Lessons for His family . . .

      Before I get started, I will apologize that the sermon is not as connected to life around Advent as normal.  Those at 8am reassured me it was different, but good, but we all acknowledged it misses some of the normal applicable illustrations.  Those visiting are probably wondering what is going on.  The preacher is telling us his sermon is not as good as normal?  His members criticize his sermons?  I have been on vacation for the last three weeks, well for two weeks it was a vacation.  The place where we stay in Maine has no dependable internet access, and we simply did not bother even to turn on the television.  So when I say I was unplugged, I mean I was tuned out of the world eating seafood and ice cream.

     For my part, my time back has been far more focused on pastoral care.  I’ll talk more about that in announcements, and I promise it will all make sense.  But as they say, my mind, since my return, has been focused on other things.

     Speaking of the two weeks one week, I do bring greeting from the Vestry and people of St. Mark’s Berkeley Springs, WV.  Once Michelle found out I would be in town visiting my dad on the way home, she reached out to see if I would celebrate a Eucharist for them.  This was their first Eucharist this calendar year.  Y’all had two weeks of Morning Prayer, so you can more easily imagine the hunger and thirst for the Eucharist better.  But imagine getting only two Eucharists a year.  Like many rural parishes across our country, it is an unfortunately common experience.  They are very grateful you don’t make me rush home to celebrate another Eucharist.

     Thank you also for allowing Rev. Funmi an opportunity to officiate and preach without too much hazing.  Given the way things worked out timing wise, this was tossing her into the deep end, but everybody seems mostly to have behaved themselves.  So I am thankful to find her still willing to serve today!

     Our reading from the Old Testament is known among our Hebrew friends as the toledot of Isaac.  It is the generations or descendants or offspring of Isaac.  Those who paid attention to my sermon on the birth of Isaac in the age before my recent vacation will remember that Isaac’s name means laughter or laughing, as in Sarai and Abram have a baby at ages 99 and 100, respectively.  To put it in our vernacular, Stuart and Phocian would both have to wait a few more years before they were forced to change diapers and care for an infant.  Do not worry, ladies, I am not stupid enough to try and figure out which of you is closest to Sarai in age.  As far as I am concerned it will be decades for each of you!  Those of you laughing at all this understand why Sarai chose the name for her son.  Can you imagine?  I’m in my mid 50’s and I cringe.  How would one get down on the floor to play with a child?  I guess the real problem would be getting up, right?

     Those who pay attention to the story will notice some similarities to the story of Abram and Sarai.  That brings me to the commercial break.  In Sunday morning Bible study Larry has us watching movies on the patriarchs and matriarchs.  They are well-written, well-acted, and faithful to the Scriptures.  Ted Turner was clearly atoning for something.  If you like watching movies or videos better than reading, and you like learning about the Bible and the ANE, join us.

     Now, back to our programming.  One of the first things you will notice is the fact that God does not bless Isaac and Rachel with a child for a long time.  Remember how Abram and Sarai had to wait 26 years for God’s promise of a child?  Isaac and Rachel have to wait only 20 years.  That means she has had to live with the same whispers as her mother-in-law for nearly two decades.  That means Isaac has had to listen to the same loving counsel to put aside his wife, much like his father heard for 26 years.  Our Sunday morning movie captured that very well.

     We do not know if it took Isaac 20 years to intercede.  Maybe the two of them were trying all the “helpful” advice about conceiving a child from others in their family.  We have a lot of medical folks at Advent, but no fertility specialists.  I am sure, nevertheless, that our doctors and nurses have heard crazy stories from patients.  I have heard nutty thing from fertility doctors over the years, so I know how well-meaning but horribly wrong advice can be sincerely given and tried.  Maybe God was teaching the holy family the value of persistent prayer?  Scripture simply does not tell us why God answers this prayer of Isaac.  It tells us simply that Isaac interceded with God on behalf of his wife.  Isaac’s concern was for Rachel, not himself.  So his prayer, his conversation with God, is a bit different than that of his father.

