Genesis 16. Delivered at Englewood Baptist Church on May 31, 2009
When Micah invited me to preach and told me about the Women of the Bible series, I got very excited. Micah and his family speak fondly of you all, well, Elizabeth does and I’m sure if Annelise could talk, she would as well. So, I’m grateful for a chance to meet you, of course. However, not often does a pastor tell me… pick any female character of the bible and preach on her. That is an extra special treat.
I chose Hagar because I have studied her more than any other woman in the Hebrew Scriptures. From class work to a very long thesis paper I wrote, I became fascinated with what her story could tell us as contemporary people of faith. Who is she to us?
Many scholars and Sunday School lessons talk about the story of Sarah and Hagar or the story of Isaac and Ishmael. I can understand how that happens. Hagar is just the vessel of the first born son of Abraham… and it is Abraham who is the chosen one of God, not Hagar. Or so we all are told.
But try to forget everything you remember about the story and focus just on Hagar. What do you see? The biggest thing I see in Genesis 16 is that God speaks to Hagar, God names her son and Hagar names God. Does this chapter have God speaking to Sarah or even to Abraham? No. God comes to Hagar. God names Ishmael, meaning “God hears”. And Hagar, a young foreign non-Hebrew slave woman speaks to God and names God El-Roi, meaning “God sees”. She is not the supporting role in this story. Hagar is the main character.
The next thing I see is a tragic story that is hard to think about. Hagar is forced to have sex with her 86 year old slave owner and beaten by the slave owner’s wife because she became pregnant, at the wife’s insistence. I can understand why Hagar ran away. But why does God tell her to return to her oppressors and abusers? This is a hard one for me to think about because I want God to be the liberator of all people and a God of love and justice. But Hagar’s situation is complicated and God can see a bigger picture.
So, how can we understand Hagar in a context that makes more sense? What faces of women who live today might reflect Hagar’s story for us? I was raised in a very conservative church that oppressed women to the extreme and if Hagar was born in this century, I can see her as a woman in that community.
Women are not allowed any power in the church, let alone to be ministers. Well, I take that back, they can organize the nursery and clean the church, except the altar area, where the male deacons can enter. They must submit all decisions about their life to their fathers until they marry, when the husband is the lord and ruler of her. Personally, that sounds like a gift-wrapped made pretty form of slavery. Women are strongly discouraged to divorce and strongly encouraged to put up with emotional, verbal and even physical abuse to keep a marriage together. And the justification of this slavery is that women are the source of all evil in the world and deserve the punishment of childbirth. Their wickedness will distort their thinking, so men must guide and discipline them. Any other form of thought, belief or culture will not be tolerated, because of its corruptive influence.
As you can see, I am no longer with that church. I have moved on and found another church community. But for Hagar, there was no other community. And I have seen women in the church I grew up in feel that way too. There is nowhere else to go. Women will put up with a lot in order to be with their kids, to provide them with food, security and shelter. I also don’t want you to think that life in my childhood church was horrific all the time. I enjoyed playing and learning with other kids. I laughed and was loved by many. And I know many women who are loved and cared for within that church community, despite their doctrine about women. For Hagar, when God tells her to return to her slavery, perhaps God knows that there is no place else for her and her baby right then. Perhaps God knows there are others in that community who will care and nurture her and her baby, despite her status as a slave woman.
Hagar is reflected in our own lives as well. There are people in our everyday lives that we must submit to, just as God tells Hagar to submit to Sarah. And it isn’t always comfortable or pleasant. There are our bosses and supervisors, our teachers and law enforcement officers, and sometimes it really, really hurts to be under their direction. Being disciplined, like Hagar, for something that is not your fault or that they told you to do in the first place happens often in today’s world. People with power over us will tend to be tempted to abuse it. That does not make it right. And in no way am I suggesting that any person should ever have to put up with sexual advances or being beaten. But there are times that waiting for a better moment will increase your chance of improving your situation.
Those who counsel battered women know this as well. If a woman leaves with no plan, the likelihood that she will be caught, beaten and/or killed is high. It makes sense if you think about it. Hagar ran with no plan or resources for her or her baby. If she went back and waited, she still would have no choice about sexual advances or beatings, but she would have a choice on how she saw herself. And now, she can return to her community and say to herself, “I am carrying a baby named by God and God spoke to me, a foreign slave woman.” She now has a purpose bigger than herself or her slavery.
Keeping those thoughts in mind, I pondered throughout this week about who we are in Hagar’s story. Now, there is of course the privileges of being white for most here and for some here of being a man. We’ve all heard, or at least I hope so, of the ways we assume that our privilege is a way of life for everyone when it is not. But what I want to focus on is the idea that Abraham’s tribe was considered the chosen people of God, the people who live on the faith and hope of God’s promise. You, Englewood Baptist Church, and I are the chosen people of God who live on the faith and hope of God’s promise. We are beloved children of God and are reminded of that every Sunday, every church picnic, every baptism and every celebration of life at a funeral. Scholars disagree about whether Hagar, as a slave, was considered part of Abraham’s faith family or not. Perhaps who Hagar is in today’s world is the custodian or cleaner of the church. Sometimes the employees of a church are members and sometimes they aren’t.
