Jacob Lied to Isaac

Chagall Etching: "Jacob Blessed by Isaac"

I.

A New York Magazine article from a couple of years ago started off with these somewhat startling words:

Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons—to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. But now there’s a singular theory for one way this habit develops: They are just copying their parents.

Beleaguered parents take it on the chin once again. We choose to do the impossible, which seems at first like one act of love that leads to a life of love, and not infrequently much of that is true; but few parents and children move down life’s pathway together able to avoid all bumps in the road. Sometimes those bumps are caused by forces external to the parent/child relationship; at other times, those bumps are caused by an intrapersonal problem in the child/parent relationship itself.

The quote from the New York Magazine said exactly the same thing about lying itself. Sometimes, kids lie for reasons that have nothing to do with their parents, and sometimes they lie because they are merely mimicking their parents. This mimicking parents behavioral pattern is surely one of the most sobering realities parents have to face. Sometimes, when parents have goofed, they may say to their children, “Mommy or Daddy goofed. This is not how I should act, and it’s not how I want you to act.” What it boils down to is a directive to “do as I say, not as I do.” That might work rarely, but it’s not going to work as a weekly bail out.

What kids see as the typical behavior of their parents is what they’re going to mimic, because--as is always the case with younger children--they aren’t able to evaluate parental behavior as correct or incorrect. Older children may well know that some people out there somewhere believe lying is wrong, but because they love their parents they give their parents a pass and develop a rationale for lying that says, “There must be good reasons my parents lie, even to me, so if there’s a good enough reason to lie at home and away from home, including lying to people I love and trust, it must be OK; it must work out alright in the end.” A child being punished for lying by a lying parent has a painfully incongruous experience, destructive to the child’s emotional health and development. It simply does not compute.

One study says that in our culture, children start lying regularly when they’re about four years old. I don’t know who sat behind the two-way glass all those hours, but a number of researchers say that many four year olds lie about every two hours; and by the time they’re six they’re lying about every hour and a half. Mostly the lies they tell are relatively inconsequential unless you as a parent believe that your child must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all the time.

Some child psychologists advise parents not to worry about lying kids, saying that the child will grow out of this childish behavior. In reality, however, many children seem to grow up into lying rather than out of it, and, again, this may have something to do with how often they see their parents lying. Children also learn by observation that pure honesty often creates tension and pressure and anxiety while lying may smooth things out or keep the conflict from ever showing up in the first place. Their lying may begin as while lies, but as someone has said, “The one who tells white lies quickly becomes color blind.”

Our children may learn to lie by observing the little lies we tell on a regular basis, or we may pressure them into lying. Here’s an example. They open a Christmas or a birthday gift, and it’s not at all what they wanted. When they express their honest disappointment, their parents jump all over them so the child learns to say that she or he likes any and all gifts ever received. As adults, we may honestly say that we like any gift given to us because by that point in our lives we really have learned that it’s the thought that counts. I couldn't care less what my kids or any other member of my family gets for me as a gift; that they put any effort into thinking about something I might like and investing their hard-earned money in something for me touches me deeply. I don’t care what it is.

Kids, though, can’t go out and buy whatever they want; as a rule, anyway. They only have a shot at getting what they want, what they hope for if someone with money and the means to acquire the item goes out and gets the desired gift for the child. If that doesn’t happen, the child isn’t likely to get what she or he most wants. So, yeah, when the wrapping paper is ripped away to reveal some nice new underwear rather than the latest “must have” piece of technology, the child who is honest isn’t happy about that. Maybe we could help with that particular problem by not giving necessities as gifts. The typical first world kid doesn’t want to open a gift box to find underwear, toothpaste, a toothbrush, or a packet of Kleenex to carry to school on a runny nose day.

It’s a good news/bad news thing, depending on how you look at it. A Canadian child development professor who is an expert on childhood lying, Dr. Victoria Talwar, says her research has shown that the smartest kids are the best liars. Speaking intellectually and not morally, lying is a more advanced skill than telling the truth. The child who quickly becomes an habitual liar, carrying that pattern of behavior beyond childhood can well become savvy and successful in many American professions. It takes some creativity and some hutzpah to lie and to lie well, but the kid with the lowest grades and the least hope of academic success can only tell the truth well.

Dr. Talwar says,

Thrown into elementary school, many kids begin lying to their peers as a coping mechanism, as a way to vent frustration or get attention. Any sudden spate of lying, or dramatic increase in lying, is a danger sign: Something has changed in that child’s life, in a way that troubles him. Lying is a symptom—often of a bigger problem behavior. It’s a strategy to keep the child afloat.

In longitudinal studies, a majority of 6-year-olds who frequently lie have it socialized out of them by age 7. But if lying has become a successful strategy for handling difficult social situations, a child will stick with it. About half of all kids do—and if they’re still lying a lot at 7, then it seems likely to continue for the rest of childhood. They’re hooked.

OK, parents, take your licks, but it’s not all your fault if you have children who become and remain liars, who become addicted to lying. We live in a culture of dishonesty.

Preachers preach theology they don’t believe. Congregants recite creeds, acting as if they take these ancient formulations as truth, when week by week they are saying to themselves on the inside as they recite the creed out loud communally, “That’s a bunch of bunk. Total nonsense.” News reporters lie because they enjoy it and/or because the information put into their hands to read has been approved by the big bosses, and they have no choice but to read what they’ve been given if they want to keep their jobs. Politicians lie, and there are those who say that it is now a necessity for politicians to lie in order to get their goals accomplished. I’d like to cast a vote against lying politicians. I want to vote for political leaders who tell the truth. Descendants of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, please find your way back to Washington, DC. Many, thankfully not all, politicians lie to their constituents, to their colleagues, to members of the opposing party, perhaps to themselves, and most assuredly to the world as a whole.

This is nothing new, but the cumulative effort of political lying in a democracy is that those in the voting pool, the citizens, don’t expect to hear the truth and position themselves to believe lies and half-truths, which are also half-lies, because it takes too much energy to verify truth. By the time our kids are early teens, they’ve had a current events class at school, and they begin to understand political comments their parents make, revealing their tacit acceptance of blatant political lies.

A website called “Ranker” lists the thirty or forty least trusted career politicians in modern US history. I’ll share only the top ten with you here.

Dick Cheney far and away was the politician American citizens trust least.

Sarah Palin

Richard Nixon

Donald Rumsfeld

Bill Clinton

Karl Rove

John McCain

John Boehner

George W. Bush

Barack Obama

II.

One of the lies that kids often tell is a denial lie, “It wasn’t me,” which should be, “It wasn’t I,” though I’ve never heard a kid tell that lie in a grammatically correct manner. Kids who don’t learn to accept responsibility for what they do can become lying adults who are unable to accept responsibility for the errors they make. It’s usually easier on everyone involved if the person who made a mistake or did something wrong admits it. A mark of maturity as well as a mark of morality is owning up to our imperfections.

