2 February 2010
Psalm 61, 62; Gen. 21:1-21; Heb. 11:13-22; John 6:41-51

We skipped the end of Genesis 19 and all of chapter 20. At the end of chapter 19 we have Lot’s daughters deciding that they have no hope for the future of the clan and decide to get their father drunk and sleep with him in order that they might have children of their own. They have clearly been corrupted by their time in Sodom. One of the daughters is the mother of the Moabites, who continue to be a thorn in the flesh of the Israelites through the conquest of the land. Baalam’s advice to his kinsmen on how to destroy the Israelites is true to their origin, send your good-looking women to them to marry them and entice them after other gods. It is amazing that a Moabite, Ruth, is a faith hero and in the line of Jesus. In chapter 20, Abraham and Sarah again play the game of pretending she is his sister with yet another king, rather than trusting God to protect them and fulfill His promise.

In Chapter 21 the child of the promise is finally born! Sarah, surely recollecting the meeting with the men at their tent when she laughed at the promise, responds to the birth with a wry irony, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’ The episode of Ishmael playing with Isaac is strange and difficult to see what is going on that has upset Sarah. The word for play could also mean mocking and it is the same word that is used in Exodus when the people got up to play after the golden calf was made. It isn’t entirely clear what it means but it isn’t fun and games. Abraham, for the first time, has to let go of a son and give Him to God. There are some parallels between this story of sending away Hagar and Ishmael and the next chapter. In both cases, God provides a way out of what looks like certain death for Abraham’s son. Hagar has once believed in the God who sees her and now she finds that He is also a God who hears.

The people murmur about Jesus, just as did their forefathers in the wilderness. They murmured about the manna and here they murmur about Jesus claiming to be bread from heaven. Belief in Jesus is the key to eternal life and here He says that belief is not from us, only those whom the Father draws will believe. Jesus presses the metaphor of His body a little too far in the end and the people now are disgusted and believe He is speaking of cannibalism. There is much here that looks and sounds like the conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus is speaking of heavenly things and they are thinking of earth, the fulfillment of their earthly desire for food in this case.

The life of faith is the life of recognition we are strangers and aliens on earth, on a pilgrimage towards our true home country. That recognition allows us to pass through and enjoy the country where we are but also to always be pressing on, never quite settling in here on earth.

CS Lewis makes the argument from desire to explain this life:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.