A Tale of Two Perspectives Genesis 21:8-21 Dr. Christopher C. F. Chapman First Baptist Church, Raleigh June 22, 2014

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1 A Tale of Two Perspectives Genesis 21:8-21 Dr. Christopher C. F. Chapman First Baptist Church, Raleigh June 22, 2014 It is the best of stories, it is the worst of stories. It is a story that ought to be preached at least once a year, it is a story which should never be read in worship. It is a story of hope and reconciliation, good news for families; it is a story of conflict and jealousy, all-too-familiar bad news for families. It is a story about God s all-inclusive love, it is a story about human exclusiveness and the ways God seems to go along with the worst of human nature. In short, it is a story about us even though it is told for people who lived thousands of years ago. With apologies to Charles Dickens, I am talking about the story we have read from Genesis 21, the story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, and Hagar and Ishmael; one big happy family; well, one family anyway. It is a powerful story of conflict, jealousy, intrigue and abuse, yet also a story with implications far beyond its contributions to systems theory. It is a story with complex characters, many twists and turns of plot and significant overarching themes. Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have nothing on this story! Thus, with all of the dangers and pitfalls of exploring this story further duly noted, I suggest we forge ahead anyway. For while there are risks here, there are also treasures to be found, treasures that will help us in many different ways. It is a familiar story, but let s consider it in a bit more depth. To do this we have to go back a few chapters from where we have read, back at least as far as chapter 16 which provides the prequel for our reading. In chapter 16 we learn that Hagar is an Egyptian slave girl, perhaps a compensatory gift from Pharaoh for taking Sarah into his Harem when Abraham lied and said she was his sister to save his own skin (Genesis 12:10-18). One possible meaning for her name is the reward but there are many other possibilities as well, such as stranger. 1

2 Hagar is property, this much we know, even less significant than a slave of Abraham s ethnicity would be. So, there is no guarantee that she will be treated well. All female slaves are expected to provide certain personal services for their masters, if asked, but her fate might be worse than most. There are laws to govern these relationships but a lot hinges on the Head Wife, Sarah in this family. Things begin O.K. for Hagar. Sarah, who is discouraged with her inability to have a child when she and Abraham are supposed to begin a great nation, gives Hagar to Abraham as a second wife. She wants him to sleep with her not just as a slave-girl or concubine but as a wife which gives her and any children she might have certain rights. Sarah s discouragement is often viewed as a lack of faith, a lack of trust in God. But before judging her, we might ask whether we would trust God to give us a child if we were pushing 90! Sarah does what many would do today. She finds a surrogate. Anyway, things are going O.K. for Hagar. She even gets pregnant, which is great, but then things go south. It starts when Hagar looks upon Sarah with contempt. It is if she says, I am going have a baby and you aren t! So, Hagar is not without fault, but she does not deserve what she gets. Sarah blows up in anger, first at Abraham, then at Hagar. Abraham tells Sarah she is in charge, she can do what she wants with Hagar, she is the Head Wife, after all. So, Sarah deals with her harshly, according to the text, which may include physical abuse. When this term is used in male/female contexts, it can include rape. So, Hagar runs away. Who could blame her? An angel of the Lord, who knows her by name, finds her near a spring of water in the wilderness and asks where she has come from and where she is going. She tells the angel she is running away from her mistress and the angel tells her to go back because her offspring will be multiplied. The angel says the child s name will be Ishmael, which means God hears and goes on to say a few other things which are not very nice. So, I won t repeat them even if they are in the Bible! Hagar is convinced she has seen God, goes home, has her child and names him Ishmael. When we pick up the story today, Ishmael has grown quite a bit. Isaac has also been born to Sarah. So, she too has a child of her own. 2

