Genesis 21:8-21
Matthew
10:24-39
Family Plot
In the wake of the
decision to allow Presbyterian ministers, if they so choose, to perform same
sex marriage ceremonies I’ve noticed a lot of people on social media bemoaning
the decline of Biblical marriage and family.
I’m not sure where those folks are getting their definition of Biblical
marriage and family, but it is definitely not from passages like the two
we just read.
From Genesis we heard the
story of Abraham and his wife and his slave girl and his sons, one son,
Ishmael, with Hagar, the slave girl, one son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah. This was not an uncommon arrangement in
Biblical times or indeed throughout the Bible.
The need for the male line to continue was considered more important
than anything. Men needed sons,
daughters didn’t count and infertility meant you just went out and got another
woman and married her or not in order to procreate the male of the
species.
Genesis chapter 16 tells
us it is actually Sarah, who told Abraham to father a child with Hagar, her
Egyptian slave. God had promised
descendants to Abraham, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. But like too many women, Sarah did not
conceive. So she decided that if her
husband needed a son, at least she could choose who the other woman to bear
that son would be.
But after the birth of
Ishmael, God renewed his promise to Abraham and said that Sarah would indeed
bear him a son. Sarah, who had been
through menopause at this point and who was eavesdropping on the conversation
burst out laughing at the notion. But
God always gets the last laugh and Sarah did indeed conceive and bear a son,
Isaac.
That’s when the plot gets
ugly. Abraham gave a feast when Isaac
was weaned, a traditional feast, to celebrate the child’s survival of what was
then a perilous infancy. But at the
feast, or immediately after, she saw Ishmael, the son of Hagar, playing with
Isaac. Oh right. That won’t do at all.
So Sarah went to her
husband and said, “Get rid of them, cast them out! You know who I mean that slave woman and her
son! They need to go. I do not want the child of that slave woman
inheriting with my son.” Sarah could not
even bring herself to say Hagar and Ishmael’s names.
Abraham was very
distressed at this, “on account of his son,” apparently, not on account of
Hagar. But God intervenes and tells
Abraham, that Hagar and Ishmael will be alright, indeed, God will make a great
nation of Ishmael, too.
What follows is one of the
most poignant passages in the entire Bible.
Abraham takes some bread, a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He puts Ishmael on her shoulder and sends her
away. Alone with her child, Hagar
wanders around until all the water is gone.
When there is no more water, Hagar puts her son under a bush and then
goes some distance away to weep. She
goes some distance away so she will not see her son die.
But once again, God
intervenes and tells Hagar not to weep, not to fear, but to hold her child’s
hand. And she looks up, and there is a
well.
Ishmael does grow up in
the wilderness; he becomes an expert with the bow. His mother gets a wife for him from her home,
Egypt. Tradition tells us that Ishmael
is the father of the Arab people.
According to the Bible, Isaac is the father of the Jewish people. They are two sons of different mothers that I
honestly believe that God intended to live side by side in peace. Sadly, like so much that God intended, that
has not yet come to pass.
When you think about it,
this Family Plot that could have come from a soap opera or a reality TV show
airing today echoes down through the centuries to our very lives today. Who is in, who is cast out? Families are still having these fights in our
own time.
Frederick Buechner says
that of this family plot, “it is the story of how in the midst of the whole
unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making
marvelous promises and loving everybody and creating great nations like the
last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred-dollar bills.”
That’s the real takeaway from this story and indeed from much of scripture,
that no matter how we fight and abuse and ignore, there is God, loving
everybody, the last of the big time spenders.
Jesus, however, is not
much help in creating family unity in the passage we heard from Matthew this
morning. “Do not think that I have come
to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I
have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members
of one’s own household. 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…”
Jesus is using some
exaggeration here, but not too much exaggeration. And setting children against their parents? That is not going to go over with your base,
Jesus. This passage is part of a longer
set of instructions Jesus is giving to his disciples before sending them out on
their first mission trip, teaching and preaching and healing. I can almost see them exchanging nervous
glances at this point.
First, I don’t for a
second think that Jesus is anti-family.
Jesus shows love and help for many families in the course of his
ministry: the healing of Peter’s mother in law, his friendship for Lazarus and
Mary and Martha, his raising from the dead of Jairus’ daughter spring to mind
immediately. Jesus helps out and shows
love for a lot of families in his ministry.
In Biblical times, you family
was your social status, your 401K, your social security, your job, your
education, your neighbors and housemates. Family = security, religiously,
socially, commercially and economically.
Family meant you weren’t wandering around in the wilderness with no
water and a thirsty child.
Think of reading the
passage this way, I have come to separate you from your security, from your
401Ks, from your cultural ignorance, from your privilege, from your
justifications.
Jesus is about restoring
and purifying relationships. But when forced to choose between God and
security, do we choose God?
In the issues that have
faced us, as citizens of the world, as Americans, as Christians, as
Presbyterians, sometimes it feels like we are choosing between family and
Jesus. The sad thing is, people on both
sides of these issues feel like they are choosing between family and Jesus. Time will literally tell and I don’t mean
that in any kind of flippant way. As
the wise Rabbi Gamaliel said in the book of Acts of the early followers of
Jesus, “If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail, but
if it is of God, you will not be able to over throw them.” It’s a good thing for us to remember in
divisive times.
Divisive and frightening
times in our world, in our country, in our church family, in that group of
unique individuals bound together by blood and or love that we call family, these
times do not feel secure. But Jesus
never, ever promised security. Jesus
promised a changed new life now and salvation forever. Security cannot be our ultimate issue when
we look to our future, the Gospel, the love of that extravagant God, the last
of the big time spenders, must be our model.
God, who spent love so lavishly, that God got human skin and bones to
love us better and call us home, who is the model for family, for churches, for
our world.
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