2nd Sunday after Pentecost
June 14, 2020
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 10:1-20
This
month we are going to focus on God’s promises. Last week we talked about God’s
promise that I am with you always, from the beginning to the end. In the
Ezekiel bible study we read about God’s promise that I am with you always, no
matter where you are, whether you’re in your own country or in exile. This week
we’re going to talk about trusting God’s promises. Do you believe what God
promises? Do you trust God’s promise that God is always with you? Do you
believe God loves you unconditionally? Do you trust God to do what God says?
In
Genesis this morning we read the story of Abraham and Sarah offering
hospitality to three strangers. Their story began when God told Abram, “Go from
your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show
you.”[1]
Abram and Sarai go, not knowing where they’re going, or how long it’s going to
take them to get there. God promises them, “I will make you into a great
nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a
blessing.”[2]
Abram and Sarai have some adventures along the way, and by three chapters
later, Abram is starting to doubt God’s promise of making him into a great
nation. This is when God has Abram go outside and tells him, “Look up at the
sky and count the stars if you think you can count them. This is how many
children you will have.”[3]
Abram believes him, and they move on. However, in the next chapter, this is now
Genesis 16, it appears that Sarai thinks the problem is with her. She tells
Abram to sleep with her maid, Hagar, which was a common practice back then.
Abram agrees and Hagar gets pregnant with Ishmael. So, now Abram and Sarai
think God’s promise is fulfilled. Abram has a son. They made it happen. They
think their work caused God to keep his promise. But that’s not how God
works, is it? That’s not how God is faithful. It’s not because of anything we
do. God is faithful because that’s who God is. God keeps his promises because
God is faithful. God doesn’t keep his promises because we force his hand.
Now
we’re up to Chapter 17, and God repeats the same promise to Abram, because
apparently Abram and Sarai don’t believe him. This is when God gives them new
names, Abraham and Sarah, and promises Sarah, “I will bless her and will surely
give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of
nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”[4]
At this point, Abraham laughs, and says, “I’m going to have a son at 100 years
old? Oh, this is rich! God, maybe you should just take Ishmael.” God says, “No,
your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will
establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants
after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him,” too.[5]
Then
we get to today’s reading. And this time, this
time, God doesn’t waste much time. After renewing the covenant with Abraham
for the third time, over ten years after God first called Abraham and Sarah
from their home, after they’ve tried to make God’s promise come true on their
own, God sends these three strangers to visit. Abraham greets them with
extravagant hospitality, bringing fresh bread and milk for them to eat. One of
the strangers says, “this time next year, your wife Sarah will have a son.
Sarah, who’s eavesdropping from around the corner, laughs. She laughs! Wouldn’t
you? Sarah is over 90 years old; she’s post-menopausal. She’s heard this
promise time and again. She’s at the point where she doubts God’s promise, and
the truth is, she has good reason to: it still hasn’t happened yet! While Sarah
is chastened for laughing, her laughing is completely understandable. She’s been
hearing this promise for so long, it’s been unfulfilled for so long, and now some stranger says it’s finally
going to happen? I think I’d be incredulous, too, because I’d also be scared to get my hopes up. I would doubt,
because I’d be afraid of being disappointed, again. It would be a self-defense
mechanism to keep me from getting hurt. There are times God takes his sweet
time fulfilling promises.
In
our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus sends out the twelve disciples with very
specific instructions. He tells them, “Go to the lost sheep of Israel. As you
go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the
sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely
you have received; freely give.”[6]
Moreover, the disciples are to do this with no money and no suitcase, no
supplies. They have to trust that the town they go to will offer them
hospitality: a place to stay, food to eat, and a change of clothes if theirs
get torn. They have to trust God will provide what they need. They have to rely
on the generosity of the people to whom they are sent. If the people are
unwelcoming or hostile, then shake the dust off your feet and move on. Trusting
in a stranger’s hospitality can be a scary thing. You do it, anyway, trusting
God promise that you’ll be taken care of. It may not be food you really care to
eat. It may not be the type of bed you sleep well in.
It
reminds me of a story I don’t think I’ve ever shared from Nicaragua. Before
seminary, I spent about a year teaching in Nicaragua with a non-denominational
mission agency called Food for the Hungry. One of the places I taught was in
the remote village of Santa Maria. To get to Santa Maria, if you don’t have
private transportation, which I didn’t, you get on the bus that runs between
the cities of Leon and Chinandega. When you get on, you sit near the front and
ask the bus driver to let you off at the manicera,
the peanut plant. The bus driver looks at you funny, because why in the world
would a gringa want to get off there??
But when you do, there’s a horse and cart waiting for you to take you the
couple kilometers off the main road and down a dirt road into the village. The
village didn’t use to be here. It used to be on the other side of the main
road, up the side of a mountain. Then Hurricane Mitch came in 1998 and horrible
mudslides that wiped out half the village. Everyone lost someone. And the
village decided they couldn’t stay there; they had to move. Many Christian
organizations worked with the people of Santa Maria, including Food for the
Hungry, offering counseling, relief work, and eventually training in other
marketable job skills. My second visit was on the eve of the 7th
anniversary of the mudslides, in 2005. I’d been in Nicaragua about six weeks at
the time and had been whisked around the Pacific side of the country learning
about what Food for the Hungry and their partner organizations were doing. That
particular night, we were fed dinner by the local pastor, some beans and a
tortilla and some of the local cheese. It wasn’t enough, and I went to bed hot,
dirty, and hungry. Beds and mosquito netting were provided for us. My mosquito
net had big holes in it. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. In the morning
there was no breakfast. I ended up skipping the anniversary commemoration.
There was heavy rain forecast for the day, and when a colleague with a car
decided to leave early, I asked to go, too. As I mentioned, after that, I made
weekly trips on my own out to Santa Maria. But I never again spent the night there,
nor did I eat another meal there. I made sure to eat before I left and I ate
again when I got back to Leon (where I lived).
God
kept his promises throughout my time in Nicaragua. I had enough. I lived with a
middle class family where the mom was a teacher and the dad was a doctor who
taught at the university. I grew close with a couple other American families
serving with other mission agencies as well as colleagues from my own. There
were still lots of times when I was overwhelmed. There were still times during
the dry season when I asked God why he didn’t send me somewhere with
air-conditioning! Yet God kept, and keeps, his promises. I expect each of you
have your own stories to tell of promises that God has fulfilled for you, or
even some you’re still waiting for, like Sarah and that baby.
God
does not call all of us, or even most of us, to leave our homeland and our
people and go to a different one, like Abraham and Sarah and my call to
Nicaragua. Most of us are called to serve God right where we are. The disciples
weren’t sent out to another place or people but to stay right there in Israel.
They even may have been going back to their hometowns. Sometimes going to a
people you know is harder than going to a people you don’t know. The people you
know expect you to act a certain way, to talk a certain way. When you change,
as we all do, it may become harder for the people who know to accept you if you
don’t fit their expectations of you. Sometimes, we fall back into old familiar
patterns. Familiar places trigger old behavior. When we’re growing in Christ,
when we’re stretching ourselves, challenging ourselves, learning more about
ourselves and about God and about who God’s calling us to be, we have to be
careful to not fall back into those old ways. We have to keep moving forward,
becoming who God’s calling us to be, going where God’s calling us to go, always
standing on those promises, no matter how long it may seem to take God to keep
them.
Let us pray…
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