In one of my seminars on marriage and family counseling, I was introduced to the work of psychotherapist Virginia Satir and her delightful book, Peoplemaking. One of the marks of mental health, according to Satir, is consistently being able and willing to claim who we are, warts and all as some have come to say. I am the sum total of all I think and do--what I’m proud of and what embarrasses me. Until I embrace the parts of me that I like as well as the parts I don’t like so much, I can’t be a healthy, whole person.

Of course, the reason many folks have a problem with admitting to their imperfections is that they have a false self-image they feel they must maintain at all costs; they want so desperately to be the person they portray themselves to be rather than the person they are that they will lie, and usually this process requires a whole series of lies, to try their best to keep other people believing that they are the person they pretend to be, not the person they really are. Sadly, this is often a way of life for someone who really dislikes herself or himself, and instead of working to learn to like the person they see in the mirror every morning, they create what amounts to an alternate identity. I’m not talking about the illness referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder wherein a person is mentally ill and may develop multiple personalities. What I’m talking about is the simple, very conscious decision by someone free of mental illness who dislikes herself or himself so much that the person tells lies to have others think they aren’t who they appear to be.

When my younger son, Carson, sold New Balance shoes at the Christiana Mall, one of the scenarios he hated most was for a heavy set person--sorry ladies, but it was always a woman in his experience though I’m sure men were doing the same thing somewhere else--to come into the store and ask for a size that was obviously too small and too narrow. I think the salespersons were allowed to suggest very gently that the shoe they were asking for ran a little small so they might have more luck fitting her with something slightly larger. Some of the customers accepted that kind way of saying in code language, “Look, honey, we both know you don’t wear a size 6 narrow; we’ll be lucky to get you into an 8 four E.” Others, and these were Carson’s favorites, irately insisted that they knew their shoe size and had been wearing exactly the same size for years, and if he wanted their business he’d get the size they asked for and get the shoes on their feet instantly. So, he had no choice but to get the tiny size requested, and then try to wrestle a fat foot into a dainty shoe. Every now and then, the customers would concede that in that style only they just might need to go up a bit in size and width, but many of them would stomp out of the store demeaning him and the store and the merchandise as they made their boisterous departure.

He would mention that from time to time, and I’d always think about the story of Cinderella and the Prince going all over the place trying to find the delicate foot that alone would fit into the shoe that had fallen off Cinderella’s foot as she ran to make her pre-midnight coach. Many young women, including Cinderella’s stepsisters, were too willing to try on the shoe even though they knew good and well they were not Cinderella and couldn’t get a big foot into a delicate shoe.

Overall, I’m a fan of the actor, Will Smith, and my favorite among his several films has to be “Six Degrees of Separation,” in which he plays a young man, a New York Street hustler, with an amazing gift for lying--so good in fact, that he could convince people he was the son of Sidney Pointier, trying to produce a revival of the musical “Cats” for all African American actors. On the power of both lies he ended up getting everything from cash to the privilege of extended stays in posh homes of socialites who would love to have the chance to know the great actor in person; befriending his son would surely bring about that opportunity. In reality, the character was so good at lying that he could do so without any of the giveaway clues that criminologists, for example, watch for as verification that a suspect is lying to detectives or to juries. Will Smith’s character gave no intention whatsoever that he was lying, and, thus, he was almost never suspicioned.

“Six Degrees of Separation” was a film adapted from a play by the same title, and it was based on a true story. The real-life con artist who had the name Paul in John Gaure’s play and the film was David Hampton who, in real life conned several people with his schemes, three of the most famous being Melanie Griffith, Gary Sinise, and Calvin Klein.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia. She with her whole family was murdered in July 1918 by the Bolshevik secret police. Because two bodies of family members were not found in the mass grave where all bodies of murdered family members were supposed to have been placed, rumors persisted for years that Anastasia and one other sibling escaped the Bolshevik massacre.

Numerous women across the years claimed to be the escaped Anastasia, though some years ago the possibility that Anastasia could have lived was ruled out completely. Still, impersonators lied about who they were and claimed to be the only survivor from Tsar Nicholas’s family. The most famous of these impersonators, because she was most convincing even though the majority of experts who studied the facts said she was lying, was a woman named Anna Anderson.

She explained her survival by claiming that, like other members of her family, she too had been bayoneted, but the bayonet used on her was blunt. She was seriously injured, but not dead. As she told the story, a soldier noticed that she moved after being thought dead. He took her to Romania to recover. There was never consistency in how Anastasia’s relatives responded to Anderson’s identity claims. Some said she was Anastasia; others insisted that she wasn’t. The aunt of Anastasia, Princess Irene, denied it, but her son, Prince Sigismund, who had been Anastasia’s childhood playmate, confirmed it by saying that Anderson knew some details about their times together that only Anastasia would have known.

Anna Anderson was financially supported by those who believed her story. She carried on as a rich brat. She was very demanding of her hosts from whom she expected royal treatment. When things didn’t go her way she might pitch a tantrum, and in the extreme have a kind of nervous breakdown. Her champions explained her erratic behavior by saying that any little girl who had witnessed what Anastasia had witnessed would naturally be emotionally impaired for life.

In 1938, Anna Anderson filed a lawsuit in a German court to prove her identity and claim her inheritance. The case had to have been one of the longest trials in history; it didn’t end until 1970. After all that time, the German court ruled against Anna Anderson and said she had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia. Ms. Anderson died in 1984 from complications related to pneumonia. Her body was cremated, but some tissue samples and hair clippings were kept. In 1994, DNA testing was done comparing Anderson’s DNA to the DNA of undisputed members of Tsar Nicholas’s family. Those results, like the court case, cast doubt on Anderson’s claims that she was Anastasia.

III.

We have before us today a story of a majorly dysfunctional family. A son lies to his father, tricks his father into believing that he, the son, is his older brother in order to get more of the family inheritance. The lying son is urged on by his mother, the wife of the man being cheated, and the brother whose money is taken from him through one of the earliest instances of known identity theft is angry and upset, but he ended up years later having a big heart though he wasn’t the sharpest camel in the caravan.

It’s a magnificent story, though disturbing. None of us who are parents want to believe our children lie to us when they are little ones, but the thought that our adult children might lie to us is so painful we can hardly articulate it. Putting away childish things, we want our adult children to be completely trustworthy; we don’t want to be wasting energy trying to decide if what they tell us is true or not.

