God heard the voice of the boy

Prepared for Redland City Uniting Church Trinity Wellington Point 25.06.2023

Readings: Matthew 10:24-39, Genesis 21:8-21

It would have been easy for me to choose the readings associated with the anniversary of the Uniting Church this weekend. The anniversary took place on the 22^nd of June. We are now 46 years old.  However, the familiar words of Jesus’ prayer about unity found in John 17, whilst challenging, could also be used to continue the domestication of our faith. You see, what we often do with the scriptures and our faith is that we make them comfortable, we keep them certain, we like to keep things predictable and so make ourselves feel good about who we already are.

But the Basis of Union itself drives us beyond our comfort zone and any sense of self-righteousness. Thus, we should always remember, with humility, that the union in 1977 also caused a further schism in the church, as many within the Congregational Union of Australia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia chose not to join us in our witness. The discomfort we might feel at this is recognised within the very first paragraph of the Basis by the Uniting Churches. It declared of those coming into union that “they acknowledge that none of them has responded to God's love with a full obedience” and later that the church is “a pilgrim people” that will need to express our faith in “fresh words and deeds” and finally that “God will constantly correct that which is erroneous in its life”. In this the Basis echoed the great dictum of the reformation, ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda (the church reformed, always reforming).  

This tension, of the church always needing reform, places us soundly in the Reformed tradition which leans on Paul’s comments about us all being sinners who fall short of the glory of God. However, this view of humans before God also sits in tension with the Methodist tradition which reflected something of the natural theology that understands human beings as made in the image of God and the concept of the work of the Holy Spirit through which, as Charles Wesley put it, we are changed from glory into glory. I have often been somewhat amazed that the contrasting and even conflicting theologies of the three churches was able to come together into this Uniting Church. But maybe in bringing these disparate ideas together the church reflects the true messiness and limitations of our relationship with God as fallible and flawed human beings.  It is the kind of messiness that we encountered in the readings today. 

In particular, the story of Hagar and Ishmael drew me in, and it struck me just how difficult the stories of the Old Testament can be. This story should disturb us deeply in our faith. Graham J. Adams in his essay “Ephphatha! DARE to be Opened!” declares “The Bible is both a butterfly and a hurricane!” (Cited in Scripture and Resistance: Theology in an Age of Empire ed. Jione Havea, p.17) He goes on to say, that as a butterfly “the Bible is always signalling to us that the apparently ‘dead’ appearance of words on a page, like a chrysalis, is not the end of the interpretive story, but instead, because “the spirit blows where she wills”, it comes to life, in ever new ways, surprising us, enlivening us, enthralling us, but also disturbing or unsettling us.” (Adams, p.17) And like a hurricane, the Bible is disruptive, “The newness disrupts our preconceptions, causes problems for us in our desire to superimpose order onto a disordered world.” (Adams, p.17) This imagery reminds us to not get too comfortable in our pews and not too comfortable in thinking that we have arrived in our faith. 

I recall a congregation in which I ministered that the wooden pews were decidedly uncomfortable and maybe that is a metaphor for how we should encounter preaching. If you walk from the church this morning and say to me nice sermon I sometimes wonder if my preaching has failed because when Jesus preached to the converted, they tried to throw him off the nearest cliff. The gospel is a two-edge sword which I think means we are meant to find and encounter hope and God’s love on the one hand but on the other to be confronted by deep and difficulty realities of our human existence. 

Hymn Love Divine 

This has been a long introduction to explain my choice to use the common lectionary readings set down for today. The story of the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael takes us into disturbing and unsettled waters to confront our assumptions and reset our faith journeys. It is a story that reflects the messiness of human existence and the messiness of our human relationships with God. The temptation could be to make the story simple. To simply say that God is faithful to Hagar and Ishmael so the behaviour and disruption to family and community caused by Sarah’s influence over Abraham is O.K.. It’s O.K. to cast out Hagar and Ishmael. But is it really? 

