The slide you see in front of you now is the sermon slide.
I prayed when I prepared this sermon on the topic that I
picked months ago. And then this week happened and,
and I feel like I needed to change the sermon and I have,
oddly enough, the title slide still fits and the scripture
still fits all of the rest of the slides.
Not so much so we won't be looking at those, but I, I felt
the need to revise and change what I was saying today based on
events of this week. And so I'm going to do that
still in the context of Abram and Sarai and and their
experience. I, I will say though, that
because of the changes, this really isn't a kid friendly
sermon. It's not a kid.
You know, it's not like bad for kids to hear, but I apologize.
This, this is really talking to the adults today for so for the
kids, if this is boring for you, I apologize for that.
And I got to get my notes out so that I can get my information
right here this week. But there's a lot, a lot that's
happened this week. And, and, and I'm going to talk
about it. And some of what I'm talking
about is very controversial. Some of it I don't think it is.
And, and as usual, I'm going to try real hard not to get
partisan, but to kind of live in, in the, the cognitive
dissonance, cognitive dissonance of, of competing thoughts and
ideas. And, and I'm going to invite you
to join me in that as the time goes on here today.
But this week has been tough for a lot of folks.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk left many people reeling.
And, and one of the things I've always known, I've known of
Charlie Kirk for years. I've, I've watched his videos
before. I'm, I'm not a, I've never was a
student of Charlie Kirk, never, never like, but I'm, I'm aware
of him and have listened to some of his things over the years.
I'd always knew he was controversial, never realized
just how controversial he was. And until this week and it but
many men, I never realized, frankly, how popular he was
until this week. And many, many folks rocked and
shaken by his assassination. But his wasn't the only death
and in the only act of violence, yet another school shooting,
this time in Denver. Thank God no one was killed, but
two people were wounded. And coming just on the heels of
the shooting at the the School of the Annunciation up in in
Minnesota, where people were killed and many more were
wounded, his wasn't the only political assassination this
year. It was this week, but not this
year in the United States. And, and again, I got to get my
notes out because names sometimes fail to stick with me.
Yes, Hortman, thank you. Melissa Hortman and her husband
killed in their home. A A up in in Minnesota as well.
There were other in recent years and months, attacks and
assassinations. Daniel Andrel, who was a
district the son of District Judge Esther Salas, was shot and
killed in their home in New Jersey, an attack motivated for
political and ideological reasons.
The the killing, assassination, execution of the CEO of United
Health Group for political and ideological reasons.
State Senator John Hoffman shot and wounded in his home
alongside of his wife in a political assassination, Of
course, 2 assassination attempts against Donald Trump.
And in addition to Governor Josh Shapiro, whose residence was
firebombed while his family, he and his family were asleep.
Politically motivated. Those aren't all of them, but
there's some of them. And it's part of the reality
that we live in and, and all of these things that are happening,
all of this violence. Well, I think I, I didn't even
mention one that in some respects, I, I don't know, it's
how do you put gradations of horribleness on violence and
murder? But, and maybe this one had such
an impact because of the video that was associated with it that
I've seen, which is is the young Ukrainian woman.
And again, I got to look at my notes to say her name properly.
Irina Zarutska, maybe I still didn't say it properly.
I don't know if any of you saw that video.
She's a refugee fleeing from the war in Ukraine and came to the
United States and had refugee status and was brutally and
senselessly murdered on a train in North Carolina.
And, and there's video. Isn't this an awful thing?
I, I don't know the fact that we can now watch videos of murder,
actual murders online. And, and the video I saw, thank
God, doesn't show the actual murder, but it's, it's they had
security cameras on the in the train car and, and she gets
stabbed and the man who stabs her walks the length of the
train car with the knife, the bloody knife in his hand,
dripping a trail of blood. You can see it.
And there's almost no response. And I don't know if I'm missing
something. I didn't do a whole lot more
digging on it. And, and I'm and maybe a lot of
I'm not sure things happened later, but maybe it was just
that she was so far back in the train that no one realized what
had happened. But there was no one seem to
respond to her. These kind of things in this
this violence in the culture is an invitation from the world
around us for us to stop living by faith and to start living by
fear. It is an invitation to circle
the wagons and draw the swords and load the guns and defend
your own and the heck with everybody else.
