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The story of Hagar
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commcommons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we continue our summer series, stories of shadow, stories of light. And we're still in shadow mode, looking at four characters in the bible who are often pushed to the sidelines. As Bobby said last week, their stories are edgy, But we need them because they share in our own vulnerability and sacredness of being human. Last Sunday, Bobby immersed us in the story of Bathsheba. Her full story, which starts with sexual violence and ends with a new life she builds for herself.
Speaker 2:We traced Bathsheba's journey from powerlessness to agency. And we were reminded that what defines us is not the harm we've experienced, but how we rise up and move forward in love. Today, we have a story of Hagar and it comes to us in two sections in Genesis chapter sixteen and twenty one. Phyllis Tribble, a theologian, calls it a tale of terror. Hagar is one of the first females in the scripture to experience exploitation, abuse, and rejection.
Speaker 2:But to lean only into the darkness of her story will mean to miss the gift of it, and I would like us to hear it all. So if you enjoy having an outline, we will talk about problematic solutions, hope and terror, and new beginnings. But first, join me in prayer. Loving God, we have this beautiful practice of setting some time aside on a Sunday to come together as a community, to worship, pray, become present to you and one another. And we bring all sorts of things with us to this moment.
Speaker 2:Need, hope, fear, doubt, disappointment, but we also bring our desire to be seen, to know that you care and that we are not alone. So as we engage with some disturbing stories, may we read them well. May they discomfort, but also expand us and help us become more aware of your grace moving gently in our lives. And may we trust that your love is what holds us today and always. In Jesus name we pray.
Speaker 2:Amen. When we first meet Hagar in scripture, she is a solution to a problem. Genesis chapter 16. Now Sarai, Abram's wife had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children.
Speaker 2:Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. So after the large scale stories of creation, flood, and the Tower Of Babel, Genesis zeros in on Abraham and Sarah, called here by their regional names, Abraham and Sarai. The people and the religion of Israel start with this couple. One day, god calls Abraham out of his home country and promises to make him a father of a great nation that will bless all peoples on earth.
Speaker 2:However, years go by, but there is no child, no son to inherit Abraham's wealth and continue his family line. And in the male centric world of ancient times, this is a major problem. Survival of the family line was so important that the ancient laws allowed and, in some cases, required a barren wife to get a surrogate, usually a slave, to bear children on her behalf. For women in that culture, the pain of infertility came with a social stigma. It was both a divine punishment and a personal failure.
Speaker 2:In the eyes of society and perhaps her own eyes, Sarah is just one big question mark. And so she reaches for Hagar. Now Hagar is introduced with three little details and all point to her otherness. Ethnically, she's an Egyptian, most likely a black woman. Socially, she's Sarah's personal handmaid, but like any other slave in the ancient world, she is a piece of property and has no voice whatsoever.
Speaker 2:And even her name, Hagar, means stranger. So after Abraham agrees to Sarah's plan, Sarah takes Hagar and gives her to Abraham to be his concubine wife. And now we're in for some serious drama. When Hagar gets pregnant, we read in verse four, she begins to despise her mistress. What's interesting, our English translations tend to choose strong words to describe Hagar's behavior, words like despise or contempt.
Speaker 2:And that gives us a certain lens for hearing her story. She's often portrayed as a prideful woman who deserved what was coming. But the Hebrew is softer here. It says, Sarah has become little in Hagar's eyes. And honestly, who can blame Hagar for not thinking highly of Sarah, who forced her to have sex with Abraham and conceive a child she now supposed to hand over.
Speaker 2:So Sarah does not like how Hagar looks at her. Okay. But she cannot do anything because she no longer has exclusive authority over Hagar. So she goes to Abraham and blames him for the wrong, literally violence she is suffering, which of course is an overreaction. Hagar has no real power to harm Sarah.
Speaker 2:She's still a slave. And instead of protecting Hagar, Abraham hands her back to Sarah and says to do with Hagar as she sees fit. And this is when Sarah's anger is unleashed. Verse six says, Sarah mistreated Hagar, so Hagar fled from her. And if the NIV's word choice for Hagar is too strong, the word for Sarah's action is actually too mild.
Speaker 2:The Hebrew verb here implies both physical and psychological violence, dealing harshly with someone weak and vulnerable and doing so with impunity. The same verb will later be used in the book of Exodus to describe how the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites. But here, the matriarch of Israel oppresses the Egyptian. Rabbinical tradition holds that Sarah sinned by abusing Hagar and Abraham by permitting it. In her book, Scars Against Humanity, Elaine Storky sees patriarchy as one of the roots of violence against women.
Speaker 2:And even though patriarchy is gendered, something like this can expand to include everyone. She writes that even today, years of socialization can mean that women uphold the structures of patriarchy, while men also suffer its impositions. Sarah might think that she's got the upper hand here, but there are no no winners in this situation. And the origin story is remarkably honest about its founders. They are no models to imitate, and the very fact of that teaches us what it means to read our bible well.
