Mooroolbark Uniting Church (St Margaret’s)

Pentecost 4 – 25 June 2023

Sermon – Rev’d Dr Howard Wallace

How do we celebrate an anniversary? It is not a ‘big’ anniversary, a ‘0’ one. What is appropriate? We might suggest a party but that raises the question of what sort of party and what are we celebrating anyhow? Are we celebrating getting to this point as a milestone? Are we celebrating past achievements? That is what we do with birthdays and golden logies and other awards. Is that sort of celebration right for a 46^th church anniversary? Maybe not quite. So, how do we celebrate this anniversary?

Our reading from Genesis today might seem to have little to do with celebrations – it seems to have to do more with jealousy, spitefulness, and cruelty. Yet it may still have some guidance. Abraham and Sarah have long been promised to be the parents of a great nation but so far the fulfilment of that promise seems only to have retreated further into the distance. They have contemplated ways the promise might be fulfilled but these have been rejected by God according to the story. The last suggestion was for Sarah’s maid Hagar to be a surrogate for her and have a child by Abraham. But then when Sarah finally falls pregnant in old age and bears a son, which we heard last week, things take a new turn. Jealousy enters the family arena. Hagar and her son are sent off into the wilderness by Abraham at Sarah’s strong urging.

in the wilderness when their water had run out Hagar resigns herself to the inevitable, God intervenes in the story and not only supplies the necessary water but promises to make a great nation of the boy. He will, in our terms, be the ancestor of the Arab peoples. There are at least two things to note about this story. The first has to do with the Hebrew language. As Hagar sits at some distance from her son, weeping and waiting for the inevitable to take place, we are told ‘God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven…’. It is the word ‘heard’ that is the key here. In Hebrew the word ‘to hear’ is shama’. You may be familiar with it from the well-known Jewish prayer called the shema’ taken from a verse in Deuteronomy: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.’ The prayer gets its name from the first word: shema’ ‘hear’. But the sort of hearing that is inferred is not just passive listening or detecting sound. It is about hearing and acting on what is heard. ‘Hear, O Israel…’ is about obedience to the word of God. It is a call for Israel, the people of God to hear and obey. In the case of God hearing the voice of the boy, God has heard and acted upon that hearing. He saves the boy and his mother.

But there is another point to note here. Ishmael, the son born to Hagar, is seen as the ancestor of the Arab peoples. In Genesis we also get stories about the ancestors of other nations who lived around ancient Israel. Lot, through his daughters becomes the ancestor of Moab and Ammon. Later Esau, Jacob’s twin, will be the ancestor of Edom. In later books of the Old Testament Israel is at enmity with some or all of these nations. But not in Genesis. In fact, as we can see, through Abraham and Sarah Israel is seen to be related in one way or another to each of them. Abraham also makes peace with his relatives. And these are among the nations which are to be blessed by God through Abraham. Genesis gives a picture of Abraham’s descendants at peace with others, And more so, Abraham is to be a source of blessing for them.

Older translations did not see it so and often read the text through modern international tensions. In our passage today, Sarah sees the son of Hagar, Ishmael, and tells Abraham to cast her out because she is afraid he will inherit along with her son Isaac. Sarah, we are told, saw Ishmael ‘playing’ with her son. The Hebrew word translated as ‘playing’ literally translates as ‘making (someone) laugh’. It is another play on words around Isaac’s name which is connected to laughter, in one case Sarah’s joy at having a son. But older translations, like the King James Version, translated our verse differently. In that version, Sarah saw Ishmael ‘mocking’ Isaac. This gives a more sympathetic understanding to Sarah’s demand that Hagar and Ishmael be dismissed. Ishmael is the villain in the KJV. It is not a matter of Sarah’s jealousy and fear as in more recent translations. The KJV arises more from present political tensions between Jews and Arabs (and perpetuates them) than from a more neutral translation.

So what might we take from all this on this 46^th anniversary of the UCA. Maybe this, that our proper celebration is not to stop and celebrate what we have achieved or done in the past, but to rededicate ourselves to be a people who hear not only the word of God as it is read, but a people who respond to its calls, who make its way their own. In addition, we dedicate ourselves to be not only ones who hear the word of God but those who hear the cries of others needing help. Dedicated to being a people who hear the voices of our first nations people crying out to be heard, crying out for equal standing before the law, and a fair share of the medical, educational and social benefits of our land. Dedicated to being a people who hear the voices of women within society who feel the slight and worse of misogyny within our society and its manifestation in the realms of workplace remuneration, opportunity or credibility. Dedicated to being a people who hear the voices of refugees, of the homeless and disadvantaged who cry out for that fair go Australians are supposed to be keen on. Now most of these things and others we could name are matters we as a congregation and denomination are already engaged with. Maybe our 46^th anniversary celebration is to be a church that continues to hear the cries of despair within society and to respond to them as needed. Maybe our celebration is to continue to be a uniting people, not just hopefully in terms of ecumenical unity but in terms of embracing the whole of God’s people, both within the church and without, in the hope and aim of spreading God’s blessing.