wrinkled and grey.
Sometimes our laughter betrays us. Sometimes, laughter covers up our
deeper pain and disappointment. Sometimes, we’re just not sure whether to laugh
or cry. Sometimes, it’s easier to laugh to cover up the pain that lies beneath.
I found myself laughing a few weeks ago, as I related to my friend how
one thing after another had gone wrong that week. Even as I was laughing, I knew
that it wasn’t really funny. But a series of disappointments and challenging
decisions had added up, one thing on top of another, and it was easier to laugh
it all off than it was to do the harder emotional work of explaining how weary
I was getting of having to regroup, recalibrate my expectations, and move on.
Laughing was easier than crying.
Similarly, how often do we tell ourselves that it’s for the best that we
didn’t get accepted into that college program that we’d been anticipating, or
laugh off our disappointment at getting passed over once again for that
promotion at work, or celebrate along with friends at a farewell party when
inside we’re aching with grief at the loss we know lies ahead?
And how often does God’s promise come to us as nonsensical, just as it
did to Sarah and Abraham? How often do we hear God’s promises that he has come
to bring life to the full, that he is at work making all things new, and yet we
look around and see another loved one battling a cancer diagnosis, or another
couple struggling to keep their marriage intact, or one of our own children
struggling to make ends meet, or turn on the news to see another terrorist
attack resulting in more senseless deaths? And we wonder at the gap between
what has been promised and what we see in front of us.
The truth is that,
in spite of God’s promises about life and resurrection, we find ourselves
living like Sarah and Abraham in the long pause between promise and
fulfillment, and it’s often painful and hard. And we may very well find
ourselves, like Sarah, laughing at the absurdity of it all, afraid that if we
don’t laugh we’ll end up crying instead.
This winter, I
found myself walking alongside the community that I pastor through the difficult transition of selling our community home after realizing
that it was just too expensive for our small ministry to be able to continue to
afford. At the same time, I watched a friend in our community struggling with
mental illness. I watched other friends struggle
with the challenges of unemployment and surviving on Income Assistance, and of
finding safe and affordable housing in a housing market where that’s far, far
too scarce. And I will confess that, in the midst of it all, in the dead of
winter, it was far too easy to question the truth of God’s promises that the
light will overcome the darkness, that life has the final say over death, that
God is at work making all things new.
If you’ve ever
wrestled with those kinds of doubts, if you’ve ever felt yourself wondering if
faith might be impractical, if you’ve ever found yourself asking where God is
in the midst of the challenges and struggles of life—you’re in good company!
If you’ve laughed,
like Sarah, at the thought that God’s promises of abundant life could actually
still be real, you’re not alone. God is in the business of appearing and doing
his best work in the midst of the unlikely, the impossible.
Because sure
enough, fast forward one year, and Sarah will be holding her long-awaited son,
feeding him at her breast, smelling his baby-sweet breath and hearing his soft
sighs as he sleeps in her arms.
Moses, a man who
has fled from Egypt after killing a man, is stopped in his tracks by a bush
that is on fire but does not seem to burn up.
It is only after
Noah builds an enormous ark, while all his neighbours look on and shake their
heads, that the predicted floodwaters come.
Saul, who was a greatly
feared persecutor of the earliest Christians, becomes Paul, one of the most
influential leaders the Church has ever known.
God enters the
world as a helpless infant born to young first-time parents in an
out-of-the-way stable far from home, his first bed an empty feeding trough.
The greatest
display of love and power that we know is that of a man who lays down his life
for his friends, condemned to a cruel death although he himself has done
nothing wrong.
Faith is no small proposition. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” There is
nothing natural about having faith. Faith requires us to hold on tight to the
things that we can’t yet see, to hang onto hope in the midst of situations
where there’s no evidence that hope is warranted. That, friends, is no easy
task!
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote, "Faith is not a
reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The
promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily
accommodated to everything else."
Our God is not known for fitting into the bounds of conventional wisdom.
Instead, he tends to show up in the least likely of places—in strangers, who
promise a son to a woman who is infertile and well-beyond childbearing years.
In burning bushes that don’t burn up. In a young virgin, bursting with the
miraculous life inside of her. In miracles of healing and the stilling of
storms with a single word. In empty tombs and locked rooms.
If we struggle to hold onto hope that God's promises can come true,
we're in good company. People no less than Abraham himself have struggled to
have faith in the face of unreasonable odds.
Sometimes, the wait is long and the journey is hard as we wait for God’s
promises to be fulfilled. As we long for the day when the world will be set
right and we will be made whole. As people of faith, we go on persevering even
in the face of suffering, certain of God’s love for us. We proclaim that the
kingdom of God has come near. We pray for healing, we give as freely as we have
received, we share generously with those in need, we practice hospitality. We
act out now the future that we hope for, the kingdom that we know in faith will
one day come in full. Even in those moments when we cannot yet see it.
Because in spite of all evidence to the contrary, somehow God still
shows up in the strangest of places, at the most unexpected of times, among the
most unlikely people.
Unlikely people like you. And me.
If we could see it, it wouldn't be faith. If it were tangible, we
wouldn't need hope.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him,
so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
