Wise Men. Wise Gifts?

A few years ago now I found a wee article about how different things might have been on that first Christmas morning if it had been three wise women who’d turned up at the stable rather than three wise men.

 If it had been three wise women,

then they wouldn’t have worried about asking for directions

they’d have turned up on time,

they’d have brought a casserole,

they’d have cleaned the stable

they’d have helped with the birth

and they’d have brought some practical presents!

Aye - very funny.

Well since then, some man somewhere has thought about that scenario a little more and suggested that as they left, the conversation between the three wise women might have gone as follows…

Well, you’ll be waiting a while to get that casserole dish back, then.

And that was one of your Le Creusets!

Did you see the state of that old robe she was wearing?

It’s no wonder, I don’t think Joseph’s even working just now.

What kind of a husband is he? How much effort does it take to log on to Trip Advisor and book a hotel room?

I always said he was far too old for her, and you know what – between you and me, I don’t think the baby looks anything like him!

So maybe it wouldn’t have been much better after all.

But at least the women might have brought some practical presents.

 

I’ve always said that the best gifts we got when we had our kids were the folk who arrived with a shepherd’s pie or a dish of lasagne.

And in no small part, that’s the kind of need we’re trying to meet through Food Angels in our congregation.

But I think we can be a wee bit unfair on the Wise Men for choosing to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh.

As far as they were aware, they were coming to see an infant King. What do you bring a child who, to the best of your knowledge, already has everything? He wouldn’t need clothing or bedding or toys. Plenty of those in a royal palace.

It looks like they wanted to bring him something that would recognise his status and express their esteem, and the three items they chose were among the most expensive commodities available in the ancient world. Gifts that were suitable for royalty.

Gold we can understand. Money’s rarely an unwelcome gift. And even today, folk will often give babies gifts of money to give them a good start in life.
 

I was talking to a lady the other day who was telling me that when she went to the supermarket with her newborn baby she’d come home, lift the baby out, and there would be handfuls of pound coins in the pram. People would slip money into the pram to bless the baby when she wasn’t looking! It was just something they did in the place where she was living.

So the gold we understand. It’s the other two that seem a little bit weird. And what are they anyway – frankincense and myrrh?

 

Well both of them are plant products: hardened, sweet smelling resins that are extracted from trees. A deep cut is made in the tree’s bark, the resin pours out and hardens into tears which are collected and used as-is, or sometimes purified.

 The word Frankincense comes from the old French franc incense, meaning pure incense, and it’s been traded in Arabia and North Africa for something like 5000 years. It’s prized for its fragrance and it’s still used as an incense in Christian worship to this day, but you can also find it in candles, oils and aromatherapy products. Yemen and Somalia are the biggest exporters in today’s markets.

 

Myrrh has a similar kind of provenance and history, but it’s also thought to have some benefits in pain relief and because of that it’s often used in traditional medicines and remedies. Another significant use in the ancient world was in embalming, a technique perfected in Egypt - the country where the infant Jesus would soon be spending the early years of his childhood as a refugee.

So there you have it – gold, frankincense and myrrh. Royal gifts for a baby King. Not practical, maybe, but fitting.

 

And we could leave things there. But there are strong hints in the Scriptures that whether the wise men realised it or not, these gifts have more significance than we might realise.

7 centuries before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a time when kings from the East would travel to the Holy Land to pay homage to Israel’s God.

“The wealth of the nations will be brought to you;

From across the sea, their riches will come.
Great caravans of camels will come,
from Midian and Ephah.
They will come from Sheba, bringing gold and frankincense
People will tell the good news of what the Lord has done”.

Frankincense was one of the spices especially bound up with the worship of God in Israel’s temple – it spoke strongly of prayer and mystery and the divine presence.

And myrrh makes a much later appearance in the Jesus story. As he’s being crucified they offer him wine mixed with myrrh to drug the pain, but he refuses to drink it; and later still, when Joseph of Arimathea takes Christ’s body away for burial, the balm he applies before wrapping him in linen is a mixture of myrrh and aloes.

Tradition holds that these seemingly odd gifts the wise men bring to Jesus have a deeper meaning because they point to the three offices of Christ – the gold for his Kingship, the frankincense for his Divinity, and the Myrrh for his sacrificial death.

Maybe they’re not so strange after all.

And I want to leave you with another story that tradition brings us, and although you won’t find this in the Bible, the point it makes is entirely sound.
 
It’s the legend of the fourth wise man..
 

In the story, his name was Artaban and he travelled from Persia to rendezvous with the others, bringing with him his gifts for the new King - three precious jewels - a sapphire, a ruby and a pearl.

 

On his way to meet the other three, Artaban met an old Jewish man by the roadside, who was almost dying from fever and he decided to stay with him until he recovered.  But because of that choice, he missed meeting up with the other three wise men who were already on their way to the West.

 
The old man told Artaban that the Jewish prophets said the new King would be born in Bethlehem. Artaban sold his costly sapphire to raise money for the sick man, and only when he had recovered, did Artaban set out for Bethlehem.

When he arrived there and made enquiries, he was told that the other wise men had left 3 days before. A young mother told him that the family he was seeking had fled, and that the people of Bethlehem were anxious because it was rumoured that King Herod was going to punish the town.