I need to acknowledge that I read this piece of scripture through the lens of a person who is a part of a dominant culture which has conquered and colonised, a culture that has invaded and instituted, a culture which has disrupted and displaced others.  My Anglo background aligns my history with an imperial past which should be challenged and questioned. But if I were to read this through the lens through the oppressed not the oppressor, I wonder how the story may be transformed. Maybe in reading it through such a lens I would begin to ask whether European Christianity has acted more like Sarah and Abraham, casting aside those who might challenge our position and place in the world. I might begin to ask who has Christianity cast aside. 

Or maybe a bit more confrontingly, who have we said are not welcome in our midst as congregations and then justified it with “it’s OK” because God allows Sarah and Abraham to cast aside Hagar as somehow a threat or even worse as worthless. 

The messiness of the whole incident with Sarah and Hagar is made more disturbing when we remember Sarah encouraged Abraham to conceive a child through her servant girl Hagar to create an heir. This was because Sarah thought she was barren. When Hagar becomes pregnant Hagar is portrayed as looking down on Sarah. Nonetheless, both Hagar and her son, Ishmael effectively became part of Abraham’s family. In the ancient world Ishmael would have been seen as Abraham’s heir by the community and by the family. 

The story that we heard today takes place quite a few years later, after Sarah herself miraculously becomes pregnant and bears her son Isaac.  This story takes place when Isaac is weaned which, in the ancient world, was probably around 3 years of age.  By this time his older half-brother Ishmael is predicted to have been in his late teens, maybe even as old as 17. We are told that Sarah observes Ishmael playing with her son Isaac, except here the translation is kind.  In other translations the word used is laughing, although some commentators suggest that it is harsher than this – Ishmael is laughing at or mocking Isaac. Maybe this was an assertion of Ishmael’s authority and status over Isaac, an authority that Abraham could still confer to Ishmael over and above Isaac.  Sarah is, we might think, naturally concerned. 

As the Biblical scholar Westermann points out, Sarah is jealous for her son’s future – she is being loyal to family. In his words, she has a “ruthless maternal concern for her son’s future.” (Word v.2 p.82) Often, when I have asked people what the most important thing in life is, the answer has come back as family. Sarah’s commitment to family and her group has consequences because it excludes others. Adams, in the article I mentioned earlier says this, “religious communities are often defined more obviously by loyalties to family, class, ethnicity, nation, or like mindedness, or by common addictions to the harm we do (to the earth power to those whom we exploit, to our own human dignity).” (Abrams in Havea, p.20) whilst we often like to use the word community in a positive and inclusive sense there is another darker side of community which is often defined by who we exclude. I would argue, despite the justifications given, the example of Sarah should not be an example we would follow. 

Nonetheless, Abraham does cast out Hagar and Ishmael. He gives them bread and water and sends them into the desert, possibly knowing that their chance of survival was slim at best. Just as imagining Ishmael as a 17-year-old playing with the 3-year-old Isaac shifts the story in my mind so too does it shift at this point too. Ishmael is on the cusp of being a man when his mother puts him under a bush and walks off unwilling to watch him die. Like many other aspects of the story this one is unsettling – she abandons him to die alone because she cannot watch it. She settles down a bowshot away looking up to heaven cries out. 

At this point, I think the story takes a most interesting turn. Throughout the whole story Ishmael has had no voice and no control over what is occurring but here in this moment we're told that God hears him. God heard the voice of the boy! Ironically, it is not the boy that God then speaks to, rather it is to his mother and God guides her through an Angel to a well of water which saves their life. Moreover, God promises to make a great nation of Ishmael, a promise that is no different than the promise made to Isaac. 

Regardless of everything else that has happened, God's faithfulness to Abraham through Ishmael will be realised. God is faithful to those whom others would have cast out. God is faithful to the one that the community rejects. God is faithful to all humanity even when we do not see it. A colleague recently challenged me with the idea that at Pentecost the Holy Spirit was only poured out on the believers and that it is only Christian people that receive the Holy Spirit. After contemplating this idea for a while, I returned to the Acts reading in which we are reminded that the words of the prophet is that the spirit will be poured out on all flesh. God's concern is for all people whom God has made. 

