While It Was Still Dark

A Sermon Based Upon John 20: 1-10,  NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Easter Sunday, April 1^st,  2018 

Welcome to Easter 2018.  Spring has sprung.  Life continues.  Warmth is renewing our part of the world.  Easter is a beautiful time of year. 

Traditionally, Easter has been the day to celebrate life’s promise and renewal.  While I can’t remember Easter bonnets, I do remember ‘Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail’.  I also remember shopping with mom, putting on new clothes, dying colorful eggs for my Easter basket.  I also remember full churches, glorious, uplifting music, and family gatherings which including hiding and hunting all those Easter eggs.

Easter can be celebrated in many ways, but we never fully understand the promise of Easter until we find ourselves walking through some of the darkest moments of life.  In it is that desperate, disquieting place, we will come to grasp the impact of Easter’s greatest promise.

,…CAME TO THE TOMB (1).

John’s version of Easter is personal, opening with Mary Magdalene coming ‘to the tomb’ while it was still dark.    The darkness was more than physical, because Jesus had been falsely convicted and was cruelly crucified.  It was then, three days before, that for the first followers of Jesus, everything went dark.

Between Friday and Sunday, it was during the stillness and silence of the Sabbath that Jesus’ disciples were getting used to the dark.   Maybe you haven’t been in this kind of ‘dark’ before, but you might just imagine what it feels like when you lose power during an ice storm.  If the emotional weight of spiritual darkness is anything like this, we would want it to be quickly over.  We would want to move on, and fast. Is this what Mary wants as she approaches Jesus’ tomb all alone?

The ‘darkness’ of loss, grief, and heartbreak is difficult to bear.  Life without the one who matters most to us is difficult to imagine.  When my father died, I wondered who I could talk to, discuss problems, or gain advice from.  I had to get used to the ‘dark’ of not having his voice, his presence, or his companionship.  I had to get used to ‘never again’. 

My mom struggled more than me.  She was already frail, but Dad’s death, accompanied with the loss of her health and finally her home too, caused her to lose all desire to live another day.  In was Christmas and she couldn’t light a single candle of hope in her heart.  We tried to give her love, a place, and encouragement, but she seemed to lose all focus.  She died one year and one month later. 

Darkness can kill you, especially if you don’t face it with hope.   Was Mary coming ‘to the tomb’ to face her loss, or was she finding it hard to let go?   We really don’t know.  Maybe it was both.  We do know that when she found the stone moved, and the entrance to the tomb opened, she did muster the courage to look straight in.  In a way, this is the task all of us face, when we too must face and learn to walk toward the tomb in unwanted darkness.

But there’s something worse than physical loss in this ‘darkness’ that Mary was walking through.  Jesus’ death had been so cruel and unjust.  It was more than the loss of a friend, a religious leader, or even a great teacher.  Luke’s gospel reminds us that the disciples were disappointed over the loss of a dream.  On the Emmaus road two of Jesus’ disciples were overheard saying, “…We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel….” (24:21).   When they lost Jesus, they lost hope in the future.   They felt that Israel’s tomorrow was gone.  Instead of good overcoming evil, evil had overcome all the good that had been awakened in Jesus.   This was a foreboding darkness of soul, mind, and spirit.   It wasn’t just Jesus the man who had died, but hope for changing their world had died with him on the cross.

What do such depressing, dark feelings of grief, loss, and disappointment have to do with Easter?   This is something I tried to explain to my mother, as we were sitting around her dining table, writing thank you notes after my Dad’s funeral.   She stopped writing and blurted out: “I just don’t know what I’m going to do!”  I answered, “Oh, yes, Mom, we know what we will do.  We will do what we have always believed!  This is the time when what Dad believed, and what we have always believed, and still believe matters most.”

 

HE SAW THE LINEN WRAPPINGS… (6)

When it gets dark, you had better have your faith close to your heart.   When you can’t see, can’t think, or can’t feel your way forward, only what is deeply embedded within will guide you when you can’t see your way through.  The dark will throw you off your game.  The dark shake you to your core.  The dark is not a good time to figure everything out, but it is the time when you must tape into what will give you the resilience to keep walking, to keep going, and to keep on living, even when you can’t find your way.

Faith gives this kind of strength to us, but the question is what gives us this kind of faith?  What kind of faith will help us see beyond what we face?  Easter does not avoid the dark, but we are to take Mary and the other disciples by the hand, and walk straight through whatever happens, so that we too can discover the hope that Easter faith can give.

When Mary saw found the stone had been removed, she immediately thought the worst.  We do this too.   We often look at the dark side especially when all light is hidden.  Mary thought the body had been stolen, so she ran to tell Peter.  Peter and another disciple rush to the tomb.  Pausing at the entrance, they see the ‘linen wrappings lying there’ but don’t go in.  When they finally muster up the courage, they enter and not only see the ‘wrappings’, but they see the face ‘cloth’ lying in a ‘place by itself’ (20:7).  

With this discovery of the rolled up wrappings, John says something unique.  No other gospel writer says anything about a (face or head) ‘cloth’ rolled up, folded, lying by itself.   This detail has special meaning for John, since no other gospel mentions it.   John wants us to see the specific place in the dark, where hope began.  Seeing the wrappings lying on the floor, and the face cloth neatly ‘rolled up’ and ‘placed by itself’ bears testimony against any theft of the body.  Who would steal a dead body and leave these expensive wrappings?  What thief would take time to fold the grave clothes?   Of course, we are not yet to the full revealing of the resurrected Christ, but we are already headed toward hope.    These intentionally placed wrappings are the first pointers toward what is yet to come.  Big hope is already breaking loose in some very small ways.

When a doctor at Wake Forest Baptist Health was sharing with chaplains and pastors about his work with terminally ill patients, he told us surprisingly, that he spent a lot of time talking to about miracles.  “If you are really listening to the patients”, he told us, “you will need to be prepared to talk a lot about miracles.”   I was not expecting this from a physician, especially not from one who was also a teacher of physicians.   

That doctor reminded me that giving hope is always like unwrapping a miracle.  “Every sickness can’t be cured,” he said,  “but it can always be healed.”   Healing is always a miracle, and it is up to us to unwrap the miracle of hope.  Hope is God’s promise of love to us, no matter what comes to us, whether it is incurable disease, death or disappointment.  Hope is God’s promise that shines in every darkness.  But to find this way to all healing, we will always need to ‘unwrap’ the miracle of God’s promise.  Only God’s promise remains above and beyond the cure because is the healing that is always outside of what we know now. 

Whatever these folded, rolled up, neatly placed grave clothes meant for John’s readers, in John’s story they point to the first evidence of concrete hope.  These wrappings were positioned as if the body had vaporized straight through them.  They point to hope’s most calculated probability.   These wrappings point to love’s possibility and love’s promise.  Even while Jesus own disciples were still standing in the dark, they were already standing in the twilight of a brand new day.    

I do not intend mere theological double speak when I say, that only love promises us life, because love is life’s source.  These wrappings left in the tomb, point us to love’s greatest promise, which will always be life.  If love can’t promise life, then what is love for?  And if life doesn’t promise love, then what is life for?  

These wrappings were the very first marks of God’s loving promise, pointing to the life that always comes from God’s love.   Think of it this way.   While Lazarus, who was raised by Jesus, still had his wrappings on because he would need them again, these wrappings  where intentionally left by Jesus.  They were left, because they are God’s loving promise that in Jesus resurrection something drastically changed forever.  Even though Mary and Peter were still looking into the tomb, they were always seeing what love has now unwrapped and unleashed into the world. 

THEY DID NOT YET UNDERSTAND

Ironically, only the smallest gesture, the slightest expression, or the simplest word of hope can point you toward the Easter’s promise.  

