June 25, 2023 Proper 7A

2023 Proper 7A

Thirty-five years ago, my parents were taking me to Virginia to see my brother and his family who lived in Chesapeake. My mom was eager for me to experience a part of that drive she loved the most.

She was not prepared for my horrified response when we got there. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was not my idea of a good time. I am not fond of bridges anyway, but going UNDER the water to get to where you’re going?! No thank you.

I love being IN the water, yes. But being trapped underneath it in a metal box? No thank you.

So you can kind of imagine how I would respond to the story many of you followed this week, the search for a submersible that lost contact during a visit to the wreck of the Titanic, two miles down.

Whyyyyy would anybody think that’s a good idea in the first place?!

And don’t even get me started on the myriad ways that money could have been better spent.

I felt some relief when the news came out that the passengers probably died in an instant, but we didn’t know that until after we’d spent a few days with that same gruesome image of people stuck waiting for the air to run out. What a horrible way to die.

Hagar, in today’s first reading, might have been able to relate to that sense of hopeless dread as a crucial resource disappears.

For those of you needing a little memory jog: Hagar was the slave of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Sarah couldn’t bear Abraham children, she was barren, so she took matters into her own hands and insisted that Abraham have a child with this slave girl, Hagar, on her behalf. (Hagar really had no say in the matter.) Hagar had already run away once. God found her out there in the wilderness and reassured her…but then told her she had to go back into that household where she was treated more like a brood mare than a human being.

Things remained peaceful…for a while. Then came that visit from the three angelic strangers that we heard about last week. The ones who made the absurd declaration that Sarah would bear Abraham a child from her own womb. Never mind that she was well past child-bearing age and had proved barren all these years. She does, indeed, become miraculously pregnant and bears Abraham a son whom they name Isaac, which means laughter.

But you know who wasn’t laughing? Hagar. Her son is no longer a blessing but a liability. Now that Sarah has her own son she has no need for Hagar’s child, and soon finds him an annoyance, a reminder of a situation she’d much rather forget. So she convinces Abraham to cast them out.  And Abraham, simply to keep the peace, does so. He pushes a slave woman and a child of his own out of camp, because it’s easier than dealing with household discord.

It’s an ugly, ugly story. It does not show Abraham in a good light at all. So much for biblical family values, huh?

But what happens? God hears her son’s cry. God responds to them. God makes a place for them. God doesn’t let her be sacrificed on the altar of family harmony. Did you notice that neither Abraham or Sarah would even call them by name? She meant nothing to them.

But to God, she has a name, and she has value. God reaches out to her in her distress, asks, “What troubles you, Hagar?” And although we don’t hear this part of the story in today’s selection, it was also God who gave her son a name, Ishmael, meaning “God hears.” God hears their distress, and does something about it.

Or as Jesus might have put it, they are worth far more than two sparrows. They matter. 

I spent two hours trying to avoid writing what comes next in this sermon.  I said earlier “don’t get me started…” but the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me go until I got started.

The people in that submersible spent millions of dollars to go explore the sunken Titanic. I don’t think we know the final bill we—the taxpayers of this country—will pay for trying to find them.

Resources that, in the words of my mother, “Could have been used to help so many people in need.”

Yes, I am saddened at the loss of life. And I have spent hours reminding myself that even they are worth more than two sparrows, and that God cares for them and was with them in their last moments—even if they didn’t know it.

But how many Hagars were thrown out into the wilderness and lost, how many Ishmaels were crying out for help, and only God heard because we were fixated on the consequences of rich people making bad decisions?

These are the situations in which Jesus shows up not with peace, but a sword. Ready to cut through the cords that maintain a status quo where some people have no access to shelter or food or clean water while others’ pockets are so full they can LITERALLY sink money into the sea for…what? An old wreck of a ship buried in the depths of the dark water?

What were they hoping to see down there? Other than an eerie foreshadowing of their own end, I mean.

Whew. For those of you who have been waiting for me to go “all fire and brimstone” I think this is about as close as I’ll ever come. 

Jesus brings a sword to cut through the nonsense and get to the truth.  But that doesn’t mean Jesus is condoning violence. If anything, he is warning his listeners that to follow him is, sometimes, to be cast out in the wilderness, rejected by the people who are afraid of what the truth will reveal. People who would rather be enslaved to sin than go through the death that leads to Resurrection Life in Jesus Christ.

In the passage from Romans today, Paul writes:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Each of us joins in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In the early church this was not a polite sprinkling on your forehead over a font. You were pulled down and held under the water, feeling its weight, feeling your own helplessness, feeling your lungs scream out for oxygen. You were meant to have a sense of being buried under the water.

And when you were pulled back up into the air, you felt alive again. You felt set free from all that sin and shame you took into the water with you. You had been reborn into a new life. Free from the pressure of the expectations of a system in which you were destined to fail. Free to live into the life of a beloved child of God.

What ultimately happens to Hagar?

She was set free.

As long as Hagar remained in Abraham’s household, she remained a slave. By casting her out, they granted her freedom. She no longer belonged to them. In the desert, she was claimed by God, who valued her more than many sparrows.

May we all have the courage and trust to follow Jesus wherever he leads us.

Even if it’s as scary as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

Amen.