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“Family Stories”

Genesis 21: 8-21

June 22, 2008

The passage that Gae just read us is a form of writing called allegory.  An allegory is a way to speak about the abstract through the concrete.  Paul is re-telling the story I’m going to read you from Genesis 21, but he tells it under the guise of something else.  So according to Paul, the two mothers--Sarah and Hagar—are not merely two women, but are representations of two covenants.    Hagar, the covenant of spiritual slavery, and Sarah, the covenant of freedom. 

 

And don’t misunderstand me.  Paul has quite a good point to make and someday I will try to preach on his allegory.  But that day is not today.   Today I want to respectfully challenge Paul because I think that this old story from Genesis stands on its own, though sadly this allegory is virtually the only time our Christian New Testament speaks of these two women.  Along with people of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faith I believe the text is a sermon in its own right, because when our ears hear this story our hearts know we’ve heard it before, for we’ve lived it before. 

 

So hear with me this portion of Abraham and Sarah’s story, Isaac and Ishmael’s story, and the story of the slave woman Hagar.

 

Genesis 21:9-21, Jewish Publication Society

“[Abraham and Sarah’s] child, Isaac, grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.  But Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.  So Sarah said to Abraham “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”  The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a child of his.  But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed over the boy or the woman.  Whatever Sarah tells you , do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you.  And as for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.  Early next morning, Abraham took some bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar.  He placed them on her shoulder, together with the child, and sent her away.  And she wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-Sheba.  When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away, for Hagar thought, “Let me not look on as my child dies!”  And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears.  God heard the cry of the boy,  and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you Hagar?  Do not fear, for God has heard the cry of the boy where he is.  Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”  Then God opened Hagar’s eyes and she saw a well of water.  She went and filled the skin with water, and let that boy drink.  God was with the boy, Ishmael, and he grew up.  He dwelt in the wilderness and became a bowman.  He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.                                                                                                                                                                       This is the Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God!

 

I wonder about good and faithful people, especially those of us who don’t study the biblical text as often or as deeply as we should.  I wonder whether over time we don’t begin to romanticize the characters of the Bible.  It’s the Holy Bible, right?  It’s full of holy stories, right?   Doesn’t that make the men and women whose lives are plastered on those pages holy?  Maybe. 

 

But then we read this story of Hagar and Ishmael.  And it’s pretty awful, isn’t it? This story is tragic and embarrassing.  “It shouldn’t have happened.  It didn’t need to happen, but it still did, and the story is still there staring us in the face, bearing witness to the failure of our ancestors to treat each other with the most basic level of human decency” (“The Story of Hagar,” 06-19-05,  Rev. S. Buteux). 

 

I have to give thanks to Rev. Buteux, a Congregational pastor, whose sermon on this text inspired me this week.  Much of what I share with you is what she shared with me.  In thinking about Sarah and Hagar, this wonderful preacher writes: “I started to think that scripture should come with a longer title, something like, The Holy Bible: the Story of People Behaving Badly and the God who Loves Them.”

 

But before we look in detail at these badly behaving people, we need to remember the larger story from which today’s text comes, so we might follow how things ran so amuck.  The Abraham story actually goes back to Ch. 12, when God calls Abraham to leave his home and go with his wife Sarah into a brave new world, the land of Canaan.  Abraham is afraid, but God promises to bless him and make of him a great nation.  God says—Look at the stars Abraham, how numerous they are…so shall your descendants be.”  Wow. 

 

Abraham and Sarah heard, and to their wonderful credit, they believed.  So they got right to work trying to make that promise a reality. And out of all the work one might have to engage, I guess the work of conception certainly isn’t the worst!   If trying for a baby was their daily calling from God, I suspect things went really well… for a while.  And then time passed.  And more time passed.  And nothing happened.  No pregnancy.  As the tabloids would say: No baby bump!  And then all the color started draining out of their marriage.  There are women and families here today who know just how that feels. 

 

While Abraham started off chock full of faith, he got tired of waiting.  So he took things in his own hands.  He decided to adopt his nephew Lot, which isn’t a bad idea I guess.  But if you recall the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, you’ll remember that that didn’t go very well at all. 

