“Under Pressure: Blessed”

Acts 2:1-21

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

May 24, 2026 - Pentecost

If you were with us last week at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, you already know that our theme for our summer shared worship services is “Ch-ch-ch-changes,” inspired by the 1972 hit single by David Bowie. Taking our cue from Bowie, we’ve decided to go on a whole rock journey this summer with our series: Ancient Stories Amplified. Each week we’ll explore an ancient story from scripture that might make you hum a tune from more recent decades. This week we’re starting strong with one of the oldest stories in our sacred texts - the story of Abraham and Sarah. 

I’ll go out on a limb and guess that most of us here haven’t seen the music video for Bowie and Queen’s Under Pressure. Despite growing up in the heyday of MTV, I somehow hadn’t ever seen it until this week either. In the video, Freddie and the guys are nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s a montage of footage that does what true art does best: evokes a feeling. 

In this case, it feels like you’re in a pressure-cooker. Crowds hurrying, explosions of every kind interspersed with creepy black and white film footage from the 20s. It’s four minutes of intensity, evoking exactly what Bowie and Queen were painting with the words and music of the song: a sense of relentless stress, confusion, longing, and - well - pressure. 

While these modern images would be unrecognizable to any of the ancients who stepped into a time machine, they certainly would have been familiar with the emotions elicited. Even a quick read through Abraham and Sarah’s journey in the book of Genesis calls forth similar reactions: a sense of relentless stress, confusion, longing, and pressure. 

Abraham and Sarah’s journey was filled with pressure points. For starters, they were always on the move. Picking up and going from one place to another, sometimes at great distances. Almost on a whim, they left their whole life behind - more than once. The pressure that built as they made their way through life is palpable, sometimes resulting in horrific behavior. Like when Abraham uses Sarah to curry favor with high-ranking officials. Immigrating to a new place, he worries that if the locals know he’s married to the beautiful Sarah, he’ll be killed so the local ruler can lay claim to her. So he pretends she’s his sister and sells her off to the highest bidder to ingratiate himself to the higher ups. Desperation leads to some truly disgusting choices in this story - lives lived under pressure. 

Or the relentless pressure and confusion Abraham and Sarah felt about their legacy. Early on, God promises that his progeny will be as numerous as the stars in heaven. But the couple grows older and no children have appeared. They start to wonder and worry how this legacy will come to be. And so Sarah tells Abraham to sleep with her servant, Hagar, thinking perhaps the inheritance will come through Hagar instead. In this sad, sad story, Hagar is used and abused. She surely had no choice in the matter, but became pregnant. Sarah, filled with jealousy, begins to treat her horribly (despite the fact that this was her idea in the first place). Hagar eventually runs away with her child, then comes back, then is later sent away again by Sarah after her own son is born. Again, pressure leads people to act in egregious ways. It’s enough to make you wonder just what, exactly, some Christians are talking about when they try to hold up “Biblical family values” as a goal. 

To enter this pressure-cooker world of Abraham and Sarah is to enter a mythic tale. If you try to understand it as something that “really happened” you’ll get bogged down in the details. But if we can engage with it instead as an ancient piece of folk wisdom passed down from generation to generation, we will find richness worth exploring.

This is the story of ancient people - not all that different from you and me - struggling for meaning amidst the pressure-cooker of life. While waking up each and every day to milk the cows, pull the weeds, make the bread, nurse the children, these ancient folks still managed to grapple with the same big questions we have today: where did we come from, exactly? What is our place in the world? And what is our relationship with this mysterious entity we call God? 

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite have a grasp on who God is, perhaps you’ll feel better when you read a Bible story like the one we heard today. Because God is a nebulous character in these ancient stories. In these early chapters of Genesis, this God is tightly-bonded to Abraham and Sarah, but it’s hard to discern much else about God from these early stories. Perhaps this is fitting for a God called YHWH, which sounds like breath itself. YHWH - the sound of a breath in and out again - as close as the air we breathe but always seemingly slipping through our fingers. Defining this YHWH is about as easy as catching a cloud. 

