Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 25, 2023 “Hope Survives” Genesis 21: 8-21 – Common English Bible The boy grew and stopped nursing. On the day he stopped nursing, Abraham prepared a huge banquet. 9 Sarah saw Hagar’s son laughing, the one Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham. 10 So she said to Abraham, “Send this servant away with her son! This servant’s son won’t share the inheritance with my son Isaac.” 11 This upset Abraham terribly because the boy was his son. 12 God said to Abraham, “Don’t be upset about the boy and your servant. Do everything Sarah tells you to do because your descendants will be traced through Isaac. 13 But I will make of your servant’s son a great nation too, because he is also your descendant.” 14 Abraham got up early in the morning, took some bread and a flask of water, and gave it to Hagar. He put the boy in her shoulder sling and sent her away. She left and wandered through the desert near Beer-sheba. 15 Finally the water in the flask ran out, and she put the boy down under one of the desert shrubs. 16 She walked away from him about as far as a bow shot and sat down, telling herself, I can’t bear to see the boy die. She sat at a distance, cried out in grief, and wept. 17 God heard the boy’s cries, and God’s messenger called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “Hagar! What’s wrong? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy’s cries over there. 18 Get up, pick up the boy, and take him by the hand because I will make of him a great nation.” 19 Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well. She went over, filled the water flask, and gave the boy a drink. 20 God remained with the boy; he grew up, lived in the desert, and became an expert archer. 21 He lived in the Paran desert, and his mother found him an Egyptian wife. At the tender age of 70, Terah became a father, ultimately of 3 boys. A few decades later, when his children had already started having their own children, he decided to move his whole family to a new country and start over again. Why not? He had a whole lot of living yet to do.[1] After Terah died, one of his sons decided to leave the clan and set off to pursue his own dreams. He took his nephew and his wife and his possessions and they set off. Young like his father, he was only 75 years old when he made this major life change. But soon after they settled in this new land, a famine hit. Desperate, they fled to another country and lived there as immigrants. His 65-year-old wife was a stunning beauty, a woman named Sarai. For whatever reason, when they arrived as immigrants in this country, if anyone asked, he told her to lie and say she was his sister instead of his wife. Indeed, that’s what she did when someone saw how beautiful she was and took her to meet the king. The king was taken by her and she moved in to live as part of the king’s haram. Meanwhile, her husband worked hard and prospered – adding donkeys and camels and servants to his belongings. But one day the king discovered Sarai was already married and, heartbroken, expelled the couple from his country. But they were allowed to take all their considerable wealth with them, which by this time not only included livestock but gold and silver. In fact, they had so much stuff, he and his nephew had to part ways because there wasn’t enough land for both of them. But there was one thing they didn’t have. They didn’t have heirs for all this wealth. Children. But if Robert DeNiro can become a dad again at age 79 and Al Pacino at 83, why not. Well, while Sarai may have been stunningly beautiful, biologically… you know. She decided to get creative to solve this issue. Have you picked up who this story is about? Sarai told Abram, now 86 years old, that he should sleep with her maid, a slave named Hagar. He did as she said but when Hagar got pregnant, Sarai fell into a jealous rage and treated Hagar so harshly, she ran away. Sarai then blamed Abram for listening to her. A messenger found Hagar along a desert spring and told her to return to Abram and Sarai and when she gave birth, Abram named their son Ishmael. Thirteen years later, Abram was told once again he would become a father. This time through his wife Sarai. He was now 99 years old and he fell on his face laughing at the idea of a 90-year-old woman giving birth – although she might not have been so amused. But God was serious and as a sign of this, from that day forward, they were renamed Abraham and Sarah. As you heard last week, one day some strangers passed by and Abraham pleaded that he may offer hospitality to them – a place to stay, some food to eat. While the food was being prepared, they told Abraham that when they passed by a year later, Sarah will have given birth to a son. Sarah overheard and laughed to herself, but one year later they indeed had a newborn son named Isaac. Sarah said, “God has given me laughter and everyone who hears about it will laugh with me.” And that’s where our reading today begins: “The boy grew and stopped nursing.” But as you heard, the story takes a very dark turn. Nearly 40 years ago, feminist scholar Phyllis Trible wrote a groundbreaking book called Texts of Terror.