Some days, you read the Bible and find it full of inspiring
miracles, joyful abundance, fulfilled promises. Other days it’s full of dire
warnings, division, and distress.
Today, for instance, Jesus is warning his disciples that the
gospel, taken seriously, has the power to divide even families; that the
radical new life that comes from a wholehearted relationship with Jesus can
disrupt even the closest bonds that could exist between parent and child.
And division like that is playing out in another story we
heard today, where the fulfillment of God’s promises triggers a round of family
disruption.
Sarah and Abraham have their miracle child Isaac, the
fulfillment of God’s promises. He’s healthy and growing and wonderful, and they
have been filled with joy. And then… well, then Sarah can’t stand that other
kid any more. That son of Abraham’s, that Ishmael: the son she plotted to
create so that they could know that God’s promise of descendants would be
fulfilled. Suddenly, Sarah can’t stand the legacy of her earlier experience of
God’s promises, and demands that Ishmael and his mother be exiled. “Get them
out of my house!” she says to Abraham.
That’s hard for Abraham. He loves Ishmael. And no one wants
to lose a good son. But he hears God say to him, “Do not worry. I will fulfill
all my promises to you; Ishmael will survive and his descendants will thrive.” So
he packs up some food for the journey, and sends Hagar and Ishmael away.
And God does, ultimately, protect Ishmael. He thrives and
becomes the ancestor of many tribes.
But still.
Still, the family is divided. At God’s command, or at least
with God’s endorsement. And the process is awful. Nobody comes out looking
good. Just the way it is when our
families divide, when we, for one reason or another, cast one another aside – emotionally, spiritually, physically –
today.
The tragedy of division – the division Jesus talks about,
the division we experience – is played out vividly in Ishmael and Hagar’s
story.
Because the travel rations Abraham packs up for Ishmael and
Hagar run out. They run out long before there’s any chance for them to
establish themselves sustainably outside Abraham’s household.
They are about to die of starvation and thirst, and Hagar –
unable to watch her child die – goes off to give vent to her anguish by herself,
where the child cannot see, and she cries out to God, or to an uncaring
universe.
If that doesn’t break your heart, it should.
Even if you know the end of the story.
Even if you know how the angel of God appears, tells Hagar
not to fear, repeats God’s promise that Ishmael will ultimately thrive, that
God has a great destiny for this child,
and reveals a hidden spring of water to Hagar, water that
lets her save her child’s life. Even if
you know that God was with Ishmael, and he does indeed thrive, and grow, and
father a great nation, it should break your heart.
That division Jesus talks about – son against father and
daughter divided from mother all in the process of proclaiming the gospel –
that should break your heart too. It breaks mine.
Because when we hear these stories, when we read these texts,
I think we are supposed to know that even when everything works out in the end,
God hears the tragedy that history forgets. God knows the pain that triumphant
endings gloss over. God bleeds for us and with us when we hurt one another in
the process of responding to God’s promises, in the midst of God transforming
life itself.
And seeing that tragedy with God’s eyes, God’s heart, should
inspire us to work to prevent it.
God tells Abraham to accept this division of his family, to
trust that God will still fulfill God’s promises in the face of his loss. But
God doesn’t tell Abraham to wash his hands of the results.
Abraham might have sent Ishmael and his mother out to start
a new household, a separate life, with enough of his own wealth of goats and
gold to be secure and confident in that new and separate start.
If Abraham could see with God’s eyes, he might have worked
with God to avoid the tragedy, the near starvation and despair Hagar and
Ishmael experienced in the wilderness, instead of packing up only a day or two
of travel rations, and leaving all the rest up to God.
I think you and I also have that opportunity to see with
God’s eyes, to work with God to avoid the tragedies that so often accompany
division, even division for God’s sake.
It’s probably a coincidence that as I read this story this
week, a friend posted on Facebook that she’s fasting on the 21st of
every month, because that’s about the time when a monthly ration of food stamps
run out for families; and probably a coincidence that on the 20th
and 21st of this month, as I read commentaries on this story, we saw
a lot of people come into the office looking for food from our pantry.
But those coincidences made me wonder about how Ishmael and
Hagar’s story might be playing out today. It makes me wonder about how often I
may be leaving up to God the life and health of people I could do something to help. If there are divisions in my human
family that I have accepted as God’s plan, I wonder if knowing that God can do
better for others than I can imagine has blocked me from seeing more that I
could do myself.
Some of us, seeing the tragedy of hunger in the scripture or
at the food pantry with God’s eyes, might be fired up with hospitality and
friendship, wanting to heal the divisions in our human family and prevent
tragedy by gathering as many strangers as we can around our own table; to build
new relationships that feed both soul and body.
Others, seeing that tragedy with God’s eyes, may be fired up
to “change the system”, to find ways to create laws and culture that make it impossible
for people to starve or be malnourished in our country; to have to balance the
costs of food against the costs of shelter, treatment for illness, laundry and
clothing, or other necessities of life.
Some of us will see still other ways to act that I haven’t
imagined. Any of us could make a point of shopping for the food pantry right
before the 20th of any month.
Perhaps a different division, or a different tragedy,
crossed your path this past week, or may in the next. Some separations are
subtle, some are clear, but God sees the need in all of them.
Sometimes, the divisions among our families, our friends,
our human family, come from a good or godly cause: a life-giving new
relationship with a partner, a vocation, with God, that demand the release of
old bonds so the new life can grow and flourish.
And even - perhaps especially - in those divisions that work
out for good, God hears and responds to the hearts that are broken, the tragedy
and need that arise.
So we ourselves are called to see with God’s eyes: to
imagine what more we can do, even as we let go; to trust God not just enough to
leave the results to God, but to enough to extend our own hearts, and
resources, and imagination: to do with
God much more than we alone could ask or imagine.
No comments:
Post a Comment