While Artaban was in Bethlehem, wondering what to do next, the soldiers arrived with orders to kill all the baby boys they could find. The young mother he’d made friends with was very frightened because she had a young son, so when the captain of the soldiers ordered the child to be killed, Artaban came to the rescue and gave his ruby to the soldiers to buy the boy’s life.

Artaban now had only one of his gifts left - the pearl, but he decided that whatever else he did, he would keep on searching for the king.

Finally, after 30 years, he came to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. The city was buzzing with talk about a man called Jesus who some were proclaiming the Son of God and the King of the Jews, and who was soon to be crucified.

Artaban wondered whether he could use this last jewel to save the life of this man, Jesus. But as he hurried through the streets of the city he came across a young girl who was crying. She told Artaban she was crying because she was going to be sold into slavery to pay off her father’s debts. Artaban felt he couldn’t pass by and leave the girl crying so he gave her the pearl, the last of his jewels, to gain her freedom.

At that very moment Jesus passed by carrying his cross to the place of execution. Their eyes met, and in that moment Artaban knew that this was the king he’d been looking for all these years.

“My Lord, I’m sorry – I have no gift to bring you.” he said.

 “You’ve already given me your gifts” said the Christ. "I was hungry and you fed me. I was dying and you nursed me back to health. I was going to be killed, and you intervened on my behalf. I was in chains and you set me free”.

 

“But how can that be?” said Artaban. "I’ve never even seen you before today, my Lord”. 

 

“When you did it for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it for me” said the Christ.

 

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abraham Part 9 - Isaac's Birth

Many years ago I read this supposed love-letter in a book that was a collection of Graffiti. It made me smile then, and is still makes me smile now.
 
Gloria, I love you.
I would die for you.
I would walk through fire for you,
swim raging torrents for you,
walk to the ends of the earth for you.
My love for you knows no bounds.

See you next Thursday outside the chip shop.

But only if it’s not raining….

Love, Nigel.

 
A promise is only ever as good as the one making the promise.

Somehow, I’m not quite convinced that Nigel will be able to deliver on his promises of undying love.

But if I could boil the story of Abraham down to just one principle to take away and live out of, it would be that our God keeps his promises, but he keeps them in his own time.

This whole journey that Abraham and Sarah had made began with the promise of land and descendants. And now, twenty five years later, Sarah is finally blessed with the son that she yearned for, in little Isaac.

And as is the way of these things, I’m pretty sure that the minute she set eyes on him, all the rest was forgotten. Not just the pains of labour, but the pain of the previous quarter of a century of childless waiting. It would have melted away like snow on a Spring morning.

Small wonder she laughed with joy. After all those weary years of trying, failing and almost giving up hope, God had finally kept his promise.

But he’d kept it in his own time. And that’s an important lesson for us too.

“Remember this, dear friends” says the Apostle Peter in his second letter to the churches “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness”.

Peter’s reminding us that God alone sees the full picture, and God’s plan unfolds according to his timing and not ours. It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t happen the way we want them to and when we want them to, but that doesn’t mean that God isn’t interested and involved. It might just mean that the timing’s not right yet.

Bob and Barbara were Canadian Missionaries working with a lost tribe in East Africa, and after 12 years living among them, learning their language and their ways, they finally led someone to Christ - the chief's son. After that taboo had been broken, others followed and before long the missionaries had many folk to disciple and their little congregation began to grow.

 

But not long afterwards, both were struck down with a mystery illness that left them so incapacitated that they were confined to bed not just for weeks, but months.

 

All they could do was lie there, praying for the new believers and the church, and asking for healing, but God didn't seem to answer those prayers. And Bob and Barbara eventually returned to Canada, defeated and confused.

20 years later their son, Nick, returned to Africa on business trip and he made a point of visiting the village where they had worked. To his astonishment, he found a thriving church there.

The missionaries leaving had been a catalyst, and the local Christians realised it was up to them to be living out their faith and reaching out to others.

Instead of dying, the church had turned around. It came good. But it came good in God’s time.

And we see that pattern again and again in the Biblical narrative. 25 years for Sarah to fall pregnant. Generations and generations, including a spell in slavery, before Abraham’s descendants would finally settle in the Promised Land.

Judges, Kings, Exile, Return, Rebuilding, Occupation – all played out over centuries and centuries. And then 400 silent years between the Old and the New Testaments in which the word of the Lord was scarcely heard.

Unpromising times. Seemingly God-forsaken times. A nation’s equivalent of Sarah’s 25 years.

But after all of that, came the Messiah; and the one who went before him to prepare the way – John the Baptist. Another son born to ageing parents who’d given up hope of having children.

And John’s particular call was to prepare the way in the desert for the Christ, and for his message that God’s time had come and God’s kingdom was at hand.

The barren womb, the barren desert, the barren landscape of dead religiosity coming to life – because God had made promises, and now was the time of their fulfilment.

On this first Sunday in Advent, it’s part of our tradition that we revisit the themes of time and waiting and hope. And we switch to the liturgical colours of dark purple because prior to the arrival of the light, it’s dark. And it’s the times when we’re in the darkness that most test our faith.