[2] They are texts in the Bible that are particularly disturbing. This is one of them. Most people think of Hagar, if anyone thinks of her at all, as a minor character at best. But Black womanist theologians, like Dr. Delores Williams, have long embraced Hagar as a curiously familiar and haunting story.[3] Black women hear in Hagar the stories of their own mothers and grandmothers who worked as domestics. They hear familiar stories of children born without their consent, of masters and those who are enslaved. They recognize pretexts created by white women that have resulted in getting fired or their children being treated more harshly and unfairly or even killed. For example, because someone claimed he had whistled at a white woman, Emmet Till was murdered. Hagar spoke up, which Sarah didn’t like. Likewise, Black women have heard themselves called uppity and worse for speaking up for themselves. Finally, Hagar was a woman forced out and abandoned, given almost nothing with which to survive. And yet she did. Just as Black, indigenous, and women of color do every day. Dr. Renita Weems said Hagar feels like a story we almost know by heart. In her book called Just a Sister Away she spoke of Hagar’s economic exploitation, sexual exploitation, and she laments, “Women betraying women when mercy could have been shown “just a sister away…”[4] But that’s the power of patriarchy – hierarchies of race, sex, and economics – that create suspicions instead of coalitions. True in the Bible. True, oh so true, in our world today. Our first encounter with this dynamic happens when Sarah felt that Hagar was treating her contemptuously. Was she really? Or was Sarah feeling insecure and created a pretext for jealousy. She complained to Abraham who told her that it’s her problem. Do whatever you want. The text says Sarah treated Hagar harshly. That’s also known as abuse. Hagar ran away. But this is where the text is truly terrible: An angel told her to return and “submit.” Then in today’s text, you heard Sarah worry that Hagar’s child will inherit Abraham’s birthright because he is the oldest, which would normally be true, except in this patriarchy, Hagar is a slave so the child born to her belonged to Sarah. And yet Sarah didn’t want to take any chances so she once again created a pretext to force Hagar to leave. She claimed that the teenage Ishmael was making fun of the toddler Isaac. And this time she demanded that Abraham do the dirty work. Send her away. Abraham agreed and sent them away with only a little bread and some water. That couldn’t possibly have been enough for them to survive in the wilderness, which was perhaps the point. And sure enough, the water ran out. Eventually Hagar couldn’t bear the suffering of her son so she left him under a tree and walked far enough away not to hear his agony or see his death. But you heard how this story ends. God heard his cries and sent a messenger. Hagar opened her eyes and saw a well. So, is this a story where it all worked out in the end? Once upon a time and happily ever after. After all, she revived Ishmael and he grew strong and became the ancestor of all Muslims, just like Isaac grew up and became the ancestor of all Jews and Christians. As members of the three Abrahamic faiths, these are our epic origin stories. An answer to who are we and where do we come from. But wait a minute. What about Hagar? What is the redeeming quality in this story for her? Delores Williams answered, “God is about both the liberation of the oppressed as well as their comfort and survival.” And sometimes the best that can come from a situation is survival. And a story in which someone as far out on the margins as Hagar survives, is liberating. As Williams said, sometimes all we need to know is that God is with us in our struggle, not why has God not taken us out of it yet. That is true no matter what our struggle might be. And we all have our own. What are you struggling with today? Remember that Hagar survived. These are our stories, within the larger epic story. My story and your stories are real, with lots of challenging, hard to hear, dynamics. Take these seriously. And then with all of the horrible things that happened to Hagar, remember that when she opened her eyes, she saw a well. She quenched her thirst and survived. Was the well there the whole time? Are we sometimes so consumed by something that we don’t see what is right in front of us? Maybe grief, or are we sometimes so busy that we look right past what is right there? No, there! Or are we sometimes so mad that we can see straight? Or are we so hopeless, we only look down, not forward? If only we lifted our heads… Hope. Like the well. God put it there. Hope. Put it in front of us every day. Whether or not we see it, like the well, hope is always waiting for us to discover it. We are the descendants of Hagar and Abraham and Sarah who persisted. And some days, that’s enough. The words of the next song say: You can take everything I have You can break everything I am Like I'm made of glass Like I'm made of paper Go on and try to tear me down [but] I will be rising from the ground Like a skyscraper[5] I will be rising from the ground The picture above is the road between Miles City, Montana, and Denver. This lonely section by Biddle hardly ever had vehicles on it - occasionally a few semi-trucks. And no cell service. [1] He lived to the ripe old age of 205 [2] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984 [3] Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993 [4] Renita J. Weems, Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible, San Diego: Luramedia, 1998 [5] Demi Lovato
