"A Blessing of Hope" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday November 27, 2022

First Sunday in Advent

Scripture Reading:  Genesis 38:1-30

 

 

(Note:  this Advent, we are exploring the stories from Jesus’s family tree recounted in Matthew 1:1-17 – specifically the stories of the 5 women who are named there. Each week, one woman is going to visit us, share her story, and offer a blessing to the newborn child.)

 

 

At one point, long before my story was over, it felt like it was over.

 

My name is Tamar.  Your book doesn’t record anything about my life before I was married to Er, but please believe me when I say that it was a happy one.  I was the firstborn child of my mother, but I don’t remember a time when I was her only child.  I spent my time helping her with my younger brothers and sisters.  She used to tell me that I needed to get lots of practice now, because some day I would have my own children to look after!

 

I used to bring them with me when I went to fetch water from the well.  I used to tell them stories about El, the God of our people.  Sometimes I had to chase a snake away from them, but sometimes we would watch the birds as they hopped from tree to tree.

 

Then the day came when my parents told me that I was old enough – it was time for me to be married and have a family of my own.  They had arranged for me to be married to Er, the son of Judah and the grandson of Jacob.

 

There was much celebration that day.  I had been the first-born child of my parents, and now I was the first child to leave their tents.  I remember feasting and music and dancing, and palm wine.  I remember meeting my new husband and feeling shy, and a bit afraid, and yet full of dreams for what our future might hold.  The family I had grown up in had been a happy one, and I knew that ours would be too.

 

But it wasn’t to be.  We had only been married for a couple of months when Er died.  People said that he must have done something wrong, for God to have taken him so suddenly, but I don’t think that this could be true.  He was a good man, and he was always kind to me.  But we had barely had a chance to get to know each other, so while I went through the motions of mourning, I didn’t really feel deep sadness at his loss.

 

Our people believe in caring for widows, and so according to our practice, when the period of mourning was over, rather than being thrown from the tents of my in-laws, I was married to Er’s brother Onan.  There was less celebration this time – this marriage was a duty.  Onan was to keep me safe, and in exchange I was to provide children so that their family could continue.

 

But again, it wasn’t to be.  No children were to be had, and before a year had passed, Onan died too.  I was now a double-widow.  People started to whisper that I was bad luck, having lost two husbands.  I saw Judah and his wife, Bat Shu’a, start to look at me a little bit sideways.  People were afraid to talk to me.

 

When my second period of mourning was over, rather than marrying me to their third son, Shelah, Judah and Bat Shu’a told me that he was too young to be married, and they sent me back to my parents’ tent to wait.

 

And I waited.  Being in my parents’ tent wasn’t the same as it had been before I was married.  My help wasn’t needed with the children any more, as they were all old enough to watch themselves.  My sisters who were closest to me in age had been married and were looking after families of their own.  I had nothing to fill my days but to sit in my widow’s clothes, and wait, and feel the disappointment of my family wrapped around me.

 

And I waited.  Bat Shu’a died, but still Judah didn’t send for me to marry Shelah.  I waited, and eventually I realized that he was never going to send for me.  Shelah was grown up and old enough to be married, but Judah was so afraid of losing him, the way he had lost Er and Onan, that he was never going to send for me.

 

I was still young, but it felt like my life was over.  I was going to have to spend the rest of my years wrapped in my widow’s clothes sitting in my parents’ tent.  No husband. No family of my own.  This was to be the end of my story.

 

But then one day, I remembered the stories of El, the God of our people, that I used to tell to my siblings.  I remembered the story of the rainbow which promised Noah that the end was never the end.  I remembered the story of Sarah who had born a child decades after it should have been possible.  And I remembered that with El, the ending is never really the ending.

 

And so I did what I needed to do.  I exchanged my widow’s robes for coloured robes with a veil over my face.  I sat by the road where I knew Judah was going to pass, but I didn’t tell him who I was.  He thought that I was selling my body, and I didn’t dissuade him.  I let him lie with me, and when I returned to my parents’ tent, I discovered that at last I carried a child within my body.

 

When Judah heard that his widowed daughter-in-law was pregnant, he was scandalized.  He said that I must be stoned to death, as is the punishment for adulterers.  He didn’t want me to marry his son, but now it seemed that he didn’t want me to marry anyone.

 

But I am craftier than he is.  You see, when he lay with me, he had given me his ring; and when I was called before him, I was able to show him his own ring, and then he knew that this was his child.  And then he realized that he had done me wrong.

 

When it was time for my baby to be born, I learned that there were two of them within me, twins, and I named them Perez and Zerah; and they grew up and had families of their own, and then I was a grandmother.  And the generations passed, until you were born, sweet baby, a descendent of Perez, and a child who carries my blood in you.

