The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, March 8, 2009.
Are you kidding me with this first reading this morning?
This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the
covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised… For the
generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be
circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from
a foreigner… Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they
must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting
covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh,
will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant
. (Gen. 17.9-14)
The Light of the Ages / Thanks be to God.
I saw you out there. Some of you were blushing. A couple of men were
crying. Someone looked agitated with me like I had written this unseemly story
and shared it just to make everyone uncomfortable. It’s the bible!
To be in covenant with God, men have to have to be circumcised when they
are 8 days old? Women don’t have to do anything special I guess, perhaps women
are God’s favorites. And what is it about 8 days? Does it count if it’s done
later?
And notice that you are to have it done to your sons and to your slaves…
sons born to you as well as male children that you purchase from foreigners.
You never really hear a sermon about buying children and having them
circumcised by command of the Almighty. Well, it is odd. Some will think it
indecent… improper to even mention the subject.
My great-aunt Gladys was never squeamish about such things. The first time
I ever heard the word circumcision I asked Aunt Gladys what it meant. She told
me and I was horrified. I then turned to my Uncle Arthur and asked him a very
personal question… I asked him if such a ghastly thing had been done to him.
He said yes, when I was a baby. I gasped. I asked, “Did it hurt?” He said,
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t walk for a year.”
Now the truth is, that for a number of people in the world, ritual infant
male circumcision is very important. And I don’t mean to insult anyone for
whom it is a truly religious practice. But I do intentionally make light of
this passage to shock us a little… to show us how we read some assumptions
into the bible that simply are not there. The writers of Genesis 17 are very
comfortable talking about the human body and literally seeing divine promise
in human flesh. The writers aren’t even opposed to a little word play, almost
a pun. The passage literally tells that any man who has not had his foreskin
cut off will find himself cut off from the larger community.
I’m not an anthropologist; I don’t have the skills to analyze ancient
patriarchal thinking from another place and culture. I do know that the
writers of this passage live in a world where slavery is a fact of life, and
they have not yet brought themselves to challenge the unspeakable evil of that
practice.
I do know that the writers of this passage were comfortable talking about
bodies… that they were earthy, real, embodied people who had no shame in
discussing physicality; and I know that the editors of our holy scriptures
apparently had no trouble including this and many other stories that speak
very frankly about human bodies and physical features.
I know that the community that produced this story honestly regarded male
circumcision as a symbol that somehow reminded them of their sacred value.
Scholars tell us that this particular story was probably written during the
Babylonian exile. Hundreds of years after it supposedly happened, people who
are in exile are keeping their stories alive, and someone finally writes some
of the down.
To exiled people, a story that says no matter what is happening there is a
divine covenant with you that is affirming your sacred value must have been
quite comforting. To be aliens in Babylon and to remember a story of their
patriarch being an alien in Canaan but being promised an everlasting
relationship with God… that story must have seemed relevant and healing to
people in their moment of despair.
The story seems to say, “Maybe you have been separated from your history,
your land, your freedom… but you cannot be separated from the divine promise
that you will be in loving relationship with God no matter what. If you will
separate your boy children from their foreskins, that will be a reminder that
skin can be cut away, but YOU will never be cut away from the heart of God.”
It may seem a harsh ritual to our sensibilities, and yet what it was meant to
represent we can totally affirm… in fact, it is what the Apostle Paul
affirmed… NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.
You see, the story is naming hope. Things are difficult, unfair,
overwhelming, but we will dare to believe that God believes in us. When our
enemies condemn us, when the larger society overlooks us, when circumstances
seem to conspire against us, we will insist that we have sacred value. That’s
a message that may encourage some of us even still!
Chapter 17 begins with Abram at 99 years old being told he will be an
ancestor of a great nation. Abram’s name is then changed to Abraham, and his
wife Sarai’s name is changed to Sarah. She is also very old and is told she
will have a child. People in their 90s don’t have children, but a story of
impossibilities being possible after all can be encouraging when you find
yourself feeling hopeless.
How will we ever get out of exile? Well, it could happen… after all, we
have a story about people in their 90s having children, and those children
multiplied into a great nation, and hundreds of years later we are still part
of that nation… the nation may be in exile, but we’re still here. So maybe
there is reason to hope… maybe that’s what the story is really saying… not
that circumcision is or isn’t a good thing, not that 90 year olds really have
babies, but that when everything looks hopeless, religious people somehow find
the wherewithal to hope anyway. And sometimes, that hope pays off. Sometimes
we remember that God’s promise is in our flesh, in our bodies, in our
sensuality, in our skin and in our bones… and it is an everlasting promise.
Abram gets a new name. Sarai gets a new name. The people’s hope for
survival is also named. Even God is named… Chapter 17, verse 1 says, “I am God
Almighty… walk before me.” Well, that’s how it is usually translated. It
actually says, “I am El Shaddai,” that is, “I am the Almighty Breasted One,
the divine One with many breasts.”
Sarah is old… her culture would have told her that her breasts were dried
up… So God appears to Abraham and Sarah in this story as a Cosmic Mother whose
breasts never dry up. A cosmic mother whose nurturing love never dries up…
even when we are in exile… even when we are hurting… even when we are scared…
even when life isn’t fair… El Shaddai is there, promising an everlasting
relationship, giving us the power to name our hope and keep it alive so that
it can sustain us through the difficult days.
Divine breasts and infant foreskins… who knew that was in the bible. But
maybe for people like us, such an earthy, real, and uncensored story, a story
that dares to name outrageous hope, that dares to affirm the sacred value of
all people is especially the word of God… or as I like to say, this is the
good news. Amen.