The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 15, 2008
The Rev. Steve Smith

Of all the stories of the Bible, there is none greater than the story of Abraham and Sarah. Think about it. Moses is the spiritual leader of the Jews. Jesus is the Lord Christ of the Christians. Muhummed is the revered prophet of the Muslims. But before all of these towering figures, every Jew, and Christian, and Muslim to this day looks to Abraham and Sarah as the Father and Mother of their faith. Well over half of the world’s population trace their lineage to these wandering Arameans of the ancient past.

According to Jewish tradition, Abraham was born Abram in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, which is located in present day Iraq. He was the son of Terach, an idol merchant, but an old rabbinic legend has it that, from an early age, Abram questioned the faith of his father and sought his own truth. He came to believe, the legend goes, that the entire universe was the work of a single Creator.

He tried to persuade his father of his folly, and then one day, in anger, he took a hammer to his father’s shop, and smashed all the idols his father had made, except the largest one. He then placed the hammer in the remaining idol’s hand. When Terach returned, and asked Abram what had happened to the idols, he told him that the idols had got into a fight and the big one had smashed all the little ones. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he father replied, “these idols have no life or power. They can’t do anything.” Abram replied: “Then why do you worship them.”

Eventually, the Book of Genesis tells us, the one true Creator Abram worshipped called him to a new land. Genesis, chapter 12, verse 1: Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Now there’s only one problem here. Abraham and Sarah, scripture tells us, are aleady senior citizens. Worse still, Sarah is barren, she can’t have children.

Nevertheless, Abraham and Sarah obeyed the Lord God. And for the next twenty years they set off as pilgrims on what appears to be a fool’s errand. They end up in a variety of locations, each crazier than the first. And in each place, the Lord God appears, saying something like: “Stick with me. It will all come to pass. Don’t give up.”

Today we pick up the story as Abraham and Sarah pitched their tents by the oaks of Mamre, a day’s journey south of present day Jerusalem. They are visited by three strangers, and as is the custom throughout the Middle East, they give them hospitality. They wash their feet, and feed them with cakes and a slaughtered calf and curds.

The strangers then ask the whereabouts of Sarah, and he tells them she remains in the tent. Then they tell Abraham, that in the following spring, Sarah will bear a son. Sarah, listening at the tent door, laughed to herself, for she had been the brunt of a great cosmic joke since they had left the land of their ancestors years before.

And the strangers questioned why she laughed. And she denied it, because she was afraid. She perceived she was in the company of divine beings.

Legend has it Sarah was struck mute for her laughter, and only began to speak again, when miraculously, the next spring, she gave birth to Isaac. And to punctuate this story, we learn that Isaac itself is the word for laughter.

The story of Abraham and Sarah has many more chapters in Genesis, and I recommend them to you, as a substitute for that pulp fiction you have planned for your days on the beach. Suffice it to say, though, this story of our common ancestor is our story. And it is a story worth retelling, particularly as we bring children today for the rite of Baptism.

Today, the Van Buren clan, en masse, come to this font to be joined with this great legacy of faith that began with Abraham and Sarah. They are presenting their precious children to receive the Sacrament of New Birth, and be marked as Christ’s own forever.

And what I want to say to each of you parents and godparents is that today, you are starting off on an odyssey, not unlike the odyssey that Abraham and Sarah took when they left Ur for the Promised Land.