A Surprising Family of Faith: Hagar, the Forgotten

Gen. 16:1-15
July 21, 2019
Matt Goodale

This week I came across a list of things you’d never expect to hear in church:Hey! It’s my turn to sit on the front pew!

Pastor, I was so enthralled, I never noticed your sermon went over time 25 minutes.

Personally, I find witnessing much more enjoyable than golf.

I love it when we sing hymns I’ve never heard before!

Since we’re all here, let’s start the worship service early!

Nothing inspires me and strengthens my commitment like our annual stewardship campaign!

And my personal favorite: Pastor, we’d like to send you to this Bible Seminar in the Bahamas.

I think we can all agree that we’d be surprised to hear most of these things come out of anyone’s mouth in church! We are usually surprised when something is so far out of the ordinary or so unexpected that it catches us off guard. Some of us love surprises. But most of us, if we’re honest, don’t like to be surprised. Life is much simpler and easier when things are predictable and happen the way we expect them to. Yet it’s funny how we’re all gathered here to worship a God who seems to make a living off of surprising us. God is often more unpredictable than we expect. Now, God is predictable in certain things: we can count on God to be loving rather than vengeful; gracious rather than vindictive; we can count on certain characteristics of God to always be true. However, we see throughout Scripture a God who continually surprises us with the unexpected and unpredictable ways God chooses to include people in the family of faith. We look at the people, the nation that God chooses to interact with and reveal His love to the whole world through, and it makes us scratch our heads. Last week we looked at Jacob, whom God renames Israel, who was a cheat, a con artist, and a master manipulator, and yet God includes him in the family of faith and promises to bless him.

In this sermon series we began last week, we’re looking at how we are all part of a surprising family of faith; we all belong to a family that is represented as a tapestry that is being woven by God. All of our stories are threads that are necessary to be used by God in this beautiful tapestry He is weaving. We saw last week through Jacob’s story that there is no cookie-cutter model of faith that fits into this tapestry; all of our faith stories are different, defined by our varied life experiences, and they are all needed to tell of God’s love. All of our stories reveal a unique aspect of God’s love for us all. And so this week, as we continue our series, we should be ready to be surprised by yet another unexpected inclusion into God’s grand tapestry.

Enter Hagar, stage right. Now Hagar arrives into the Genesis narrative somewhat abruptly. Where we pick up today in chapter 16 is the first time we hear her name, and she only receives 14 verses more to her story after this narrative. Her story seems to function as an excursus in the biblical narrative—a digression from the main story which follows Abraham and Sarah, the mother and father of Israel. We could probably extract Hagar’s story from our Bibles and the rest of the story would flow all the same; nobody would notice that something is missing. Yet for some reason biblical authors decided to include this story. It is a story that reveals a God who works on the margins of society and in obscurity. It is a story in which a woman who would have been forgotten in any other culture, is remembered by Israel. It is a story where God looks upon someone who is overlooked by everyone else. It is a story which should comfort those of us who feel ourselves to be on the margins, overlooked and forgotten. And it is a story which should afflict those of us who are too comfortable and would like to ignore and forget about those on the margins. This is Hagar’s story:

My feet hit the ground with the frenzied, yet patterned click clack of my heels scraping the dry, scorched earth. My mouth was parched, a mix of dry spittle and sand. The sun, though it pounded upon me with the intensity of a fire upon a dry log, it was my lifeline; my only compass as I ran on the road towards Shur, the only place I thought might be safe. I was fleeing. Running away from my master, Sarai. Running away from what had been my home for many years. Many people think the life of a servant is all gloom and toil, but I didn’t mind it too much. It put a roof over my head and food in my belly. The problems begin when your master decides they have something they need to take out on you. That’s why I’m fleeing.

My master Sarai believed the wrong name. She was called barren by others. She believed them. I still remember the day she took me and put me in bed with her husband, Abram. She needed a child and I had a womb. My womb was legally her property, but I’ll never forget how nonchalantly she told me I needed to sleep with her husband to bear him a child. She said it so casually as if it was no big deal; she did not look me in the eye when she told me this; she did not call me by name. She merely gave my body away and I had no choice but to acquiesce. 

But that’s what my life is. I’m used to it. A life of acquiescence and passivity. I am well practiced at not allowing myself to feel too much, because feelings are the beginning of insubordination; I had been taught that by the other servants. Better just to not think and not feel. It makes it easier to be treated as less than human. And oh boy, am I ever used to being treated as less than human; most of the time I’m practically invisible. But that’s what happens when you have three strikes against your name. Because not only am I a servant, automatically one of the lowest tiers on the social class, but I am a woman and a foreigner—an Egyptian, to be specific. I am convinced that most of the other servants didn’t even know my name; I was just “that Egyptian” to them. Labeled and written off as quickly as footprints are erased from the sand. Invisible. Forgotten. Nobody to call me by name. Nobody to look me in the eye and tell me that I have worth beyond the hands I have to toil and the womb I have to offer.

And so I fled. I did not flee because I was invisible, but because I became too visible to the woman who held all the power. As soon as I felt the first signs of life in my womb, I was immediately elated! I knew the child would be raised as Abram’s, but that child was still mine. I ran to tell Sarai the good news of what had happened and was met not with pleasure, but with contempt. Sarai, the beautiful woman I had known who was always so full of such laughter had no more laughter to share. She believed the name they called her: barren. She began to take it out on me. And so I fled.

I did what was within my power to do. I fled. I fled with Abram’s child. My child. Now I have been running for two days, refusing to look back. Who says a servant doesn’t have some agency? Who says a woman isn’t able to stand up for herself? Who says a foreigner isn’t worth more than cheap labor? I will show them.

I dipped my full head into the spring of cool water, taking in full gulps, satiating my thirst. I was lucky to have found such a spring in the middle of the wilderness on the road to Shur. Perhaps my mute idols had heard my prayers and decided I was worthy to provide some assistance to. I reminded myself to say a couple extra prayers and make a couple extra burnt offerings at the next roadside altar I came across. But now, as I leaned back against a rock at the edge of the spring, I let the water drip from my head down my back and my face, coating my lips with a cool balm. 

And then it happened. As I turned my head to survey the land, deciding which way to follow the road, there was a man sitting on another rock about ten arm’s lengths away from me. I jumped in my seat, startled. When had this man gotten here? Wait, was he even a man? He had the face of a man, but the rest of his body seemed masked in the shadows of a nearby rock outcropping. 

Then the man-figure spoke to me in a calming voice: “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”

He had said “Hagar”. He knew my name! And I knew immediately that I was in the presence of someone that was not human. I quickly got to my knees and bowed down, quick to trust anyone who had the decency to call me by name. I told him the truth: “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.”

And the stranger spoke again: “Return to your mistress, and submit to her, for I will watch over you and see to it that you are taken care of.” The words “return” and “submit” stung me. I had only been free two days and this stranger wanted me to go back to the life of suffering and invisibility I had endured for far too long? How as this right? I opened my mouth to contest, but before I could, he spoke again: “But you will not return to your former life empty-handed. You will go with a promise and a hope. I will surely multiply your offspring so that there are too many to be numbered.” 

I stared at the stranger in disbelief, pretty sure that I had left my mouth wide open. Me, Hagar, be the mother of offspring too great to be numbered? It was almost too hard to believe, yet this stranger spoke with an authority that I had never before heard. It was not the same authority as my masters Abram and Sarai; there was a tenderness to it. I looked him in the eyes and he looked at me as no one ever had before. He seemed to look past my dark skin, past the marks I bore as a result of years of servitude and I am sure that he saw into my very soul. The way he looked at me, I knew he loved me, yet I knew not why. But I was comforted by it. 

The stranger spoke again: “Behold, you are pregnant and you shall bear a son.” He smiled. “ You shall call his name Ishmael, because Elohim  has listened to your affliction.” 

I sat there, stunned in disbelief. Elohim? Does he mean, Elohim, the God of Abram and Sarai, the God who had made a covenant with my masters to make them a great nation. This very same God had followed me here and was now offering me the same promise of offspring? How did this make any sense? 

The stranger carried on with his pronouncement: “Your son shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” I continued to sit in stunned disbelief. But now, as the stranger pronounced this final promise upon my soon-to-be son, I began to cry. I put my head in my lap and cried uncontrollably, not caring what the stranger thought of me. To most soon-to-be mothers, hearing that their son would live a life of continual strife and fighting would not come as good news. But I did not cry tears of mourning, but tears of joy, because this promise was great news. This promise meant that my son would free. This promise meant that my son and his offspring would no longer have to live as I had lived: invisible, forgotten, less than human. He would be free.

As I lifted my head from my lap, wiping the tears from my eyes, I did what no man or woman had done before. I named Elohim. Most of the time Elohim does the naming: Abraham, Isaac, Israel, Ishmael. But I, Hagar, am the only person in your sacred Scriptures who was bold enough to name Elohim. I know not why I did or what came over me, but I gave God a name: atah el rahi. “You are a God of seeing.” I named God because He was the only one who ever truly saw me for what I was and loved me.

This is indeed a surprising story. Hagar’s story is chalked full of surprises at every turn. Hagar is the only person who names God in all of Scripture. Not even the great patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac or Israel—were bold enough to name God. But Hagar was. Hagar, a slave and a foreigner, is the first person God visits personally. God hasn’t even visited Abram and Sarai personally yet. But God visits Hagar. Hagar is also the first and only woman, foreigner or servant in all of Scripture to receive the promise of innumerable descendants.

A story this surprising is meant give us pause. Because the biblical writers decided to interrupt the flow of the Genesis narrative in order to include Hagar’s story. Hagar, someone who is an outcast, one the margins of society in every possible way—a woman, a servant and a foreigner—is ignored, abused and treated as less than human, is seen by God. God is the only character in this story to call Hagar by name, to call her anything but servant. 

Perhaps some of us here this morning feel like Hagar. Some of us feel overlooked, forgotten or invisible. Our society is very good at creating margins and forcing people into them; the margins are occupied by people who do not fit the current trend in what is considered valuable. Our society tends to value light skin over dark skin. It tends to value men over women. It values citizens over foreigners. Straight over gay. Rich over poor. Those with a home over those who have no home. Our society values youthfulness over old age. Health over sickness. Able-bodied over disabled. Mentally healthy over mentally ill. And the list goes on. Many of us in this room do not check all the boxes of what is considered “valuable.” Perhaps some of us have our own stories of how we feel invisible, forgotten, marginalized. Perhaps like Hagar, some of us carry wounds from past mistreatment due to our marginalized status. 

But today I have good news: Hagar’s story reveals a God who often works on the margins and in obscurity. We worship a God who looks upon those our society overlooks. We worship a God who has promised that the last shall be first, that those who mourn will be blessed. We worship a God who gave teachings and commands with a preference for society’s poor and powerless. We worship a God who sent prophets to reprimand and warn Israel and Judah for the ways they oppressed the poor and placed unbearable yokes on the marginalized. We worship a God, who took on the form of a man, not to hang around society’s privileged and elite, but to spend time with sinners, with prostitutes, with tax-collectors, with women and foreigners. Jesus spent most of his time on earth with those who found themselves on the margins of society. In Jesus’ first sermon, recorded in Luke 4, inaugurating the start of his ministry, he preached from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

If we read Scripture with an eye for it, we find that God seems to have a preferential option for the poor, the vulnerable, the downtrodden and those on the margins of society. As Hagar realized and appropriately named God, we worship a God who sees. A God who sees those we forget to see or choose to overlook. God sees Hagar’s affliction and God offers her a promise and a hope. Now, I need to admit that this is the place where I really struggle with this story. God tells Hagar to return to Sarai. God tells Hagar to return to her abuser and to her life of servitude. We know that five chapters later Hagar is officially banished from Abram and Sarai’s camp and is provided safe passage and provisions by God. But I struggle with a God who would send Hagar back to her affliction. 

Now, I want to make one thing very clear: we are not supposed to take any moral imperatives from this part of the story. This passage in no way encourages us to return to abusive or unhealthy situations. Too often this passage is used by preachers intentionally or unintentionally to suggest that we must return to abusive relationships to learn to bear our cross, or to return to unhealthy situations to be a light. This passage does not say that! If you happen to be in an abusive relationship or an unhealthy situation, then you are not called to remain in or return to that relationship. It is your responsibility to be safe and that is ultimately what God desires for you. If you find yourself in this situation, then please come to me or someone you trust and we will help get you safe.

So after that clarification, even though this passage does not provide a moral imperative to return to our affliction, I still wrestle with this story, because I know there’s some truth in it. For some reason, God does not snap His fingers and make Hagar’s affliction disappear. She has a moment of respite with God in the wilderness, but then must return to her life. The same is true of us. For those of us who find ourselves on the margins, overlooked, afflicted or invisible—for some reason God does not snap His fingers and rescue us immediately from our marginalized status. I wish I knew why. But I don’t and much like Jacob last week, I wrestle with God over this. 

However, Hagar does not return to her old life empty-handed. She returns with a promise and hope of something better that is to come. This promise and hope might have been all that allowed Hagar to return and to continue to endure her life on the margins; the hope that she was being watched over by a God who actually sees her and a promise that her affliction will one day be no more. 

For those of us who feel pushed to the margins, we also do not return empty-handed. We cling to the promise that God sees us, calls us by name and loves us, even when nobody else seems to notice us or treat us the way we deserve to be. We also cling to the hope that one day Jesus will wipe away the margins, and that in the kingdom of God we will all be embraced, looked upon and called by name, because there will be no more distinctions; no more social hierarchies and stratifications; we will not be forgotten or overlooked, but we will all be loved and embraced the way we are. 

The good news is that we have a glimpse of this promise, a glimpse of God’s kingdom, here among us. Jesus proclaimed that God’s kingdom is near and indeed we have a glimpse of it in the Church. The Church should be a place where there is no distinction, there is no judgment, there is no hierarchy and there are no margins. We are called to embrace one another, to see one another and to call one another by name, the way God has embraced, seen and called us by name. 

It is said that art should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Theologian Rachel Held Evans suggests that perhaps Scripture is meant to do the same. Stories in Scripture like Hagar’s should comfort those of us who feel ourselves to be on the margins. And it should afflict those of us who may be too comfortable and too privileged to notice those on the margins. I find myself in this latter category. We as a church, as a people chosen by God, have received a beautiful calling to become a united body, in which there is no distinction and no margins. It is a beautiful body in which the marginalized and the privileged come together to look upon one another, to call each other by name and to be loved by each other. Those of us who may not find ourselves on the margins of society, who are not invisible, who are not overlooked, we are invited by God to repent, to lament the times we have walked by those we should have noticed, and we are invited to participate in a holy community that is set apart to be a light for the world: a community where all are welcome, all are seen, all are known and all are called by name. 

We have been called together by the God who sees. Will we allow ourselves to be seen? Will we allow ourselves to open our eyes and to see those who we might rather overlook and forget because it is more comfortable? We have all been invited into a surprising a family of faith. A family that has no margins, that overlooks nobody and invites us all to be called by name.

Church, let us go out into our neighborhoods, our work places, our homes, our street corners and let us allow ourselves to be afflicted by those who are overlooked by others. Let us allow ourselves to feel their pain. And let us look them in the eye, call them by name and treat them as one of us, a member of a surprising family that God is calling together from the ends of the earth. Let us allow our God who sees, to give us eyes to see those who have gone too long unseen and too long without being called by name. We go out into the world as the hands and feet of God, a God who sees, promises and calls us by name. Amen.