Not long ago, I saw a heartbreaking news report of how a dying young mother left notes, and even recordings and videos of encouragement for her young child that she would never watch grow up in the world.   That child would never remember her mother alive, but the mother wanted her child to just how much her mother loved her, and she wanted her child to also know how valiantly her mother fought the good fight to live.  So, when she realized she was going to lose this battle, she was determined not to lose hope or love for her child.  She wanted her child to have this special gift of love and hope from her mother.  Different messages were supposed to be viewed each year on her daughter’s birthday and on other special occasions right up to the day of her marriage.  Can you imagine what it would be like to receive and unwrap such ‘love’ messages from her deceased mother whose love never died?   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1385134/Brave-cancer-mother-leaves-video-messages-advice-guide-daughter-life-bullying-sexuality.html.

Easter is not a message from the dead, since Jesus appeared to his disciples.   Easter is, however, our living hope of life over death.   Easter is the promise of love we still receive from the Christ who lives, who reigns, and who is victorious over death.   The living, indwelling, resurrected Christ is the source of our hope of life.  There can be no full- proof, guaranteed, scientific knowledge for eternal life, because science has neither the capacity to trust, nor can it see beyond now.  Only with eyes of faith, can we humans find our way to navigate through the dark of death toward the hope that “no eye has seen nor ear has heard‘.  Easter is the trust of God’s loving promise of life; life that came to you once, and will come back again.    

E. Stanley Jones, the famed Missionary to India, told of visiting the Mosque of Saint Sophia in Istanbul.  This mosque, located in the former early capital of Christianity, was built over the ruins of one of the largest churches of the ancient world.  All the Christian symbols were destroyed and Arabic architecture and markings were put in their place.   One day, as Jones craned his neck, looking up into the building’s dome, he grabbed a companion by the sleeve and cried out, “Look!  He’s coming back!   Through the decaying plaster and paint that was centuries old, the image of the ascending Christ was becoming visible again. “You can’t wipe him out!” the missionary said, “He keeps coming back!”  (Setzer, Encounters..., p. 149). 

If you are walking in the dark this Easter, you need to see the Christ who keeps coming back.  You can see him, not by sight, but by faith in his promise like ‘the other disciple’ did when he went looked into the tomb and ‘believed’ (2:8).   Faith is the only way to see your way through the dark.   You don’t have to ‘understand’ because the disciples still didn’t either (20:9). It is not understanding that gives us faith or hope, but as Augustine said, it is faith that comes first; ‘faith that seeks understanding’.   

This kind of ‘faith’ is not mere belief, but faith means trust.  You don’t find your way through the dark by believing in something or having understanding of everything, but you find your way by trusting Him.   It is love that trusts and believes in the promise of resurrection.   

When a young apprentice artist took his painting of Jesus to his teacher, his teacher responded, “You don’t love him enough, or you would paint him better  (Barclay)!”  

Loving and trusting Christ is what Easter still means.  It does not mean believing in a day, having your own faith, or believing in some form of soul immorality.  No, Easter, means that Jesus has left the ‘cloth’ in its place, so that you will seek, love and trust him.  Only by trusting and loving him, can you ‘come to the tomb’ and find your way to the light of life, even ‘while it is still dark.’   Amen.

“The Crucified God”

A Sermon Based Upon Mark, 15: 1-20, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Passion/Palm Sunday,  March 25th, 2018

Chris Keller tells of his Father’s slow death to Alzheimer ’s disease.  It was a dreadful end to a long, good life.  The worst part of it, Chris says, was two or three years into the decline, when his Dad realized something terrible was happening, but could no longer fathom what it was.  One night, as his son was visiting, his father paced back and forth from wall to wall, anxiously insisting that there was somewhere else that he was supposed to be; a forgotten meeting or appointment.  Desperately, he pleaded, "Can you help me?"   Chris responded, "Dad, I wish I could, but I don't know how."  “For the very first time,” Chris said, “my father looked at me with something like contempt.”  

At breakfast the next morning with my mother, just the two of us, I said, "We are living in a nightmare."  As the disease progressed, it became easier to live with--until death came, finally, as a friend.   

At his Father’s funeral, Chris said: "Alzheimer's slips in on cat feet.  Dad never quite knew what got him. This disease is as fully terrible as advertised.  Then Chris quoted Scripture, which comes from the cross, right after our text for today:  “When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.  At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk. 15:33-34 NRS).

Here in the midst of this kind of darkness; the darkness of human suffering accompanied by feelings of forsakenness, we find the core of the Christian mystery, where darkness turns to light.   Hope comes from the man who suffers the nightmare of the cross.

THEY BOUND JESUS… (1)

Today, on this Passion/Palm Sunday we approach again the ‘nightmare’ of the cross once again.  The cross invites us into the divine mystery.   Here, in Mark’s gospel, we find the Jesus who could ‘rebuke the wind’ and ‘still’ the waves (4:39), being ‘bound, and led away and handed over’ to the Governor, Pilate.  

      “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks.  “You say so.”   This ambiguous answer makes religious leaders accuse him more.  But Jesus doesn’t defend himself with a single word.  

       “Have you no answer?” Pilate says.  “See how many charges they bring against you.”   We read that, “Jesus made no further replay.”  Pilate was amazed.   He knows what this means.  This man is signing his own death warrant.  

Everyone knows that Jesus was crucified on a cross.  The Romans crucified thousands.  This is a terrible fact of recorded history.  We know that of all the thousands who were cruelly crucified, only this one had gospels written about him, had a following that developed almost immediately, and has impacted human history more than any other person.  What is not recorded anywhere, except in the New Testament, is what this means.   What is it about this dying, suffering, and crucified Jesus that made his dying and death, the most significant religious symbols filled with meaning and redemptive hope?

Once a pastor asked a group of children what God looked like? The kids rounded up the usual visual images of God: old man with white beard, king on throne, etc. Then a shy little girl, almost too afraid to answer, slowly raised her hand. She said, "I think of God as the one who has a thorn in his head."     When we think of Jesus death, what kind of image pops up our heads?   How many of us think about God dying on the cross?    We think about Jesus, God’s Son dying for us, and we preach, as the Apostle Paul said, “Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2), but what about God dying for us?   Paul said: “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19), but a ‘crucified God’?  How can the eternal God die?   If you try to explain something like this to a child, you realize what it means to enter the deep, dark, and divine mystery of the cross. 

But let’s enter another way.   Back in 1966, when I was only nine years old, Time Magazine's Easter cover story posed a shocking question on its cover with red letters posted on black: "Is God Dead?" I was too young to read or understand the article, but I do remember hearing preachers talking and even joking about it in sermons.  They quipped: “If God is dead, then who was it I talked to when I prayed this morning!” 

At that time, most churches were alive, vibrant, and Spirit-filled.  Everyone laughed at the preacher’s joke.  Today, churches are not laughing so much.   As congregations face decline and challenges, some tottering on the edge of death themselves, this question invites sincere conversation: "Is God really dead?"  Was this just a bunch of ‘liberal’ mumbo-jumbo, or was it an attempt to have an honest discussion about this coming reality, which is now here?

Several years later, when I was in college, I learned that the term ‘death of God’ was first formulated by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.   Nietzsche’s father was a pastor in a small German village.   When Nietzsche became a philosopher, he wrote about what he observed taking place in modern culture, as the belief and thought of God had lost its power.  We should see his point.    Now, in universities, and even in lower education, talk about God has been banished from science and history, and is widely ignored in ethics and philosophy.  Secular knowledge rules the modern mind, leaving religion "to the priest, the pastor, or to personal opinion."  It may not be true to say that God has fully died, but as Chris Keller said, when Alzheimer’s, the disease of forgetfulness took over his father, we can see that in our society, ‘the death of God’ has also ‘slipped in on cat’s feet’.

