Anxiety & Acceptance, June 22, 2008

Genesis 21:1-15
Matthew 10:24-39
"If all a physicist knows about The Truth be true, then, for all our common world's futility and grime, we have a better time than the Great Nebulae or the atoms in our brains. Marriage is rarely bliss, but surely it would be worse, if particles were to pelt at thousands of miles per sec about a universe, in which a lover's kiss would either not be felt or break the lover's neck. Though the face at which I stare while shaving, be crude, for year after year it repels an aging suitor, it has thank God, sufficient mass to be altogether there, not an indeterminable gruel which is partly somewhere else. Our eyes prefer to suppose, that a habitable place has a geocentric view, that architects enclose a quiet euclidian space: exploded myths – but who would feel at home astraddle an ever expanding saddle? The passion of our kind, for the process of finding out, is a fact that one can hardly doubt. But I would rejoice more, if I knew clearly what we wanted the knowledge for; if I felt certain still, that the mind is free to know or not. God has chosen once it seems, and whether our concern for magnitude's extremes really become a creature, who comes in a median size, or politicizing Nature be altogether wise, is something we shall learn. Amen." (WH Auden)

In the poem we used for this morning's prayer of confession, WH Auden asks whether the purpose of all our desire for the truth, is only a quest to know? The Enlightenment was conceived as a great experiment, to quantify ALL the Laws of nature, so as to know, knowing to better accept life. But along the way, our anxieties got the best of us. There was always knowledge we could not know, Circumstances we desired to be different, or on our timetable. Humanity's great desire to fix, to change, to correct what we believed was askew, inspired us to control our destiny, but doing so without full knowledge of what might yet be.

Abraham had received a Promise from God, yet years went by anxiously waiting. So Sarah, Abraham's wife, tried to correct their ANXIETY, tried to control “The Promise”. The Great story of Abraham, Father of Nations was controlled by Sarah who took her slave Hagar, and abused her, used her to conceive a child. The story of Hagar is a reminder of all the marginalized persons in our society, the ones who are used and abused, and cast aside. Through her planning, control, manipulation, Sarah and Abraham were able to have a child according to The Law, Ishmael; but then The Promise of “what might be” was fulfilled, Sarah conceived.
As they lived into this reality, suddenly a new ANXIETY was manifest, Ishmael was a child of Abraham. While Hagar was a slave, considered property of Sarah, Hagar's son was the first born of Abraham, of equal and greater stature than Isaac. Sarah tried to correct her ANXIETY by having Hagar and Ishmael banished to wander in the wilderness.

There is a poetic irony to this, that ISHMAEL the firstborn son of Abraham by a Slave of Egypt would be EXILED to wander in the Wilderness, and their cries would be heard by God; and generations later with Moses, the enslaved descendents of Isaac would be EXILED from Egypt, because of the firstborn, to wander in the Wilderness, their cries being heard by God.

Genesis establishes for us the tension, between trying to live according to the LAW, we have MT. SINAI, the TEN COMMANDMENTS, ISHMAEL; and God's PROMISE, MT. ZION, CIRCUMCISION, ISAAC. Both are Sons of Abraham. Both are ways of following God, attendance to the LAW/ and living in COVENANT.

But one has to wonder, what would have happened to human history, if SARAH had not been so filled with ANXIETY that she used Hagar to create a Child, ... that she disposed of the Child to favor her own. Genesis establishes the tension that would become Islam and Judaism, Ishmael and Isaac, both descended from Abraham.

We also need to pay attention to the SPIN and EMPHASES we place on the telling of the Story. Historians and Politicians have been quick to recall that this is the origin of the conflict of the Middle East, that Sarah used Hagar, and Sarah had them sent away. But two factors also need to be remembered, first the response of Abraham...while this is the Hebrew Scriptures and Isaac is the SON of ELECTION, OF PROMISE; he TREASURES ISHMAEL also. Second, that decades later, after Sarah died and was buried, after Rebekkah was found for Isaac, ABRAHAM DIED and both ISHMAEL and ISAAC joined together in burial of their father. Neither one without the other.
ANXIETY and ACCEPTANCE are both responses to KNOWING.

I grew up in a Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of the beloved leaders of that church was a retired Professor of English named AK STEVENS. AK and his wife were nearly a hundred years old, filled with the wisdom of a Lifetime, spiced with knowledge of Literature. AK and his bride never had children, instead they taught and took in college students as borders, whom they loved as if their own. When they had first been married, AK and Helen had a Graduate student, working on his PhD who turned out to be WH Auden. So it was that when WH Auden completed his thesis and had it published as his first book, he dedicated it to ABRAHAM and Helen Stevens. However, AK's first name was not ABRAHAM but ALVIN. He could have been ANXIOUS, to have his one great opportunity at fame, to be listed in the first publication of WH Auden foiled. But instead AK, accepted the circumstance and loved to tell the story.

Years ago we had a neighbor who had a baby. One day, the doorbell rang and here was the neighbor looking quite frantic. She described that for the first time she had tried to bottle feed, and the baby had eaten and eaten everything she had, then the baby became lethargic, and the mother was anxious she had given the baby too much. She demanded to know what to do, how to fix it. And we described that eventually, it was going to come out one end or the other, so all we could do, was make certain the baby had burped, to watch and wait and pray.

There are times of ANXIETY in all our lives. One response is to CUT OUT others, to eliminate all options outside our control. We can even do so, while obeying the LAW; but we can also accept and live into what comes, recognizing God may have a Promise here we had not yet known.