The Beginning and the End XXX. Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale 1 Genesis 17:15 18:15

Transcription

1 March 18, 2018 The Beginning and the End XXX. Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale 1 Genesis 17:15 18:15 Dr. William P. Seel Easley Presbyterian Church Easley, South Carolina The story begins as a tragedy. According to the classical Greek definition, a tragedy is a drama in which the hero comes undone through some fatal flaw, which is revealed through difficult circumstances and fateful encounters. Think of Achilles and his heel, Oedipus and his complex, Hamlet and his hesitation. But that definition seems too formal for the tragedy of Sarah and Abraham. Their tragedy is far less heroic in scope, far more intimate and heart-rending. For they are elderly and without children. Child-bearing had long been their dream but now, in their elder years, has become a source of constant sadness. The barrenness which has marked their hopes of procreation has become a deeper barrenness now residing within their souls. And this, indeed, is the stuff of tragedy. But, even more, I believe we are being invited by Scripture to see in the personal barrenness of Abraham and Sarah that greater barrenness which besets us all. The great tragedy at the heart of the Biblical story is that our good and loving God gave us everything we needed to be happy and satisfied. He set us down in a paradise He had crafted just for us set us there and simply said to us, Enjoy. Live within my love and enjoy all the gifts of my love. And we, perversely, answered no. We said no to God. We questioned the goodness of His intentions towards us; and then we all decided we would be better off on our own, living according to our own thoughts and desires, giving heed only to our own preferences. We walked away from God. We turned against His love. We rejected the good life He had laid out for us and stalked out of paradise determined to build a paradise of our own. 2 Tragedy. And a tragedy that continues to be told in the barrenness of our own lives even now. We fill our lives to the brim with whatever we can lay hold of from the world around us and yet, there is a persistent emptiness inside that nothing seems to fill. We cram our moments and our days with ceaseless efforts to prove our worth, establish our value, accomplish our plans and dreams and yet, still there persists in us a nagging fear that this is all just so much sound and fury, signifying nothing in the end. 3 We seek to love, to bless, to care for one another and yet, we do it so imperfectly that we cannot help but hurt and be hurt, constantly needing to forgive and to be forgiven. Tragedy. I think of wee Zacchaeus up in his sycamore tree as Jesus passes a man who possesses everything, except what his heart truly requires. 4 I think of that Samaritan woman by the well with Jesus drawing her daily water with a heart as dry as a desert. 5 I think of Peter and the others casting their nets into the sea all night long but coming up empty time after time after time. 6 I

2 2 think of Abraham and Sarah and you and me and everyone we love and everyone who has ever lived and that same barrenness which dwells within us all. That nameless longing, that unfathomed sadness, that unfulfilled desire for a life which is somehow more, somehow different, somehow the way we sense it was supposed to be. Tragedy. The Gospel Story begins in this tragedy of human brokenness, of human barrenness, of human Sin. In fact, until we become willing to acknowledge that tragedy in us, nothing good can ever hope to get started in us. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, Jesus says, and I will give you rest. 7 We hear that promise of rest, but sometimes without acknowledging that the only path to that rest lies in first confessing that our labors are empty and our hearts heavily laden. The confession that life lived on our own terms, life lived apart from God, in rebellion against God, leaves us the much worse for our labors and stooped down beneath the burden of our barrenness. Tragedy. Our fatal flaw of that capital letter S Sin finally and fully exposed. The Gospel Story begins in tragedy. But then, suddenly, the story takes an unexpected turn. And we find ourselves no longer trudging along in the plotlines of tragedy, the hero s downfall but rather, suddenly and unexpectedly, we are leaping and laughing and dancing and singing because God has intervened to turn the tragedy of our rebellion into the comedy of His redeeming purpose. God appears on the scene and in His appearing changes the story from one of tragedy to that of comedy. Not comedy in the sense of the arrogant fool slipping on his banana peel, or a Three Stooges custard pie in the kisser. But comedy in its classical Greek definition. Comedy as a story in which, against all odds, the hero overcomes and prevails in the end. Dorothy making it back home, the Scarecrow discovering that he does possess a brain and the Tinman a heart and the Lion his courage. And even the Wizard proving himself to be wise after all. Comedy. God comes down to Abraham and Sarah in the midst of their tragedy of barrenness and simply flips the script. He unleashes upon them the most unbelievable and happiest of good news that they shall, after all, even in their old age, give birth to a son. It is so unbelievable almost inconceivable this news that with God s help they are just about to conceive. Though, at first, it must have sounded more like a cruel joke. For God comes down and first changes their names Abram becomes Abraham, which means father of a multitude ; and Sarai becomes Sarah, which means princess, the mother of a noble nation, the mother of kings. It must have seemed, at first, like even God was just mocking them in their sorrow. But then comes that promise, that divine intervention, that good news which will overcome all the bad news and utterly change the direction of their story and the world s story. I will bless your wife Sarah, God says to Abraham, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of people shall come from her. The barrenness shall be overcome, after all. The tears will be turned into joy. God has intervened and the Tragedy of our Sin has now become the Comedy of God s great plan of salvation. Abraham and Sarah respond to this good news of tragedy becoming comedy with what else laughter: They are laughing at the idea of a baby s being born in the geriatric ward and Medicare s picking up the tab. They are

