A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on June 18, 2023 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Reading for address: Genesis 18: 1-15, 21: 1-7
For the mass of people in this country, for a thousand years, from shall we say the tenth to the early twentieth century, Christianity fitted the plausibility structure of the whole culture. It harmonised the ancient traditions of the Hebrews to the classical wisdom of the Greeks. It united rulers and ruled in a common cause of purpose and obligation, humility and conscience. Over the last hundred years those benign certainties have come apart, and Christianity has come to be seen no longer as common sense or default understanding, but as curious, unwelcome or even offensive. Most Christians assume this is a bad thing. But it may not be as bad as it seems.
I want today to take the story of Abraham, Sarah and the three visitors in our Old Testament reading and see how it illuminates this historical shift. Those who teach creative writing speak of six elements of a story. You start (1) with establishing the normal: the context, the things your reader can take for granted about the characters and the setting. Then you introduce (2) an incident that sparks the story into life. Next (3), in the largest part of the drama, you combine action and complication to reveal character and develop the plot. (4) The crisis comes when the main character faces some kind of a choice that seems impossible but must nonetheless be made. (5) The climax narrates the result of that choice. Finally (6) a new normal emerges in the aftermath of all the action and revelation of the story. This structure works like a pyramid, building to a crisis and then coming down the other side. It’s sometimes called Freytag’s Pyramid, after a nineteenth-century German novelist.
To take an example, in Cinderella, (1) The context is of a daughter’s miserable existence treated as a slave. (2) The incident is the appearance of the fairy godmother. (3) The drama is the ball and the encounter with Prince Charming. (4) The crisis is Cinderella’s return to her prior servitude. (5) The climax is the discovery of the glass slipper and the perfect fit on Cinderella’s dainty foot. (6) The new normal is her happy-ever-after life with Prince Charming. Of course, most stories are more sophisticated than that. But it’s amazing how common the sixfold structure of Freytag’s Pyramid is.
Now let’s look at today’s story of Abraham, Sarah and the three visitors through this structure. (1) The context is of the oaks of Mamre. Abraham is a long way from where his story began: he’s a guest in a land that he’s been promised his descendants will inhabit for countless generations. (2) The incident is the appearance of the three visitors. Sometimes they’re described as three and sometimes they speak as one, and are called the Lord. It’s not hard to see how this ascription to the Lord and the interchange of their being three and being one has led to this being regarded as a key story in identifying God as Trinity. Yet the incident assumes the customs of Middle Eastern hospitality. Rather ironically, given that Abraham’s a newcomer to the Holy Land, he’s the one offering hospitality. (3) Then the drama is Abraham’s gift of hospitality to the three visitors and the visitors’ gift in their announcement that Sarah will bear a son.
(4) The crisis is the fact that Sarah, who’s earlier in the story been described as infertile, is also by now very old, and thus not in a position to be conceiving or bearing a child. (5) The climax is the visitors’ compelling, transformative and challenging question, ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ The answer to this question is the key to the whole story. (6) Then today’s reading adds a few verses from later in Genesis to give us the new normal, which is a happy scene of the rearing of the child Isaac – although the full irony of the scene isn’t apparent unless you realise that the name Isaac means laughter: then it’s clear the whole story is one of the transformation of the laughter of defence and derision, when Sarah hears the announcement, being turned into the laughter of joy and hope.
Now I want to put this story on a much larger canvas. Let’s take the six stages of Freytag’s Pyramid and see how the story of Abraham and Sarah and the three visitors portrays the whole Christian story. (1) The context is the encounter between God and humankind. Thus the three visitors represent God while Abraham and Sarah represent humankind, with the oaks of Mamre standing for the theatre of creation on which this encounter takes place. (2) Then we have the incident. The encounter of the three visitors with Abraham and Sarah is a prefigurement of the fundamental incident in the Christian story, which is the incarnation, in which Jesus becomes the place where God and humankind meet one another. (3) Then we have mounting drama, represented in this story by Abraham and Sarah offering hospitality to the three visitors, and in their announcing the coming of Isaac, but in the Bible as a whole by the whole narrative of creation, exodus, the kingdom, the exile and the coming of Christ, the church and the last day.