It is an invitation to say maybe God even to say that either God
is not good or God is not powerful.
If all of this kind of stuff is happening and we're going to
have to protect and defend ourselves, it's that kind of
invitation. Events like this invite us to
live in fear rather than in faith.
And that's exactly what Abram and Sarai did in the passage
that John read this morning. We've seen over the course of
their life and their call from God that Abram and Sarai have
have at times acted with tremendous faith and and amazing
courage, trusting in God to provide them for them, to guard
for guard them, to care for them, and to deliver on His
promise that He would give them a child and through them a great
nation would be born. But something happened, and
maybe it was as simple as the passage of time without the
promise being fulfilled. And now they're both 10 years
older, or 15 older than they used to be, and there's still no
baby. And they can't imagine how God
can keep His word. They can't see how it's
possible. Sarai is past childbearing
years. They knew then, as we know now,
that change has happened in a woman's body and a woman reaches
a point when she can no longer bear children.
And they knew that had happened to Sarai.
And they're like, how can God do this?
And in fear, Fear for their legacy, fear for their future.
It's the children that's supposed to take care of them as
they are no longer able to take care of themselves.
Fear that the promise that God made wouldn't be fulfilled, that
God couldn't or wouldn't do what they said he would do.
Or maybe that they misunderstood God.
And maybe God really wants them to take care of this.
And they decide God's not going to do it.
God can't do it. We've got to do something.
We will take care of this on our own.
And so Sarah took her slave, a woman that she owned and she
controlled, and sent her to have sex with her husband so that
Sarai would then claim the child is her own.
And Abraham agreed to it. They did great harm, not just to
themselves and not just to their descendants, but to Hagar and
Ishmael in particular. Amazing horror.
We are told nothing about Hagar's level of consent in
this, because in that day and age, question of a slave's
consent was not on anybody's mind.
She had no freedom not to consent.
And the harm they did that day is incalculable to Hagar and
Ishmael and their descendants. But they did it.
They did it because they lost faith.
Their faith failed and they acted out of fear, and in so
doing they harmed themselves and more so Hagar and Ishmael.
This is what happens when we act out of fear rather than out of
faith, when we lose confidence in God to keep his promises,
when we lose confidence that God really is sovereign and really
is in control and really is over it all.
Now I'm, I'm going to talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk in
all of this. And I'm going to say upfront
that I know there are radically different views about Charlie
Kirk and I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a
minute. But, but starting off, I want to
say I'm not here to lionize or canonize Charlie Kirk.
And I'm not here to condemn or revile Charlie Kirk.
But his death has had such a cultural impact.
I want to talk about that and and and love him or hate him or
indifferent toward him. One of the things that he said
and he said more than once and I've heard the video, I've never
never saw him in person. I've only ever known him through
his videos is that when we stop talking is when bad things
happen. Charlie Kirk's stated mission is
to to to he he believed himself. He, he identified as a follower
of Jesus Christ, as a Christian and, and someone who was going
to zealously pursue the truth and engage in conversation and
debate. And his MO was to go to places
particularly that were hostile to him, particularly college
campuses, and engage young adults in debate.
And he would say, if you think I'm wrong, come up and convince
me. And he would have debates, open
mic debates with people that would come and talk to him.
And, and he did that because he felt and he believed that
talking and debating difficult and controversial topics was
important and necessary. And if we reached a point where
he said, if we can't talk anymore, that's when bad things
will really happen, when we can't talk.
And that's what he did, that's what he did, and that's what he
was doing when he was shot and killed.
Kirk leaned heavily into the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech,
press and religion. The Bill of Rights, including
the First Amendment, I believe, have very solid biblical basis.
In the simplest terms, God left people free to do stuff, even
bad stuff, and government and society is better when we leave
people free to do certain things, even if that freedom
means that they're going to do bad things, particularly in the
area of speech, that we leave people as free as possible.
That's what Kirk leaned into going to say up front.
I'm a fan of the 1st Amendment. I think freedom of speech is
important. I think it's a culturally good
thing, even though it is at times a very painful and
difficult thing. I need to say this as well,
though, that the Bill of Rights is not the Bible.
