2017-06-20
Brooke Strong
Scripture: GENESIS 18:1-15
At the heart of this church’s life is our mission statement: God loves us just as we are, and too much to leave us that way. What a gift! What a blessing! No matter what we do, God loves us, and, at the same time, no matter how good we are, there is always more we can do. God loves us just the way we are, and too much to leave us that way. Very cool!
Tom Long, though, a wonderful preaching teacher, says that that very image of the love of God is a metaphor that has lost its pep. It’s so over-used, he says, that it has little meaning any more. God loves all of us, all the time. And Long argues that when we hear that, we just figuratively tune out and go about our business, unchanged by what should be the center of our lives. God loves us? Big deal. I have groceries to get and a dog to feed and some prep to do for tomorrow’s work meeting. Tell me something I don’t know, something that will surprise me.
The point, says Long, isn’t that God doesn’t love us. It’s just that the phrase has become so bland, so oft-repeated, that it’s lost its power. What we need to remember, he says, what we need to fully take in, is not just a bland, general notion of a kind of amorphous love, but rather a love that embraces me in my way, that holds me in my way, that directs me in my way. Love isn’t some general shapeless force, in other words. It’s a blanket that finds its way to wrap around me in particular. And you in particular. And every single person the world over in a particular and idiosyncratic way.
Part of what makes the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures so riveting is that they make it plain that God’s love isn’t just general and shapeless. The love of God is a love that is geared to particular individuals and communities in their specific settings and challenges and needs. Just in the early chapters of the Bible’s very first book, God’s love blesses Adam and Eve after they have disobeyed God (Genesis 5:1). It blesses Cain after he kills his brother Abel (Genesis 4:15). It blesses Noah and his family, as well as all the animals of the earth, when the flood comes and the end seems imminent (Genesis 9:1). And then we come to today’s characters, Abraham and Sarah. The love that comes to them isn’t some formless affection. It’s a love that speaks to their special situation. It’s a love that graces them in their own distinctive way. God has made them a promise. And God comes through—for Sarah and Abraham, in their own unique situation.
Abraham and Sarah have been told that they will beget a great nation, and that all the families of the earth will be blessed through them (12:2-3). But here’s the problem: Abraham’s 99 and Sarah’s 90, and all hope of bearing children is, of course, gone. Nobody bears children at that age, so God’s promise must have been “fake news”—a nice hope, but really no more than a pipedream. Pregnancy at 90? I don’t think so!
So the two of them are hanging out in their tent one day. It’s a blistering day, not unlike the heat here this past week. And three strangers happen by. We who hear this story know this is God in human form (because the narrator tells us so), but Abraham doesn’t have the faintest idea that these are divine visitors. Abraham is as gracious as he can be with them, though, and, together with Sarah, issues their guests, as we way in the UCC, an extravagant welcome. The two of them bow, and comfort their guests, and prepare the best beef tenderloin and a succulent cake for dessert. And then, out of the blue, one of the visitors says to Abraham, “You know, Sarah’s going to have a son.” Sarah, just inside the tent opening, does what any of us might do: she laughs. What could be more ludicrous than the idea that she would have a son! So of course she laughs: this is absurd!
Sarah evidently feels a little embarrassed by her own laughter, though, because when this divine visitor asks why she laughs, she claims she didn’t laugh. Which prompts the visitor—who we know is God—to utter one of my favorite biblical lines: “Oh yes, you did laugh.”
Laughter is a significant part of this story, because not only does Sarah laugh here, but Abraham has already heard this news and he, too, has laughed (17:17). And then, when the baby is finally born, a little later in the story, both Abraham and Sarah laugh again, this time not in skeptical disbelief but in absolute delight (21:6). And what do they name this child of theirs? Isaac, which means, appropriately enough, “laughter.”
What’s so striking here is that the grace that comes to Sarah and Abraham is a grace that is designed and carried out just for them. Nobody else receives holy blessing in precisely the way these two do. I think I can safely speak for Mary when I say we are both hoping against hope that the two of us do not have a baby at 90! For us, that would manifestly not be a blessing!
The promise that comes to Abraham and Sarah is a promise that comes to them alone. It wouldn’t be fair to infer that, just because their infertility is broken, so the infertility of a couple here, or of some family member, is also going to be ended. The blessings that come to that ancient matriarch and patriarch are their own. This is what blessing is all about: it’s given to each and every child of God in its own particular way.
There may be something painful about this. You may look around your neighborhood, or your extended family, and see that the couple next door is able to vacation in places you will never visit; or that the golden child in your family always seems to have everything go right; or that a co-worker seems charmed while work life for you is always a struggle. It’s easy to envy the blessings of others, the “I’ll have what she’s having” reaction to the good fortune of others that we ourselves crave.
That’s evidently not how blessing works, though. The blessings that come to you are not the blessings that come to me. The love that God showers on you is not the same love that God showers on me. The deep truth is that God loves us all. It’s just that it happens in its own unique and special way for each of us. “Is anything too wonderful for God?” asks the story rhetorically (18:14). And the implied answer, of course, is an emphatic “No!” It’s our job, then, to see God’s wonderfulness in our own lives and to give thanks for those marvels.
