Some Things Ought Not To Happen
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
Some things that happen in our world just ought not to happen. A mother decides that she does not want her newborn baby, so she wraps it in a blanket and leaves it beside a rural road. Fortunately, the baby is found by someone passing by before it dies but the ants have already begun to bite it. A community puts its trust in a man and elects him to public office. Then he uses his position to enrich himself by taking bribes and favoring the businesses of his friends. Famines occur in impoverished parts of the world. Many people die the slow agonizing death of starvation and many young children grow up permanently retarded because they were malnourished during certain critical parts of their development - even though the world is still perfectly capable of producing enough food for all of its people and surplus grain is sitting in warehouses in other parts of the world. A country is torn apart along ethnic lines and people who once lived as neighbors displace and rape and kill one another in the name of ethnic cleansing - and some do this in the name of religion - yes, in the name of the Christian religion. Certainly, everyone can see clearly that things like that ought not to happen - everyone except the people who are involved in doing them. Some things that happen in our world really just ought not to happen.
But how can we say that in our "open" culture? Anthony Bloom, the college professor who wrote The Closing Of The American Mind,1 surprised many of us by telling us that most college students today arrive on campus with one commonly held belief. That is the belief that there are no moral absolutes. Reality is what you choose to perceive it to be. Can it be that ethnic cleansing is an acceptable thing? If it is not, why not?
Could it be that our loss of moral direction - and of moral outrage - is related to our loss of any real consciousness of a higher power? Oh, yes, the ethical principles sound good in the classroom: "So act that you could will the norm of your actions to be the universal rule." It sounds good. But moral principles can easily be set aside when some person or some group thinks that they have good reason to do so.
Doesn't our belief that some things ought not to happen really need to be grounded in some belief that we live in the presence of some higher power who has a "will" that represents what is really right and wrong? Must our treatment of others somehow have to take into consideration a belief that there is some great other to whom all of the others we have to deal with in life are persons of value and not just things to be treated as we choose? No, that will of God cannot be translated into any set of rigid rules that can be imposed upon every situation. Life is just too complicated and too unpredictable for that. But if there is a living God before whom we all live our lives, there can be a living source of moral truth. Can there really be one before whom we must all live responsibly and to whom we can all hold ourselves and others accountable? Can we recover such a consciousness in our day? Would it work?
Our scripture lesson for today gives us some insight into the dynamics of what may be happening when those things that ought not to happen do happen, and it gives us some insight into what the solution may be. This story does that by showing us the dark side of some of our biblical heroes. Yes, people like Abraham and Sarah were very human. God had to work with them in terms of their humanity. But things could have worked out much better if the people involved had been willing to work with God.
Abraham and Sarah had no children. God had promised to make of their descendants a great nation, and they had hung all of their hopes upon that promise. But God had not yet given them any children, and they were getting old, and they were getting worried about whether or not there would be a fulfillment of that dream around which they had planned their lives. Instead of just trusting God to do what God had promised, Sarah decided to do something about it. She took her Egyptian maid, Hagar, and gave her to Abraham to be his concubine so that she could have a baby for them. In their culture, that was an acceptable thing to do. Ishmael was born, and they were all glad. But Hagar began to be haughty with Sarah because she had conceived a child and Sarah could not. Deep jealousy developed.
Then, when Isaac, the child God had promised, was born, Sarah demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her child away. It did not seem to matter to her that she would be sending them out into the desert to die. Abraham did not want to do that. Both of the boys were his sons and he loved them both. But jealousy, and the tendency always to live in competition, decreed that one of Abra--ham's sons was destined to be the chosen one and one was to be the outcast.
Wherever people believe that they must live in competition with each other, one is almost sure to fall into the role of the chosen, the advantaged, and the other will fall into the role of the disadvantaged, the outcast. In the human situations with which you are familiar, who are the chosen ones and who are the outcasts? Who are the advantaged and who are the disadvantaged in each family, in each class at school, in each business or industry, in each community and each nation - and in the community of nations? Can we see how, at each of these levels, there are outcasts who are struggling to push themselves in and to make a place for themselves? Can we see how the advantaged are always feeling threatened by this and reacting by defending their advantage? Can we see how the conflict keeps developing?
Stop now and put some familiar faces on these characters. In your family, who is the chosen and who is the outcast? Think hard. In your class at school, in the place where you work, in the community where you live, who are they? They are there, aren't they? Where do you fit into that picture? In what situations in your life are you the chosen? In what situations are you the outcast? To what extent does that explain whatever alienation and conflict there may be in your life and in the situations in which you live?