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Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 18, 2023 “Juneteenth is Our Story” Luke 4: 16-21 - Common English Bible Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. 17 The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, 19 and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.[a] 20 He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. 21 He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.” One of my first classes in seminary was Old Testament 101. Many of our other classes the first week began with story sharing, getting to know professors and classmates, but not Dr. Merrill. He walked into the classroom, placed his thick binder of lecture notes on the podium, and said, “Let us bow our heads in prayer.” From this first interaction, we knew he was serious about his task of preparing pastors to preach from Holy Scripture. No other professor had begun class with prayer. After his amen, he opened his binder and said, “And now we begin at the beginning.” We all waited to hear his deep and melodious voice, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” Dr. Merrill had a wonderful Bruce Ramet kind of voice. Instead, he said, “A wandering Aramean was my father.” We looked at each other with confusion. He started in the 26th chapter of the fifth book – Deuteronomy. I wanted to tell him that’s not the first book in the Bible, but he probably knew that. In fact, we didn’t reach Genesis, chapter one, verse one, until the next semester in Old Testament 102. The phrase “A wandering Aramean” dates back 2,000 years before the Common Era and, according to some scholars, is one of the oldest phrases given human breath.[1] Remarkably, it is found in fragments of some of the earliest writings ever found, dating back 1,800 years BCE, making it literally, or at least close to it, the first thing ever written that is in the Bible. Genesis wasn’t written down until more than a thousand years after that! “A wandering Aramean was my father” was a key phrase that shaped a people around a common narrative. But first, the word “wandering” sounds kind of quaint. We may imagine wandering as strolling through the cobblestone streets of an old European city or popping in and out of antique stores. Who is a wanderer? Maybe a traveler full of dreams written in a journal while sipping coffee. But the Hebrew word for wandering is actually closer to one who is destitute, desperate. The Common English Bible makes this clear: “My father was a starving Aramean.” To hear that line was to know that the story to follow tells us who we are. Our origin story is Deuteronomy 26, verse 5, our father was a starving Aramean who “went down to Egypt, living there as an immigrant with few family members, but that is where he became a great nation, mighty and numerous. 6 But the Egyptians treated us terribly, oppressing us and forcing hard labor on us. 7 So we cried out for help to the Lord, our ancestors’ God. The Lord heard our call. God saw our misery, our trouble, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with awesome power, with signs and wonders 9 [and] brought us to this place and gave us this land—a land full of milk and honey.” And then the story continues, “10 So now I am bringing the early produce of the fertile ground that you, Lord, have given me.” This story leads us into instructions about tithing. Can you believe it? The oldest writing in the Bible leads to what we call stewardship! It is about responding to what God has done in our lives, but specifically demonstrated through tithes that support “immigrants, widows, orphans, and Levites,” meaning the ones who served as priests. Get this. The earliest form of tithes tied to one of the oldest stories includes making sure immigrants “can eat in your cities until they are full.” The Bible says so, literally, in Deuteronomy 26: 12. Not flown to another city and dumped at the door of a church. But I’ve gotten off track. It’s an invitation to stewardship but also expresses yearning for liberation. The oldest story in the Bible is not only about us but about our God who frees people suffering from cruel treatment and forced labor and also a promise that one day people would live in a land flowing with milk and honey. And in fact, reflecting back, now they were. In our country, it took a Civil War, waged for the soul of our nation, that killed more than 600,000 