5th Sunday after Pentecost
Trusting God.
Preached at Saint John the Evangelist, Cold Lake, Holy Eucharist 23 June 2002
Genesis 21:8-21; Romans 6:1-11; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Matthew 10:24-39
O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Sermon:
I recently read the story of a Priest who arrived in his new Parish and, on the first Sunday preached a wonderful sermon. On the second Sunday, he again preached a wonderful sermon, but it was the same as the week before. On the third Sunday, there was another repeat of the same sermon. One kind person quietly said to the Priest after the service, ‘It was a good sermon, but that’s the third time you’ve preached it.’ ‘I know,’ replied the new minister, ‘When I see some evidence that you actually heard it, I’ll change it!’
Now as this is likely our last Sunday for some time, there should be little fear that you’ll hear this homily repeated even once.
First, my thanks to everyone in the Parish for making us feel so at home so quickly. It is hard to believe that it was only 18 months ago that we made the move from the base chapel here – it feels like we have been worshiping at St John’s for much longer. This is due in the most part to how we were welcomed as members of the family.
It has been an eventful year for my family and I. I came to St John’s with some feelings of vocation, and a strengthening call to serve God in a new way. I am leaving with my vocation confirmed personally and by the greater church in their acceptance of me as a postulant for the priesthood. For most of this discernment, I can thank the members of this Parish for their support, prayers and aid in clarifying God’s will. This is not a small step to contemplate.
In many ways I will not be leaving this Parish. I will remain under the authority of Bishop Victoria, and it is our eventual plan to return to the Diocese, somewhere. If the continued discernment and God’s will is that I should be ordained it will likely be under the sponsorship of this Parish – so in many ways we will only be visitors in Winnipeg for the next year.
The way ahead for us is filled with much uncertainty. There are so many challenges and unknowns ahead that it is near impossible to even list them.
The 17th century bishop of Geneva, Saint Francis de Sales, was a good example of proceeding out into the unknown. While his whole family wanted him to enter a secular career, he persevered and became a Priest. My Lives of the Saints records that “In the summer of 1595, going up a mountain to restore a shrine to Our Lady he was attacked by a hostile crowd, who insulted and beat him…His patient perseverance under every form of persecution and hardship resulted in numerous conversions and many returning to the church. His words are very appropriate today,
“Do not look forward to tomorrow, or to what tomorrow will bring.
The same God who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow, and every day.
Either God will shield you from all harm, or God will grant you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace then, and put away all anxious thoughts and imaginings.”
The uncertain future for my family and I has resulted in us spending a lot of time contemplating what St Francis de Sales has said – trusting God in spite of what is going on around us. For me, the future appears filled with uncertainty and yet, I have come to realize, that even if I knew exactly where were going to be living in 2 years time, how we would get there and how we would pay for it all – the future would still be filled with uncertainty.
Our lives in Christ are characterized by this uncertainty, for we never know the future. Regardless of our extraordinary efforts to measure the present and predict the future we still only know a little more than the ancients. As ‘advanced’ as we are, it is still very much hit and miss to even predict the weather tomorrow, let alone our health and our families’ well-being next week.
So even in our hour of confusion and pain we can trust in a God who will be with us, and will allow us to rise again.
Abraham lived with this same uncertainty and was tested in many ways. We all know the near-sacrifice of Isaac, which comes in the next chapter of Genesis. Today we hear about the casting out of Hagar and her son Ishmael. Now the account tells us that Abraham did not want to fulfill Sarah’s request to drive out Hagar and her son, ‘Abraham was vexed at this on his son Ishmael’s account’. Imagine Abraham, one who longed for a son and never had one – who then had a son through his wife’s servant. The timing makes Ishmael out to be a teenager when Isaac was born which means Abraham would have seen the boy grow into a young man. Casting him out into the desert, and likely to death, would not have been an easy thing for him to do. Until I had a daughter, I did not understand how deep a parent’s love really goes – and I can imagine Abraham’s anguish at Sarah’s request.
As a side note, I find that this humanizing approach to our Bible history really opens up the text for me. It is so easy to read the account and in the few sentences passed to us through the centuries to nod and say ‘oh yes, this is where Abraham sends Hagar and his first son into the desert.’ When I read these accounts now it is with an ear to how the person must have felt – how would Abraham, or any parent, respond to a request to send his son off into the wilderness?
Abraham does sent them off, after he is reassured by God that Ishmael will father a great nation, though a great nation without the heritage that God has promised to Isaac. With God’s reassurance Abraham trusted and sent Hagar and Ishmael away with only a water skin and some food. We heard the rest, with water gone Hagar drags Ishmael into the shade and then sits down and awaits death.
