Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 10:24-39
Is Hagar a character from The Handmaid’s Tale? Hagar was a slave who had been made use of to bear a son for Abraham, because Sarah could not. Hagar had had no say in the matter. And now fifteen years later, when Sarah gives birth to a boy of her own, as we saw last week, Hagar’s boy is inconvenient, and gets disinherited, which Abraham has the right to do.
Abraham has all the rights here, including the right to free his slaves, which he does to Hagar, but her freedom does not give her any rights. Her freedom is dangerous to her. Every woman has to be under the protection of some man. Every village will be dangerous for Hagar and her boy, so she takes her chances in the desert.
Abraham does Hagar no favor by setting her free. And the story depicts him as shameful, for all his distress over his son, his only son for fifteen years. He sends them out before dawn, by himself, surreptitiously, and he packs their provisions, which is a servant’s job, and he does it on the cheap, with just some bread and water, after the lavish feast to honor little Isaac. He puts the skin of water on her shoulder, that once he had embraced in something like love. She has to yield to him one more time. This is how he treats the mother of his firstborn son—dishonorably and shamefully.
How can good people treat other people so poorly? Well, the system allowed it and everyone accepted it. The system allowed good people to treat certain other kinds of people poorly with impunity. Back then it wasn’t skin color, but economic class, the haves and the have-nots, and Hagar was allowed no economic power of her own, nor any social power. And now she is getting punished for having obeyed her mistress by yielding her body to her master. As long as she was a slave her life had value, but now that she has her freedom, to Abraham her life and her son’s life do not matter.
We are troubled by God’s complicity. God tells Abraham to do what Sarah said. True, God was not complicit in their having used Hagar to begin with, which they had done because they doubted God. True, God promises Abraham that Hagar and her son will survive and someday flourish, but imagine him telling her that as he casts her out in the dark. True, God rescues them, but we are troubled by God letting them suffer first. True, God answers their cry, but not hers, only the boy’s.
The story ends well enough for all, but let’s not skip over her wailing and weeping. It’s crucial to the story, as the opposite of Sarah’s laughing. And what so angered Sarah was to see her slave’s son laughing too; in grammatical terms, his jesting is an intensification of her laughing. But a day later his mother is wailing and weeping, with him under a bush, a bowshot away, lifting her voice in fear and grief and anger. “I just did what they made me do, and all is lost, and my child will die.”
It’s wonderful to me that the Book of Genesis is not afraid to show us the underside of God’s great plan. Yes, there is the official story of the great covenantal history developing from Abraham to Israel, the providence and promises of God to these patriarchs who live by faith and walk with God. But the Bible also shows us the underside, like in the misery of Hagar that resulted from the joy of Sarah.
I wonder if it’s also suggesting the weeping that Abraham should have been doing for his firstborn son. And is it also the weeping that Abraham should be doing in our story next Sunday when he’ll be asked to sacrifice Isaac, but shows no visible emotion? Or, maybe—why not sacrifice Isaac, since he’s already given up his firstborn son and exposed him to death in the desert!
In these Genesis stories, the lives of the children are so close to death. And the fear of that is always lurking in the back of every parent’s mind. We make our kids wear helmets just to ride their scooters. I’m not big on helmets, but when I was caring for my granddaughter I used to have these terrible images of us crossing the street and her getting hit by a car, before my eyes. Do those kinds of things come into your brain? And I’d imagine myself screaming at the driver and doing whatever damage I could manage to punish him, even though it would do no good for my granddaughter.
So I can well imagine the violence and destruction in the demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd. I think it’s partly about children. It’s not just that store windows are symbols of an economic system that serves others well but treats us poorly, it’s also fear and anger for the future of our children, and, watching from a bowshot, we know they could die, simply by exclusion from the benefits of the system, good people or no. I can imagine our lashing out, doing what damage we can manage, with the only power available to us, even if it does no good.
Every great story has an underside, and the story of America is no exception. We who treasure our great stories prefer to keep the underside covered. But to honor the world-significant greatness of America is also to expose and bewail its cruel and shameful underside, for “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.” I thank God that the Bible story shows us its own underside, and it invites us to weep for it and for our part in it.
But she persisted! Go Hagar. She made honor out of their dishonor. Abraham acted shamefully, but her son will have reasons to be proud of her. She reveals her strength and determination. She determines to keep her freedom. She does not submit to some other man to be their protection. She determines freedom for her son, and that he be expert with the bow, which frees him from the culture of his rejecting father. She gets him a wife from Egypt, which frees him from obligation to some local chieftain. This woman is mother and father to her son. She’s a fugitive slave with nothing but her own determination, and then God’s blessing. So thank you, O God, for the story of Hagar.
I am not discrediting the official story of Abraham. I am not disavowing the sovereign choice of God to draw the line of the covenant through Sarah and Isaac and not through Hagar and Ishmael. But even the Lord Jesus in our Gospel exposes salvation’s underside. To find your life, you must lose it. If you follow him, you can expect resistance and even suffering. If you stand for peace, you will face the sword. If you follow him, your foes will be from your own family. To follow him, you must take up your cross, and in the Roman Empire, that means to take on the punishment of a slave condemned to die. Not unlike Hagar and her son being cast out by Abraham.
Abraham walked with God and lived by his faith. And yet his old and shameful self lived on him, to use the language of St. Paul in our second lesson. We all of us have our own undersides, we who are baptized into God’s people and the communion of saints. We have our body of sin that we must daily put to death, the sin to which we are enslaved. And to carry your cross is to expose this and bewail ourselves and grieve our fallen natures that live on in us.
But you are also invited to not live there, down in your underside. From your enslavement you are called to freedom, albeit a freedom that the Lord Jesus has told you can be dangerous. Yet he calls you to not be afraid, because you share in his resurrection, which means you are living already in your future, already beyond your death. And you are able to walk in your newness of life, when you walk by faith, as we will see Abraham do next week.
And in your freedom from servitude you are called to a freedom for service, to weep with those who weep, to bear their anger, to lift up their voices in your voice. Shout from the rooftops what you hear whispered—whatever grievous whispers from the underside’s experience—lift up your voice and proclaim it. Because the final salvation is for the underside, that it be brought into the light.
I love it that the Torah gives us Hagar, and I love it that the Bible is so written that it lets you be her voice. In your remembering her you give voice to her fear and grief and anger, and also to her final vindication as the mother of her own nation. I love it that the story speaks to our own situation, that light from Hagar shines upon America today.
And I don’t mind how troubling God can be to our own sensibilities, because if God is worthy of being God, then God should trouble us. God is free from us, and sovereign, and not accountable to us. But yet it is God who inspired this story, with Hagar’s inclusion, and in that I read the inspirer’s ultimate morality, for the story itself loves Hagar and her son. In our very reading and repeating this story is the expression of the love of God for her, and her son, and in your remembering them, God’s love for you as well.
Copyright © 2020 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
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