Both the chosen and the outcasts think they know the solution to the problem. The chosen think that they must protect their advantage by either eliminating or subjugating the outcasts. The outcasts think that their only hope is to push themselves into the position of the advantaged and to push the chosen into the position of the outcast.
Those dynamics explain an awful lot of the things that ought not to happen in our world. The mother who left her baby by the roadside explained that she had been abused, as if she was sure that excused her actions. The public official who betrayed his community's trust came from a disadvantaged race. He probably thought he was just doing what other people from the advantaged race had been doing for a long time and he may have felt that, when he was taken to task for it, he was a victim of racism. The people who stockpiled grain while famine devastated other parts of the world certainly had explanations based on what they believed about the dynamics of the marketplace. Once conflict developed between ethnic groups, each could point to atrocities committed by the other that allowed them to excuse their own actions either as self--defense or as revenge, and so the conflicts escalate.
Is there any hope that there can ever be anything but life--spoiling and life--destroying conflict between the chosen and the outcasts?
Where is God in the sad story of Ishmael and Isaac? God has another solution in mind. Even though God told Abraham that he was going to have to accommodate the jealousy of Sarah, it is clear that God loved both Isaac and Ishmael. Yes, even Ishmael, the child of his parents' unfaith, has a place in the love of God. God wants there to be a place for him in the world.
God always loves both the chosen and the outcast. God wants there to be a solution to the world's problems in which both are affirmed and in which the well--being and human dignity of both are provided for, one in which both not only respect one another but work together for the dignity and well--being of both. Why does there have to be an outcast? In God's eyes, everyone, every group, every nation is chosen. Does that sound utopian? It is obviously the only answer to the conflicts that keep tearing our lives and our world apart. Anyone who is not involved in the conflict can see that. And, if it is really what God wants, it must be a real possibility.
All of us who love God are called to want that, too. Jesus said that we are to learn to love everybody, just as God loves everybody (Matthew 5:43--48). We are called to love both Ishmael and Isaac in every situation, even the situations in which we can clearly identify ourselves with one or the other. We are called to want what is best for both and to want peace and justice between them. Can we be more courageous than Abraham was? Can we refuse to go along with those who seem to be insisting upon the rejection of either the outcast or the chosen? Can we find ways of putting creative love to work in situations of conflict? Can we find ways of becoming peacemakers?
When people can think and act in that way, it can make a difference. A certain mother and father had two sons. Both of the parents were exceptionally intelligent people. They both had advanced academic degrees. The mother was a teacher and the father was an engineer. When the first son started elementary school, he excelled just as everyone expected the child of such parents to do. But two years later his brother started school, and he did not do so well. He appeared to be a very mediocre student. People invariably compared the two boys, always to the disadvantage of the second. Some teachers who knew both boys even suggested that the second son needed some special education. But the parents would have none of that. They told everyone who would listen that the two boys were not to be compared. It was not true that one was intelligent and the other was not. They were just different. They learned differently and at different rates. If they were both allowed to learn in their own ways, they would both turn out just fine. In fact, it did turn out just that way. Both boys graduated from excellent universities and did well in their careers - and they stayed friends all of their lives. That story could have turned out very differently if the parents had not been wise enough to give each son his unique place.
Can we imagine God feeling that way about all of God's children? What would it mean for all people to believe that it is the will of God for all people to have a place? What would it mean for us to live as if that is what is really right and to try to live according to it? That could solve many of the problems that tear apart families and schools and businesses and communities, couldn't it?
Could attending to that will of God for there to be a place for everyone offer a solution to the massive destructive conflicts that tear the world apart? Right now, the world is watching a tragic conflict between the people of Israel who consider themselves the descendants of Isaac and the Palestinians who consider themselves the descendants of Ishmael. The world watches with aching hearts. Certainly, most of the people on both sides of the conflict wish that the conflict could stop and they could find a way to live together in peace. But some people on both sides, who are obsessed with hate, keep the conflict growing. And that conflict has become a sort of a caricature of a wider conflict that is growing between the advantaged and the disadvantaged peoples of the world. What would happen if the whole world could stop living out the tragic drama of conflict between the outcasts and the chosen? What would happen if we could learn to know every person and every nation as one of God's chosen and work together to make a place for each?
