The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey
June 15, 2008
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Introduction to the
Scripture:
It’s entirely by chance that I’m preaching on Father’s
Day this year. I know I’m getting married in a few months, but let’s not get
ahead of ourselves. Incidentally, our passage this morning is a strange one to
read on Father’s Day, because the primary figure in this text is a mother; and
hers is a story of doubt and outright cynicism.
Abraham and Sarah, ancestors of Israel, are visited by
three strange men. These strangers turn out to be a manifestation of God, and
they come bearing good news. But after all she’s been through, Sarah doesn’t
believe in good news anymore. She laughs at them bitterly, determined to wallow
in her despair.
Little does she know, happy endings can be more than a
pleasant fiction.
Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
Genesis 18:1-15
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he
sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near
him. When he saw them, he ran from the
tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favor with you,
do not pass by your servant. Let a
little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the
tree. Let me bring a little bread, that
you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come
to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you
have said.’ And Abraham hastened into
the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice
flour, knead it, and make cakes.’
Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it
to the servant, who hastened to prepare it.
Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set
it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
They said to him, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you
in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance
behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were
old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of
women. So Sarah laughed to herself,
saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have
pleasure?’ The Lord said to Abraham,
‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am
old?” Is anything too wonderful for the
Lord? At the set time I will return to
you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied, saying, ‘I did not laugh’;
for she was afraid. He said, ‘Oh yes,
you did laugh.’
Genesis 21:1-7
The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord
did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah
conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had
spoken to him. Abraham gave the name
Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.
And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God
had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred
years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears
will laugh with me.’ And she said, ‘Who
would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’
Sermon:
There is a dog
who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just
barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state
of rigor mortis.
This is the preface for David Lynch’s avant-garde comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World. This bizarre comic ran weekly for nine years in newspapers around the country, but one would be hard pressed to compare it with Garfield or Peanuts. The minimalist black & white comic consisted of exactly four panels. From week to week, for nine whole years, these panels never changed. One critic remarks, “The Angriest Dog in the World was, without a doubt, the all-time easiest comic strip to draw. Each episode, over and over, consisted of four iterations of the same black and white drawing. The only variation was that the final one took place at night; and was shaded accordingly.”
That drawing was, of course, a picture of the so-called angriest dog in the world. The fierce black hound is chained to a stake in the backyard of a suburban home, its eyes bulging out of their sockets, its teeth clenched in unspeakable rage. An industrial factory looms beyond the backyard fence, billowing toxic smoke into the sky. By the fourth panel night always falls, and the angriest dog in the world is shrouded in darkness. But the dog cannot sleep.
The only variation in the comic strip comes in the form of mysterious dialogue from the unseen inhabitants of the house, their words overheard through the backyard window. For the most part, this dialogue makes remarkably little sense. In one episode, we hear the owner of the house saying, “If everything is real, than nothing is real as well.”
That’s it. That’s the whole episode. Tune in next week, folks.
When one interviewer asked David Lynch why the angriest dog in the world is so angry, his only reply was, “That’s a mystery. Certain clues come from the world around him.”
Could it be the factory in the distance, polluting the dog’s air? Is it the irritating philosophical pretensions of his owners? Or might it be the chain than binds him so tightly, locking him in a kind of four-paneled purgatory?
Or is it something else we cannot see, a desolate story behind the mad dog’s eyes that has forever stolen its hope?
***
The Angriest Dog in the World is a cheerless and intensely cynical cartoon. But while we tend to identify cynicism with pessimism, this was not always the case. Cynicism was once a school of ancient philosophical thought, one that was actually concerned with the pursuit of happiness. According to the ancient Cynics, happiness is achieved when people live in agreement with nature. Some of the Cynics took this ideology to an extreme, choosing to live much like dogs—hence the name cynic, which derives from the Greek kunikos, which means “dog-like.”
So you might say that the angriest dog in the world is cynical in more ways than one.
Perhaps the most famous of the Greek Cynics was one of its founders. His name was Diogenes of Sinope, an unusual ethicist who extolled the virtues of dog-like behavior. Diogenes believed that human beings live in denial of their baser instincts, instead wasting their energy on artificial constructs such as politics, fashion, religion, and the arts. The Dog, he pointed out, does none of these things. Dogs live carefree lives, caring not for what they eat or where they sleep. Dogs don’t judge people, dogs don’t tell lies. Dogs are fiercely loyal.
Diogenes had so much respect for dogs that he chose to live as one of them. When he wasn’t busy with high-profile speaking engagements, he was known for defecating in the theater, sleeping wherever he felt like it, eating raw meat, urinating on his detractors, and on occasion even biting people. Like David Lynch, Diogenes has made a significant contribution to the so-called theater of the absurd.
Fortunately, times have changed. I for one am glad that the cynics of the modern era don’t bite people or relieve themselves on fire hydrants. And yet, I’ll say this much for Diogenes—
At least he pursued happiness, instead of chasing after despair like a dog after its own tail.
