"Who Do You Not See?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 27, 2023
Scripture Reading:  Luke 13:10-17


Oh. Hi.

 

You don’t know me. In fact, before today, you probably didn’t think about me very much. You don’t even know my name.

 

I used to be even more bent over than this. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how it happened. But 18 years ago, my back started to ache some bad like you wouldn’t believe, and I just couldn’t straighten up. It got worse and worse, and more and more painful.

 

Eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t look people in the face. I couldn’t see the sky. I couldn’t cook to feed myself. I couldn’t wash myself. I could barely hobble around with my stick.

 

People told me that evil spirits had taken over my body.  That evil spirits were making my spine bend like that. People started to be afraid of me. They called me unclean. If they touched me, they risked becoming unclean too.

 

Nobody had touched me in 18 years, afraid of becoming unclean. Do you know what it is like, not to be touched by another human for 18 years?

 

Some people offered to heal me. There are so many people out there, peddling miracles, willing to take my money in exchange for the promise of a cure. And I went to all of them. Some of them gave me a cream to rub on my back. Some of them told me that I needed to pray special prayers. Some of them told me to travel to a distant land to bathe in the holy waters there. They all had two things in common:  they were willing to take my money, and none of their cures worked.

 

Every day I would drag my body outside, and sit with my begging bowl by the gates to the town. Some days I would set up beside the place to worship.  I usually got more money sitting by the town gates.  The holy people going to pray were usually in too much of a hurry to stop to give me a few coins.

 

People would drop a coin in my bowl and rush onwards. Nobody would look me in the eye.  Nobody would stop to talk to me. Eighteen years without being touched. Eighteen years without speaking with anyone.  Eighteen years without being seen.  Eighteen years with no name.

 

Sometimes on a Sabbath I would drag my poor body into the synagogue to listen to the prayers and the teaching.  I would sit in the corner thinking that maybe, just maybe, even though the people around me couldn’t see me, maybe God could see me.  Maybe God knew how much I was suffering.

 

Really, this wasn’t living.  This was merely existing.  I wasn’t able to take care of myself. Nobody cared for me. I couldn’t understand why God didn’t take the rest of my life too. Maybe God couldn’t see me either.  I was angry with this God who would let me suffer so much.

 

One Sabbath I went to the synagogue and there was a huge crowd there – so many people I had never seen there before.  I heard a whisper that the one who was teaching that day was the son of a carpenter up in Galilee.  He was on his way to Jerusalem, and he had such a crowd of people following him – women and men from all sorts of different backgrounds. The whispers said that not only was he a good teacher, but that he was also doing miracles along the way as he was travelling.

 

Well, I’d had it up to here with so-called miracles.  The ones who claimed to do miracles usually just performed the miracle of making my money disappear.  So I didn’t hold out any great hopes for this miracle-worker. I just settled into my usual back corner of the synagogue to listen to the teaching and pray that God might hear me today.

 

But no sooner had I settled in then this teacher glanced at me.  And then he stopped and looked me in the eye.  And he called me over to the place he was teaching from. I struggled to get up from the floor, grumbling a little bit. Why couldn’t he come over to me? Couldn’t he see how much of a struggle it was for me to get up? But because he had looked at me, because he had seen me, because he had spoken to me, I went over to where he was.

 

And when I had made my way to the front, this teacher, he reached out and he touched me. For the first time in eighteen years, I felt the touch of another human. He put his hand on my shoulder, and he told me that I was set free from my bondage.

 

And when he had done that, I was slowly able to straighten out, and look him in the eye. And I turned, and I was able to see the faces of all of the other people in the synagogue. And I rushed over to the door and looked up, and I saw the blue sky above me for the first time in 18 years. And I threw my arms up in the air and started to sing praises to God. For God had seen me in my suffering, and had healed me. How could I keep from singing?!

 

Now the leaders of the synagogue weren’t too impressed. They told this Jesus that he shouldn’t have been doing the work of healing on the Sabbath. He should have waited until the next day to heal me. Then they chastised me They told me that I shouldn’t have asked for healing on the Sabbath. I should have come on another day of the week to look for healing instead.

 

What hypocrites. I had been living in this place for my whole life. I had known these people since they were born. They knew that I was crippled, even if they chose not to see me. And for 18 years, they hadn’t glanced my way, let alone offered to heal me.

 

But this Jesus, he knew the law so well that he could out-argue all of them.  He knew that Sabbath was more than just a rest from work. He also knew that the scroll of Deuteronomy also says that Sabbath is in remembrance of our delivery from slavery in Egypt. And if Sabbath honours our people’s deliverance from slavery, then it is right that I should be delivered from my bondage of illness.