Carole Bell is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a parent of adult children. The issue of having adult children who lie to their parents, sadly, isn’t an uncommon one. Ms. Bell says that part of the reason some adult children lie to their parents is that their nosy, controlling parents keep asking them about matters which are none of the parents’ business unless the adult child makes it the business of her or his parents. What if you have one of those kids who didn’t leave lying behind when move out of childhood and then out of adolescence? Bell says if that’s the case, and you ever want the problem corrected, you eventually have to make a dreaded announcement to your adult child that should go something like this:

I have repeatedly taken your word for the truth, only to find out later that you were lying. I am to the point now that I question anything that you say to me. I really do not like what that does to our relationship. From now on, I will not try to find out what is true, but will assume that if it benefits you to lie, you will. I just cannot trust you any more. I hope that will change in the future, but for now, that’s how it stands.

“Then,” says Ms. Bell, “let it go. Do not question or lecture. Just be there as a friend, a cautious friend.”

As we age, many of us think about our children being there for us--not so much as caregivers because not many of us really want that, but--as sources of emotional support and reminders of powerful love that have enriched our lives. We don’t want bad blood with our kids in our golden years so some parents will put up with anything their adult children dish out in the hopes that the strong bond we have wanted believe is present really is and will endure.

I haven’t yet been to a happy funeral, but I can tell you that one of the saddest funerals I was ever asked to conduct was for a widowed mother who had one child, a daughter, from whom she was estranged. When Irvaline died, the nursing home kept trying to call her daughter in another state, and when they couldn’t reach the daughter they called us at her church, University Church in Baltimore. We like they had no way to reach the daughter who didn’t want to be reached. If memory serves, the daughter never responded to the nursing home. Evidently, when Irvaline moved into the nursing home she gave her daughter’s name and number as next of kin and emergency contact. This left the nursing home with the responsibility of working out final arrangements.

As if all of that isn’t sad enough, the day of the funeral was a bitter cold Baltimore day, as gloomy and gray as could be, with a bit of icy rain falling. The weather didn’t help this, but there were three of us at Irvaline Hargatt’s funeral. The funeral director who also had driven the hearse, an administrator from the nursing home, and me, her pastor. Even the grave diggers weren’t there that they because they would do no burials in that kind of weather; perhaps, too, under the muddy layer of ground the dirt might have been frozen so that a grave couldn’t have been dug.

So there we were, three of us alive and one deceased. The casket would have to be taken back to the funeral home until burial could be arranged so the funeral director opened the hearse and pulled the casket out as far as the rolling supports would allow, and the three of us stood there while I conducted a brief memorial service in front of an undertaker who didn’t know her at all and a kindhearted nursing home administrator who knew her only in passing.

My boys were little then, but I remember thinking to myself, “Whatever it takes I will never cause, allow, create such estrangement from my sons that they wouldn’t even show up for my funeral.” So that is why some parents put up with lying and other unacceptable behavior on the parts of their children.

Back to the biblical world where Isaac knew that his days on earth were coming to an end; he would soon be going to the abode of the dead, Sheol. Isaac and his contemporaries had no idea of heaven as Christians later defined it. He thought he was going to dwell where all people, the good and the bad, went to dwell when earthly life had passed.

Though it was the law that the first born son received a greater share of his father’s money and property than any younger sons, evidently there was still a ritual where the aging or dying father would speak words of blessing to his sons as he confirmed the transfer of his earthly goods into their possession. Isaac felt the time was right to pass the blessing. He asked Esau, who was a hunter, to go a kill a wild animal, which would be the main dish at a meal they would share together before the blessing was officially pronounced. While Esau was out hunting, Jacob, fully encouraged by his mother Rebekah, concocted and carried out a plan whereby Jacob fooled his blind, dying father into believing that he, Jacob, was his older brother, Esau. Jacob had already tricked his brother into agreeing that Jacob and not Esau would get the greater amount of the inheritance when Isaac was gone.

Esau was a hairy man; Jacob was smooth skinned so Jacob donned some of Esau’s clothing and put animal skins over his arms before he went in to pretend to be Esau and ask for the inheritance and his father’s blessing. This is the first known case of identity theft in history.

Isaac was surprised that Esau was back so soon, but Jacob, pretending to be Esau, said that God had provided the meat for their meal almost as soon as the hunt had begun. They ate a meal together, and then based purely on lies and deceit Jacob received what was rightfully his brother’s regardless of what Esau had said in a stressful situation.

When Isaac found out that he’d been tricked, he couldn’t change the material part of the inheritance, but he could amend the blessing; and he did so. He said that though Jacob might very well prosper, he would still be a servant to his older brother. When Esau found out that Jacob had followed through on the promise he, Esau, had made to reverse the recipient of the larger inheritance, he was irate, and he told his brother that he’d better enjoy his money right away because he’d be dead soon. Esau vowed to kill Jacob.

This part of the story comes to an end with Jacob being on the run from his brother; this fear of Esau and a life of running from the threat of fratricide dominated Jacob’s life for the next several years. The tension between the brothers becomes the focus of the story from there on out. Isaac's addendum to his blessing is recalled from time to time, but the offense, the serious offense, of lying to one's parent for monetary gain and a move up of one rung on the social ladder fades from the narrative. It shouldn't; it's a pivotal, stunning, and revolting part of the story--lying to a parent, a dying one no less for financial gain. It should shake us up and disappoint us.

What could be more disrespectful than that? What could have broken a dying father's heart more than leaving this world knowing that one of his sons thought more his father's money than he thought of his father and was willing to deceive and lie to manipulate the now helpless man who had participated in giving him life and who had, from the son's birth on, been involved in providing for that son. There is no way to find a happy ending for this story. There is no clever quote or moral of the story to carry home with you for the week. What Jacob did to his dying father was despicable at every level, and the fact that his mother encouraged him to do what he did makes the story that much worse. Hopefully, Isaac never knew that his beloved wife, Rebekah, had helped their son deceive him for financial gain; that would have made his dying all the more painful. Isaac whose name meant laughter and who had brought laughter and joy to many left this world in tears, rather than in joyous thanksgiving for his rich life, because of a lying son.

Sarah Lied to God

Chagall, "Why Did You Laugh?"

I.

On December 10, 2008, the sons of Bernard Madoff, Mark and Andrew, told authorities their father had confessed to them that the asset management unit of his powerful Wall Street investment firm was a massive Ponzi scheme and quoted him as describing it as "one big lie.” He received the maximum prison term allowable for his many years of defrauding clients, which is 150 years. At the age of 72, it is not likely that he will get to enjoy all those years behind bars.

There isn’t daily news about Madoff these days as was the case when the story first broke, but occasionally additional details about the case do come to the attention of the press; and related stories are reported. Most recently, Madoff told reporters that numerous banks had to be involved in the Ponzi scheme in order for it to have worked so well for so long. When charges were brought against Madoff, all banks played innocent, but safely behind bars where bank thugs can’t hurt him, he is saying without hesitation that the banks knew. He called their position “willful blindness” and acted in such a way as to make it clear that if he were doing something wrong and they were complicit, they--the banks--didn’t want to know. But he insists that they knew and, in fact, had to know.