Speaker 2:To quote a pastor theologian, Debbie Blue, the bible is not a slick promotional tool for a nation or an institution or even a particular set of beliefs. It is a witness to a god who is profoundly alive. And Hagar takes up space in scripture because she has met that god. Chapter 16 verses seven to 10. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert.
Speaker 2:It was the spring that is beside the road to shore. And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress Sarai, she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.
Speaker 2:Now, in the imagination of Genesis, to encounter a divine messenger is to encounter God. And Hagar is the first person in the bible to whom this happens. But the message she receives is interlaced with hope and terror. For starters, the angel calls her by name, which is special. This is the first time her name is actually spoken in the text.
Speaker 2:She is finally seen as a human being. But the angel immediately reminds her that even far away in the desert, she is a slave of Sarah, and she needs to return and willingly submit to her mistreatment. And I just want to say no. No. This is wrong.
Speaker 2:And, yes, maybe going back is the only way for her and her baby to survive, but to willingly suffer injustice is too much to ask. God, whose side are you on here? And the text does not give us any explanation for why such a submission is necessary. Some theologians actually believe that God's sides with the chosen family here, with Hagar's oppressors. And they question how often the church today does the same by choosing to dismiss the the victims of abuse in order to protect the institution.
Speaker 2:But again, for Hagar, this word of terror comes with an incredible promise. Hagar will become a mother of a nation. An Egyptian slave woman receives a blessing that only the patriarchs of Israel received. Like Abraham's, her descendants will be too numerous to count. Another good news is that God has heard Hagar's suffering.
Speaker 2:She will have a son, and his name will be Ishmael, which means God hears. But Ishmael will be a wild donkey of a man and live in hostility toward his brothers. Now side note, a wild donkey is not a curse here, it's a praise because that was a fiercely independent, untamable animal. So again, the wonderful news of a son and his future comes with a troubling prediction that his love of freedom will make his life difficult. And when we think of Hagar hearing this message, that her life will be this mixed bag of suffering and joy, how her troubled motherhood will somehow lead to freedom, and how freedom is a dangerous gift, I think she is just like us.
Speaker 2:We all carry hope and terror deep, deep inside. We balance between trusting that God is good and knowing that life can and will happen to all of us. We're tough and we're fragile. We're brave and we're so so fearful. I'm a new mom, and my first few months with my son's Slava were the most wonderful, but they were also really really rough.
Speaker 2:So what can be more peaceful than rocking your newborn to sleep, sniffing his head, being in awe of this new tiny little human? And yet, I have never experienced that level of anxiety before. My brain would feed me all kinds of what if scenarios that could happen to Slava, to me, to my partner, and my deep joy was mixed with this visceral fear for my baby. So much hope for the future and so much terror of it. And I just love how Hagar responds to this message.
Speaker 2:She does something astounding here that no one else in the bible gets to repeat. She gives God a name. She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me.
Speaker 2:The name she chooses for god is Elroy, which literally means god of seeing, and it is beautifully ambiguous. It can be read as god who can be seen, but also as god who sees. And with that name, Hagar captures a part of the divine essence that makes sense to her in this moment. The god of Abraham, it turns out, is the god who cares for Hagar. This abused pregnant woman is not a thing.
Speaker 2:She's not a tool. She is alive. She's generative. She is creative in the way only a human being made in the image of a creative god can be. And while her body is making space for a baby, her soul is making space for the strange God, the strange message, and the strange life she will now live.
Speaker 2:By naming God, Hagar does some priestly work here, both for herself and for us. The work of theology and prayer. I just see Hagar returning to Abraham and Sarah's camp, and whenever things get hard, just praying to her god of seeing. Elroy, god of seeing. Remember me.
Speaker 2:And I love the language of Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, when she says that faith is more craft than feeling, and prayer is how we practice this craft. When we cannot run on optimism that our circumstances may improve, the practice of prayer can teach us to walk with God in the crucible of our fragility. And you might not be sure about prayer. And if you're not, maybe begin where Hagar begins. Allow your imagination to search those moments of hope and terror.
Speaker 2:Notice how and when your soul made space for God. Find a name, and it will be your name for God because only you can experience the divine the way you do. Now after Hagar goes back and has her son, we do not hear about her until chapter 21. After decades of waiting, Abraham and Sarah welcomed their promised son, Isaac. And if at one point, Sarah saw Ishmael as a solution, now he becomes a threat.
Speaker 2:When Isaac was weaned, Abraham threw a big party to celebrate that his son survived the dangers of infancy. But Sarah's eyes were on Ishmael, a teenager by now, and she did not like what she saw. The text says that Ishmael was mocking, which is a very awkward linguistic construction. Mocking who or what. Now, the word used for mocking, metzahek, shares the root with laughter, from which we have Isaac, So some old testament scholars believe that Sarah saw Ishmael, Isaacing, at the party, pretending to be Isaac, and that's what triggers her.
