Sepfember 2, 1990

11:00 Worship Service
for the Installation of The Reverend Barbara Pua

First Presbyterian Charch
Greensboro, North Caralina

GOD'S OTHER PEOPLE

John M. Ruchanan, Pastor
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicaga, Tilinois

Scripture
Mark 1:409-2:6, 13-17
Genesis 16:1-16

Tf is very good ta be part af this community of Faith oan this
Significant morning and 1 bring you greetings from the Fourth Presbyterian
Church of Chicaga. T have known about this important. charch for vears and
until this weekend 1 have known your pastor by the fine reputation he
enjoys in the Presbyterian family. Tt has heen a delight to get to know
him personally, to break bread with your staff and to hear from them about.
the excitement and Jove and faith which is part of this time at this
church. This is a great church. Tt laoks like it, feels like it, worships
and sings like it, serves like it, makes creative and stronp decisions
about. its professional staff, sa it is. Which brings me ta vour decision
to cal] The Reverend Rarhara Dua to be an Associate Pastor. Congratu-
lations on that decision. She and 1 have been colleagues and friends for a
decade. She's bright and creative and hard working. Yer know all that, of
course, T lave the thonght of Rarbara Dua and her strong gifts for
ministry working in this great congregation and I pray God's hlessing,
Gad's stimulating impatience, and on occasion, God's peace for her and you.

My sermon on this occasion grows out of a peculiar vignette which
accurs almost at the beginning of the Biblical story. t's a curious
little tale. Tt's a kind of small human interest story happening in the
middte of the higger stery, the real story.

Tt acecurred to me as T thought about this story that you could say
that about each of us: smal, relatively insignificant episodes in a
larger story. First Presbyterian Church, Greensboro, North Carolina, a
pretty big church, bet part of the larger story of Preshyterianism in North
America; a small episode in the Christian enterprise. Rarbara Dna, part of

and hugging. t's a festive ecclesiastical oceasion, but if was not
designed with the sixty-minute imperative in mind. So T didn't teli
Rarbara and Jerry Shetler that 7 wanted you ta hear Genesis 21 in additien
to Genesis 16, and at? that material in Mark, because T was afraid they
might uninvite me. It's ten tate for that now, so here poes.

Sarah finally conceives, is ecstatic, has a baby ~ Tsaac. Everybody
is happy. Until one day Sarah sees her infant son Isaac playing with
Hagar's son Ishmael, and she begins to think about the fact that while she
and Abraham have this wonderful son, Tsaac, Abraham and Hapar have a
wonderful sow ton, a son older than isaac. And suddenly Hagar who tried ta
run away once, is ahsolutely anweloome, unwanted. Sarah wants her and her
baby ont. of there, out of her life, aut of Abrahan's life, out of the
story. Insiders became instant outsiders. And then there occurs a seene
of enormous power and passion. Listen to it:

“So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a
skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her
shoulder, alang with the child, and sent her away. And she
departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Reersheba. When
the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one
of the bushes. Then she went, and sat down over apainst him
a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot: for she
said, 'Let we not look upon the death of the child.' And as
she sat over against him, the child lifted up his vaice and
wept. And God heard the voice of the Jad: and the angel of
God called to Hagar from heaven, and said ta her, 'What
troubles you, Hagar? Fear not; for God has heard the voice of
the lad where he is. Arise, Lift up the lad, and hold his
fast with your hand; for I wit) make him a preat nation.
Then God opened her ayes, and she saw a well of water; and
she went, and filled the skin with water, and pave the lad a
drink. And Gad was with the lad, and he grew up; he lived in
the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow."

[Genesis 21:14-20]

Hagar and Tshmael are, in terms of the hig stary, frankly,
disposable. The appearance of Isaac renders them instantly irrelevant
The big story ean proceed now. Abraham and Sarah have an heir. The chosen
peopje, the promised land, the law, the temple, the Kingdom...

Tt's now a matter of the major plot playing itself ont. One modern
Ribtical schotar observed that it's almost as if the Bihte is arpuing
with itself in this story. The tradition wants to get rid of Hagar and her
son and get. an with the main plot and right in the middle of a very human
scheme to do just that, right at that excruciating moment when the haby is
going Lo die of thirst and exposure, and his mother is so utterly overcome
with her powerlessness, and the senselessness and injustice ef tt afl - so
overcome she actually walks away from her child so she will not have to
watch — it is then that God heaes that weak infant ery and knows that
woman's desperate agony and rape: hears it and knows and responds to it
and comes and saves and empowers and promises life. That's some story.

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ATDS, for homeless men and women and children in your city and mine, for
women Tike the client of the shelter wha hrake her legs last winter and wha
would not allow the cast ta he remaved and who nitimately had to he
physically restrained in order to remove the cast because, the caseworker
reported, it was hers and she wasn't about to let it Fo. fiod toves them.
God Javes them when nobody else dass.

Garrison Keillor tells about. walking inta an Episeopal Chnrch in
Manhattan. fie first attended an Episcapal Church in Copenhagen he said
hecanse they used Enelish and hack in Minnesota, in the Plymouth
Brethern Church af his childhood they used Enplish “just bike the Lord and
his disciples." He was not prepared to like the formality, the kneeling
and bowing and incense. "Our picture of Episcopalians," he said, “was wealthy
people, Vale graduates, worshipping God in extremely good taste."
Episconalian was the church in wingtips, the church of scotch and soda.

Rut in the Episcopal church in Manhattan, “Tl was surprised to see no suits.
Nobody was wel] dressed. A congregation of a hundred souls, no parking
lot, in need of paint and evidence of rain damage, but which managed to
operate a soup kitchen that fed a thousand New Yorkers every day. Rlack
faces in the sanctuary, old people, exiles from the Midwest, the lame and
the halt, divorced ladies, gay couples: a real gaod anthology of the faith.
T felt glad to he there... When we stood for prayers, jt brought tears to
your eyes.” [We are Still Married, p. 206, 7]

The need to be inside, ta belong, to be at home is real and power fil.
Tt is, we now know, a primal need. The Frendians continue to tell us that
an infant's basic need is acceptance and basic fear is rejaction,
exclusion. That truth about us never changes. Our hasic need ts for
acceptance, our basic fear is of rejection. That fear can berome the most
powerful force in our lives. Advertising knows how powerful that is in all
of us. Fashions are established not to make us distinct and unique, but to
make us acceptable. The choice of attire, automobile, briefcase and
beverage shouid he made for the purpose of establishing our acceptability
- our discrimination.

A clever article in the July 30 edition of Fortune asked “How Much
Boes Class Matter?” and traced the unnsual phenomenon of a diminishment of
a sense of class tn onr culture bot at the same time a kind of uwnprece-
dented search for social acceptahility. A Philadelphia sociologist
said: "This is a generation desperately yearning for class."
Vaprecedentead numbers of Americans got rich in the 1980s. The number of
registered palo players doubled in the decade, and the price of polo
ponies consequently skyracketed. You can, the article announced, hire a
consultant to help you approach that ullimate arbitor af acoeptability,
The Social Repister. The consultant will teach you manners, how toa dress,
style your hair, and see to it that you are invited ta the correct anc
socially necessary cocktail parties and-benefits.” "Tt helps," ane of them
said, "if yon can look like you just sfepped off the Concorde."

Tt is devastating to be nat waated, not. accepted, nat included,
And ata level so deep within vs that we really dan't have much access Lo
it, we heild defenses and huy insurance and invest our treasures and

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