According to Janet Tavakoli:

JPMorgan allegedly was Madoff’s primary banker for more than twenty years. It might be argued that given JPMorgan’s position of leadership in the business and failure to disclose red flags that it alone knew, the bank lent sponsorship and credibility to Madoff allowing him to enjoy a “halo effect.”

JPMorgan had a responsibility to hold itself to a high standard of ethical conduct, due diligence, and disclosure with respect to Madoff’s fund. Yet, allegedly JPMorgan failed to take appropriate action such as investigating suspicious money transfers, investigation of concerns about structured products expressed by its employees, investigations of allegations that the fund was a Ponzi scheme, and terminating its business relationship with Madoff when Madoff declined to allow JPMorgan to perform due diligence on him.

I’d never heard of a Ponzi scheme until this story was splattered all over newspapers a couple of years ago. I had to find out to understand the story, which reminded me of all the study I had to do to understand the Enron scandal. A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of alleged returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. In reality, the new investors aren’t investing in anything; their monies are paying off the longer standing investors, and down the road newer investors will do the same for those whose money is now used to make older investors think they are being paid off well for their investments. In the process, fraudsters like Bernie Madoff can take any amount of the money handed over to their firms since no one seems to be watching.

The eldest son, Mark, though never convicted of any wrong doing himself, faltered under the pressure of ongoing investigations and the disgrace that fell upon his father when Bernie Madoff was condemned as the most successful thief in American history and the person to have taken more life savings from modest income individuals and families than any other American crook. Mark Madoff tragically committed suicide, using a dog’s leash to hang himself, just before this past Christmas while his little two year old son slept in a nearby room.

Bernie Madoff is now in a federal penitentiary in North Carolina. Of course, he misses his family and his freedom. He didn’t seek permission to attend his son’s funeral. Does he feel remorse for what he did? When one reporter asked him that question, his reply was: “Bleep my victims.” I guess that’s a no, no remorse. That’s honest, though. I mean, how could someone steal consistently from those who trusted him for sixteen or twenty years or more and have remorse? It would not have been possible to propagate the lie for such a long time if she or he had remorse, and the way long-term lying works is that it gets easier all the time.

A few years ago, the BBC did a multipart series on ethics, and lying was one of its key topics. Early in the study the question was raised, “Why is lying wrong?” Here are the answers given by the BBC reporting team:

• Most people in most cultures, we rather widely believe, think lying is bad because a world where truth generally prevails is a good thing. If our physicians, clergypersons, bankers, newscasters, and significant others lie to us, what can we count on?
• A lie, once it is discovered to be a lie, diminishes trust between human beings, those with whom we must share life during our sojourn in this realm of living.
• Some moral philosophers who deal heavily with the use of language as reflective of right living--even though the philosopher probably wouldn’t use the phrase “right living”--say that lying is bad because language is essential to human societies and carries the obligation to be used honestly. An unwritten contract in oral communication is that the speakers will not use language deceitfully.
• Lying treats those who are lied to as things, as parts of a liar’s means to an end, not as persons of value as they are uninvolved in the lying chain.
• Some people, many people, after all, are unwitting liars. They lie only because they have been lied to by people whom they trusted. Many of you newbies, and I’m so glad we have so many newbies around Silverside these days, will not know that the Pastor Relations Committee before it became the Pastor/Staff Relations Committee or the Staff/Pastor Relations Committee--there is widespread difference of opinion about what the proper name of the Committee became when it evolved to include attention to staff members other than the pastor--flattered me by collecting and publishing a group of my sermons, and the title they selected was the one proposed by my older son, Jarrett, “Lies My Sunday School Teacher Told Me.” As the booklet circulated beyond Wilmington, friends and non-friends began to see it and react. One of my most beloved friends, as I’ve told many of you before, was offended by the title because he said that those who had taught him in his growing up years in the rural church in which he was raised were doing the best they knew how. I saw his point and still do, but my response was that just because someone is well-intentioned and gullible in passing along untruths does not make her or him any less the liar if the information being passed along is untrue; there may be intentional and unintentional liars in the world, but if they haven’t verified for themselves the information they are passing on to others who trust them then, if the information is false, they are lying.
• Back to the BBC. Lying is bad because the person lied to cannot make an informed decision about the matter concerned and how to move ahead. In other words, lies put many well-meaning people in the position of making decisions based on false information. A Ponzi scheme is the perfect example of this.
• Lying is bad because according to any of the widely held and respected systems of morality held up around the world as a strong foundation for living, lying is wrong. Good people don’t lie, and we need good people to keep the world as safe and functional as possible.
• Lying is bad because lying as a way of life corrupts the liar, and as with Madoff and coconspirators, the more lies that are told the easier it is to keep on telling them.

A little caveat. The BBC people remind us that an untrusting world, one made up of people who have been burned time and time again by lies, and a world made up of those who just give in and lie like so many others around them are bad worlds for liars since lying isn’t very effective if everyone’s doing it.

A pragmatic word. The highly respected and long remembered Greek rhetorician, Quintillian, said, “A liar had better have a good memory.”

II.

Your perception of who God is and what God is will have a lot to do with how our story about Sarah today has an impact on you. If you have a highly anthropomorphized, humanized view of God, then when I tell you that Sarah lied to God, you picture someone lying bold-faced to the family patriarch or matriarch, as your imagination provides. It’s an awful, virtually unforgivable act.

If, in contrast, God is spirit who dwells throughout the cosmos including inside you, then lying to God isn’t exactly this, but is closely akin to lying to oneself. That may or may not seem like a major offense to you, but it can have damaging consequences nonetheless.

Then, there may be some deists among us, spiritually akin to many of the founders of this nation and framers of our constitution, who don’t think it’s possible to lie to God since God, after having created the world and put it into motion, took a break and has never come back. In this case, there still may be all sorts of powerful symbolic meanings in the story that make it worth our awareness and our study.

Those are the major perspectives on God I can think of, and yet I’m quite sure that there are other perspectives represented in this congregation that I haven’t thought of and have, thus, left off my list so to you I say: I look forward to our discussion in sermon talk back or our email exchange later in the day.

In our story about Sarah and God, primarily, her husband, Sarah’s husband, Abraham has an important role and to a lesser degree so do some messengers whom God sent to give the sweet old couple the news of their lives, and it had nothing to do with any lottery or the Publishers’ Clearing House. In our story, laughter and lying are interwoven, and laughing at God’s message is the real laughter on which the story turns. The funniest part of the story is not when one of the characters laughs, but rather when that character lies to God about her behavior. That is funny; at least on the surface it’s funny. Those who believe in an omniscient God, and I’m not sure to what degree that was the case when this section of the book of Genesis was written, believe that the Creator God knows all; thus it’s funny to them to think that someone would out and out lie to God, denying behavior that God knew for a fact she had done. She laughed at God’s message. Then later on when God asked why she laughed, she denied laughing all together. Let’s outline our story this way:

1. News
2. Laughter
3. News Repeated and Clarified
4. Laughter Unheard and Out of Sight
5. God’s Question
6. Sarah’s Lie
7. God’s Response

Now let’s flesh out this story, which is one of the most wonderful and insightful stories in the Hebrew Bible.