I think you can make a strong case that there is biblical
foundation for the Bill of Rights, but the Bill of Rights,
or but I'm sorry, the Bible has precious little to say about
rights. The Bible is far more concerned
about responsibilities. The Bible is far more concerned
about God's people learning not what their rights are, but what
their responsibilities are. And sometimes we have to
surrender our rights in order to do the responsible thing that
take on the responsibilities that God has given us.
And what are those responsibilities?
One of those responsibilities is truth.
Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life.
And we as church, as followers of God, we have a responsibility
to seek truth, to pursue truth, to elevate truth, even when that
truth is painful and difficult and hard to hear and hard to
accept and hard to believe. Now, that's always easier to do
when it's the other person that finds the truth hard to hear,
hard to accept and hard to believe.
That's when it's easy. Everybody loves that, but it's
just as important, even more important to be willing to
pursue and hear and receive the truth when it's difficult for
us. I've been confronted with that
again this week in some very real ways from some very loving
friends. And, and I'm in the middle.
I'm going to switch from preaching mode to testifying
mode and just tell you a little bit about my experience this
week. Before that, though, one more
general truth. One of the things I'm hearing
and I began to find myself repeating in my head and even to
other people is that something seems to have changed in our
culture. Something seems different with
these deaths and with this violence and with these
assassinations. And a friend of mine sent me a
link to a an independent journalist.
I don't, I had not experienced with him before.
He's an independent author and journalist whose name is Where'd
It Go in my notes? Where is he?
Keith Boinken. I don't know if you know him.
I haven't heard of him before. I'm going to listen to him.
Click the follow button. I'm going to listen to him
again. He pointed this out that none of
this is new in the United States, and he's absolutely
right. Like it or dislike it, hate this
truth or not, the fact is, is violence is in our DNA in the
United States of America. Our nation was born out of
violence. The violence of genocidal wars
against the native populations, The violence of a a rebellion
against the governing authority which was England, the violence
of the Spanish American War, the violence of the War of 1812, the
violence of the French and Indian War, the violence of the
Trail of Tears, and so many other things.
Assassinations are nothing new. There's a lot more.
I know we've had more than just Abraham Lincoln and John F
Kennedy, but I'm not a good enough in American history to
tell you all of them. But Abraham Lincoln and John F
Kennedy assassinated tremendous civil rights leaders like Martin
Luther King Junior and Malcolm X assassinated the terrible
violence of lynchings. Violence is in our DNA.
This is not new, and Boykin makes the point that I think
he's absolutely right that until we're honest about these things
with ourselves, we really never have a chance to heal from them
and move on and get past the violence.
So this is nothing new. Some other truths I'm confronted
with. Made a post about Charlie Kirk.
I, I, I have listened to his videos.
I knew some I, I, I, I knew he was popular.
I knew he was controversial. I did not realize how popular,
how controversial. Made a post with what I thought
was a relatively innocuous compliment toward Charlie Kirk.
He says, I, I, I'm not going to get in.
What are you, what I believe or don't believe?
I'm not going to get into today on, on Kirk himself, but I made
what I thought was a relatively innocuous compliment and
discovered it was not relatively innocuous.
And I, I don't have enough followers to have anything go
viral, but I have enough followers that are sufficiently
diverse in their ideological viewpoints that I had a little
mini firestorm right there on my Facebook page and a lot of, a
lot of hard feelings. But I, I, I noticed a pattern
and, and, and I noticed that there was a whole diverse group
of people that were angry about what I posted.
White, black, gay, straight, male, female.
It seemed that the people that were pleased with what I posted
were they were male and female, but we're all white and as far
as I know all straight. That's not true.
I'll take that back.
Not all straight, but I did notice this, that every single
one of my black friends, and by the grace of God and the
patience of a lot of great folks of color, I have, I have a lot
of black folks that that claim me as friend.
And I then and every single one of my black friends that
responded to it, responded to it negatively.
And by the grace of God, I've learned to see that those kinds
of patterns are important. See, one of the things we have a
responsibility for is truth. Another thing we have a
responsibility to do is to listen, is to listen.