(4) Then the crisis of the story is the interface between the gracious gift of God, relationship in Christ, and the two factors that inhibit that relationship. Both factors are present in today’s story. The inhibitor of our mortality is represented by Sarah’s advanced age, and the obstacle of our sin is represented by Sarah’s mocking laughter. (5) The climax of today’s story, as we’ve seen, is the question, ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ The answer to that question is the key to this story. But the secret for understanding the significance of Genesis 18 is the wider ramification of these words. The reason the story’s so important is that the answer to this question is the key to the whole Bible. ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’: remember, we answer that question in the light of Jesus’ incarnation, gift of his life in crucifixion, restoration in resurrection and of our empowerment by the Holy Spirit. But Sarah’s back in Genesis 18, so let’s not be too tough on her not yet being able to give much of an answer. (6) Then the Christian story concludes in our dwelling with God, one another and the renewed creation as peaceably and joyfully as Abraham and Sarah dwell with young Isaac.
So we’ve seen that not only today’s Old Testament reading but in fact the whole scriptural narrative can fit quite tidily into the sixfold shape of a conventional storyline. If we return to the historical transformation with which we began, we can see how this helps us identify what’s at stake in the place of Christianity in our culture today. If you remember, we said Christianity was once the default story – the story into which every other story fitted. Now it has become one story among many, and for some an unwelcome story. Christians have responded to this situation in two predominant ways. One is to shout the story louder, asserting or demanding that our culture inhabit the Christian story as if nothing had changed. The other is to argue for and demonstrate the reasonableness and usefulness of the Christian story, as if to say, ‘You know it makes sense.’
By setting out the Christian story as a six-part plot just like any other story, I’ve tried to show how you can make Christianity sound reasonable and useful, unthreatening and plausible. You can portray it as assuming all the givens of our culture, but just providing a greater degree of generosity and a larger hope for eternal peace. But that would be to miss what’s unique about Christianity. What’s unique is the question at the heart of today’s story of the three visitors: ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’
For Christianity, everything depends on the answer to that question. Our culture’s bent on a project of establishing the givens of existence and either pushing them back through technological invention or distracting from them by sophisticated forms of entertainment. Both of these options assume the answer to the question, ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ is, ‘Yes – everything, or almost everything.’ Our contemporary culture is a project designed to secure existence without the need to resort to God. Christianity flies in the face of the assumptions of this culture because it maintains that the answer to the question, ‘Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’ is no. To be a Christian is to base your life on that answer. We need to accept that the day when Christianity was the almost universally accepted plausibility structure for our society is gone, and isn’t coming back. But that isn’t a disaster, because that assumption obscured the truth of Christianity, which is a bold statement of faith in the midst of mortality and derision – a statement that there is nothing too wonderful for the Lord.
Angela Sheard has made that bold statement of faith by being ordained. Today she presides at the Eucharist for the first time. Angela has committed herself to a story that has the same structure as our culture’s story but very different content. Let’s go back to Freytag’s Pyramid for a moment, and consider what we could call Angela’s Pyramid. The context of Angela’s story is not a striving for survival but a generous offer of relationship. The incident of Angela’s story is not a terrifying brush with mortality but the coming of God to be with us face to face. The drama of Angela’s story is not our pointless quest to make our lives meaningful but a stream of surprises in which we perceive the wonder of God. The crisis of Angela’s story is not the distribution of scarce resources but an overwhelming encounter with the grace of God. The climax of Angela’s story is not the breathtaking success of a talented and lucky hero but the awesome discovery that nothing is impossible with God. The new normal this story portrays is not the survival of the fortunate few but the embrace of all by the everlasting arms of a never-failing God.
Angela, here’s the bad news. You’re not going to be part of a Christianity whose story is restored to widespread acceptance in our culture. If you’re going to try to show Christianity is reasonable and useful, you’re wasting your time. Here’s the good news. You’re taking up the mantle of a story that renarrates our culture’s story at every turn, and turns Abraham and Sarah’s fading mortality and mocking derision into laughter that all can share. You will be tested, challenged, and sometimes derided, but the story you inhabit is one of hospitality, gift, abundance and blessing. Because your priesthood will be a journey of discovery that nothing, nothing, nothing is too wonderful for the Lord.