 

And I offer you the blessing of hope, sweet one.  As you go through your life, know that the ending is never the ending.  Even when it seems as though death and despair are all that you will ever know, I give you the blessing of hope so that you can know that new life awaits you on the other side.  May the hope that helped me in my life, guide your heart through yours.  May El, the God of our people, make it so.  Amen.

 

 

 Our Advent Candle of Hope shines brightly,

dispelling the gloom.

"This Isn't the End of the Story" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday November 13, 2022

Scripture Reading:  Isaiah 65:17-25

 

 

Earlier this year, I told a family member that I had made a donation on their behalf to Hestia House; and because my family isn’t from here, I had to explain that Hestia House is a shelter for women and children who are escaping domestic violence and abuse.  My family member said thank you for the donation, and that women’s shelters were something that they thought should always be supported; and I made a passing comment along the lines that I agreed, and that they are organizations that I will support until a time comes when they aren’t needed any more.  And to that, my family member laughed – “Ha!  Like that time will ever come.”

 

And that took me aback and made me think.  And I realized that I have to believe that the time will come.  I have to believe that a different world is not only possible, but it getting closer and closer all the time.  I think that if I wasn’t able to believe this, I would fall into despair, and the despair would paralyze me so that I wouldn’t be able to do anything.  I have to believe that the future holds something better than the brokenness of the present; however unlikely that future might seem from the perspective of the present.

 

Isaiah, like several other prophets in the bible, was a prophet of the exile.  (Side note – the book of Isaiah was likely written by three different people at three different points of time – before the exile to Babylon, in the middle of the exile, and just before returning to the land they had been taking from.)  The passage we heard today is from almost the very end of Isaiah – the people had seen their city and their temple destroyed 70 years ago, and had been carried away into a foreign land.  They had deeply grieved everything that they had lost, but then had built houses for themselves, they had learned to grow crops in this new place, they had married and children had been born.  Two generations had passed.  Almost everyone who was originally brought to Babylon is now dead, and it is their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are living in Babylon.  70 years and two generations – talk about circumstances where you can’t imagine anything ever being any different.

 

And yet God promises them that something different and something better is coming.  In the middle parts of Isaiah, God talks about raising the valleys and lowering the mountains and smoothing out the road so that the people would be able to return from exile.  And now at the end of Isaiah, God looks even further into the future and using beautiful poetic language describes a time that is coming – a new heaven and a new earth.  A time when there will be no more weeping and no more distress.  A time when a person a hundred years old will be considered young.  A time when there will be food enough for everyone.  A time when all of creation will be governed by peace so that a lamb is safe to lie down next to a wolf, and not a single person will hurt another single person.

 

And I have to trust that God, who has been trustworthy in the past – a God who did make a way for the people to return home from exile; a God who did lead Moses and the people to safety through the waters of the sea; a God who created the whole universe and called it good – I have to trust that since God has been trustworthy in the past, God will be trustworthy in the future.

 

And more than just God’s previous track record – I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – but we are an Easter people.  We know that the end is never the end.  We know that Good Friday with all of its suffering and death and despair and abandonment isn’t the end of the story, because Easter and new life and new beginnings is just around the corner.  Because, as author Frederick Buechner wrote, “resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.

 

I don’t know everything that is going on in your life right now.  I don’t know if you are going through a time of exile like the ancient Israelite people – the exile of grief, the exile of illness, the exile of a struggling immune system that means that you have to be very careful these days about contact with other people.  I don’t know if you are going through a Good Friday time in your life right now – a Good Friday of despair, a Good Friday of exhaustion, a Good Friday of abandonment, a Good Friday of pain and suffering.

 

But while I don’t know everything that you are going through right now, what I do know is that exile isn’t the end of your story.  Good Friday isn’t the end of your story.  God gives us a glimpse, through these words of Isaiah, of what is coming.  Jesus gives us a glimpse, through his resurrection, of what is coming.

 

And once we catch a glimpse of what is coming, that doesn’t mean that we sit back and passively wait for it to get here.  No – instead once we can see what is coming, then the Holy Spirit working in us makes us increasingly uncomfortable with the brokenness that we see in the world around us.  We look around and we see poverty and hunger and violence and war and abuse and inequal sharing of the world’s resources… and none of this lines up with God’s dream for the world.

 

And that is when the vision for the future has the ability to transform the present – it has the ability to transform our lives so that we can be people who work for a better world.