Speaker 2:She's worried that as Abraham's firstborn, Ishmael has the right to the larger part of the inheritance. So she tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar and her son. She wants them kicked out, but the word get rid of can also mean divorce. And according to ancient laws, a divorce would give Hagar her freedom, but her son will be completely disinherited. Abraham is distressed at the idea, and god tells him not to be.
Speaker 2:His line will, after all, continue through Isaac. But god promises to make Ishmael into a nation too, for he is also Abraham's son. And this is where we meet Hagar. Genesis twenty one fourteen, early the next morning, Abraham took some food and the skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy.
Speaker 2:She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. For a rich man who just threw a lavish party, Abraham sends them off with only as much food and water as Hagar can carry. Come on. And probably still reeling from this sudden rejection, she loses her way in the wilderness. And when the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes.
Speaker 2:Then she went off and sat down about a bow shot away, for she thought, I cannot watch the boy die. And as she sat there, she began to sob. Deserts are not kind to people without directions. Ishmael is now dangerously dehydrated, so Hagar places him in the shadow of a bush. And when referring to a person, the verb used here almost always describes lowering a dead body into its grave.
Speaker 2:Her son is dying, and she cannot do anything except for provide him with some shade. And I can almost see her saying, it's going to be okay, honey. You rest here in the shade, and I will rest over there, and then we will feel better. But then she removes herself far enough from him so she can still see him, but he hopefully cannot hear her, and she breaks down. She sobs.
Speaker 2:She lifts up her voice. She cries, and she prays, let me not see my child die. And god hears. Ishmael is never called by name in this chapter, just boy or lad or son, but the narrator does something interesting, something beautiful here. The Hebrew embeds his name into action of the divine as if to show that God's love gently surrounds the boy.
Speaker 2:Twice in verse 17, we read that God has heard the boy, which takes us right back to Hagar's first encounter with God. Name your child Ishmael, for God has heard your cry. Like Abraham and Sarah, who get their miracle of a promised son when all hope is gone, Hagar and Ishmael get their miracle of water where they could find none. God tells Hagar to lift the boy up and take him by the hand, which is an idiom, meaning to support and encourage. There is a future for him, and he would need his mother.
Speaker 2:To Abraham, God promises to make Ishmael into a nation for Abraham's sake. To Hagar, God promises to make Ismail into a great nation, full stop. There is no patriarch attached to their future. She is free. And from now on, she is her son's guide and mentor and support.
Speaker 2:The story ends with a couple of brief notes. First, it says that God was with Ishmael as he grew up. The cast out son of an Egyptian slave is the first person in the historical memory of Israel of whom such thing is said. And secondly, a small detail that tends to be overlooked. Hagar, when time when time comes, Hagar finds a wife for her son.
Speaker 2:This time, she's simply called mother. There are no labels attached. Just one simple word that anchors her identity and reveals her agency. This is the only time in the bible when a mother finds a wife for her son. In patriarchy, family lines are men's business.
Speaker 2:Fathers get wives for their sons. Hagar the matriarch disagrees. And with that, Hagar, this blessed other disappears from the pages of Genesis. But her story does not end here. It grows and sprawls and spills into other stories of God.
Speaker 2:In the Muslim tradition, her name is Hejar, the splendid one, the one who nourishes. She is a mother of a whole new faith. Mohammed will eventually arrive through Ishmael. Hejar's story is remembered every year as part of the Hajj, traditional Muslim pilgrimage, where pilgrims are required to follow in her foot footsteps in the desert. In our Christian tradition, Hagar is a major figure in African American womanist theology.
Speaker 2:A black woman brutalized by her slaveholder. She is the first one with whom God enters into conversation. With her oppressors, God is silent. She is a resilient mother and the first woman to liberate herself from the oppressive power structures. And I see the gift of Hager's story is that she steps into the life of faith and finds her way in it.
Speaker 2:And I hope we can find something of ourselves in her journey. Just like Sarah, we can sometimes or maybe often blind to systems we prop up. As those who consider themselves spiritual descendants of Abraham, we need to remember that we do not have exclusive rights to blessing. Our origin story includes a stranger whom God hears, sees, and sets free to seek another path. When God blesses others, it is not a threat to our blessing, it is an expansion of it.
Speaker 2:Like Hagar, we might feel stuck between hope and terror, knowing that our circumstances may not change for a long time. And in those moments of suffering, we have the same achy question, where is God in all of this? And perhaps she can teach us to be God watchers and God namers, And help us remember that even in the darkness, we are never fully consumed by it. We're free and creative and human, and maybe that's what is called faith. Please join me in prayer.
Speaker 2:God of love, to those of us who feel like outsiders, you say, you belong the blessed one. To those who are tired of waiting for change, you say, I am with you, I see you. To those who resist oppressive systems and worldviews, you say your work is holy. Keep it up. To those who live with deep loss, you say, I hear your cry.
Speaker 2:And so as we go into this week, may we let your grace enter all those places of darkness. May we experience your healing, and may we remember that you always invite us into creative and audacious and generous faith. In the strong name of Jesus we pray, amen.