St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, March 8, 2009

You Can’t Choose Your Family – Rev. David Mundy

Genesis 17:1-9, 15,16 Romans 4:13-25

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In November 1998 Oprah Winfrey orchestrated an on-air family reunion which created a stir in the United States. On stage with her were members of two family groups, one chocolate and one vanilla who were there to talk about their shared family roots.

The reason that this was Oprah-worthy was that DNA evidence had confirmed connections of both groups to one of the founding fathers of the nation, apparently a father in more ways than one. Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was also a wealthy man who owned an estate called Monticello, which like many plantations of its day relied on slave labour for its prosperity.

Jefferson was married, the father of six children, but it turned out that this family wasn’t enough for the president. The DNA testing showed that the rumours which went back nearly two hundred years were true. Historians had long held that Jefferson had a nearly forty-year relationship with one of his slaves, a woman by the name of Sally Hemings. Hemings was actually three quarters white, but under U.S. law, her 25% black background meant she was officially a black woman, and any relationship between a white man and a black woman would be unrecognized, even though this was a regular occurrence in the days of slavery.

As we know, Oprah has a much bigger audience than mere historians. The people on the television set with Oprah represented the family descended from Sally Hemings and those who had always traced their “legitimate” lineage back to President Jefferson.

Initially these families were uneasy about their notoriety, but the year after the television interview members from both extended families gathered at Monticello for a much more celebrative reunion.

This revelation may not have been what the people of America wanted to hear about one of the iconic figures of their independence, but “truth will out.” It brings to mind the old adage that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Don’t you wonder if it’s just coincidence that almost exactly ten years after that show, the United States elected its first mixed race president, Barack Obama, with Oprah standing in the crowd as he gave his victory speech?

Can you imagine if there was a story like the Hemings/Jefferson saga in the bible? Of course there is such a story, and we heard an important part of it in our older testament reading today.

Last Sunday we began our Lenten march toward Easter with the first of a series of biblical promises which remind us that God is faithful. The well-known story of Noah is one of those important myths of Genesis which includes God’s covenant with all creation.

Although we heard again today from Genesis, this story may move us from myth to history, the history of one of the great figures of three religions. Abraham of Ur, and his wife Sarah, are considered the spiritual parents of the three great monotheistic religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the bible Abraham is mentioned almost 250 times, and it may surprise you to know that even though he lived nearly 2,000 years before Jesus, Abraham is mentioned in the New Testament about eighty times and Jesus refers to him often.

The sign of this covenant or promise made through Abraham and Sarah is different from that made to Noah and his family. This isn’t just the pretty rainbow gracing the sky after the storm subsides. This is an earthy promise of offspring and property, and all that goes with that.

This is a complicated story because Abraham becomes a father first of all, not with his wife, Sarah, but with one of his slaves, a woman named Hagar. It might surprise you to know that this liaison was suggested by Sarah, when it appeared that she was unable to have children. In ancient nomadic cultures children were essential, and at times people went to extraordinary lengths to produce those children.

Hagar has a boy, whose name is Ishmael. But Sarah is blessed by God, according to what we read, and they have a son whose is named Isaac. With Isaac’s birth Sarah’s perspective changes and she sees young Ishmael as a competitor rather than a surrogate child. In one of the uglier stories of the bible Hagar and Ishmael are sent out into the wilderness to perish. But because of God’s intervention they do not die, and today the Arab and Muslim peoples of the world trace their lineage back through Ishmael rather than Isaac.

Isn’t this an intriguing covenant? This is really a promise about family, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the inner workings of families can be tricky business. Even the best of them can require a program to keep up with what is going on.

We learn that families can be disrupted and torn apart by complicated relationships, rivalries, bitter separations. Not long ago I had a conversation with a funeral director who observed that it can be disheartening to deal with families where members refuse to speak with one another or will argue loudly and even violently about what will happen when a matriarch or patriarch dies.

