O Lord, forgive the sins of the preacher,
for they are many, that only your Word may be preached and only your Truth be
heard. Amen.
The Bible is full of verses that are absolutely foundational to our understanding of the faith, and as such, these verses can function as a summary statement of faith. We heard one of these verses in today’s Epistle reading – Romans 5:8 states, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” That verse is a clear and consicse description of Christianity, and so I wanted to be sure to lift up that verse in this sermon. Romans isn’t my focus today, but that verse is one worth knowing. And, in a sense, every sermon points to the Good News that is contained in that verse, so there will be connections to the grace of God that Paul writes about in Romans with the grace of God we see in the story from Genesis about the how Sarah became a mother to Isaac.
The
point of this sermon is that God does wondrous, marvelous, and impossible
things. That’s what it means that God showed love for us when Christ died for
us sinners and that’s what Abraham and Sarah experienced. Now, the way that the
lectionary works in the season after Pentecost is that we get readings that are
generally in order from week to week, though sometimes chunks are skipped over.
So, starting today, you’ll notice that we’re going to have readings from
Genesis, Romans, and Matthew for a while. But the lectionary doesn’t know when
Pentecost is from year to year, so in some years, we start further into the
story – and that’s the case this year.
We’ve
been dropped into the middle of the story about Abraham and Sarah, which began
six chapters ago in Genesis 12. A quick summary is that Abram and Sarai, as
they were named at that point in the narrative, live in modern-day Iraq, about
800 miles east of Jerusalem. God, who at this point was not known to Abram,
tells Abram to leave his tribe, which was one of power, wealth, and influence,
and head out for the land that would become Israel. God promises to bless Abram
with descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and God says that, through
Abram, God would bless the entire world. There’s a problem though – Abram and
Sarai don’t have any children and they aren’t getting any younger. In Genesis
17, Abram is said to be 99 years old and Sarai about 90. In other words, well
past their childbearing years. But God reiterates the promise to Abraham – you shall
be the father of a great and numerous people.
This
is where today’s reading picks up. One translation renders Sarah saying not “After
I have grown old,” but “Since I am shriveled.” The text says that Sarah laughed
to herself as she said this. And I imagine that it was not joyous laughter, but
a sort of sarcastic laugh with an air of frustration, resignation, even anger
in her voice. This God who had called them to leave their lives and their
family, promising to make them into a great nation hasn’t even given them a
single child. The promise seems to have been forgotten and there is barrenness
where there should have been fruitfulness.
But
this becomes a story about how, in the words of an African-American folk
saying, “God makes a way out of no way.” When there are seemingly no options
left on the table, when we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, when hope
is gone, God still has another move. The Lord
says to Abraham: Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? The answer, of course, is “no.” When Israel was stuck
in slavery in Egypt, God did what was beyond wonderful. When they were stuck
with the Egyptian army on one flank and the Red Sea on the other, God did what
was beyond marvelous. When Jesus was lying dead in the tomb, God did what was beyond possible and raised him in Resurrection life. God is a God of impossible
possibility. And this is a message that we need to hold dear during these
difficult times in which we find ourselves.
In
our personal lives, sometimes we just get stuck. I’ve talked to several people
in the last few weeks about the difficulties they’ve had within their own
families in talking about the issues facing our nation. I’ve experienced it
even in my own family – either we don’t talk about issues of race or we don’t
talk at all. Other times it’s a medical diagnosis that makes us feel lifeless.
It might be a job situation, financial stress, or a marriage that isn’t working
out the way you hoped it would. We’ve all been there – where it seems like
there are no good options in front of us and that the road behind us has been
closed off. But when we can’t see the way forward, God makes a way.
This
pandemic also feels to me like an impossible situation in our need to stay safe
and also not become a society of hermits. Human beings are social animals, and
we need interaction. It’s why we build cities – we enjoy the benefits of being
around each other. And, for better and worse, our society is built upon a
capitalist economy that will eventually crumble under the weight of people not
being in public. But, on the other hand, we don’t want to have a second wave of
infections that is higher than the first. The more we are out in public, the
more the risk goes up of us catching or spreading this virus. And with public
health officials telling us that a vaccine being available by next year would
be nothing short of a medical miracle, it can certainly seem like an impossible
situation. And yet we trust that God can redeem all situations.
And
as we reflect on the protests and calls for justice over the past two weeks, it
could seem like a hopeless and intractable situation, as people are shouting
slogans back and forth at each other. Certainly, we do not have a good record
as a people when it comes to making it clear that black lives matter, along
with all other lives. There’s a podcast that has some really good conversations
about the history of race in our nation called “Scene on Radio,” and, in
particular, Season 2. The current season (#4) is subtitled, “The Land That
Never Has Been Yet.” We know those famous words that changed the course of
global history, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Wonderful and lofty words, to be sure. But we’ve never fully lived into them,
at least not yet.
