"Women Who Shook The World: Part Three"
How the story of a lost soul fits into God's plan at Christmas.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Text: Luke 1:46-55
Amongst the magnificent Christmas cards that Marial and I have received over the last few weeks are many from members of this church, and we thank you. Many have also been sent by my relatives in England and Scotland who I hear from at least once a year, anyway. For all the organizations that sent us messages wishing us the best and wanting our money, and for all the others who have corresponded with us, I am grateful.
In the midst of all this I received a letter from my sister-in-law in Nova Scotia. Her letters are usually full of light, humour, hope and a caustic word about ministers, and I usually look forward to getting them. Enclosed was a full-page article from the Halifax Chronicle Herald, dated December 9. She wrote, “Andrew, I think you might want to read this.” The clipping included a photograph of a man who looked quite old with a very distressed-looking dog, called Coyote. The headline read: “Homeless Man and His Dog Battle Hard Times Together.” I began to read the article with some interest, thinking maybe my sister-in-law was just reminding me of those who are in need at Christmas. As I read, I realized that the man, who looked as if he were in his seventies, was actually someone who had been a friend of mine for 25 years! He is only 49. His brother and I used to go golfing and work on cars together, and this man, Patrick, was always part of our joy.
When I moved to Ottawa from Nova Scotia, Patrick also happened to move into the city. He looked me up, and we spent quite a lot of time together. Realizing he was having problems in his life, I helped him return home to Nova Scotia, to be with his family. It was some seven years ago that I put him on a train back to Halifax. Now, I read that he is homeless, with his dog, Coyote. The story is tragic, as many of these stories are. Here is a man who had worked as an embalmer in a funeral home, but because of an accident contracted hepatitis C and is now, basically, waiting to die. Because he has a dog, he is not allowed into any of the shelters. Because he is poor, he cannot afford to rent his own place. Because he is sick, he does not know where to lay his head.
In writing the article, Peter Duffy, who writes a wonderful column for the Chronicle Herald, asked him, “Why don't you just get rid of the dog, and then you can go into a shelter?”
And Patrick replied, “All my life, I seem to have been rejected, and the only one in 25 years that has been faithful to me is my dog. How can I let him go?” Encouraged by the writer to think not only of himself, but also of his dog's wellbeing - it has been a bitterly cold two weeks in Halifax - eventually my friend ended up in the Salvation Army hostel, and Coyote at the SPCA. And that is where they now reside, for a while apart.
What really troubled my heart in this article was something Patrick said about his own view of life. He said, “It seems to me that I am really not wanted. All I want is some peace and quiet and a place to lay my head.” And when Duffy asked him, “Why don't you just go home?” he just simply stared at him and said, “I have no home.”
Since I read this article, the picture of this shriveled man and his sick dog have been engraved in my mind. As I have tried to get hold of him these last few days (and I will), I've been thinking that the biblical women we are looking at in this Advent series must have felt exactly like Patrick says he feels right now. These are women who are part of the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. Mentioned in the Book of Matthew, they are his ancestors, those who came before him: Rahab, Ruth, and today, the saddest and most miserable of them all, Tamar. Now you might say, “Why are we looking at a person like Tamar today when we are looking forward to the joy of Christmas?” But relax, this is a joyful story - in the end - but the road to joy is a painful one, and a sorrowful one.
The story in the Book of Genesis makes The Young and the Restless, Six Feet Under, Peyton Place and Sex in the City look pretty benign, let me tell you! If you think there is nothing in the Bible that can be relevant for the modern day, trust me, this is a story that will change your view.
The story is very simple, about a man called Judah, the brother of the very famous Joseph of the many-coloured coat. Judah marries a Canaanite woman and has three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah. Er, Onan and Shelah grow up and become men, in a time when all men were expected to marry and have sons to keep the family name going. So Er marries a woman named Tamar. Unfortunately, they do not have any children, and Er dies at a young age. Seeking to maintain the family line, father Judah encourages the second son, Onan, to marry the woman who had been his sister-in-law. So Onan marries Tamar. But they don't have any children, either, because Onan is not keen on the idea of his son being named after his older brother. He could not stand that, so no child was born. Eventually Onan, too, dies. (Makes you wonder what Tamar was like, doesn't it?!) There seems to be no other hope for the family line except for the third son, Shelah, but Judah, is so worried that he might lose yet a third son - two is, I think, a coincidence, three would be absolutely devastating - that he decides, no, we are just going to leave Tamar as a widow and I will have no heirs.
