Over the past several weeks the world's attention has been
particularly focused on the news from Camp David. Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat have
been in the midst of peace talks. As the talks opened, Barak and
Arafat engaged in a mock pushing match for the cameras as they
entered the main cabin. Arafat, perhaps because he has been
hunted as a terrorist for most of his life, likes to be the last
into a room. Barak insisted the Palestinian go first. Arafat
refused. So Barak, with a big grin, shoved him toward the narrow
door anyway. Finally, President Clinton, in his first act of
mediation, resolved the problem. "I've got an idea," he said
with a laugh. Then he opened the second double door, allowing
the two to stride in, smiling, side by side.(1)
Sadly, the smiles have been few and far between since then.
The negotiations have been incredibly difficult. This past
Wednesday, it looked as though they would be called off without
any agreement at all, then, just as everyone was ready to pack
their bags, they came back to the table. What will happen today
now that the President has returned from Okinawa? Who knows?
To be painfully honest, even if Barak and Arafat do
negotiate an agreement, there will be militants on both sides who
will object, and probably violently. The world remembers what
happened to Anwar Sadat and Yitzak Rabin after coming to terms
with the opposition. This is a dangerous business. And the long
and bitter struggle between Jew and Arab seems bound to continue.
Sad...and especially so considering that the Jew and Arab
are "blood brothers," both children of Abraham - Arabs tracing
their ancestry back through Abraham's first son, Ishmael, Jews
going back through second son Isaac. Then again, perhaps their
problems are understandable because, as the lesson from Genesis
makes clear, this family has been dysfunctional since the
beginning.
The saga gets underway in Genesis, chapter 12 as
Abraham is called to uproot himself and his family and set out
for a new land to which his God would direct. During the course
of the journey, God makes Abraham some wonderful promises, but
they all involve posterity, and by the time we reach chapter 16,
we are informed that Abraham and Sarah are still childless
despite being relatively along in years. This was a particular
disaster in the ancient world since children stabilized that
society - they were a supply of labor, a promise of old-age
security, and guarantors of the orderly transfer of property.
Indeed, for a woman to fail to give her husband children was seen
as a curse from God. For Abraham, all these divine promises were
"on hold" - if the journey of a thousand miles begins with the
first step, then the promise of descendants so numerous as to be
compared to stars in the sky or sands by the sea will begin with
a first child. Big problem.
Actually not so big. Not for the well-to-do (as Abraham and
Sarah were). There was an alternative: surrogate motherhood.
Custom of the day permitted a woman to claim as her own any
children a servant girl might bear after a liaison with the
master of the house. By the time Abraham and Sarah address this
possibility, Sarah was well past her child-bearing years. So,
according to the Genesis' record,
Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has
prevented me from bearing children; go in to my
slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by
her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So,
after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan,
Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her
slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a
wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived.(2)
With mistress Sarah's blessing (although I suspect it was
given with a forced smile and through clenched teeth), Hagar
became pregnant with Abraham's first child.
Now the trouble starts. The Genesis record says "when
[Hagar] saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on
her mistress." Uh, oh. What did she do? Little verbal jabs?
Eyebrows elevated for a view down the nose? Walk around the tent
with belly tauntingly thrust forward? Who knows? Just the
meanness of youth sneering at age. Hagar was not nice.
Sarah did not react well. The hurt that she had felt in not
being able to bear Abraham's child was now compounded by the
anger at being ridiculed. Furiously, she takes her hurt out on
her husband: "Abraham, it's YOUR fault; when I offered you Hagar,
you actually TOOK her. This would never have happened if it were
not for YOU! MEN!!!"
Abraham's response: "Uh huh." How else is a man supposed to
respond to that? He finally said, "Listen, she is YOUR servant;
she works for YOU. YOU handle it!"
So Sarah did. She took the meanness of Hagar, multiplied
it, then dumped it back. She made life so miserable for the
pregnant slave that Hagar finally ran away into the wilderness.
Not a good move. How did she plan to survive? What could she
have been thinking? Of course, she was NOT thinking, just
reacting.
Now we find Hagar all by herself, resting exhausted by a
spring. Genesis says, "The angel of the LORD [meaning the Lord]
said to her, `Return to your mistress, and submit to her.'"(3) You
can imagine how Hagar must have been eager to jump at THAT
chance. Then the LORD gave her a reason: "`I will so greatly
multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for
multitude.' And the angel of the LORD said to her, `Now you have
conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for
the LORD has given heed to your affliction.'"
Ishmael -- a Hebrew name meaning GOD HEARS. To be honest,
what she hears next might make a woman expecting a child to
change her mind. Hagar is told that the child will be a boy of
whom God says, "He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand
against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; and he shall
live at odds with all his kin." Delightful. Then follows a
scripture verse that became famous in it's King James Bible
language - it was posted in cross-stitch on the walls of
countless Christian homes, it was carved in wood above the pulpit
of the first church in which I regularly preached [St. Luke's
United Methodist Church, Pritchardville, SC], and my mother tells
me it was the first Bible verse she ever taught me. Hagar
listens to the divine voice, realizes that no matter where she
might be, she is never beyond the sight of the Almighty, and says
those words which have made her immortal: "And she called the
name of the LORD that spake unto her, THOU, GOD, SEEST ME." It
is a wonderful affirmation of faith. Obediently, she returns to
the tents of mistress Sarah, the baby is born, Abraham's son.
It would be lovely to end it there and say they all lived
happily ever after, but we know better. Actually, knowing the
personalities involved - two women who hated each other, a man
who did anything he could to avoid confrontation, and a boy who
even before he was born was predicted to be all but a juvenile
delinquent or a gangster - it is almost surprising things did not
blow up sooner.
