Family Matters
Genesis 16:1-6; 21:8-21
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
June 15, 2008

The Word of God from the Old Testament is a story, not a pretty story, of a conflicted household.  The characters would be star guests on a TV interview show.  Jerry Springer would be thrilled to get them.  I hear the promo: "Our guests are an infertile wife who encouraged her husband to have a child with her maid, and the maid who then lorded it over her mistress.  And they all fought.”
  
Who are our characters?  Abraham is the man, a nomadic sheikh, very old and wealthy.  He has fathered no heir to his fortune.  Sarah is his wife.  She could not have children.  She also is very elderly, well beyond child-bearing.  The other woman is Hagar, Sarah's slave from Egypt (an alien from south of the border).  The other character is God, who intends to create nations from this three-some, a ridiculous dream that would become real.  Jews trace their lineage back to Sarah and Abraham.  Arabs trace their ancestry back to Hagar and Abraham. 

Some of us try in vitro fertilization, insemination or fertility drugs to have children.  Four thousand years ago, Abraham and Sarah had to do it the natural way.  It was socially acceptable for a man to produce an heir by another woman with the wife's permission.  It was their version of surrogate motherhood.

With that background, listen to the story from Genesis 16:1-6 and 21:8-21.

This is one stressed-out, messed-up family -- sex, inheritance, disrespect, mistreatment, slavery, jealousy, rivalry, cruelty!  Do they sound anything like a family whom you know? Yours? 

These people don't know how to relate with each other.  The three try to fill their own needs.  They need to be one-up on each other.  Abraham was old, and embarrassed that he had no heir.  Sarah was old and embarrassed that she produced no heir.  When children were both practical support in old age and a source of pride in the community, they did not have them.  Painful loss.  Yet, could Sarah and Abraham have been more cruel than to send Hagar and her son Ishmael out into the desert to die?  They violated the principle code of the desert, hospitality.  And, Hagar?  She was in a tough place.  As a slave, she was property.  Sarah could use her however Sarah wanted.  It is understandable that she wanted to give Sarah a come-uppance for all the abuse, but she could not manage her tongue.  With her attitude and mouth, Hagar threw away her ticket to the good life.  And sheik Abraham, head of the clan?  A wimp.  God has to save the situation.

What may be the cause of family conflict?  The sources of family conflict are numerous.  There is no one source.  What sometimes is the root of the conflict? 

The source of conflict often is lack of self-love.  I am not talking about pride in the sense of vanity.  I am talking about too little appropriate pride.  I am talking of the love to which Jesus referred when he said, “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”

I have been talking with you in recent sermons about love.  Today I continue that theme, but in a direction that receives less attention.  What was the first commandment of the two great commandments?  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.  What is the second that is like it?  Love your neighbor.  How much?  As you love yourself.  The root of many sour relationships is that we don’t love ourselves, and we act out our need for love on the family and others.  We act it out in angry defensiveness.  We act it out by criticizing compulsively. Results?  Hard feelings and strained relationships.  We see the dynamics in the two women.  Sarah’s defensiveness is revealed in her resentment at even the sight of Ishmael.  He is a tiny boy, but she is threatened by him as if he were a mighty warrior.  Hagar was used by Sarah and Abraham; but when something good does happen for her, she has to puff up herself by lording it over Sarah -- foolish. 

Michael McManus wrote about Howard and Jackie:

"I was out of work," [said] Howard.  "I had spent six years in the Army, was gung-ho, succeeded, got rank quickly.  When I got out of the service, things began to change.  We were having problems with our children.  We were non-Christians and were having enormous communication problems.  We felt, `I love you...but can't stand you.'  We had tried books… .  We had non-Christian counselors.  Nothing was working.

Jackie added, "I was at work, and I said, `I am looking for something, but I don't know what I'm looking for!'  A co-worker replied, `Why not try God?'  And he dropped it.  He didn't say anything else.  [What a neat evangelism method – just plant the seed and let the Holy Spirit nourish it!]

Howard replied, "Why not?  What have we got to lose?"

They started to attend worship, but worship made no sense because they were so hung up on their emotions.  Jackie said:

The first step was to learn that God loved me enough to send Jesus Christ to die for me.  I did not use to like myself, and I did not like anybody else either.  I thought that I was garbage.  I grew up in a home in which my mother was an alcoholic and my father had a mental problem.  I got married at eighteen to get out of the house.  My first husband left me for another woman.  That compelled me to think, `I am not worth very much.’

In time she came to reason: "...if Christ died for us, we have to be worth something."

Then she realized that part of the [marital] problem was her sharp tongue.  [That compulsive criticism that I mentioned.] "I had always let him know what his failures were.  So I prayed to the Lord to send angels down to clamp shut my jaws.  I had been the nag before I made a commitment to Christ.  But I did change with the Lord's help.

The next time she saw his clothes scattered about, she did not scream "Pick up your clothes!"

Howard noticed the change right away: "It became obvious.  She stopped complaining!"  So he was motivated to start picking up after himself.  That made her feel affectionate, a welcome change!

[What do you learn from the experience of Jackie and Howard?  The love of Christ has powerful healing impact!  We may lock the door against his love; or we may open the door of our hearts, souls and minds, and the realized love of Christ will improve us. The past does not have to control the future.  Christ may!]

The antidote for our family problems may be to accept that we are loved.  If you are angry, defensive and blasting away, if you are always finding fault, stop!  Ask yourself: Do I feel loved?  Am I feeling this way and acting this way because I don’t believe that I am lovable?

Let me tell you another story, this from Fred McFeely Rogers.  You know him as Mr. Rogers of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."  Fred and I attended Pittsburgh Seminary at the same time.  If I remember correctly, he took the three year curriculum over seven years while doing his TV show.  (Rumor had it that he made straight `A's.)  I quote from a commencement address he delivered for our alma mater.  I can hear him speak in his slow, quiet, even manner, the same personality in real life as on TV. 

Mr. Rogers said:

For two years I've been in touch with a teenage boy in New Jersey by the name of Tony.  When I read the first letter that Tony wrote to us at the neighborhood, I was touched in a unique way.  It seems that for all of his early life, Tony was--for some reason--never cared for by his biological parents.  Even though they could afford it, they never bought him a bed or even a winter coat.  He remembers being very, very cold.  When he would come home from school, his mother or father would throw him across the room and tell him to be quiet.  Some nights he would just ride the subways so he wouldn't have to go home.  In his letter to us he talked about how understandably frightened he had been.

When his parents weren't looking, Tony watched television.  Somehow he found our neighborhood, and as a teenager, he wanted us to know what we had meant to him when he was a little boy.  It's a long story, but five years ago when Tony's father beat him so hard he nearly killed him, Tony's parents were discovered and finally charged with child abuse, and both sent to jail.  Two people … took an interest in him,  a white woman and an African-American man, and they have now become Tony's adopted parents.  After being cured of malnutrition and broken bones, Tony began to grow in his new home.

But after a while...well, I'll just read part of that first letter he wrote:

"Mister Rogers, I will always be grateful to you for giving me the way to be.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive, and I do get angry at many of the things that go on around me, but I choose not to be a participant of the hate and hard feelings I see so much of. [Did you catch that sentence?  It is a good insight.  We assume, we rationalize, that we have to respond to the conflict the way that we do; we have no choice.  But, is that true?  Perhaps we can take another look, and find another way of thinking and behaving.  Maybe.  We may have more choices than we want to believe. Was exile of Hagar and Ishmael to die in the desert the only option for Abraham and Sarah?]  And I have AIDS.  Well, that's no picnic, but I've been pretty lucky lately.  I have a family that loves me very much.  While it's scary to realize what this disease can do, I'm trying hard to concentrate on the kind of person I have been able to be since coming here.  I wish that I could do something special for you.  I'm working on a book, and I'd like you to know that there is a page of dedication in it for you."

I asked him what he thought about forgiveness.  I even read … verses from the sixth chapter of Matthew to him on the phone.  And he saw right away the conditional nature of forgiveness.  "If we forgive, we'll be forgiven," he said.  And I said, "Yes, it looks that way."  Tony then proceeded to tell me what he thought forgiveness means and what it does not mean.  "You know," he said, "what my parents did to me when I was little--like having their friends use me sexually and all -- that wasn't O.K.; and if forgiveness means that I have to say it was O.K. then I'm not into forgiveness. At first when I came to my new home, I'd be having a wonderful time at a picnic or something and all of a sudden I'd remember and I'd have to go off and be by myself; but, little by little I was able to let go of it.  After a while, I just didn't think of the meanness. I just didn't think of that garbage any more.  Maybe that's forgiveness, Mr. Rogers, letting it go, giving it up, putting it behind you.  If that's forgiveness, then I'm into forgiveness."

Since he has been loved, he knows for sure what he wants to be and what he wants to put behind him!

Incidentally, his book has been published and its title is "A Rock and A Hard Place."  He sent me one of the first copies, and I'd like to read you a few sentences that he wrote about his adopted dad.

"In this short time, I can close my eyes and think of many things about him that have changed my life forever...he has shown me that if I take care of the present that I take care of forever at the same time.  He has helped me to regroup the ugliness of yesterday and demonstrated on more than one occasion that I can use it to become a better me.  Through our games, our contending with things that are unpleasant, and our vigorous living of every day, we choose to push away from those things which hamper our capacity to love."

Sarah and Hagar did not know the value of forgiveness.  Nor did they learn to deal with their inner needs before putting down the other.   

Are you thinking and acting like Sarah and Hagar?  Start inside. Love from God, demonstrated in Jesus Christ and his forgiveness, became the antitoxin for Jackie and their marriage improved.  Love from an adoptive parent became the antitoxin for Tony to forgive and heal and love. 

Being a loving spouse offers blessing, being a loving mother is imperative, being a loving father is vital, for the development of healthy family life.  Being a loving church family reinforces indispensable love-of-self and the capacity to love for all of us. 

All begins, all is sustained, by the Heavenly Parent’s message this Father’s Day: I love you!!!

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