Secular Sunday Sermon: When Good Marriages Go Bad

I'm really at my wit's end these days... I really don't know what to do. Sometimes I figure maybe I should just run away and start a new life - just me and my son. I mean, I may be a little over the hill but I'm still beautiful for my hundred years. I'm sure I can find someone who will love me and my son...

My so-called husband has just come back from the mountain. He took off a few days ago with my son. It turns out he got it into his head that God had told him to kill our son... That's right! Our only son - the one I waited decades and decades to have. The one that my husband claimed God had promised again and again... "We'll have a son one day; I'll be the father of nations; God has told me so..." I'd heard it so many times it made me laugh... And now here he is, taking that same boy up to the mountains to slit his throat!

Now, I have to admit that my husband's so-called conversations with God have often tested my patience. I mean, I couldn't have children, so I can't say I was that surprised when he said that God had instructed him to sleep with our servant... This is the same man, after all, who told me that God had told him to lie to the Pharoah and call me his sister: the man who sold me to the Pharoah because he was too scared to fight him. "It's better this way," he said. Yeah right. I should have left him then, really, and stayed with the Pharoah. But no, there just had to be a bunch of plagues, didn't there? And the Pharoah just had to give me back, didn't he?

So by the time that whore of a servant got herself knocked up, I was really ready to expect anything. He'd been babbling so much about the 'father of nations' thing that I guess I just let it be... Let him have his fun with our servant, I said...

After all, there was a son in our house, even if it wasn't mine. My husband kind of seemed to return to normal. It looked like we were kind of settling down into a relatively calm old age... That is until one day he comes home saying that he and God had had another conversation, that we ought to change our names and that all the men in our house had to cut off part of their penises. And that old 'father of nations' hogwash again!

"Come on," I said, "I like my name. And why are you going to make all the men mutilate themselves?" But he wasn't hearing anything of it. "You're going to be a mother!" he was babbling. Calling me by that crazy new name he claimed God had told him to use... Another mid-life crisis, I thought. So off went all the foreskins and next thing I knew he's running with some so-called angels into his nephew's hometown. A few days later he's telling me that God killed everyone in the city except his nephew and his family. Turned the kid's wife into salt too... Later on it turns out that he knocked up his two daughters too - claimed they got him drunk and did the deed. Some family values, eh? Can you imagine the family reunions we have? Can there be any family more dysfunctional in the Holy Land than ours?

So on it goes, and suddenly my husband's back to the old "She's my sister" game and there's some other old lecherous guy hitting on me. "Better say I'm your brother or they'll kill me!" he starts snivelling. Some husband. Some protector...

Well, for better or for worse, I finally did get my own beautiful son. And I finally kicked that whore of a servant and her arrogant bastard son out of my house. I got to thinking, "Okay, I've got a loser of a husband but things aren't so bad. I mean, I've got this beautiful son here..."

And now I hear this... Naturally, our son's scared witless, saying to me "The old man's gone senile! Keep him away from me!" My husband's sitting there, tail between his legs, saying "Yeah, but God told me to do it! And anyway, I didn't kill him, did I? I killed a ram instead..." "What," I say, "if God told you to jump off a bridge, would you?"

Actually I half wish that God would tell him to jump off a bridge! Maybe then my son and I can score a decent inheritance and we won't have any more nutbars running around saying "God told me this! God told me that!"

Men!

Voices from the Box

There was a box on the table. I never knew who put it there or why, but it looked nice and I liked it, so I kept it. I never opened it. Whenever I had friends round, they'd ask about it. I'd smile secretively and say, "It's just a box. Why does it need to be anything else?"

One day, I heard some rustling. Then a small voice. It was coming from inside the box. "Help me," it cried, "help me."

Well, what could I do? I tore it open and peered inside. "Hello?" I called. No answer. I put my nose a little deeper into the box. I called out again. Again no answer.

I stuck my head right inside the box, and suddenly I could feel myself being pulled in. I was powerless to stop it, and - stranger still - I didn't know whether or not I wanted it to stop.

It was pitch black when I came to rest. I heard a voice say "thank you", and I heard the sound of fluttering wings. It was gone.

And I was trapped in the box.

Who knows how long I was down there, rustling about in the darkness, looking for a way out. "Help me," I cried. No answer. "Help me," I cried. Maybe months. Maybe years. I don't know. Slowly I could feel my insides turning to jelly, but there was nothing I could do, except rustle around in that box and cry for help.

One day, I heard a voice calling hello. I stopped. I didn't answer. In the darkness I heard the noise of somebody falling down, falling in. A bang, a thud, a crash.

That's how I got my wings.

Looking back now, it was a terrible price to pay. I spent half my life down there and lost half of myself.

But when a voice asks for help, we offer it. That's what we do.

Would I do it again? It's a moot point. I didn't know what I was doing the first time and yet I did it. I didn't think about the consequences. I only thought about the voice crying for help.

That's what we do. We're only human.