God Hears & God Acts
Homily
by The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
John’s Episcopal Church, Bainbridge, GA, 22 June 2014, Proper 7
Year
A RCL:Genesis
21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39
My
Brothers & Sisters, St. Paul asks us: “How can we who died to
sin go on living in it?” I don't know how! All I know is that I do.
Fortunately,
in today's lesson Paul also tells us:
“So
you...must
consider yourselves dead to sin & alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus frees us from slavery to sin so that we can
consider ourselves “dead to sin & alive to God in Christ
Jesus.”
In
our first lesson, the banished slave Hagar considers herself dead as
she sits dying of thirst &
looking away so she won't see
her son die.
Why
does Hagar
carry Ishmael, who is a good bit older than Isaac, & Isaac is
at least 31.
One idea is that Ishmael suffered something that has left him lame.2
Here are some details about
lesson. . . . .
How embarrassing!
Where are those details?
I had them
right here! . . . . .
Oh! Here:
right here in front of me where I put them.
How many of you do this, too?
You search & search for something
&
later you see it right where you already
looked.
looked.
I
wonder if this is what happens to Hagar
in the wilderness when she
gives up hope.
I wonder if the well of water has been in
plain sight
& she has been so traumatized
by being thrown out of the family,
so filled with fear,
that she can't see the resource she needs is
right there.
The details:
- God tells Abraham to do what he hears Sarah tell him to do.3
- The name Ishmael means “May God hear.”4
- Notice the contrast: Abraham hears “the voice of Sarah in her lack of compassion”5 & in God's profound compassion, God hears Ishmael.6
Another
detail: Why would Abraham send Hagar & his
son
away with so little provision? According to the Jewish Study Bible,
Sarah would have decided on the provisions;
God tells Abraham to do
what she tells him:
to give extra rations would be to disobey God.7
This is not the first time
this family has experienced discord. It starts in Chapter 16 when
Sarai has yet to bear a child. (Her name changes to Sarah later, as
does Abraham's name. In Ch. 16 he is Abram when Sarai gives her
Egyptian slave-girl to him to be a surrogate mother.
Hagar conceives Ishmael &
looks down on Sarai, who gets miffed & complains to Abram, who
says:
Do what you want with her.
She deals harshly with Hagar
&
the slave runs away.
Today's
lesson is not the first time Hagar has wandered in the wilderness
&
encountered God!
After she wanders this time, carrying her son &
their scant provisions, she gives up when the provisions give out.
How
can Hagar not remember encountering God in the wilderness when she
ran away?
That time the angel of the Lord
finds her by a
spring of water in
the wilderness
& tells her to return to her mistress & submit
to her, that God will bless Hagar.
She's been in the wilderness
before & had a spring of water.
Perhaps
this time despair wipes out hope.
She lifts up her voice & weeps.
Ishmael has lifted up his voice – perhaps weeping, perhaps calling
to God for help.
God hears & responds.
God's angel calls to Hagar
from heaven, to banish her fear & to reassure her that God hears
the voice of her son & God acts.
God
opens Hagar's eyes &
she sees the well of water.
She &
Ishmael move on away from the family of Abraham, Sarah & Isaac.....
Sarah's
banishing Hagar shows us family discord, rather than the peace Jesus
proclaims.
It shows not all people appreciate family as
“a school
of perfection because of the endless opportunities it (gives us to)
exercise...(brotherly love).”8
This
story of Sarah & Hagar is one of many the Bible tells with the
“recurring theme of family discord.”9
What does it say to us who follow Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the one
who willingly dies for us?
It
reminds us that family discord is not new. In today's Gospel, it may
sound as if Jesus encourages family discord! Jesus is
telling us the cost
of discipleship.10
Jesus tells us not to have divided loyalties.
We can love our
families; we just have to love Jesus above all others.
We
see what it costs Abraham to obey Sarah because God tells him to do
as she says.
He
loses his son.
As disciples of Jesus, we owe God our first loyalty.
Jesus says “have
no fear.”
The Good News is God loves you.
God's love lives in you.
living in us, we can proclaim the
Good News:
God loves us so much that Jesus
willingly dies for us,
rises again,
& sends the Holy Spirit to be with
us always.
Empowered by love, we – you – can even
proclaim this Good News to our families.
Remember:
family IS a school of perfection
that gives us endless opportunities
to unlearn hate & to learn love.12
Bibliography
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers. 1988.
Harper’s
Bible Dictionary.
General Ed.: Paul J. Achtemeier. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1971.
Holy
Bible.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
Hughes,
Robert Davis III. Beloved
Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life.
New York: Continuum. 2008.
Jewish
Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Long,
Thomas G. What
Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith.
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2011.
The
New American Bible for Catholics.
South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.
New
Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha.
Eds.: Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University
Press, Incorporated, 1977.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
8
Hughes, Robert Davis III. Beloved
Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life.
P. 128, quoting Francis de Sales'
“Counsels to Married People” in Introduction
to the Devout Life.
Ch. 38. Pp. 270-81.
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