In his essay Adams says this, “the God of the Bible is, in fact, the God who hears the cries of the oppressed and outsiders, the God of empathetic solidarity - with Hebrew slaves, midwives, widows, orphans, and aliens; Moabite refugees, foreign commanders, and widows; Assyrian Messiahs and Roman centurions; lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes; children and all kinds of ‘little ones’; the poor, bereaved, and meek; the doubters, deniers, and crucified.” (Adams in Havea, p.18)

God hears the voice of those who do not have one. God hears the voice of those whom we would cast out. God hears the voice of the voiceless. And God pours out God spirit on all flesh. The imagery of the story and the promise of unity found within the scripture discombobulate us, it shakes us out of our reverie, and it challenges us with what it means to be God's people. The good news is the just as the Old Testament reconfigures our understanding of family and community, of religions and its institutions, so too does Jesus. 

Jesus’ words that we heard today are just as unsettling: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Whilst I cannot take the time to preach a whole other sermon on this passage, I would share a precis from a previous sermon I preached on this passage.  Earlier in Matthew when Jesus was told his mother and brothers were outside, he responds, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” 

Jesus’ view of the idea of family here is not to diminish it but to augment it.  Family is not defined by biological ties but is defined by the growing relationship he had with those outside his own family – his disciples. 

The restriction of who could be part of the family changed. The goal post was shifted.  The fact that he defines the disciples as mother and brothers reminds us of how important Jesus views family to be, yet at the same through his words Jesus elevates others into his family. Whereas Sarah sought to exclude Jesus seeks to include and as we know to include others who society and community often rejected. 

To reimagine Adams words, possibly a little controversially, “the God of the Bible is, in fact, the God who hears the cries of the oppressed and outsiders, the God of empathetic solidarity” – with First Nations peoples, Yugambeh and Quandamooka, and all of with First Nations peoples across the globe who experience European invasion; with modern slaves who work in sweat shops and mines, and child labourers who produce the things which we consume; with the poor, the unemployed, the lonely, and the forgotten; with those whose journey to find their own identity in their gender and sexuality is more complex than we can begin to imagine; with refugees from climate and from wars who find themselves in inhospitable countries; and from any who would be sent out like Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.” These are the people whom God hears and sends Jesus into the world to bring the peace of God which surpasses all our understanding. 

So, as we celebrate 46 years of the Uniting Church, 46 years of being fallible and frail humans before a gracious God I am led to ask. What does it mean for us to be the Uniting Church when we know God as a God who includes the outcasts and the dispossessed? How does this transform our understanding of what it means to be Redland City Uniting Church? How does this transform our understanding about what it means to be the South Moreton Presbytery or the Queensland Synod or the Uniting Church in Australia? How does it challenge what it means to be faithful to following the way of Jesus who invites us and challenges us not to elevate those who are like us above others and in so doing be like Sarah, who put her family first? What does it mean for us to elevate others who are not us, who are not like us into our family and into our midst? 

The words of the Statement to the Nation made in 1977 ring in my ears: 

We affirm our eagerness to uphold basic Christian values and principles, such as the importance of every human being, the need for integrity in public life, the proclamation of truth and justice, the rights for each citizen to participate in decision-making in the community, religious liberty and personal dignity, and a concern for the welfare of the whole human race.

We will challenge values which emphasise acquisitiveness and greed in disregard of the needs of others and which encourage a higher standard of living for the privileged in the face of the daily widening gap between the rich and poor.

We are concerned with the basic human rights of future generations and will urge the wise use of energy, the protection of the environment and the replenishment of the earth’s resources for their use and enjoyment. (UCA Statement to the Nation 1977)

Reconciling Ishmael and Isaac

Whenever I open up the Old Testament and consider preaching about it I must admit I always do so with a sense of trepidation.  The stories are so often gritty and unsavoury and confusing and more often than not need an M rating, if not an R rating.