Advent is all about waiting and there are so many things we might be waiting for this morning; and so much unspoken restlessness in our waiting.

For some, Sarah and Elizabeths’ stories might be just too close to the bone. Where is this God who seems to spend a good amount of time in the Bible opening or closing wombs? Why do our prayers for a child seem to go unanswered?

Others, maybe, are waiting for change – change in circumstances, or an attitude, or the tone of a relationship. We sense that we can’t be happy unless things change but we’re not quite sure what that change might look like, or if it can even happen. We feel lost in the middle of a life we cannot control.

Some are waiting in the hope of health – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. We know the pain that we carry and the scars that others don’t see. Is this as good as things are going to get, or does God have more and better for us in the years ahead?

And some of us are living in our own end-time; more aware of advancing years and diminishing capability than we’d like to admit.

But the Advent message, springing to life in the fallow wombs of Sarah and Elizabeth, given voice in the prophesy of Isaiah, is that God’s life and God’s way can flourish even in the barren places of our lives.

“The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

And a highway will be there; it will be called the way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that way.

They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away”.

You are right to hope and pray for the things you desire, but I cannot promise you that prayer will bring you the child, or the relational happiness, or the health, or the good end to your days that you hope for.

But I can promise you that if you traverse the terrain of your own wilderness in the company of God, life will spring up all around you in ways that you would never have dreamt of.

In this season of Christ’s Advent, may we learn to wait patiently for whatever God, in his wisdom and his timing, has for us. And may we, like Sarah, find only laughter and joy at the end of our waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abraham Part 8 - Hospitality

Years ago when I was fresh out of university I did my apprenticeship as a minister in a part of Glasgow called Possilpark. And chances are you won’t know anything about Possilpark, but if you’ve seen the film Trainspotting, you’ll have a fair idea of the territory.

But although it was scary and challenging at times, it was a really good year. And one of the things I remember most was going out with folk from the other local churches in an act of joint witness to welcome in the Millennium.

We’d bought in hundreds of wee candles and candle holders ,and made up a wee leaflet to go with it, explaining the significance of the Millennium and inviting folk along to the church. And we headed out in twos – a good Biblical principle – to go door knocking over the space of a few evenings, and take these candles and greetings around the parish.

It wasn’t easy. Lots of closed doors, lots of scared people behind those doors. But I’ll always remember one home where we heard someone come to the door, pause for a moment to look through the eyehole, and then start undoing the latches to let us in. She had so many locks and chains you’d have thought she was guarding Fort Knox. But when she finally got the door opened, she listened to us politely and took the candle with gratitude. And just as we were about to move on she said – ‘hold on a wee minute’.

She went off into the flat and came back with an enormous millennium candle, about that big! “There’s one back for you!” she said with a smile.

We went out to spread a little grace in the parish, and we got far more back than we bargained for. God met many of us in unexpected ways and unexpected places over the course of those two or three evenings.

In the course of today’s reading, Abraham too, has an unexpected meeting with God; and it happens as he shares the grace of hospitality with three strangers.

1 The Lord appeared to Abraham at the sacred trees of Mamre. As Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent during the hottest part of the day, he looked up and saw three men standing there.

Now we could easily pass over those words and move on, but there’s something interesting there that we might miss. A unique part of the Christian understanding of God is that God is somehow three and yet one, all at the same time. Father, Son and Spirit – one God in three persons. We call it the doctrine of the Trinity.

And although that doctrine isn’t spelled out for us in the Bible, there are hints in that direction from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.

And this is one of them. God appears to Abraham. And how does he appear? As 3. Three men.  Is this Father, Son and Spirit? Well we don’t know – it’s not spelt out for us, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

But what’s more interesting, I think, is that Abraham doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed by this divine appearance. We know from the Christmas story that when angels appear people tend to keel over and end up with their faces in the dirt.

 

But there doesn’t seem to be any of that here. In fact, Abraham doesn’t seem to identify these men as different in any way at least, not at first.

As far as we’re aware, he just sees three strangers in need of some basic human comforts: water to drink and wash with, somewhere to rest, and something to eat.

Were they finely dressed? Did they look like ordinary travellers? We don’t know. But whatever the circumstances, Abraham responds to their need with classic middle-eastern hospitality:

As soon as he saw them, he ran out to meet them. Bowing down with his face touching the ground, he said, “Sirs, please do not pass by my home without stopping; I am here to serve you. Let me bring some water for you to wash your feet; you can rest here beneath this tree. I will also bring a bit of food; it will give you strength to continue your journey. You have honoured me by coming to my home, so let me serve you.”

They replied, “Thank you; we accept.”

So there’s running and bowing and fetching and serving which shows remarkable humility from a man of Abraham’s standing; especially toward visitors whom he did not know. Middle Eastern culture placed a high premium on showing courtesy to the stranger; and many folk who’ve travelled in the Middle East will testify that it’s still the same today.

And there are no half measures here…

 6 Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, “Quick, take a sack of your best flour, and bake some bread.” Then he ran to the herd and picked out a calf that was tender and fat, and gave it to a servant, who hurried to get it ready. He took some cream, some milk, and the meat, and set the food before the men. There under the tree he served them himself, and they ate.