These are not nice thoughts, just like the cross is not very pretty to look at.   What has happened in our world, and our public lives, is not that different from what happened when Mark’s gospel tells us how Jesus was ‘bound,’ ‘led away’ and ‘handed over to Pilate’.   Just as Jesus was betrayed, denied and accused, people today blame the world’s problems on religious faith, and demand that faith prove itself, defend itself, or make some convincing argument, but many too, hear no definite answer.   Just as people had enough of Jesus then, modern-minded folks have had enough of religion and church now.   Many walk away, busying themselves elsewhere, and some are downright anti-religious.  They see religion as just too dangerous or senseless.   They think the world will be better off without any belief that can’t be proven.   The only belief that matters now is only what I want or choose to believe. 

When the modern world first began to remove God from the center of western culture, way back in the 1800’s, there was an British Anglican Priest, who became a catholic Cardinal, named John Henry Newman, who first started to warn that when God is forgotten in public places, and not talked about or reverenced in schools, there would be an unwholesome trickledown effect everything else--- on education, on morality, on science, and also on economics.  "If there be Religious Truth at all,” he said, “we cannot shut our eyes to it without it having a bearing upon all truth….” What bearing might this be?   

Cardinal Newman’s warning came about the same, when Nietzsche also predicted the rise of the ‘mad man’ or the ‘supermench’; that is the prideful, power-hungry human who thinks they can replace God.   While Nietzsche himself was agnostic about God, he found no cause for celebration in announcing God’s death.   Nietzsche doubted that civilization would endure very long without God.  His thoughts about the ‘mad man’ practically predicted the rise of Hitler and Stalin, and the Nuclear Warhead, though no one saw it coming.   The Russian Dostoevsky also saw it, when he wrote that “without God, everything is permitted."   Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, one an atheist and the other Christian, agreed that God's death was dangerous for humanity.   If God does not matter, it will not be long until nothing else matters; nothing except what a hungry, hurting, evil human wants.   Nietzsche feared, it will only be the human with the most money, the most power, and the most madness, and who has lost all reverence for God, who will be the one who determines our future.     

 

THEY SHOUTED BACK, “CRUCIFY HIM!” (13)

This talk of God’s death in our culture is certainly heavy talk; perhaps too heavy for a sermon.  But folks, this is the week before Easter!   This is Passion Week when we remember, commemorate, and sometimes re-enact what the world did to Jesus, when Jesus was falsely accused and crucified.   And Jesus told his followers to ‘remember’ him and not to forget.  So, isn’t Passion Week an invitation for us to think about what the world does to Jesus now?   Even the book of Hebrews observed only a few years after Jesus was crucified, that people who were falling away from the faith,  were ‘crucifying again the Son of God and…holding him up to contempt’ (Heb. 6:6).  How do we keep practicing our faith in a world that keeps on killing God?   One thing must do is keep holding on to our faith.   Strangely enough, it is the cross and the death of Jesus that stands at the beginning, and remains at the center of our faith, not at the end of it.  In other words, the more the world betrays, denies, accuses and even crucifies Jesus again and again, the more we should realize how Jesus’ death is the key to understanding who God is and what faith and life should mean.    

In one of his very first letters, the apostle Paul called the cross ‘the wisdom of God’ that is ‘foolishness’ to the world, but that it is also ‘the power of God to us who are being saved’ (1 Cor. 1: 18ff).  This interpretation by Paul was original, incredible, and unique.   However, Peter was already on to it, only 50 days after Jesus crucifixion, when he preached: ‘…this man, (was) handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed….’ (Acts. 2:23).  This means that the very first disciples were already on to the saving and redemptive truth about the cross, even while Jesus’ own killers were still around and holding power.   

Today, and I mean this very week, on the same dark Friday commemorating when the crowd screamed out ‘Crucify Him!” and Pilate ‘handed him over to be crucified’, we will call this day, of all days---and I mean this dark and most depressing day---we will, in fact, call this Friday “Good Friday!”   Why in the world would anyone want to call the the day Jesus died, good?   Might the naming of Christ’s crucifixion as good, mean that something ‘good’ might still come out of a culture that wants God dead?   

Of course, Jesus’ death was not ‘good’, at least from face of it.   My very first book of Theology was written by the great Baptist theologian, Frank Stagg.  Dr. Stagg taught me that Jesus’ crucifixion and death always had two sides to it.   This is exactly what Peter was talking about in his sermon on Pentecost, when he says that Jesus was ‘crucified and killed’, but that this was also ‘according to the definite plan … of God’ (Acts 2:23).  Looking at it from one side, Dr. Stagg said, the cross was a ‘life taken’, but looking at it another way, the cross was ‘a life given’.   The bad way of looking at the cross will always be before us, as people still despise and reject the truth that Jesus spoke and lived, which includes the truth about Jesus himself.  But the good side of the cross is always before us too, that is, how Jesus lived and taught what is truth, just as he himself said ‘he was the way, the truth, and the life’, no matter what people did to him.  Jesus never gave up on the truth!   But what is this truth?   In other words, what is truth about Jesus’ crucifixion that gets better, even when people are at their worst?

Could the heart of the truth still be right here, not just at the cross, but also on the cross, since ‘God was in Christ…’, even there, even here, on this ugly cross?   Let me explain.   Long before Nietzsche, a very religious Martin Luther, the great German reformer, had also said that God was dead, but Luther meant something else entirely.  Luther meant that in Jesus Christ the Lord above had descended into history.  As a human being, God lived by history's rules.  One of those rules of life is that, in one way or another, everybody dies.  Jesus Christ was no exception.  But on the cross, it wasn’t just that Jesus the man died, but through Jesus Christ the man, God also died.  God gave himself up for us.   God himself pain for our sins.  God showed his love for us.   In other words, Jesus the revealing of  “The Crucified God.”  

So, rather than doom or gloom, Luther meant that the ‘death of God’ is gospel, which is ‘good news’.  Echoing the apostle Paul, Luther meant that in Jesus’s rejection and crucifixion, God suffers and dies, gives himself up for us, so that he can ‘reconcile us to himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19).  As Paul later explained it to the Romans, ‘God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.’ (Rom. 8.32).  But now, how does this ‘plan of God’ work out?  How can killing God in the flesh, or even our own ‘modern’ killing of God too, which God allows, also turn out to be the ‘wisdom of God’  which might give us ‘the power of salvation’, rather than the power to simply destroy ourselves?

HE HANDED HIM OVER… (15)

I want to point you to the answer, by drawing your attention to a Jewish Rabbi.  But this is not the Jewish Rabbi named Jesus, but a present-day Jewish Rabbi, who today leads the oldest Synagogue in Los Angeles; a reformed Synagogue with over 10,000 active members.   Rabbi Stephen Leder recently appeared on the news because he wrote a book about human suffering entitled, “More Beautiful Than Before”.  The subject of that book is to explain that when we humans face our pains, our hurts, our suffering, and even our wrongs or innocence too---facing them with both honesty and courage,  Rabbi Leder claims that even the most negative experiences of pain and suffering could make us better people than we were before.  

Where did that Jewish Rabbi, get an idea like that?   We know, don’t we.  We all know that this can be true, don’t we?  This is the truth that was revealed in Jesus Christ, and in his redemptive suffering on the cross.   When we look at the cross, just like the Israelites were told to look at the ‘serpent in the wilderness’, we can find life.   When we look straight into the pain, the evil, and the ugliness, we not only see what people did to Jesus, but we might also see what God does, and how we can change, with God’s help.   For with God’s help, not only can our suffering be redeemed, but our sin can be redeemed too.   By looking straight at the ‘snake on the pole’ or at ‘the crucified on the cross’ we finally, and fully see what we can overcome, what we must learn, and how God can save.  We would never see what matters most or what we might more beautifully become, had we not gone through the wrong, endured the suffering, or even caused the pain.   At the cross, we still “see the light….”

