St. John’s United Church of Christ
June 22, 2008
A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger
Who Does the Heavy Lifting? Genesis 21:8-21
In the spring of 1956, when I was a senior in high school, I was part of a student exchange program with Newton High School in Newton, MA, a Boston suburb. That was quite a culture shock, to be sure!
We were small town/rural kids from eastern Wisconsin and our world stretched to Milwaukee, 50 miles away, and not much farther. They were East Coast sophisticates, on the fringe of Boston with all of that historic and cosmopolitan significance. We seemed just happy to be getting a high school diploma, and they were in a frantic effort to get grades good enough to be accepted into Harvard, or some other prestigious university. Those two weeks in March of 1956 are still vivid in my memory.
I lived with the Lipscomb family. Larry was a senior as I was. There was an older brother, a Harvard graduate working for a Fortune 500 company in Boston, and a younger brother who was blind who attended the Perkins School for the Blind. This was a Jewish family, Reformed Jewish family, and they allowed me to participate in the family Passover meal.
All of this information does have a purpose. That older brother, working for a prestigious company, still living at home, was unmarried, much to the chagrin of his mother who brought up the subject often in my hearing. I had thought those stories about Jewish mothers, intent on making sure their sons would be married to just the right, deserving young woman, were greatly overblown. My two weeks with the Lipscombs showed me how serious this was.
Since that time I have noticed this passion to marry a son or daughter to just the right person is not confined to just Jewish mothers. Other well-meaning people are prone to making it come out right, whatever their concept of “right” might be. This applies to mate selection, place to live, job to pursue, child-rearing practices, new trinket acquisition, whatever is deemed important enough to warrant the intervention of a concerned family member or friend.
The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac falls into that same category. How do we make sure the story turns out right, according to our expectations? Who Does the Heavy Lifting to ensure the proper outcome, the desired result?
This all goes back to the promise to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a place to live and will have multiple descendants. They come to this Promised Land, travel about here and there, setting up altars of thanksgiving and territorial prerogative, assuring their future rights to this new land. But the progeny part was a bit more challenging.
This was before fertility clinics and our other nifty medical advances, working with couples experiencing difficulties in conceiving. Their biological clocks were ticking, louder and louder. The nursery was painted and ready, but no pregnancy.
Sarah gives up first, suggesting to Abraham that if she is not able to conceive a child perhaps he should turn to Hagar, their Egyptian house servant. Half a promise fulfilled is better than none, and since the family tree is often traced through the father’s side, maybe that is how God wanted the promise to be fulfilled. Hagar has a son, Ishmael, with Abraham as the proud father, and it seems like this is the answer to the promise.
But then, as we saw last Sunday, those three strangers interrupt Abraham’s life with the news Sarah will yet bear a son, sufficient reason to laugh and disbelieve the prediction. But Sarah indeed does bear a son, Isaac, as predicted, and now we have a bit of a problem. Now there are two sons of Abraham, Ishmael, a growing boy, and this new baby, Isaac.
Remember the wisdom about the impossibility of two women living under the same roof? Sarah wonders how the promises of God will unfold. Will Ishmael, that other woman’s son, be the rightful heir? After all, he is the first born, and in that culture the first born are the chosen ones. Or would it be Isaac, for after all, Sarah is Abraham’s wife and Hagar is just one of the servants?
Sarah wants the dilemma to be solved now, right now, not trusting that old saying: “Everything will turn out alright at the end.” She tells Abraham to remove Hagar and Ishmael from the household. Get rid of the competition for there’s only room for one of us here, and she must go.
Abraham is in a difficult place, to be sure. Does he follow the desire of his wife, cut ties with his son, or does he try to keep both sons, both mothers, and suffer the consequences? Reluctantly, very reluctantly, he decides to send Hagar and Ishmael off into the wilderness. He gives Hagar some water, some bread, and his son.
Despairing of all hope of surviving, Hagar thinks the end is near and she half abandons her son when the water is all gone. But “God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water…” and they in fact do survive. Ishmael becomes the father of 12 sons, creating a distinct people after taking for his wife an Egyptian, like his mother. The followers of Islam trace their history back to Ishmael and Hagar and Abraham, a people relegated to the wilderness but saved by the mercy of God.
Well, Who Is Doing the Heavy Lifting in this old story? Is it only God who manages to fulfill these promises, no matter what? Is it Abraham, who produces these two sons? Is it Hagar, and then Sarah, who give birth to these sons? Is it Ishmael and Isaac, who up to now are oblivious to what is happening to the supposed adults in this story?
How much of what happens in our lives is the divine initiative that carries out schemes and plans we will never understand? How much of what happens is muddling human beings who stumble their way along uncharted paths into murky episodes that only become clear years later, and then they become the great stories of our faith journeys?
We can fault Abraham and Sarah for taking over, rigging up an outcome they felt was consistent with what they thought were God’s intentions, but isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Aren’t we supposed to be the actors who help to shape the script, improvising at times instead of only reading our given lines? Wouldn’t it be wrong for us to just do nothing, expect God to do everything, almost defying God to make something good happen as we sit around and twiddle our thumbs?
For me, the answer is Both, And, that the Heavy Lifting is done by both God, and by us. Certainly God has a perspective of this world and our lives that is far superior to the limited vision any of us can muster. We expect God to be able to see the Big Picture, working through events to bring about God’s intentions. We are keenly aware of the short-sightedness of the human family and therefore eager to rely on a power greater than ourselves, a wisdom grander that what we can possess. But God has chosen to enlist fallible people like us in God’s grand design, Junior Partners, to be sure, but critically important to what God has in mind.
The saying, “God has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet, no voice but our voices,” may sound like the height of arrogance, as if God is that dependent on us, that we are that capable of getting in God’s way. But, in fact, we mortals are critically important to this Heavy Lifting.
If a needed word of grace or hope or love is to be spoken on behalf of God, it will be folk like us who speak that word. If an act of kindness needs to enrich someone’s life, it will be folk like us who can do so on God’s behalf. If this world is to be shaken from its self-centeredness and greed, from its materialism and selfishness, it is up to us to be those shakers and movers that the teachings of Jesus may stand in judgment over all that does not measure up to God’s will.
God does the Heavy Lifting, to be sure, but we are important members of this team, this redemptive team. We are called and challenged to share the Heavy Lifting, agents of a loving and forgiving God who broods over this world and all its peoples. This is a God who wants each and every one to live in peace, in hope, and into the promise of a full and meaningful life.