He says ‘do you want a bite to eat’ and then he goes and has a feast prepared! I reckon Abraham must have had some Northern Irish blood in him! That’s typical of the folk that I grew up with - they’d have killed you with kindness. Even higher cholesterol levels than the Scots, and that’s saying something!

But the thing to note is that all this preparation and consumption must have taken time. To bake bread, to have a calf slaughtered and a meal prepared. This wasn’t a fly cup. For the duration of their visit, he was giving them his best – his full attention – even to the point of serving them himself. Whatever else was on Abraham’s  agenda for that day suddenly became less important.

That’s a wee word to all of us, myself included, who are prone to see the other, the stranger, or the visitor as an interruption to our busy schedule. Sometimes our real work is in the interruptions.

So, Abraham created a leisurely space, an hospitable space, within which good things could happen. And as they ate together, the strangers brought their own strange blessing to bear on Abraham and his home.

9 They asked him, “Where is your wife Sarah?”

And I wonder if that’s the point at which he began to realise who he was dealing with here, because in the text at least, nobody’s mentioned Sarah by name so far. How did they know that that’s what she was called?

“She is there in the tent,” he answered, probably more than a little puzzled by now.

 And then one of them says, “Nine months from now I will come back, and your wife Sarah will have a son.”

Now Sarah was behind him, at the door of the tent, listening…..

Not like any woman you or I might know, I’m sure!

Joking aside, Sarah’s listening reminded me of something from years ago. In 1988 I lived in digs with two female student friends in my third year at University, and we were in a semi-detached house next to a kind and devout Muslim family.

I was playing guitar and singing a lot in those days, and at the end of the summer term after I’d gone back home to Northern Ireland, my two flatmates got to know the Muslim girls next door.

They would have liked to have come in and got to know us, but they couldn’t because I was there and they weren’t allowed to be around a Western man without a chaperone. But they confessed to my friends that throughout the year they used to sit in their bedroom and listen to me practicing through the wall!

Sometimes women have to listen or speak in secret, because the culture they live in doesn’t give them any other option.

So, behind her tent flap Sarah was listening. And laughing. Because the news they brought was so far-fetched, In the past God had promised her a son, and she’d been waiting for decades for him to arrive, but nothing had happened. And now she was old! Her body was so far past fertility it seemed ridiculous to even entertain the idea of a pregnancy.

I like Eugene Peterson’s modern translation of what Sarah has to say here:

“An old woman like me? Get pregnant? With this old man of a husband?”

Small wonder she laughed.

I guess after years of trying and failing, all of us do tend to grow weary and lose hope. It can be hard not to let cynicism take over, and end up greeting any suggestion of newness or change with disbelieving laughter.

But God’s reply gave Sarah pause for thought.

Why did you laugh?  He asks. Is anything too hard for the LORD?

And this part of their story ends with those words hanging in the air; words that re-kindled hope for Abraham and Sarah and reminded them just who they were dealing with. Words that they would never have heard if they hadn’t chosen to be hospitable.

 

One of the things I notice when I speak to older folk in the congregation and parish is how strong the bonds used to be between friends and neighbours in this parish.

People talk to me of first-footing on Hogmanay nights, trudging across snow-covered fields to go and greet their neighbours; of epic dances at the Victoria Hall where they met life partners; of groups of friends in their 80’s and 90’s who’ve been part of the same crowd for almost all their lifetime.

And two things strike me when I hear those stories.

That those kinds of bonds only grow up between folk through years and years of hospitality.

And how hard it is, in our modern world, to make that kind of time for people any more.

 For all our labour saving devices, we seem to have less time than ever. We need two wages, or one big wage, to afford those labour saving devices, so very often both partners are working, and coming home tired at the end of the day. What little energy’s left over goes to the kids, and one another and there’s not a whole lot left over to go around. Certainly not much time to go out of ourselves towards someone we don’t know.

The spirit might be willing, but the flesh is knackered!

And we may, or may not, be able to do anything about that.

But what I want to suggest, in closing, is that even if our time is pressured, it’s still possible to cultivate an attitude of hospitality towards the other. Because at the end of the day, hospitality isn’t about cups of tea and fattened calves, though it can be. At it’s most basic, hospitality is just about openness. About a willingness to see the person who’s in front of you and engage with them as a fellow human being.

Hospitality isn’t just about having people into your home. You can take your hospitality with you in the attitude you bring to your relationships.

 My friend Matt is great at this. His family run a restaurant and a big part of the culture there is to make every guest feel special. And that’s why people keep coming back.

And growing up in that environment has shaped him. He talks to the folk giving out fliers as you make your way into a building, he takes the time to speak to the waiter or waitress and have some banter with them. He registers the check-out girl and makes a point of calling her by name. Just small things, but they’re signs that he’s taking his hospitality with him. This openness to the other.

And the beautiful thing is, he does it not because the other person’s especially important, or because he’s going to get something from them if he treats them well. He does it because he believes in the core of his being that this person before him matters to God. And that means they’re a person of significance, whoever they are.

