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SEEING WHAT WE COULD NOT OTHERWISE SEE
Genesis 21:8-21; Matthew 10:24-33
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
June 22, 2014
“Call me Ishmael.” Those three words may be the most famous opening words of any American novel. They come from Herman Melville’sMoby Dick, which many a literature class has struggled with through the years. I remember discussing that opening sentence in my high school class, and though we were in the Bible-belt South, none of us in the class knew who the narrator was talking about. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Esau – those were all names we knew, people we had learned about in our Sunday School classes. But who was Ishmael?
“Call me Ishmael” – we meet him here in Genesis 21, but it is not the first time he appears. Ishmael is a member of the household of Abraham and Sarah, who though childless and seemingly beyond childbearing age, are promised in Genesis 12 that God will give them a child and make of their descendants a great nation. But when Abraham and Sarah remain childless, Sarah suggests in Genesis 16 that Abraham should have a child by their Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, who is much younger than Sarah.
Sarah’s suggestion may not have shown much faith in God’s ability to deliver on God’s promise, but it was not a bizarre suggestion for the times. When you read through the Old Testament you will often find that it was not uncommon for a clan leader to have multiple wives, or in the case of King David and King Solomon, to have multiple wives andconcubines. Children were that precious since they were the parents’ source of security and food in their old age.
In any case, Abraham and Hagar do have a child and Ishmael is his name. Not many years later, Abraham and Sarah, to their delight, also have a child, a boy named Isaac.
And now, here in chapter 21, Abraham and Sarah throw a party to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, as was the custom then. Isaac is probably about 3. During the party, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac – and that is when the trouble begins, Genesis tells us. While we might see a poignant scene of an older brother playing with a younger brother, Sarah sees a crisis brewing. She goes and tells Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.”
Sarah is both jealous and zealous – jealous of Hagar and zealous for her son, Isaac. Ishmael would have been a legitimate heir at that time under Near Eastern customs. Sarah is concerned not just for her son but also for herself. A mother’s security rested in her son’s inheritance because he would be the one taking care of her. But there is also a deeper level of inheritance here: through whomwill the line run from Abraham to the great nation that God promises will inherit the land – Hagar’s Ishmael or Sarah’s Isaac?
To our surprise perhaps, God counsels Abraham to give in to Sarah’s request, saying in effect, “Let Sarah do what she wants. Do not worry because I will make it right.” As one commentator puts it, the exchange sounds like “two men coping with a cantankerous woman.”[1] And so Abraham packs a lunch and gives it to Hagar and Ishmael before sending them off into the desert.
In the desert, Hagar and Ishmael are alone, without protection, and soon, without food or water. In one of the most poignant passages of all of the Old Testament, we learn that Hagar puts her son under one of the bushes and goes off to another place to sit so she will not have to witness her dehydrated son dying. There she weeps and wails out with a grief and despair that most of us can only imagine.
But Hagar soon she learns that she and Ishmael are not abandoned by God. An angel tells her that God has heard the cry of Ishmael and that God will make a great nation through her son as well. “Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water,” we learn in verse 19. Ishmael does grow up and has 12 sons and is the father of a great nation. Indeed, he is seen today in Islam as a true prophet and great man.
So, what do we make of this strange story of Ishmael and Hagar?
First, we are reminded that those chosen by God are far from ideal or perfect. When you read this passage with its reference to Abraham and Hagar having a child at Sarah’s suggestion or a great public feast at Isaac’s weaning, we can be reminded how very different family life was among the Israelites living three thousand years ago, even those held up as leaders and spiritual models. But on the other hand, there is something very current about this family in Genesis 21. I mean, if Abraham and Sarah lived now, can’t you imagine the producer trying to book Sarah and Hagar and their sons on the “Jerry Springer Show?” Or, a new reality series being started called, “The Wives of Canaan?”
In fact, none of the adults look that great here. Sarah encourages Abraham to have a child by Hagar and then wants to see Hagar and that child banished. Abraham looks weak and indecisive. And although Hagar is the victim here, earlier in chapter 16 we learned that after Ishmael was born, Hagar looked with contempt on the still barren Sarah and humiliated her.
They are all imperfect – and yet they are loved by God, and perhaps even harder to believe, chosen by God to be a part of God’s larger purposes. Abraham and Sarah are the father and mother of God’s chosen people – a great nation will flow from them and through them God will bless the world. And Hagar herself is to see a great nation spring up from her womb through her son Ishmael, and this is all God’s doing.