     As is so often the case, we need to be careful what we pray for.  I guess as Episcopalians we would say that we serve a God who does more than we can ask or imagine.  God blesses Rachel with twins.  Quickly, though, this blessing begins to cause problems.  The twins are never resting.  Rachel complains that they are always wrestling in her womb.  Her discomfort gets so bad that she inquires of God to find out why the twins are so restless. 

     God tells her that two nations are in conflict in her womb.  This revelation will serve for many of God’s people as an instruction as to why the descendants of Esau and the descendants of Jacob are always fighting.  So much of genealogies instruct us that these geo-political conflicts are really family squabbles.  It explains, in part, why they go on and on and on and why they are so bitter.  Can anyone fight better or harder or longer than siblings?  I see a few knowing nods.  God reminds His people, which means us, that we all share common ancestry.  On some level, we are all family.  But in this case, they are much close family.

     Notice, too, God’s declaration about the older serving the younger.  As we work through the story this summer, or some of us watch the movies, we will be uncomfortable at the blatant favoritism shown Jacob by Rachel, the mother of both Esau and Jacob.  We live in a world that values fairness.  We cringe when we see her plotting to help Jacob because in her plotting to help Jacob, she is plotting to hurt Esau.  Before we judge her too quickly, though, how would you respond if God told you He had great plans for one of your children?  Would you not likely not pay closer attention to the one that God has favored?  We would all still love all our kids, I have no doubt, but I bet most of us would pay extra attention to the one singled out by God.

     The boys are born and named Esau and Jacob, for the red hair and grabbing of the heel.  Then, we skip to young adult twins.  Esau comes back from a day out hunting and is starving to death.  Understand, Esau is not literally starving.  His father is the richest man in the area.  As the first born son, Esau is destined to become the richest man upon the death of his father, now Abraham.  Esau has been out hunting and has had no luck.  The text makes it clear he is exaggerating his hunger.  If he ended up not eating this day, he would still live.  But like most of us, he likes to satisfy his desires immediately.  He is hungry.  And Jacob has made some good-looking stew, red stuff.  So he tells his brother to give him some.

     Jacob says not so fast.  He tells Esau he can have the stew if he will give him his birthright.  Esau is famished and does not see any value in a birthright, and so he makes the deal.  From that time forward, Esau will be described in Scripture, and in our reading today, as one who despised his birthright.  It might seem a harsh judgment to our ears, but is it?  Esau has grown up hearing the stories from grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, and others in the holy family.  Like his brother Jacob, he should value his birthright.  He should be the inheritor of the Covenant, but he is willing to trade it for some stew.  As the knight says in Indiana Jones every time I watch it at the grail scene, he chose poorly.

      Our story today contains several important lessons to which I want to draw your attentions.  First, consider the lesson on patience or perseverance.  We live in an age where we get things our way, almost immediately.  Everything from food to major purchases can be done rather quickly.  As a result, we have lost the virtues of patience and perseverance.  We, the people of God, forgot that time is yet another creation of God, that we are called to be stewards of it just like the rest of His creation.  The culture around us beats on us and hammers us with the idea we need always to be in a hurry or rushed.  We cannot afford to eat a sit down meal with family.  We cannot afford to wait too many minutes to receive our food at a restaurant.  Our time is too valuable, and we need to remind the servers of that truth, right?  And heaven forbid you lack money for a weekend trip or major purchase.  Credit cards are there for a reason, right?  Notice in just two easy examples how we, and those around us, become enslaved to our flesh, to use Paul’s words this morning, or enslaved to those who hold our debts.