And here’s the thing – when we cultivate that openness, that attitude of hospitality, not only are we blessing the other, we’re opening ourselves up to more of what God has for us. Because God and God’s truth often come to us in the guise of the stranger.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how some will be commended some and other reprimanded at the end of days. Why? Because he came to them in the guise of the poor, the hungry, the needy, the stranger. And some were hospitable towards him, while others weren’t.

As I was preparing for today I had a memory of an old Celtic prayer of hospitality, and I managed to track it down for you. It says:

 

I met a stranger yest're'een;

I put food in the eating place,  Drink in the drinking place,

Music in the listening place;

And, in the sacred name of the Triune,

He blessed myself and my house.

My cattle and my dear ones,

And the lark said in her song,

Often, often, often,

Goes the Christ in the stranger's guise;

Often, often, often,

Goes the Christ in the stranger's guise.

As he sat in the door of his tent, with the heat haze shimmering over the baked soil, Abraham glanced up and saw three strangers needing his help; help he was ready to give.

He knew what he could do for them. He had no idea what they could do for him.

And it’s no different with us. It’s as we choose to be open toward the other – whoever that might be - that God does some of his best work: in us, for us and through us.

Thanks be to God.

Abraham Part 7 - Circumcision

So – here we are.

A baptismal Sunday. Busy church – lots of visitors, some of whom may not be in church very often.

And especially on a Sunday like this I want to bring a good message. Something that’s relevant and connects with where people are.

So............ Circumcision!

Not really the subject I would have chosen for today, but a couple of months ago I got myself organised for all the Sundays between now and Christmas and this is where we happen to be as we follow the story of Abram.

But these seemingly unpromising texts often have more to say to us than we’d realise at first, and I think that’s the case today.

So for the sake of those of you who are visitors, let me bring you up to speed with where we’re at.

Christians, Jews and Muslims all trace their spiritual ancestry back to a man called Abram who lived something like 4000 years ago, and week by week, we’ve been following his story as it’s set out in the book of Genesis.

And the story begins when Abram and his wife Sarai receive a call from God to leave their homeland and travel to Caanan, where God promises to bless them with land and descendants.

But the fulfilment of those promises ended up taking far longer than they’d expected; and two weeks ago, we read Genesis 16 where a frustrated Sarai, ten years into their stay in Caanan and still childless, gave Abram her maidservant Hagar to sleep with in the hope that they could start a family through her. That was one of the ways infertile couples did things in the ancient world.

But although Hagar produced a son for Abram, a boy they called Ishmael, the tensions around this pregnancy and this child were awful. Sarai wasn’t happy, and as a consequence neither was Abram.

But as we join the story today, God re-iterates his promises to Abram and reassures him that things are still on course. But this time round there are a couple of new elements in what God has to say.

Abram’s described as fathering nations: not just descendants. And for the first time, Sarai’s reassured that she herself will bear Abram a son.

So Ishmael, who’s 13 by this stage, isn’t the end of the story. There’s another son to come, and if you know your Old Testament, you’’ll know that that boy, Sarai’s boy, would be called Isaac.

So from the line of Abram and Ishmael come the Arab peoples, and eventually Islam. From the line of Abram and Isaac come the race of people we call the Jews, and the religion of Judaism. And from the line of Abram and his descendant Jesus come the spiritual race of people called Christians.

So with that destiny in view, God gives Abram the new name ‘Abraham’ – which means father of nations.

And at the same time, Sarai becomes ‘Sarah’, which means Princess. A suitable name for the mother of future kings.

But there’s another development in this re-statement of the promise that’s different from what’s gone before.

Up until now, God’s acted unilaterally in bringing the promise to Abram.

But now God’s asking for a greater commitment from Abram, and summoning him to be an active partner in this covenant.

“I covenant to be your God, and to bless you with the land and the descendants I’ve promised you” says God.

“And in response, I want you and your male descendants to be circumcised, as a sign of the covenant that you’ve entered into with me”.

Now that might sound like a strange command to our ears; but we have to hear it in its original context.

Circumcision was already quite widely practised in Abram’s day, but more often than not it was associated with puberty and the transition to manhood and marriage. And that’s still the case in some cultures, even today. In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela tells the story of his circumcision at the age of 16 – without it he wouldn’t have been considered a man among his tribe, and he wouldn’t have been able to inherit anything from his father.

But setting aside what we think of the issue – and it is a controversial practice – there’s no denying that leaving a permanent mark on your body of one kind or another, makes powerful statement. And it has done for generations.

For today’s teenagers, tattoos are often a statement of rebellion and independence. But in many cultures, including the Maori, tattooing started out as a religious practice.

The problem is once a tattoo’s there, it’s there, unless you go in for laser treatment. So if you’re going to get one you’d better make sure it’s one you can live with!

 


And piercings are more popular than ever before, whether you’re talking about something that’s discrete but slightly subversive like an eyebrow - Or alternatively the face-full of hardware approach on the right!

Why do folk do these things to themselves?

 

To make a statement. They’re saying ‘this is who I am. this is the way of life I choose”.

And in that sense, they’re not a million miles away from the kind of religious rite that we’re talking about this morning.

For Abram and his community, circumcision became a sign of belonging. It marked them out as the people who’d been drawn into this covenant with God.