soldiers and even more citizens, to end the enslavement of people. Unfortunately, this is not only the oldest story in the Bible but one continually repeated. How could anyone think God would approve of anyone enslaving or being enslaved. Despite this clarity, yet President Lincoln said, “my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” Which side seems quite clear. Just use the words of scripture and replace Egyptians with slaveowners. Slaveowners “treated us terribly, oppressing us and forcing hard labor on us. 7 So we cried out for help to the Lord, our ancestors’ God. The Lord heard our call. God saw our misery, our trouble, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out… with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with awesome power, with signs and wonders 9 [and] brought us to this place and gave us this land—a land full of milk and honey.” Except the story in America didn’t end this way – yet. No milk and honey. No 40 acres and a mule. Compensation was given to those who dared offend God by claiming the right to own people as property to do with whatever they wished. They were paid for their “loss of labor” but those who were forced to labor were only given new ways to be enslaved, lynched, segregated, and brutalized. That is, those who were even informed of their freedom from bondage. Out in the hinterlands, in places like Texas, people continued to defy God’s design for human freedom. They knew of the Emancipation Proclamation. They knew the Confederacy had been brought down in humiliating defeat, they lost and surrendered, but they kept it a secret as long as they thought they could get away with it. Enter Juneteenth and General Granger’s now-famous Order No. 3. I told the story last year about Juneteenth that General Granger had not been given the task of going around sharing the news of emancipation. He and his company were on their way to secure the Mexican border from the invading army of Napoleon. The French were establishing colonies in Mexico so the southern border had to be secured from the French. It was while they were on their way for that assignment that a terrible storm hit, bad enough to cause their ships to seek shelter. The storm forced the transport ships to anchor in Galveston Bay on June 18, 1865. The next day they went ashore and discovered thousands of people still enslaved, working in the ports and houses and fields. And so, Order No. 3 was written.[2] But what if there had been no storm? When would word of emancipation, freedom, reached Texas? You know how storms are sometimes called Acts of God? I’ve never liked that. But at least in this case, I’m glad for such an Act of God storm – you know, “God’s strong hand and outstretched arm, with awesome power, with signs and wonders” that forced a ship to find shelter on the shore of Galveston Bay. “The Lord heard our call. God saw our misery, our trouble, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out…” Juneteenth may be a new federal holiday but it’s an enactment of one of the oldest stories in the Bible. This story makes me think that sometimes we need to thank God for the storms that pass through our lives. Sometimes we need to thank God for storms that take us off track, never knowing where we might be led or what we might be called to do. Never knowing who is waiting for us. Or as Marla would ask, where is the gift in this storm? This summer we will follow the grand sweep of stories that shape who we are in the Judeo-Christian tradition, starting with the call of Abram and Sarai to pick up and move by stages to a land which would be revealed. That was last week’s reading from the lectionary. Today, Sarah laughed at the absurdity that she, a 90-year-old woman without any children and her 100-year-old husband would one day have so many descendants, it would be just as easy to count sand on a beach than the generations that would follow. Just look though. Count all the adherents of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, billions on the earth, just counting today, and you will see it was no laughing matter. Next week Hagar, then Rebekah, the fighting twins Jacob and Esau, sisters Leah and Rachel, Jacob wrestling in the night, Joseph sold by his 12 brothers, slavery in Egypt, Moses and freedom and complaining in the wilderness, the 10 commandments and golden calves, and finally the promised land. This is our story for we are all descendants of a certain wandering Aramean, we are all part of a biblical narrative that calls forth freedom and liberation, whether our own or as participants with God. Just like Juneteenth is all our story – the story of our nation yet called to live more perfectly into freedom for all by each of us taking a stand today:
And then we shall all be free. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2008/dec/23/religion-christmas-bible-deuteronomy#:~:text=%22A%20wandering%20Aramean%20was%20my%20father.%22%20It%20goes%20back,2000%20BC%20and%20probably%20before. [2] Jayne Marie Smith, Sojourners, June 17, 2021 |
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