For example, let's think for a moment about biology.  Many Christian still struggle with whether or not traditional Christian faith is compatible with evolution.  One of the great problems some evolutionary people have with faith is that God allows suffering.   One of the problems some Christians have with evolution is that it leaves us to suffer without hope.   But what if we could look this again, and see evolution pointing us to faith, and see faith discovering an evolving journey through pain and suffering that enables us to be ‘more beautiful than before’?   

In a book entitled Genes, Genesis and God, the philosopher Holmes Rolston studied Christian faith and evolution by side.  Rather than conflict, he found harmony.  In both faith and science, the problem of pain and suffering is important.  In both, we see that pain, while it can be terrible, can also be creative and redemptive.  As theologians have long known,  much of the good in the world would be lost, or have never come about, if all evil, suffering, pain had been prevented (Aquinas).  

Across the board, nature "uses pain for creative advance”, Rolston discovered.   Physical and emotional suffering are unexpected gifts in evolution, and perhaps the ability to suffer is a gift of God too, because they increased creatures' chances of survival in life.   If you didn’t feel pain, you would die quicker.  People who lose the ability to feel pain, whether it be emotional or physical, don’t thrive or survive very long.   Pain serves a ‘purpose’, as an evolutionary progress, and as a divine purpose,  giving us eventually the ability to think and to love.   In short, we can’t learn to love fully, unless we also suffer fully.   The person who learns to love, lives to love.   Or, as the Tennyson wrote: ‘It is better to have loved and to have lost, than to never have loved at all.’   We could not love at all, if evil and suffering had been prevented.   Even what the world did to Jesus, is what it took to fully release God’s love in the world.

All natural suffering in life is religious, and it can be creative.   In this way, all life is Christ-like; or "cruciform"—that is cross-like.   Human life has been given, through the natural processes, the ability to suffer evil; even the capacity to do evil, so that we also gain the ability to learn, to heal, to be saved, and most of all, the ability of love.  This also why, at the center of our faith, just like at the center of all life, is the suffering and painfully creative death of Jesus, who reveals God and his love to us as the center of the ‘good news’. As Isaiah wrote, it is ‘by his stripes, that we are healed."

The cross is exactly what it seems--terrible and evil, red and black--the nightmare. Nothing in the gospel dissipates the nightmare; rather, but this is also a nightmare that serves God's purpose as the way to reconciliation and redemption.  Without the evil of the cross, great good would have been prevented.  Without the rejection of truth at the cross, the truth of God would not have been fully revealed.  This is why Paul called the darkness of the cross the foolishness that is also wisdom and the weakness of the cross,  also its power’.  

By the light that shines in the darkness of God’s cross, that we find our way home.  In the suffering and rejected Jesus, we face our own pain, know our own sin, and we turn toward the God who loves and heals us, who can make us more ‘beautiful than before’.  As the scholar Rolston concludes, "the secret of life is that life is a passion play."

Isn’t this why Jesus allowed himself to be ‘handed over to be crucified?’ When Jesus submitted himself to the cross, by his suffering he revealed more fully, the loving, saving and redeeming God, who lives in Christ, dies in Christ, but still lives in Christ, because God raised Jesus from the dead.  "The mystery hidden throughout the ages has been revealed,” Paul told the Colossians (1.26).   A non-preacher said it better,  "Surely this man was God’s Son." 

So we, when we look again at Jesus on the cross,  we should also see a God who is so loving and strong, that he will allow himself to be crucified again and again,  so he can always return and we can see the ‘way, the truth, and the light’.   Because God’s love can be killed, but doesn’t stay dead, we still have choice.   We can either decide for the hopeless future, as Nietzsche imagined it, and live as if “God is dead”, or we can go with the gospel, which says, that ‘God was in Christ, (on the cross, and in the suffering too),  reconciling the world to himself… and proving his love for us. When we choose this Christ who reveals the loving, suffering, saving God, we choose good news, because we choose this God who will love us, through thick and thin, even if it kills him.   And it did.  He died, to show you his undying love.  Amen.  

“God Tested…God Provided.

A Sermon Based Upon Genesis 22: 1-14,  NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

5^th Sunday in Lent,  March 18th, 2018

If you were watching TV between 1963 and 1997, you may remember your favorite TV show being interrupted with a loud, long, alarming tone.  These words followed:   “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.  For the next sixty (or thirty) seconds, this station will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.  If this had not been a test, you would have been instructed...”   Now that I think about it, that was a big ‘if’.

 Our final story from the life of Abraham begins: “After these things God tested Abraham” (1).   It is the strangest, most outrageous test anyone could imagine.  No wonder the person writing this story had to clarify this right up front.  Even though God did not allow Abraham to actually carry out the sacrifice of his only son, why would a loving God demand such a thing as a test?

However you interpret this story, it is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful, profound, and disturbing stories in all of the Bible, and in all of literature, for that matter.   It doesn't fit even the lowest form of ethic in most any society, so how could such an outlandish ‘test’ like this point to how our own faith might also be tested?

THE SON YOU DEARLY LOVE (2)   

One thing is clear.  This story will only be understood as it relates to Abraham’s story as a whole. Abraham’s story is about living toward a promise.  The original promise given to Abraham, and to Sarah, a childless couple, is that they would be given a child and that their descendants from this child would be as numerous as the stars.  Included in this promise was also that they would be given a land and the land would be inhabited by their descendants. That land came to be called, as we know, the Promised Land, because it was based on the promise first given to Abraham.

What's more, Abraham and Sarah, throughout their lives, were called to trust that God is able to give what he promises.  So, they were leave behind the life that they have been living, a prosperous life in Ur of Chaldees, and to start a new life as nomads, leaving everything behind, trusting only that God keeps the promise.  Their lives were all about God’s promise.

As children of Abraham, we are people who also are called to live by God’s promise.  We read the story of Abraham and Sarah as an example of our faith-story too.  Why do we do this?   Well, deep down, we know what living by God’s promise means.  Look at little children!   It is just wonderful how they greet each day with expectation.  They journey into this world with great anticipation.  They dream about who they will be, and what their life will be, in the wonderful world that is waiting for them. The world for them holds a great promise.   Can’t we all remember the ‘great expectations’ we have had as children, youth, or young adults?

We know that life gives us a promise of goodness.    Human sin can limit that promise, or as we grow older, we may narrow our expectations, but we still believe and live toward a promise.  We still believe that life is supposed to be good and that even in aging, suffering or death, it will be alright.  So when we read that Abraham received a promise that life would be good, for him, his people and the world, we know what that means.  The story of Abraham and Sarah is the story that mirrors the hopes, dreams, and promise of human life.

Interestingly, Abraham and Sarah went almost all their lives before they received the fulfillment of their promise.    Abraham was 75 years old and Sarah was 65 years old when the angel first visited them and told them they were going to have a baby.  They waited another twenty-five years for the angel to return and tell them, now is the time.  Isaac was finally born to Abraham when he was 100 years old.  Sarah was ninety years old, when she gave birth.   It was a miracle.  They could not possibly, through biological means, produce this child.  It was, beyond doubt, God’s ‘gift of grace’ to them.