I. News

There are seven turns or twists to this story as I have outlined it for you, and the first of the seven is “News.” Here’s the news.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”

Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,

“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you...”

So, this is pretty important news. It came from God Godself--not from a messenger, which was the most frequent way God got news out to God’s people.

Abram, soon to be renamed Abraham, was 99 years old when God came to him with life-changing--indeed, world-changing news, and he was still agile enough to fall on his face before God, the sign of absolute and total respect for the one before whom the person bowing bowed. The news is that Abraham will be fruitful--that is, the father of many children and grandchildren. With his face in the hot dust, the old guy is thinking that he may need to take off his turban, that God has the wrong guy. At 99 years of age, he has only managed to have one child--and that child, a son, not through his wife, but through her maid. Certainly, Abraham loved the son he did have regardless of who the boy’s mother had been, but, naturally in his culture, he had longed most of his life to have a child with his wife. Those hopes had faded with menopause and with his own loss of sexual capabilities as age took its toll. Sex, now, was for birthdays and anniversaries when possible, but things didn’t always happen as planned or hoped for on those special days.

Abraham is thinking that if what God says is true and the news really is for him and not for his neighbor in the next tent down the path, Ishmael, his only son, was going to have to get busy--albeit in an enjoyable way. There were worse pressures to place on one’s son to be sure.

There was more to the news, however. Something Abraham couldn’t have come up with in his wildest dreams. God continues sharing this news.

“...as for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

OK, that was it! No more putting off being tested for hearing aids. He thought God had said he, a 100 year old man, and his 90 year old wife, Sarai--soon to be Sarah--were going to have a child of their own. He must have sat up for a moment to try to figure out what actually had been said. What news had God delivered?

II. Laughter

Twist two: laughter. Abraham was rethinking all he thought God said to him.

Then Abraham fell on his face [again] and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

Now, he isn’t face down in the sand. He’s rolling around in the sand, laughing his old backside off. This had to have been the funniest information he’d ever heard in his life. Robust, old man laughter. Laughter, joyous yet suspicious, that had built up for a life time. Notice that he says nothing to God about his glee or his doubt; he speaks only to himself. Of course, we will soon find out that God knows what people are thinking and doing even if they don’t know that God knows.

III. News Repeated and Clarified

Now, the news is repeated and clarified. Maybe Abraham doubted it more than he believed it and put it out of his mind, or maybe it was too much to hope for so he just didn’t let himself hope. Whatever the case, one day he is sitting at the opening of the tent he shared with Sarah when three men walk toward him, and we aren’t told how; but he recognizes them as God’s messengers. I can’t figure this out at all, but he refers to them collectively with the singular “lord.”

Abraham pled for the opportunity to show hospitality to the three messengers. He wanted to have their feet washed. He wanted to give them a bite of bread, and if they could stay around long enough, he wanted Sarah to prepare a fancy full meal for them. All of that panned out so while Sarah was in the tent getting the feast going--remember that she’s 90 or so and didn’t move around the kitchen as quickly as she once had--she couldn’t help hearing the conversation going on outside the tent.

The messengers tell Abraham that by the same time the next year, there would be a baby to tend to--not their grandchild or their great grandchild, but their very own son.

IV. Laughter Unheard and Out of Sight

Sarah nearly dropped her Martha Stewart mixing bowl. They say, you know they do, that a couple who lives together for a long time act alike and may even begin to look a little alike. She had exactly the same reaction her husband had when he first heard the news on another occasion. The writer of Genesis tells this brief, but vital part of the story in this way:

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?”

I have shared before when we have come upon this passage what the great writer and preacher, Frederick Buechner, had to say about it, and I can’t pass up the opportunity to share it again. Abraham and Sarah “are laughing at the idea of a baby’s being born in the geriatric ward, and Medicare’s picking up the tab.”

III.

The last three parts of the story as outlined happen very rapidly, but they are very important to the story. We can’t let ourselves miss them if we want to take in the meaning of the story as a whole; indeed, what they story has been leading up to.

V. God’s Question

With Sarah standing right there, fully able to answer for herself, God Godself asked Abraham or the trio of messengers asked Abraham on God’s behalf, “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."

VI. Sarah’s Lie

Sarah knew for sure that she had not laughed out loud, and the questions she asked she asked herself silently. No way any one could have heard any of that, but she was fearful she would offend God or make God angry so she lied. Speaking for herself even though the question had been directed to Abraham about her, Sarah speaks up and lies to God, “I didn’t laugh.” Not all lies are Madoff lies; not all lies wound others. Not all lies are told just to be devious and deceptive.

VII. God’s Response

God’s response was stunningly direct and simple, “Oh yes you did laugh.” It’s bad enough to lie to God and have to carry the seriousness of that misjudgment with you for the rest of your life. It’s something else entirely to have God call you a liar right on the spot. “Yes, Sarah, you did laugh.”

What can we make of this powerful story punctuated with laughter? So, yes, even though she hadn’t laughed out loud, she had laughed in her heart for her own reasons; probably, she couldn’t help her laughter. It just came. She was quiet about it and never thought she’d have to explain something that no human but she knew about.

She was 90, and she didn’t remember every little thing. Maybe she forgot for the moment that she had laughed, or at least she forgot why she laughed so that in retrospect it didn’t seem like a lie at all to deny to God or to anyone else that she had laughed.

God’s response to Sarah’s lie may be much more important to the story than the fact that Sarah lied. It is my guess that many who hear this story expect God to jump all over Sarah for lying about her laughter. That is not what God does, though; nothing at all like that. God doesn’t criticize her. God doesn’t chastise her. God doesn’t demand her repentance and an apology. God doesn’t call down any curses on her head. God simply corrects her. The God of Genesis 18 will not let Sarah lie to herself. After a lifetime of disappointment over this barrenness thing, she thought that chapter of her life was closed. After preplanning her funeral a few years earlier, she simply wasn’t prepared to be sketching out the way she wanted the tent rearranged when the baby came, stocking up on diapers and swaddling clothes, having a servant build the safest possible infant seat to affix to a camel’s hump, and getting advice from women a fourth of her age on how to breast feed with the fewest complications. Her whole life had been turned around by this divine promise to Abraham, and Abraham couldn’t make it happen all by himself; he had to have Sarah in on this one.

Perhaps the answer God was looking for was, “You bet I did. God can do great things, but this is too wonderful for me to believe. Many people have witnessed the overt blessings of God in their lives year after year, but I haven’t. My life has been largely a sad life, and I don’t know how to take it all in so deep down in the silence of my soul where all the sadness resides, I laughed a laugh of someone who knows how to carry sadness, but who doesn’t know how to carry joy. I didn’t expect to laugh. I didn’t mean to laugh, but I did laugh.”

