25th June 2023
Reflection (readings are below)
Things do not always go to plan. What we expect to happen, may not happen – or what we hoped wouldn’t happen, does happen. In that sense the Bible is honest: it relates stories where things do not go to plan, when the hoped for outcome doesn’t materialise. The Bible is upfront in relating how sometimes people are disappointed. They are faced with loss. They discover that life is going to turn out radically different to what they expected. They may have to go along with plan B.
The background to today’s reading from Genesis is the earlier promise made by God to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation – with descendants more in number than the stars in the sky or the grains of sand in the desert. He had already left home and family and travels with Sarah his wife to make a new home in Canaan – yet they had no children. Time passed and still they were no children. So Sarah suggests that to remedy this, Abraham should sleep with her maid Hagar. Abraham does, Hagar conceives and Abraham has the longed for son. More time passes, and we have the story related last week, when three strangers predict that Abraham and Sarah together will have a child, a son through whom Abraham will become the father of a great nation. Which plan has gone wrong? Has the path of destiny been changed? Or was this just one of those unpredictable events?
Some things in the world are predictable – water will always flow down hill because of the force of gravity. The sun will always rise in the morning and set in the evening. One day we will die. But many more things are unpredictable – will it rain today? When will Mount Etna next erupt? Will this cat catch that small bird?
Perhaps most unpredictable are the actions of human beings? Will they be kind to one another or will they be callous and unkind? Will they be generous or jealous? Will they be patient or angry? Will they hit out or will they go the extra mile to be helpful?
In Sarah we see someone who has become jealous, who is fearful that their plans may backfire, who perhaps feels that even her own position in the community is under threat? For these and many other reasons, Hagar and her son are made to suffer. It is not God who cause suffering, but flawed, imperfect humankind.
The story is not all doom and gloom. Hagar hears God talking to her – is this the first time in the text of the Bible that we hear of God speaking directly to a woman? God speaks and Hagar is comforted; she sees that God is showing her a way out. When we are adrift, when we feel abandoned, it would b food to recall this story, to realise that God is always there even when things are not going well.
Paul describes baptism as a process of dying – of dying by drowning – which is not an image as readily embrace when we are being children to baptism. But is there not an honesty in remembering that life is not guaranteed to be free of pain and suffering, that there will be times when we are pushed to our limits? Paul sees baptism as part of a bigger picture, one in which we are united into both death and life with Jesus. Whilst Paul knows life is not free of suffering, he also knows it is never free of God! He knows, from his own experience, that there is a flip side to ‘dying to sin’ – that of experiencing a newness of life in which we are united in God. To quote the words from John’s gospel: ‘you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you’. (John 14:20)
Do I believe at face value all that is written in the Bible? No. Just as the world is a place of uncertainty and unpredictability, so I believe some passages do not reveal the complete truth. I do not believe that Jesus came to set son against father, daughter against mother. Why I do believe is that there are no situations where God is not present – although our ability to perceive God’s presence maybe flawed.
Genesis 21:8-21
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
1 Bow down your ear, O Lord, and answer me, *
for I am poor and in misery.
2 Keep watch over my life, for I am faithful; *
save your servant who puts his trust in you.
3 Be merciful to me, O Lord, for you are my God; *
I call upon you all the day long.
4 Gladden the soul of your servant, *
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, *
and great is your love toward all who call upon you.
6 Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer, *
and attend to the voice of my supplications.
7 In the time of my trouble I will call upon you, *
for you will answer me.
8 Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord, *
nor anything like your works.
9 All nations you have made will come and worship you, O Lord, *
and glorify your Name.
10 For you are great;
you do wondrous things; *
and you alone are God.
16 Turn to me and have mercy upon me; *
give your strength to your servant;
and save the child of your handmaid.
17 Show me a sign of your favour,
so that those who hate me may see it and be ashamed; *
because you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.
Romans 6:1b-11
Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 10:24-39
Jesus said to the twelve disciples, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!
“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
“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; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
The Green Tau 