The sordid story of the relationship between Sarah and Abraham and Hagar is a prime example.

Sarah and Abraham are getting on in years.  Sarah is well past a child bearing age and the decision is made, with Sarah’s encouragement, to use the slave girl Hagar as a surrogate.

Hagar, as we know from today’s reading, conceives and bears a son called Ishmael but somewhat to everyone’s surprise Sarah then bears a son Isaac.

Despite the original encouragement to use Hagar it is clear that the tension and jealousy boil over resulting in the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael from the community.

Within the story, from our perspective, we have many strange ideas and ethical decisions being made that certainly can add to our confusion about how we are to live. 

There is the presence of slaves, the use of a girl as a surrogate, the miraculous birth of another child, derision by Hagar and jealousy from Sarah, vacillation from Abraham, rejection and exclusion.

As much as it might be easy to see God choosing Isaac over Ishmael, Sarah over Hagar, it is important to listen carefully to what occurs and consider what grace might mean in this context and how that might challenge we who live now.

 

In desperation, Hagar discards her son under a tree, not wanting to witness his death.  Yet, God intervenes as he hears Ishmael.  The name Ishmael literally means “God hears” and the name had been understood to connect with the concept that God has heard and fulfilled a promise.

Ishmael is saved, as is his mother, and we hear that a new future is made for them.

Despite, God choosing Isaac for a particular future, establishing God’s people Israel.  Ishmael is also given a future and a people will be established through him.  It is important to understand that there are many claims made around Ishmael, in particular he is seen, not only as a significant prophet by Muslims, but an ancestor of Muhammad. 

Abraham had been promised to be the father of many nations and so in the line of Ishmael we see a promise of God being fulfilled in a different way.

Now, whilst it may be that Paul in his letter to the Galatians associates the early Christians with Isaac and that Hagar and her son were driven out as slaves there can be no denial that God listened to Ishmael and that in Ishmael God’s promise to make Abraham the father of many nations is fulfilled.

This reality indicates a number of things to us.  God has a concern for people in their lives – he does not desire the death of Hagar and Ishmael, he desires for them a life and a future.  God listens to people whether they are part of the so called chosen community or not.  The presence of other nations, even other religions, other than Israel does not appear to worry the Creator.  In fact, if anything quite the opposite appears to affirm the fulfilment of the promise that Abraham will be the father to many nations.

As followers, of Jesus Christ, who believe that God’s grace is unconditional and that we are recipients and witnesses to this grace it would seem to mean that this raises serious questions as to how we might respond to this story by how we treat others.

Firstly, to say that the behaviour of both Sarah and Abraham is far from perfect and assumptions we make about those who live as God’s people being better than others should always be taken with more than a little scepticism.  Sarah’s jealousy and Abraham’s questioning plot a course for the dehumanising manipulation and treatment of others.

Whilst Abraham and Sarah may have driven Hagar and Ishmael out God does not desert them and so if we believe in the reconciliation of all things in Christ does this not involve welcoming those that may have been driven out back in?  How can the line of Ishmael and Isaac be reconciled?

In practical terms, this raises serious questions for us as Australians in terms of our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.  And, as Christians, in the way in which we engage with people not just of Islam but of other faiths generally.

The story reminds us that God listens and God cares and despite the anomalies we might find in the story and in the fragmented world in which live hope can be found for those who are considered outsiders or exiles as much as for those consider insiders or chosen ones.

In this our faith is humbling and challenging.  How do move beyond our fears and jealousies, the desire to protect our inheritance, and live re-presenting such a gracious God to others, especially those who are rejected and disowned and suffering and fleeing and seeking hope?

God Tests the Covenant

by Peter Lockhart

I am not preaching on the lectionary this week but here is my sermon from 2007 on the story of Abraham and Isaac Gen 22:1-14.