3 Both children are boys If we are paying attention, we should be able to anticipate what happens next. The stage is set for some intense jealousy and conflict. Which son will inherit what? Which wife will be honored most? How will Abraham respond to these challenges? And where will God come out in this private family matter with monumental national and religious implications? Well, the first thing that happens is that Sarah sees Isaac playing with Ishmael and realizes the slave-woman s son may threaten her son s inheritance. So, she tells Abraham to get rid of them. Cast out this slave woman with her son; she says, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit with my son Isaac. Abraham is distressed. Score a point here for father Abraham. He cares about both wives and both sons. But God tells him not to worry because Isaac will inherit the great promise, that of having a great nation being built through him, and God will make a great nation of Ishmael also, since he too is Abraham s son. Whew! Abraham must think to himself. He didn t know how he was going to get out of this bind. The next morning he gives Hagar some bread and a skin of water and sends her and Ishmael away. We don t how the conversation goes, whether Abraham mentions God s promise to them, whether Hagar argues with Abraham. The biblical writer leaves space in the story for us to imagine what happens here. All we know is that the slave woman, wife or not, and her son are cast out and pretty soon they run out of food and water. Hagar assumes they will die in the wilderness. So, she places Ishmael under a bush and walks away some distance so that she won t have to watch her son die. She turns her back to Ishmael, sits down, lifts up her voice to the heavens and begins to cry. It is a tragic scene. When the movie comes out, the music will reflect just how desperate Hagar is! But at this point God hears the voice of the boy, whose name, as we recall, means, God hears. The angel of God asks Hagar what is troubling her, tells her she has no reason to be afraid, that God will make a great nation of Ishmael. And then, God opens her eyes so that she can see a well of water. It was there all along but she could not see it in her distress, could not see it until God opened her eyes. She gives the boy water and he drinks of it, and they survive; in God s grace they survive. 3

4 Ishmael grows and becomes an expert bowman. Hagar finds him a wife from the land of Egypt, and according to legend, God makes a great nation of him and ultimately a religious tradition, Islam, traces its roots to him; just as God makes a great nation of Isaac and a religious tradition, Judaism traces its roots to him. In fact, so does another tradition ultimately, our tradition, Christianity. So, after many twists and turns, many ups and downs, many would-be tragic moments, the story ends happily ever after, sort of; everyone involved has good and bad moments; and God gets what God wants. But what are the implications for us? What does this ancient story have to offer us post-moderns living thousands of years after the telling of this story? One thing this story does is normalize our experience of family. Many people in our culture, especially within the church, live with an idealized image of the family that makes most of our families seem radically dysfunctional, perhaps even beyond redemption, by comparison. One mom, one dad, for life; two perfect kids, one male and one female; all going to church, all in peaceful contact with extended family members; holidays shared with everyone gathered at the table, holding hands and singing either Kum Ba Yah or the Hoos song from the Grinch. It is an image informed by 1960 s television, not the Bible. Biblical families are like the family we read about in Genesis 21. Abraham has more than one wife, like the other patriarchs, he has children with both, and there are many messy conflicts in this family. There is petty jealousy and division, abuse even. Thus, Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible, who has ties to this community and some of our members, includes this story in her listing of biblical texts of terror. We may wonder how in the world this could be good news. It is certainly not a model for how we want to do family today. But it does help us to know that God can work with and through messy families like this and many of our families are like this. It helps us to know that we are not cast out by God when we don t live up to the one perfect model which, as it turns out, does not even exist. 4

5 I know a man who was born to a couple who got married too young. They separated before he was born and divorced when he was eight months old. He was raised by grandparents for a while and then when his mother remarried, by his mother and stepfather who was an immigrant who had lived in the Middle East. It was a good home in many ways but two younger siblings, step-siblings technically, since they had a different father, came along and while there was not intense jealousy, as with Ishmael and Isaac, there were issues. One had mental health challenges but settled down, the other had addictions. In the extended family there were many wonderful nurturing people, but there were also some characters and troubled souls a bipolar aunt who threatened the man when he was young with a butcher s knife on Thanksgiving, an uncle some were convinced was connected to the Mafia, one whole part of the family cut off and another in a different country, alienation and estrangement in relationships. What a messy family! Yet somehow, this young man did receive nurture and found his way into a church in adolescence and turned out reasonably sane, even became a minister. I know the story pretty well because it is my story. The family is mine and the man is me. It s nice to know that families like mine are pretty similar to families in the Bible. And yet, the message here is not just that Biblical families are messy but that God works with and through these families. As David and Diana Garland say in their book Flawed Families in the Bible (p. 14), it is in those broken places that we catch glimpses of God s grace and healing, of God silently reaching in to touch the wound, and often, of fragile and broken people stepping up to do what is right. That s what happens in our story. There is brokenness in this family, human brokenness and a lack of trust in God, petty jealousy and conflict, abuse and abandonment. Yet somehow God works though it all and enables every person to survive. And as a result, the members of the family become more than they were. This story, a text of terror or not, lets us know that God can work with and through families like ours. It also has something to say about modern struggles with human trafficking. Numerous CBF missionaries deal with this challenge on a 5

