Communion

​We just heard three challenging and thought-provoking readings! I found myself especially drawn to our Old Testament reading from Genesis.
 
Abraham’s wife Sarah is the villain of that story. But before talking about what Sarah does wrong, I want to say a word in Sarah’s defense.
 
When Abraham and Sarah were already old, God called Abraham to leave his home and go to a land that God would reveal to him later. To his great credit, Abraham goes.
 
We don’t normally focus on the fact that Sarah goes with Abraham. But Sarah deserves credit, too. Sarah didn’t go just because Abraham told her to. We can see in our reading for this morning that Sarah is tough. Abraham couldn’t make Sarah do what she didn’t want to do. If anything, Sarah was the one who could make her spouse do things.
 
I picture myself at supper some evening casually mentioning to Carrie that God was calling us to move away from everything we know and love. That conversation would not go well. And if I added that I didn’t know exactly where we were going, but that I was sure God would tell us when we got there, the conversation would end with us staying put.
 
But Sarah goes. And Sarah puts up with a lot on the journey. And God clearly recognizes Sarah’s devotion. Abraham ultimately had eight children with three different women (see Genesis 25:2). But God assures Abraham that the main blessing for Abraham’s line will go through the child he had with Sarah.
 
All that is to say, Sarah is the mother of the faithful just as much as Abraham is the father of the faithful (Romans 4:11-12).
 
But in our reading for this morning, Sarah demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham’s son with Hagar, into the desert to die. That’s bad. Abraham was distressed, “very distressed,” at the idea. But to his shame, Abraham was prepared to do it. Otherwise, Abraham wouldn’t have been distressed. I imagine God looking at the two of them and wondering, did I really choose the right pair through whom to bless all humankind?
 
Sarah’s motivation here is clear. Sarah loves her son. Sarah wants her son to succeed in life. I get that. I want my children to succeed, too. 
 
But Sarah goes too far. Sarah is willing to do whatever it takes to help Isaac succeed, even if it means killing a rival. I’d like to think I wouldn’t actually kill anybody to help my children. But if need be….That’s a joke!
 
We see in Sarah’s story the way in which even love can get distorted. Even love can lead to fear, envy, hurt, anger. And over time, those emotions can turn into real hatred, hatred which divides people from each other in potentially murderous ways.
 
I note in passing that what Jesus condemns in our Gospel reading is that kind of exclusive love for one person, most often a family member, that leads us to hate other people.
 
In our story, Sarah is us. Sarah story can help us to recognize our own tendency to deny what we might have in common with other people, to treat people as threats, to respond to people with hostility, to break off community with people we define as other, as different, as potentially dangerous.
 
Sarah’s behavior in this story, our behavior when we do the same, is sin.
 
In our story, God works to overcome the sin of Sarah and Abraham in sending away Hagar and Ishmael.
 
First, and this is important, God reassures Abraham and, through him, Sarah. Sarah was acting out of fear. Virtually anytime we act out of fear, things won’t go well. So God promises Sarah that her fear was misplaced. God will still bless them. God will bless their son.
 
The same is true for us. We don’t have to be afraid, and we don’t have to do the things that fear inclines us to do. God loves us. God blesses us. And life isn’t always easy, but God is ALWAYS with us. That’s reassuring!
 
Then God blesses Hagar and Ishmael. God promises to make a great nation of Ishmael, just as God has promised to make a great nation of Abraham. And that happens. Ishmael ends up having twelve children who become twelve princes of the twelve tribes that carry their names (Genesis 25:12-17). It’s a clear parallel to the blessing that God gives Jacob, the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham and Sarah.
 
Sarah had worried that God’s blessings were limited. But God blessed Sarah and her child Isaac. And God also blessed Hagar and her child Ishmael. That’s true today, too. God blesses us. And God blesses other people, including people we may not be inclined to like or trust.
 
God does one more thing. God promises Abraham that Isaac will be the one to carry his name. But God also reminds Abraham that Ishmael is his offspring, too. Isaac and Ishmael may be divided by the actions of their parents, but in God’s eyes they remain family, both connected to God, and both connected to each other.
 
And in a beautiful scene at the end of Abraham’s life, the family is restored. Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father in the tomb where Sarah is already buried (Genesis 25:9).
 
In this story, we see God working to bless divided people and, eventually, to restore community that has been broken by sin.
 
That’s a great lesson for any day. But it happens to be especially relevant for us today. Five young people in our parish finished Communion Classes this week. We’ll pause to recognize them immediately after Eucharist at the 10:00 service.
 
In our sessions, the teachers and the kids talked about the meaning of Holy Eucharist, holy Communion. We call it communion because it is a sacrament of community, a sacrament uniting us to Christ and to each other.
 
We live in a divided world. But every time we celebrate holy Communion, we experience exactly what our Old Testament reading teaches. God is still working to overcome human sin and division by blessing us and forming us into the one body of Christ. Today we celebrate Anthony, Lucas and Caleb, Brady and Jack, who join us in a more intentional way in the sharing of the sacrament and spiritual community it creates.
 
Afterwards we get to experience our own community in yet another way, in our Church picnic! Mostly the picnic is fun. But our picnic has a real value too. Our picnic reinforces the message of sacramental unity grounded in the Eucharist.
 
And so, on this picnic Sunday, this Communion Sunday, I give thanks to God for calling us together, for uniting us and calling us to the mission of union and reconciliation in our world, and for bringing us at last into God’s kingdom, where we will experience perfect unity at last.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.