Now, on this thought of how we never really know the future think about this from Hagar’s perspective. She knows things would get dicey once her mistress, Sarah, became pregnant. The all-important question of who would inherit from Abraham made Hagar and Ishmael’s presence a problem. Now she has been driven out for the second time and can see nothing as she drops to the hot, stinging sand except death for both of them. What words come to mind? Despair, hopelessness, defeat, pain, anger, hate? I am sure Hagar felt many of these as she sat there on the sand waiting for death to come. We read that she sat some way away from her son as she said, ’ How can I watch the child die?’
At her lowest point she is visited by an angel who tells her what all angels use as their opening line – ‘fear not’. The angel reassures her that Ishmael will become a great nation and then there before them is a well full of water. Hagar fills her water skin and gives her son a drink…life is good and Ishmael marries a woman of Egypt. We do not hear of Ishmael again until the death of Abraham, when the two half-brothers Isaac and Ishmael bury their father together. So even when the future seemed bleak, God’s will was done.
Muslims view Ishmael as the father of all Arab peoples. As God said, Ishmael would become a great nation. As we ponder this question of trusting in God, and accepting that in our future – be it good or bad – we will be cared for and strengthened by our Lord. If you jump back in Genesis we read something else very interesting about Ishmael,
Genesis 16:12 “He [Ishmael] shall be a man like the wild ass, his hand against every man
and every man’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kinsman.”
Abraham is the patriarch through which our Bible and the Koran are linked. This passage in Genesis is particularly interesting when you consider what is happening in the Middle East right now – Isaac was promised an eternal covenant with God to possess the land, while Ishmael was excluded from that covenant and was set to live with every man’s hand against him. It almost sounds as if the present simmering conflict between Jew and Muslim and Christian and Muslim was anticipated in the Old Testament. This should not surprise me – but as many times as I acknowledge God as ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ I still place my earthy concepts of time and limited knowledge on Him.
If our present is anticipated in a book written 4000 years ago, how can we not trust in God even when things are at their bleakest? How can we not strike out into the unknown safe in the knowledge that God will be there with us comforting, strengthening and protecting?
We hear Saint Paul in the great Epistle to the Romans telling us that our Baptism in Christ is like dieing and being reborn in Christ. The old person we were lies dead, and arises again – this time freed from the shackles of sin.
The Gospel today tells it even more clearly: we are not to fear death of the body, for our soul will live on. Jesus also tells us that we are of infinite importance to our Father in heaven so much so that even each individual hair on our heads is of interest to Him. Trust in God is the clear message.
There is another clear message that comes through right after that one – trust in God, but do not assume that the path you walk will be easy. Where is it written that life is supposed to be simple? Jesus is blunt in saying that He has come to ‘…set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law…’. His message is such that some people will gladly accept it and follow the path of life, while others will reject it and follow the path of death. Between these two groups there will be separation, strife and conflict even surpassing the love that bonds a family together. Following Jesus must take precedence over even the natural love of family.
In many ways, being a Christian is a wholly unnatural thing to do! If I look at my situation in responding to a vocation dramatically different from the path I walk today, it seems very unnatural. To become a Priest I will give up an established career, good pay, continued promotion and challenging jobs. This is not to mention uprooting my family to live in perhaps another country, with less income and a dramatically different lifestyle than the one we live now. According to the greater world, this is unnatural.
One of my friends I worked with in a past job was told by his wife that I would be following a path to the priesthood. His response was ‘why would he do that, he is such a good engineer?’ As if to imply that those who become Priests do so because they are not competent to do anything else. The world sees the path I walk as unnatural – the world sees the path we walk as Christians as unnatural!
The message today is very much one of trusting in God. Jesus tells us that we are to take up our crosses and walk in His footsteps, regardless of the cost to us. We are to throw off the values of this world and to shout His message from the rooftops. We are to focus not on saving our lives in the natural world, but losing our lives for Jesus’ sake.
We see God’s dominion and power through many eyes in today’s readings:
Abraham and Sarah who had a son even in her old age.
Abraham who trusted God would care for Hagar and Ishmael as he cast them out.
Hagar and Ishmael who were saved by God.
The words of Saint Paul.
The words of Jesus.
All these together tell us the same thing – we are to trust in God regardless of where we are, or where we think we are going. Our task is not to worry about today or tomorrow, but to submit the future to the love of God confident and bold in his dominion over all.
“No man is worthy of me who does not take up his cross and walk in my footsteps. By gaining his life a man will lose it; by losing his life for my sake he will gain it.” (Mat 10:38-39)
Let us go forth into the world to pick up our individual crosses and to shoulder our part of Christ’s burden. Let us not focus on the things that are important in this world, but the treasures that are ageless in heaven.
Finally, I ask your continued prayers for us as we step forth onto this path of the unknown. Not praying that things will be easy (although those are always welcome), but that we will have the strength and love to trust God, even when we cannot see where he is leading us.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