     God, for His part, has a great reminder for us today.  He is the Creator of all this is, seen and unseen.  He can dd whatever He wants whenever He chooses to do it.  A few minutes ago we were all placing ourselves in Sarai’s and Abram’s places.  Well, we were trying to.  What would it really be like to have a child at their ages?  As the Scripture made clear when we read that story in June, what would it be like to be able to have all the plumbing working to have the possibility of a child?  Quit squirming.  Don’t be prudes.  Sarai names Isaac Isaac in part because she knows people are going to laugh at her and her husband knowingly.  And she shares in that laughter, in that joy.  She, who gave her husband Hagar the handmaid as a solution to God’s inability to keep His promise, learns first hand that nothing, not even old age or faulty plumbing, can thwart God’s will.

     The next lesson I want to point out today is our impotence.  It would be better had you all heard my sermon on Isaiah last week at St. Mark’s, but you should have some understanding of the fact that we are insufficient for far too many things in our lives.  We like to think that hard work or brilliance or any number of other activities or qualities enable us to overcome life’s problems.  Scripture, for its part, is most concerned with our inability to get back to God in the garden because of our sin.  How do we learn to trust God?  How can a sinful human being be restored to a holy God?  Most of us gathered here today understand our need for Jesus’ faith, for His willingness to go to the Cross, for His trust in the Father’s goodness, for us to be restored to God, at least on some level.  But notice how much in life is beyond our power, our intelligence, our hard work, our whatever.  Who can stop wars?  Who can stop droughts?  Who can end slavery?  Who can end infertility?  The list of our insufficiency goes on and on.  But we are reminded today in this story that God can.  More importantly, we are reminded that God has the will or desire to do away with all evil even as He uses evil for His own purposes.  Do any of us think that Sarai had any idea that people in Nashville would be laughing with her at her newborn predicament some 4000 years later?  Do any of us think that Esau had any idea we would be talking about his foolish choices even as we remember his re-embrace of his conartist brother in a couple decades?  But these stories were caused to written by God to instruct us, to reveal to us, these characteristics of God.  In this case, we are taught that His redemptive power is sufficient for all things, even things the world says is impossible.

     Related to that power, though, is another important lesson.  Though we are only starting the third generation of the holy family, we have learned how God works on the margins.  He is always in the business of drawing those on the fringes into His embrace, into the community of His people.  Part of why we invite the food insecure into our midst is because we have learned, we have internally digested if I might make a pun of sorts, the certainty that such is always the work of God.  Those whom society ignores are the very people whom God seeks.  And God often uses the insignificant in society’s eyes to accomplish great things.  The best reminder, of course, is Jesus.  He had nothing remarkable about Him, from the eyes of society.  He was not famously handsome or chiseled.  He was not born into power in a palace.  Heck, He was expected to be a tradesman.  But Scripture is full of other examples of a nobody in the world’s eyes being a somebody in God’s eyes and a glorious example of His redemptive grace in our eyes, beginning with Abram and Sarai and their long trek to the Promised Land.

     Another important lesson is the detail to which God is paying attention.  I will let you all in on a little secret.  When you come into my office complaining about your family, and I tell you to go read something between Genesis 12 and 49 or so, it’s because the holy family experienced your same dysfunction.  Nothing with which you struggle in families is not present in the holy family.  And I can always tell who read the story and who did not.  The Adventer who did not read the story gives me skubala-filled answers about how the lesson was encouraging.  The Adventer who read the story is shocked to learn that the author of Ecclesiastes was right, there truly is nothing new under the sun.  And I usually have to remind the latter Adventer that the story they read was about the holy family, about Jesus’ great-great-great however many times grandfather or uncle or mother or whatever.  God is keenly aware of our dysfunction and is still willing to use us for His glory, if we are willing to let Him.

     There’s one last lesson to which I want to draw your attention.  It might be the most important on this day since we are celebrating the baptism of Mara today.  In celebrating her baptism, though, we should all be reminded of our own baptisms and the consequences of the covenant that God makes with each one of us, despite our insignificance and despite our dysfunctions.  I began this sermon by naming this the generations or descendants of Isaac.  The word was toledot.  Good.  Some of you have not fallen asleep!