In
2020, George Floyd was needlessly killed during a police arrest in a society
plagued by systemic racism. In 1968, Civil Rights champion Martin Luther King,
was assassinated. When African-American GIs returned from World War II combat, they
found themselves excluded from education and housing benefits by the nation
they were fighting for. In 1906, Nease Gillespie, John Gillespie, and Jack
Dillingham were lynched just a few blocks from this church. In 1896, enabled by
the Supreme Court’s decision Plessy v.
Ferguson, Jim Crow laws introduced segregation and degradation as a way of life
for many African-Americans. From 1861-1865, nearly 750,000 people were killed
in a Civil War that was fought, at least in part, over the issue of the slavery
of Africans. In the 1840s, just steps from here at the courthouse, enslaved Africans were leased with a member of this church serving as the auctioneer and another member profited greatly from the sales. When our nation’s founding document was adopted in 1789, it said
that Africans only counted as three-fifths of a person. In 1619, the first
Africans were brought to our shores as slaves to work the fields that had been
seized from the indigenous peoples who lived there.
And
this problem didn’t start on our shores. It goes back to 1455, when Pope
Nicholas V said that Africans could be forced into slavery. It goes back to the
1st century when the Roman historian Tacitus lauded the Germanic
tribes which would become the Anglo-Saxons for their superiority over and
against other ethnicities. It goes back to cultures that condoned public
torture of their enemies, the kind that our Lord himself endured on the Cross.
It goes back as far as that day when Cain raised his hand against his brother
and the ground cried out with Abel’s blood. Given our penchant for violence and
hatred, it might seem far more likely that a 90-year-old couple will have a
baby than we can figure out how to end racism.
But
is anything too wonderful for the Lord?
I think not. God can and does bring new life into hopeless and barren
situations. When God intervenes to transform the hearts of people, anything can
happen. As Jesus told his disciples in today’s reading from Matthew, God sends
out laborers into the harvest. The mere fact that our society is actually
talking about race in a constructive way right now is a sign of God’s promise.
The legacy of the Beloved Community championed by King is a sign of hope. In
the 1700s in England, there was a young man who worked in the slave trade but,
when he learned of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he had a conversion moment and
worked for the abolitionist cause. That man’s name was John Newton, and you
probably would know him as the man who wrote, “I once was lost, but now am found;
was blind, but now I see.”
God does
impossible things like turning slave traders into freedom fighters. God takes people
like Saul of Tarsus who was persecuting the followers of Jesus and transforms
them into St. Paul who tells us that God proves his love for us in that, while
we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God sends us Harriet Tubman when we
saviors. God sends us Oscar Romero when we need a voice for the poor and
oppressed. God sends us people like Catherine Meeks who we had at this church
last year to talk about race, and people like Michael Curry who call us to the way
of love, and people like you and me to be instruments of God’s peace.
In the
Post-Communion Prayer, we pray “Now send us out to do the work you have given
us to do,” taking our cue from Jesus who sends out his followers to “proclaim
the Good News that kingdom has come near.” But he warns us, be wise as serpents
and as innocent as doves because there are wolves out there. When God does the
impossible and the unexpected, it will frustrate the plans of those who were banking
on the status quo continuing. So we must be wise and compassionate.
And it’s also hard
work because, often, these new beginnings that God gives us mean there is a
break with what used to be. When Abraham and Sarah left Ur, they left behind
everything. When God told Mary that she would bear a son, it turned her life
upside down. Or, as the Lutheran pastor who was killed by the Nazis, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, put it – “When Christ calls us, he bids us come and die.” Sometimes
God’s wondrous and marvelous transformation is not a happy ending to the old story,
but the start of a radically new story, as it was for Sarah and Abraham. In
these new starts of grace, sometimes things are left behind. Whether or not
this nation can overcome its history of racism, I really don’t know. But I dokdo
that, while were still sinners, God proved his love for us in Christ’s death.
And three days after that death, the impossible became possible as Jesus rose
from the dead. Nothing is too wondrous or marvelous for God, and that is where we
find hope in the midst of life’s impossible situations.
And this is all laughable
– Sarah laughs when she hears that she will have a child, she even names her
son “laughter,” which is what “Isaac” means. God’s grace starts with the
laughter of the absurd and is transformed into the laughter of true joy. The
angel Gabriel tells blessed Mary, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” That’s
what it means to be a Christian, to be someone who anticipates and prays for
the impossible.
At the end of Morning or Evening Prayer, one of the options for concluding the liturgy is this verse from Ephesians, and it’s a good verse to carry you this week as we pray for God to transform our lives and our society in the love of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit: Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.