But another contemporary picture I see of Hagar is a woman raised in the church, any church really… because we are all at risk of hurting others. Maybe this imagined woman was baptized here and felt forced to participate in the church community. Perhaps she received unwanted advances from men or boys in the church. Maybe the other kids make fun of her for wearing different clothes, talking funny, or having a different culture or skin color. Perhaps her parents or Sunday School teachers told her she was stupid or that Jesus wouldn’t love her if she were a bad child. There are so many places for a child or adult to be hurt by the church community. We are human, after all. And we sometimes don’t think about how what we say or do will affect someone else.
Someone I know told me a story how the church she had been a member of for decades sent her a letter requesting she either give money or attend church right away, or else they would take her name off the membership rolls. Granted, she had not attended or given money in a few years, but in that time, she had been through a traumatic divorce, where her husband had left her with a large homestead to take care of as well as her restaurant business, let alone all the turmoil of losing her husband and partner. She had no time to attend church and no money to spare either. That the church sent her that impersonal letter, after years of being a part of them, devastated her and now she wants nothing to do with the church because of it.
We are taught from a very young age that the church is supposed to be a sanctuary and a safe place, a place where people reflect God’s love and caring. And so often we who are the church are not capable of holding so high a standard. We are not God. We make mistakes. We have biases and prejudices that we wouldn’t recognize even if they bit us in the face. People will get hurt. What can we do about it?
I left the church I was raised in around the time I entered high school. I did not turn my back on God, however, and I did not take my decision to leave lightly. All I knew is that my anger and sadness and sense of betrayal was so great, I could not feel God in that place or with those people anymore. For almost a decade, I became part of the now popular “spiritual but not religious” group. I sought out wisdom from every other major religion but Christianity and it took an amazingly open campus minister in college for me to see that there were other church homes and other Christian communities I might fit in.
Hagar’s story continues on past what we read today. Once again, she and her son are cast out of the tribe, but this time with resources, such as a skin of water and bread. It doesn’t last long and God hears her cries in the wilderness and shows her a well of water and promises her that everything will be alright. She and her son not only survive in the wilderness on their own, they thrive and prosper under God’s blessing.
As a chaplain, I meet people almost every day who no longer belong to a church family, for one reason or other. From the elderly patients in hospice who moved to be close to their kids and are unable to attend a new church in order to join to the family members of these patients who either disagree with this or that doctrine, or perhaps have been abused or neglected by the church. These people have been cast out into the wilderness just like Hagar. The forms I fill out for Medicare ask me the reason I visit people. And on 95% of them I check the boxes that say spiritual isolation and loneliness. There are so many people who are isolated and feel like no one hears their cry for spiritual companionship.
Yet, many move on and find other ways to be fulfilled spiritually and socially. “Spiritual but not religious” people often have put together a hodge podge of beliefs from their Sunday School lessons to popularized meditation from other religions. They often say that they find God in places other than church. They may even be uncomfortable with the language we Christians use, such as God, Jesus, Sin, Prayer. But in their place are words like Higher Power, Challenges, Teacher and Meditation. I don’t know about you, but those sound similar to my words of God, Jesus, Sin and Prayer. Is it possible that these wanderers of the wilderness really HAVE been talking with God all along? Is it possible that God speaks to those OUTSIDE of church, OUTSIDE of baptism, OUTSIDE of accepted society? Is it possible that people who claim no religion, who have no church or pastor or even use different words than us actually TALK to GOD?
So, here’s the REALLY tough part. What are we, the community of faith, those who believe in the hope and promise Jesus gave us… what are we supposed to do about all this? What wisdom do we learn from Hagar’s story? How can we act upon the wisdom that God’s word gave us?
First of all, be reassured that God speaks to each of you. Be reassured that God listens to you. Like Hagar, God never abandons you, even in your own wilderness. You may be sitting right there in the pew and be going through your own spiritual wilderness and no one here even realizes it. But God does. Be reassured that God is speaking to you. What do you hear? What will you say? What will you do?
And through that reassurance, there should be a desire not only to share the good news with others, but to LIVE the good news as well. Demonstrate to the lonely and isolated that God hasn’t abandoned them. Demonstrate to the spiritually or physically wounded and betrayed that through our imperfections, the Church, OUR community of faith, has something to offer them. Reassure your children and newly baptized that this church is a place to grow together and demonstrate to them that their bad experiences are heard and acted upon and that their questions and doubts of faith are normal and okay.
Go into the wilderness willingly and learn to find God there. Find out what these desert nomads, these “spiritual but not religious” people are thinking and experiencing. Learn their language so that you not only may interpret to us, your community of faith, but also that you may share your own faith story with them.
Hagar isn’t the only one in the bible who walks through the wilderness, is she? Read your bible. Know your faith and tradition. And invite with an open heart those who may have been cast out or forgotten, whether they are on your membership rolls or not.
And may the love of God, the hope in Jesus Christ, and the motivation of the Holy Spirit comfort and bless you your own journey. AMEN.