I said to someone the other day that if I allow the Old Testament passage to be read in today’s service then I must also preach on it. This is simply because of the challenging and disturbing nature of the story. I would also say that this sermon comes with an M rating – for a mature audience, for the story in itself should carry such a label.

The story of God’s testing of Abraham is one which raises all sorts of questions and has been much meditated upon and written about in the history of Biblical studies. The idea that God would test a man by asking him to sacrifice his son is utterly distasteful. It is a horrific tale so far beyond comprehension that at face value it can cause a person to ask, ‘Is this really the kind of God I want to be associated with?’ A God who asks for infanticide!

But digging deeper into the narrative that has already unfolded for Abraham the extent of what he is ask to do goes far beyond this. Abraham was an elderly man and in ancient times the future and hope of a person was intricately tied to having children, particularly sons. Abraham and Sarah had waited so long, and eventually had used a surrogate, one of their servants Hagar, to produce the heir Ishmael whom Abraham had loved as his son.

Then in the midst of human impossibility for Sarah, Sarah conceived and bore Isaac, even though she was in her eighties and had laughed at God’s promise for the provision of this child. With a true son to be the heir of Abraham and Isaac, Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Abraham questioned God on this matter and found reassurance that God would deal well with Ishmael and make a nation from him. And so Abraham sent his first born son away confident in God’s promise that his name and his nation would rise through Isaac.

This sets more starkly in its context the test which God brings to Abraham. It is not simply the request to kill his son, which is abhorrent enough in itself, but the request to kill the son long waited for to fulfil the faithfulness of God to Abraham and Sarah and who was also promised to provide a future and a hope for them and the world.

The question is no longer simply how could God ask a man to kill his own son but how could God command Abraham to do something which seemed to so contradict what God had already done: his faithfulness in providing Isaac.

For listeners to the story and readers of the scripture the story opens with the revelation that this is to be a test for Abraham. Maybe in being told this the blow of what is asked is softened. We might reasonably imagine that God whilst asking this horrific thing does not really intend for Abraham to carry out the act. Yet what we need to understand is that Abraham does not know this is a test he bears the full emotional force of this divine command and his faithfulness to God, his trust is astounding.

One of the reasons Abraham’s faith here is so astounding is that on other occasions when God had made such grave decisions Abraham had questioned God. When God sought to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, veritable dens of iniquity, Abraham had pleaded on their behalf. When Sarah told Abraham that Hagar and Ishmael were to be sent away Abraham was deeply distressed and questioned God.

But here, now, in this story, when asked to kill his son we are told, “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.” No questioning, no pleading on Isaac’s behalf; just a mechanical going through the motions. Could it be that he was simply numb with the shock and horror of what he was to do? Or could it be that in the face of previous impossibilities Abraham placed his trust in God to create another possibility so that his blood line could survive?

The Rabbis called this story the binding of Isaac. What do we do with it? How can we reconcile this image of God with the God of love whom we wish to proclaim? For even if we think that God was never really going to let the act be carried out how can we countenance such terrible games played with the lives of mortals?

Whilst Abraham’s faith is upheld in the letter to the Hebrews, do we really want to have such a blind mechanical faith that when we hear God’s voice we are obedient to the point of acting in such terrible ways? For me this makes us no different to those Christians who have placed bombs in abortion clinics or the terrorists who strap explosives to themselves and walk into crowded market places. How do we discern God’s voice and differentiate it from other voices we may hear? The voice that many a murderer has claimed has spoken to them – go into this place, or that, and kill in my name! Is our faith so blind, so unquestioning, so obedient that it cannot discern the inherent evil in such actions?

These are disturbing questions, questions that cut us to the core and this very story has been enough for people to reject God and the Biblical witness because of these kinds of issues.

Yet for me the Bible does contain the witness of God’s love for the world, the coming of Jesus, the story of the covenant and if I am to accept the stories of faith it tells then I must, you must, be able to give an account for the inclusion of the difficult passages of scripture just as much as we want to hold on to the sentimental passages that fill us with warm and fuzzy feelings.