Tamar realizes that it appears she has caused this devastation, and feels the pain of the family. Not only that, she was also living in poverty and needed to find a means of survival by getting back into the family. So she decides to do something. Here the story gets quite spicy. She dresses up as a veiled harlot, sits on the side of the road and waits for her father-in-law, Judah. He comes along, she motions towards him, and Judah, wanting this harlot, takes her for himself under the veil, not knowing who she is. As a result, Tamar becomes pregnant. Judah is out of his mind with rage when he hears that she is pregnant. (He does not know that he is the father, because he does not know that she was the harlot on the roadside.) He says, “This woman is terrible! She should be burned! She should be put to death! She has disgraced the family!” But Tamar was clever. You see, she had, in fact, got a pledge from the man who had been with her, in the form of a cord and a signet ring and a staff. So before Judah could put her to death, she reminded him that the father of her child had given her a ring, a staff and a cord. Judah then realized that he was the father, and he forgave her.
Tamar went on to have twin sons. The eldest was named Perez. If you read your Bible, you will realize Perez was one of the ancestors of David, the great King, and David was one of the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth. Tamar was the mother of a child from whom the line of David and Jesus of Nazareth eventually came - a woman who shook the world!
What is amazing about this woman is that she took a great personal risk to maintain a family line that I am sure she did not have a particularly high view of, given the way she was treated. She probably agreed with something George Burns once said: “Happiness is having a big, happy, closely knit family that lives in another city.” Well, for Tamar, Judah's family could have lived in another city quite happily for her! But she gave birth to Zerah and Perez, her sons.
As I look at the magnitude of what happened in this story, I think there is a profound message for us this Christmas. I think in the story of Tamar and Judah, there is not only an historical linkage, there is also a lesson about the meaning of Christmas. The lesson is in two parts.
I: This woman seemed hopeless, but was in fact healed. If you look at the story closely, one of the most beautiful parts of it is when Judah realizes that it is he who is the father of Tamar's children. And he looks at Tamar, and not only forgives her, but also actually declares publicly that: “She is more righteous than I am.” She is more righteous than I am! In other words, he has not only forgiven her, he has also tried to rehabilitate her. Quite frankly, Tamar was not on the list of the 20 most beautiful, righteous women of all time, was she? Two dead husbands and an illegitimate child by stealth from her father-in-law is hardly what you would classify as qualifications for Miss Righteousness, circa 1500 BC. However, Judah realized that this woman had sacrificed herself and her reputation to maintain the family line, to preserve the heritage and the traditions of the line of Judah. Judah said, “She is more righteous than I am.” Now, do not misunderstand: The Bible does not condone this activity. There is no glossing over it. But the Mosaic laws - the laws of Moses and the Torah, which say how people should live in relationships - came after the story of Tamar, not before it. They came partly in response to this, the story of Judah and Tamar, for there is no condoning of this behaviour. Rather, there is the recognition that even in the midst of this behaviour, there can be forgiveness.
The thing that strikes me so much about this biblical story is that God can use the most unlikely of people, the dispossessed, the sinners, for his purposes. When people tell me that they are concerned that the God of the Bible, particularly, the Old Testament, is simply a God of judgment or of wrath or of anger, I turn to a story like Tamar, and I say, “Read your Bible again, read it again, and you can see how God can use the most unlikely for his kingdom and his purpose.” Tamar was rehabilitated, she was brought back into the fold. Are there any of us who feel that as they approach this Christmastide, that they are somehow not worthy to come into the presence of God, that they have no right of be joyful and full of celebration when they look at the wrongs that have been done in their past or the wrongs that they have suffered? The Christmas story is of a God who can take the hopeless and heal them, and rehabilitate anyone by the power of forgiveness, and the glory of grace.