3 3 laughing because the angel not only seems to believe it but seems to expect them to believe it too. They are laughing because with part of themselves they do believe it. They are laughing because with another part of themselves they know it would take a fool to believe it. They are laughing because laughing is better than crying and maybe not even all that different. They are laughing because if by some crazy chance it should just happen to come true, then they would really have something to laugh about. 8 The Good News of the Gospel is that what we made into a Tragedy through our Sin, God has now turned into a Comedy through His boundless grace. The barrenness shall be overcome. The emptiness shall be filled. The wounded shall be healed, the grieving comforted, the Cross shall become the Empty Tomb. And wee Zacchaeus so full and yet so empty is invited down from his sycamore tree and into the company of his Savior. 9 The Samaritan woman at the well her desert heart laid bare by this Stranger who has met her there suddenly finds Living Water flowing within. 10 The prodigal son comes chastened home, only to be met by his father s fervent embrace and a celebration to end all celebrations. 11 The lost sheep is found 12, the lost coin is located 13, the farmer dutifully plowing his field suddenly stumbles over that buried treasure 14. And new life breaks forth from out of the old. Hope springs into being amid the sadness. And you and I, weary and heavy-laden, lay down our own burdens before Him and He gives us rest. Rest and a well-fitting yoke that makes life good and well worth the living. 15 Like Peter and the others, suddenly, on cast number five hundred and seventy-three, we haul up our nets and are surprised and overjoyed to find them near to bursting with mercy, love, and peace. 16 Before the Gospel Story is anything else, it is the Tragedy of our rebellion against the God who is our Maker and Friend. But that Tragedy is not the final word not in God s telling of the story. God intervenes. God comes down and immerses Himself in this mess of our making and the Story is changed from tragedy to comedy, from barrenness and despair to the laughter of two nonagenarians and their new-born son. For, indeed, that child is born. And the name given to that child the name God Himself appoints for this child, couldn t possibly be more telling or appropriate: Isaac. Isaac which means in Hebrew, he laughs. Abraham and Sarah laugh at the Good News. God laughs with them. And you and I have now been invited into holy laughter which springs forth out of that great Good News that God really does so love this world, that He really did send to us His Son, so that we really should have the gift of eternal life, abundant life, and not perish. Laughter because that which was a Tragedy has indeed now been made into a Comedy. A happy ending, after all. But then, when we step back and think about the whole of this story, this narrative which runs all the way from Genesis to Revelation, maybe it is more true to say that what we are really reading here this divine story of redemption which is even now being read to us and read into us by the Holy Spirit is something more even than Tragedy overcome by Comedy. That what this story really is is the stuff of a Fairy Tale. Now, not fairy tale in the sense of make-believe and never-never real. But Fairy Tale according to its classical definition, as a story whose opening line, Once upon a time, becomes an invitation into a world different from our own a notice that we are about to encounter an alternative reality to our own. And a story whose classical ending, And they lived happily ever after, suggests to us that that which seems most impossible

