God's Other Stories
Genesis 21:8-21
I’ve spent far too much time lately watching videos of foreign tourists here in America for the World Cup reacting to various aspects of American culture. It’s amusing to watch the rest of the world grapple with the enormity of this country. Everything is bigger here than what most of the world is used to. The skyscrapers that make up our cities, the cars and trucks that fill our roads, the warehouse retailers that sell everything in bulk (you might think you don’t need a 7-lb. tub of Nutella, but are you sure?). And, of course, our portion sizes, like 20-oz. coffees at Starbucks and 32-oz. sodas at 7/11—drinks that could satisfy the thirst of an entire European family.
One of the joys of watching foreigners experiencing America is the opportunity to see through their eyes. To see the familiar through another’s eyes is like seeing it again for the first time. It enables us to see things we ordinarily take for granted, like 7-lb. tubs of Nutella.
Years ago I remember seeing on the Facebook page of a friend from seminary these photos that appeared to be shot entirely at random, as if she had dropped the camera and the shutter kept clicking. They were taken at what appeared to be an outdoor café, but each photo was off in someway. Every photo was taken from an odd angle, or off center, or out of focus. This was all the more unusual because my friend’s husband was a professional photographer. Her Facebook feed was normally filled with perfectly composed photographs.
Then I read the text that she wrote to accompany the photos, and it all made sense. At the café my friend had met a young girl, seven years old, who showed interest in her camera. My friend let her borrow the camera and told her to take photos of whatever she wanted. When my friend got home and looked at the photos, she didn’t care that they were of poor quality. Instead she was struck by the perspective from which they were taken.
I’m going to read you some of what my friend wrote because it relates to the Scripture reading. She writes:
When I looked through her photos later, I was impressed by the radical difference of her perspective. Indeed we live and breathe in a world where there is a normative vision. Even the way we see the world is always already shaped and prepackaged for us, and this viewpoint automatically excludes those who cannot share the same vantage point.
I remember yearning as a child to grow up fast, to be able to see as adults do and to not feel so small and vulnerable. This girl’s photos jogged visual memories of my childhood when I was closer to the ground and when adults loomed large and imposing. Her pictures are a visceral reminder of children’s vulnerability...but also their unique way of being in the world.
We need to learn to ask others around us what they see and how they see. We should strive to see through their eyes even as we know that it is impossible to fully see from another’s point of view. We need to incorporate the views of marginalized others, those whose vision of the world is different from the dominant perspective.
“We need to incorporate the views of marginalized others….” That is precisely what today’s Scripture passage from Genesis invites us to do. We are invited to see through the eyes of Abraham and Sarah’s enslaved servant Hagar, a woman who is forced literally to the margins of society, into the wilderness.
The last two weeks we’ve focused on the story of Abraham—how Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland with the promise that God would make of him a great nation. Then Abraham was visited by three guests, one of whom prophesied that Sarah, despite her advanced age, would give birth to a son, causing her to laugh in disbelief. In both of those passages the story was told from Abraham’s perspective.
But here in chapter 21 we are invited to see things from a different perspective. The perspective is not that of Abraham the Jewish patriarch but that of Hagar the Egyptian slave. Hagar’s social status doesn’t grant her much significance. She is a woman, she is Egyptian, and she is a slave. That makes it all the more surprising that the Bible includes her story alongside, or within, Abraham’s story. But as one of my seminary professors once said, “God has other stories.” What he meant was that as much as the Old Testament is the story of Israel, there are other stories of outsiders woven into Israel’s story. Stories like those of Rahab, Ruth, and Hagar.
Hagar’s story begins back in chapter 16. While God had promised to make of Abraham a great nation, Abraham, and Sarah for that matter, are not getting any younger. They’ve waited years for God to fulfill that promise, but still they have nothing to show for it. Tired of waiting for God to deliver, they take matters into their own hands. Sarah tells Abraham to have a child with Hagar, their Egyptian slave. At least then Abraham will have an heir.
As one of my seminary professors once said, “God has other stories.”
And what does Abraham say in response? Does he protest, “No, Sarah! We must remain steadfast and trust in the Lord’s promise. Just have a little more faith.” Of course not! Having heard Sarah command him to sleep with the enslaved Hagar, he says basically, “Okay, if you insist.”
My point is not to make light of the situation. It’s to hold up to the light the flaws in Abraham’s character. The image of Abraham that many of us have is that of the father of faith. Abraham believed the Lord’s promise, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. That’s the famous line in Genesis 15, a line that Paul cites in his Letter to the Romans, commending Abraham’s faith as opposed to any righteous work. But the picture that Scripture paints of Abraham is more complicated than that.
Hold that thought for the time being. We’ll come back to it.
Hagar conceives via Abraham, and once she becomes visibly pregnant, she looks with contempt upon the childless Sarah. Pregnancy presents Hagar with the one opportunity that her society offers for a female slave to be esteemed. If she can provide Abraham with a son and heir, she is very valuable indeed. But Sarah will not have it. She makes life miserable for the pregnant Hagar, and Abraham offers not so much as a word of protest. “Your slave is in your power,” he says. “Do to her as you please” (Gen. 16:6). Abraham might have faith, but he certainly lacks compassion.
Desperate to flee Sarah’s abuse, Hagar runs away, but returns when the voice of the Lord assures her that God has heard her cries. Thus she names her son Ishmael, meaning “God has heard.”
As we heard in last week’s reading, Sarah did at last finally conceive and bear Abraham a son, whom they named Isaac, meaning “He laughs.” Sarah, who had laughed in disbelief that she could bear a son well after her childbearing years had ended, laughed with joy at Isaac’s birth. But now, as Abraham prepares to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah is in no laughing mood. She observes Hagar’s son Ishmael playing with her son Isaac and she becomes enraged.
What’s going on here? What’s wrong with Ishmael playing with Isaac, or laughing with Isaac as other versions say? The Hebrew provides a clue. The root of the word that’s translated as “playing” is the same root as Isaac’s name. Translated literally, the verse says that Sarah saw Ishmael “Isaac-ing” with her son Isaac. In other words, Sarah sees Ishmael as a threat to replace Isaac. In Sarah’s mind, as long as Ishmael is around, Isaac’s status as Abraham’s heir is not secure. Hagar and Ishmael both have to go.
For his part, Abraham is at least distressed about the matter. He doesn’t show the same indifference that he did to Sarah’s mistreatment of Hagar, likely because Ishmael is his own flesh and blood. But that doesn’t stop him from sending away the mother of his son along with the child.
I mentioned earlier Abraham’s moral failings. While he trusts in God’s promise, when God’s timing is not to his or Sarah’s liking, he tries to take matters into his own hands by having a child through Hagar. When Hagar conceives and Sarah mistreats her, he is appallingly indifferent. Earlier, in a story that we didn’t read, while traveling through Egypt he tried to pass off Sarah as his sister because he feared that Pharaoh would kill him and take her for himself. Almost from the moment we meet him, Abraham is shown to be a complex figure—courageous in some respects, passive in others, filled with faith but lacking in compassion—and with a moral compass that does not always lead him in the direction of righteousness.
Sarah is also complicated. She longs to have a child with Abraham and grows understandably frustrated waiting for God to fulfill the promise of a child. And yet her impatience leads her to victimize Hagar, treating her simply as a means to an end. And then once that end is achieved she is overcome with jealousy and treats Hagar with contempt and callousness.
The one person who comes off well in this sad family saga is not the great patriarch Abraham nor his wife Sarah but the outsider Hagar. Hagar, a woman consigned to the life of a slave but who uses what little power she has to assert herself and attempt to build a life for her son.
Using the outsider as example is entirely in keeping with God’s character. There are even foreshadows here of what Jesus will teach his disciples years and years into the future. In the famous parable, who does Jesus cite as the model of charity? Not the priest and the Levite, the consummate insiders, but the Samaritan, the despised outsider. Who is it that Jesus praises for the humility of their prayer? Not the outwardly righteous Pharisee, who is grateful not to count himself a sinner, but the tax collector who confesses that he is. Whose temple offering does Jesus draw the disciples’ attention to? Not any wealthy patrons but a poor widow who drops into the treasury the only coins that she has to her name.
God has an eye for the outsider. God has an ear for the outsider. Having been sent off into the wilderness, and with her water having run out, Hagar resigns herself to the inevitable. She lays the child down a good way off so that she won’t have to look upon his death. She then sits down and she weeps. Long before John the Baptist, Hagar is the voice crying in the wilderness. Only she doesn’t cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” She simply cries to be heard.
God has an eye for the outsider. God has an ear for the outsider.
That is what we all want, isn’t it? To be heard. To be recognized. To be known by name. When Sarah demands that Abraham cast out Hagar and Ishmael, she can’t even bring herself to refer to either by name. “Cast out this slave woman with her son,” she says, “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” Sarah reduces Hagar to a nameless object.
And yet when Hagar has abandoned all hope, when she is alone in the middle of the desert awaiting death, she hears a voice say, “What troubles you, Hagar?” She hears the sound of her name. She is heard. She is recognized. Her name is known to God.
What a gift it is to be named and known! There’s so much talk these days among pastors, sociologists, and cultural commentators about the epidemic of loneliness in our society. It’s ironic that technology has enabled us to be more connected to each other than ever before, and yet so many of us lament that we feel more disconnected than ever. There are a lot of reasons for that, technology being just one of them. But many of us feel anonymous, nameless, and unheard. The story of our lives feels disconnected from any larger, grander narrative.
That’s why Hagar’s story is so important. Even though she is an outsider, Hagar’s story is woven into the grand narrative of God’s grace for insider and outsider alike…for slave and free, for male and female, for Jew and gentile.
And for you as well. Through Jesus Christ, who was crucified and risen, not just for the world, but specifically for you, God has made you a part of the greatest story ever told.