When God corrected Sarah by saying, “Oh yes you did laugh,” God was saying, “Yes you did. I know you did. It’s wonderful that you could, and there’s no need to lie to me about it.” It was a simple divine correction for Sarah’s well being, not thunderous condemnation and threats of death for daring to lie to Almighty God.

I know many people who seem to be able to make a very clear distinction between what they believe God is saying to them and what they are saying to themselves, between what God wants them to do and what they themselves want to do with God on board or not. I think the line between those two voices, if there should be a line at all, is much thinner than many are willing to admit. In reality, Sarah was lying to herself about her laughter because she was afraid of offending God and afraid to believe that her greatest life dream was now about to come true, and what the writer attributes to God as a corrective may also have been Sarah’s own inner voice calling her to honesty about her true feelings.

Hanging around seminaries as much as I have over the years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about calling into ministry. Some students have experiences with God almost as dramatic as Paul’s conversion, falling from a horse by the force of bolt of lightening so bright he was nearly blind for the rest of his life. Other students keep seeing themselves in the pulpit every time they hear someone else preach. Religious experiences including a sense of God are so widely divergent and nearly unique that it’s tough to say one person’s experience should be very nearly like the experience of someone else. Regarding calling to ministry or any other vocation, my very wise doctoral supervisor used to speak of inner consent. He didn’t play down the dramatic experiences that many claimed to have had, but he used to say to me it isn’t as complicated as many want to make it. What it takes is inner consent.

Sarah needed inner consent to take in the gift that was coming her way, and as the story is told, God’s correcting her lie was a way for the story teller to say God wouldn’t tolerate anything that kept Sarah believing that she was unblessed and that life was designed to be mostly one sadness after another. God’s corrective was God’s voice or Sarah’s inner self saying, “Love every minute of this joy that is coming to you, girl! God, as it turns out, wants to share the festivities with you so don’t pretend that laughter deep down in those sad spaces escaped you. Don’t do that to yourself.”

The story is for all persons and all institutions who have ever believed that they are old, washed up, and passe--with nothing left to offer a world in which they have struggled too hard and carried sadness too far. Some bright promise suddenly gleams in your eye, and you get all excited deep down inside like you did when you fell in love or held your precious baby only minutes out of the womb. Then in the face of that gleam in your eye because you were more accustomed to disappointment than delight, you tried to cap that little bit of laughter, which had already begun to check the sadness welled up and walled up down in there.

Then God asks, “Did you laugh?”

You say, “No. It couldn’t have been me. I forgot how to laugh long, long ago.”

God says, “Yes you did. You laughed, and there’s much more laughter where that came from. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop!”

Never forget when you hear or think about the story of Abraham and Sarah and the ER nurse who is trying to page psychiatric services to help out the old gal who thinks she’s having a baby, that when she finally saw her child of promise, she and Papa Abraham knew there was only one name for the little boy, “Isaac,” which meant laughter.

Amen.

Abram Lies to the Egyptians

I.

People in all generations have asked, “What is truth?”, and people in all generations have sought answers to that fundamental, philosophical question. Few answers posited have “stuck” for the use and the benefit of successive generations, and some of the great thinkers would say, “That’s exactly how it should be because whatever truth is, it is relative to person and circumstance. There is no such thing as absolute truth.” No one to my knowledge has ever accused me of being one of the great thinkers although a student once wrote on a course evaluation, “Dr. Farmer is a god.” I have that one framed and hanging on my office wall.

If by “thinker” one means “philosopher,” I’d be the first to agree that I’m not one of those and do not wish to be, but I do think from time to time so I’m going to wade into these philosophical waters and say that while I recognize the reality of relative truths, “truths” that change over time based on information unavailable to previous generations, I would not, by any means, say that absolute truths are nonexistent.

This could take us in many directions, but I want us for the next several Sundays to think about truth pragmatically and interpersonally, rather than in a philosophical sense, per se, even though the philosophical sense of truth must linger in the background of our deliberations. Today we begin a sermon series I’m calling “The Lingering Power of the Well Told Lie.” The subtitle of the series could be “The Power and Importance of Truth.”

So George Washington, the first president of our nation, is typically remembered as a person of great honesty even though as truth gets sorted from legend by historians, he wasn’t so hot as a military commander. He was, however, a person of integrity, and as we near the celebration of his birthday, we remember a story that has long been associated with President Washington. As a child, new hatchet in hand, he naturally wanted to find something to chop down. If you can’t chop something down, why have a hatchet in the first place? The poor choice he made was to have chosen to chop down one of his father’s cherry trees. We would have to think that a little boy even with a fine and finely sharpened hatchet couldn’t chop down a fully mature cherry tree so, probably, young George chopped down one of the younger trees.

In any case, his father found the downed tree and asked his son if he might know who would have done such a thing. Probably, putting the facts together, George’s father had a decent idea of who had done it; boy plus new hatchet plus downed cherry tree could add up to boy using new toy. Still, instead of accusing his son outright, the father respectfully asked his son who, according to legend, replied promptly and truthfully, “I cannot tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree.”

The factuality of this story has been called into question in recent years. Washington’s integrity isn’t questioned as far as I know, but as a way of emphasizing his integrity, something that started when he was a kid and continued through the rest of his life, some literary and historical investigators have suspicions that the story was made up, made up by a parson who sold books on the side and who wrote his own book about Washington. Of course we all know that ministers never lie so the accusation that Parson Weems made it up to help sell his very successful book can’t possibly be true. We wish it weren’t so, but preachers and politicians do lie--not all of either, but many of both; and Mason Locke Weems may have made up the cherry tree legend to include in a biography he wrote of Washington, published in 1800, to bolster book sales while, at the same time, giving young people a piece of the great Washington they could grasp and hold onto

The very nature of legend is that bits of fact are mixed with bits of fiction to make an individual look, in retrospect, either much better or much worse than she or he actually was in order to rewrite history to some degree. Fans of the person about whom legend is told want her or him to be remembered as great by everyone and as ordinary by no one so some of the person’s better moments are trumped up as stories are told after the person is no longer prominent or after the person has died. Exactly the same thing can happen negatively; someone who wants an important figure to be remembered negatively plants unkind and unflattering stories about the person in the mix of stories recalled and told about her or him. What many of the males in the early Jesus Movement did with Mary Magdalene’s life story is the perfect example of what we could call “negative legend.”