II: There is, however, something more about the Tamar story, something that gets right into the heart. It is that the woman who was healed also became a helper. The Christmas story, my friends, is not actually about us. It is not about what we do, or what we sing, or what we say. It is about God, and what God has done and what God says. The Christmas story is about God's activity on our behalf.
When you look at the story of Tamar, you realize that so many of the great, glorious and splendid things in the history of our faith have come from the line she began. Where would the city of Jerusalem be, if it were not for David? Where would the glory of Zion be and the defeat of the Philistines, if it were not for David, whose ancestor was Perez, the child of Tamar? Where would the law come from, or the Promised Land? How would the grace of God come to Mary and Joseph, and the Child Jesus, who came from the line of David, who goes back to Perez, the son of Tamar? Where would the Psalms that we sing come from, if they had not come from the heart of David, whose ancestor was Perez, the son of Tamar? We would not have what we have, if God had not used Tamar.
And the same thing applies to the other great woman we celebrate today, Mary, and her song, the Magnificat. This magnificent statement of faith by Mary, that a handmaiden of the Lord, the lowliest of the low, the one who really was insignificant, could be used to bear the Son of God, the Messiah, tells us over and over again that it is not what we do, it is what God can do, and has done, that makes Christmas so powerful and so meaningful.
Sometimes when we get this gift, we miss the point. It is like the wealthy man from Texas, who buys his father an extraordinary and an unusual gift every Christmas. For example, he bought him a gift certificate one year to go hang gliding. Another Christmas, he bought him the complete musical recordings of Clay Whitman. Another year, he bought him the first editions of the writings of Longfellow. One year he even bought him a gift certificate to go on the big rides at Disneyland. (It seems that he was almost trying to get rid of his father with some of these gifts, doesn't it?) But he always gave his father something exceptional and outstanding and different, and the father used to anticipate his son's gift. Well, this one year, the son decided that he had found the ideal gift, a $10,000-bird. This bird was exceptional. It could sing The Yellow Rose of Texas while standing on one leg. It could recite all the works of Wordsworth without even blinking an eye. So the man bought this bird and presented it to his father.” The father was overjoyed, and the son thought, “Oh, this is terrific!” He spent Christmas that year with his in-laws, and phoned his father about a week later: “Dad, how did you find the bird?” And the father said, “Oh, son, it was delicious!”
We do the same with Christmas! We get this great gift, which is about the glory of God's love, and we forget why we have it, and what its purpose is, and what its meaning is. If you look at the song of Mary, it all comes back. When Mary says that she, a lowly handmaiden, has been lifted up, when she says that the rich will be brought down and the poor raised up, when she says that the unlikely can be used by the grace of God, we read that her soul magnifies the Lord. Her soul magnifies the Lord! Why? Because what she sees happening in her and through her was to change the world.
And if you think that the story of Christmas is just an historical reminiscence of a few people, then listen to the way this man Jesus, born from Mary, from the line of Joseph and David and Perez and Tamar, spoke of himself. He said, “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life. I am the Good Shepherd. I am the Door. I am the Light of the World. I am the Bread of Life. I am who I am.” And it is because he called himself such terms that he has meaning for us today.
There is something I read not long ago, by Helen Mallicoat:
I was regretting the past, and fearing the future, when suddenly my Lord was speaking. ”˜My name is I am.' I waited, he continued, ”˜When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I Was. When you live in the future, with its problems and fears, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I Will Be. When you live in the moment, it is not hard. I am here. My name is I Am. I Am.'
The I Am is here. The I Am is here to lift up the lonely. The I Am is here to support the weak. The I Am is here to struggle for justice for the oppressed. The I Am is here to give forgiveness to the broken. The I Am is here to embrace the lonely. The I Am is here to give hope to the hopeless. The I Am is here, and this Christmas we can say it loudly and boldly and confidently, as we look at Tamar - the woman who shook the world! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.