As you know, between the time of Ishmael's birth and the
scene in this morning's lesson, 16 or 17 years had elapsed, and a
major miracle had taken place. About two-and-a-half years
before, at the age of 90, Sarah had given birth to Isaac.
Suddenly, everything was changed. As is often the case, the
family is now focused on the new arrival, and attention is
diverted from earlier children. But this shift was different.
The presence of Hagar and Ishmael was unwanted evidence of
Sarah's previous pain. Now that Isaac was on the scene the
faster that reminder could be removed, the better. No doubt
Sarah kept her eyes open for an excuse.
Finally she found one. It was at a big family party
celebrating one of those rites of passage - the weaning of the
child, the first step on his road to manhood. The Genesis
account says, "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.'"(4)
What? For playing with the baby you get thrown out of the home?
For you scholars, it should be noted that the Hebrew is not as
clear here as we might wish - it could mean that the playing was
more along the lines of mocking or taunting, but still, PERMANENT
EXILE??? Wow! This is one tough lady.
We might wish that father Abraham would have shown himself
worthy here of the reverence and respect shown him for centuries
by three great religions. No. The story says that Abraham was
displeased with the demand - after all, Ishmael WAS his son. The
boy might have been a bit of a hand full, but a son is a son. We
do not just get rid of them in favor of a newer model. For
whatever it is worth, Abraham was able to justify being an
incredible wimp and acceding to Sarah's demand by relying on
God's promise that Ishmael would also become the source of a
great nation. What could the man have been thinking? "Oh gee,
Lord, that puts my mind at ease. Now, I, a wealthy man having
the wherewithal to provide handsome support, can send them out
into the desert with nothing but a loaf of bread and a skin of
water and not give it a second thought." Right.
That IS what he did, you know. Bread and water and bye-bye.
They were on their way to die.
Picture it. Bread and water now gone. The desert heat has
taken its toll. Hagar sits on a small rock in the blazing sun,
rocking back and forth, back and forth, clutching her arms about
herself, trying not to hear the distant whimper of her son, her
dying son...(5) If she had stayed right by him she would have gone
mad. So she went off. There was nothing more she could do.
"Well, we always do as we are told, God. You want us to come out
here and die, we come out here and die. Is this what you wanted, God?"
"Go and hold the boy," a voice within her seemed to say. "Go
and put your arms around your child. Hold on tight - resist the
temptation to distance yourself. Do not let despair drive a
wedge between you and this child. I have plans for him. This is
no time for you to start letting go. Hold on tight, and bear him
up. Hagar stumbled over rocks and thorns to take the dehydrated
body of her son into her arms from under the bush where she had
placed him for some protection from the beating sun. His moans
were weak, but at least he was still alive. She poured her
mother love into the boy, and she wept...and wept and wept.
Through the water of her tears she saw a well. Had it been
there before and had she just not seen, or had God given her a
miracle? She almost dropped the boy in her hurry to fill the
skin with water, then to press it to Ishmael's thin cracked lips.
At first he hardly responded, but then he moved, and slowly, bit
by bit, he drank.
Hagar's hopes renewed, then crashed once more as she
remembered who she was - a slave - and where she was - in the hot
and unforgiving desert. Again she cried, she looked toward the
well, and from the deepest well within her soul she heard a
voice. "From you and Ishmael shall come a people," said the
voice of God within her. "You will survive. Your son will grow.
And he will have a wife and you shall then be grandmother to a
fine and gentle race of people; a race of people who will know
the pain that you have known; a race of people who will know how
it feels to stand weeping outside the tents of wealthy men."
The descendants of Ishmael are the Arabs, and if there is
any curiosity regarding the sources of the present-day Middle
East conflict, one need look no farther than the family quarrel
between Sarah and Hagar. Because Islam traces itself from
Abraham through Ishmael and Judaism and Christianity trace their
lines through Isaac, Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all "blood
brothers," the spiritual "children of Abraham."
Hagar and Sarah, Abraham, Ishmael. A sad story, and one
that continues to this day. Since the founding of the nation of
Israel in 1948, the people have suffered through four wars (1948,
1956, 1967, 1973). Five if you count the 1969-70 "War of
Attrition." Six if you count the continuing conflict with
various terrorist organizations supported by hostile nations. A
fierce family fight that has been going on and going on and going
on and going on. No heroes here, only survivors.
But there is a wonderful lesson. It is simply "Ishmael" --
God hears. The Psalmist knew it:
Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor
and needy...Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer; listen to
my cry of supplication. In the day of my trouble I
call on you, for you will answer me.(6)
"Ishmael" - God hears. God hears the cry of Hagar in the
wilderness before her son is ever born. God hears the cry of her
boy in the face of imminent death. God hears the cry of those of
their descendants who have been denied a homeland, and for over
50 years have been relegated to refugee camps. God hears the cry
of every child in pain. This is gospel: God hears. If you
remember nothing else from this morning, remember GOD HEARS.
When the world seems to be tumbling in and all around go rushing
by, remember, God hears. When it seems that your heart's most fervent prayers cannot manage to get past the ceiling, remember God hears. God hears the cry. Hagar's, Ishmael's,
mine and yours. God hears. And answers.
Amen!
1. "Horseplay and High Stakes," Newsweek, 7/24/2000, p. 24
2. Genesis 16:2-4a
3. Genesis 16:9ff.
4. Genesis 21:9-10
5. This is adapted from a Ralph Milton midrash on the Story of Hagar and Her Son. These
excerpts were posted by John Lohr, Franklin Lakes, NJ in the PresbyNet meeting "Sermonshop
1996 06 23, Note #8, 6/17/96 and blended with an monologue posted by Chris Ewing of the
Roland & Myrtle United Church Pastoral Charge in south central Manitoba in Note #53,
6/21/96.
6. Psalm 86:1, 6-7
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