Some of the stories that have come down to us about Jesus are likely based on some historical kernel, exaggerated toward the good or the amazing by his followers who lived on after him. In order for the Christian religion to be able to make a go of it, they couldn’t leave Jesus to history as nothing more than a poor carpenter who lived his whole life under the subjection of the Roman Empire and, finally, died the cruel death of a notorious enemy of the state so some of the basic, no frills stories about Jesus got embellished by followers who wanted others after them to see the greatness in Jesus that they saw. It’s hard to build a religion or a religious movement around a central figure who never has much money, never has much prominence, and who is executed in the cruel and inhuman manner that Rome reserved only for those whom it regarded as the most vile enemies of the Roman Empire. Parts of the collection of Jesus stories that have survived into the modern era are legendary and not historic.

At the opposite end of the spectrum with Mary Magdalene is Judas, Judas Iscariot, who had a hand in helping Rome capture Jesus. Judas was a zealous follower of Jesus; he adored Jesus, and perhaps more than any other disciple believed that Jesus could be or become the conqueroring messiah hoped for by many Jews since ancient times. Judas helped Rome arrest Jesus only because he thought that, once cornered, Jesus would get rid of this meek and mild stuff and come out swinging, marshaling in the process sufficiently angry forces to beat up on Rome enough to cause Rome to set the Jews free. Judas’ plan backfired, and Jesus was crucified by the Romans. Judas got the blame, even though the last thing Judas wanted was for Jesus to be hurt in any way, much less executed. That is why in his unspeakable grief he took his own life. Needing someone to blame for Jesus’ horrible fate the legendary Judas became increasingly evil as every generation after his death told his tale.

On the other end of my home state, Tennessee, from where I grew up there once lived one of the greatest musical performers in the history of American entertainment, Elvis Presley. Health complications handed this country boy from Mississippi an early death. A coroner pronounced him dead. A funeral director embalmed and buried the body. A memorial service was held, and countless people saw his lifeless body, but some serious devotees of Elvis’s refused and still refuse to believe that he died. What people observed was play-acting, they say Therefore, though getting on up in years, Elvis is still alive, and about as many people who claim to have seen aliens claim to have seen Elvis--usually at night and usually at a Waffle House or a VFW dance. The legend told as factual isn’t factual at all, but the legend wants to stress Elvis’s greatness by keeping him alive. That Elvis was great is true; that Elvis is still alive and showing up at Memphis IHOPS near his Graceland Mansion are lies--however well-intentioned.

II.

There are many stories in the Bible about lies, and not all lies are condemned by any means, which would give some readers of scripture the idea that it must be all right to lie under certain circumstances. We can think of some Protestants in Germany and throughout Europe during Hitler’s reign of terror who hid Jews and helped them escape; to protect the lives of the Jews they were hiding, many a Protestant lied to Hitler’s accomplices when asked if they were hiding Jews. They clearly were hiding the Jews, and if they answered, “Yes,” chances are they as well as the Jews they were hiding would have been put to death--maybe on the spot. I applaud those who saved Jewish lives by lying to Hitler.

Many a Caucasian crusader against slavery lied to legal authorities and military personnel about their knowledge of and participation in the Underground Railroad, which was a series of secret routes slaves could take to get far enough north to be free from their taskmasters and their lives of misery. I applaud those Caucasians who lied to those who, perfectly within their legal rights, wanted to punish or kill runaway slaves.

Someone may say, “I always tell the truth. I would not lie under any circumstances.” I admire the morality such a sentiment is intended to convey, but I would say that if telling a dangerous, destructive person a lie is necessary in order to save an innocent person’s life then the lie should be told.

Now, this principle doesn’t apply to modern teens who lie to their parents to keep from getting grounded. Being grounded isn’t life threatening, and if you did something serious enough that your parents decide to ground, you suck it up, tell the truth, and take your punishment. On the other hand, if a teen has to lie to keep from being sexually or otherwise physically abused, then I believe she or he should lie to save that part of her or his personhood.

On the side, I’m a professor--for those of you who don’t already know that, and in that role I’ve learned a great deal about lying. The excuses I hear for submitting late work or plagiarizing could be the stuff of a very entertaining novel or film. Technology has changed the old fashioned lies as excuses, such as, “There’s been a death in the family.” My first boss at Wilmington University, George Bellenger, used to say to students who told him that there had been a death, “I’m very sorry for your loss, and I’d like to see a copy of the bulletin used at the service or a clipping of the obituary from the newspaper.” Oops. Some of them got caught red-tongued then and there.

Technological lies, however, are very different and are much more difficult to disprove. When I first started teaching online, weekly classwork was always due on Monday. I had a student whose power went out, like clockwork, every Sunday night so that he couldn’t possibly, he said, finish up his work to be able to submit it on Monday. After two or three weeks of that nonsense, and I confess that I did believe him the first time, I told him that henceforth his work would be due on Wednesdays rather than Mondays because of that blasted Sunday night power issue; I also emailed him several means of contacting Delmarva so that he could get that mess cleared up.

A few studies have shown, including a widely known study conducted in the United Kingdom in the year 2000, that men lie more frequently than women. That Y2K study was upgraded in 2009 with the same results, except that the results were more specific. Men, the study said, lie six times every day--twice the number of times women lie in a day. The most common lie told by both genders isn’t sneaky and deceitful, but it’s still untrue, “I’m fine.” When someone asks how they’re doing, they say, “I’m fine,” when, in fact, they’re not fine. This is an understandable lie because most of us have learned, sometimes painfully, that just because someone asks us how we are doesn’t mean she or he really wants to know; somehow, though, they’re uncomfortable with a, “Hi there,” so they add, “How ya doin?” The only answer many who ask that question want to hear is, “Fine.” Those poor gullible people who live for a while believing that everyone who asks that question wants a detailed response dare to answer truthfully and then give enough details to support their answer so that the person who asked runs away and never speaks again to the person who tried to give an honest answer.

There are those good hearted souls who call a friend who is ill or who is dealing with some tragic loss, and instead of saying the most sensible thing they could say, which would be something like, “I’m thinking about you today and wanted you to know,” they ask, “How ya doing?” Even then, all they really want you to say is, “Fine.” They have no interest whatsoever in having you say, “Well, I still don’t feel well at all; I think they’re going to have to lance this humongous boil on my backside.”

What kind of a question is, “How ya doin?”, to someone who just lost a loved one? In our culture, we want people to be emotionally neat and tidy so even after they’ve suffered a loss, we want them to be back to normal within a couple of days so we want them to say, “I’m fine,” even when their heart is still in the process of breaking to pieces. Many who ask the question have no intention of hanging around to hear the person detail how she or he is really doing, “If I can make it through an hour without crying, I feel like I’m making progress,” or, “I feel like I’ve lost my reason to keep going.” The person who asks comes up with some excuse suddenly to have to get off the line or fakes cell phone trouble, “What did you say? Huh? Are you there? I can’t hear anything. Something’s wrong with this crazy cell. Catch you later, OK?”

So, we get trained to say, “I’m OK,” when we’re not, and that is the number one lie both men and women tell. The fact is, only those people who really want to know how we are should ask the question.