For me to think again on this passage means taking a different perspective, to ask is there something that I am not seeing in the story? Is there something more at stake in the request of faithfulness by Abraham? What really hangs in the balance? Is there a different perspective?

We know what hangs in the balance for Abraham – his son, Isaac, so with this in mind we have to look from the perspective of the other stakeholder in the test: God! What does God risk in this encounter? What do we learn about God?

In asking this unseemly act of Abraham God puts at risk the very covenant he has entered into with Abraham, a covenant that began many years early when he asked Abraham to leave his father’s house. The Old Testament scholar Terrence Fretheim reverses the questions for us, he asks:

“Is this not only a test of Abraham’s faith in God, but also of God’s faith in Abraham?” Fretheim assumes this is the case as he asserts, “God places the shape of God’s own future in Abraham’s hands, in the sense that Abraham’s response will affect the next move that God makes… Something is at stake for God in this matter”

What is at stake for God is the covenant relationship and the possibility that what God has invested in by entering into covenant with Abraham will fail. If anything the trust that Abraham exhibits that God can work this situation out ups the ante for God. The scripture poses the question can God really be trusted or will God require the infanticide that Abraham has been commanded to commit?

When Abraham says in response to Isaac’s question about where the sacrifice is Abraham declares his trust and his hope that God will provide a lamb. Just as there is a lot riding on the outcome for Abraham so too God is placed in the position of being tested – “can this God really be trusted”, maybe even “should we love this God”?

As the story unfolds we see that God can be trusted… a lamb is provided and Isaac is spared. In the end we find that God’s trust in Abraham was warranted and vice-versa, Abraham’s faith in God was reasonable even in the face of the bizarre command that Abraham received.

There are many lessons we might ponder for ourselves from this story not least of which is how we approach our understanding of difficult passages. There are also many questions left hanging.

I want to finish by raising just two issues one to do with the nature of human freedom and the other to do with the nature of God.

In this story what Abraham will do appear to be unknown by God, Abraham has genuine freedom to act as he will and what he does will have consequences. Whilst in other parts of the Bible we might have a sense of God predetermining things this story indicates that God entrusts to human beings the freedom to respond, or not, the commands God gives. God is no puppeteer pulling all the strings as it were. If Abraham did not have a choice, or if the all knowing God knew what Abraham would do then the test was a furphy, there was no real test just an expected outcome. This raises questions for me in terms of human freedom and God’s knowing which are a little too difficult for me to explore at this point, suffice it to say that we have freedom in our choices and maybe the possibilities of our choices are unknown not simply to us but to God.

This is a vital principle to bring out in the second issue which is the willingness of God to be vulnerable in the context of the freedom of human response. Ultimately this vulnerability is exposed in the story of Jesus of Nazareth in whom we believe God was fully present yet at the same time was fully human. Jesus resistance of temptation and choice to walk all the way to the cross involves real choice, a real risk it could have gone otherwise. If this was not the case then it was all a charade.

Ultimately God’s choice of vulnerability leads to a response of rejection and condemnation – Jesus is betrayed, deserted, condemned and hung on the tree by human hands. Whilst Abraham stayed the course and followed the command when God becomes fully vulnerable in being one of us human beings reject God.

The grace present in the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection though is that whilst humanity rejects this God who is so freely vulnerable God’s choice is to renew the covenant and in Jesus bear that rejection so that we might remain with God in that promised relationship.

There are times that confronted by the complexity of life and the complexity of the Biblical message we might rather turn away. As I contemplated the story of Abraham and Isaac this week I wondered how could any of us believe in a God who would ask such a thing of a father. And, I must be honest that this was a very personal response to the concept of killing a son. Yet as I have struggled with the passage and the questions it raises maybe the question I might now rather ask is, “How can I not be willing to be faithful to this God who would be so willingly vulnerable to those he created by giving them, us, so much freedom?”

I do not think we have covered everything in this story by a long shot but maybe, just maybe, despite its macabre and horrific nature we have found some reason for its presence and for our own faith to continue.