Abraham’s story, as unique as it seems, is still our story too.  For, life hold great promise.  But the fulfillment of this promise is never automatic.   Even when ‘God is for us,’ there can still be much against us.   For many people, the promise will not come true without God’s help.  The fulfillment of the promise of our life, ultimately comes from God.   There are no guarantees in life, except that God will fulfill his promise.   Even when it seems that the promise remains unfulfilled, God is working ‘for us’ within and against our situation.  That's the point of this story.   Abraham and Sarah are called to trust their lives and their future to God.

When we have so many options, so many blessings, and much prosperity in our lives, it’s harder for us to see the value of God’s promise.  But when you face insurmountable problems, when you realize your own limits or failures, or if you or a family member in your home is up against something you cannot change, think how your own understanding would change.  What if you had a disease that you had to live with, or that there was little hope for?  Would God’s promise be less or more in your life?  At least for the child I saw on the news the other day, who had a rare skin disease, he seemed have a maturity most children don’t.  He seemed to understand better than most that his life belonged to God.   What could be the ‘test’ in your life that reminds you that the promise comes from God?  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4313747/ 

GOD HIMSELF WILL PROVIDE THEM LAMB (8)     

It is wishful thinking that we gain the promise of our life, without the test?   Wouldn’t it be a nice ‘Hollywood Ending’, if the story of Abraham could end with an old childless couple finally having a baby?   Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring the story to a happy end with the promise fulfilled, and with all the descendants, who are as numerous as the stars, all fulfilling God’s promise ‘in perfect harmony’?   But Abraham’s story doesn't end like that; no story does.   The promise of life that came to Abraham, also comes to us, but it also comes with challenges, detours, and tests of faith.  This is how we must understand what it meant, when God says, "Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain of which I will tell you."  We are not to think of child sacrifice here, because the point here is ‘theological’ not ‘ethical’.    The point here is not God demanding that Abraham prove his devotion by giving God his child child!  No, the point here is that God is reminding Abraham that everything, even this precious child,  the child of promise, always belongs God.  Think of it this way, with this other biblical word: "The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord."

The command to sacrifice Isaac is a ‘test’ to whether or not Abraham really understands and trusts that his life is in God's hands, even after Abraham gets what he needs and wants.  God is the Creator and Giver of Life.   We may have children, but we do not ‘create life’.    This is what it means to say, "The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."  No matter what we have in life; all life, all gifts, even the most precious gifts of our children, including our life too---it all comes from, belongs to, and returns to God.  God is the source of life and God is our destiny.

This same message is underscored throughout the Bible, most beautifully expressed in the 90th psalm, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God”  (Psalm 90: 1-2).  Right after this comes more sobering insight: “You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. (Ps. 90:5-6 NRS).   The Psalmist is saying that this is what the promise of life is like.  Even a life of promise has limits.  He continues, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”  This wisdom always begins with this: "The Lord gives. The Lord takes away."   Life and Life’s promise belongs to God.  Even the gift of life, forever remains a gift.

The New Testament wisdom is not any different.  Jesus called the man a ‘fool’ who built barns and filled them to insure his future.  When he built his last barn, and thought his future was now secure, this is when God said to him, "Fool, Tonight your soul is required of you" (Luk3 12:20).  Or what about those words of First Peter, echoing both Jesus and the Psalmist: “You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.  For ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ That word is the good news that was announced to you (1 Pet. 1:23-25 NRS).    Here, throughout the Bible, the first and last lesson of biblical wisdom remains the same: "The Lord gives. The Lord takes away."  All that we are, all that we have, and all that we ever hope to be, comes from God and returns to God.    

When God tested Abraham, the ‘test’ was about the ultimate ‘ownership’ of the promise.  Like Abraham, we are given God’s promise, but the promise still belongs to God.   This means that even when we receive the promise of life, we still can’t own it.  We are stewards, managers, and custodians of the promise, but the promise still belongs to God.   

Like Abraham, you and I, are also be tested as to whether or not we know this, believe this, trust this, or live this: that all things come from God and ultimately depend on God.  That's the test.  That is the ultimate test for any one of us.  Are you able to let go of everything in the trust that the Lord owns and will continue to deliver on the promise?  That is the meaning of the offering of Isaac.  Do we trust this God who gives us the gift and promise of life?  Will we continue to trust that God gives us the promise, no matter what happens in this life?

Martin Luther rediscovered this radical, biblical understanding of faith, and coined the phrase, "We are saved by our trusting in God's grace alone." He also wrote a hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," where he spoke of complete, radical, unreserved faith in God:  “Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also. “   This is exactly what Abraham was called to do at the beginning of the story, to "let goods go." He was called to leave Ur of Chaldees, leave all his possessions, and travel the world as a nomad, trusting in God alone, that God would lead him to the fulfillment of the promise.  Now, at the age of 100, at the end of the story, Abraham is now being called to "let kindred go."   And when God asked Abraham to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you" (22:2), as any loving parent knows, God was then asking him to let ‘this mortal life’ go, even his own life.   

Of course, none of us would ever want to go there; where our own child is taken from us.  But it does happen in life.  As I said earlier, a child can be born with a terrible, incurable disease.  A child, your child too, can be, God forbid, killed tragically in an accident.   What about all those innocent children senselessly murdered at Sandy Hook, or at First Baptist Sutherland Springs, or those children who die unexpectedly, or suffer physical, emotional, or mental illnesses, and parents have to give them up and release them to God?  

My wife and I adopted a wonderful little girl, who had all sorts of promise in her.  She had such amazing energy and personality.  She traveled, experienced the world, before she could talk.  She spoke two languages, fluently.  She was smart, strong, with all kinds of promise, then, at the age of 11, her brain began to fall apart.  She struggled socially, then academically, and then her life was at risk.  She had to be put in a home for girls, for her own protection.  She spent time in counseling, mental evaluations, and then, there was medicine.  None of it worked.  She wouldn’t take it.  She finally got married.  Lost her three children (our grandchildren), and her husband too.  She doesn’t have contact with them, or with us.  “Mom, Dad, I’m not like you!  I can’t think like you, or be like you, she always said.”  She’s never been rebellious or mean to us.  She’s always polite, but she can’t be who she knows she’s supposed to be.  She’s the kindest, most caring, mixed up minded person.  Now that she’s almost thirty, all we can do, is give her back to the God who gave her to us.   It hurts, but we also find healing and hope, too, when we release her, and give her back to God.  “The Lord gives…The Lord takes away.  Blessed Be the Name of the Lord!  In other words: Thank God anyway.  Trust God anyway.  Hope in God, anyway!

NOW I KNOW THAT YOU FEAR GOD

Fortunately, putting our trust in God is intended to ‘give’ not ‘take’.  This is why Abraham’s test ends with life, not death.   As Isaac is laid on the altar, Abraham was fully prepared to carry out the command.  He trusted that he ‘Lord would provide’, but he did not know how.  But then, the voice of God intervenes, saying, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for NOW I KNOW THAT YOU FEAR GOD, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me...And behold, there was a ram standing by. Abraham took the ram, and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son (12-13)."

The last line in the story is most important.  It shows us what it means that Abraham ‘fears God’.  It does not mean that Abraham is afraid of God, but it means Abraham trusts, respects, and lives to follow and obey God for his life.   So, after Abraham ‘offers the ram’ as his sacrifice instead of his son,  Abraham then named that place, "The Lord will provide” (14).   This line is repeated to reflect the ‘trust’ that God demands and that life demands, if he (or we) would find hope and promise in life.  "The Lord will provide." The God who gives us life in the first place, is able to give it to us again. 

When I preach this story, I don’t preach it with great excitement.   It is not really a hero story.  It is such a difficult story.  It is a story which symbolizes the hard, overwhelming tests of faith that come to our own lives.   And I not only think of those who have been able to pass the tests, like Abraham, or like Jesus, but I also think and pray for those have failed test of faith, and may be going through the test right now, and don’t know whether or not, they can maintain trust and faith in God.  

