"Hearing Hagar's Story"

Preached August 12, 2012 at Rennie Memorial Presbyterian Church in Amelia, VA

Texts: Genesis 16:1-16; 21:1-21

          Galatians 4:21-31

"This is the Word of the Lord," we say when we read Scripture, "Thanks be to God!" We call this collection of texts Holy Scripture, the Good Book, the Living Word of God.

And thanks be to God indeed! Thanks be to God that we have these Scriptures, that our mothers and fathers in the faith wrote them, recorded them, and handed them down to us. Thanks be to God that we can open them and read them not only here at church but in our homes, in our workplaces, wherever we may go. 

But most of all, thanks be to God that we come to Scripture not for the many words but for the one Word. That's the interesting thing about Scripture in our theology as Presbyterians. We don't say, "These are the words of the Lord." What we listen for when we come to Scripture are not the individual words but the one eternal Word that God is speaking to us today. That's why we pray the Prayer of Illumination - we ask God to send the Holy Spirit upon us so that in these many words we may hear God's one Word.

This may not seem like much of a distinction, and sometimes it's not. In some parts of the Bible, if I understand the text, the actual words of the text are almost identical to God's Word. But sometimes, the words of Scripture cast a shadow so dark that it can be difficult, almost impossible, for us to see God's Word of Love coming through. 

This morning, we heard the story of Hagar. Hagar's story is one of the more difficult texts we encounter in Scripture. It is the type of text that Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible calls a "Text of Terror."

Terror is a strong word, isn't it? Especially in our world today, where the word "terrorism" is regularly heard in on the news to describe human violence and evil. Connecting a word like "terror" to our Scripture, to the texts that we call "The Word of the Lord," may seem almost like blasphemy. But I believe there is genuine terror present in this text. I invite you to look with me at this familiar text, look at it from Hagar's perspective, and see if you can't see some of this terror unfold.

Hagar is Sarah's slave from Egypt. Being a slave, she is already in a situation of oppression. We do not do Hagar's story justice if we simply write her oppression off as "the way things were done." Certainly slavery was commonplace in many cultures in Biblical times. But, as my mother always told me, just because everyone's doing it doesn't make it right. Just because a culture accepts the institution of slavery, doesn't mean it is in line with God's purposes. And it doesn't mean that Hagar's suffering is any less. Hagar has no freedom. Her life is not her own. She is bound to obey any whim of her master and mistress.

And Hagar's master and mistress have a problem. We all know what it is. Abraham is supposed to be the father of many nations, and yet he has no children. So Sarah sends her slave Hagar to sleep with Abraham so that Hagar might bear children that will legally be Sarah's. Having children through slave women was also commonplace in Biblical times, and we'll see it happen later in the Bible with Rachel and her maid Bilhah, and Leah and her maid Zilpah. But as it was with slavery, just because this was culturally commonplace doesn't make it right, or any less painful for Hagar. You'll remember last week, when I referred to what transpired between David and Bathsheba as ‘rape’, because, well, there’s no saying “no” to a king. I would use the same word, rape, for what Abraham and Sarah did to Hagar, because again, there is no saying no. Hagar's body is not her own - it legally belongs to Abraham and Sarah.

And when Hagar saw that she was pregnant with Abraham's baby, she "looked with contempt on her mistress." And I ask you - can we really blame her? Sarah is using Hagar as a pawn in her plan to have a child, to produce an heir, and Hagar has no recourse through which she can object. Sarah has violated Hagar's very sexuality, her ability to share intimacy with another human being. Were I in Hagar’s shoes, I think "contempt" might be an understatement.

Sarah is upset by the way Hagar looks at her, and she treats her harshly. We don't know what the conditions Hagar's slavery were like before she became pregnant, but now we know for certain - she is treated harshly. She is abused. And, like many women who experience abuse in their homes, Hagar does the only thing left in her power. She flees.

She flees to the wilderness and has a strange encounter with the God of Abraham and Sarah - not her god, remember, because she is an Egyptian. We'll return to that encounter in just a few minutes; I believe it's an important yet troubling encounter. But at the end of this encounter, she returns to Abraham and Sarah, gives birth to her son Ishmael, and we don't hear anything about her for several years.

It's not until Sarah's own child Isaac is born and weaned that Hagar comes back into the story. Sarah sees her son Isaac and Hagar's son Ishmael playing, and she becomes jealous. Sarah asks Abraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael because she doesn't want Ishmael sharing in the inheritance with her own son. This inheritance Sarah mentions isn't money - this isn't about who will get the larger share when Abraham writes his will - this is about the blessing that God promised Abraham. God has promised to make a great nation of Abraham's descendants, to make them the chosen people through whom God will bless the entire world. And when Sarah sees the two boys playing, I think it crosses her mind that Ishmael might also get to share in that blessing that Sarah wants reserved for her own son Isaac. Isn’t he too, after all, a descendent of Abraham? It becomes a question of who is "chosen" in God's eyes, and who is not. So Hagar and Ishmael are sent away. And even though God does save them in the wilderness, and provides for their survival, Sarah ultimately gets her wish. Isaac becomes the father of God's chosen people. Ishmael does not.

When we turn to the New Testament, things only get worse for Hagar. Certainly she is long dead at this point, but her story remains, inscribed in the Holy Scriptures of the Jewish people, and it catches the eye of the Apostle Paul. He uses Hagar's story as part of an allegory for God's covenant at Sinai - Hagar and her child - and God's covenant in Jesus - Sarah and her child. Paul argues that choosing the covenant represented by Sarah is choosing the better half.

