Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-january-24-2024
Genesis 16:1-16
Hagar and Ishmael
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”
6 “Your servant is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Two days ago, we based our Reflection on a passage from Genesis about the mysterious ritual by which God formalized the covenant with Abram and his family. Today’s reading has a similar feel about it. It’s from a time in the distant past, when people lived by customs that are almost unimaginable to us in the digital age. But in spite of the ancient setting of the story, when you look closely, it’s surprising how much it has to say to people like us who are trying to follow Jesus in our time.
The story comes from a time when slave-owning was a part of almost every culture on earth. And a slave is what Hagar was, in spite of the somewhat euphemistic term “maidservant” that’s used in the text. For people from our time, it’s unsettling to read that Abram’s wife Sarai would feel free to exploit Hagar as an instrument for producing children, and to put her at the sexual disposal of her husband.
But some of the human dynamics of the situation seem clear and familiar, even to us living four thousand years later. As soon as Hagar realizes she’s pregnant, she starts to act arrogantly toward Sarai. For a woman in the ancient would, the ability to produce children was the central aspect of her value. So it’s easy to imagine a slave who finds herself pregnant feeling like she’s the real mistress of the household now.
And it’s also easy to imagine Sarai turning her fury on Abram when she begins to feel marginalized in her own family. Even though it was her idea to have children through Hagar, she blames the whole thing on her husband when the idea starts to leave a bitter taste in her mouth.
But if the idea of exploiting Hagar for child-bearing seems unsettling, Abram’s lack of concern for Hagar and her child – his only son – is even more disturbing. Abram callously washes his hands of the whole matter. He stands aside and allows Sarai to mistreat Hagar, who eventually flees. An Angel of the Lord intervenes, promising Hagar that she will be the mother of a great people, and she goes back to endure the abuse of Sarai.
(As you might be aware, Muslim tradition says that they are the descendants of Ishmael, Hagar’s son.)
It seems to me the heart of this story is that Sarai and Abram, having been promised by God that they will have many descendants, are shown to lose faith in God’s promise. The descendants aren’t showing up, they’re getting old, so the couple take matters into their own hands. But of course, it doesn’t work out – as things usually don’t when we choose to let our will, not God’s, be done.
A lack of patience is part of our sinful human nature. We tend to think God should operate according to our timetable. That’s true of our lives of faith, too. We expect God to bless our efforts when we want them blessed. We want our prayers answered right now. And so on. But our God, who has a long track record of keeping his promises, also has a long track record of setting his own timetable. We’re called to keep praying and working and serving and growing in the faith, and trust that God will do what he’s promised to do.
There are a couple of other things about this story that seem particularly interesting. One is that Abram and Sarai come off looking like really crummy people. They’re perfectly willing to exploit Hagar for their own purposes, and then casually discard her and her son when it suits them. That’s not that uncommon in the Old Testament. The people at the center of the stories usually aren’t particularly virtuous people. So one of the most important lessons of these stories is that God has often worked out his purposes in history through imperfect people.
That’s an important point. We need to keep in mind that our imperfections don’t mean we can’t be useful to God. And for that matter, God might be doing great things through people around us whose flaws are obvious to us. It’s sometimes hard for us to accept both of those ideas, but these “warts-and-all” portrayals of the characters in the Bible make them hard to ignore.
And finally, the story of Hagar and her cruel mistreatment offers a word of hope for those who are exploited and abused by the world. For women who are used by men and then discarded. For people who are regarded as ‘second class’ because of their social status or race. For workers who are put on the street when their employer can make more profit by shipping their jobs elsewhere. God hears the cries of the exploited and abused Hagar in this story, and even though she is not one of the “chosen people,” God shows her mercy and love, and provides for her and her child.
So as we said, in spite of the ancient setting of this story, it has a surprising amount of resonance with the lives of people in our own time.
Let’s pray. Lord, we recognize that exploitation and abuse are still tragic parts of the world in which we live. Help us to recognize those things when we see them, and protect us from casually accepting the exploitation and abuse of others when those things make our own lives easier. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
Recent Comments