If you've been reading the book of Genesis along with the rest of the parish this summer, you will have noticed that the Sunday lectionary doesn't quite capture the whole story. It skips over several bits—whole chapters, in fact. We're hearing just the highlights, only the parts that are essential to understand the arc of the story of Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants. If the lectionary captured every part of Genesis, we wouldn't get to the rest of the Bible.

As a preacher, I'm glad that a few stories got skipped over; I'm not sure how I would write a sermon about the end of Genesis 19. But there are some other passages that I wish had been included. For instance, the part on Sarah's death is very moving: the story of Abraham's devotion to his wife and his insistence that he bury her on land that he purchased, rather than borrowed, is heartbreaking and lovely.

And then there are passages that are, for lack of a better word, tedious. I'm talking about the genealogies, long lists of men and their descendants, when their first sons were born, and how long they lived afterwards. Reading these accounts from the ambo would be drudgery, but that's not Arphaxad's fault. Nor is it Eber or Peleg's fault. The same is true for Reu, Shelah, and Terah. These grandfathers of Abraham who lived for 200, 300, 400 years had their entire stories reduced to numbers and the names of their first-born sons. A life well-lived cannot be reduced to numbers.

I wouldn't want to preach on these genealogies, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to hear me try. But if we knew the stories behind these names and numbers, that would be different. If we knew how Serug's grandmother told him and his sisters of how God saved their ancestor Noah in the great Flood, that would be a tale worth telling. If we had an account of how Reu's wife knew at first sight that she would marry him, that would make a great story. I'd love to tell you about the time when Nahor disgraced their family in front of the Hitites, but his sisters hatched a plot to redeem them. That would preach.

A genealogy isn't a story, it's a table of contents for us to organize those stories. And for those who lived such long, family-filled lives, you know there had to be some wonderful tales to tell.

Now, the days of these mythically-long lifespans are very much over, but every now and then, we get to celebrate someone who hits an extraordinary milestone in their life. I hope you will join us this Sunday and wish Gordon Dempsey a very happy 100th birthday. Gordon has a long story that is still being written: a story filled with family and faithful service to his country and his church.

We may not all live to see our 100th birthday, but we can all have stories about faithful service and love. And you don't need to have a voice that is the envy of the entire heavenly host, but you can still tell the story of God's love for the world to all who will listen.

Happy Birthday, Gordon, and Many Happy Returns!