Explaining the Impossible
“Then Avraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘To a man who is a hundred years old can children be born? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” — Genesis 17:17.
They Might Be Giants is the title of a fairly obscure film released in 1971. Despite its obscurity, it had some very impressive people connected with it. James Goldman, best know as the writer of A Lion in Winter wrote the screenplay. Lion won Katharine Hepburn her third Best Actress Academy Award— three out of four.
Other people connected with They Might Be Giants included Joanne Woodward, the winner of an Academy Award for The Three Faces of Eve and George C. Scott, who infamously refused two Academy Award nominations, once for The Hustler and once for Patton. Needless to say, having refused the nominations, Scott never won an Academy Award.
The plot of the Giants film runs something like this: Justin Playfair, the part played by Scott, is a millionaire who seems to retreat into a fantasy life after the death of his wife. He imagines himself to be the legendary but fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
He dresses the part, complete with a deerstalker hat and pipe. He acts the part by playing the violin and spending days at a time in a home-made criminal laboratory. Last, he seems to be constantly paranoid about plots he thinks are being hatched by an arch-enemy, a person he believes to be one Professor Moriarty, but is actually his brother.
Justin’s real brother, worried about Justin’s mental state, has the pseudo-Sherlock placed under observation in a mental institution and tries to get power of attorney. So, the aforementioned paranoia does not seem very misplaced.
A psychiatrist, the part played by Joanne Woodward, becomes fascinated by this case. Her name? Why, of course, her name is Dr. Watson. Get it? Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson? O.K. we’re on the same page there.
Dr. Watson has Justin released because he demonstrates a knack for deduction, just like Holmes. After all, he can’t really be crazy if he can do that, can he?
Well, I am sure you can figure out what happens next: Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes begin a search for Professor Moriarty. Together, they follow all manner of bizarre and (to Watson) unintelligible clues. Needless to say, the two grow closer and more fond of each other in the process. (Slight pause.)
Is the delusional Holmes character really crazy? I don’t think so. You see, there is one scene where the pseudo-detective explains exactly why he is sane and that scene also explains the title of the film. The character played by Scott offers this explanation which makes a reference to a famous episode in the novel Don Quixote.
The delusional knight, Quixote, tries to fight a windmill, thinking windmills are really giants. Windmills are, of course, not really giants. The old knight loses his fight to a windmill when one of the sails, one of those arms, swoops down and knocks Don Quixote to the ground.
The mistake the Don made, says the Holmes character, is to believe windmills are giants. That, insists the detective, is clearly delusional.
You need to understand, he says, it’s not that the windmills are giants. It’s that the windmills might be giants. Hence, the title of the film— They Might Be Giants— a film about someone who acts like Sherlock Holmes, who seems delusional but probably is not, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Watson. (Slight pause.)
And these words are found in the work know as Genesis: “Then Avraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘To a man who is a hundred years old can children be born? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” (Slight pause.)
I think those of us who have lived and live in the late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries have a tendency to try to explain things. That’s not a bad thing. Explanations are often both good and profitable.
But then, when we come across things which seem to defy explanation, which seem impossible, we still do that. We try to explain them. We try to explain away the impossible. And I think we try to do that especially when it comes to Scripture.
Let me offer an example. I have a friend, a true scholar, who insists Avraham is a hundred years old and Sarah is ninety years old and they conceive a child. But then he explains this impossibility away in the next breath.
It means what it says, he continues, except in that era and in that place, each year there were two harvests. So, given the calculation recorded in the passage, the counting is determined by agricultural cycles, not by calendar years. Therefore, they count two years for every one calendar year.
This math, obviously, makes Avraham 50 and Sarah 45 at the time of the story. And while that is still fairly old to have children, it is not totally impossible. So, the impossible gets logically explained away.
I take issue with the premise that says count one year as two. Why? It ignores the idea that the writer of this story knew exactly how it was being told, that the writer of this story knew the details being offered were an impossibility.
In short, it explains away the impossible when the impossibility of the story may be the very point the teller of the tale is trying to make. This explanation also makes a very large and, I think, very invalid presumption. It presumes both the writer of the story and those who first heard the story did not understand the literary value, all the shades of meanings and all the possibilities, that convey in this story about Avraham and Sarah in terms of the impossible might present.
So, suppose we try to refrain from doing that. Suppose we try to refrain from simply explaining away the impossible. The way I see it, that leaves two options.
First, take the story in a literal way. The story happened exactly the way it says it happened. Avraham and Sarah were old, they had a child and, if you continue to follow the rest of the story as it unfolds, despite the fact that they were already old, they lived quite a long time after that. Maybe.
The second option? The age factor is here in this story on purpose. And the impossibility of the age factor is meant to tell us something that has nothing what-so-ever to do with age. I think this is the case on several counts.
As was mentioned when the reading was introduced, this story is not about the miracle of theophany, not a story about an experience of the real presence of God. Even though the story does tell us about the experience of the real presence of God, I don’t think this aspect of the story is central.
Further, I don’t think this story is about the miracle of two people conceiving a child well beyond the age at which that’s normal. So, even though the story does tell us about the miracle of two people beyond child bearing years having a child, that’s not central.
So, what is this story about? Again, this is a story about the covenant of God with humanity. In fact, what is the only miracle being addressed here? The real and only miracle here is that God insists on being in covenant with humanity, insists on being in covenant with us. (Slight pause.)
We, in the early Twenty-first Century, can be over-analytical in our thinking. We try to explain things away.
Indeed, that’s what those on the theological right do. They do it by insisting the stories in Scripture are to be taken literally. Insisting what we find in Scripture be taken in a literal sense is just another way of explaining the stories we find away.
We try to do that even though the the real meat and the real meaning of many of these stories is not about what happened. It’s about message of covenant.
So, just like the character George C. Scott played, we need to be at least a little wary of pinning things down. We need to be wary of seeing giants and presuming them to be real when the truth might be a little more subtle than that. (Slight pause.)
This morning we celebrated the Sacrament of Table. Some insist the bread and wine is the body and blood of Christ. Some say this is simply a remembrance. But I think a more fluid understanding, one which says God is present to us here and now and we are empowered to be present to one another as the sacrament is celebrated is both more paradoxical and more subtle. And maybe even more satisfying.
So, in the end, the message we find in Scripture is all of these: subtle and simple, a paradox and direct. And, yes— satisfying. That message? God loves us and wants to be in covenant with us. Amen.
03/04/2012
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “It is sometimes said we are surrounded by Angels. If by that you mean what the word Angel really means, I agree. You see, Angel really means ‘messenger from God.’ And we get messages from God in many ways: subtle and simple, a paradox and direct. But the messages come at us from messengers more often and in more ways than we think. And the one message God is always sending is this: covenant.”
BENEDICTION: Do not be ashamed to question all that denies God’s reign. The promises of God are for all. Let us trust in the promises of God. Let us understand, believe in and hold to God’s covenant. Let us depart in confidence and joy knowing that God is with us and let us carry Christ in our hearts. Amen.
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