4 4 will turn out to be possible after all. Against impossible odds Cinderella is found and the glass slipper placed upon her foot and they live happily ever after. Against impossible odds Snow White is awakened with true love s kiss and they live happily ever after. Against impossible odds, Sarah and Abraham beget Isaac, Isaac begets Jacob, Jacob begets Joseph and on runs Abraham s vast lineage until the day when Jesus is born in Bethlehem, dies upon His cross, rises from His grave, ascends back into heaven from whence He shall one day come again and the whole people of God shall live happily ever after. For what is the Gospel Story if not the ultimate once upon a time about an alternative reality, this Kingdom of God, breaking into the reality in which we live? What else is the Gospel Story but the story of how the Kingdom of God turns out to be the most real Kingdom there could ever be and our true home? What else is the Gospel Story but the in-breaking of this Kingdom and its King into the flat, mundane landscape of this fallen world showing to us, revealing to us, welcoming us into a whole new world and a whole new life, awash with colors and depths and meanings and outcomes such as we had scarcely believed possible? Once upon a time, God created the heavens and the earth. And then, at the end of the story, in the book of Revelation, they all live happily ever after: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. 17 He is making all things new, even now. That is the one true fairy tale that our once upon a time shall indeed end happily ever after, because He, our God, is making all things new. The truest story of them all He is making all things new. He is making this world, so long tarnished by the stain of the human tragedy, into a new creation. And here and there, if we have but eyes to see, we can glimpse even now, beneath the headlines and the daily hustle and hassle, the sure signs of His presence and work. He is making all things new transforming us day by day into creatures who one day will perfectly shine in the reflected brilliance of His own eternal glory. In fact, says Revelation 2, He is even now preparing us to receive our new names, just like Abraham and Sarah names that no one now knows but God, who has already carved them into stones of purest white. 18 And here and there, if we have but eyes to see, we glimpse within our daily interactions some sure sign of that new life springing forth in us and between us a new kindness, perhaps; a new patience, a new capacity to love, a new forgiveness offered and received, a new desire to serve and not just to be served. He is making all things new even us. And we shall live happily ever after. The Tragedy of human Sin becomes the Comedy of God s intervention of redemption becomes the Fairy Tale in which those who live into this Story live happily ever after.

5 5 Frederick Buechner, whose insights lie beneath the whole of this sermon, tells of going to Sea World in Orlando one summer morning, and of finding himself overcome to the point of tears by the performance of the killer whales. When the show is finished, he turns to his wife and daughter and sees the same tears in their eyes as well. It took him years to come to understand exactly what lay behind those tears, exactly what they had truly seen which had prompted those tears: I believe there is no mystery about why we shed tears. We shed tears because we had caught a glimpse of the Peaceable Kingdom, and it had almost broken our hearts. For a few moments we had seen Eden and been part of the great dance that goes on at the heart of creation. We shed tears because we were given a glimpse of the way life was created to be and is not. We had seen why it was the the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy when the world was first made, as the book of Job describes it, and of what it was that made Saint Paul write, even when he was in prison and on his way to execution, Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. We had had a glimpse of part at least of what Jesus meant when he said, Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. The world is full of darkness, but what I think we caught sight of in that tourist trap in Orlando, Florida, of all places, was that at the heart of darkness whoever would have believed it? there is joy unimaginable. The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home, and I believe the tears that came to our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears. God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy. 19 The Tragedy of our Sin has become the Comedy of God s plan of redemption has become the Fairy Tale of happily ever after come true this is the Gospel story. And so, we shall now live, here and now and forevermore, in the joy of the One who is the Author and Redeemer of us all. We shall live, in Him, happily ever after. 1 Frederick Buechner s brilliant little book, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), served as the inspiration for both this title and for the content of this sermon. Though the words of this sermon are my own (except where noted), pretty much every word I have written stems from Buechner s insight and wonderful ability to tell the Story. 2 Genesis 3. 3 Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5. 4 Luke 19:1-10.

6 5 John 4: Luke 5: Matthew 11: Buechner, p Luke 19: John 4: Luke 15: Luke 15: Luke 15: Matthew 13: Matthew 11: Luke 5: Revelation 21: Revelation 2: Buechner, pp