 

So next, Sarah tries out her own loop hole in the divine covenant.  She tells Abraham to impregnate her servant.  Notice here she doesn’t even mention Hagar’s name to Abraham!  Sarah says Go, sleep with my maid servant, for perhaps I can build a family through her.

 

And in that time and place, such a compromise was acceptable.  It’s not pretty, but it was real.  Sarah owned the slave Hagar—including her womb—so any child from Hagar would legally belong to Sarah.  This plan didn’t have the same panache as God’s plan, but Sarah figured that if God wouldn’t follow through, she would.  Still, it was never felt quite right. 

 

Hagar quickly became pregnant, which spun rumors through the camp that the couple’s inability to conceive stemmed from Sarah herself.  She began to feel that people looked down on her.  She dreamed of people laughing cruelly, mocking her, even her own slave.  And in return, she treated Hagar so badly that the pregnant women fled into the wilderness out of fear.  But while Hagar was out there God came and promised her, just as God had promised Sarah, that her son too would be the Father of a great nation.  God said that when the baby came she should name him Ishmael, which means God Listens, for that is what God had done for her. 

 

Hagar returned to live with Sarah and Abraham.  Only months later Abraham because a father.  His first son was born and was named Ishmael.  Abraham was a proud father.  And by the letter of the law at least, Sarah was a mother, though it never quite felt the way she had hoped.  

 

But people endure, even in rough times, don’t they?  So it was for many years, until Ishmael’s baby cheeks had turned into the face of a boy, and then at a time no one expected or even suspected Sarah became pregnant. 

 

At the age of 90 Sarah was suddenly with child!  Overnight her life was filled with laughter.  And nine months after that most jaw-dropping news, Sarah delivered a healthy baby boy, who was named Isaac and eight days later, as Jewish custom dictated, was circumcised, engraving him into the official lineage of Abraham’s family and into the community of Jewish faith.

 

God’s promise was fulfilled, at last, and it was more spectacular than those parents ever imagined, even after they both tried to fulfill it in their own way.  But here they all were.  Not just one son, but two sons!  And two promises from God that both sons would one day father a great nation.  How could things possibly go wrong? 

 

And I wonder, friend, what would have happened if those Holy Bible people could have just been more Holy.  If they could have just trusted God that there would be enough: enough inheritance, enough land, enough money, enough love to go around. 

 

Might Abraham’s sons not have grown up together, playing as brothers until the day came when each went his own way to found his own nation?  I don’t know.  You don’t know.  All we do know is what really happened.

 

And what really happened is this.  One day Sarah, who after three years had just quit nursing Isaac, was at the feast Abraham had prepared to celebrate this milestone in his second son’s young life.  After weaning, you see, Isaac was no longer considered a baby!  It should have been a Mother’s day of joy, but she spotted something that made all those old hurts and fears come alive again. 

 

She saw Ishmael, Abraham’s older son—who looked so like his father already—standing tall over her tiny Isaac, playing with Isaac or, as some traditions claim, laughing at Isaac.  And something like fear slithered into her heart. 

 

And suddenly it was clear.  She couldn’t believe she never noticed before.  Now that Isaac was there, they didn’t really need Ishmael anymore.  Now that she was a Mother, her family didn’t need Hagar.  All those slaves were was a threat!  I’m sure she rationalized the whole thing before marching over to Abraham and demanding: Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my Isaac! 

 

This is a dark moment in scripture and the weight of it falls on Abraham who felt torn in two. Ishmael was his Son, his oldest boy, perhaps born from dubious circumstances, but precious indeed.  Ishmael was never second best.  Abraham couldn’t fathom sending his flesh and blood away, until God enters the scene.  Until Yahweh, the One who had given him both sons to begin with, tells teary-eyed Abraham to do just what Sarah asked because, God says,  Isaac would be the child through whom Abraham’s descendants would flow. 

 

That is a decision of God’s that I personally don’t know just how to reconcile, except to remind myself to hear all that God says.  For that wasn’t the end.  God goes on: As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him as well.  How will God make a nation of Ishmael? When? Where?  God doesn’t answer any of those questions.  All God asks is for Abraham to trust God, as he did years before. 

 

And Abraham—God love him--Abraham does trust—though I don’t know how.  He wakes up early the next morning so they’ll be gone before Sarah wakes.  He gives Hagar water and bread and sends her, along with his oldest son, into the deserts of Beer-Sheba! 

