God's Foolish Projects and a Fool's Possibilities The Rev. Fred G. Garry - July 28, 2002
Texts: Genesis 25 and 1 Corinthians 1
If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. We've all heard this; said
this. For some this phrase may be more than an advice but a way of living.
We come at life believing it will take a couple a tries before things work
out. There is an unspoken logic behind the phrase, a logic of persistence.
The logic tells us to keep trying. Or better put, life is about persistent
attempts. Just because something didn't work out the first time, don't give
up, be prepared to try it a few more times. In fact just plan on it.
There are some areas of life where this plan becomes standard
operating procedure. For instance, writing. I view any writing project this
way. If something doesn't work, if something is awkward, if something is
not quite clear, try again. Yet as I came to see last month in Princeton,
such an experimental model is not universally held. Some times people can
place great value in their words, and demand they take on a kind of sacrosanct
quality. Like Pilate before the Pharisees, "what I have written, I have written."
In other words, there is no room for editing or amendment. I have come to
see the written word as having no such demand. Change, and change again.
There seems to be certain areas of life where this adage,
try, try again, is expected and there seems to be areas where it is not.
It is one thing to build a program or try out a project and then say, "hey,
this isn't working, we should try something else, or modify this and start
again." It is one thing to speak of a document like that; it is another though
to speak of a person like that; and it is quite another to speak of God this
way.
Although we have all reached a place in our life where
we wanted a fresh start (or what we called on the play ground a "do-over"),
even though we have all reached such a place in life where we wanted to really
try again, is it truly possible? I can imagine starting an essay over again,
from scratch. Or sermons. From time to time you get sermon number 3 or 4.
If I don't like a sermon, I don't try to fix it; I simply start over. Some
Sundays, some passages, it takes three or four tries. But what if we are
talking about people instead of sermons? Can they/we really start over?
The passage we read from Genesis today and the larger
story of Jacob, which we will explore, is a long reflection upon this question.
And the provocative aspect of it is that it is not simple asking, can we
start over, but can God start over? To some this notion may be rather odd
or striking. For God is in heaven and creation is a long consistent expression
of an omnipotent will. All things are in accord with God's purposes and everything
is moving ahead according to schedule. While I don't want to contradict this
view, for there is some merit to it, the Book of Genesis doesn't quite match
up with such a neat and tidy picture of creation or God for that matter.
Up to our reading today we have a series of stories that
can be seen as failed attempts of God trying to relate to creation. We truly
have what I like to call the Australia of history. Australia is an intriguing
place in my mind. Seemingly, through the course of creation, it became the
place to put good ideas that didn't quite work out. For instance the kangaroo.
There is an animal, interesting to look at, but certainly an object of derision
in the animal kingdom. Other animals may lament their appearance can be consoled
with the knowledge, you could have been a kangaroo. Or the Emu. Now I know
the African continent has the Ostrich, but it is as if in a moment of fairness,
God decided to share the wealth of odd creatures and not put them all to
Australia.
The greatest example of this though has to be the duck
billed platypus. Here is a classic of something that didn't work out. Have
you ever had a great idea, it sounds good, everyone agrees, and then once
you try it is a disaster? Well, such is the duck billed platypus, and where
else would you find such a creature, but Australia?
In the opening chapters of Genesis we have such a series
of failed projects and a picture of God trying, and trying again. The first
and most classic attempt was the garden. Although fingers can be pointed
and issues raised, the bottom line is that the project failed. It didn't
work out. God tried to relate to creation, to humankind in a garden setting,
and the whole thing went south. The same conclusion can be reached when we
look to God's next attempt with Noah. Here is a dramatic tale of high seas
and if this is a literal story terrible stink on a boat that seems to conclude
with a lovely image of a rainbow and an olive branch. Yet once again, the
project fails when Noah shows signs of drinking too much and his children
are not quite what God had intended. And remember the great promise of the
Noah story spoken by God can be recast, "well, I won't do that again." We
can shade it differently, but in the end it's recognition that the project
was less than a success.
The last project before we get to Abraham is the Tower
of Babel. Although a story not frequently touched upon, it is a powerful
picture of God choosing to disband a project: i.e., dealing with humankind
as one people, and then deciding to change the whole shootin' match. Like
the kangaroo, the emu, and duckbilled platypus so are these stories. They
are projects that don't quite work out.
Behind our passage today is yet another choice, God changes
course and takes a whole new tack with Abram. Gone are the primal, the cataclysmic,
and the cultural. The garden, the boat, the tower, they didn't work. Just
when it seems there are no options left, God chooses Abram. Abram and Sarai
are described as God's new project, a new direction and plan. When you compare
this new project to the one's of Australian demise, you see this is quite
a radical departure. Instead of dealing with creation as a whole in larger
frames of reference, God calls a family and says, "alright, those other projects
didn't turn out, let's try something really different."
Lo and behold, things seem to start working. Abram becomes
Abraham; Sarai, Sarah. They laugh at the project God intends, but sure enough
there is a start. God promises a progeny like sand upon the shore and they
see one son (a son Abraham almost sacrifices in moment of zealotry, I might
add), but there is slow, persistent progress. There isn't a gang buster start.
