Trinity 4
June 19th 2005
Early in my twenties
read the novel The Brothers Karmazov.
It is an amazing novel
full of vivid images which
will stick with you for ever.
In one chapter, there is a holy priest
who has died and he
is revered by many as a saint.
The practice of the monastery
is to read the four gospels
over the body of the deceased brother.
One of the beliefs among
the brothers and the people
is that because he was a holy man
and also a saint,
his body will be perfectly preserved by God
The holy man is laid out in state
and surrounded by praying brothers
holding lit candles and the
abbot of the monastery
begins to read the first gospel.
Shortly into the gospel of Mark
a suspicious smell starts to
fill the chapel. At first the monks
refuse to see what is causing the smell
and only when it starts to get unbearable
do they admit to themselves it is
coming from the holy brother’s body.
Rather than being preserved
the body of the monk seems
to be decomposing at a faster rate
than normal and we are left
second guessing ourselves
about our beliefs.
In another piece of scripture
that we heard this morning
the passage from Genesis,
I’d like to suggest that something
similar is happening here.
The story is our ongoing saga
of Abraham and his wife Sarah.
Abraham has been promised by God
that he will have many descendants
and that the peoples of the earth
will be blessed through his offspring.
We know that Sarah his wife
gives birth to the miracle baby
called Isaac even though she is
was at least 90 years old at the time.
We look at Abraham and Sarah
as those people of great faith
and we give them a place of honour
in the eucharistic prayer
number one where we read
“You made a covenant with Israel
and through your servants
Abraham and Sarah gave
the promise of blessing to all nations.”
Paul in the epistles especially Romans
praises Abraham’s faithfulness.
Abraham and Sarah appear
in stained glass windows and
when we think of them
perhaps we think of them
in terms of that holy priest
in the Brother’s Karmazov –
exemplary examples of people of faith.
After all, didn’t Abraham and his wife
leave their home and strike
out towards Canaan in obedience
to God and trust in his promise?
Yes, they did.
And we’ve been so trained
to look to them and others in the Bible
as sterling examples of people of faith…
uncorrupt able – but funny thing is
when we read this passage
we might start to catch an odor
a hint of something rather unpleasant.
Let’s look at this passage a little more closely.
It shows what? What is going on here?
We have to back up a few pages
Abraham impatient…takes matters into own hands
Slave girl Hagar…used and thrown out
Isaac now is here…
Jealously, inadequacy pettiness
greediness also sides of these saints
the saints are rather tainted here!
Rabbi who realized the same
thing – after being taught to
revere the people in the Torah
urged to live up to them
he sees ordinary dysfunctional people!
These are his own family, mirror
of himself…
Perhaps we need to allow the bible
to reveal to us the truth of who we are
we are all tainted saints
vessels of clay
What is man that you should be mindful of him? Psalm 8
And yet God
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