I have learned that some so-called intact families are anything but, and that there are blended families that are called that because they seem to have been put through the blender! Some of you have discovered along the way that you have siblings who weren’t part of your family of origin and have been challenged to sort out how to include the “newcomers” into your midst.

These family dynamics are a reminder of the personal nature of our promises, but the covenant made through Abraham and Sarah has global implications. The covenant with Abraham that he will be the parent of nations is one of those “be careful what you wish for” promises because of the consequences through centuries and millennia.

Sadly we see that this promise has often gone terribly sour in the conflicting family claims on land in the Middle East and the volatile mix of religion, tradition and territorialism which have caused so much bloodshed and grief.

Recently, the state of Israel and militant forces in the Gaza territory have been in conflict with one another with terrible consequences. Even though Israel is a secular state and the majority of Palestinians in Gaza do not support Hamas, this conflict is often portrayed as a war on the Jews by Islamic extremists. In the end, though we see grim numbers for the dead, most of whom have been civilians, including hundreds of innocent children.

In this conflict there was a story of one family which took the people of the region beyond recriminations and retaliation. A doctor in Gaza, a Palestinian gynecologist by the name of Ezzeldeen Abu al Aish began reporting what was happening through the Israeli media. In addition to working in Gaza, Dr. Abu al Aish travelled across the border to work in an Israeli hospital and he is greatly respected by his colleagues for his dedication to his patients and to peace in the region. One day while he was talking to a television reporter on a cell phone an Israeli tank shell blasted into his home. The tank crew mistakenly believed that the house was a shelter for Hamas fighters. Instead the shell killed three of the doctor’s daughters instantly and seriously injured another child and a niece. His agonizing cries of “My God, my God, my daughters” were broadcast live throughout Israel and while some people had no sympathy, many were deeply moved by what had happened. Within forty-eight hours a cease-fire was announced, and some wonder whether this incident with its very human face tipped the balance.

Perhaps that’s what we need to understand about the promises of God. They have a human face and are meant to address human relationships and choices and they are written not just on stone but on the human heart.

The old adage says we can’t choose our family. But our faith says that we can make choices about who will be part of our faith family. In fact, scripture says that we are the family of Christ, the spiritual heir of Abraham and his promise, and that we can be coheirs of this promise with others who share our spiritual DNA.

In the other passage today, the apostle Paul says that Abraham “hoped against hope” and “he did not weaken in faith.” We can choose not to go down the road of bitterness and alienation in our own families, even in those times when we are convinced that we are right and others are wrong. Our commitment to forgiveness and, hopefully, reconciliation is different because we are the heirs of Abraham and Sarah and have the wonderful inheritance of new life in Christ.

By the same token, we live with the conviction that even though our religious beliefs are not the same as those of Jews and Muslims we can seek the common ground which will bring an end to the centuries of mistrust and bloodshed which are blots on the reputations of all three traditions. When we are criticized for this shameful legacy it is entirely justified, and as Christians we must hear Jesus who said “blessed are the peacemakers.” Our call is to “hope against hope” for a family reunion which will reconcile us, despite our differences.

Bruce Feiler has written a book called Abraham in which he traces the origins of this “ancestor of a multitude of nations” to use the phrase from the New Revised Standard Version. Feiler speaks of the Middle East as “the cradle of God,” an interesting term given our religion with a saviour born in a manger.

In his book he tells of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Jerusalem and one of the holiest places in the Jewish religion, the Western wall of the ancient temple mount. Just above this wall is one of the principal holy sites for Islam. When the pope prayed here he did so with a written prayer pushed between the massive stones and this is what his prayer said:

God of our fathers [and mothers], you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer. And asking forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood [and sisterhood] with the people of the covenant.

There it is. A call to share the promise of Abraham and Sarah, rather than hoarding the birthright for ourselves. It is a lofty goal, but one we can achieve through the grace of Christ. Amen.