The God Who Sees
Genesis 21:8-21
Click here to view the full worship service for June 21st, 2020.
This morning’s passage brings us back to the book of Genesis – back to that ancient book of beginnings which even now holds up a mirror to our world, reflecting back what it means to be human created in the image of God in a world full of both beauty and brokenness.
We find both beauty and brokenness in our story about Hagar this morning, but before we get there, we need to travel with Abraham and Sarah for a little bit first.
We all know that epic story – God called Abraham and Sarah to leave behind everything familiar, to walk forward into an unknown future full of promise. Travelling down unknown and dangerous paths, they pressed on in in the hot desert sun while holding onto that promise of descendants which every day felt increasingly unlikely.
Last week we heard the story of Sarah laughing at the impossibility of it all
As time carried on, growing unsettled by her barrenness and old age, Sarah took action in the same way that anyone in her position in the Ancient Near East might have done in order to secure her family’s survival: she gave her handmaid to Abraham as a wife - to serve as a surrogate so that she might give birth to the child they so desperately wanted.
This is where we first meet Hagar. At some point during their sojourn in Egypt, Sarah had acquired Hagar as her slave. Her name itself meaning “foreigner” and with no power even over her own body, this young Egyptian woman is given to Abraham and she conceives a child right away.
But as Hagar’s pregnancy begins to show, so does Sarah’s resentfulness, leading to her harsh treatment of Hagar which is described by the same Hebrew word as is later used to describe Egypt’s treatment of the Hebrews in slavery. And so, Hagar flees to the same wilderness to which the Hebrew people would later flee for their freedom – However, in this wilderness, while for a moment Hagar is free, this is no place for a pregnant woman to survive on her own.
In this place of desperation Hagar encounters God and our stomachs turn when God tells her to return to her enslavement. Try as we may, and believe me, people have tried hard – there is nothing we can say that makes this return to slavery ok. But God does say another thing to her – God makes the same promise to Hagar as was made to Abraham himself – she will have descendants that will be too numerous for counting.
In the wilderness, God acts for her survival and makes a promise of future freedom and thriving. And in response, Hagar then becomes the only person in Scripture bold enough to name God. Hagar’s God is named El-roi, the God who sees.
Returned now to Abraham’s household, Hagar has given birth to her son Ishmael and when we begin our passage the morning, Sarah in her old age has just miraculously given birth to Isaac.
Hear now, (finally…), God’s word for you this morning:
First Reading Genesis 21:8-21
8(Sarah’s) child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.9But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.10So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac."11The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.12But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.13As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring."14So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
15When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.16Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.17And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.18Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him."19Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
20God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.21He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
While Hagar’s story unfortunately remains on the margins within traditions that grew out of white western Europe, her story has resonated loudly and deeply among womanist theologians – African American women theologians – who see their own stories in this ancient text.
Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible writes about how Hagar has become many things to many people: “most especially, all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the divorced mother with child, the expelled wife, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone,” …. the pregnant young black woman 3 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, …the woman crying for her dying son.
Hagar’s story contains much suffering, to which too much of our world can relate.
However, it would be a mistake to think that her story resonates only because of shared suffering– because there is much more to Hagar’s story than suffering.
Hagar is resilient. She is a survivor. She is bold. Hagar fiercely protects her son who is under threat, she takes initiative for her own liberation, and secures her family’s future back in Egypt. This is the Hagar who has given oppressed women hope and companionship throughout the centuries.
This is also the Hagar who has been mostly overlooked, silenced, allegorized away by the Apostle Paul, or even reprimanded by scholars and theologians, yes - even in our Reformed tradition.
More sympathetic readings of Hagar have invited us, the reader, to take from this story the nice little lesson that we should take care of the Hagar’s of our world. But even that feels patronizing and diminishing of her story.
Hagar’s story, if we open ourselves up to it, asks us not to respond with pity and handouts, but rather with awe and respect – with a desire to hear the powerful story of God that these women have to tell in order that we might be challenged and changed by it.
I come to Hagar’s story this morning with humility, knowing that as a white woman, her’s is not my story to tell, but it’s for me to listen to.
And I also come to the text this week knowing that it’s a story we all need to hear, especially right now as our country reckons with all the ways white supremacy has embedded itself in our history, our institutions, and our hearts. Hagar’s story, while ancient, sheds light on a history that we’re still very much wrestling with today.