This is a big concern for Paul, the Law versus faith; it is especially so in his letter to the Galatians. But I don't know...when I read this text, I can still hear Hagar weeping as she wept in the wilderness. I can hear her saying, "That wasn't my law, that wasn't my choice! I wanted no part in any of this! I fled the laws of my time and the cruelty of my mistress. You're not listening to me; you're not hearing my side of the story. I'm not a covenant or a symbol - I'm a person!"

In light of all of this, I find myself forced to ask - can Hagar's story be redeemed? Is there any hope left, in the face of all this terror? Can we really respond to this text saying, "Thanks be to God!"  Is it possible, in the midst of the suffering of an innocent human being, that we can hear the Word of the Living God?

Many people have answered “yes” to this question and point to more hopeful, positive details of Hagar's story in doing so. Some point out that in the history of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel that starts in Genesis chapter 12, Hagar is the very first person to whom God appears. She is the first woman to be given promises by God - God appears to Hagar before God ever appears to Sarah. And finally, Hagar is the only person, man or woman, to name God in the Old Testament. She calls God "El Roi" - God who sees - for God saw her in the wilderness.

Others point out the miracle that God appears to an Egyptian, to someone outside the covenant. The Lord in this story is not the God Hagar worshipped, and yet God came to her, called her by name, rescued her and her child, and promised them a future. Perhaps this in itself is an affirmation that God cares for all people, not just those who acknowledge and profess God's name.

All of these aspects of the story are important, no doubt, but for me, it just doesn't cut it. No matter how many times I read Hagar's story, I come to the same, albeit reluctant, conclusion: I think God might be in the wrong. When Hagar flees to the wilderness for the first time, she encounters God, yes, and God makes promises to her - ambiguous though they may be - her son will be a "wild ass of a man" who will "live at odds with all his kin." But then - and this is the part that gets me every time - God says to Hagar, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her." Suffer abuse at her hand. God, as this story tells it, does something that no compassionate person could do in good conscience. God sends the abused woman back home.

Many of you have shared stories with me about Madeline's House and the tragic death of the woman Madeline in whose memory it is named. Madeline, you have told me, was a woman who suffered abuse and was killed because she had no place to go. I imagine that if such a shelter had been built in Biblical times, they might have called it "Hagar's House." A single mother, pregnant by rape, flees to the wilderness because she has nowhere else to go. And yet, unlike the faithful people who serve at Madeline’s house – God sends this abused woman back home. The Word of the Lord?

Old Testament scholar named Phyllis Trible, who I mentioned earlier, draws the same unsettling conclusion that I do when she reads these passages of Scripture: in this telling of the story, God is guilty. However, Trible doesn’t stop there. She does believe that Hagar's story can be redeemed. She says that we must be the ones to redeem this story as we retell it and honor the memory the suffering Hagar. She encourages us to identify Hagar's presence in our society today.

Trible writes, "As a symbol of the oppressed, Hagar becomes many things to many people. Most especially, all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others."

Hagar is all these people and many more. She is the quintessential "Other." The one who gets lost in the cracks of the system. The person who does not fit into what the prejudices of our society say a person should be. The one who makes people uncomfortable by her presence, because she reminds us of the flipside of our comfort, of terrors of life that we would rather forget.

And yet she's still there. Truly, the fact that Hagar is even in the Bible, that she gets such an extended story, is rather difficult to explain. I imagine many of you may have heard the saying, "History is written by the victors."  The same can be said of much of this holy book we call the Bible. The book of Genesis is a book of the Hebrews, by the Hebrews, for the Hebrews. This is supposed to be a story about why and how the descendants of Abraham through Sarah and Isaac became the holy people of God.

There's no reason Hagar should be there...and yet there she is, speaking to us, calling to us. Sometimes I can even hear her weeping. If we take the time to listen to this text, to hear Hagar's story, our hearts break for her. And this, my friends, is what we pray for in the Prayer of Illumination, when we ask God to speak to us in Scripture, sometimes not through what the characters say and do, or even what the authors of the narratives provide, but sometimes in spite of the text itself.

This is supposed to be a story about Sarah and Isaac. But for so many readers, our hearts hear it as a story about Hagar and Ishmael. And it is important, vitally important, that as we approach Scripture, we listen not only with our ears and our minds, but also, perhaps most importantly, with our hearts. Our hearts break for Hagar and Ishmael. And perhaps this experience of our hearts breaking discloses more to us about who God is than the words in the story ever could.

This, my friends, is what we mean when we say "This is the Word of the Lord." It is when, through the many words recorded in Scripture, we hear God Godself, speaking that one, true, holy, and unchangeable Word of love. The Word that became flesh and dwelt among us as Jesus Christ. The Word that has empowered disciples through the ages to lead lives governed by love. The Word that comforts us when we are afraid, that breathes hope into us when cannot see the way to go on, and that calls and challenges us out of our complacency to draw closer to God and become even more faithful disciples.

Hagar is still with us today. She lives in all those that Phyllis Trible mentions and more - the abused woman, the father who lost his job. This week she is the Sikh mother in Wisconsin mourning her son, who was shot at his house of worship simply because one man thought his way of life was better theirs. She is the person whose story has been trampled upon by the dominant stories of our time.

And Hagar continues to weep. And we, who as Christians claim Abraham and Sarah as our spiritual ancestors, must answer for the terror in her story. How will we respond? Will we send Hagar back home to suffer abuse? Or will we sit with her, listen to her, and see if together we can change the stories of our time to reflect God's Living Word of Love?