Isaac, The Promised Child

When my first child was born a friend sent me this excerpt from a William Wordsworth poem to mark the occasion:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

-William Wordsworth from Ode on Intimations of Immortality

Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God… a reminder, that somehow, in our birth we come from God, and we actually trail some touch of the divine with us when we are born. An encouragement to see, in a newborn child, a spark of the sacred. John Philip Newell, a speaker and writer in the Celtic Christian tradition, says that “when we look into the face of a newborn child, we are looking into the face of God freshly born among us” (Christ of the Celts, 21).

Every child is a gift from God. I think we all want to affirm that. Many people see children as a sign of hope that God is still at work in the world. If we have confidence in God, we can find the confidence in ourselves to bring new life into this world. Children can be a community’s sign to the future that life, in spite of its hardship… is worthwhile. Children remind us that what is deepest in us is of God. We are made in the image of God and therefore we are “bearers of an ancient wisdom and an unspeakable dignity,” Newell writes (Celts, 20). There is a “sacred tune at the heart of the human soul” (Celts, 20); and “children carry within them the sounds and scents of the Beginning (Celts, 23).

So it is fitting that in a service where we bless our children, and honour the gift that children are to this community, we read the story of Isaac, the promised, long awaited miracle child born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. There is much joy and laughter in this story. We can imagine the delight and wonder of the new parents as they got to know their son. We can appreciate their sense of deep gratitude and utter relief after waiting so long for a child. We can imagine how their sense of grief and shame lifted. It is a story of a promise from God fulfilled. The promise that Abraham and Sarah would have many descendants, now has a starting place in their son Isaac.

But this was certainly not a straightforward, easy path to happily-ever-after. The geographical journey of Abraham and Sarah to the land that God promised them was long and winding as we heard last week. They moved 17 times! Their journey to parenthood was just as long and winding. It tested their patience and trust in God to the very limits. It was tedious, tiresome and troubling for them to wait so long for the promise to be fulfilled.

The version we read this morning is a condensed account of a much bigger story. If we step back and extend our perspective we see a family saga that unfolds over many chapters in Genesis. The story today about the birth of Isaac is just one part of this much longer multi-generational story of God’s relationship with this family.

The problem in this part of the story is Abraham and Sarah have no child. The family saga will end with them if there is no heir. How can God’s promises be fulfilled if there is no next generation? I expect Sarah and Abraham carried a great deal of grief at not being able to have children. They probably wrestled with feelings of inadequacy and guilt, even shame created by their infertility, in a culture where giving birth to a child, especially a son, was seen as God’s blessing. I wonder if they felt bitter and jealous of other people who were able to have healthy children. Did they have moments of doubt that God would ever fulfill the promise to make them a great nation with many descendants? I bet they wondered if God had chosen the wrong people for the promise.

When we look at the larger sweep of this story, we see how Abraham and Sarah took things into their own hands at points, probably when they doubted God’s promise. Abraham passed Sarah off as his sister three different times to protect himself, allowing Sarah to become the property of other men, enabling the sexual abuse of Sarah. What kind of pain did she carry around from those experiences?

And then Sarah, in a desperate effort to produce an heir, gave her servant, Hagar, to Abraham, enabling the sexual exploitation of Hagar. The child, Ishmael, that is born, as a result brings joy and hope that the promise can now be fulfilled. But the family system also fills with tension between the women, jealousy, rivalry, blame. At one point Sarah is so harsh, that the pregnant Hagar flees into the desert for a time. Even after Sarah finally gives birth to Isaac, the jealous rivalry continues. Which son is the rightful heir? Which son is to inherit the promise? What is Hagar’s role in the family? Sarah and Abraham end up sending Hagar and Ishmael away in order to privilege their son Isaac, leading to an agonizing scene where Hagar, faced with watching her son die of thirst in the desert, cries out to God for mercy. God provides a well to find water, and a blessing for Ishmael, perhaps undoing some of the cruelty. This is a pretty messy and sometimes disturbing backstory. When Abraham and Sarah step in, they leave a lot of pain and suffering in their wake.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about this story is that God still chose to work with Abraham and Sarah, and their dysfunctional, messy family after them. The meddling and scheming and interfering–trying to make the story unfold to their benefit–carried on through the next generations. And yet God continued, with unfathomable patience, to call, to provide and to bless.

There is no clear, direct route to promise fulfillment. Not when humans are involved! And yet God can still work around them, within them, in spite of them and yes, even through them, flawed as they are. This reassures me that God won’t give up on me either, or on anyone else for that matter. We are never too old, too young, too tired, too messed up, too broken that we cannot still be partners with God. We are never too old for something new to be born in us.

One commentator writes, “…the faith has always been carried in the hands of people who stumble, grow weary, act incompetently, and disobey at some moments, while at other times they surprise us with their trust, perseverance, perceptiveness, and faithfulness…the story will disappoint those of us who wish for unblemished heroes. But insofar as we know the people of God in other generations, we will understand the people in this saga and perhaps even recognize ourselves” (Believers Church Bible Commentary: Genesis, Eugene F. Roop, 95).

And we do find ourselves in this family. We find ourselves jealous, afraid, doubtful, impatient, selfish, and convinced we are too old and tired for God to do anything new. We need to hear the promise, that in spite of all of that God wants to partner with us, wants to be that living presence of love within us and through us.

