Hagar at the center
/Sermon for Laurel Heights UMC, San Antonio
Genesis 21:8-21
We are living in a moment of stories. Certainly it’s a moment of many other things—masks and a frightening new virus, working from home and online church. But this is also a moment of stories. Some are reflections we share on our new, COVID-induced lifestyle. Some have come as testimonies from health care and other frontline workers, as our nation figures out how to be safe and make a living, and what it means to value each other’s lives.
Still other stories have come to us from the news—stunning stories of Black American men and women killed without justification in the street and in their homes, sometimes by law enforcement and sometimes by fellow citizens. These stories are not new; what is new is the breadth of the audience hearing and digesting them. Cell phone cameras, social media platforms—these have called the attention of Americans to a reality, a lived story of brutality and systemic oppression against Black people and other people of color, that we have since forever not wanted to believe but whose truth is incontrovertible, clearly unfolding before our eyes.
We, as twenty-first century American citizens and Christians, particularly those of us who are white, are facing a moment of decision. The tragic stories of this moment and the people whose lives they represent are asking us, are you willing to be part of crafting a new narrative? Are you willing to take a hard, different look at what you’ve thought you knew, in order to learn something different? Will you lay down the stories you think you know and the meaning you’ve learned to give them? And are you willing to live differently as a result, for the sake of love, mercy, and justice, so that all fellow human beings on your watch might not just survive, but thrive?
I heard a quote in a podcast this week: “If you don’t own the story, the story owns you. And if you don’t own the story, you can’t write the ending.” Here the word “own” doesn’t just mean to possess the rights to the story, or to hold authority over what the story means. To actively own the story means to reckon with it, to honestly encounter and absorb the full truth of it, even where it’s disturbing or feels threatening. It means to stand before that truth, without trying to change its existence. For us, in this nation, it’s time to own some stories.
Today’s Genesis text tells a story that invites us to read in a new and different way, a way of reading that could serve us in our current national moment of challenge and decision and help us own our story. One of the greatest tools for discernment and learning when we engage Biblical texts is to put ourselves in the place of different characters, and not just the one we automatically identify with or see as familiar. In Genesis 21, instead of seeing this as one more chapter in the long saga of Abraham and Sarah, I want to invite you to read from the perspective of Hagar. Hagar is a slave, a girl, a dark-skinned foreigner. Yet despite her vulnerability and lack of social power, if we read this right, she is the protagonist of her own story. And the fact that white or European readers have not generally encountered her in that role is itself part of our story.
I want to note here that today I’m drawing from the work of Dr. Delores S. Williams and her book, Sisters in the Wilderness, which hit me like a ton of bricks back in seminary. Williams identifies in the figure of Hagar a prototype for the struggle and bold survival of African American women. I recommend it as a way to learn about racial injustice from a Biblical angle. I am grateful for the ways Dr. Williams has challenged and changed my thinking, and I’m grateful to share her wisdom today.
Today’s passage from Genesis 21 has its roots in Genesis 16 and really cannot be understood outside that context, so I’m going to tell some of that back story. I invite you to find that chapter in your own Bible. Abraham and Sarah are old people and are having trouble trusting that God is actually going to do what God has said, which is to give them a whole nation of descendants. Sarah in her impatience decides to act, to help God out, as it were, and she gives her slave to her husband as his second wife. That word “wife” means that any child born to the slave can be counted as a legitimate heir and relieve Sarah of the burden of not having her own child. Sarah is exercising her complete control over not just Hagar’s labor as her slave, but over the intimacy of her body and its life-giving power. Some have imagined that being handed over to Abraham in this way might have been an honor or a step up for Hagar. But—and I hope you’ll excuse me for getting real about this here in church—but there’s a word for sex without consent, without a woman’s voice or decision-making power over her own body. Though we try to soften it by putting it through a filter of slavery in a foreign land, thousands of years ago, and however well it fit into the customs of the time, today we would call this rape, or at least forced surrogacy. That would be a more accurate description of what happened to Hagar at the hands of Sarah and Abraham.
When Hagar became pregnant, the story says she viewed Sarah with contempt. Was this a jab at Sarah’s childlessness? Or resentment for her having turned Hagar over to Abraham? We don’t know—the person recording this story wasn’t worried about the internal workings of women’s lives. But we do know that as soon as Sarah’s plan turned out just the way she planned it, she no longer wanted it that way. Sarah complained to Abraham, who fully cooperated with her plan. And even with his potential heir already growing in Hagar’s body—this is their plan—Abraham tells Sarah that Hagar is hers to control. He tells his wife, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Sarah “dealt harshly” with Hagar, the text says, and Hagar made the decision to run away into the wilderness, to escape the abuse.
This, to me, is a very hard story to hear. From my perspective as a white person and a person of faith, a person of this book, it’s a hard story to begin to own.
As chapter 16 continues, despite the many dangers that surround her, Hagar’s path is one of life, thanks to her own courage and the provision of God. She makes her way to a spring of water, and there the angel of the Lord finds her and speaks to her. The voice of God counsels her to go back home, as there is surely no safe place for her, pregnant and alone, in the desert. As Dr. Williams notes, this moment is about survival, not liberation. God promises Hagar that the baby inside her will live and become a great nation, in a promise that sounds very similar to the one God made to Abraham. And then Hagar does what no other person in the Bible does—she gives God a new name. As one who has seen and been seen by God, she gives God the name El Roi—“God Who Sees.” She returns from the wilderness. She bears her child and names him Ishmael, which means “God hears.”
We fast forward to Genesis 21, where Sarah has finally given birth to Isaac, and we find Ishmael playing with his little brother. Jealousy spikes in Sarah upon seeing them together, and once again she uses her power to make the story go the way she wants. She demands that Abraham get rid of Ishmael and Hagar. Again, they are cast away from the safety of home and into the wilderness. Once the water they carried is gone, Hagar cries out, unable to bear seeing the death of her son. But God hears Ishmael, and God opens Hagar’s eyes, and instead of death, she sees a well. This time she does not return to Abraham and Sarah but goes on to raise up her boy and to find a wife for him from her homeland. And Ishmael grew and flourished, and as a man, he became the father of Islam.
It’s quite a story, especially when you read it with Hagar at the center. I know this is a heavy word in a heavy moment. But I can only dare to believe that this is a hopeful moment as well. Power relationships, injustice, and rationalization have been at work between human beings for a long time, probably since the beginning. We certainly see them shot through even the most ancient parts of the Biblical witness. We see, too, that the constructs of race and slavery have played their insidious role in American society—and, honestly, in the American church—since our collective beginning. This truth owns us right now. But if we can look it squarely in the eye, empowered by the love and grace of God at work within us, we might get to be part of the holy work of turning it around.
What story do you need to own in your heart of hearts? Where can you find space to learn from a new voice? And what difference will it make in what you do next? Go back and re-read our history, centering new characters whose voices have cried out for centuries but whom we have not heard. Engage new people in real conversations, trusting and being trustworthy enough to bear their pain and share your own, and discover their beauty and giftedness. Find a place to give your money or your time to open a closed door or relieve a heavy burden. And stay connected with your faith family, where we share with each other God’s life-giving truth.
In closing, I want to name three more Black women protagonists who lived in times of hardship and danger. There are books and movies about them, so you can learn their stories. I share their names as beacons of hope. Henrietta Lacks, a poor woman whose resilient cells were taken from her body without her permission and whose genetic material changed the course of medical research; Ruby Bridges, who at six years old in her little dress bravely walked down the stairs and integrated an all-white Louisiana school; and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, who testified, “God's time is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.”
Take heart, beloved ones, for God’s time is always near. May the God who sees, the God who listens, inspire us to be people who see and listen. And may this same God, who gave Hagar water and hope in the wilderness, lead us to own this story, so that together we might write for it a new and gracious ending.