It’s not even clear where or who exactly YHWH is in today’s passage. We are told Abraham is at his home by the oaks of Mamre, a place where he also built an altar to his God. The story says the Lord (YHWH) appeared to him and then mentions three men who appeared to him. Are these three men also YHWH? It seems so. Odd because how can God be contained fully in the bodies of three normal-looking men? We’re not told. But since YHWH speaks to Abraham and Sarah several times in this story, it seems God is somehow speaking through the men. They aren’t messengers, exactly, they seem to be YHWH themselves. Strange. Are these men, men? Or God? It’s a bit like a mirage - look at it one way and you see one thing, blink and look again and the image has shifted. 

A wise pastor once told me that the best questions we can ask when looking at any scripture are these: What does this tell us about God? What does it tell us about humans? And what does it tell us about the relationship between God and humans? 

Those are great questions, aren’t they? You can apply them to basically any story from the Bible. If you’re ever asked to lead a Bible study, those are basically the only questions you need.

What does this tell us about God? What does it tell us about humans? And what does it tell us about the relationship between God and humans? 

As nebulous and shape-shifty as God seems in Genesis, there are some things we can learn about the relationship between YHWH and humanity in this old, old story. 

The people experienced God as deeply invested in and involved in their lives. God seems to care deeply about what happens to Abraham and Sarah and their kin. God tells them where to go, what to do, and seems to have concrete desires for how their lives will unfold. God is not far away. God is near, speaking to them directly in their daily lives. In this story, it’s fascinating how close God is to them. When the strangers arrive at Abraham’s home, they ask about his wife Sarah. They already know who she is. And then Sarah stands nearby, overhearing the promise that she will bear a child, she laughs, wondering how this is possible since she and her husband are so old. YHWH seems to hear her very thoughts and responds to them asking, “Why did Sarah laugh? Doesn’t she know nothing is impossible with God?”

Sarah, out of embarrassment or politeness, tries to cover up her laughter. “I didn’t laugh,” she insists. But YHWH knows better - perhaps better than she even knows herself: “Yes, you did.”

This vision of our cloud-like God may or may not match up with how you’ve experienced God. There are so many different depictions of the divine in our ancient scriptures - it seems safe to say we’ll never fully understand the Holy on this side of reality. But whether this nearby, invested, meddling God sounds familiar to you or not, we can surely all identify what it’s like to turn to God - to reach out and try to hold onto that cloud - when we are under pressure. 

Last month, I asked for questions about anything related to our faith. One of the questions was this: “Does God want us to be happy? Or is this the wrong question?”

When it comes to our faith, I don’t think there are any wrong questions. I think God welcomes them all. And I think Genesis 18 would answer this question - does God want us to be happy? - in the affirmative. God is present throughout their lives, moving in the background, clearing pathways, pointing them towards a fuller, richer life. 

“Happy” might not quite be the right word for what God desired for them. You know, in the Psalms, “happy” appears over and over again. In some translations, though, it says “blessed” instead. 

In fact, the very first word in the Psalms is happy/blessed. From Psalm 1

Happy (blessed) are those

    who do not follow the advice of the wicked

or take the path that sinners tread

    or sit in the seat of scoffers,

but their delight is in the law of the Lord,

    and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees

    planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

    and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do, they prosper.

I think what I like about “blessed” is that it’s a relational word. Happy is something you can be on your own. Blessed is something you can only be when in relationship with another. Happy is about me. Blessed is about us. 

We may not always be happy - Abraham and Sarah certainly weren’t. But despite their failures and flaws, their fears and flailings, they were blessed. They were held in reverence by a God who wanted the very best for them. Created in the image of love to be a light to others. Blessed to be a blessing. As it was for them, may it be for us. Amen.