6 daily basis and we had a joint Sunday School lesson recently on this subject where a highly informed leader from Project FIGHT helped educate us on the local realities of this global problem. The subject matter was difficult for us to hear because the speaker had to talk about both labor and sex trafficking. The details, no matter how carefully referenced, leave us feeling very unsettled. And yet, we cannot bury our heads in the sand. If we are a church which seeks to help people in need, these are real people all around us in very real need. The Genesis story provides background to reflect upon trafficking because whether we like to admit it or not, Hagar is sold into servitude which includes the area we least want to talk about. Is any of this in God s design for this pivotal family in salvation history? No! Hagar comes into the family because of cultural practices of the time which we would not seek to emulate. She functions as a second wife because of Sarah s lack of trust in God to give her a child, cultural practices and Abraham s complicity. Hagar and Ishmael are cast out because of pure meanness on the part of Sarah and either a lack of backbone on the part of Abraham or a word of assurance from God, depending on how we read the story. Yet, somehow, through every twist and turn, God is at work for good on behalf of every member of the family. So, the message here is that slavery is not God s work nor is it ever God-approved. Rather God is at work to redeem those held captive and the captors who are diminished by their part in slavery. Thus, if we are God s people, those who seek to do God s work, bring in God s reign on earth, as we pray each week, our calling is clear to help those caught up in trafficking: through ministries like Project FIGHT and the work of CBF missionaries, by serving as advocates for legislation that might help address this social evil and by educating ourselves every way we can. The story from Genesis 21 normalizes our families and offers a lens through which to reflect upon the evils of human trafficking in our time. Then, it sheds light on some hopeful possibilities for how the three Abrahamic faiths Judaism, Christianity and Islam might relate to one another today. There are some who disagree either because they think this is a negative story of conflict only or because they don t think we 6

7 should even try to relate to one another in a better way because we are the only true children of God and they, or at least the Muslims, are not. I disagree with both points of resistance. There is conflict in this story but there is also hope for all if not reconciliation, though there is a hint of that. God makes promises to both sons and though we have no story of Sarah and Hagar embracing, when Abraham dies, his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, bury him together in the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 25:7-11). Whatever differences parts of the family have had, the two young men stand together, united by a common link to one father. Further, in the story God blesses Isaac and Ishmael, God makes a nation of each, God is involved in both of their stories, which lead to not one but three faiths. We might argue that Islam requires a separate revelation, the Quran, to make sense of the line of Ishmael. Well, Christianity requires a separate revelation first in the person of Jesus and then in the New Testament, to connect us to the line of Isaac. I am not saying I regard each tradition equally. I am part of one tradition - Christianity. I am simply saying that we have a common connection in Abraham. Perhaps that could help us find common ground rather than seeking to convert or kill each other and take the whole planet with us. And I am suggesting that God is involved in some way in all of these stories, not just ours. I say this because the Bible says it. God seems to choose one son and thus not the other. But, in fact, God blesses both. It is, at the very least, food for thought. I am reminded of something Anne Lamott once said about how people of faith should regard the struggles of this world. Everything is going to be Okay, she said, but we do not know exactly what Okay might look like. It is a helpful word about the story from Genesis 21and what it says about families, human trafficking and other faiths. It is the best of stories and the worst of stories, but it is God s story; so, it is ours too and we are glad that it is, because it means everything will be Okay. 7