When we turn back to the text, maybe you find it odd that Sarah becomes so angry at seeing Hagar’s son Ishmael playing with young Isaac. But there’s more going on here with this word that gets translated as “playing.” Over the centuries, various Biblical scholars, wanting to somehow justify Sarah’s behavior, have stretched the boundaries of translation to suggest that this word has a more nefarious undertone, that Ishmael was doing something more sinister than merely playing.
While those translations are not given much credence today, Hebrew scholar Robert Alter has an intriguing observation about what might be going on here. Another way to translate this word is “laughing” – Sarah saw Ishmael laughing with her son Isaac.
Perhaps you recall that the name of Sarah’s son Isaac means “he will laugh” …and so when Sarah sees -not Isaac- laughing, but Ishmael, she sees Ishmael stepping into the place of her son, which triggers what comes next.
Turning to Abraham, she expresses the fear which lies at the heart of racist systems throughout all time, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac."
We make a mistake here if we think this is a story only about Sarah’s abusive self-interest. Sarah, after all, lived in a very different time, she herself victim to a system that disenfranchised women and abused their bodies. This is not just a story about Sarah, this is a story about us all.
While modern racism is different in many ways than the injustices which plagued ancient societies, at the core of it is this same human tendency to hold onto privilege at any cost and to place self-interest above the well-being of others. In the history of our country, we have heard white supremacy look out upon the black citizens of this land and say “the son of the slave woman shall not inherit alongside my son.”
Yes, on this Juneteenth weekend we celebrate the end of chattel slavery after the Civil War, but the freedom granted was incomplete.
In a burst of energy after the end of slavery, newly freed African Americans got to work advocating for human rights and voting rights, establishing public schools for children of all colors, serving at all levels of leadership in State Houses and in the national life of our country, these newly freed black Americans during this brief period of reconstruction pushed our country to live up its values of equality and democracy.
But white supremacy looked on and echoed that fear-filled pronouncement: “the son of the slave woman shall not inherit alongside my son.”
And the backlash was swift and violent. Under Jim Crow laws, rights were taken away, education underfunded and segregated, voting restrictions silenced black voices, redlined neighborhoods eliminated any opportunity to build wealth through homeownership in segregated black neighborhoods.
Even after the repeal of Jim Crow laws in 1960s, white supremacy found sneaky, persistent ways to hold onto its inheritance. Unfair policing of black bodies and mass incarceration continue to decimate black communities today, on top of the legacy of oppression which gave white Americans a nearly 400 year head-start at building wealth and power.
And the echo is still heard across our land: “the son of the slave woman shall not inherit alongside my son”
Was Sarah afraid that there wasn’t enough of God’s promise to share? Did she think it was only for her? Was she afraid that she would lose status or power or voice if Hagar and Ishmael were included? In what ways was Ishmael seen as a threat?
These are hard questions for us to ask of ourselves, of our history, or our religious traditions, and of our institutions in this country. Recognizing and naming the white supremacy built into our social, financial, and justice systems is the first step to finding a new way forward so that all God’s children can inherit what is rightly theirs.
In the lectionary passage this morning from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus describes Hagar’s God-who-sees – the God who sees and cares for even each sparrow, and even more so, each human - especially the ones nobody else sees. Jesus describes the God who sees what is hidden and knows what is covered up. And then in one of his most challenging sayings, Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword – he warns of divisions in families and losses that we might face on the journey of discipleship. This needs its own sermon, but for now, suffice it to say: discipleship is hard work and will demand much from us.
Of course, Jesus does ultimately proclaim peace, and prays that we might learn the ways of peace. But the kind of peace that Jesus leads us toward is a true and lasting one, a peace in which walls must be broken down in order that all people might be built up and made free. This is not the easy, fake peace of complacency and denial, but true peace that requires us to do the difficult and costly work of justice and antiracism.
I know that today’s texts are heavy and hard to hear. But ultimately, I hope you might also find them hopeful.
Hagar’s story ended in freedom. And we are on the road to that kind of freedom when we can pull out into the light all that has been hidden and covered up.We’re on our way to that kind of freedom when we can repent from the ways we’ve been complicit in the oppression of people of color. We’re on the road to that freedom when we can truly listen to the Hagars of the world who have stories to tell and ideas about how we move forward together knowing that we are all of the same family.
So this morning, may those of us who have benefited from a system of white privilege, learn to listen. May we learn to listen without defensiveness or fear, without becoming paralyzed by guilt, may we learn to listen knowing that it’s especially to people on the margins to whom God shows up and shows us the way.
By the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of our risen Lord in whom we all are made one, may this be so. Amen.