 

As I said to my family member earlier this year – I will continue to donate to Hestia House and other shelters for people fleeing domestic abuse until the time comes when they aren’t needed any more.  And I have to believe that this time will come – even if it isn’t in my lifetime – because that is what motivates me to work for change in the right now.

 

For this isn’t the end of the story.  The wars and the violence and the suffering that we see around us or that we experience ourselves isn’t the end of the story.  God’s dream for the world is more beautiful, more loving, more peace-filled than anything that we could ever imagine.  We have to trust that the exile will end someday, that Easter will eventually dawn, that the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and all of creation will be at peace.  And may this time come soon.  And may it come soon.  And may it come soon.  Amen.

 

Right after the sermon, we sang “When Hands Reach Out Beyond Divides” – the words matched this reflection perfectly.

 

 

 

Photo Credit:  “hope” by fen-tastic on Flickr

Used with Permission

"We Don't Know How to Ask Good Questions" (sermon)

Sunday November 6

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture Reading:  Luke 20:27-40

 

 

So this was one of the weeks where the assigned readings had me scratching my head and wondering, “What the heck am I going to say about this on Sunday?”

 

On one level, it’s a fairly straightforward story.  The setting is Jerusalem in the middle of Holy Week in the days before Jesus’s crucifixion.  Tensions are high.  Everyone is just waiting for Jesus to make one wrong step so that he can be arrested.  And so a group of people who don’t believe in resurrection decide to ask Jesus a question with no answer.

 

Here, it’s not Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but rather One Bride for Seven Brothers.  If there is one thing that God’s Law, as given to Moses, is very clear on, it is that you are to protect the most vulnerable among you – specifically widows, orphans, and foreigners living in your land.  And so the practice of what is called Levirate Marriage was to protect widows.  If a woman’s husband died and she didn’t have any children, then her husband’s brother was to marry her to give her a home and to give her protection; and if she were later to have any children, her first born child would be considered to be her first husband’s child.

 

So along comes this group of people who don’t believe that there is any resurrection, and they ask Jesus what seems to be a silly hypothetical question.  “OK Jesus, c’mon now.  There can’t be any resurrection, because what about this woman.  She was married to each one of seven brothers, and all of them died, and there were no children involved that might make her first husband her one true husband.  So if there was a resurrection, she couldn’t be married to all 7 of them, could she? So which one of them would be her husband in the resurrection?”  It is an impossible-to-answer question.

 

And impossible-to-answer questions aren’t that uncommon.  I think of my friend’s mother who was an English teacher, and when her school board forced her to include multiple choice questions on her exams – she hated multiple choice questions – she would always prove her point by including an impossible to answer question.  For example, “At the end of the play, Hamlet:

a) Hamlet is dead.

b) Ophelia is dead.

c) Claudius is dead.

d) None of the above.

e) All of the above.

 

An impossible-to-answer question, because you can’t pick e, all of the above, since “the above” includes none of the above.

 

And so here is a group of people asking Jesus an impossible-to-answer question. How could he possibly decide which of the seven brothers the woman is married to; but he also doesn’t want to deny the resurrection and the fullness of life that he knows is God’s reality.

 

But what he can do is call his questioners out for asking the wrong question.  “Why are you asking who she will be married to.  Don’t you know that everything will be different.  Good; better than you could ever imagine, but different.  It won’t matter who she was married to before because everything will be changed!”

 

And that is where I landed in my “What the heck am I going to say on Sunday?” conundrum.  Because I think that we still don’t know how to ask the right questions when it comes to what resurrection is going to look like.  In fact, I don’t think that it is possible to ask the right questions… at least not while we are still on this side of the curtain that separates this life from the life that is coming.

 

What we do know is that it will be good – better than anything that we could ever imagine.  I think that we maybe get glimpses of it, if our hearts are attuned to look for them.  We might see glimpses of it in the words and the pictures of books like The Next Place that we read earlier.  We might hear glimpses of it in certain songs or pieces of music.  And I definitely think that we can catch glimpses of it in the communion meal like the one that we are going to be sharing shortly – a meal where everyone is welcome, without exception; a meal where everyone can celebrate and know that they are loved; a meal where everyone is well fed.

 

We don’t know how to ask the right questions about the life that is coming, but as Jesus said, God is the God of the living; so if God is with us in this life, how much more will God be with us in the resurrected life?

 

For God is good; and God is love; and some day we will cross through that curtain and nothing will be between us and that infinite love.  Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

In our Story for All Ages this week,

we read The Next Place by Warren Hanson.

Some weeks, the Story for All Ages gives a

teaser for what is coming; this week it gave away

the punchline of the sermon.

It is a beautifully written and illustrated book.