ABRAHAM AND SARAH: ANOTHER DIRECTION

Last week we heard the second in our series on Abraham and Sarah and the original family of faith. In their old age, Abraham and Sarah were promised a child at last.

Following that promise they tried for a while to conceive that child, and then Sarah initiated a process by which her handmaid would serve as surrogate to bear a child. The handmaid was Hagar and the child was named Ishmael, which means “God has harkened”. Then after that Sarah did indeed bear a child and he was named Isaac. That’s where the story kicks in from today’s lesson and documents the jealousy of Sarah and the split in the family.

Children by two different women. Forget about living under the same roof: they were living in the same tent.

Those of us who grew up in Ozzie and Harriet families may think this configuration a little odd, but consider the configuration of American families today. If the divorce rate is below 50% it is a cause for optimism. We have married and unmarried families. Single parents of both genders. Weekend visitation families. Double moms or double dads. And in many of these families that do not fit the traditional mold, there is far more love than the frozen-in-marriage relationships dead from the inside that we sometimes encounter.

This last week as we watched the tributes to Tim Russert, we were touched by the wonderful relationship with his father “Big Russ” and his son Luke. Some of us have had relationships like that with our parents and our kids, but many haven’t.

So God has picked this family of Abraham and Sarah and now Hagar to be the family by which the divine covenant will be worked out. Well, if it is to be the family by which faith comes to earth, it will have to be a perfect family. Right? Nowhere close!

This is the family where the divine evolution of faith begins. It’s a little bit Darwinian.

Charles Darwin based his model of evolution on the British practice of breeding dogs and pigeons. He theorized that in places of isolation, variations that occur in offspring do not have the opportunity to breed back in and thus new species are produced. He came to this while charting life forms on the isolated Galapagos Islands.

God speaks to Abraham and takes him and Sarah out of their setting in Haran and into the land of promise, then keeps the family from intermarrying with the people of the region. And so Isaac is born, who will seek a wife back in Haran, and then to him Jacob, who will also return to Haran to marry.

But then there is Ishmael to deal with, because something has been started there also and will need to become a distinctly new direction. Ishmael will grow up and prosper and become the ancestor of the Arabic peoples. Today in the Koran you can find the acknowledgement of Ibrahim, the father of Ishmael.

So from Abraham came three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Three peoples of the Book, three sets of religious practices that feature the establishment of congregations rather than just shrines, three religions opposed to paganism and idolatry. In comparison to other world religious, how alike. In comparison to each other, how distinct. From the same root.

We have often said that in the Bible geographical journeys are also about spiritual journeys. Well, genealogies of ancient times are brought forward so that relationships in ancient times can explain relationships in contemporary times. We get along because of the kindness of our ancestors toward each other. Or I don’t like you because of what your great-great-great-grandmother said about my great-great-great aunt. We three faiths trace back to the common genealogical ancestor.

I would ask what God was up to, except that is bad grammar. To what was God up?

The polar and the panda and the grizzly. The wren and the owl and the cardinal. The lion and the leopard and the cheetah. The Jews and the Christians and the Muslims. The children of Abraham.

In spite of this awful parting in our lesson today, Jewish scripture credits Ishmael with returning to join with Isaac in their father’s funeral: a reconciliation of sorts. The Koran goes on to tell of Ibrahim and Ishmael joining to restore the ancient site of Kaaba, thought to be the house of Adam. According to Islam, Ishmael is one of the six major prophets, along with Adam, Ibrahim, Moses, Jesus, and Mohamed.

So Abraham had two sons: Ishmael with Hagar and Isaac with Sarah. We would rather hear that they lived together in harmony, but sometimes families need a little space.

A few years ago I pastored a family where the husband and wife always both got sick or injured at the same time. He was in the hospital tested for Limes disease and the next day she was in the adjoining bed with a broken ankle. (It made pastoral visits very easy.) A year later he was in for pneumonia and she joined him with severe exhaustion. It happened again, but I forget the diagnoses. Legally they were married; emotionally they were joined at the hip. He would catch a cold and she sneezed. There are times even in close families where there is a need for some healthy distance.

There was a time when African American Methodists needed to develop in a more welcoming environment and thus came the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Out of separation came strength.

It may be that in the days ahead conservative Christians and liberal Christian will break apart and reform the religious landscape of America. Historic denominational brand names don’t mean as much as they used to mean.

And so we see Hagar take Ishmael and go establish yet another distinct clan and culture. And God blessed them. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “God works for good with those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose.” In making sections of the family of faith distinct, to what is God up?

There are things we could learn from people whose culture is desert based. We could learn to value the water we waste. We could learn to put more quiet in our lives. We could learn more of the oneness of God.

There are also some things we could teach. The mischief of letting fundamentalists take charge of public life (learned by hard experience). The strength of acknowledging the equal partnership of men and women.

And so here we are. Dick Cheney and Barak Obama are related. George Bush and Queen Elizabeth are related. Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a common ancestor in faith. The next time we hear of some atrocity done by one set of brothers to another, perhaps instead of going immediately to the question of who is to blame, we might ask the question of our scripture today: to what is God up?