Footprints of an Unseen Hand

(and other “Irish Bulls”)

The Trusting Christian

 

The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether or not

the LORD had made his journey successful.

The man bowed his head and worshiped the LORD and said,

“Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham . . .

As for me, the LORD has led me on the way to the house of my master’s kin.”

(Genesis 24:21, 26-27)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, October 14, 2007

Volume 2 Number 15

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6th Street, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 

This is the fourth in a series of six sermons highlighting Oxymorons for Christian Living.  Today we begin with the fun-loving Irish, to consider a sort of oxymoron called Irish Bulls.  Any public speaker knows the danger of making a verbal snafu which, once loosed, runs like a bull through a china shop, right through your otherwise carefully crafted words, leaving the speaker to try to reassemble the ruins.  One category of unintentional verbal gaffe is called Irish Bulls, not a branch of the Angus family (as Paul Greenberg informs us), but a verbal blunder which seems at first to make sense but after a moment’s reflection is seen to be wildly illogical. 

 

The Irish have always been prone to colorful metaphors, but metaphors can play tricks, morphing into mischievous little literary leprechauns.  When metaphors go through the Mixmaster, they can result in well-intentioned absurdities of self-contradiction.   Irish Bulls are a sort of oxymoron, Jumbo Shrimp with literary pizzazz.  Comedians and artists often try to imitate Irish Bulls.  For example, you have George Carlin saying, “There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting,” or Huey Lewis singing, “Some of my lies are true,” or the bumper sticker that says, “Honk if you love peace and quiet.” 

 

Funny, to be sure, but being artificial and composed, they are not undiluted Irish Bulls. To be a genuine Irish Bull a speaker must haplessly tumble into the gaffe, it can’t be crafted for artistic effect.  For example, you have Al Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign saying of Mr. Bush’s record as governor of Texas, “a zebra cannot change its spots.”  Well, we understand what he meant, and smile at the mixed metaphor. That’s the charm of a genuine Irish Bull, that far from confusing us, we know exactly what is meant.  Yogi Berra, of course, was a master of the Irish Bull, famously saying things like, “It’s so crowded, nobody goes there any more,” and, “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” 

 


 

So the classical Irish Bull is not only logically absurd, but slips up on the speaker quietly, such as the man in a job interview who, asked if he had any children, replied, “It’s hereditary in my family to have no children.”  I love another who complained of workplace problems with co-workers, “They were laughing in my face behind my back.”  Irish Bulls even make their way into advertisements, such as the Safeway food label, “There is more chocolate in all-butter cookies than any other ingredient.”  Someone was really in a hurry constructing the Ohio “Key to the City” website, which says, “Ohio is the birthplace of more presidents than any other state --  eight.  Virginia also has eight.”

 

Well, we could go on.  There are collections of hundreds on the net.  If you want a good laugh, Google Irish Bulls and enjoy.  You will also likely find the history of the Irish Bull.  The term had its beginnings with an 18th century member of the Irish Parliament, Sir Boyle Roche.  Being challenged in Parliament to make sacrifices for future generations, Sir Roche famously replied,  “Why, Mister Speaker, should we do anything for posterity?  What has posterity done for us?”   Another time, when England was in trouble, he said, “Why should Ireland stand with arms folded and our hands in our pocket when England has called for aid?”  My favorite, and the one leading us to our text, is when Sir Roche, seeking to inspire Parliament and Ireland, said, “All along the untrodden path of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.”

 

Footprints of an Unseen Hand.  Now, just try and picture that!  I did, and that’s why I’ve chosen Genesis 24 as my text, the record of Abraham sending his servant from the land of Canaan, back to the region of the Tigris and Euphrates, to find a wife for Isaac.  Abraham had told his servant, “the LORD will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.”  Abraham, evidently, looked to the “untrodden path of the future” and he, too, could see footprints of an unseen hand. 

 

So Abraham’s servant embarked upon a journey.  One on a journey often plays the role of the stranger, a need to find welcome in order for the journey to be successful.  One thing stood out in my reading of this text.  The servant is never called by name.  It’s always, “the servant,” or “the man.”  One on a journey can feel nameless, lost in the crowd.  The Bedouin tradition of hospitality is highlighted in the reading, a code of the desert culture famous in ancient times and right up to the present.   When I visited Egypt in 2005 our group, wearied by a long day of travel from Jerusalem when we finally arrived deep in the Sinai Peninsula at St. Catherine’s monastery at Mt. Sinai, was graciously invited by our guide to enjoy spiced tea among the Bedouin in the tents set up on the outskirts of the hotel. 

 


 

Our experience revealed how hospitality became a central component of desert culture.  For these nomadic tribes the land was not able to sustain communities for long durations, so tribes become wanderers.  Knowing themselves to often need hospitality, they freely give it.  In the desert wilderness it could be so unusual to see new faces that they were met with joy, the host “running from the tent” to greet the stranger at the door, as we see Abraham do in Genesis 18.  It’s still a custom in some tribes that, once dinner is finished, guests wipe greasy hands on canvas walls of the tent!  This is not being rude, but rather complimentary, the streaked canvas becoming a proud registry of guests to which the owner points with pride (though I wouldn’t suggest doing so after your next good meal at a restaurant or a friend’s house!)

