The God Who Hears (Hagar’s Story)
Based on Genesis 6 and 12
Rev. Deborah Troester, June 18, 2023, STHPC
Most of you have probably heard of Abraham, whose story is told in Genesis. God calls Abraham to leave his country and his kindred to travel to a land that God will show him, the promised land, where God will bless him and make his name great. God promises that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the sky or the sand of the seashore. He and his wife Sarah are the progenitors of the Jewish race and religion, through their son Isaac. But not much is heard about Hagar, an Egyptian woman, who was their slave, and the mother of Abraham’s first son, Ishmael. Usually if this story is mentioned at all, it is to emphasize that from the beginning Judaism and Islam were opposed to each other, as Abraham made Isaac his successor, not Ishmael, Hagar’s son, even though Ishmael was the elder. Hagar and Ishmael feature prominently in Islam, which claims that the Prophet Muhammad descended from Ishmael. This morning we will take a look at this little-known story, and see what we can learn from it.
First, it must be said that Hagar was a slave. As we read in Genesis 12, “Abraham took his wife Sarah and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.” With tomorrow’s celebration of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the freeing of the last slaves after the Civil War, we must remember that Bible stories such as this were used to justify slavery for millennia. If a man as respected as Abraham, our father in the faith, owned slaves, then there must be nothing wrong with it, right? We could spend some time here reflecting that not every cultural practice recorded in the Bible is meant to be emulated here and now in the 21st century. We would also do well to repent of the evil the church has done throughout the ages by condoning and defending the institution of slavery, and its legacy of racism. As recently as this past July, the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.’s General Assembly passed a resolution of repentance for “our failure to recognize and take responsibility for the legacy of slavery… for the injustice, pain, humiliation, and suffering imposed on African Americans by our ancestors and ourselves through actions and inaction. We repent of our complicity in failing to act in mutual loving relationship.”
As if being a slave wasn’t bad enough, the name “Hagar,” may not have been this woman’s actual name. It means “foreigner,” “immigrant,” or “flight” referring to one who has fled from another country, a refugee. Indeed, scripture tells us she was an Egyptian. That Abraham and Sarah may simply have referred to her as “that foreign woman” adds insult to injury, reminding her constantly that she didn’t belong.
Despite Abraham being a slave-owner, a fact we tend to overlook, most Christians and Jews think highly of him and Sarah, our ancestors in the faith. It is true that they did many good things – Abraham had faith in the one true God at a time when nearly everyone else worshiped idols. He gave his nephew Lot the best lands on which to graze his livestock, he showed hospitality to strangers, and he prayed earnestly for God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He made peace with his neighbors whenever it was possible.
But in this matter of Hagar, Abraham and Sarah act cruelly. They abused her by using her to provide an heir, a child that would not belong to her, but to her master and mistress. She had no say in the matter. Then, when Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael, Sarah felt disrespected, even though the whole sordid affair had been her idea. She was angry with Hagar and treated her harshly, while Abraham looked the other way. As a result, Hagar ran away. Rather than disobedience, I think this shows initiative and self-respect on her part. She wasn’t willing to put up with being mistreated. When God told her to go back to Abraham, it was not an endorsement of slavery, but rather a way to save her life and the life of her unborn child.
In the wilderness, beside a well, the angel of the Lord appears to her and promises her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” Thus Hagar becomes the first woman in the Bible to receive an annunciation – an appearance, or special message, from God. Hagar is also the first and only woman in the Bible to be promised many children. God tells her to name her son Ishmael, meaning “God hears,” “for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.” Hagar is also the first person in the Bible, male or female, to give God a name: “El-Roi” – the God who sees. There in the wilderness, Hagar encounters God – the God who hears, the God who sees, the God who has given heed to her affliction. Author and pastor Debbie Blue comments that this is “a significant moment for monotheism. Unlike other deities that are distant and unapproachable, the God of Abraham and Hagar draws near, pays attention, seeks relationship...”
In the cultural context of that day and time, it’s not surprising that God would appear to a respected man of faith such as Abraham, a man of some wealth and power in his culture, but God appearing to a female slave, a foreigner to boot? Here the biblical text disrupts the patriarchal culture in which it was written. The Holy Spirit breaks through to show that God sees and hears everyone – not just the great, but the little people as well. Hagar represents the oppressed and mistreated of the world: a slave who runs away; a victim of abuse; a homeless mother with a young child, cast out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst;
an immigrant with no family to help her, no legal rights to claim. She is a woman without protection or sustenance in a world, where to be without husband, father, or other male protector, was to be sentenced to a life of poverty and even starvation. Hagar is the epitome of those of whom the ancient Jewish laws and prophets spoke: “You shall not deprive an immigrant or an orphan of justice; (Deut. 24:17); “Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien [immigrant], or the poor;” (Zechariah 7:10). Hagar’s story tells of a God who hears and sees the sorrows of the hopeless, the tears of the helpless. It shows God’s heart of love toward the outcast, those who are despised and taken advantage of by the powerful. It introduces an over-arching theme in the Bible: welcome for the stranger, belonging for those who did not belong.
God appears to Hagar not once, but twice. After Sarah gives birth to Isaac, she tosses out Hagar and Ishmael like garbage. Genesis tells us that Abraham is saddened, but does not intervene. Wandering in the desert, they run out of water. Convinced that they will die there, Hagar tells the boy to sit in the shade of a bush, and goes off to weep,
for she did not wish to see the death of her child. Again God speaks to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.” God did not abandon them, but rather blessed them.
Karen Gonzalez, author and immigrant advocate, writes:
“Hagar will get to watch her boy grow up and will see him marry from among her own people, the Egyptians. Unlike Sarah, who laughed at God’s promises, Hagar responds to God’s provision with open hands. She has a special understanding of God because God cared for her and Ishmael in the desert as a compassionate mother would have done. God cared for her deeply and tangibly regardless of the fact that she was an enslaved foreigner. And all this even though she did not bear the child of the promise to Abraham.”
Gonzalez continues:
“Hagar in the desert reminds all of us that the Spirit can be found in the places we least expect: with the poor, the outcasts, the enslaved people, the domestic help, and the foreigners. God is present with anyone who is treated as a human resource instead of a human being. God shows up not just for the master and mistress of the house and the native citizens with rights but for the undocumented maid in the kitchen…people who matter deeply to God…made in the image of God.”
This story is primarily about God’s special care and love for the outcast and downtrodden, but it also shows that God hears and sees everyone who suffers and sorrows. Even though Abraham and Sarah sinned in their treatment of Hagar and Ishmael, God still heard their prayers for a son. They had to wait years for their prayer to be answered, but God heard them. God saw them. God sees and hears us, too. May God give us, like Hagar, eyes to see and ears to hear what God is trying to say to us. Amen.
© Deborah Troester, 2023