 

And he also knew that the law allows for people to untie their animals on the Sabbath in order to give them life-giving water. And he argued that I was more valuable than any farm animal, and therefore could be untied from my illness in order to be given life-giving healing.

 

Can you imagine it? Someone saying that I was valuable! Someone affirming that I am a daughter of Sarah and Abraham. Someone affirming that I am a beloved child of God. For so many years, I was a nobody. Unseen, untouched, unacknowledged. And yet here I was, in front of the synagogue, valuable in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the people.

 

And all of the people in the synagogue that day were rejoicing. Rejoicing that I had been healed. Rejoicing at the wisdom of Jesus.  Rejoicing that God was even more powerful than they had ever imagined.

 

Something has changed in me since I was healed. I think that before I became sick, I was like all of the other people in this town. If I had seen someone bent over like me, I wouldn’t have given them a second glance.  I would have brushed right on past them.

 

But now that I have been in their shoes, my eyes have been opened. Now, when I pass through the town, I notice all sorts of people that the rest of society doesn’t see. Those who are bent over like I used to be. Those who don’t have a home to go to. Those who sit with their begging bowls every day. Those who have been abandoned by their families and sit alone in empty houses. Those who have moved here from other lands and don’t speak our language yet. Nobody sees them. But I do.

 

And so I beg you. As you go about your busy life this week, think of me. Remember me. And when you remember me, look around you for the unseen people in your world. Open your eyes and notice them, in the same way that Jesus, this man that you follow, had his eyes open; so that you can see the people like me that Jesus saw. And like this man that you follow, find a way to give them back their humanity. Remind them that they are beloved child of God. Remind them that they are precious in God’s sight, and in your sight too.

 

Remember me. And look for other people like me. Open your eyes and see the people like me who are unseen. And then love them into wholeness.

“Old Woman Dancing”

Ernst Barlach (1920)

Used with permission

"Created for Community" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 13, 2023
Scripture:  Ruth 1:8-22 (The first part of the chapter was summarized in the story for all ages.)

 

 

Ruth and Naomi. There are so many different lenses that you can read their story through.  They are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, so you can read it through the lens of obligation to care for your family – an obligation that was very strong in that time and place.  Naomi’s decision to send her daughters-in-law back to their families after all three husbands died would have been a very counter-cultural choice as their society said that Ruth and Orpah had an obligation to care for Naomi.

 

You can also read their story as a love story.  Last December we read this story, and in the sermon, I re-told it as a queer love story between Ruth and Naomi.

 

You can also read their story, especially if you read the whole book of Ruth, as a story of going above and beyond what God requires.  The story explores God’s law of levirate marriage – a brother’s requirement to marry his brother’s widow to provide a home for her. The story explores God’s commandment not to harvest your field right to the edge, but to leave some of the harvest so that people without enough food can take what they need from what you left behind.  The story explores what truly loving your neighbour as you love yourself might look like in practice.

 

But this week, I want to look at the story of Ruth and Naomi through the lens of community.

 

Right from the very beginning of the bible, God is a God of Community.  When God created the first human, shaping them out of the dust, then breathing the breath of life into them, God said that it isn’t good for the human to be alone, and God divided that first human into two humans.  Right from the very beginning, we weren’t created for isolation.

 

We see this again and again throughout the biblical story.  So many of the laws in the Old Testament, as well as the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament are all about how to live well together – about how to live well in community.  There are laws in Deuteronomy about how shopkeepers shouldn’t falsify their scales, and how kindness is to be shown to people who are vulnerable – widows and orphans and foreigners living in the land.  And then we have Paul writing his famous verses to the Corinthians about how to live well together – how to live with love that is patient, love that is kind, love that isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

 

Even when we consider that we are all made in the image of God, the God in whose image we are made is Trinity, is community. We are literally made in the image of community.

 

So getting back to Ruth and Naomi.  Whether their relationship was romantic or familial, they were together.  We have two women who are grieving – Ruth has lost her husband, and Naomi has lost her husband and both of her children.  In her grief, Naomi tried to isolate herself – tried to send Ruth back to her parents’ home, tried to travel the dangerous road back to Bethlehem alone, tried to go to a place where, if she made it back alive, no one would know the depth of her grief and pain.

 

But Ruth doesn’t let Naomi be alone.  She refuses to be sent back to her parents’ home.  She refuses to let Naomi be alone in her grief.  She insists on accompanying Naomi to what would be, for her, a strange land where she would be treated as a foreigner.  Ruth says to her:  “Wherever you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people; your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die, and that’s where I will be buried.” And then Ruth calls on God’s name to seal the deal, to witness the covenant promises that she is making to Naomi.

