June 25, 2017 Genesis
21: 8-21
God Hears
There is something about summer and reading. You go on vacation and choose a mystery
thriller for the long flight or car ride to your favorite destination, or you
pick a romance novel to take you away as you sit in your beach chair sipping
iced tea with sunscreen slathered on your body listening to the waves lap up on
the sandy shore. Or maybe you decide to read an autobiography or a biography
about some influential person or movie star as you get home early from work and
relax.
This is to point out that we have these fantasies about
summer. It implies that our days
are less rushed, less programmed and far more relaxing so that we can loose
ourselves in a ‘good and juicy book’.
So it is with summer preaching, or rather summer preaching from the
lectionary. Often the summer
lectionary offers some sort of lengthy saga from the Old Testament such as the
many stories of David or in the case of this summer the stories of the
descendents of Abraham.
And so this is what I am going to be preaching from this
summer, the likes of Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, Isaac and Rebekah,
Jacob and Esau, and Jacob and Rachel.
There are many good nuggets of inspiration for our lives from these
stories. They are not always easy
stories to hear and comprehend but they are not to be missed. No doubt these were the stories of the Hebrew faith that
Jesus would have heard and loved growing up. He probably asked Mary to tell him the story of David and
the giant Goliath over and over again because it is a delightful and
provocative story to the child’s imagination.
So let’s settle in now as we begin our summer reading from
the Old Testament book of Genesis.
I just wish that I could offer you a glass of iced tea so that you could
relax in the summer breeze!
A long time ago and in a place very far away a man named
Abram was called by God to leave his country, his father’s house and to go to a
land that God will show him eventually.
God tells Abram that a great nation will be made out of his
descendents. And so Abram leaves
and takes his wife Sarai and they set off and take refuge in Egypt because of a
famine. Many things happen to them
during that time, but most notably, Sarai was barren and she so badly wanted a
child.
Out of desperation she calls for her slave-girl Hagar to ‘be
with’ Abram so that he may have a child. Of course Hagar conceives and a son is born to
them. The boy child is named
Ishmael.
When Abram was 99 years old God comes to him and makes a sign
of a covenant with Abram. God
says, “I will make of you and your offspring a great nation and I will give you
the land of Canaan for a perpetual holding. Each male child shall bear the mark of my covenant by
circumcision and your name now will be Abraham and Sarai shall be called Sarah.” Important ‘God moments’ are marked by
name changes in the Bible.
And the blessings continue. God comes to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre and tells him that
he and Sarah will also have a son.
Sarah conceives and has a son and they name him Isaac. So in the tent of Abraham now there are two boys who are half
brothers, Ishmael and Isaac. Now
things in the tent begin to turn a bit sour.
Let us now pick up the story in Genesis, the 21st
chapter.
The
child (Isaac) grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day
that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she
had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So 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.’ The matter was very distressing to Abraham on
account of his son.
But
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 after you. As for the son of the
slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.’
So 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.
When
the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.
Then 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. And 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. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I
will make a great nation of him.’ Then 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.
God
was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an
expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a
wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Not one of Sarah’s better moments,
what do you think? But God works with what God has – even us imperfect humans. God works for a larger, divine purpose
in the book of Genesis that we can be sure, these stories are not to be taken
in isolation but within the context of God’s story of salvation.
We can figure that Isaac in this
scripture reading is between 2and 3 years old because they have just had a
festival to celebrate his weaning.
He’s off and running, as they say.
Now I would assume that Sarah was somewhat close to Hagar since Hagar
was her ‘right hand’ slave-girl and especially since she lent Hagar to Abraham
for a specific purpose. Once that
purpose was fulfilled Ishmael became part of the mishpaha, the family.
It seems that at the point when Isaac was old enough to play with
Ishmael that her jealous streak reared its ugly head.
And what about God in the first part
of this passage? Well to
understand why God would endorse her actions you need to understand that
earlier God makes a clear distinction between Isaac and Ishmael’s covenants.
They would both receive a blessing and
someday, as Abraham’s sons, they each would become the father of a great nation. It’s just that this Book of Genesis was
written by and for the Hebrew people and Isaac would become the proGENitor of
the Jews and ultimately us Christians.
Whereas Ishmael would become the forbearer of the Arab people. Hence when we talk about the “Abrahamic” faiths we are talking about
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
And so back with the story - Abraham
once again, in faith, follows God’s instructions. Hagar is banished to the desert of Beer-Sheva with her son
Ishmael carrying just a few rations.
This is where this passage, for me, becomes heart wrenching.
Hagar wonders about with little
Ishmael and just enough food and water to last them a very short time. The desert is parching and the sun’s
rays are relentless and they are alone.
Hagar separates herself from her child so that he would not hear her cry
out of her pain and sorrow and so that she would not have to look upon her
dying child. It is in this
deep and throbbing grief that God hears and listens to her cry.
And God asks Hagar in one of the most
tender and compassionate moments in the Bible, ‘What troubles you Hagar, do not
be afraid, I see you, I hear you and I will save you, take little Ishmael’s
hand’. And her eyes were opened to
the well of water in front of them.
Not only did God send a drop of water but and entire well to Hagar so
that she and Ishmael could be refreshed and live.
You see God works through complex and
very sad situations and that is why Hagar and Ishmael’s story needs to be
told. We learn that God hears and saves
those who are cast out from home and hearth, from the swell of society’s
mainstream. The refugee, the
migrant, the other, those of us who feel as if we have been all but forgotten,
God sees and hears our cries and saves us.
Today we know that persecution sadly still exists; it is
reported that there are 21million refugees in the world. These are people like Hagar and Ishmael
that are persecuted because of race, religion, social class or group,
nationality, political opinion, and are forced to leave their homeland. Forced to leave everything that they
know and love, perhaps other family members, their belongings their security,
their very existence just so that they may live fully, freely and safely. That is a tragic reality that has
existed for millennia as we see back from the Israelites being forced to flee
Egypt.
We, the US, invite 85,000 refugees – those seeking shelter
and safe refuge to come here each year.
This is reported by IRIS (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant
Services). Lest you think it is
easy for them to get here, it’s not.
They must meet the UN’s definition of a refugee, there’s a background
check, a medical examination and they must be sponsored by an authorized
agency. It’s not free ride for
them, they take loans out to get here, are fully documented and come with
skills but no command of the English language. Between 500-800 come to CT seeking a safe harbor.
God has heard their cry; and through resettlement they have
been offered a well of water in a parched land. We can absorb them faithfully, carefully and securely. For it was Jesus who said, “I was a
stranger and you welcomed me” (Matt 22: 31-46), “Whoever has two coats must
share with anyone else who has none” (Luke 3: 11), and the apostle Paul who
said, “It is a question of fair balance between your present abundance and
their needs” (II Corinthians 8: 13-15).
Sometimes I think the only thing that
stands between life and death for a refugee is our own prejudice and fear. There are a lot of ‘reasoned’ arguments
for rejecting refugees that discreetly hide biases and preconceptions. And that is something that each one of
us individually and honestly needs to examine. But we are a people of hope and God will be with you if you
chose to engage in this reflection.
God is not distant and aloof, just as God saw and heard Hagar and sent a
well, someone or something that will redeem us from ourselves too.
How will you know? Dawn follows a dark night, spring has
always managed to appear after a snowy winter, a shower breaks a hot, hazy and
unbearably humid summer’s day, the proof is around us that redemption exists
and God’s ultimate redemptive act for our lives is just around the corner.
Be of faith my friends. Embody hope. Live into Hagar’s story. This is also the living gospel for our lives, that where we
are, Christ is too.
Amen!
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