I think of that young 17 year old girl, who committed suicide in a church on day I had preached my first sermon.  Some in the family came to get me after the service.  It was a painful and hard way to begin my ministry.   Later, learned that she pulled the trigger on her life, because she could not measure up to the successes of her younger sister.    The loss of hope, of faith, and even love was heartbreaking.  Her parents were devastated.    I also think of many others, who have been through the tests of life’s struggles, having bad parents, bad illnesses, or just plain ole bad luck in life.  Some of these get through by the ‘skin of their teeth’, but a lot of them loss faith altogether.   If you listen closely to the stories of people who don’t come to church, you’ll often hear expressions of hurt.   What does this story say to a person struggling with a life or a faith that does not turn out as we want, or even as it should?   Can still believe, no matter what happens, or whose fault it is, or isn’t, that the God who has given us life in the first place, can give it to us again?  If we lose all that we have, all the things which bring us hope or security---all the things that bring us pleasure, meaning, purpose, and beauty in our life, can we let them go?  Can we give them to God?

We constantly see pain and loss in this world.   It could be pain of refugees losing their homes,  the pain of immigrates trying to find a one, people losing their loved ones in wars, violence,  or natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, fires, or hurricanes.  Sometimes I also think of my own grandparents and parents, who also lived through the great depression.  Some of them kept faith, and others of them loss faith altogether.   I also think of some of you, who have been through loss yourself---who have lost those precious to you, or who are right now, dealing with the loss yourself, either loss of physical health, loss of children, spouses, or others who mean so much to you.   I am one of you.  I’m not immune to loss either.  In some ways, we are all facing the same ‘test’ Abraham faced.   And the question that comes to us, is will we be able to say and believe the same thing Abraham believed: “The Lord will provide!”

I have been privileged to know many of those people, those who have lost their future, everything that they worked for. It is just amazing. They say, "The Lord will provide." Have you observed someone like that?  Aren’t you amazed at people who keep faith, no matter what?  Mark Trotter, whom I owe credit for much of this sermon, tells of an article he once read by Paul O'Brien.  O’Brien once wrote an article reflecting about people who had experienced tremendous losses in their life.  He focused particularly on literary personalities, and how they coped with it.  He talked about William Thackery, once wrote a manuscript for a novel, which was accidently destroyed by a servant. Upon hearing the news, Thackery simply sat down and started writing again.  O’Brien also wrote about a Chinese scholar, Zhu Guangquan, who painstakingly translated Hegel's philosophical works into Chinese.  Then, during the "reign of terror", when communism took over China, his home was searched, and the manuscript was confiscated. He announced that he would simply start translating again.

O'Brien marveled at their resolve, concluding that what Thackery and Professor Zhu have in common is a belief, a trust, that their lives are not their own, but that they live for a larger, greater purpose.   And just like these men, while we are all responsible for what we do, we are not responsible for the outcomes of what we do.  We cannot control the future.  We cannot control the outcomes.  We cannot determine what happens.  The future belongs to an outcome that is greater than ‘me’, or ‘you’, and ‘us’.   Isn’t this why Jesus said,  “Whoever comes after me, must deny himself?”   That’s sounds a little like ‘sacrificing Isaac’, doesn’t it?  We give ourselves to God, and we trust that God can give us our lives back again. 

T. S. Eliot, the great poet, once wrote that half the harm in the world is done by people who want to feel important.  That's where the problem comes in.  We all want to feel important.   We want to be somebody.  We want to have something.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We are all born that way.  We want our lives to have meaning, purpose, and significance, but the problem comes in when fail to give ourselves to God’s greater purpose, which can only be given and received by grace.   We go after life.  We try to seize life. We try to control it.  We try to squeeze everything out of it.  We try to gain the lime light.   It becomes hard for us to imagine, especially in a culture with so much, that life is not finally about what we gain, have or want, but that life is about what we give, sacrifice, let go of, and devote to God’s greater purposes.   The models that are often held up to us in our culture, are the models of people with oversized egos who talk about me, me, me all the time, without apology and without embarrassment.  Who could believe that you could really have a life, or that this big world, or even this great universe, could ever have really just been about you?  How dumb is that?

Who doesn’t love the story about Muhammad Ali, who was on airplane. The flight attendant said to him before they took off, "Please fasten your seat belt." He said to the flight attendant, "Superman don't need no seat belt." The flight attendant said, "Superman don't need no airplane either.  Please, fasten your seatbelt."

The greatest disease of this world comes into play, not when we find ourselves up against losses, struggles, and tests of faith.  No, the greatest disease in this world is when we try to reduce life down to just what I have, what I feel, or what I want.   While there is a lot of psychology still be discovered about why a person would enter into a church and gun down innocent people, or why a man would randomly shoot people on a street, or why a person would get so hurt, so sick, or so angry, that they would lash out and take all kinds of people down with them,  what we need to know is that this is the kind of sickness that begins to surface, in a society bows down before the god of ‘me, me, me’!’ 

In a more positive note, think about a basketball game, a baseball game, soccer or football game, where after the game is over, the star player or players are being interviewed about their amazing feats, but he or she is constantly reminding the viewers, that after this win, it was never about just one play, or one or a couple of players,  but that it was always about the team or another player.   It was only when the players thought more about the ‘team’ than about themselves, that they were able to win the game.  Only when they gave up thinking about accolades, records, or self-achievements, were they able to gain what the game was about.  Once when Al McGuire was coach of Marquette University, they won the NCAA championship.    How did it happen?   McGuire said that one day he took their best player, Butch Lee aside.  Butch was an extraordinarily gifted player, who had difficulty sharing anything with anybody else, so Coach McGuire said, "Butch, the game is forty minutes long. If you divide that between two teams, it means that each team has the ball about twenty minutes. There are five players on each team. That means that each player has the ball about four minutes. Now Butch, I know what you can do with that ball for four minutes. But what I don't know is what you are going to do for the other thirty-six minutes.  CAN YOU LET SOMEBODY ELSE HAVE THE BALL?"

Whatever we say about Abraham’s test, or his life, or even his child, it was never about Abraham nor was it really about Isaac (Isaac never amounted to much in the biblical story).  No, this story is not about these people, but it was about faith and trust.  It was about giving everything to God, so that God can give you back what you could never gain for yourself. 

So, this is my final question for us today:  Can you let your life go? Can you decrease so that somebody else can increase?  Are you mature enough?  Are you trusting enough?  Can you let go, and go where God leads?  This is what the Bible means by faithful.  Are you mature enough realize that when you let your of your life, your ego, your opinion, or your will , you will still shine in God’s future?  If you sacrifice; if you give, do you believe the Lord will still provide?

The most difficult application of this kind of test is when we have to let go of someone we love.  It is no accident that the great task of grief work is called "letting go." It is only by letting go, that you can find life again.   You’ve got to give everything to this God who is the only one who can promise to give what you lose back again.   This is why Abraham called the name of the place of faith, "The Lord Will Provide."  "Not as the world gives do I give to you,” Jesus said.   Jesus assures us again, that in God’s way and in God’s time, “The Lord will provide,” even if it’s not in the way we expect or anticipate.  This is the ‘place’ of faith and trust, that is our only hope. 

James Angell, a Presbyterian minister, was awakened on Saturday night, in the middle of the night, with a phone call.  It was the Saturday before Easter. The phone call was the Highway Patrol telling him that his twenty-one year old daughter, Susan, has been killed in an automobile accident.  Susan was on her way home. She was going to spend Easter Sunday with her mother and father. She was killed on the way home.

