The Continuing Conversation

July 27th, 2014
8th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12, Year A
The Rev. David Kendrick

In this preaching series on Genesis, we’ve had the Abe and Sarah Show.  We’re currently in the middle of the drama about hairy Esau and his twin brother Jacob the Heel, or Hairy and the Heel.  So what do we call this episode that focuses on Jacob?  Mistaken Identity?  HBO had a series about a polygamous marriage called “Big Love.”  Whatever we call it, this episode is awkward, in many ways, scripturally, ethically, even liturgically.

In the Rite Two Eucharist, there are four Eucharistic prayers that can be used at Holy Communion. We’ve mostly used Prayers A and B.  We used Prayer D during the Easter season.  Then there’s Prayer C, affectionately nicknamed the Star Wars prayer, for phrases like, “At your command, all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.” I haven’t used this prayer on Sunday, yet.

But after the words of institution, it gets a little awkward: “Lord God of our Fathers; God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”  Where are the mothers?  So I’ve heard some priests try to improve this prayer by adding them: God of our Fathers and Mothers: God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and…I’ve heard some say Rachel, others Rachel and Leah.  Some are uncomfortable mentioning a polygamous marriage right in the middle of a Eucharistic prayer.  And after all Rachel was clearly Jacob’s favorite.  But others will point out that the twelve sons of Jacob who became the twelve tribes of Israel were born of both Rachel and Leah.

So this story that we hear a part of today is liturgically awkward. It’s scripturally awkward because we call this book the Word of God, and yet it contains stories of relationships that Christians in the West consider ethically challenged.  Notice that I said West.  Every ten years, on the eights, all the bishops of the Anglican Communion come together in Canterbury, England, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  They meet and worship together, and give their best advice as bishops. In 1988, the thorny issue around sexuality was polygamy.  We in the West may have thought it was a settled matter.  But in Africa, polygamy has continued to be practiced up to the present day.  So should a man who converted to Christianity have to divorce his second or third wives?  Where would they go?  How would they be provided for?

What the bishops agreed to was that if a convert was already married to more than one woman, he should not divorce any of his wives, but if a male convert had only one wife or was unmarried, they would only be allowed to marry one woman.  From several thousand miles away, it’s not clear how closely that advice has been adhered to.  For not surprisingly, many Africans ask why a type of marriage that has been perfectly acceptable in the Bible should be off limits.  And before you dismiss this as an Old Testament thing, Look at Paul’s list of qualifications for an overseer, or bishop, in 1st Timothy and Titus, one of them being having only one wife. Presumably, if no one in the church had a polygamous marriage, it wouldn’t have been necessary to spell out a monogamy requirement for bishops.

I have described the Bible as the record of a conversation between God and human beings.  The Word of God has spoken throughout our history.  Sometimes it has been a whisper in the wind.  Sometimes it has been a fire bursting from the heart.  Sometimes it has been a blinding light.  Sometimes it has been a power from nowhere that liberated thousands.  But the Word of God has spoken to men and women in different times and different cultures.  Over the millennia, they have recorded what they heard as best they could.  Later generations have listened to their words, and interpreted them in the light of their own circumstances and cultures, as well as the fresh Word of God that came to them in their particular circumstances and cultures.  And so the holy conversation has continued down to this day.

As the people of Israel interpreted their complicated relationship with God, they often imagined it as a marriage, in which they were the adulterous spouse.  Eventually, they came to see that as God sought a monogamous relationship with his people, that their own committed relationships should reflect that monogamy.  That is how the conversation about marriage developed in these inspired books through which the Word of God has spoken.  In an ancient time where life was much more fragile than our own, reproduction of the species was a truly life and death matter for families and clans and tribes.  It was vital that men and women ensure the survival of their people by reproducing.  In that environment, polygamy made sense.

But the conversation has a theme.  It has a purpose that God works out through the complicated relationships of human beings: “All the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.”  Rachel may have Jacob’s heart.  But Leah is the more fertile.  Of Jacob’s twelve sons, ten will be born of Leah.  So far, this family’s survival has been in doubt.  It took years of anxious waiting before Sarah had her one and only child.  Rebekah has only managed to have two, who may end up killing each other.  But now this wandering nuclear family is becoming a tribe, and a nation that will be able to bring all the nations into unity with God and each other.

So we don’t need to get hung up over the more awkward parts of this back-and-forth between God and us.  It’s all just part of the continuing conversation between us and a very, very patient God.  Thanks be to God.