For some of us, that would require a real conversion. When we are caught up in the conflict, it is hard to see anything in any way except from the perspective of the conflict. And, many of us have long since stopped living with any real consciousness of a higher power. But conversions can happen. Paul spoke of dying to sin and being raised to a new life in Christ (Romans 6:1--11). By the grace of God, we can die to fear and jealousy and hate and we can be raised to a new life shaped by trust and love. Let us pray for that kind of conversion for ourselves and for all people. We all need that - because there are some things that just ought not to happen in our world.
____________
1. Anthony Bloom, The Closing Of The American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
But how can we say that in our "open" culture? Anthony Bloom, the college professor who wrote The Closing Of The American Mind,1 surprised many of us by telling us that most college students today arrive on campus with one commonly held belief. That is the belief that there are no moral absolutes. Reality is what you choose to perceive it to be. Can it be that ethnic cleansing is an acceptable thing? If it is not, why not?
Could it be that our loss of moral direction - and of moral outrage - is related to our loss of any real consciousness of a higher power? Oh, yes, the ethical principles sound good in the classroom: "So act that you could will the norm of your actions to be the universal rule." It sounds good. But moral principles can easily be set aside when some person or some group thinks that they have good reason to do so.
Doesn't our belief that some things ought not to happen really need to be grounded in some belief that we live in the presence of some higher power who has a "will" that represents what is really right and wrong? Must our treatment of others somehow have to take into consideration a belief that there is some great other to whom all of the others we have to deal with in life are persons of value and not just things to be treated as we choose? No, that will of God cannot be translated into any set of rigid rules that can be imposed upon every situation. Life is just too complicated and too unpredictable for that. But if there is a living God before whom we all live our lives, there can be a living source of moral truth. Can there really be one before whom we must all live responsibly and to whom we can all hold ourselves and others accountable? Can we recover such a consciousness in our day? Would it work?
Our scripture lesson for today gives us some insight into the dynamics of what may be happening when those things that ought not to happen do happen, and it gives us some insight into what the solution may be. This story does that by showing us the dark side of some of our biblical heroes. Yes, people like Abraham and Sarah were very human. God had to work with them in terms of their humanity. But things could have worked out much better if the people involved had been willing to work with God.
Abraham and Sarah had no children. God had promised to make of their descendants a great nation, and they had hung all of their hopes upon that promise. But God had not yet given them any children, and they were getting old, and they were getting worried about whether or not there would be a fulfillment of that dream around which they had planned their lives. Instead of just trusting God to do what God had promised, Sarah decided to do something about it. She took her Egyptian maid, Hagar, and gave her to Abraham to be his concubine so that she could have a baby for them. In their culture, that was an acceptable thing to do. Ishmael was born, and they were all glad. But Hagar began to be haughty with Sarah because she had conceived a child and Sarah could not. Deep jealousy developed.
Then, when Isaac, the child God had promised, was born, Sarah demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her child away. It did not seem to matter to her that she would be sending them out into the desert to die. Abraham did not want to do that. Both of the boys were his sons and he loved them both. But jealousy, and the tendency always to live in competition, decreed that one of Abra--ham's sons was destined to be the chosen one and one was to be the outcast.
Wherever people believe that they must live in competition with each other, one is almost sure to fall into the role of the chosen, the advantaged, and the other will fall into the role of the disadvantaged, the outcast. In the human situations with which you are familiar, who are the chosen ones and who are the outcasts? Who are the advantaged and who are the disadvantaged in each family, in each class at school, in each business or industry, in each community and each nation - and in the community of nations? Can we see how, at each of these levels, there are outcasts who are struggling to push themselves in and to make a place for themselves? Can we see how the advantaged are always feeling threatened by this and reacting by defending their advantage? Can we see how the conflict keeps developing?
Stop now and put some familiar faces on these characters. In your family, who is the chosen and who is the outcast? Think hard. In your class at school, in the place where you work, in the community where you live, who are they? They are there, aren't they? Where do you fit into that picture? In what situations in your life are you the chosen? In what situations are you the outcast? To what extent does that explain whatever alienation and conflict there may be in your life and in the situations in which you live?
Both the chosen and the outcasts think they know the solution to the problem. The chosen think that they must protect their advantage by either eliminating or subjugating the outcasts. The outcasts think that their only hope is to push themselves into the position of the advantaged and to push the chosen into the position of the outcast.
