FAMILY VALUES ? Genesis 21: 8-21 Matt 10: 24-39

It was Mark Twain who once commented that his problem was not so much the things he didn’t understand in the Bible as the things he did understand.

Whether, he was right or not there certainly are some problems with the things we have crossed in today’s Scripture Readings.

Let’s first look at Abraham. I struggle at the best of times to find him an attractive person. Already, he has passed his wife of to an Egyptian Pharaoh as being his sister which has kept him safe but has led to her being morally compromised. Worse still, he has stirred up a right hornet’s nest in that at the instigation of his wife Sarah, he has decided to give God’s promise of a child a bit of a push by sleeping with her Egyptian servant Hagar. In the Genesis narrative, we are not told how Hagar responded to this happening which was certainly not an unknown practice in those times. However, given the power relationship, Hagar does not seem to have been in a position to make a free decision and so some commentators have likened this story to rape. That may be seeing the story through 21st century lenses but I suspect that Hagar was in no more of a position to withhold consent than were African slaves who were abused by the slave owners on America’s plantations.

Anyhow, the result of these shenanigans was that Hagar became pregnant with the son who was to be Ishmael. But more happened than that. The relationship between Hagar and Sarah deteriorated. May be because of the wrong she had suffered, may be because she a slave had what Sarah wanted most, Hagar began to despise her mistress and in return, Sarah treated her slave with cruelty - to such an extent that Hagar ran away. Yet such is Hagar’s pitiful state that she has to return to Abraham and Sarah where she gives birth.

But the problem does not end there. Some years later, God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah is fulfilled and Sarah gives birth to a son called Isaac. And with this, the problem between the women, flares up again. In away this is so modern - a story of a father with children by two women who both think he’s making to much of the offspring of the other woman. However, in this case the outcome is extreme. Sarah demands, at a party to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, that Abraham get rid of both Hagar and the now adolescent son, Ishmael. And so, desperate to maintain an easy life for himself as always, Abraham looks after himself by sending them to the perils of the desert. Comforting himself, with a promise that Ishmael would also father a nation, Abraham shows his ’love’ with a little food and a skin of water. What a Father!

Other than at Abraham’s grave, we never hear of Isaac and Ishmael meeting again. But a poison has come to exist, a poison that has gone down through the centuries. For today, the children of Abraham look back to this inglorious Father through these sons, Arabs looking back through Ishmael and Jews through Isaac. And the story of pain that begins with Abraham misusing Hagar, just goes on and on!

But perhaps, we might find a better picture of family values in our Gospel Reading. But here too, we are in for a bit of a shock. As you know today is Father’s day. This morning, I had cards from both of my children. My son, James, in typically robust form, sent me one with a cover which proclaimed;

This Father’s Day Card is given in a way of saying sorry for my behaviour over the last year

Before adding on the inside

And as an apology in advance for the year to come.
Happy Father’s Day.

Pretty typical of James.

As for Kaye, well in response to my often calling her Princess Kaye, she begins rather sweetly;

However old I get Daddy I will always be your little Princess

Sweet! But wait for it! On the inside is added;

And you will always be my servant!
Happy Father’s Day from your loving daughter.

Aagh! Family values are alive just as Jesus taught us.
Well, No! Not exactly! For Jesus tells us in our Gospel, that he has come not to bring peace but a sword, and wait for it:

To turn a man against his Father,
A daughter against her mother.

Some Father’s Day greeting card that would !

And the passage goes on to talk of those who love parents more than Jesus as being unworthy of him. It might not surprise you that when I yesterday visited my father who has Parkinsons, I did not talk in this sort of language.

So is Jesus really against family values? Well I find that hard to believe of one who would seem to have cared for his family in the absence of his father, one who commits his mother to John’s care whilst on the cross. Surely, if Jesus was cavalier on family, Paul would not have written so extensively on family matters in his epistles.

I think the truth is that Jesus is largely using dramatic language, speaking with hpyerbole to make his point. Remember this is the Jesus who warns at Gethsemane that those who live my the sword die by the sword. My guess is that he is emphasising the importance of following him and his way. Matthew’s first readers would know all to well how Jewish families divided over their response to Jesus, with Christians often being betrayed into persecution by their close blood relatives. For many family had become a reason not to follow Jesus. These verses powerfully remind us of the great importance of following Jesus even when it goes against our cultural norms and the views of those who are nearest and dearest to us.

But I think, there’s more to things than that. You may remember the story elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel of how Jesus’ mother and brothers come to see him. When told, Jesus
answers;

Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?

Before adding as he points to the disciples;

Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

You see, too often, we misuse family by using it as a means of restricting our sphere of responsibilities but the way of following Christ extends the circle for whom we should care. To care for Me and Mine is good but Christ challenges us to think wider.

How does he do so? Our passage has some clues. It calls on us to be like Christ rather than thinking we are Christ. That’s a warning against the abuse of power by associating ourselves directly with the Divine. But it does ask us to be like Christ and the message of the Gospels is that Christ is revealed in love in and to the most unlikely of places. I love the picture of God ’s love - love so great as to see the fall of a sparrow yet knowing and loving us much more than that. Don’t we have here a love that brings importance and value to those who feel as strangers to both? And as that is the way of the God who is in Christ, that is the way that Christ suggests we should be.

I can’t emphasise too strongly the importance of healthy self value. It’s a lack of self value that wrecks many a life. It’s a lack of self value that causes people to give up struggling with the challenges of life. It is a lack of healthy self value that lies behind the recent spurge of prison suicides. And it is not rocket science to affirm that self worth is a part of getting the best out of people. Years ago, I taught at Cornwall College on a course to do with working practices. I was ill-equipped on the subject and to be honest I was teaching one week what I had learnt the previous week. Most of it I have long forgotten. However, one thing I remember is Maslow’s pyramid of Needs. And there in that Pyramid is self worth both in regards to the negative of a person without self worth being unable to really function and the positive of self actualisation being a real motivator.

I defer to nobody in believing that the nuclear family is important and beneficial. I believe with all my being that such is the Christian perspective. But it is not the all! For the way of Jesus takes us beyond Me and Mine to a world that we are called to serve with outcasts, rejects and so on. The way of Christ is not about rejecting family but about widening our understanding of family.

Back to Abraham! He might not have been much of a Father but the story still has something to tell us of God as Father. For in Hagar’s distress, God meets her. Meets her just as when she ran away in her pregnancy. And in this second meeting, God brings healing from her distress, provides her and the boy with refreshments and gives to her and her son, the promise of a nation just as had been promised to Abraham and Sarah.

And there is the rub. The Patriarchs of Genesis are a pretty rum bunch but are blessed. But God’s blessings don’t stop there, reaching others including the victims of the Patriarchs such as Hagar. And so we see a great circle of love, a circle of limitless unbounded generous love which reaches a climax in Christ. For on this Father’s Day, we worship the God who is not tribal or limited but who is the Divine Parent of all, who brings us all into relationship with one another.

AMEN

This sermon was preached in Alwington on Sunday June 19th