I once heard Oprah Winfrey explain that the greatest lesson in gratitude she had received came from Maya Angelou. Oprah had been going through a terrible time, being accused in the tabloids of something that was manifestly false and deeply painful. And she called Maya Angelou and asked how she should handle it, and Angelou said, “Stop right now and say thank you.” And Oprah said, “Why would I say thank you. This is horrible, and it’s not true.” And Angelou told her she should be grateful for the journey she was on, and that she had this opportunity to walk through the trouble she was having and get to the other side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0FUao81jk1E&list=PL8PHl4WVmfxU_UivmnlT0RFxZX-iM1PNW&index=2). None of us would choose the difficulties we have. But the richness is that God is baked into those difficulties, and that right in the midst of the journey we’re on, God is there enveloping us in love and adoration—each in our own way. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”
This is what’s at the heart of biblical faith. Tom Long quotes Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod as saying, “the biblical story is not about a God who smiles benignly and impartially toward all humanity but instead about a God who falls in love with Abraham [and Sarah], Abraham [and Sarah] in particular, and who loves Abraham [and Sarah and their] children” in a uniquely distinctive way.
Long goes on to say that parental love works the same way. Mothers and fathers don’t show love to their children “blindly and equally, dividing things down the middle, but very particularly.” When one of her children asked her which child she loved the best, Betty Hollister, whose life we will celebrate here this afternoon, said, “I love the child who needs me the most.” On this Father’s Day, let’s imagine a father with two daughters. Long says, “If one of them has the flu, [the father] does not desert her bedside after 45 minutes in order to give precisely equal time to the other. If one of them comes home from school crying because the ‘popular’ girls fenced her out, she is the daughter who gets that day an extra helping of [fatherly] affection. In the law courts and other public spaces, we may desire that justice wear a blindfold, impartially dispensing benefits in equal portions. But we want parents—and we want God as our parent—not to wear blindfolds, but instead to see us in all our needs and particularities with the eyes of tenderness and love” (Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2017, pp. 18-25).
This, too, is what’s behind the meaning of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” It’s not that all lives don’t matter—they do, of course. That should go without saying. It’s rather that when a particular group of people have experienced the slavery and oppression that have historically squelched people of color, the love of God is particularly focused on those deep needs. Or as I heard someone put it once, if a house is burning, the fire department doesn’t spray both that house and the house next door with water, on the theory that all houses matter. If your right arm is broken, the ER doesn’t X-ray the left arm too, because of an inarguable conviction that all arms matter. Just as with the fire or the ER, the love of God is focused where the need is acute. It’s given to you and me in our own special ways. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”
So a good part of our work as people of God is to look for the love and blessings that are showered on us in our own particular ways. A few days ago, while I was out for a walk, a neighbor whose wife, I knew, had had a horrible winter, stopped his car and opened his window. His wife has been living with cancer for some time, and this winter she was felled in addition by pneumonia. I asked how she was doing. “She’s better,” he said. “Gratitude. That’s what we practice every day: gratitude.” As with Oprah Winfrey, even in the midst of pain and worry, there is something for which to be grateful. God blessing the two of them in their journey. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”
A few minutes later on that very same walk, I ran into another neighbor, a younger woman who has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She had just returned from her first visit to The Gathering Place, which offers support to people with cancer. She was extremely anxious as she headed there. But when she walked in, she was surprised to be greeted by a radiant friend of hers who volunteers there, someone who is going through what she’s going through, and who smiled at her and hugged her and welcomed her. She had been so thrilled by her visit, and so grateful for her friend’s greeting, that, as she told me this, she pointed to the skies and said, “God’s just showing off.” God blessing her in her journey. “Is anything to wonderful for God?”
You can’t read the story of Abraham and Sarah, and hear tell of their laughter both before and after the birth of their son, and their naming of this son Isaac—Laughter—without also remembering that laughter is one of those ways in which God blesses us. Anne Lamott says that laughter is “carbonated holiness.”
One of Federated’s core values is the whole notion, as we said a moment ago, of “extravagant welcome.” We want everyone to feel extravagantly welcomed into this place, and especially those who may not have sensed that welcome elsewhere in their lives. Last week, at our most recent Church Council meeting, we had a new Councilor join us for the first time. Because he was new, I went around to the other side of the table and gave him a welcome hug. When I returned to my seat, the woman sitting next to me said quietly, under her breath, and with mock disdain, “That was an awfully extravagant welcome!” I roared with laughter, my own personal “Isaac” moment, I suppose—carbonated holiness. God blessing me in my journey.
Last weekend, I was away at our younger son Taylor’s master’s degree graduation outside of Chicago. While I was gone, John Hollister, son of Betty, wrote me an email filling me in on some details of this afternoon’s service. Now, as it happens, John went to Amherst College in Massachusetts, a school, as some of you know, which is the chief and bitter rival of the school I attended, Williams College. At the end of John’s email, he congratulated my son on his degree, and he said, “I hope he is being better educated than what they offer in Williamstown, Massachusetts.” And once again, through particular laughter and another “Isaac” moment, God blessing me in my journey. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”
As we baptize Joy Robertson this morning, we celebrate, not just an abstract, overarching, and identical love for every single human being—a love which may be philosophically true—but we revel in the particular love that holds her, and all of us, close. May we each live every day steeped in gratitude for the special gifts that come from God just to us. And may we be reminded that, as we are loved in that particular way, so we are called to love each other in all our particularity and even peculiarity. May we exercise that love with each person we meet, now and always. For it is God who has made it possible. “Is anything too wonderful for God?”