Then and now, God shows us that despite our imperfections and brokenness we are loved by God. But God doesn’t just love us – God chooses to work in and through us. Then and now God works God’s purposes out in and through broken and imperfect people.
I don’t want to disappoint you – but your family is not perfect – and neither is mine. And this church congregation is not perfect – far from it. But that is why God gives us imperfect families, both at home and church. Sothat we can learn how to handle disagreements and conflicts when we see the world differently or understand the truth differently. So that we can learnhow to handle failures and brokenness, how to say “I am sorry” and “that is all right, I forgive you,” and then how to really let go. And so that we can learn about God’s grace that accepts and uses us despite our imperfection.
If you are looking for a perfect family, live alone. And if you are looking for a perfect congregation, don’t join this congregation. We are all broken – but we are also all loved and can all be made useful by the grace of God.
Second, we learn that God’s providence and God’s love are not limited to God’s elect.
In Genesis 12, God makes a particular promise to a particular people when God tells the couple “”Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house the land I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great.” God chooses or elect one particular people, the Israelites – and not others. For most of us that is bothersome or even a scandal; it goes against our notions of equal opportunity and fairness. Indeed, there have been times when the people of Israel or the people of the church have taken this chosenness as license to hate and abuse outsiders. But to do that is to badly distort the Scriptures.
Because God does not just bless Abraham and Sarah for their sake. No, they are blessed so that they can be a blessing for the nations. The same is true for the church. And God’s provision and love are not limited to those whom God has chosen to take on extra purpose and responsibilities as part of God’s plan.
Hagar and Ishmael may not be God’s elect, but they are very much treasured by God. God comes to their aid here and God will be “with” Ishmael going forward, verse 20 tells us. God remembers Isaac and Ishmael, just like a mother remembers all her children.
And so it is to be for us. While we have a special bond with, and responsibility for, our families – both our birth families and church families, we are called to respect and treasure all. Like Ishmael and Isaac, whether we are willing to recognize it or not, we are related to all because we are all God’s children. And as God does in this passage, we should always be attentive to the cries of the outcasts.
Finally, we are reminded in this passage that though we may not see it at first, God will supply what we need, even a well in our deserts.
Surely the scene sketched by the author of Genesis here in chapter 21 is one of the saddest in all of the scriptures, Old or New. One can only imagine the anguish and tears of Hagar in the desert as she prepares to die and see her only son die? She is hungry and thirsty and feels abandoned,not only by her household and the father of her son, but also by God. For Hagar, how can the world feel anything else but cruel, unjust and godless? She looks around and sees no one and nothing that can help.
But soon someone shows up to so here something she had not seen before. “Do not be afraid,” an angel calls out to her. “For God has heard the voice of the boy. Come lift him up and hold him fast with your hand,” the angel says. And then God steps in and gently opens Hagar’s eyes. This time when she looks out, she sees what she had not seen before – a well. Right in the middle of the desert and it is no mirage.
There is a beautiful quote in the children’s book, The Little Prince: “What makes the desert beautiful…is that somewhere it hides a well…” “But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.” Perhaps when God touched Hagar she looked, for the first time, with her heart, and saw what she could not see before.[2]
I pray that none of us will face what Hagar and Ishmael face here in Genesis 21. But I know that all of us have experienced times when we found ourselves seeking something we desperately need but cannot find. I imagine that at one time or another, all of us have experienced the feeling that world is a cruel or that life is unfair. And I imagine that all of us have known times when we felt distant from God, even abandoned by God.
When that happens, we may withdraw into ourselves, with too little energy to cry or cry out. Or we may shake our fists at the heavens and cry out “Why?!...Why this?! Why me?!”
Either way, God hears our cry and knows what we are feeling – from the inside out. And no matter where we find ourselves, God is already there. Douglas Nelson tells of visiting a terrible little cell in the dungeon of an old English castle. No light had ever come there from outside. On one wall, the stone had been worn into the shape of a hand, because men would lean there to get a drop of water that came from the moat through one small crack. In that blackness someone had scratched – with a belt buckle perhaps – these words: “The Lord was in this place.”[3]
And so it is that the angel says to Hagar and Jesus says over and over to his disciples: “Be not afraid.” Because no matter how bad and God-forsaken the place may seem, the Lord is in that place. And in every desert, no matter how dry it is, there is a well. We may not see it at first, but with God’s help we will see it with our hearts.
[1]Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 183.
[2] Linda Fabian Pepe,
[3] Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Beyond Doubt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 37.