Surprised by God
Genesis 21: 1-7

November 16, 1969
John M. Buchanan

The phrase "joyless Christianity" is a contradiction me terms. It makes no
sense at all. And yet, I would suggest that, this is precisely what we have on
our hands. Religion sans joy. I keep returning to this theme - but I do so
because it keeps coming up in my perception of the Church — and particularly
the Church as I work in and through it in this place.

There 4s, I would propose, about our religion too much theorizing and too

little feeling: too much talking and too little experiencing: too much
discussing and too little acting. For the life of me I can not recall ever
feeling joyful - or experiencing deep happiness as the result of a discussion
group. Theories are ideas: and ideas which remain locked in the mind soon die
there. That is our problem: the Gospel of Jesus Christ withers - and dies in
the recesses of our minds: and we possess a religion without joy.

’ This is not, in any way, to say that religion is only an emotional = feeling -
type of experience. It is not, in any way, to disparage the honest intellectual
quest of a seeking mind. Far from it. That extreme too bogs down in its own
blind alley. In this complex age ~ in this complex society we need to be thinking
deeply about the meaning of our faith: we need to know what is going on in the
world, and how that, whatever it is, relates to our faith. We must be theologians,
everyone of us. Our problem lies in the fact that for many of us this is all
there is.
| It all began with the Inlightenmentjthat period in history which followed
the Dark Ages. For a thousand years the human intellect was the captive of a
barbarian and ignorant mentality. Men lived their lives on the basis of super=
stition. Man's progress, intellectually, culturally, technically and socially
came to a rude halt ~ and remained static for a millenium, Then the Enlightenment -
the Renaissance - art flourished, philosophy was reborn, symphonies were composed
and books written. The movement them began which gave birth to the industrial

onus

revolution =< the birth of demooracy and the flourishing of Western Civilization,
And its keystone - was human reason. Man had the capacity to think - and with
his intellectual power alone he could do any thing.

Religion, too came under the strong influence of rationalism. The Reformation
liberated the philosophers from the dim superstitions of medieval catholicism.

The mysticism was jettisoned - the mystery and allure of a God who could be
persuaded to act in certain ways by lighting candles was nejected. God = like
everything else — could be understood. And religion - religion became a very
cerebral matter.

We are children of that enlightenment mentality: our whole civilisation
is, and you and I individually are. Our theology has to be entirely rational -
and if we can't understand it - we aren't buying any, thank you. Our Goa Pa
in a box - the box of the human mind.There hemust play by our rules, and act in
ways we can understand and speak in ways we can comprehend - and obey the laws
of nature as we have discovered them. We don't let our God out of that box
either, because there is risk in that. The minute God starts operating in
categories - other than those we use - we are in big trouble.

We reject, automatically, the antics of our Pentecostal brothers —sometimes
for good reasons. But mostly I believe it is because their lusty joy - their
shattering conversion experiences, their focus on the mystical power of the
Holy Spirit assaults something that is very precious to us — our rational theology
of a perfectly understandable, perfectly domestic God. We back away from anyone
who talks about God calling him to’do this or that - God speaking ~ God, in
fact, doing anything at all, sometimes for good reason, but mostly because that
assaults our precious Presbyterian God who does not do anything that connot be
explained by a clinical psychologist.

‘This sermon and this line of thinking began again for me last Monday:
after a hard eight week push ~ in the post Stewardship let down, and pre-advent
dryness. In the crisis of dryness which afflicts everyone who must nek publically

once a week, I found myself rummaging around in, of all places, the book of

Genesis, and focusing finally on one of the stories I've known since childhood -
the Birth of Issac. But this timd — a phrage jumped out of the text: & phrase
I really hadn't known was there ~ a perfectly beautiful and utterly profound
phrase ~ spoken by an old woman who had just borne her first child, Sarah said
"God has made laughter for me."

Now before we deal with the subtle impact of that statement, which by the
way his fi in my mind all week long, let us here and now acknowledge that we
have a lot of trouble with the whole Old Testament. There is nothing very
rational, after all, about talking snakes, axe heads that float, dry bones that
dance and a sun that stands still. Things like that don't happen - and when we
discover that they don't we encounter our first Old Testament crisis. Perhaps
none of it is true - perhaps nothing really happened the way it is told. Many
of us, I would suggest, never get over that crisis. We live with it by filing
all those Sunday School stories on a shelf in our minds reserved for "Jack and
the Bean Stock" and "Snow White". And by refusing to deal with the depth of
the crisis, by stalling our motors in the discovery that the Old Testament is
not an encyclopedia of historic and anthropologic facts we very conveniently
manage to ignore the real issue with which the Old Testament confronts us.

That issue is that there is a God - one God who ig totally free. A God
who created and bcektinines to create. A God who choses people to do certain
things and then gets imtimately involved in their lives. A God who discloses
himself in history - big history like a political power struggle between the
Babylonian and Persian Empires: and little histories - like the life story of
an unremarkable woman by the name of Sarah.