 

When church folks like us think of Father Abraham we often recall how God asked him one time to be willing to sacrifice his one son Isaac.  Today we remember that Abraham had two sons, and God asks him to be willing to give them both up.

 

This is a difficult story, isn’t it?  Raise your hand if you can remember ever hearing a sermon on Hagar and Ishmael?  I never have!   In fact I learned this week, again from Rev. Buttreaux’s excellent sermon, that today’s text was only recently included in the Revised Common Lectionary (the set of readings that we use in Sunday worship).  Before that inclusion, not only was this story not preached on, it wasn’t even read in worship! 

 

But this is a critical text friends!  It shows us, among other things, that men and women in the Good Book can act in some very, very bad ways. It also gives us a glimpse into the origins of an entire religion: Islam.  And as people from a Judeo-Christian heritage we see clearly that Ishmael was never abandoned by God. 

 

In fact God comes to Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness, bringing a well of fresh water to sustain them and the promise that God sees them, hears them, and was with them right where they were, not welcomed in but cast out!  God was with Ishmael, in a different way perhaps, but in a way no less powerful than God’s presence with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the long line of ancestors in our own Judeo-Christian tradition.

 

This is a story we need to know, even if it’s difficult to hear.  And it is.  As my preaching colleague says,  “For those of us who feel, like Abraham and Sarah did after the birth of Isaac, that we finally have it altogether, that things are finally as we would have them be, it can be really uncomfortable to come face to face with someone like Hagar, someone who now has less because we finally have more.  In that sense our world is teeming with Hagars, women and men who suffer to the point of not being able to sustain their own children, while others profit from their pain and suffering.”  Politically, economically, theologically, personally, this is just a hard story for those of us who’ve ever stood in Sarah’s shoes.

 

But others of us today hear a story that sounds a great deal like our story.  Perhaps today, this week, this year Hagar’s story is your story.  Unlike the Sarah’s and Abraham’s of the world there are many among us who can relate to Hagar’s pain.  We feel her loneliness.  We understand her helplessness.  And we need to hear loud and clear that the God who did not abandon her in the wilderness, will not abandon us!

 

For we all go through times in life when the circumstances are so stressful, when the pain is so deep that we feel alone.  It could be unemployment, disease, disability, depression, bankruptcy, divorce, or you name it.  Life is hard, and there are times when the pain is raw.  There are people who feel like that right now.  And like Hagar, you may feel alone, unable to care for those you love most, unsure of how you’ll make it through the day, much less the week.

 

And so in this story, as awful and tragic as it might be, the Hagar’s in our midst may actually hear hope.  “Hagar brings us face to face with our God, a God who sees us, a God who hears us, a God who does not, who will not, turn away from our pain.”  We know, through her experience that our cries do not go unheeded.  And when any of us is are suffering, that is something we need to know.

 

Buttreux speaks of a friend named Susan: a mother and minister and wife to a man who was living with severe MS.  I’ll end our time today with her words, because I believe many of us have felt them before:

 

We have been in our own wilderness places,

where the desolating emptiness surrounds us

and we feel abandoned by all forms of care, including that of God.

The desperate injustices dealt to Hagar and her son remind us

that our lamentations do not fall into empty, arid space…

Our cries forever and always fall into the heart of the holy.

(Susan Ivany AHA!  June 19, 2005).

 

This story of Abaraham and Sarah, Isaac and Ismael, and Hagar is so much deeper than allegory, even though Paul makes some really good points down the road.  This story stands as a sermon on its own, reminding us that just as God heard Ishmael, God hears us.  Just as God loved Hagar, God loves us.   And God heals us, as utterly as God healed Sarah’s bleeding hardened heart. 

 

This text whispers to us, gently and deep, that no matter how desolate or confused or cast out we feel, we are not alone. And friends I’ll take that over a simple allegory any day!  This is one of the forgotten stories of our faith, and even if we haven’t heard it in years, when our ears hear it our hearts remember, because we have lived it.    Amen.    

 

 

  

*Thanks to Rev. Sara Buteux  and her sermon “The Story of Hagar” preached 6-19-2005. 

http://web.mac.com/revsarahb/Firstchurchhadley/sixth_sunday_after_Pentecost,_Year_A.html.

Quotes and inspiration gathered with gratitude.

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