 

These two women are now bound together.  Even though Naomi changes her name from Naomi which means “pleasant” to Mara which means “bitter,” the bitterness of her life will be lessened because she isn’t alone – because she has someone to share her grief with.

 

Yesterday, some of us from Two Rivers joined with some people from the other two Affirming churches in this area to walk in the Saint John Pride Parade.  There are so many things that Pride is all about – it celebrates legal gains that have been made over the past decades in terms of rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people; it continues to contain an element of protest, pushing back to make sure that the gains won’t be lost in the current political climate; it is a joyful celebration of authenticity and being your true and authentic self.  And it is also a celebration of community.  It is a celebration of a community coming together to support each other and to celebrate each other.  As humans, we are created for community.  It is not good for the human to be alone.

 

I also think that community is one of the gifts that the church can offer to the world.  In a time when people are becoming more and more isolated, here in the church we recognize the importance of community.  We recognize the importance of celebrating with each other, whether that be at baptisms or marriages or concerts or just gathering on Sunday morning to worship together.  We recognize the importance of supporting each other through difficult times, whether that be funerals or health challenges, or simply praying for each other through the tough times in life.  We recognize that a joy shared is a joy doubled, and that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.  The gift of community is one of the gifts that the church offers to the world, for it is not good for humans to be alone.

 

Community takes so many different forms.  Like with Ruth and Naomi, it can come in the form of family, either biological family or chosen family.  It can come in the form of an intentional community – people coming together to both support and celebrate each other, like we do in the church, or like we saw yesterday at Pride.

 

And as Jesus reminds us, wherever two or three… or more… are gathered, he is there with us.  Jesus is present in community, the body of Christ that gathers.  And so God becomes the thread that weaves community together; God, whose very essence is love, becomes the love that glues a community together.

 

And we are never alone, for God is with us and we are with each other.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

 

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge at the Saint John Pride Parade

August 12, 2023

"God Who Sees" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 6, 2023
Scripture Reading:  Genesis 16:1-16

(Our scripture reader at the first service said, before reading, that if this reading was a TV show it would probably have to come with a "Mature Audiences" rating.)


So this week, in our exploration of the stories of women in the bible, we have Hagar.  We don’t hear her story very often.  When we talk about our ancient ancestors in faith in Genesis, we talk about Abraham and Sarah, we talk about Isaac and Rebekah, we talk about Jacob and Leah and Rachel, we talk about Joseph and his brothers, after whom the 12 tribes of Israel are descended.

But we have more ancestors in faith who aren’t named in this genealogy; and sometimes we don’t name them and don’t talk about them because their stories make us feel uncomfortable.  Joseph and his brothers weren’t all the children of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel – a third of them were born to Leah and Rachel’s slaves, Bilhah and Zilpah, who were given to Jacob for the purpose of bearing children.  They also had a sister, Dinah, whose story isn’t told very often… probably because it is a story that involves deception and rape and the sons of Jacob don’t come across in a very positive light.  We did read the story of Tamar last year during Advent – she was Judah’s daughter-in-law, the granddaughter-in-law of Jacob; and many people were shocked at her story that involved seducing her father-in-law when he didn’t fulfill his obligations towards her when her husband died.

And today we have another story that is often left out of the genealogy of Genesis – the story of Hagar.  This is another story that has elements that make me uncomfortable… both in how the humans act in the story, and also in how God is shown to act.

Hagar’s story in the bible begins with Abraham and Sarah, as she was Sarah’s slave – we don’t know anything about her life before this, beyond the fact that they acquired her in Egypt. We don’t know who Hagar’s parents were, where she was born (in Egypt or elsewhere), whether she was born into slavery or born free and sold into slavery.  We don’t even know what her name was, since Hagar literally means “The Foreigner.”  But we meet her as the slave of Sarah, who was the wife of Abraham.

Now Sarah and Abraham – we do know a good bit about their backstory, and part of their story was a promise from God – a ridiculous promise that they would have descendants more numerous than the stars in the night sky; and what makes this promise ridiculous is that they had had no children and were past the age when children should have been possible.  How can we have descendants more numerous than the stars in the night sky when we don’t have a single child?

This is where our story today begins.  The end of Chapter 16 tells us that Abraham was 86 years old, and from elsewhere we know that Sarah is 10 years younger than he is.  And 76-year-old Sarah doesn’t trust God’s promise for her… possibly for good reason… and so she gives her slave Hagar to her husband for the purpose of giving him children.