That is, the Old Testament insists that God is really God; not & captive,
domestic ‘God who operates in very understandable ways - but a God who is free —
and who keeps interjecting himself into the common life of men. We don't, you
see, really want to buy that - and therein is our problem.

When they .looked ‘back on their own history, for instece to their miraculoue

et
«4
escape from the Egyptian armies at the Red Sea, the Israelites saw an act of
. "God did that for us," they said: "He delivered us out of the hands of the

Beyptians." "They men the wovind intercession of God in the wilderness - in the
battle of Jaciobo - in theis victories and their defeats. Their history was full
of surprises - events “that told them about God. It was the gene toe them
personally. The very God who delivered them out of the hands of the ‘Rgyptians -
cared about them individually. God moved across the historic landscape = but
he also moved in and out of individual lives. That's what the Old Testament is
all about - men abe were ‘continually being surprised by God.

And so we come to the story of one of them: an old womaby. 4 a very as
woman vio was baren; a woman who had Long since given up any thought of having
children. Ina cutee that valued women only in terms of their reproductive
abilities, we are talking about an siganongaey woman - unhappy, empty, shrieveled
and bickonal joy. But Sarah bore a son — and if you've ever witnessed that specvial
joy — that deus and mature doy that an older woman exudes when. she has borne a
child - you know a little about Sarah. Sarah laughed - at the absurdi ty of it
all — this foolishness that happened to her. But then, we wrulae, she laughed
because here was something profoundly good; here was life. And Sarah said "God
has sits Laaabtes for me." | 7

That sentence gomehov sume it all up - it atest the genius of the Old
Testament — and it indicts the sterility of our very rational religion.

Have you ever been surprised by God? ee God ever made laughter for you?
The question which begs to be asked here, of course, is "Do we really have a
Goa?" } 7 :

“tts finally a matter of how res beroeive aes Sarah could well have said:

"T have a baby: I'm happy," and left Goa out. The Psalmist well could have
said "When I look at the moon and stars, I marvel in their beauty and wonder about
"their origin. t instead he said: “When I look at’ the heavens, the moon and
stars which thou hast evtablished, what is man that thou art mindful of him?"

That is the issue we confront every time we open the pages of the Old Testament.

3

es € iS TAS Ses mh = asia 6 ieee’ Ee it i oe : at

There is a God: a God who is free to act in ways as surprising as the creation
of the cosmos and the birth of a child. 7

Christians, then, are people who perceive things aitterently. Christians
are’ people who are always alert +0 the fact that God is - and that he is very much

involved in the life of the world, and with their individual rere Christians

‘are people who know that secret, and who — because they perceive the power and

' presence of God are living myreand experiencing more — and crying more — but

always laughing deg. Tate ip 2ald of grace: life has been infiltrated by
God: the life of nations and the life of men. None of it is excluded: there
is no place — no situation outside the realm of God's redeeming power: God is
involved in life with us - when we are shooting at each other and when we are
loving each other: when we are having babies and when we are dying.

William Stringfellow has, I believe, said it best: ",.e.the most notorious,

plain and victorious truth of God is that God participates in our history -

even yours and mine. Our history - all our anxieties - have become the scene of
his presence and the matter of His care. We are safe. We are free. Wherever
we turn we shall discover that God is already there. Therefore, wherever it
be, fear not, be thankful, rejoice and boast of God." [A Private and Public
Faith p. 72] .

Where you and I are grasped by that truth we are suddenly able to look
into our own histories and see the power and presence of God, opening a door
here — closing one there: creating a new possibility here - bringing meaning
and growth there. That done we begin to see him now - moving us, urging us,
holding us up when we stumble, creating us over and over. We begin, that is to
say, to come to grips with a God of surprises.

Another woman bore a child, and was surprised, for her motherhood was even
more unlikely than Sarah's. In a manner of speaking she laughed too; so did her
kinswoman, Elizabeth and the baby in her womb. The biggest surprise of all is

\
that God did come among us: the ancient Israelites were right ~ He's that kind

of God; and life suddenly has all kinds of possibilities it didn't have wavane.

That's the good news — we are surprised by kGod ~— He can and does and will
make laughter for us.

I wish I had written the words I am about to read to you. They are from a
book of reflections on being a minister by Robert K. Hudnut, but they deal with
experiences common to us all -

"I think of the coffin on rollers and the freshly dug dirt and the six
little chairs. I think of the young woman with laughter tumulting from her lips
as she talks with her husband—to-be. I think of the little boy in an oxygen
tent with his teddy bear at the foot of the bed. I think of the mother smiling
the smile of first mothers as she tells of the birth of her child. And then I
think of myself and my being there, and of God's coming somehow out of the
nowhere into the-now, here and being there, too."

Amen.

Startle us, 0 God with Your truth: open our minds to your Spirit: enable
us to perceive your power and presence in our lives. Give us laughter = in

the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

ee be