With courage and with faith that should make us marvel, Jim Angell, just a few hours after receiving that news, entered his pulpit on that Sunday morning, and preached on the victory that Christ has given us over death through his Resurrection.  Later he wrote a book about those days, a beautiful little book called, O Susan!  In that book, he said there is a long period when the loss seems to be more than you can bear. It is like you are at the end of the rope, and you have to hold on while you tie a knot at the end, for something to keep holding on to.

Then, he said, in that dark moment, something happens.  It happens to people in in different ways and at different times.  But for him it happened this way. A dear and trusted friend came into his study one day, and talked bluntly to him. He said, "Jim, you've got to face this. For the rest of your life this is a fact that you just have to live with. You can do two things about it. You can use it, use your fresh depth of feeling to make life finer, or you can let it crush you, and go through the rest of your life whimpering.

Angell wrote that those words from his friend reminded him of the words of the hymn, "Shun not the struggle, face it. 'Tis God's gift."    This gift is not the accident. It’s not the tragedy and it’s not the sorrow.  These are not God's gift, but God’s gift is the grace, the power to use those events to find hope, and to learn how to trust.  This is what Abraham was doing when he told his servants, as he left the donkeys to go up on the mountain alone with his son.  He told them, in trust and faith: “We will worship, and then we will come back to you” (5).

What did Abraham meant is exactly what Jim Angell realized, when he had to let his daughter go.   When he found the grace and faith to let her go, this is when he found life again.   We know Abraham passed the test, just like we will know it too.  We know it when we walk through both life and death, and can still say, “The Lord gives….The Lords takes away… but whatever happens, "The Lord will provide."  Amen.

"Chosen But Messy"

A Sermon Based Upon Genesis 21: 8-21 NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

March 11, 2018

For the past few weeks, we have been preaching from the life of Abraham, the ancestor of all biblical faith.   Scripture sometimes speaks of Abraham as a ‘friend of God’ (Isa. 41:8; James 2:23).  Jesus called his own disciples, who were descendants of Abraham, his ‘friends’ (Jn. 15:15).    In a way, all people of faith can be named ‘friends of God’.  But what we are going to learn today is that just because we are God’s friends, this does not in any way mean that we are a privileged or superior people to everyone else.   God’s people do not have a monopoly on the goodness and grace of God. 

Besides this, what we will see in today’s text is that God’s people can be perfectly ‘imperfect’ friends of God; people who have faith, but who still have a long ways to go.   One writer explained today’s story of faith this way, saying, “the religious consciousness which was to have noble growth in Israel, had its subsoil in the same life and same ideas (and I might add same failures) as other peoples of ancient times (Bowie, IB).   In other words, Abraham was not perfect, he was a flawed human being.  But even as a flawed human being, Abraham did open his heart to God by faith, warts and all, so that his faith could be perfected by God’s grace.  

One of the most wonderful truths about biblical truth is that it tells us exactly this kind of truth; truth that comes with warts and all.   The Bible does not hide who Abraham was, just as it does not hide how faith was, before it was perfected in God’s love through Jesus Christ.   What we see, particularly in today’s text, is that Abraham was not always a great example of what a person of faith can be, but still, God ‘credited’ Abraham’s with “righteousness” because of his faith (Rom 4:3).   Abraham believed (or trusted) in God (Rom 4:6), as Paul put it, but, as Paul adds: “If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about---but not before God” (Rom. 4:2).   As we will see in today’s text, Abraham really had nothing to boast about.  Neither do we.

Paul reminds us, that also in this way, we are children of Abraham.   Yes, we are people of faith; having a faith that will also be ‘credited…as righteousness’, but , as Paul adds, faith is credited to us because ‘our transgressions are forgiven,…(and our) sins are covered’ (Rom. 4:7).  In this same way,  just like Abraham, as like Israel too, we Christians are also a ‘chosen’ (Eph. 1:11, 1 Pet. 2:9) people, who are chosen to be objects of God’s love and recipients of God’s grace.  But this in no way, means that we are any better than anyone else, nor does it mean that we are the only people God loves or saves.

CAST OUT THIS SLAVE WOMAN…. (10)

Our text today begins on the ‘happy note’ of the fulfillment of God’s promise.   God had promised Abraham that he would be blessed with a child, and would become a great nation so his faith could bless the whole world (Gen. 12: 1-3).  “All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you”(Gen. 12:3.  It was made very clear from the beginning, that the ‘blessing’ Abraham received was never just about Abraham alone, but this was a blessing that was always intended for ‘all peoples on earth’.   Abraham’s blessing was for everyone.

It is exactly this ‘promise’ or ‘calling’ to ‘bless others’ that makes the second part of today’s story especially hard to think about.  This is one of those places in the Bible where faith gets messy, complicated, and can even appear to be down-right cruel.   It is one of those hard parts of the Bible that some believers quickly pass over, excuse, or explain away.   As one pastor put it, this is ‘one of those things that ought not to happen’ (James Killen).   The truth in this story is told twice in Genesis (see Gen. 16), perhaps just so that we don’t miss just how ‘messy’ and ‘imperfect’ Abraham’s faith was.   This reminds us that, even as ‘friends of God’, we are all on a journey to learn how to love like God loves.

The ‘messiness’ of this story focuses on what to do with Ishamel, Sarah’s other son.  Now that Isaac is born, what does the family and the future look like?   It was not ‘faith’, but Abraham and Sarah’s lack of faith that asked for this.   If you recall, when it didn’t look like she and Abraham could have children on their own,  Sarah decided to allow her Egyptian slave-girl named Hagar, to become Abraham’s surrogate wife  (Gen. 16:1ff).  This was a standard practice in world where family was business, as well as, family.  

Hagar quickly conceived, but this complicated the family arrangements.  Sarah became jealous of Hagar, and even before the child was born, earlier in Genesis 16, we read that with Abraham’s blessing Hagar was sent away, only to be sent back by the angel of the LORD.   Now that the promised child Isaac has been born,, the same jealousy and the same question arises again: “What happens to Hagar and Ishmael?”  Sadly, the problem arises in a most innocent moment when the two children were ‘playing’ together.  Sarah takes the scene as insult; perhaps it might have been a reminder of her own lack of faith.  In the next moment, Sarah demands that Abraham ‘cast out this slave woman with her son.’   Sarah’s reasoning: ‘This slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac’ (10).

It is always ‘sad’ when families, who have grown up together, experienced and shared life together, come to a point where they don’t want to travel through life together any longer.   Often, it happens because of some disagreement about ‘inheritance’, just like Sarah voices it here.  You and I know this happens, sometimes even to the best of families.  People get their feelings hurt, one makes unreasonable demands, the parents failed to make their last wishes clear, and now, after the parents are gone, the family relationship falls apart.  The world and the love they once shared, is gone forever.  Sometimes it can be reduced down to piece of furniture, a tract of land, or an amount of money.

But Sarah’s jealousy over Ishmael is not about monetary inheritance; it is about God’s promise, and it is about her own weakness of faith.   Sarah realizes that she has failed, and now she wants to protect her son.   Perhaps it even has a motherly motivation; maybe she didn’t really wish her servant-girl and child any harm.  However, what she does is wrong, and it proves that she, like Abraham, were not ‘justified by works’.  We also read, that this whole ordeal seemed so unfair and ugly that ‘the matter was very distressing to Abraham’.  Ishmael was Abraham’s  ‘son’ too (11). 

Perhaps this whole story occurs in the Bible’s story about faith, to remind us, that even people of great faith, sometimes ‘get it wrong’.  Sometimes we too have taken matters into our own hands, and have either made matters worse.  Sometimes we too have hurt some really good, innocent people, even by trying to bring God’s blessing into the world.  This whole story, being about the mistreatment of a ‘slave-girl’ should make us all take note of our own failures, flaws, and mistreatments of those around us.   Sometimes we have intentionally or unintentionally hurt others,  either actively by our own power, or because of our own passive participation in a culture, a people, or a nation, that has been less than perfect.

About a year and a half ago, it was announced that the prestigious, Georgetown University, was going to take steps to ‘atone’ for its past of profiting from having slaves and by participating in the slave trade that was once a part their own history, as it has been part of the history of our nation.   More than a dozen prestigious Universities, including Brown, Harvard, and the University of Virginia have publically recognized their own ties to slavery and the slave trade.   What Georgetown University decided to do, was to go beyond admitting their past or apologizing, but they are now planning on making restitution and reparations, by allow descendants of slaves to have preferential treatment and special scholarships, if they desire to study at their school.  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/slaves-georgetown-university.html

When the “Black Lives Matter” movement started, sometimes misguided and othertimes misunderstood,  causing no small amount of controversy, I found it interesting that during the public discussion, that the conservative, evangelical magazine, Christianity Today---a magazine that was endorsed and started by Billy Graham---ran a ‘cover article’ about one how a Lynching Memorial is planned to be erected in Montgomery, Alabama, remembering how 4,000 African American were lynched between 1877 and the early 1950’s.   In the Bible and in American history too, memorials are a way, not just to remember the past, but they can also be a way to remember heal from the ‘sins of our past’, so we can all move to a better future.

GOD HEARD THE VOICE…. (17)

What is most important this sordid story, is not just to revisit what was done wrong, but how, even in the midst of human sin and failure,  and just when this child was about to unjustly ‘die’ in the wilderness, God shows up.   God ‘hears the voice (or cry) of the boy’  (17).  God reminds ‘Hagar’ not ‘to be afraid.’  God shows up in the midst the ‘troubles’ of the forsaken and forgotten to make a promise of ‘greatness’ just for them (18).  God ‘provides’ for them in their own wilderness.  God quenches the thirst of this humble child, so that he not only survives, but he thrives in the wilderness he must make his home.

When I read this story, of God’s provision for Ishmael, I wonder how often people of color, who are descendants of slaves, or Indians, or poor forgotten, working-class peoples around the world, might read such a story.   Do they see God, also as their redeemer; even though have been part of a subjugated, persecuted, or enslaved people?   Interestingly, Christian faith is often more alive and vibrant among people who have been abused, mistreated, or maligned, than it is among those who are blessed, advantaged or privileged.   I have a book in my study, strangely entitled, “Reading the Bible with the Dammed”.   This book reminds me, that strangely enough, it is people who have been persecuted, who have suffered, and who started out as forgotten and forsaken by the powers of this world, who often best understand their own spiritual hunger and need of God.   

Through the years, some of the greatest ministry moments, were spent not in churches, but in prisons.  In Greensboro, a deacon there by the name of Sid Wrenn, ran a prison ministry.  When he took me with him one Thursday evening, he prepared me saying, “Pastor, I need to warn you that some of these guys are mixed up.  Some of them are going to say something you might not want to hear, but I also want to tell you, these are some of the most spiritually hungry and open people I’ve ever known.  I mean no offense to you or my church, but if I had to give up one, I give up my regular church over being here with these guys every Thursday night.  Their need and desire for God is the highlight of my week.”

What people like Hagar and Ishmael mean for the story of faith, is that sometimes any of our lives might feel more like them, than like Abraham and Sarah.   Most of us don’t live lives with Hollywood endings, where the hero comes returns, and sweeps us off our feet and rides off into the sunset.  Most people have to learn to live ‘beyond happily ever after’, because somewhere in life, we realize that most heroes, like John Wayne, or Captain America, are just myth. A person of faith learns to live life ‘beyond happily ever after’ because in reality, few lives really turn out like that.    For most of us, our spiritual journey can seem much more like Hagar and Ishmael, than Abraham and Sarah.  Life can seem like the promise has completely skipped over us.  When this happens, we know that if is wasn’t for our faith in God, we know, that in this life, that we wouldn’t have a prayer.

To be true winners in this life, we must learn to ourselves in the shoes of the losers, not just the winners.  This is not easy to do.  Most of our hero stories, in fiction or in history,  try to focus on the successes, not the feelings of failure forsakenness.  Most of us don’t dare try to imagine ourselves as descendants of Hagar and Ishmael.  Even the Bible, which pictures God’s promise coming through Isaac, could lead us to think that nothing good could come from Ishmael, just like Nathaniel once wondered: ‘what good could come from Nazareth’ (Jn. 1:46), especially from a forsaken Jew who was crucified on a cross.    

GOD WAS WITH THE BOY (20)

In our own time, with heightened tensions between Muslims and Jews, and now, also between Christians and the Radical State of Islam, need to consider something else very important from this story about Ishmael.  

Modern day Muslims, are Arabs who consider themselves descendants of Abraham, just as much, or even more so, than many secular Jews do.  If you go to Jerusalem, you will see that the large Dom of the Rock sanctuary, marking the skyline of Jerusalem is a Muslim sanctuary, not a Jewish or Christian one.   And the continued ‘hot’ question of our world is how can both Jews and Muslims co-exist in the Holy Land, and the great city of Jerusalem, which is today anything but its own namesake; a city of peace?

What could be a way forward could begin with an honest interpretation of what is happening at the end of this story.  When God comes to save Ishmael, and his mother Hagar, we are simply told that ‘God was with the boy’ (20).   Think about these words, they almost sound the same as the name found in both the Old and New Testament, child of promise who is ‘Immanuel, God with us’ (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23).  The only difference is that long before God was revealed in the child known in Isaiah’s day, or the even more completely in the child Jesus, of Matthew’s day, God was already there ‘with the boy’ we know as Ishmael.  

What we need to understand that although Ishmael isn’t the child of promise, Ishmael isn’t the child without a promise either.   God had a unique purpose in blessing Abraham’s seed through Isaac, not because they are better than Ishmael’s, but because they were blessed to reveal God’s love to ‘all people’s’ including Ishmael’s people, and the rest of us too.   God loves Arab peoples, just like he loves Jews, and just like God loves Christians, and just like he loves other religious people, and even secular people too.   

There is an interesting little story in Gerald McDermott little book entitled, “Israel Still Matters”.  In that book Dr. McDermott argues that Israel has a right to the promised-land, and that Christians and Arabs should respect that.  I don’t have time to go through all his arguments, nor do I want to, but there is one story he tells that especially caught my attention.   McDermott says that when he lived in Israel, he talked to a lot of people who actually lived there and didn’t care too much about the politics.  He said that there were even many Arabs there, who would rather live under the rule of Israel, than under any government of Palestinian Arabs.   Their reasoning was simple.  They would much rather be ‘Arabs’ under Jews who govern the land with democracy and freedom, than live under Palestinian rule that would rule with the restrictions or forced or extreme Islamic religion.   They wanted to believe in God through the lens of their Muslim culture, but they didn’t want all the negatives that came with it.  They wanted the freedom and democracy only Israel could give.

If we want to be the people who bring God’s peace (Shalom) in the world, we must work to undo sin of Sarah and Abraham, who kicked Hagar out, so that all can rediscover the grace which God revealed that could save Abraham, and us too.   It is not in Jerusalem, but at Golgatha, just outside the walls of the great city, where Jesus died on the cross, that God’s love was fully revealed.  This is not because Jesus was Jewish, nor because Jesus established the Christian Church.  No, the reason God’s love and grace was revealed fully in Jesus, was because “God was in Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself’.   It is in the pain, in the suffering, and in the death this Son of God, Jesus the Christ, that God reveals the only kind of love that will ‘provide’ the ‘saving grace’ God has always intended for the whole world.  Amen.