“A family scene—plus”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Saturday, January 27, 2024

Genesis 18: 1-16 (Forward, p. 90) CEV p. 15

One of my joys and delights has been to try to see and study the Scriptures through the lens of Middle Eastern society and culture. Accordingly, I am absolutely thrilled to read accounts like today’s story of the visit by three ‘heavenly’ visitors to Abraham and Sarah. It is such a homey, domestic story, and one that is so very true to Middle Eastern culture and practices.

In Middle Eastern society there was a rigid demarcation between male and female roles, and not only were roles and tasks defined, but also male and female ‘spaces’. These too were defined, segregated and separate. The female space, separate from the male, was generally interior, confined to her quarters, and generally confined to cooking, mending and child rearing. The only exceptions were tending livestock (goats generally), fetching water, and using the communal outdoor ovens. The male realm, by way of contrast, was outside the home—though he too had separate quarters—and had to do with hospitality and with matters of public importance like war or legal affairs.

Thus, what we see here in today’s account of Abraham acting as host—this was a sacred duty, providing food and water to his guests, and Sarah staying closeted inside, is entirely in keeping with how things were ‘organized’ back then. And then too, the fact that his three guests gave him—and not both of them—the news about their child was entirely to be expected. As the meditator of ‘outside’, community business, that was the way it was done back then. It is all so very homey. They were somewhat ‘in a rut’, strictly defined by social convention.

But here their routine lives were about to be totally unended, totally disrupted. As an elderly couple, they were settled and had few surprises in life. Everything was pretty well ‘as normal’, pretty predictable. They could see no big changes or surprises on the horizon.

So, imagine the prospect of a child—at their age! No wonder Sarah laughed. It was, to put it bluntly—quite laughable after all this time, and after all this ‘trying’. That they would have a child, a son, in their old age!

Interestingly, Sarah is quoted as thinking to herself, “Now that I am worn out and my husband is old, will I really know such happiness?” (verse 12). Commentators have interpreted this a couple of ways: ‘will I really know the joy of making love’ or ‘the joy of having children?’ I would add a third possibility: for years she would have suffered the shame, the ridicule, the embarrassment, and the ostracization of being barren. Back then barrenness was considered to be the woman’s fault and was generally seen as God’s punishment for some sin or indiscretion in her life. And, not only that, a woman was not really considered a ‘person’ in the full extent of the word until she had a child, preferably a boy. And so, this would have ushered Sarah into a brand-new, amazingly different and wonderful world, one that she could have only dreamed of until that time.

What this says to me is the God is a God of surprises, of new hope and new prospects and possibilities, a God who restores our sense of worth and identity and belonging. With Him, there is a newness that is always breaking into the old. Thanks be to God.

Forward notes: ”The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bare a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (verses 13-15).

“When God appeared to Moses as a wild bush enflamed, God had a dream for him: a dream of being a saviour, a dream of freedom, and of parting waters. Yet even with this dream from the lips of God, doubt poured from Moses’s mouth, ‘Who am I to lead the people out of Egypt?’

“When God appeared to Abraham and Sarah and expressed the dream that Sarah would bear a son in her advanced age, doubt wrapped in laughter fell from her mouth.

“What do you do with God’s dream for you? When God whispers to a blade of grass to grow, does the blade answer, ‘No, not I’? Listen for God’s dream. Embrace God’s dream. Live into God’s dream. Nothing is too wonderful for the Lord!”

Moving Forward: “What excuse do you give God?”