This is a pattern that has been repeated again and again in places that practice slavery.  Best-known would probably be in the American south where enslaved women with no autonomy over their bodies or their lives were raped by their owners, and often children resulted.  But this story isn’t unique to that time and that place.

In the story we are reading today, Sarah and Abraham have control over Hagar’s life and over Hagar’s body.  Sarah gives her to Abraham, Abraham rapes her, and Hagar becomes pregnant.  The only sliver of power that Hagar might have is the power of her fertility, and even this tiny amount of power makes Sarah afraid of her.  Hagar has done what Sarah has been unable to do, and Sarah is afraid that she might lose her position in the house.  And so Sarah “treats her harshly” – the same word is used here as will be used later when the Ancient Israelites are slaves in Egypt and the Egyptians treat them harshly.  Sarah abuses Hagar until Hagar runs away into the desert.

This is the story that we heard this morning.  Hagar, newly pregnant, having run away from an abusive situation, encounters a messenger from God; and this messenger from God tells her to go back to Sarah and Abraham’s tents for she is going to have a son, and she is going to be the mother of a great nation.

This is the problem I have with God in this story – God is telling Hagar to go back to an abusive situation, to submit to Sarah and put up with her harsh treatment.  I find myself angry with a God who would tell a woman (or any vulnerable person) to do this.

Hagar’s story doesn’t end here – we have to flip ahead to Chapter 21 to find out what happens next.  Fourteen years later, when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90, Sarah gives birth to Isaac, whose name means “laughter.”  Sarah said, “God has given me laughter – everyone who hears about it will laugh with me!” But one day she sees Ishmael, the son of Hagar, laughing, and she becomes jealous.  She doesn’t want her son, her beloved Isaac, playing second fiddle to the son of her slave who is technically Abraham’s first-born son.  Not only does she see Ishmael taking over her son’s inheritance, but now she sees Ishmael taking over her son’s identity, the identity of laughter.  And she tells her husband Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael.

Abraham sends Hagar and her son out into the desert with a meager portion of bread and a flask of water.  These resources are quickly exhausted, and she leaves her son under a shrub and goes a distance away from him so that she doesn’t need to witness her son dying of thirst.  She sits there, in the desert, and cries out her grief.

But for a second time, God sees her and sends a messenger to her, this time not to send her back to the abuse of Sarah and Abraham, but instead to show her a nearby well.  Hagar and Ishmael live, Ishmael grows up, Hagar finds him a wife in Egypt, and she does become the mother of a great nation, as Ishmael is the ancestor of Arabian people and the Islamic faith.

Hagar’s is a troubling story, notwithstanding the happy ending.  It is a story of slavery and abuse and rape and grief.  It is the story of a God who sees her, and who keeps her alive, but it is also the story of a God who sends her back to an abusive situation.

At our Wednesday morning bible study (on summer break at the moment!), we are reading through the Old Testament, in part so that we have an opportunity to wrestle with stories like this one – to wrestle with stories that challenge our faith, and our trust in the bible.

One of the questions that I like to ask the group when we come across a story like this one is:  If you had to preach about this story, what would you say?  If you had to stand here where I’m standing, and you had no choice about what the bible reading was – what is the good news that you would pull out of the story.

Despite the eventual happy ending, Hagar’s story is a very difficult story.  There are challenges on so many layers in this story.  And one of the challenges with preaching about it is that I don’t want to gloss over all of the horrors in this story – I wouldn’t be authentic if I stood here and preached about her happily-ever-after, ignoring everything that came before.  I can’t stand here and pretend that these horrors don’t exist.  Author and theologian Phyllis Trible names stories like this, “Texts of Terror.”

But in the midst of the terror, I do see a glimmer of good news.  I see the good news here in God’s presence with Hagar.  Even in the midst of her lowest points, God was with her.  When she ran away into the desert to flee the abuse she was experiencing, God was with her.  When Abraham and Sarah banished her from their household back into the desert after the birth of Isaac, God was with her.  Hagar names God “El-roi,” “God-who-Sees.”  God saw Hagar in her distress, and God was present with her.

I’m going to have to put that question about why God sent Hagar back into an abusive situation on my list of questions to ask God when I have a chance to do so face-to-face; but for now, what I will take away from this story is the reassurance of God’s presence. When I am in the pit of grief, when I am anxious about the future, when I face any sort of struggles, I know that the God-who-Sees, that the God who saw Hagar sees me too, and that God is with me just as God was with Hagar in the desert.

And God sees you too; and God is with you too.
Always.
And forever.
Amen.

 

 

Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar

Unknown Artist

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons