The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

"It was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin death," St. Paul tells us, "and thus death pervaded the whole human race, inasmuch as all have sinned." In other words, sin and death originated with Adam, and we participate in Adam's sin. The original sin of Adam is our sin.

How are we to understand this?

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940s, explained it this way: "When we open our eyes as babies, we see the world stretching out around us. We are in the middle of it. All proportions and perspectives in what we see are determined by the relation -- distance, height, and so forth -- of the various visible objects to ourselves. This will remain true of our bodily vision as long as we live. I am the centre of the world I see. Where the horizon is depends on where I stand.

"Now just the same thing is true at first of our mental and spiritual vision. Some things hurt us; we hope they will not happen again; we call them bad. Some things please us; we hope they will happen again; we call them good. Our standard of value is the way things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place in the centre of his own world."

From the beginning, we are spiritual infants. Like Adam and Eve, we eat whatever fruit we like, judging our actions by no external measure, but only by whatever pleases us as we stand in what appears to us to be the center of the world.

"But I am not the centre of the world, or the standard of reference as between good and bad," Bishop Temple reminds us. "I am not, and God is. In other words, from the beginning I put myself in God's place. This is my original sin. [Just as it was Adam's original sin.] I was doing it before I could speak, and everyone else has been doing it from early infancy. I am not 'guilty' on this account because I could not help it. But I am in a state, from birth, in which I shall bring disaster on myself and everyone affected by my conduct unless I can escape from it." (Christianity and Social Order, p. 60)

When we speak of a "fallen" world, when we speak of our participating in Adam's sin and the death it brings, this is what we are talking about. We are talking about the human habit of measuring the good and bad of everything according to how we see it's affecting us, as if we were the center of the world.

Abraham and Sarah show us how it works.

Despite the fact that Abraham and Sarah were both old and childless, God promised that he would bless them with a child and that their grandchildren would become a great nation. The child was to be God's gift.

As the years passed, however, Sarah failed to bear the promised son, and one day she said to Abraham, "The Lord has not let me have a child. Take my slave girl Hagar, and sleep with her. Perhaps through her I shall have a son." So Sarah took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar, and she gave her to her husband to be his wife. And Hagar conceived and gave birth to Abraham's first-born son, and they named him Ishmael.

Later, however, God also made good on his promise to Sarah, and she also conceived and bore a son. And Abraham and Sarah named him Isaac. Isaac was a gift from God, and the gift caused Sarah to laugh in her old age.

But the gift also presented a dilemma to Sarah. As the elder son, Hagar's son Ishmael stands to share his father's inheritance. But Sarah is not about to let that happen. After all, to Sarah, it is Sarah, not Hagar, who is the center of the world. So Sarah demands that Abraham throw Hagar and Ishmael out of the house and into the desert, where they are certain to die. Sarah goes for the gold. Whatever it takes! The ends justify the means. And if receiving the gold in the Promised-Blessing-of-God-Department requires it, well then, Hagar and Ishmael are dispensable.

Abraham was grieved by this, because Ishmael was his own son, his first-born. But he did as Sarah demanded. "Early the next morning, Abraham took some food and a full water-skin and gave them to Hagar. He set the child on her shoulder and sent them away, and Hagar and the child wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.

"When the water in the skin was finished, Hagar thrust the child under a bush, and she went and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away. 'I cannot bear to watch the child die,' she said. And she sat there and wept bitterly.

"But God heard the child crying in the wilderness, and the angel of the Lord appeared to Hagar and told her not to be afraid, but to take the child in her arms, because the Lord would make a great nation of him.

"Then God opened Hagar's eyes, and she saw a well, full of water. She went to it and filled the water-skin and gave her son a drink. And God was with the child as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and became an archer, and his mother got him a wife from Egypt."

Why couldn't Sarah celebrate the birth of her son Isaac and enjoy the good gift that God had given her in her old age and just let it go at that? Why couldn't she and Hagar celebrate together? Why couldn't Ishmael and Isaac share the inheritance? Why did Sarah see Hagar, not as a sister to be embraced, but as a competitor to be driven away? Not only away, but out into the desert to die! And why did Abraham comply with Sarah's demand? Why do blessings we receive -- blessings like Sarah's, which are gifts of grace -- often become a wedge between ourselves and others?

It's because of sin. It's because our original sin remains our present sin. It's because our spiritual sight so often remains as it began in infancy: we see and measure the things and people around us as if we were the center of the world. We are, as Bishop Temple says, in a state, from birth, in which we will bring disaster on ourselves and everyone affected by our conduct unless we can escape from it.

Our story begins with Adam, takes a decisive step with Abraham and Sarah, and then continues throughout the Scriptures much as it began with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It's the story of how one brother supplants the other, often by deceit and violence. Cain, angry with God's blessing of Abel, kills his brother. Isaac, at the insistence of his mother Sarah and at the expense of his brother Ishmael, becomes the patriarch of Israel. Jacob, supported by his conniving mother, steals his older brother's birthright. The people of Israel themselves conquer their brothers, Canaanites and Philistines and others, and displace them from lands they had lived in for centuries. Europeans drive aborigines from their lands in what we call "the New World" and establish the United States. It was our "manifest destiny," we said.

Rwanda is in the news again. Do you remember Rwanda? Eight years ago, Rwanda was headline news. And just this week, there was a report about how Rwanda today is struggling to establish a process of accountability and reconciliation to deal with the aftermath of civil war eight years ago, a civil war which resulted in a genocide that some say, on a per capita basis, exceeded that of the Nazis.

Eight years ago, the terror of Rwanda was the lead story on the evening news. Each night thousands were dying, as Hutus and Tutsis fought to see who would supplant whom. And I remember thinking one evening, "I just can't watch any more of this dying in Rwanda." Fortunately, the news soon moved on to the President's most recent proposal on health care, and then to the stock market, and then to sports, and I was spared more strain on my spiritual vision.

And today, the war to prevail or supplant continues, but now closer to home. We call it the War on Terrorism, and its roots reach back to the wilderness of Hagar and Ishmael, back to Sarah's sin, and Abraham's, back to Cain's and Adam's. At the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September, in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank today, the grandsons of Abraham, the sons of Isaac and Ishmael, continue to bomb and maim and kill each other, each trying to drive the other away from the homeland and out into the desert. And, as in 1994, here in the promised land today, I think, "I just can't watch any more of this dying in the Middle East." And blessedly, the news moves on to congressional bickering over prescription drugs, and then to the stock market, and then to Rockies, and once again I am spared more strain on my spiritual vision.

Those children in the Middle East, today's mothers and sons and daughters in Israel -- they are our brothers and sisters and cousins, the grandchildren of Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah, the children of Isaac. And the others -- the mothers and sons and daughters in Palestine, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq -- they, too, are our brothers and sisters and cousins, the grandchildren of Adam and Eve and Abraham and Hagar, the children of Ishmael. They are the ones we supplanted, the ones grandmother Sarah and grandfather Abraham drove out into the desert to die so that we could be the heirs.

Is this perhaps why the story of Hagar and Ishmael is not a favorite of ours, because, after all, we smell something fishy and can see that there's something all wrong about it?

Most of us here this morning are the usurpers, like Isaac. Most of us here -- Western, white, Christian, privileged -- are, like Jacob, the supplanters. Here in the so-called "New World," we forget that from God's viewpoint there is nothing new about it at all. Here, too, we took our inheritance by force from those who were here before us and declared it good. Like Sarah. As if we were the center of the world, as if we were the judges of good and bad, right and wrong.

Why do blessings, gifts of grace, become a wedge between ourselves and others?

It's our original sin, and it's painful for us to hear of grandmother Sarah's vicious actions and of grandfather Abraham's cowardly complicity, just as it's painful to ponder our own dealings with those in this land who were here before us.

Where will it end? I don't know. The story doesn't know. We have only the promise we find in the story, the promise that God will bless both the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael.

What I do know is this -- that most of the world identifies more readily with the anguish of Hagar and Ishmael than with the joy of Sarah and Abraham and Isaac. Asia, the Middle East, Africa -- somewhere in there the cradle of civilization, the source of the whole human race if the anthropologists are right, and I suppose they are -- there, when our spiritual vision is strong enough, we find our elder brothers and sisters dying in the wilderness like Ishmael, while we, the supplanters, receive it all "as seen on TV." Until September 11, that is. Since September 11, we have seen it more immediately.

Who remembers those driven into the wilderness?

God does. We do not. Because, after all, here in the land of promise and prosperity and blessing, it's hard to keep our spiritual vision focused on the horizon of the wilderness for very long. Spiritually and mentally, the evening news soon draws us back to things closer to home and less painful, draws us back to what we perceive as the center of the world, and blocks out the rest. This is our original sin.

But we are not the center of the world any more than Adam and Eve and Sarah and Abraham were. We are not, and God is. So even as the celebration of Isaac's birth is in full swing at Abraham's and Sarah's house, God finds room in his heart to remember our older brother, the one whom Abraham and Sarah drove away, out of their sight, beyond their horizon. But not beyond God's sight. Not beyond God's horizon. Hearing the cries of Ishmael, God slips away from the party and finds his way out into the desert, and there he blesses Ishmael and his mother as well.

God is not small. God is not limited to our vision of him and the world. What is wilderness or horizon to us is the center of the world to God. There is a place in God's sight and in God's heart for those who cry in the desert, a place for those like Hagar, who lift up their voices to God in some wilderness world. What is wilderness to us is the home of beloved sons and daughters to God.

The mother in Israel still cries out. The mother in Palestine still cries out. The mother in Rwanda still cries out. The mother in Asia still cries out. Is she a daughter of Sarah, or of Hagar? Is she Jewish or Christian? More than likely, she's Muslim. Or, if in Asia, maybe Hindu or Buddhist, also our cousin, the grandchild of Adam and Eve. Who will hear her? Who cares? Rwanda, like Somalia and Haiti and many other such places, is a back-page story now. They have no strategic importance to us. They have no oil. Even Afghanistan has faded.

Briefly, we think of them. Briefly, we mourn the plight of Hagar and Ishmael, the plight of Rwanda and her children, the plight of Isaac's children, the plight of Ishmael's children. And then the evening news moves quickly to what are, for us, more pleasant things. This is our original sin.

"I was doing it before I could speak," says Bishop Temple. "And everyone else has been doing it from early infancy. I am not 'guilty' on this account because I could not help it. But I am in a state, from birth, in which I shall bring disaster on myself and everyone affected by my conduct unless I can escape from it."

How to escape from it? That's the question. "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" asks Paul.

Education can help, says Bishop Temple, but only to the extent that education can make my self-centeredness less disastrous by widening my horizon, the way climbing a tower "extends the horizon of physical vision while leaving me the centre and standard of reference."

Complete deliverance requires a spiritual deliverance, a deliverance from my seeing and believing and acting as if I, rather than God, am the center of the world, a deliverance from my believing and acting as if I, rather than God, am the standard of reference for good and bad. It can come, as Bishop Temple puts it, "only by the winning of my whole heart's devotion, the total allegiance of my will, and this only the Divine Love disclosed by Christ in his life and death can do."

Complete deliverance, in other words, comes only by grace, only by that grace that moves us in heart and will from our preoccupation with our inheritance out into the wilderness where we can hear the cries of Hagar and Ishmael as well, where we are joined there by God, because God, after all, is there ahead of us.

Complete deliverance comes only by that grace which moves us in heart and will from our preoccupation with ourselves out to the edge of town, or perhaps these days into the inner city or into some other wilderness, where we can see the Divine Love disclosed by Christ offering a cup of water or dying on a Cross, where we are joined there by God, because that's where God has gone ahead of us.

It is there, there "outside the camp," there in the wilderness with Hagar and Ishmael and there on the Cross with Jesus, where Jesus dies in love, not for Isaac alone, but for the whole world, it is there in the center of the world, where God is, that we can see that we are not the standard of good and bad. It is there, in the wilderness and on the Cross, that we can see that we are not the center of the world, and that God is.

"Thanks be to God!" says Paul. Thanks be to God, that just as sin and death and condemnation came by the one man Adam, so righteousness and life and salvation come, by grace, through the Cross, where the one man Jesus shifts our spiritual vision from our focus on ourselves out to the places where justice and mercy and love happen, out to the wilderness, to the center of the world, where God is.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.