But there is a new start and things seem to be working. Things seem to be
working until we get to our passage today.
From time to time we run into a brick wall, an obstacle;
we encounter a test. In relation to the adage, we don't succeed and we need
to try again. Things can be running smoothly in life and then they don't
work out. Children can do this to you. I love all the advice I receive on
parenting, most of it is a call to relax saying, "don't sweat this because
in a couple of years things will really be bad." I always encourage people
who say things like that to not apply for a crisis hotline position. "Don't
jump now, because you haven't seen how bad things are going to get."
In our passage today, we can literally see God running
up against such a moment. The simplicity, the heroic nature of Abraham and
Sarah is quickly lost. In its place is going to come a test and a question
for the new project. We can call this test and question Jacob. Jacob for
all intents and purposes will test all the limits of God's new project, the
new direction. The question will be put before God, are you really going
to enter into the day unto day, the mundane of life? What we are going to
find with the arrival of Jacob is a moment for God to fish or cut bait.
The author of Genesis gives a series of glimpses of where
the project is going and it is not good. The first glimpse of this is with
Rebecca. God deals with the barrenness; this is more of a big picture moment.
Yet after this the prayers keep coming and there is a kind of miscue. Rebecca
is pregnant with twins and she going through the physical trials of having
two wily critters inside of her. She prays to God for comfort, saying in
essence, I want to die. The answer she receives tells more about God than
anything else. Again, she is in physical distress about carrying twins, and
God's response is, "there are two nations at war within you."
At first such a response may not be so revealing, but
give me a moment. The first clue is to ask, would Rebecca have found such
an answer helpful? Dare we say no? What she needed to hear was "this too
will pass" or "that is really hard, but your blessing will be double." Instead
she gets a prophecy about nations. I imagine the look on her face would have
been the one my kids give me when they ask a question about their homework.
There is a kind of cautious, hesitancy in their voice, "Dad, I just need
to know an answer about the Revolutionary War, not the complexity of colonial
economics and its relation to Britain's empire." I imagine something similar
with Rebecca.
God's response to her discomfort reveals that on some
level God hasn't fully committed to entering the day unto day yet. There
is a kind of over and above. My stomach really hurts; you have two nations
at war within you. There is a similar miscue with the division of the parents.
Abraham and Sarah were both convinced of Isaac, but Isaac and Rebecca don't
share a similar feeling about Jacob. The parents had each chosen one twin
to love and one to ignore. At this point you have to wonder if God is lamenting
the whole project. O.K., we need to think smaller, no more nations at war
speeches, but what do we do with this divided house?
Such a question becomes even more complex when Jacob and
IEsau actually enter the scene: they are handful. Jacob is deceptive and
crafty; Esau is brash and wild. Neither one is exactly a model of faith or
an exemplar of the human condition. They are both rascals; they are both
people. Our reading today from Genesis packs all these problems into one
place as a kind of moment of decision. It is as if the project is reaching
a point of critical mass, things had been going so well, but then... Jacob.
God should be wondering if this too is heading south, heading for Australia.
There is a moment here, I believe, if we take the Book
of Genesis as true, there is a moment here where God has to wonder if maybe
there is another option, but decides instead to stick it out. It is as if
God decides to go ahead and see what happens, to keep trying. There is fair
warning that it is not going to be smooth. Fair warning for us too as we
look to the life of Jacob: this is not a cookie-cutter example. Jacob's life
is filled with mistakes and problems, faults and failures. The story of Jacob
is called the "earthiest" by the commentators. By this they mean the closest
to real life.
The most challenging part of the story of Jacob is what
it says about our life. If we believe that Jacob isn't strange but close
to life; if we take his life as a kind of mirror to the miscues and mistakes
we too often make, then there is a really challenging message here. Just
as God decided to stick it out with Jacob, so God has decided to stick it
out with us. God has decided not to give up on our project, but to keep trying
and trying. What is even more challenging is when we ask, is God the only
one trying?
The irony of sin is that it is born of our decision to
give up on ourselves, to deceive ourselves, to cheat ourselves, to break
our selves. At some point, and this is what the Bible means by sinful, we
commit to our own self-deception, we can become convinced that we just are
what we are; there is no saving us.
There is good news to be had. Even when we give up God
keeps trying. There are fresh starts even in the midst of a life gone bad,
a soul become moldy and sour. As we look to Jacob's life we will see there
were plenty of times God should have given up on Jacob, but he didn't. And
so it is with us. We are not a failed project, but the handiwork of God.
The amazing grace of God is that despite our rough edges and our broken parts,
love abides and the Holy Spirit persists.
I hope the people of Australia will forgive me. Yet the
point is simple, things don't always work out. So we should try, try again.
Remember that this week when you hear the voice of capitulation, when you
hear the tenor of resignation, when you are ready to throw in the towel on
someone, or yourself. Remember life is a decision to try or to give up. So
try, try again. Amen.
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