     The focus in Scripture shifts from the relationship of God with Abraham to His relationship with the descendants of Isaac.  Being a human family, some in the holy family make some seriously stupid or unwise choices, just like Esau today.  But through this family and despite their dysfunction and horrible choices, God will work His plan of salvation.  We know, of course, that His plan of salvation is fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the ultimate Seed of God’s promise to Abraham and to Sarah.  But as is so often the case, the Good News is even better than we first imagine.

     Today, Robyn and Patrick will make a pledge to God in front of us and Him that they will raise Mara to know God, to instruct her in His redeeming love, and to help her turn away from all those things which lead her from God.  It is a weighty promise, to say the least.  She is their firstborn child.  How many mistakes have they already made?  How will they shepherd her through her toddler years, when she seems intent upon giving mom and dad lots of grey hairs?  How will they get her through the willful years we call teenage?  How can they fight social media?  How can they overcome her friends who do not share the same values?  What if there are drunk drivers or speeding drivers?  What if there are natural disasters?  What if they are given another child?  You are laughing, and rightfully so, many of us were too stupid to understand the responsibilities of parenthood when we became parents.  And we got so focused on washing bottles or pacifiers to keep dirt out of our kids’ mouths that we missed the real dangers, those things which caused us to realize the responsibility God had given each of us in the care and instruction of that beloved daughter or son.

     For their part, Donald and Caitlin will vow to do the same.  As Godparents, their job is to support Patrick and Robyn in their efforts to raise Mara to know just how beloved she is of God.  It sounds easy in our ears.  They are the support.  The back up.  How many of us, though, had effective Godparents in our lives?  How many of us were effective Godparents in the lives of our Godchildren?

     We, of course, will all vow to God to do all in our power to support young Mara, and Robyn and Patrick, in their lives in Christ.  We will vow to celebrate with them, mourn with them, struggle with them, pray with and for them, that God’s purposes for young Mara will be fulfilled, and that she will grow into the full stature as a beloved daughter, a princess, of God.

     All these vows, though sincere, as with all things human, will fail.  And it is there that we all will do the truly heaving lifting of discipling and catechesis.  When we fail, we will repent and return to God, modeling to little Mara the true life of a disciple, the life of one who gives thanks to God for the saving faith of Jesus, for His willingness to do the hard work that we could not do to save ourselves or others. 

     It is in that living, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, that we will become a testimony and example to Mara of God’s unfailing promises to each of His children.  By virtue of all our baptisms, we are grafted into the descendants of Isaac!  The stories about which we read this week become our stories.  The promises which God makes to these individuals that we read about each week become the same promises that He makes to each one of us.  And that redemptive power about which we read becomes our glorious inheritance.  Because we are part of the holy family, because we know God loves and wills to redeem us, we can depend upon Him to see us through the trials of this life.  And though events in this life may not go the way we would like, we know that one glorious Day, all our struggles, all our failures, all our hurts will be washed away as we sit at the lap of our Father who loves each one of us dearly.

      And as a people generated from Isaac, we become a people of laughter and of joy!  We become a people who know what it is to be loved, to be in community with others who are loved and love, and to know the freedom of having been redeemed.  We become a people who give true joyful thanksgiving.  We become a people who get to invite others to share in that love and freedom, to experience the same joy and wonder as we have known, and to reserve a place at that Marriage Feast where the food, the drink, and the dancing are prepared for those who love Him and accept His calling on their lives!  Perhaps best of all, His story of redemption becomes our story, and our story becomes part of His story.  God takes each one of us who comes to Him in faith in baptism and promises to redeem us and to use us as He woos all in the world to choose Him!  It is a heady promise, to be sure.  It is a weighty responsibility, to be sure.  But because Christ has done the hard and weighty work, we are assured of God’s ability to keep that promise He makes to Mara this day just as He promised to each one of us however long ago!

 

In His Peace!

Brian†