***
Sarah waited anxiously by the backyard door. Her husband,
Abraham, was entertaining guests again, three wandering vagabonds who emerged
from the desert that morning. She hadn’t paid them any mind as she set
about her work, drawing them water from the well and kneading flour in
preparation for their breakfast. As her hands absentmindedly worked the dough,
she heard someone speak her name.
“Where is your wife Sarah?” one of the visitors inquired.
How could these strangers know her? Were they agents of the Pharaoh, who was so
smitten with her while she and Abraham were passing through Egypt? Had he
finally come to claim what he believed to be his? Or were they angels? Or demon
spirits of the desert wastes?
Sarah moved to the doorway and listened intently.
“She’s in the house,” Abraham replied cautiously.
“I will surely return in due season,” declared the stranger, “and your wife
Sarah shall have a son.”
Sarah had heard this kind of talk before. Her husband had been dragging her all
over creation from Mesopotamia to Egypt, following the trail of an invisible
God who made idle threats and empty promises. For fifty years, Abraham’s God
had promised her children. But she had stopped believing that a long time ago.
She was an old woman now—bitter, and barren as the desert itself.
Returning to her work, she caught a glimpse of herself in the bowl of water
that she had prepared for Abraham’s guests. Her hair was shot through with
grey, and her tightly pursed lips made her expression cynical and cold, but her
brown eyes betrayed her. They were the eyes of a frightened little girl,
tormented by the things she had seen and haunted by promises that had never
been fulfilled.
The years had been long, and they had not been kind.
All Sarah could do now was laugh without humor as she kneaded the flour with
hostility. “After I have grown old, and my husband has grown old, shall I now have
pleasure?” she murmured under her breath. She paused for a moment to look again
at her aging reflection, and she answered her own question. “Not a chance,” she
whispered.
No one heard her; No one but God.
***
When animals are abused—especially dogs—they often find it difficult to be around people. Some of them live in constant fear, fleeing to relative safety at the first sign of trouble. A kindly owner raises her hand to pet the dog’s head, and the poor animal thinks that she is going to strike him.
Other abused animals turn vicious, like the so-called angriest dog in the world. They growl at anyone who gets too close, and will sometimes attack without reason. They’re determined to never let anyone hurt them ever again.
We’re animals too, of a sort. The dog-man Diogenes demonstrated how blurred the line between humanity and the animal kingdom can become. Just as abused dogs will cower in fear or lash out in anger when they’ve been abused, so do we. At the very least, we become cynical, and we stop believing in second chances.
If we are all dogs, than who is our master? If we follow that metaphor to its logical conclusion, then the master is surely God. When life deals us too many bad hands, we may begin to fear the hand that feeds us—or worse, try to bite it off.
That’s what happened to Sarah. Much of her life had amounted to one big disappointment. God had promised her offspring in her youth, but had never delivered. Abraham had a son, Ishmael, by his serving maid. As you can imagine, this only added insult to injury. Sarah witnessed the mighty power of God in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but it seemed that this God who could annihilate whole cities in minutes could not—or would not—give her a child.
We often speak of religious doubt, but I wonder—do we really doubt God’s existence, or is it God’s intentions that are in question? C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”
This is, I think, the kind of doubt that Sarah is experiencing in this passage from Genesis. She doesn’t appear to doubt God’s existence, but rather God’s promises. In the end, against all logic, God delivers. The elderly Sarah does birth a son, and she names him Isaac. Isaac will come to sire Jacob, father of the twelve tribes of Israel. As God promised in the beginning, a great nation is born from her womb. Then Sarah laughs again, not with bitterness but with great joy.
My father once told me that he was never happier than on the day I was born. While Sarah’s advanced age might make her story seem implausible, the bliss that she feels is very real. We’ve all felt it too, in one way or another.
Sometimes, it might seem like our happy ending is nowhere in sight; but another chance at it could be waiting for us in time, further on down the road.
***
On a late night in October of 2006, the bartender of Longo’s Bank Café was taking trash out to the dumpster in the alley behind the bar. When he lifted the lid of the dumpster to dispose of the garbage, he was startled to see two eyes peering back at him from the darkness.
Those eyes belonged to a wounded pit bull who had been left in there to die. A little detective work from local police, animal shelters, and business owners revealed that the dog had belonged to a young man named Reginald Coleman, who gave a full confession. The dog had peed on the carpet, so Coleman beat it with wooden boards and sticks, a belt, and then stabbed the animal repeatedly. He later told police, “Since I thought the dog was going to die, I left it in the dumpster.”
Animal rescue workers nursed the dog back to health, and he made a miraculous recovery. Grateful for his survival, they called him Chance.
As of today, Chance is living in a warm and loving home. His owner commented, “His physical injuries have healed well. He is good with people and good with other dogs. (But) he is a bit skittish around anything that looks like a stick.”
I guess some scars never heal, but wounds do, if we entrust them to the God who makes all things new. It’s not easy, putting aside our fear and anger and placing our trust in God, not after life has wounded us so deeply.
Take one last look at the angriest dog in the world. That dog will never find a happy home, because it will pollute even the most loving household with its undying anger, as surely as the factory in the dog’s horizon pollutes the sky.
Maybe we ought to be more like Chance—never forgetting the weapons that wounded him, but willing to give his new life a chance.
Amen.