I also want to take some time to acknowledge that we can identify with these families in other ways too. Many of us know all too well these troubling experiences and feelings around fertility, parenthood and family. Some among us have known the ache and longing to have a child, but faced the reality of infertility–of trying everything but not being able to conceive. Some have faced other life circumstances that made it difficult to imagine starting a family, and maybe looked with envy on others who were able to shape the kinds of families they wanted. Some have experienced a miscarriage or a difficult pregnancy, or perhaps a premature birth that carried higher risks, or the agony of a stillborn baby or early childhood death. Maybe some have faced the reality of an unwanted or untimely pregnancy and the difficult decisions that resulted, perhaps even making the decision to end a pregnancy. Some have suffered sexual violence, even intimate partner violence.

So yes. We want to celebrate with joy, wonder and delight when babies are born. And we want to make space to grieve with those who grieve. Sarah and Abraham’s story connects with those layers of grief and pain–with that tangled web of feelings around sexuality, fertility and family. When Hagar runs away from Sarah, and collapses in the desert, she cries out to God in anguish. In one of the most profound biblical accounts, when God responds and promises a blessing for Ishmael as well, Hagar names God ‘the one who sees” (Genesis 16: 13). She is able to go back to Sarah and Abraham’s household, knowing she has been seen and heard–that she is not alone.

As we explore the story of Isaac, the promised child, we shouldn’t be surprised any more that God most often works through unlikely choices and crooked journeys. One thing we do notice, all through the biblical story, is that God often points to children just like Isaac, as signs of what God is up to. What could be more unlikely than a weak, helpless infant that is totally dependent on compassionate caregivers? But that’s where God points! Look, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14) God says through the prophet Isaiah. For unto us a child is born…again in the words of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6). Sarah and Elizabeth, in their old age, will give birth to sons. Hannah, praying desperately for a child, at the steps of the temple will be blessed with the birth of Samuel, who became a prophet and guide for his people. Jesus, the Word, made flesh, will be born among us in the form of a child, to a young mother, Mary. Jesus himself takes time in his busy ministry to bless the children (Mark 10), and when he hears his disciples arguing about who will be the greatest in his kingdom he brings a child into their midst and says the kingdom belongs to such as these (Luke 9:46; Matthew 18:1-5; Mark 9:33-37).

In the midst of all the immense, complex political troubles of Israel throughout its history, what is it about babies that God keeps offering them as signs? In an article called, The Politics of the Child, Alastair Roberts identifies three things that God might be pointing to when God offers children as signs (see On Babies and Politics, by Judith Friesen Epp, volume 24, Issue 24 Canadian Mennonite). First of all the lives of children are centred on trust. Infants are helpless, weak, and entirely dependent on their caregivers. They trust that their needs will be met. One of the names for God in these Old Testament stories is El Shaddai. Often it is translated as God Almighty, or something like that. But another translation is “the breasted one.” In other words, God is like a nursing mother, all sufficient for the needs of her child.

To think about being utterly dependent on God’s provision and care is both terrifying and totally freeing. Terrifying because we would rather be the authors of our own story. We want to design our own destiny. To be utterly dependent on God means giving up that need for control. But it is also freeing because it means we are not responsible for everything. Not everything depends on us; nothing begins or ends with us.

Recently a friend of mine was asking how I was doing in my role as pastor. I shared that sometimes it felt weird to be starting in pastoral ministry when so many people in our society are leaving the church, and I admitted to feeling some weight and heaviness about the future of the church. She gently reminded me that it wasn’t my job to worry about the future of the church. After all, it’s not my church. It is God’s church, and God is already at work. It is not my responsibility to preserve or save the church. What happens to the church–that is up to God.

Many of us have trust issues, especially with God. Abraham and Sarah did too. They needed to trust God in the face of what must have seemed like impossible circumstances. In the curriculum resource materials we are using for this worship series we are reminded that, “trusting God’s promises is more than a belief we hold in our minds. Trust involves committing our lives to a particular direction in the absence of evidence and choosing to act in a manner consistent with the promises made to us. God’s promises to Abraham and Sarah are fulfilled, in part, because they act upon them in the face of greater evidence to the contrary.”

Second, the lives of children are vulnerable. And when God points to children God reminds people to look out for the vulnerable among them. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures the people are reminded to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger–three categories of vulnerable people. The kingdom of God is not about coercive power, muscular might, or intimidating force. Rather, as Jesus describes it, the kingdom of God is good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed (see Luke 4: 16-19). God has an eye for the vulnerable in the story of Isaac, the promised child. God gives Sarah a child in her old age. God provides for Hagar and Ishmael.

This summer I have been reading through the book, Resistance: Confronting Violence, Power, and Abuse Within Peace Churches, edited by Carol Penner and Cameron Altaras. It is a collection of essays, personal stories and poetry, assembled to speak truth about and confront violence within historic peace churches, especially focused on sexual violence and how churches have often excused or overlooked. In this case, having a heart for the vulnerable among us means listening to their stories. Standing in solidarity with those who experience violence, abuse, injustice and oppression. And working hard to prevent more abuse from happening in the future.

Finally, when God points to babies as signs, it is a reminder to have a long-range vision. When we think of babies and children, we celebrate the potential and promise they are. Although, I’d like to caution that it’s not fair to expect them to fix all the problems previous generations have created! Thinking about babies and children helps us to become concerned with what we will leave for the next generation, and makes us more conscious of how we are using our resources today. Taking a long view also means that we don’t get too worried if we can’t see the whole journey ahead of us. Can we value the crookedness of the journey, as Don asked this week when we were talking about this theme.

Maybe the journey itself is as important as the destination. Do we learn as much along the stumbling way as we do from the promise fulfilled? Is there something important simply about participating–about taking that one next step that we can see in front of us. It reminds me of a poem I have heard a number of times.

The Long View

(written by Ken Untener in 1979, but is commonly known as “Oscar Romero’s Prayer”)

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. . . .
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and to do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen