Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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After almost 37 years, there’s an album that still has a lot to say to us today: Graceland by Paul Simon. One of those songs that calls to us on both a cultural and personal level is “You Can Call Me Al”.
Throughout the song, we see a real sense of spiritual need, one we all face. There’s a desire, in Simon’s words, for redemption. As Simon describes this feeling, this need, he also hits at something very modern. In his words, or rather the words of his man walking down the street:
“Where’s my wife and family? What if I die here? Who’ll be my role model, now that my role model is gone, gone? He ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl. All along, along, there were incidents and accidents, there were hints and allegations.”
Not only does this speak to our own #MeToo culture today, with its power dynamics often at the cost of women, it gets at all of our failures to find suitable role models who won’t let us down.
Take our reading from Genesis today. Here we have Abraham, the patriarch for all the Abrahamic faiths. Here’s the guy out of whom all of Israel will come from, who our own Lord descended from, and he’s acting like a complete jerk.
Here is Abraham, this person we’re all supposed to respect, and he’s doing several bad things. He failed to fully trust in God’s promise that he and Sarah would have a child, even in their old age. He followed Sarah’s plot to ensure God’s promise would come to pass, not through her but by her servant Hagar. Then when Hagar has a child, Sarah gets jealous. After Sarah finally has her own child, as we saw last week, Abraham, under her wishes, kicks Hagar and his own son Ishmael to the streets.
Except it wasn’t the streets. It was the middle of the desert. This is way more dangerous and far more deadly.
This is not a good look for Abraham. Not at all. If Abraham can’t be a good role model for us, then who can be?
For one, we should remember what we learned 2 weeks ago, that Abraham is justified by Faith, not works. Fortunately as well, God has it all covered. Even as Sarah wails against Hagar and Ishmael, God assures Abraham that the Lord will watch after them, and so God does. It is this hope, this care in times of trouble, that our Psalm speaks to in response to our Reading from Genesis today.
When no one else is there to be our role model, God is there. Our Gospel shows us that as well. Even when the whole world marks our value as low as the cost of two sparrows in Jesus’ day and age, God still cares. God still values us.
Really it is God over all else that should be our focus. That’s what Jesus tells us. It’s what Paul is telling us in Romans too. It’s not our family members or our own household we should focus on. It’s not anything else in this world that we may love. It’s not any other group or ideology we belong to. The only thing that matters is our connection to God. That’s all Jesus cares about. It’s all we should care about too.
Even if all other things in our life were to go away, we still have God. That’s reflected in Paul Simon’s words as well. At the end of “You Can Call Me Al”, the man walking down the street finds himself “in a strange world”. This reflects Simon’s own journey to South Africa to make the Graceland album. Everything is unknown. Everything is disconnected from what was known before. Yet the man walking down the street, after all his time of suffering, fear, and disappointment, “sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity. He says, ‘Amen and Hallelujah!’”
Separated from everything else, Paul Simon’s man can see the angels, the messengers, of God. Separated from all else, Simon’s man gives his assent, the meaning of “Amen”, and praises God, the meaning of “Hallelujah!”
When it comes to trusting in and relying on other people, we will always be let down. We in turn will always let down. What we need is a new person to rely on to be our role model. What we need is God in our Lord Jesus Christ.
There are so many things in our lives that try to drive us away from the love of God. They can be things and stuff that we love. They can be our families and loved ones even. When we separate ourselves from these things, we find God there as One who loves us and One we can rely on.
My hope is you can make your way through the fog and disappointments of life. My hope is you can find yourself in a new, if strange and different land. My hope, in the end, is that you can find God and that you too can make your cry, “‘Amen’ and ‘Hallelujah!’”