In an old Reader’s Digest article written by Dr. Joyce Brothers, she listed seven lies men frequently tell women they’re trying to impress; remember, now, this was before internet chat, which has changed the whole realm of possibilities for lies.

1. “I graduated at the top of my class.”
2. “Of course I like your friends.”
3. “You’re the best lover I’ve ever been with.”
4. “I can’t call you then. I don’t even know where I’ll be at that time.”
5. “No way. That dress is not too tight. It looks great on you.”
6. “They’re downsizing at work, but any layoffs won’t have an impact on me.”
7. “Sure, I’ll mow the lawn as soon as this back trouble clears up.”

Now, the five lies women most commonly tell men. Remember, #1 on both sides is, “I’m fine.”

1. “I’m not mad at you.”
2. “No, I don’t mind if you go to the strip club with the boys.”
3. “I’m just not ready for a boyfriend right now.”
4. “I don’t mind picking up the tab tonight.”
5. “That was the best sex of my life.”

III.

Earlier in today’s sermon, I referred a bit to justifiable lies, if you will, and I tried to make it very clear that these can only be justifiable in an extreme or life-threatening circumstance. Many lies are told by various biblical characters, and not all of them by any means are justifiable. The lie about which our reflective reading today spoke happens to have been one of those justifiable lies. Abram lies to the Egyptians to save his own life.

With all the unrest going on in Egypt right now, I felt a lot of uneasiness all week with my sermon title posted on our large sign out front: “Abraham Lies to the Egyptians.” I didn’t want to upset any Jews who are fearful about who will gain power once Mubarak is finally out, and I didn’t want to upset any of the Egyptians who are upset just because it’s fun for them to be upset and angry, not because they are pressing for freedom for all citizens of their nation. A rabbi spoke here on Wednesday evening, and he didn’t mention it; and I didn’t run into any Egyptians this week so I hope no one was offended. I also hope no one construed based on that title, which, truth be told, is a very poor sermon title, that I would dare today to preach about the solution to the “Egyptian problem.” It’s a touchy, dangerous, complicated, and multifaceted situation that very few people fully understand; let us all hope and pray and send out our positive thoughts for a peaceful resolution beginning with the cessation of all violence at once. It happens when sermons are planned well in advance that there are some interesting parallels at times between the sermon and current events.

Now to the lie Abram, who would eventually be called Abraham, told the Egyptians, a lie he, perhaps, told the Pharaoh himself. The chronology of many of the longer collections of stories in Hebrew scripture is often jumbled. Key episodes are put in a place of importance, not necessarily told in chronological order. So, the episode on which we focus today is from a time relatively early in the lives of Abram and Sarai as a couple. They weren’t newlyweds, but they both still had their youthful beauties; and they were a long way from that poignant time in their twilight years when they felt unfulfilled because they’d never been able to have a child together. As that part of the story goes, God gifted them with a son, but that story will come up for us in a few weeks because dear old Sarah, sweet old octogenarian Sarah will laugh at God’s promise and then turn right around and lie to God about it, denying that she laughed at all.

There was a famine in the land where Abram lived with his wife, Sarai, and their only real option was to go to Egypt, which shows itself several times in early Hebrew history to be a generous and caring people; this would change, but early on it was a fact. Abram and Sarai head toward Egypt where they are willing to live as aliens in exchange for nourishment. They weren’t going to be treated like royalty and would probably have to take landscaping or housecleaning jobs to get by, but at least they wouldn’t starve to death.

As they neared Egypt, it dawned on Abram that not all the Egyptians might be kind and understanding as well as generous. He realized that even though strictly forbidden in Hebrew culture, not all cultures took seriously the importance of treating aliens, sojourners, immigrants humanely.

Sarai was a lovely lady, and the more Abram thought about the what if’s the more he realized that it would be very easy for some of less noble Egyptians to take Sarai as a sex slave and kill him just to have him out of the way. So, Abram said to Sarai as they got closer and closer to Egypt, “Look, sweetheart, we’re in a bind. We have to eat, and the only easy food I know about is here in Egypt, but you are so beautiful that some unscrupulous Egyptian might take you as his sex slave and kill me just to make it all the more tidy. Let’s say, some higher up wants to take you as a concubine; your having a husband would complicate the process so he would have me put to death so that he could do with you whatever he wanted to do. The only thing I can do, and it kills me even to think of it, is to tell them you’re my sister. They are still likely to take you and make you their slave, but you will live; and I will live. We’ll both come out alive on the other side of the famine at home and go on with our lives as best we can.”

Ironically, perhaps, Sarai doesn’t say a word, as the story is told. She silently accepts her fate as a woman in that time and place.

When Pharaoh’s officials saw the beautiful Sarai showing her passport at the immigration office, they hurried to their ruler and said, “Our Pharaoh, our master, the most beautiful Hebrew woman has just been allowed entry into our country. Only you are deserving of a woman with such beauty; she is here with her brother, and they are hungry--willing to do whatever we ask in all likelihood.”

When the Pharaoh saw Sarai, his eyes bugged out, and he agreed with his aides. He took Sarai as one of his concubines, and in appreciation, thinking Abram was her brother, the Pharaoh showered him with gifts. Abram had it made while Sarai was the Pharaoh’s sex slave. How often he called for her, we don’t know, but she was obedient when called, and the glaring message of the story regarding survival is that Sarai’s willingness to be the Pharaoh’s concubine saved her and her husband, aka brother.

It, sadly, is not uncommon in history for women to be used sexually to protect and provide for their husbands and their children. Abram had been willing to work as a slave if that’s what it took to get food for himself and his wife; as it turned out the lie he told worked in his favor. Unlike his wife, aka sister, he lived high on the donkey and didn’t suffer the loss of any dignity while waiting for the famine back home to subside.

The lie saved Abram’s hide and allowed him to keep on living to be there for Sarai when the Pharaoh was ready for a fresh supply of young and beautiful concubines. Abram took a risk, but as it turned out, only Sarai suffered--though not as much as if she’d fallen into the hands of a lesser man than the honorable Pharaoh.

It turns out not to have been a long-term arrangement because about as soon as Sarai became a part of the Pharaoh’s household, he and many members of his family and staff became ill. The only cause the royal doctors could trace it back to was Sarai.

The Pharaoh called Abram and said, “Something isn’t right here, pal. What’s up?” Abram could have sustained the lie, but to his credit and facing death if he made the Pharaoh angry enough, he told the truth. “Your majesty, she is not my sister; she is my wife.”

Pharaoh said, “Well, you and she get out of Egypt now. And you’d better be glad I feel too ill to call for what you really deserve.” Sarah was done with concubinage, and Abram got to keep all the gifts the Pharaoh had given him because the Pharaoh was afraid that messing around with Abram would keep him and his people on the sick list.

Most lies are not justifiable. Most lies are told for careless or destructive reasons--intentionally to mislead or hurt. We must be people of truth.

Amen.