Pentecost 3

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires now, and from you no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you and also with you.

Let us pray.

Amen.

Prayer by the power of the Spirit among the people of God.

God, of all power and love, we give thanks for your unfailing presence, and I hope you provide times of uncertainty and love.

Send your Holy Spirit to enkindle in us your holy fire.

Provide us to live with Christ's body in the world.

Wherever and however we gather, unite us in common prayer, and send us in common mission that we and the whole creation might be restored and renewed through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.

So she said to Abraham, Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.

The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.

But God said to Abraham, Do not be distressed because of the boy, and because of your slave woman.

Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.

As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, and putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away, and she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.

Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, Do not let me look on the death of the child.

And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.

And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar?

Do not be afraid.

For God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.

Come, lift the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.

And then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.

And she went and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.

God was with the boy, and he grew up, and he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow.

He lived in the wilderness of Haran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Bow down your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and in misery.

Keep watch over my life, for I am faithful.

Save your servant who puts his trust in you.

Be merciful to me, O Lord, for you are my God.

I call upon you all the day long.

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, and great is your love towards all who call upon you.

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications.

In the time of trouble I will call upon you, for you will answer me.

Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord, nor anything like your works.

All nations you have made will come and worship you, O Lord, and glorify your name.

For you are great, you do wondrous things, and you alone are God.

Turn to me and have mercy upon me, give your strength to your servants, and save the child of your handmaid.

Show me a sign of your favor, so that those who hate me may see it and be ashamed, because you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?

By no means.

How can we who died to sin go on living in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death.

So that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.

For whoever has died is freed from sin.

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him.

The death he died, he died to sin once and for all.

But the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said to the twelve apostles, The disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master.

It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master.

If they call the master of the house to be eligible, how much more will they malign those of his household?

So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.

What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, which you hear whispers proclaim from the house tops.

Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, and even the hairs of your head are all counted.

So do not be afraid.

You are of more value than many sparrows.

Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my father in heaven.

But whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my father in heaven.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

For I've come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of it.

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

As I went down to the river to praise Tumblr and the way the way to be able to do it.

And I'm going to tell you the best I can do in a second, but I want to start out and say I think that there's this really great opportunity for us to remember that the word Bible doesn't mean book, it means books.

And there are some sentiments out there that say the Bible presents one single coherent message, and we have to obey and live into it just like it is.

And I want to tell you that hasn't been true of the Jewish tradition, that hasn't been true of the Christian tradition as well.

And maybe it's okay to say, at least from this priest, it's okay if you don't like this story.

I don't like it either.

I don't like what Abraham chooses.

Honestly, to put somebody out of your home with their child is a really, really tough bid, especially when there's nowhere for her to go.

She's far from Egypt, her native land.

There's no social services.

We don't know that she's got any support network.

What's even worse is that this was Sarah's idea.

Sarah told her husband, listen, take your property and have a child with your property.

We don't know that Hagar wanted to do this.

We don't even know that Abraham wanted to do this.

There's no want, there's no intimacy.

This is all relationship as property.

And this is the plan for Abraham's heir until, well, they don't need plan B anymore.

Isaac is born and uh he survives infancy, and now we can get rid of plan B, and it just seems the most awful way imaginable to treat a human being, particularly because it has the strong word in it, slave.

When Abraham's done with his slave, he discards her.

And I think the hardest thing for me in the story is that not only does Abraham do this in spite of his worry, but we hear God tell Abraham in the story, go ahead and put her out.

I'll take care of her.

And I'll tell you what I wish God said is, Abraham, this woman, this child of yours deserve your labor.

This woman, this child of yours deserve you working hard to include them and Sarah and your other child as one family.

And that may be an uphill slope given what people are wanting to do here, but that's your call.

So that's my starting point.

The only positive thing I can figure out in this story, and I don't even know if it's positive, I think it's descriptive, is that Sarah has decided she doesn't want to be part of a blended family anymore.

Initially she thought that was going to work out, maybe it was even gonna work out in her favor, and now that she no longer has the need, she doesn't want to be part of a blended family.

She doesn't want to, quite honestly, share the resources.

She wants them all for her own sake and her own child.

Truth be told, Ishmael might stand to inherit somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of Abraham's inheritance as the firstborn son.

Isaac could receive somewhere like 30 or even only 10%, and Sarah's not going to have that.

Lest I sound too harsh on Sarah, I mean that this is her dream.

And she, like so many of us parents, would do almost anything for our children so that they can have a protected future.

And I do want to say I think that's a that's a property of this story, is it all far too often describes who we are as parents, and maybe it's an invitation for us to say, listen, we will serve our children the best by living in the blended family we find ourselves in, whether that's in Houston or Nassau Bay or Friendswood or Seabrook or all of them at the same time.

Because essentially what the story is telling us is some of those people we find ourselves rivals with, and in this story, it's Hebrews and it's the people who live in Saudi Arabia who found themselves in survival.

The story says we've got common parents.

We're all members of the same human family, let alone the same spiritual one.

And sometimes we forget that protecting the children of Abraham does not just mean protecting our children, it means protecting the people in our community who have no protection, even if that means our kids don't get everything we wanted to give them because we have to share our time and our effort and advocacy with other kids.

So I think this is a call to justice.

I think the story describes all too well that uh there is something that we do when we have major disagreements, especially in family, which is self-quarantine.

Uh or in this case, it's even a little bit worse.

Um Abraham says, Look, living with Sarah is going to be really hard, so just go and then you'll be at peace, and God will take care of you, and you won't have to live in this difficulty.

That's the best positive, is that Hagar is being spared the scorn of Sarah, who frankly has already proven herself to be abusive.

Uh, in a few chapters ago, Sarah was hitting uh Hagar.

What I wish the story said is, Sarah, you go to anger management.

Sarah, you go to rehabilitation.

We're going to work this out.

Uh I think sometimes the hard thing about the human family is when we have some discomfort, we decide because there's discomfort, let's just call it quits, and you go your way, and I'll go mine, and now you're in exile one way or another.

And maybe it's important to think about that there is this important physical difference between being in pain and being uncomfortable.

Honestly, exercise is pretty uncomfortable, and so is stretching.

But of course, those things are really, really good for our body.

Pain, on the other hand, is typically a signal from our body that we should change what we're doing.

And I think sometimes we're not aware of which one is which, and we run away from discomfort.

We run away from pain by trying to just remove it instead of say, listen, there's a signal right now that we as a body need to do something different.

And I'm positive that things like marches and protests and rallies are painful signals that there needs to be some corrective measures in our body.

Fast forward to the gospel, where Jesus quotes this really interesting phrase, right, which is that I came, uh I did not come to bring peace on earth, but the sword and to drive fathers against sons and sons against fathers, and daughters-in-law against mothers-in-law.

I think we could read that message in here.

Oh, okay, so I'm following Jesus when I don't like my parents.

I think instead Jesus might be doing hopefully what you just heard me say about the Abraham story, describing the reality that we live into and settle for.

Even thinking outside of poverty, the classic example we always got in youth group that we had to consider is why don't Muslims in Saudi Arabia, why don't they want to convert to Christianity?

And I think one of the things that's important to remember is if you make that move in Saudi Arabia, you lose everything, potentially even your life.

And is that a reality that we should be imposing on people without respecting the difficulty?

And I want to tell you, I'm convinced that Jesus did not come to divide us.

I think the fact that we find ourselves divided is evidence that we have not fully understood or been transformed by Jesus' coming.

And what I think is maybe at stake in these texts is that we so often settle for peace as quiet instead of peace as the presence of justice.

And Jesus says many who look for their life are gonna lose it.

But many who lose their life for my sake might just find it.

I think if we pursue the kind of peace that is quiet, that is living in our own enclaves, we might be losing the life that wants to live in us.

And I think if we follow Jesus' words, if we're willing to pour our For the difficulties of living in the blended family that is God's own, we might just find the life that wants to live in us.

And I suggest there's actually a pretty decent way to start, which is within our own families.

Now there is one other thing that I think is really important to bring into this, which is Paul's epistle to the Romans.

And this is a really important passage for me personally.

It's one of the first ones that I memorized as a young person.

I memorized the whole of the entirety of Romans chapter 6.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

And it's sort of this really interesting bit where Paul says, we were slaves to sin, but we've died to sin.

So how can we continue to wallow in it?

And Paul, I think, is raising up this really important point that I sometimes get asked.

Listen, if God loves us all the same, what's the point of doing anything different or better or pursuing justice or righteousness?

And the point is, I think, because those things would bring about the most joy not only for us, but for others and for God.

The point is joy, not so we can earn more of God's favor.

We've already got that, Paul says.

And because that's not something that we have to gamble for, it's something that we can leverage.

Because we know we've got God's favor, we're absolutely free to live toward, to lean into, to love others, especially when it's uncomfortable.

And when we don't do that, when we say, well, listen, I'm just going to settle for what I got because it's quiet.

Paul calls that sin.

Sin is that Hebrew word from archery.

It means missing the mark.

In Greek, the word is hamarsha, and it means a tragic flaw in a protagonist.

It's an acting term.

So often we think, oh, that's hubris, it's pride.

No, no, that's a kind of tragic flaw.

There are many kinds of tragic flaws out there.

But Paul is inviting us to consider: do we want to continue to live a tragically flawed life, or can't we change our character to match God's?

The whole point is that we don't have to earn grace, but grace ought to transform us.

If we can adequately receive it, then perhaps we can adequately offer it and give it.

Now, I don't know where you are, but I also have to tell you this week is Father's Day, and that's always a really interesting one for me because, you know, as a parent and as a son, fatherhood's a tough thing for me.

There are some things my dad has done for me that are great.

I've done some pretty decent things for my own kids.

And then I have these other examples, these critical turning points where my dad blew it, he said the wrong thing, or he did the wrong thing.

And if I'm really honest with you, I've got those in my own life.

And part, I think, of the wisdom I'm trying to grow into is to keep both of those together.

My dad was a dad.

My dad is a dad.

Sometimes, good.

Sometimes he made decisions that weren't life-giving for either one of us.

I'm a dad.

Sometimes I choose quiet with my kids over peace because I don't have the emotional resources it takes.

Sometimes I make a mistake and I'm able to come back around and make it right.

And you know, if my kid said to me, Dad, you blew it, I'm done with you, I would never have a chance for repentance.

If I wrote my dad off, I'd be doing exactly what Abraham does to Hagar and to Ishmael.

I'd be sending them out of my house to wander in exile in the desert.

And I wonder if it isn't worth us spending a little bit more time, both in our nuclear families and in the family of God, pouring some life into disagreement, pouring some life into tough details that honestly might have more to do with social systems we've been programmed into than with uh wanton rebellion.

And I want to suggest to you that maybe the kind of peace Jesus came to breathe, bring on earth might look like the sword because it might hurt a little bit.

But the pain that we bear is not in order to tear down and kill and destroy.

It's the kind of pain that is birth pangs so that there can be new life.

I think we have an opportunity not just to condemn the story of Abraham and Hagar, but to rewrite it every day of our lives as we live into the beautiful mess that is the family of God.

Let us renew and reconsider our faith in a created by Lisa friends.

We believe in God the Creator, who created and is creating everything the universe, the world, the plants and animals and us.

Each of us unique, individual and beloved of God.

We believe in God the Christ who saved and is saving everything.

The universe, the world, the plants and animals and us, each of us, unique, individual, and beloved of the Christ.

We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who guided and is guiding everything, the universe, the world, the plants and animals and us, each of us, unique, individual, and beloved of the Spirit.

We believe that this one God and three persons is present among us, working directly in our lives and the lives of all who were born into this world, striving to bring us back into harmony with all creation and with God, forgiving, healing, touching everyone, never rejecting any who willingly receive this freely offered gift of love and grace and eternal life.

Amen.

The prayers of the people, with all our heart and with all our mind, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace from above, for the loving kindness of God, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord have compassion.

For the peace of the world, for the welfare of the holy church of God, and for the unity of all peoples, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord have compassion.

For the people and clergy of the church, for bishops and other ministers, the priests in our community, Mike, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, our bishops Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, in the dioceses of Texas, Christchurch, San Augustine, and Christchurch Tyler.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin, and our presiding bishop Michael, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For our parish and our vestry, that the source of wisdom may guide us, the source of strength may support us, and the source of love may unify us.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For Saint Thomas the Apostle School, that those who teach and those who learn may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, that we may teach our students to love whatever is just and true and good, and that we may be bearers of your grace to all who come through our doors.

Let us pray to the Lord, Lord, have compassion.

For all who govern and hold authority in every nation, for the members of the armed forces throughout the world, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plan the signs of your dominion everywhere.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the good earth which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the aged and infirm, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, especially Chris, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, and Andrea.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebrations or petitions silently or aloud.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For all who have died in the hope of the resurrection, for all the departed, especially Fletcher, Britta, and Ashley.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degregation, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

That we may end our lives in faith and hope without suffering and without reproach.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

In the communion of Saint Thomas and of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

To thee, O Lord our God.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Merciful God, we have sinned in what we have thought and said, in the wrong we have done and in the good we have not done.

We have sinned in ignorance.

We have sinned in weakness.

We have sinned to our own deliverance.

We are truly sorry.

We repent and turn to you.

Forgive us for our sin in Christ's sake.

Renew our lives to the glory of your name.

Almighty God have mercy on you.

Why the hell does Holy Spirit the Lord be always with you?

How would we like it?

Give us the bread.

We forgive those trespasses against us.

Deliver us from evil.

May God, who are the Holy Spirit, call those of the many languages to proclaim Jesus as Lord.

Strengthen your faith.

The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you this day and remain with you forever.

Amen.

Thanks be to God.