And the instruction to circumcise on the eighth day, and not at puberty, was a sign that these children belonged to God from the very beginning of their lives.

Incidentally, as a wee aside, why the eighth day?

Well, whether this is co-incidence or part of a plan I’ll leave you to judge, but scientific research has established that two of the essential clotting agents in your blood – vitamin K and prothrombin – are dangerously low for the first few days after birth, leaving the newborn baby susceptible to the risks of bleeding. But once the baby’s liver function has fully kicked in, the clotting agents are produced and they reach their optimum concentration on – the eighth day. There’s no better day to be cut, if you have to be cut.

And to this day, both Jews and Muslims continue this practice that their forefather Abram received. A sign in their flesh to remind them of who it is they belong to and what they have to do in response.

“I Am God Almighty” says God in verse 1. That’s who they belong to. And what do they have to do? “Walk before me and be blameless”.

Now let’s pause for a wee minute and think about those words “walk before me”. 

What does God mean there, do you think?

As I thought about it, I found myself picturing a catwalk at a fashion show or a stage in the theatre. The people who are up there doing their thing are doing it in a way that’s mindful of the audience – they’re aware that they’re on show.

So when God says “walk before me”, what he’s saying is “Live out your life mindful of me. Live out your days in a God-conscious way, and live them as well and faithfully as you can”.

That’s what it’s all about. In and of itself, circumcision doesn’t really mean anything or do anything. What it does do is remind the circumcised to live out their days mindful of God. And I think that’s why God gave that particular sign to Abram and his descendants.

Now here’s the thing.

Any ritual or ceremony, over time, can lose something of its meaning.

I've told this before, but like all good stories bears repeating…

A woman was preparing a roast in the kitchen with her daughter, and before she wrapped it up in tin foil, she carved off the last quarter or an inch from each end of joint and set the meat to the side.

 

"What are you doing that for?" asked her daughter. "It makes the meat taste better" said her mother. "My mother always said that a fresh cut gave more flavour in the cooking".

 

"That's nonsense!" said the daughter. So they went and asked the grandmother about it to verify the story. "Yes - that's right!" she said. "My mother always did the same".

 

So they sought out the great-grandmother. "Great-Granny, do you remember when you were cooking a roast? Why did you cut off the ends before you put it in the oven? Was it to make it taste better?". "No!" she laughed. "My roasting tin was never big enough!"

 

The ritual, in that family, had become separated from its meaning.

Now come forward with me 2000 years from the time of Abraham.

A new movement’s begun within the family of Judaism; a movement centred around the man they called Jesus. He himself was a Jew, as were his followers, but he was persecuted and put to death by his own religious leaders because they felt threatened by him. But growing numbers of people are coming to believe that he’d risen from the dead and that he was God’s messiah.

Some of these new believers are Jews, but many are non Jews. And one of the burning questions for the early church was ‘are these non-Jews who believe in Jesus required to obey all the Jewish laws – laws about diet, and customs and circumcision”?

The Apostle Paul, who was himself a Jew and persecuted the church before his conversion, said ‘no’ – they’re not. And in his letter to the church in Galatia – a church struggling with this very issue, he says “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”.

Here, 2000 years after Abraham, Paul is saying the same thing all over again. Circumcision, at the end of the day, counts for nothing. What counts is faith expressing itself through love. What counts is that you live out your life mindful of God, and walk before him as well and as faithfully as you can.

The danger of a practice like circumcision is that we keep the ritual but forget what it really means.

And in Christianity, it’s no different with the practice of baptism.

I spent a good few years studying what you might call sacramental theology. The religious theory behind the sacraments. And I have to say, a good amount of it sounded rather like people with too much time on their hands debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

And after all that study, I came to the conclusion that baptism, like circumcision, is of no value in itself unless it leads us to walk before God and live well and faithfully in this life.

Baptism, without discipleship, is as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Unless it issues in discipleship, it counts for nothing. The only thing that counts, says Paul, is faith, expressing itself through love.

I’m aware, as we read through the story of Abraham that anyone with half a brain must wonder sometimes where Abraham’s God is. This God who keeps popping up and having face-to-face conversations with people. Why doesn’t he do that with me? Or better still, why doesn’t he do that with Richard Dawkins?

Part of the answer to that, I think, is that in Christ God gave us his definitive word for all time.

You want to know that God is with you and for you? Look at the lengths he went to to come and live among us in Christ. Look at where that journey took him – to the pain and suffering of the cross, where he died to take upon himself the consequences of your sin and mine.

It’s a covenant that God made at the cross: a new covenant sealed by Christ’s blood.

But just like today’s covenant with Abram, it’s bilateral. A response is required. A response of faith and discipleship. And without that in adulthood, our baptism has very little meaning.

“Walk before me” God says to Abram. Live out your life in a God-conscious, God-faithful way. That’s what circumcision is meant to signify. That’s what baptism is meant to signify.

 

 

In very old churches, the font is often near the front door of the building to signify that baptism’s the way in to the family of the church. And that’s good theology, as long as we remember that baptism is the beginning of a journey and not the end of one.

You may have undergone the rite of baptism, as a child or as an adult, but the real question is - are you living out of your baptism? Are you making your way through life conscious of God? Consciously serving him.

