Genesis 21 – Where the Wind…

Sermon for Sunday, June 18, 2023 || Proper 6A || Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

Going to California this past week for my grandmother’s long-awaited funeral kept me from having as much time to write a sermon as I normally have. So I went back into my archives and guess what? The very first sermon I preached as an ordained priest fifteen years ago was for this particular Sunday. So I thought I’d bring it out of mothballs, dust it off, and share an updated version with you. The sermon is about laughter.

Now, when I was a little kid, I often told jokes that only made sense to me. My parents encouraged me to finish my jokes like Fozzie Bear, the hapless stand-up comic of the Muppets (you know, “Wocka, wocka!”). This told them it was time to laugh. My sense of humor and comic timing didn’t come into their own until my late teens. So maybe that’s why I never employ the old sermon technique of beginning with a joke. I used to get laughs by making oblique references to my age, but I’m forty now, so I don’t think that’ll work anymore. Let’s try: “Back when I was born during the Reagan administration…”)

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Sermon for Sunday, June 21, 2020 || Proper 7A || Genesis 21:8-21

Today, I’d like to talk about Hagar. Specifically, I’d like to talk about Hagar’s vision and how God grants us the same capacity for faithful seeing that Hagar has. First, though, you might be wondering who Hagar is. Hagar is an Egyptian servant (or slave) in the household of Abram and Sarai (who during the course of the Genesis story have their names changed to Abraham and Sarah). When God promises Abram that God will give Abram countless descendants, the old couple don’t know what to do. They’ve never had children of their own, and now they’re way too old. Taking God’s promise into her own hands, Sarai offers her servant Hagar to Abram, saying, “It may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (If this sounds eerily like The Handmaid’s Tale, it is.)

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