Genesis 21:8-21

We pick up where we left off last week, with Abraham growing up. But, there's trouble. Having children with your servants was not unheard of, in fact, it was Sarah's idea in this case, but that doesn't mean there aren't emotional costs. God is working on building a nation here, after failing with Adam and wiping the whole slate clean with Noah, He's still having a time with it. He blesses Sarah with a child, after having blessed Hagar and telling her to go back and deal with Sarah, now he saves the life of Ishmael, despite the not-so-great behaviors he's exhibited. Seems like God is hedging his bets. He listens to the cry of the son of the slave, but he created the situation of distress.

Sarah looks particularly bad in this passage and Jewish scholars have tried to figure this out, with not much success in my opinion. The rich and beautiful Sarah is kicking out the lowly servant, apparently hoping to secure her position as matriarch of the covenant. We have the one word “playing” in verse 9, that could infer something more nefarious than a little touch football, and it's on a day when Isaac should be participating in his own ceremony, so maybe that explains Sarah's reaction. Seems like a stretch. We don't hear much more from Ishmael, he shows up at his father's funeral. We hear about “Ishmaelites” here and there, and sometimes “Arabs” in later books.

If you want to know more about the life of Ishmael, turn to the Muslims, they claim him as the ancestor of Muhammad and have expanded on his legacy. That this Bible story is the root of our problems in the Middle East today seems beyond reason, but it's hard not to at least consider it. The warring tribalistic practices of the East and West have roots far beyond and preceding this story, but that these characters have been used to justify violence and claim divine inheritance is undeniable.

Jeremiah 20:7-13

The passage seems like a personal conversation between Jeremiah and the Lord, admitting his sinfulness, singing praises. I suppose the creators of the lectionary are aware that there are children in the audience, so they only include only this conclusion to the story. Reading from chapter 19, we see why Jeremiah has become a laughing stock, literally in stocks just a few verses before the lection. In chapter 19, he is instructed to go to the Potsherd Gate. This is a garbage dump. Shards of pottery are there as well as other garbage. Before Jeremiah's time, King Manasseh was telling people to throw their children there and burn them as a sacrifice to Baal. Jeremiah shatters a clay jar there as a symbol of something destroyed that can't be restored. It gets ugly after that. If you want to get pre-teen boys interested in the Bible, this is a good story.

This is a battle of the gods. People are whispering around him, looking for a weakness, but a fire burns within him that he can't hold in. All of us have something within us that we want to express. We express it with words, sometimes in a dramatic protest, and we get slapped down for it. We hope our thoughts are the righteous ones and we dream of the day we are vindicated and our enemy so defeated that no one ever forgets it. We are the ones who represent the needy, “they” are the evildoers. But that rarely all plays out within one lifetime. Jeremiah's people are taken by the Babylonians, which is seen as punishment from God, and eventually there is hope for renewal. Some of this is covered in the later half of proper time in Year C.

Matthew 10:24-39

Here we see some of the morality of how to treat slaves being spoken. Sarah is not mentioned, but one wonders if she was being thought of for these words from Jesus. Of course, wouldn't this have been a good time to say, “don't enslave people”? This also contains the verse I mentioned during Easter, that Jesus comes with a sword. I take that as symbolism, because no actual swords appear and no further instructions are given to use swords in a physical manner. There is however clearly going to be some arguing at Passover dinner. Whoever wrote this felt as strongly as the leaders of Black Lives Matter or the host of a Fox News talk show that if you were on the wrong side of history, you were on the side that was going to destroy civilization.

Something in this story is being destroyed. It may be the author thinks the world itself is coming to end, or at least what he considered civilization. If civilization was the Roman Empire, that was destroyed, albeit a slow death over centuries. If it revolved around the Temple, that was destroyed, probably right about the time this was being written. After that, it is hard to trace exactly what was going on with these stories that became scripture. It wasn't until early in the second century that we begin to see those who are now called the Church Fathers attempting to piece it back together. They got much of it wrong, both by historical standards and the standards within the Catholic Church. Today, there are more arguments about the Catholic Church getting it wrong from outside the Church, but that would take a couple degrees in Church history to unravel.

Despite the arguing, the last two verses have endured. No matter what you believe, the symbolism of taking up the cross is well known. The Jeremiah passage today expresses this feeling well. The closing somewhat paradoxical verse about losing your life to find it is a poetic statement of giving in to your higher self. “Find your life” means finding those things that feel good and give you short term rewards. If you follow that, you will only get short term rewards, and they likely will get shorter and shorter until no matter how much football you watch, how much coke you do, or whatever, it won't be satisfying. Instead, by finding something to live for, by reaching for long term rewards, or just enjoying the satisfaction of having put in the effort regardless of the outcome, you will be worthy of great rewards. I can't tell you what your passion should be, but you will find hints in the faces of those around you. If the faces around you seem to be blank or dark or angry, I recommend looking around a little more.