The only thing that counts, says Paul, is faith expressing itself through love.

May God bless us with a faith which does just that.

Abraham Part 6 - Hagar

A childless couple are beginning to worry if they’ll ever be able to have children together.

A man and a woman from different cultures and opposite ends of the social spectrum get married, and almost immediately she falls pregnant.

The childless woman looks on, worried for herself and envious of this other woman who’s carrying a new life in her womb.

 
No, it’s not Downton! It’s Genesis 16:1-16; but when you get into it, it’s every bit as dramatic as the ups and downs of the Crawleys and the Granthams on a Sunday evening.

One of the things that I hope you’re picking up as we make our way through the story of Abram and Sarai is that for all that they’re great heroes of the Biblical narrative, they were real people as well.

They had feelings to contend with; problems to solve; issues to work through. They sometimes got things right, and they sometimes made bad mistakes. In other words, they weren’t so different from you and me.

And for all the divine disclosure and mystery that’s woven through their story, what we’re reading about today is the kind of domestic that Jeremy Kyle would have a field day with.

So for a while at least, let’s put aside the rose-tinted spectacles with which we tend to view these venerable characters, and see them as they really are.

This incident in their story plays itself out in four acts, and once we’ve looked at each of them in turn, we’ll spend a little time reflecting on what we can learn from them.

Act 1 begins with the pregnant phrase that Abram’s wife Sarai had not borne him any children.

Ten years now in Canaan. Ten years since God’s first promise of land and family; and though they now had a place to stay, there was still no sign of a child.

And I wonder if Sarai’s mind was doing that thing where you put two and two together and instead of making 4 you make 9 or 10. You see, when you read back through all these promises God had made about family, they were all made to Abram and about Abram,

All the talk is about Abram’s seed, Abram’s descendants. Now we might assume that as his wife, Sarai’s implicit in that, but the fact of the matter is she hasn’t once been mentioned by name in the context of those promises.

And who could blame her if, after long years of trying for a child, she began to think that whatever God’s plans were for her and her husband, they didn’t involve her being the natural mother of his children.

It’s pretty logical really. God’s made these promises; they don’t seem to be coming true for us; maybe that means there’s some other solution.

But those of you with a good memory will remember that Abram and Sarai have been in this same kind of territory before. And they’re about to make exactly the same mistake as before.

Remember when there was famine in the Canaan a few chapters back. What did they do? Pray it over? Stick it out? No – they did the logical thing and they went down to Egypt where they found food, but also a shedload of trouble.

The way of logic and the way of faith are not always the same path, but once again, they’re choosing logic over faith in these circumstances. There seems to be no prayer or attempt to engage God on this issue; patience is wearing thin. Sarai’s decided it’s time to take matters into their own hands and move things on a little. And once again, fertile Egypt is the destination of choice, though this time it’s the fertile body of Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant Hagar which offers a solution.

“Why don’t you sleep with my slave” says Sarai – “Perhaps she can have a child for me”.

That suggestion sounds odd to our ears, but this was one of the socially acceptable ways a childless couple could start a family in the ancient world. And it was understood that when the baby was born, it would be the wife and not the biological mother who would have jurisdiction over the child.

So Abram sleeps with Hagar, whether reluctantly or contentedly we’re not sure, and as the curtain falls on Act 1, Hagar’s blooming and things seem to be progressing nicely with what we might think of as Plan B.

But that’s when it all starts to kick off

Act 2 has barely started before Hagar seems to be developing a rather unpleasant sneer anytime that Sarai’s around.

After years of subjugation, suddenly Hagar has a little power and boy does she enjoy it.

Does she take Abram’s hand and place it on her belly with a smile, from time to time, knowing full well that Sarai’s looking on? Does she start to get stroppy about duties she deems unfit for a woman who’s carrying her master’s unborn child? Do she and Abram share glances and words that cut Sarai to the quick because she never in a million years thought that she would have to share him with another woman, let alone a younger and more exotic one?

Finally, her rage and jealousy boil over and with absolutely no sense of irony she rounds on Abram and tells him this is all his fault, even though it was her idea in the first place.

It always so much easier to blame the other than take responsibility for your own poor choices.

But Abram doesn’t do much better. He’s supposed to be the head of the household, the father of nations. He’s the one to whom Kings answer and from whom Kings flee. What does he say? “You’re the boss, dear. You do whatever you like!”.  He abdicates responsibility.

And we reach the interval in our little drama with Hagar being chased off stage by Sarai, and the sounds of fighting in the wings.

Act 3 sees us far from Abram’s home in Mamre. Hagar has fled and she’s making her way back to Egypt. She’s drinking from what might be the last stream before a risky desert crossing, when an angel comes and speaks with her.

I wonder how they would have the angel dress, if this were a play. In dazzling white, maybe? Full set of wings?

Well the Greek word ‘angelos’ from which we get the word ‘angel’ simply means a messenger. Could an angel cloak his or her glory and seem like one of us? I guess if God could, it wouldn’t be beyond an angel either. Indeed, it seems from the text that this angelic being may have been God himself.