 

The point is that host and guest become one.  In fact, the words host and guest are derived from the same word – ghosti.  We still see the word Host in the word hostel and hotel.  There is a oneness, a dynamic interchange between Guest and Host.  We see this in Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, whoever hears and opens the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me.”  Note the interchange of activity, “Me with you and you with me.”  

 

So, in Genesis 24, the one who had traveled far through much difficulty was met with hospitality, Rebekah’s brother Laban “ran out to the man, to the spring,” and said, “‘Come in, O Blessed of the LORD.  Why do you stand outside when I have prepared the house and a place for the camels?’  So the man came into the house, and Laban unloaded the camels and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. Then food was set before his to eat, but he said, ‘I will not eat until I have told my errand,’ and he said, ‘Speak on.’”

 

The desert code of hospitality was not to ask a visitor the reason for their visit until they had been fed.  In this case, the errand was so urgent and the evidence of God’s Unseen Hand so clear, that Abraham’s servant insisted on reversing cultural custom.  He tells his story, a story of God’s providential hand, sending his angel before him to prepare the way.  He tells of his errand and of the sign he had asked the LORD to fulfill when he had approached the spring.  He related how, “Before I had finished speaking in my heart,” there was Rebekah, coming out with her water jar on her shoulder.  The servant knew, then and there, that he had discovered the Footprints of an Unseen Hand.

 


 

In the moment of revelation, sensing something happening, something led by God, “The man gazed at Rebekah in silence to learn whether or not the LORD had made his journey successful.”  These are the lessons of Providence, an alertness to the synchronicities of life which become uninvited, non-verbal tokens of Divine Presence.  Are there not moments in each of our lives when, in the midst of our arduous journey, we stop, and in silence we gaze, to learn whether or not the LORD has made our journey successful?  In such moments, no matter how difficult the journey may have seemed, we are overcome with a confidence that, just as God has led us in the past, so will God lead us in the future.  We trust that we are being led by the Footprints of an Unseen Hand. 

 

I’ll never forget our journey to Ann Arbor, Michigan in July 1985 to enter graduate school.  I was 31 with two girls, a 2nd grader and a pre-schooler.  We had no jobs.  We were young and taking risks I think I’d never dream of taking today.  We loaded the U-Haul in Helena and up the Mississippi River we wnet toward this foreign country of Michigan.  In the days before cell phones, I lost Sherry from our little caravan, around Effingham.  For a panic stricken hour I searched for where our car broke down, not knowing which exit she had hobbled off the interstate. That fixed, and only hours after arriving in Ann Arbor, relaxed and enjoying our new town, the axle on our other car broke and the car crashed to ground, stalling a major intersection in rush hour traffic and loading us with more car repair bills.  Next day, at the Finance Office, I learned that my student loans had fallen through and that now I would be saddled with $8,000 tuition per semester.  The following week, and hardly surprisingly, Sherry entered hospital for tests, dealing with the stress of the move.   Our journey, which we had begun with excitement and confidence, seeing Footprints of an Unseen Hand, now seemed foolish. 

 

We felt absolutely nameless, needing someone to “run from the doors of the tent” and welcome us.  One by one, they did.  A wonderful angel of a lady whose name I think I’ll never forget, Mary Jarrett, at the Finance Office awarded me a Block Grant to pay entirely for first year.  People from the medical community embraced Sherry and not only did her trip to the hospital get her on her feet, but she had made inroads that led to her being hired her at the University Medical Center.  People from First United Methodist Church took me in, Senior Pastor Dr. Donald Strobe offering me a job as his Administrative Assistant.  One by one people came running from the tents and we made friendships that have endured through these many years.

 

And so I wonder.  How can we be those who “run from the doors of the tent” to embrace the stranger in our midst?  How can give the nameless a name?  How can we, in acts of kindness, uplift their spirits and cause them again to Trust, to see again the Footprints of an Unseen Hand.  How can we be the church that welcomes, that nurtures, that becomes family to the outsider?  Who among us can say with joy, “In this church I have been given a name, in this church I have become part of a genuine family?” 

 

Do you know what it is, that moment of silent gazing when we look back over our lives and see that what seemed like meandering and waste was, in fact, a path that now seems to have been divinely directed, so that our lives, in retrospect, look like a well-composed book, the most unfortunate twists sometimes becoming the most defining and formative moments of our lives?  In this moment one knows that something strange and important has happened, an intrusion of higher meaning into an otherwise ordinary journey.  It is then that we sense that, throughout our lives, we, pilgrims through this barren land, have been inexplicably guided, led to follow the  Footsteps of an Unseen Hand. 

 

Let’s turn now to Hymn #127, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah, and sing that prayer together.

 

Sources and notes:

“A Herd of Irish Bulls,” Paul Greenberg in The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, September 29, 2004, based on an earlier editorial on March 18, 2001.

 
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