Those dynamics explain an awful lot of the things that ought not to happen in our world. The mother who left her baby by the roadside explained that she had been abused, as if she was sure that excused her actions. The public official who betrayed his community's trust came from a disadvantaged race. He probably thought he was just doing what other people from the advantaged race had been doing for a long time and he may have felt that, when he was taken to task for it, he was a victim of racism. The people who stockpiled grain while famine devastated other parts of the world certainly had explanations based on what they believed about the dynamics of the marketplace. Once conflict developed between ethnic groups, each could point to atrocities committed by the other that allowed them to excuse their own actions either as self--defense or as revenge, and so the conflicts escalate.
Is there any hope that there can ever be anything but life--spoiling and life--destroying conflict between the chosen and the outcasts?
Where is God in the sad story of Ishmael and Isaac? God has another solution in mind. Even though God told Abraham that he was going to have to accommodate the jealousy of Sarah, it is clear that God loved both Isaac and Ishmael. Yes, even Ishmael, the child of his parents' unfaith, has a place in the love of God. God wants there to be a place for him in the world.
God always loves both the chosen and the outcast. God wants there to be a solution to the world's problems in which both are affirmed and in which the well--being and human dignity of both are provided for, one in which both not only respect one another but work together for the dignity and well--being of both. Why does there have to be an outcast? In God's eyes, everyone, every group, every nation is chosen. Does that sound utopian? It is obviously the only answer to the conflicts that keep tearing our lives and our world apart. Anyone who is not involved in the conflict can see that. And, if it is really what God wants, it must be a real possibility.
All of us who love God are called to want that, too. Jesus said that we are to learn to love everybody, just as God loves everybody (Matthew 5:43--48). We are called to love both Ishmael and Isaac in every situation, even the situations in which we can clearly identify ourselves with one or the other. We are called to want what is best for both and to want peace and justice between them. Can we be more courageous than Abraham was? Can we refuse to go along with those who seem to be insisting upon the rejection of either the outcast or the chosen? Can we find ways of putting creative love to work in situations of conflict? Can we find ways of becoming peacemakers?
When people can think and act in that way, it can make a difference. A certain mother and father had two sons. Both of the parents were exceptionally intelligent people. They both had advanced academic degrees. The mother was a teacher and the father was an engineer. When the first son started elementary school, he excelled just as everyone expected the child of such parents to do. But two years later his brother started school, and he did not do so well. He appeared to be a very mediocre student. People invariably compared the two boys, always to the disadvantage of the second. Some teachers who knew both boys even suggested that the second son needed some special education. But the parents would have none of that. They told everyone who would listen that the two boys were not to be compared. It was not true that one was intelligent and the other was not. They were just different. They learned differently and at different rates. If they were both allowed to learn in their own ways, they would both turn out just fine. In fact, it did turn out just that way. Both boys graduated from excellent universities and did well in their careers - and they stayed friends all of their lives. That story could have turned out very differently if the parents had not been wise enough to give each son his unique place.
Can we imagine God feeling that way about all of God's children? What would it mean for all people to believe that it is the will of God for all people to have a place? What would it mean for us to live as if that is what is really right and to try to live according to it? That could solve many of the problems that tear apart families and schools and businesses and communities, couldn't it?
Could attending to that will of God for there to be a place for everyone offer a solution to the massive destructive conflicts that tear the world apart? Right now, the world is watching a tragic conflict between the people of Israel who consider themselves the descendants of Isaac and the Palestinians who consider themselves the descendants of Ishmael. The world watches with aching hearts. Certainly, most of the people on both sides of the conflict wish that the conflict could stop and they could find a way to live together in peace. But some people on both sides, who are obsessed with hate, keep the conflict growing. And that conflict has become a sort of a caricature of a wider conflict that is growing between the advantaged and the disadvantaged peoples of the world. What would happen if the whole world could stop living out the tragic drama of conflict between the outcasts and the chosen? What would happen if we could learn to know every person and every nation as one of God's chosen and work together to make a place for each?
For some of us, that would require a real conversion. When we are caught up in the conflict, it is hard to see anything in any way except from the perspective of the conflict. And, many of us have long since stopped living with any real consciousness of a higher power. But conversions can happen. Paul spoke of dying to sin and being raised to a new life in Christ (Romans 6:1--11). By the grace of God, we can die to fear and jealousy and hate and we can be raised to a new life shaped by trust and love. Let us pray for that kind of conversion for ourselves and for all people. We all need that - because there are some things that just ought not to happen in our world.
____________
1. Anthony Bloom, The Closing Of The American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