Whatever the truth of it, Hagar doesn’t seem too phased by the encounter. She speaks with this messenger and explains the situation before receiving a command – go back to your mistress and serve her – and also a strange, double edged promise.

“You will have a son, and you’re to call him Ishmael, which means God hears. You’ll be blessed with countless descendants.” So far so good. “But he’ll be a wild donkey of a man”  the angel adds. In other words, he’s going to turn out to be stubborn and untameable.

The messenger is flagging up that Hagar’s future with her new son isn’t necessarily going to be any more straightforward than her present.

But it’s enough for her. She knew that as a foreigner, a slave, a runaway and a woman she didn’t count for much in her world. But she counted with God. She had seen, and been seen by him. And in response she’d given God a name, the only person in Scripture who ever does so. She called him El Roi – “The God who Sees”.

And so she returns home. And the drama ends with Act 4 - a brief vignette, setting us up for the next part of the story. I imagine this part played out in silhouette. Hagar hauls herself up into a sitting position after giving birth and offers Abram his newborn son, who he receives as though made of porcelain. For all that anyone knows, this Ishmael is the child of the promise.

And Sarai is nowhere to be seen.

 

It’s a powerful episode in the story; and in closing I want to flag up three issues it raises which I think it’s worth our reflecting on.

The first is patience.

Twice, now, in Abram’s story, we’ve seen the problems that surface when patience begins to wear thin.

When nothing seems to be happening, or things don’t seem to be progressing as quickly as we’d like, the temptation is either to impose our own solution – we head off to Egypt or we sleep with a servant girl – or to give in to despair.

Neither is a good option to take; and thankfully there is a third way, described beautifully by Father Richard Rohr in a book of Advent readings I’m using just now.

Rohr is talking about one of the key phrases of Advent – “Come, Lord Jesus”, and he argues that those words can help us to live more patiently with incompleteness, because they remind us that God’s perfect fullness is always ahead of us.

“When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say “Come, Lord Jesus”. We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always given by God.

Hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content, and even happy, because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.”

Sarai had another option to giving into despair or trying to take the future into her own hands. She could have gone back to the Source. She could have owned the disappointment and the worry and prayed God into the very centre of it. “Come Lord God. Come, Lord Jesus.” Come into this place, where I am lost and worried and confused. What would you have me do here? What would you have me be? Help me be patient in the middle of all this and to wait until your wisdom shows me the way.

Maybe that’s a prayer you need to echo today if you find yourself in a place where your patience has worn thin. “Come, Lord God. Come Lord Jesus. Be here with me, in the middle of all this. Let this difficulty be my teacher. Show me the way through.”

Those are the kind of prayers that rarely go unanswered.

So there’s something to learn here about patience; but also about power.

The dynamics of power in this story are fascinating.

Sarai has power as Abram’s wife, but in the one area she really cares about, she’s powerless. She can’t have kids.

Hagar’s powerless ‘til she gets pregnant and then her newfound power begins to go to her head.

Abram’s weakness in the face of his wife’s anger leaves a power vacuum which Sarai fills with wrath towards Hagar.

And finally God enters the scene, using his power both to console and correct Hagar, and bring her back home.

We’re left with what seems like an uneasy truce where none of the power struggles have been resolved, but for a time they’ve been set aside with the arrival of this new baby.

Power.

It’s interesting to reflect on how many of our associations with that word are negative. We speak of power struggles; of people who are power mad or power hungry and some who struggle to give up power.

We’re familiar with Baron Acton’s much quoted observation that Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But the thing is, in and of itself, power is neutral. As neutral as electricity or magnetism. It’s how you use your power that counts.

Because all of us have power, to at least some degree.

Some acquire power because of their role, or their abilities; their experience or their wealth. But at it’s centre, power is really about our ability to influence relationships.

Put Bill Gates on a desert island without a mobile phone or any lackeys to do his bidding, and he’s as powerless as the rest of us. Maybe more powerless. For all his wealth, in that context he has no power because there’s no-one around to influence.

Go to the other extreme and imagine a newborn baby – completely helpless, but exercising immense power over the lives of mum and dad and siblings. Dominating their relationships and their sleep patterns for months and months to come.

So don’t ever kid yourself that you don’t have power. If you’re involved in a network of relationships - as we all are - you have influence, and that influence is power.

Someone once said that the key question is not “do I have power”, but “what kind power do I have?”

To that, I’d add the following – “and am I using my power the way Christ would want me to?” Am I using my power to manipulate and bully so that I get my way? Or am I using it wisely and collaboratively for the greater good?

In Jesus we follow a servant King who exercised power by washing his disciples’ feet, talking to children, telling stories and placing gentle hands on broken people.

Don’t ever mistake gentleness for weakness. Gentleness is simply power, that’s beautifully controlled.

Powerful men and women come and go and make their mark. But none have ever left the mark that Christ left.

I’ll end with some words from Napoleon Bonaparte who knew a thing or two about power.

"I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him."

We end this morning with Abram and Sarai in view - recognising the problems that we bring upon ourselves when we lose patience or abuse our power.

But we also end with our eyes fixed on Jesus, remembering that in the grace of God it doesn’t have to be that way.

May God enable us to be patient, and wait on him.

And to use the power he’s blessed us with wisely, for the greater good.