Sermon from Sunday, June 18, 2017

Reading:  Genesis 18:1-15

The location for this story – the Oaks of Mamre, is sacred to this day to Jews and Muslims -- lineal children of Abraham and Sarah, and to Christians -- adopted into their family.  An ancient oak still standing in what is now the city of Hebron, shows where once there was just an oasis where, according to the family story, Abraham and Sarah settled for a spell after separating from their nephew Lot, who chose instead the fertile plain around the ill-fated Sodom and Gomorrah.  While at Mamre, Abraham and Sarah receive three visitors who tell them God’s earlier promise of a child to be born to them will still come true, in spite of their advanced years.  Sarah’s derisive laughter provides the narrator an opportunity to ask, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”  

So that’s the story of how we began – the story of mom and dad, or maybe grandmom and grandpa, and how the family came to be.  Abraham and Sarah are lineal parents to the world-wide family of Jews and Arab Muslims, and spiritual parents or grand-parents to us as well – the outsiders adopted in. 

Who would have known that such a large and influential global family would come from two people that old – Abraham 99 and Sarah 90, kind of homeless in the world, and not overly successful by worldly standards?

But they were promised great things by God – things they could never have accomplished on their own, or just by themselves.

Mom, of course – grandma, Sarah – laughs.  She always is the practical one – the one who has to make ends meet.  She knows the limits they are living within.  She sees the losses and the things given up along the way.

She is also the bitterer one.  The one who by times can be resentful.  Cynical.  And if not depressed herself, certainly depressing for others around her.

I know sometimes I’m like that, and I wonder if I get it from her.  All through my life I’ve suffered a kind of anxiety about whether I have what it takes and have what’s needed.  I second-guess my own decisions.  I worry about failure and of not measuring up.  To what, I’m not always sure – and maybe that’s why the anxiety is so difficult to deal with. 

And as I get older, it only gets worse.  I’m not ninety like Sarah, but as I look back on a long road behind and a short road ahead, I wonder sometimes if there still will be time to learn what I haven’t yet learned, become what I haven’t yet become, correct and create what I haven’t yet corrected or created.

Sometimes the doubts weigh heavy, like a great overcoat or heavy cloak weighing down the soul, limiting the mind, and keeping the body from really doing what it most wants to be able to do in the world.

So what a telling image it is of Sarah, while Abraham is chatting about the promised future with God and God’s angels – that Sarah is back in the tent, isolated and cut off, both God’s and the angels’ faces hidden from her because she is behind them, and she hidden from them because of where and how she is.

Of course she is expected to be in the tent.  It is her place to be because she is a woman of her time, and also because it is the safer place to be against any harm.

But it is also welcome to her.  It is easy and comfortable.  It is the safer place to be against having to take any risks, or trust any promise.  It’s a guard against being open and vulnerable.

So unlike Abraham – her partner, our father, our grand-father in the faith. 

He sits in the entranceway of the tent – on the threshold between what and who is inside and what and who is outside; between what we have and already know, and what may come and is yet to be seen; between what we can control and try to maintain, and what others, the world, life and even God may yet bring and reveal to us.

And when Abraham sees the three strangers approaching, does he know from the start that he is looking at angels and at the Lord?  Or does he see only strangers, three “others”?

There’s no way of knowing because Abraham doesn’t say much about it.  He tends more to listen than to talk.  He watches to see what’s going to happen, and what may emerge.  He is open, and willing to wait for what is true and good to unfold.

And on one level the hospitality he offers is nothing exceptional.  It’s the practice of the time of that kind of place.  In the wilderness and as a nomad, it’s the custom when strangers come to your encampment, to offer them water and a meal and a chance to rest.  Because who knows when you may be in the same position yourself someday, dependent on the kindness of strangers?  Not being readily hospitable is not a way for any society to be.

And Abraham doesn’t do it all by himself.  He tells Sarah to bake the cakes.  Tells the servant to prepare the calf.  Probably has other servants help bring the water, and serve the curds and milk.  The whole household is involved in this act of charity and service of others, and of openness to receive the seed of whatever holy future this present moment might hold.  As open as Abraham is to God and God’s good will, he is open as well to his need of other people to help him live within it and towards it.

And sometimes I’m like that, too – sometimes I am aware of his DNA in my spirit as well, when I am able to be open to others and to what they bring, receiving and accepting others as I know I am received and accepted, believing in the promise of something good being done in me and through me and even because of me, waiting in faithful patience for the future to be revealed, trusting in God’s good will being done even through me and living towards it even when I can’t yet see just how on Earth it will happen.

Sometimes like Abraham I come out from the tent and sit in the entranceway – on the threshold between what is and what is not yet.  And as I sit there with my father, with all our father and grand-father in the faith, it feels good to be with him and be like him – maybe even be a father for someone else in the way I am able to be open to the possibility, the presence, the promise and the power of God in the present moment – be a father, a mother, a parent or grand-parent of faith to people who for better and worse look to me – look to us, as examples of how to live in the ongoing family of faith.

A final thought, though, before I celebrate too simply the moments when I am able to find my way into the way of Abraham – we read three chapters later (in Genesis 21:1-7) that:

The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.  Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.  Abraham gave the Isaac (meaning, "to laugh" or "he laughs") to his son whom Sarah bore him... Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.  Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me."  And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?  Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."

Isaac is the son of both Abraham and Sarah together.  It's not just one or the other, but the two together and out of the relationship, the openness, and the dialogue between them -- or the tri-alogue between them and God, that new life is born and they become the blessing to the world they are promised to be.

I am both Sarah and Abraham -- both imprisoned and burdened by doubt, cynicism and regret, and open to what is not yet, but is promised, will be accomplished in me, and will be seen.  And the fruitfulness of my life comes from learning to know these two very different spiritual realities within me, the room I make for them both in my journey and in my prayers, and the ways I allow them to be in relationship and dialogue together.

Father Abraham, open to God's promise.  Mother Sarah, closed up in doubt.  What a pair you are.  And what a wonderfully complex family of children we are who God brings into the world through you.