And, and I've had some folks over the years teach me that
that because I'm a white guy who grew up where I grew up, I have
certain blinders. There's certain things that I'm,
I'm naturally don't see or find more difficult to see and
perceive and recognize. And, and I have noticed that
that when, when, when predominantly white on this side
and predominantly black on this side on a, on a controversial
political topic, that there's something going on than just the
topic. That, that, that there's,
there's, there's a racialization of something that's happened
here. And some of those black friends
of mine reached out to me off of the Facebook news feed.
We've had direct conversation and communication, text
messages, those kinds of things. And we'll have some, some other
kinds of conversation going forward.
And, and I began to hear from them.
And and by the grace of God, I'm I'm trying to listen.
Some of them will tell you I'm not listening hard enough.
I'm trying and, and this dynamic developed that that is, is has
left me in a in an uncomfortable position.
I'm not looking for sympathy. This is not a plea for pity or
sympathy. Don't hear that just description
of reality, but it's a position that I hate being in.
But I think God wants us all to be in regularly.
And that's a position of cognitive dissonance.
See, here's here's where I am with this right now.
I've got people that I know well and that I know that they're
honorable. I know that they're intelligent.
I know that they're faithful. I know that they are filled with
goodwill toward fellow human beings and that they see Charlie
Kirk as an honorable, faithful, decent human being out doing the
work of God. And I have friends that are
honorable, intelligent, faithful, goodwilled people that
have goodwill toward their fellow human beings that look
and listen to Charlie Kirk and are absolutely convinced he's
out there doing the work of the devil.
And, and, and I know neither sets of people are crazy.
I know they're neither ignorant. I know neither set of group
people is faithless. And, and, and I'm going and both
kind of want me to pick a side and, and right now I'm just
stuck in the middle again. This is not poor pity for me,
but what do we do in that kind of situation?
What do we do if, if, whichever side I pick, the other feels
like they are being repudiated and rejected?
Now, here's the thing. I think that's where God wants
us. I think listening like that and
here, because I can hear where these folks are coming from and
I can understand where these folks are coming from, and I can
hear where these folks are coming from, and I can
understand where these folks are coming from.
And, and, and, and I think that's where God wants us far
more often than we want to be there.
Cognitive dissonance is a very unpleasant place to be.
It's a very necessary place to be.
I think Jesus demonstrated that in his own inner circle, his 12
followers that he called his disciples and his apostles cause
one of them was Simon the Zealot.
The left and right here are in no way correlated to where I was
before, so it's not like these groups are yet OK.
Simon the Zealot was a political revolutionary.
The Roman Empire would have called him, and using today's
terms, a terrorist who was engaged in political violence
against the Roman Empire. That's what the Zealots did to
get the Romans out of Israel. Matthew was a tax collector,
making his living working for the Roman Empire, taking money
from his people and giving it to the Romans, and that's how he
got paid. And Jesus had them both at the
table. He had them both at the table
and the only thing that they seem to have in common was
Jesus. And what, what I, what I find
tremendously frustrating about that is we're never told how
they or whether they resolved that.
We're never told that, that Simon and Matthew work things
out and they became friends and Simon changed this way.
And we're never any of that. We just know they were both
there, part of Jesus's inner circle, and I got to think the
other disciples were looking around going man, what do you I
think we're I've got it. Maybe some of them were taking
bets. What do you think?
Simon's going to stab Matthew in the back first?
Or will Matthew turn Simon into the Roman authorities first?
I'll wage you 2 shekels and a piece of fish.
They would have all been aware of this tension.
They would have all been there in the middle of that in some
way, shape or form. Pastor friend of mine used to
say, and he still says that to be follower of Jesus.
If we're really serious about it, it means that we become
comfortable being uncomfortable. And that means getting out of
our silos and really listening to people who are different than
we are and trying our best to hear them and understand, even
if we can't come to agreement. And we have a responsibility to
do that. We have a responsibility to
truth. We have a responsibility to
listen. And ultimately, we have a
responsibility to love. And we can't love without
listening and without truth. This is this is the story of
Hagar that we see here. Hagar, the very definition of an
invisible person in the world. No one who saw her running away
and saw her in the streets are the would have cared.
She was nothing in the eyes of most people.
