This week’s readings are Genesis 16.7-13**
and the Gospel is Luke 1.26-38**
To access the Zoom link for bible study please contact office@huddersfieldparishchurch.org. Below is today's sermon, preached at the 8.30am BCP Communion and the 10am Eucharist.
God’s Promises – Advent 1 2021
May I speak in the name of our living God, creator, saviour and comforter. Amen.
I wonder what you are used to thinking of as the themes of Advent? I wonder if you were aware that the themes go deeper than something to say when we light each of the candles in an Advent wreath?
Not all church traditions would use a wreath like ours and light the candles together – and of those that do, some wouldn’t mention any particular theme. On some wreaths all the candles would be red – like those ones they put on the Blue Peter Advent crown. Come on, some of you remember – something simple you could make with two metal coathangers, some highly flammable tinsel and real candles? If you don’t know what I mean – please Google it when you get home. For some the themes are hope, peace, love and joy. Keeping it nice a broad.
The tradition that I was brought up with was that during Advent we reflect on the promised messiah that is to come through the experiences and expectations of Patriarchs, the Prophets, John the Baptist and Mary. And no, the pink candle isn’t for Mary because she’s a girl.
Our readings this Advent, which are also the subject of our Monday evening bible study, and on which we will focus at our mid-week Eucharist and bible study too, are pretty true to this tradition – but they put a slightly different spin on it.
This year we are tweaking the focus on our Advent lense, to encourage us – as the clergy always long to do, to see the same season, the same process, the same journey – the same four weeks of trying to connect to a peaceful penitential season while cultural Christmas already rages around us - through fresh eyes. Together we are seeing how God’s promises and blessings have impacted on people we never hear about in the standard Sunday lectionary – but who are nevertheless key to our understanding of ourselves and our communities in relation to God’s promises and blessings – who they are for, how they come, and how they are shared.
This morning we hear not of patriarchs, but of matriarchs. Of Hagar and Mary. Both experiencing the most direct communication with God. Both hearing God’s promises. Both responding.
I don’t know if many of you are familiar with Hagar. Hagar is an Egyptian, the abused slave of Abraham and Sarah. The word in verse 11 – "affliction" in the NRSV – means abuse. It’s the same word for how Egypt treated the Hebrew slaves and its meaning includes physical and sexual violence.
When Sarah cannot give Abraham an heir, she instead gives him her slave to produce for him an heir. Hagar has Abraham’s child – and we are told loses respect for Sarah now she holds a more privileged position in the household. Sarah is angry – and Abraham does not protect Hagar, but tells Sarah to do what she wants.
As the story goes on, God gives Sarah her child in the end, in her old age, and Isaac is born – leaving Sarah yet more bitter, jealous and abusive to Hagar and her son Ishmael. It was all Sarah’s idea – but that doesn’t make her kinder or more tolerant.
This is a text that bears close wrestling with. God has already promised to Abraham that there will be a child. But the child has not yet materialised and Sarah takes things into her own hands. She loses faith in God’s promise, and much harm flows from this – to herself and others. Her relationship with Abraham is soured by her bringing another woman into his bed. The abuse in the relationships flows from jealousy, bitterness, feelings of rejection. Sarah has been dehumanised by her own trauma – we will hear next week of the times her husband has pimped her out to Kings to guard his own life - and we see her living out that damage here. But none of this is of God’s doing – rather it is what flows – what we create - when we choose to ignore God.
But God does not forget promises – they are not lightly given.
Hagar is not one of "God’s people". But God speaks to Hagar. Hagar is not loved or cherished, she is used and exploited. But God speaks to Hagar. This is a big deal. Hagar the foreigner, the stranger, hears God’s promises more than once – for her, for her children. In her otherness, her outsider-ness, her victimhood, God speaks to her.
There is a shocking mutuality revealed in this text. Hagar hears God’s message and she trusts that this God of others will hear her – we know this because that is what her child Ishmael’s name means "God will hear". And in the name that Hagar gives to the living God we again have this back and forth – she names God. She recognises that this is God, she sees the truth of God and knows that this is the God who sees the truth of her too. We know because that is the name she gives El-ro’i – “The God who sees me” – and we know too that while she sees and recognises God, there are still questions, it’s not all over, all understood, it’s part of the story not the whole picture. “Have I really seen God and remained alive?”
We then heard the much more familiar annunciation to Mary told – but these stories have so much in common. Each receive a messenger. Each respond. I used to love sharing the story of Mary’s annunciation with the infant school children in my last job – because Mary is such a fantastic role model of faith and learning in this passage (and not because of all that lowly obedience stuff). She’s a brilliant role model of faith because she doesn’t just blindly accept. There is mutuality here too. God’s messenger brings the message, but this encounter must have been so much more expansive than the time it takes us to read of it. There is time for thinking, for reflecting, for asking questions. The fact that the encounter takes place at all tells us that it’s important that Mary has the time for these things, that Mary consents and understands, as far as she can, the gift and the burden God asks her to bear.
The angel speaks words of greeting. Mary is troubled and she pondered. Time was taken, time to adjust, time to connect, before the angel moves into the main business of the communication. And Mary has questions – and not lala land questions – deeply practical ones. We always imagine folks back then weren’t scientific – but they did know where babies came from.
So the angel explains – and Mary says yes – Mary trusts. God asks her to be part of how God’s promises and blessings will flow not just for her, but for everyone.
In some ways Hagar and Mary are very different – but in their responses to God, their openness to listen and speak, to see and be seen, their questioning without rejecting, they are both models to us as we seek this Advent to engage with God’s promises to us.
These are the ways in which our ancestors, unnamed and named, the fertile and the barren, the mighty and the weak, the insignificant and the odd, have met and responded to God’s promises of life, of continuity, of the chance to participate in God’s story and our story.
I wonder where you might hear God’s promises for yourself and others this week?
Amen.
