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Our reading begins with genealogy—the recounting of the
generations. When we hear it read, generation after generation
flows into the next in a continual, almost seamless flow of
creation. This is how genealogies work. We know how they flow:
the New Dealers gave way to the Baby Boomers, the Boomers
became the Busters, and the Busters gave way to us Xers, who
have now paved the way to become Generation Y.
The genealogy flows along nicely until verse 30. There it
sits, so unlike the nineteen verses that precede it. “Sarai
was barren, having no child.” Creation has halted. The
endless flow from generation to generation, the turning of
season upon season all of a sudden ends in barrenness.
Barren. Empty. Dried up. We are not even twelve chapters
through the biblical journey when we are faced with the
reality that the future is not assured. The people of God are
faced with the reality of barrenness.
Barrenness enters into human history, disrupting the flow, the
pace, the progress, and even the inevitability of life itself.
“Sarai was barren…” We have all heard similar
pronouncements of barrenness inserting themselves into the
flow of human history.
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Everything changed the year Mom died.
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We’d have been fine if the plant hadn’t closed.
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When he left, everything seemed to just fall apart.
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Life as we knew it changed the day the towers fell.
About barrenness, biblical scholar Walter Bruggeman says,
“Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective
metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future.
There is no human power to invent a future.”
Barrenness is a biblical condition. We encounter it throughout
the scriptures. We recall Sarah’s heartbroken laugh, “Now
that I am past the age of child bearing and my husband is an
old man, is pleasure to come my way again?” and the shouting
of the Israelites, “We would rather go back to Egypt than
die in the desert!” as they faced certain death at the foot
of the Red Sea. Or how about those who stood in the barren
valley and wept before Ezekiel, “Our bones are dry, our hope
has gone; we are done for.”
And lest we think that barrenness is only found in the Hebrew
scriptures, Jesus too was touched by the realities of life’s
barrenness. Especially in the season of Lent, we retrace the
scenes of Jesus’ encounters with barrenness. We will retell
how at Gethsemane Jesus cried out, “I am scared to
death…if it is possible, take this cup from me.” And it is
during this season that we come face to face with the grips of
the fear and terror of the cross as Jesus screams out from the
depths of life’s barrenness, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” Book after book, chapter after chapter, verse
after verse—the Bible revisits the theme of barrenness.
Barrenness is a biblical condition.
Barrenness is a biblical condition because it is a human
condition. I think we would be hard pressed to find one among
us who does not know at least one moment in their life they
would describe as barren. The dry times, the rough times, the
cracked and broken times, in one way or another touch us all.
Sooner or later, the everyday routines of our lives find
themselves bumped up against the uncertainty of tomorrow,
smacked headlong into the insecurity of the unknown, and/or
simply just weighted down by unbearable hopelessness.
Barrenness is a part of the human condition.
And while it may be something that touches us all, its
terrain, the contours of its valleys and rough places, is
experienced differently by each of us. It might come when the
sleepless nights, coupled with the fear of tomorrow, become a
burden too heavy to carry. You might find yourself in life’s
barrenness when you can no longer shoulder an emptiness that
has been there since childhood. Others have faced the dry
times that come when the marriage struggled, or when the
children left, or when the layoff notice was delivered. For
others, the realization that they were now standing on the
cracked ground of barren times came with the doctor’s
diagnosis or when they left the cemetery. And too many of our
brothers and sisters know the gripping fear that the barren
lands of addiction and depression can bring. Barrenness is a
part of the human condition.
And this barrenness not only visits us in our individual
lives, but there are times that we, as a whole people, find
ourselves with the uncertainty of this dried-up condition.
Times when the future seems unclear or even threatened. Times
when the journey we travel as a people seems mired in
ambiguity and doubt. These current times that we, the human
family, find ourselves living indeed seem awfully dry.
Economic and employment volatility, feelings of insecurity and
the threats of war have brought us face to face with the
collective human condition we call barrenness.
So what does that have to do with Ash Wednesday? We have
gathered here this afternoon because barrenness is not only a
biblical or human condition, it is our Lenten condition. In
the midst of our routines, smack dab in the middle of business
as usual, we Christians intentionally interject a season of
barrenness. Lent—the journey with Jesus from the desert of
temptation to Jerusalem and a confrontation with both a church
and state that no longer lived up to their vocation—a
journey that takes us to the anguish of Gethsemane and the
terror of Calvary. And the only way we can walk this road, the
only way we can arrive at Easter, is to walk this path of
barrenness. Lent is a season of being honest about the places
in our lives that are hurt or are hurting others. Lent is the
season where we bring to light how we suffer, as well as the
ways we inflict suffering on others. Lent is the season where
we struggle to end the wars that wage within us and the ones
we are engaged in without. Our Lenten journey brings us both
individually and collectively into the reality of our
barrenness.
Why is there a season in the church year that asks us to wear
our brokenness so openly? Why must we be nudged from the
comfort of life’s routine to walk the journey of the cross?
Because our reading reminds us that when we confront the
barrenness of our lives, God offers to us his promise. Faced
with an uncertain future and the sense of powerlessness to
change the direction of their lives, God calls Sarai and
Abram, his barren people, to journey to a new land, to new
ways of living, to new ways of understanding. So we, too, come
to this Lenten season being asked to step out on faith, to
take up the journey of being open and honest about our
individual and collective sin. It is an invitation to walk
through the valley of the shadow of our barrenness. We are
asked to take the dangerous departure from the presumed world
of our norms and security. To forego this Lenten journey is to
remain in barrenness. For new life to happen, for new
possibilities to form out of the voids of our lives, to find a
way through the barrenness, we must take the Lenten journey,
the faithful journey, trusting that somehow God will make a
way where there seems to be no way.
God’s word is offered in the midst of the journey. It is
into their condition of barrenness that God proclaims to Abram
and Sarai:
I shall bless those who bless you,
and I shall curse those who curse you,
and all clans of the earth
will bless themselves because of you.
A similar promise is offered to the disciples as Jesus ascends
into heaven:
Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age.
Into the midst of barrenness, when we seem at the end of our
rope, when there seems to be no hope, it is then that God’s
promise is perhaps most available to us and our Lenten journey
gives us the opportunity to discover anew the promises of our
God.
What do you bring to this Lenten journey? Where are the places
in your lives that especially need God’s touch? Where are
the places in our communities and throughout our world that
yearn to hear God’s promise spoken anew? Bring those to our
journey so that when the promise of Easter breaks forth, we
too can share in the promise of new life.
So, now, how does it end? After God speaks the promise into
the midst of barrenness, and even though our couple remains
uncertain that a new future can be born, our reading ends in
verse 14 with five simple words: “So, Abram and Saria
went.” They began their journey. Let us begin ours.
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