A Sermon for 3 Pentecost and Juneteenth

by the Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm

In this morning’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we heard the second episode in the story of Abraham and Sarah, after beginning the tale with last Sunday’s reading from Genesis, in which God directed (then Abram) to leave his home and “go to the land that I will show you.”  ​

​The land, as it turned out, was first part of God’ covenant with Abraham and Sarah.
During the summer months in this first of the three-year lectionary cycle, the Matthew year, we follow the longest sequence that appears at any point in the lectionary – over the course of several months we follow the sweeping story of the tribal ancestors of Israel -

• we began last week as we peered into the tribulations and triumphs of the household of Abraham and Sarah;
• we will continue in Genesis through mid-August, tracing adventures of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and their families;
•  at the end of August we’ll continue the narrative by plunging into the Exodus story through September and October, and then finish up with snippets from Joshua and the Book of Judges in November.

We are following the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the most sacred texts in Judaism.  
I LOVE THIS MATERIAL.  Not only is it wonderful storytelling, with all the characteristics of great literature;  it is important because it is the foundation of Jesus’s faith, and therefore ours as well.
Genesis and the rest of the ancestral stories convey Israel’s knowledge of a loving God who creates the world, who is passionately engaged with and faithful to God’s people, who is continually seeking to redeem the world through drawing God’s people into relationship with God’s self.
Although I know this will be review, I wanted to spend some time this morning setting the context for this material, since we will be hearing and living with it for the next several months.
The Ancestral Narratives are mythological in nature. 

• They’re not “myth” as in “fiction”, as in “5 myths you should know about …”  fill in the blank, 
• They are “mythological” in the literary sense – like the childhood stories of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln that Americans tell, stories that are told to convey truths and values that are important to a people.
• Myths may or may not have a basis in objective fact – what is important is not their historical accuracy, but the truths they transmit.

The story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar probably does not have basis in historical fact.

• If they did live, as particular people, it would have been around 1800 BCE.
• For many, many generations their stories existed in oral tradition, handed down in families around campfires and teaching community of Israel about origins of their covenant with God.
• The stories took written form during and after Babylonian Exile – about 1300 years after Abraham, Sarah and Hagar would have lived.

But Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar are our spiritual ancestors – whether we understand them historical or symbolic figures. 
According to sacred text we share with Jews and Muslims, Abraham and Sarah were the first to know God as we know God and to enter into covenant relationship with God – 

• recognizing God as creator and protector,
• struggling to understand and follow God’s will, not only for their own benefit, but for the sake of the world’s redemption.

Their stories, and stories of succeeding generations, tell us who God is and who we are.
Today’s look into the story picks up with a promise, a laugh, and a rebuke.
Let’s look back at what came before -
The covenant God established with Abraham involved three promises, revealed over the course of several encounters:

• the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession (12:7),
• descendants who would form “a great nation” (12:2) – according to two different texts, as numerous as the stars in the sky, or as grains of sand on the beach –
• and the promise of relationship (17:7-8): “You will be my people and I will be your God”  

The offering of the promise of many descendants is what creates tension and therefore drama in the story, as Abraham and Sarah live through their prime and into their old age without bearing children.
Abraham and Sarah are imperfect people, as are all of the Bible’s human protagonists, and the plot thickens as Abraham and Sarah age without the awaited offspring.   Sarah, unable to trust God’s promise, has hatched an alternative plan, and sent her servant, Hagar, to lie with Abraham and bear a son.
But as anyone might have predicted, Ishmael’s birth introduces new strains into household and the sense of threat and drama grows.
Which is where we pick up with today’s episode.  Resting by the oaks of Mamre, Abraham spies three visitors approaching, and somehow seems to know that these are no ordinary strangers.  Abraham outdoes himself in providing hospitality:  he runs to greet them, hastens to tell Sarah to prepare a meal, and then runs to the herd to pick out the perfect calf.  All of this on 100-year old legs!
As the visitors are eating, they ask after Sarah who, we learn, is eavesdropping behind the tent flap, and they renew the promise that she will have a son “in due season”.  The storyteller reminds us that Sarah is old – we already know that she is 90 - and has passed her menopause. Listening to the visitors’ promise, Sarah laughs to herself: “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure?” 
The Lord (who, it turns out, is present in the guise of the strangers,) chastises Sarah for her laughter, speaking the line that is clearly the important point of the story: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Throughout the ancestral narratives the storytellers illustrate the faithfulness and the power of Jahweh, the one who comes through and fulfills promises, the one who overcomes all of the obstacles that the faithless human community creates.  God’s faithfulness is a truth we still need to hear, for it is still true.  Today, I think, though, we recognize that that it is our opportunity and our responsibility to work on the healing of the world, and that it is through us that God acts.
Having affirmed this important and central truth, I also want to acknowledge some of the difficulties in this story.

1. For one thing, it is terrible disheartening that God does not bother communicating with Sarah directly.  In other annunciation scenes in scripture – to Rebekah, to Hannah, and, of course to Mary – the news of a coming birth is offered directly to the mother.  Not so with Sarah. 
2. And Sarah is rebuked for laughing where just a chapter previously Abraham laughed at the same news, to say nothing of some of the other really poor choices that he made, without a word of criticism.
3. And finally, the biblical authors demonstrate no sympathy at all for the pain of infertility that Sarah admits to in her moment behind the tent flap.  “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure?” expresses the sorrowful irony that it is only after decades on unfulfilled longing, when her elderly arms will weary with holding the child, that Sarah will have the joy of motherhood.

All of which is, I think, where today’s story connects to the celebration of freedom we recognize with the Juneteenth holiday, tomorrow.
Juneteenth celebrates freedom from enslavement, recognizing the occasion when the final enslaved Americans were notified, as Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas in June 1865, that the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had liberated all persons in the United States from bondage under the system of chattel slavery.
So there it is:
Who matters?
Who is treated with respect, is worthy of being provided the basic information that affects their lives?
Just as the ancient storytellers did not regard it as important to allow Sarah a direct part in the conversation about her own childbearing, historians suggest that some slaveholders may well have withheld information about their freedom from their enslaved agricultural workers, in order to continue to benefit from their labors.1
Let us do better in our own time.
                                                                        ***
Today’s story of Abraham’s visitors and Sarah’s laughter reminds us that despite the many troubles of this broken world, ours is a faithful God, one we can trust. 
It reminds us that God’s answers for us often don’t take the shape we would choose or emerge in the time frame that we have in mind.
Is anything too wonderful for God?  Let us be the bearers of hope and the workers of justice.
 
1  “What is the history of Juneteenth?”, brittanica.com