A runaway slave, a pregnant woman who's run off, no value,
no space. Why even care?
Why be concerned? Just don't just walk away.
That has nothing to do with you. This is not your problem.
She is not your problem, she is nothing you even need to be
worried about. But God saw her of all the
billions of people. God saw her in her situation, in
her need. And God, knowing everything
about her, took time to listen and say, what are you doing?
Where are you coming from? Where are you going?
Giving her time and space and opportunity to tell her story.
No argument, no judgement, no condemnation, no
rationalization, no excuse making for anybody else involved
in all the people that heard her.
God saw her and God listened to her and God blessed her.
God is so faithful. Abraham and Sarai screwed up so
bad in this, and God is so faithful that God gave her the
promise, the same promise almost, not exactly, but close
to the same promise that he gave Abraham.
Don't worry, Hagar, your son will be the father of a nation,
a great nation, a powerful nation.
God blessed her, God's listened to her, God saw her, God
listened to her, and God blessed her.
And this is what God calls us to do as well, to listen, to love,
to bless, to do for others what we would want them to do for us,
even if that makes us vulnerable.
And in all of this, all of this truth, all of this listening,
all of this loving so that we can, we can Foster and nurture
life in this world, Jesus said I am the way and I am the truth.
He also said I am the life. And God gave life to Hagar, God
gave life to Ishmael. God gave them a future, God gave
them a hope, God gave them a legacy.
God brought life into the situation.
He even went back and worked with Abram and Sarai and they
got and got them back on the right track too.
And we're called to do the same, to find ways to bring life into
it. I don't know how that's going to
work out with some of my friends.
I, I hope we can, I hope we're able to work it out.
I used to when I was younger, I prioritized being right over
friendships and relationships. I've been, God's been working
with me on that, working really hard to prioritize friendships
and relationships over being right.
I don't know how all of this is going to work out.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I fear I might late lose a friend or two.
Again, I'm not looking for pity. I'm just telling my story.
I'm certainly not looking for praise because I'd stepped on a
landmine or I threw a grenade. I had, you know, brought this on
myself, but to find a way for life in all of this, to see the
space, the light, to listen, to attend, to love and see how life
can grow up and out and through. And in all of this, my daughter
is she is wonderful. Some of you've met her.
She's, you know, doing some neat stuff right now, including
teaching Hebrew grammar. She's very faith and church
minded. She grew up Methodist because
Amy and I were Methodist. She's now Anglican.
This is cool. She said something when we were
there visiting her that that I that's beautiful.
She's talking about redemption and, and she said these bad
things that happen to have a a bad thing in our life be
redeemed. It it doesn't I'm I'm I'm
leading up to what she said. Given you context, that doesn't
mean that God erases it. He doesn't.
Jesus had scars after his crucifixion and and she's been
through stuff and and she's close to a lot of other people
have been through a lot of stuff and she was talking about
redemption. She said when God redeems, he
doesn't make it such that the bad thing didn't happen.
When God redeems, he makes it so that you are better off after it
than you were before. Somehow God does that, that God
makes it better after even than it was before.
And God did that with Hagar, and he did that with Ishmael.
God did that with Abram, and he did that with Sarai.
And God can do that with all of this turmoil and violence that
we're facing right now. Not that we pretend it's
insignificant, not we print, it's unimportant, not that we
pretend that it doesn't matter, but somehow God is going to make
it better after than it was before.
And this is the hope and the promise that we have.
And because that hope and promise, we don't need to circle
the wagons, we don't need to draw the swords, we don't need
to get defensive. We don't need to just protect
our own and forget about everybody else.
We can live lives of love and truth, listening and caring,
pursuing relationship over ideology.
And we can be vulnerable while we're doing all of that because
we can trust in God to redeem whatever happens, to care for us
and for them through that, as we seek love and we seek
relationship and we seek compassion in an incredibly
diverse world. When our faith fails, when our
faith fails and we begin to act out of fear, we hurt ourselves
and we hurt the peace people around us.
But when we can live in faith, trusting in God that He is
sovereign and that He can and will redeem anything and
everything we might encounter. When we live in faith, we open
the door for the truth of God's love.
We open the door to listen in love.
We open the door to build life with others instead of death.
In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.