In the Wilderness

Genesis 21:8-21

June 25, 2023

 

            In any good story there is the main character or characters. They are usually the protagonist, the person or persons who are the heart of the story. A main character would be Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter in any Harry Potter book, or Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In any good story there are other characters who move the story along. There are antagonists. Antagonists raise the level of conflict and tension in the story. If you have ever read a story that has no conflict or tension, you know that it’s actually pretty boring. I would say that Ebeneezer Scrooge might be the antagonist as well as the protagonist in Dicken’s classic Christmas story. Lord Voldemort was definitely the antagonist in the Harry Potter series, and Mr. Darcy, who was both the foil for Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice as well as being her love interest. Along with these characters, there are tertiary characters and minor characters. A minor character is one who is mentioned because there is some need for them in the bigger plot unfolding, but a minor character doesn’t really affect the overall story in any significant way. When Ebeneezer Scrooge flings open his window on Christmas morning, a changed man after his encounter with the three ghosts, the young boy he encounters is not a major character. That boy is not a secondary character or an antagonist. He is a minor character but is needed there to help Scrooge fulfill his part of the story. The story could have been told another way without the boy, and Scrooge would have still gone forward with his new life.

            For many of my years on this earth, I have believed that Hagar and Ishmael were but minor characters in the story of Abraham and Sarah, and certainly minor characters in the larger arc of God’s story with humanity. I’m not alone in believing this. Hagar and Ishmael have been presented to me through interpretation and tradition as minor characters. Maybe they were necessary to show that God’s promise to Sarah and Abraham would not be circumvented, but they were minor characters when it comes to the story of God.

            Now, before we go any further, let me state emphatically that when I talk about the story of God, I am not referring to something that is make believe or made up. I love good stories, and I’m more than fine with stories that come solely from the imagination of a writer. Stories are powerful. They engage our hearts and our minds. Jesus used the power of story. But to say that we are talking about the stories of God or God’s larger story is not to say that these stories are just creations of a human’s imagination. I believe that they are stories about God told by the people who were directly impacted by God and as a way of conveying their experiences with God. But they are told as stories, so we have the same aspects of story in these divinely inspired ones as we do in other stories. There are characters. There is a plot being advanced, etc.

            And as I said, I believed for a long, long time that Hagar and Ishmael were minor characters in the overall story of God and God’s people. But I have come to learn that sometimes what seems a minor character to one person is a major character to another. As I understand it, in the Koran Ishmael is anything but a minor character. As God promised in these verses before us, Ishmael would also be the father of a great nation, the nation of believers that became Islam. But beyond that, Hagar is also a major character to Christians. To our Black sisters, Hagar is anything but a minor character. She has been and continues to be a source of hope and inspiration to theologians and folks in the pew alike. She is seen as a woman of courage and great strength, a witness to God’s promise, and one who not only finds God in the wilderness but names God in the wilderness.

            In chapter 16, the first time we meet Hagar, she is introduced to us as the enslaved Egyptian woman in the house of Abraham. She is Sarah’s maidservant. And even though God has promised Abraham that his descendants will be vaster than the stars in the sky or the sand beneath his feet, Sarah continues to experience the heartbreak of infertility until she is well past the age where a woman could conceive and have a baby. So, Sarah takes the promise into her own hands. She “gives” Hagar to Abraham. Hagar has a baby, and Ishmael is born. There is a son. There is an heir to the promise after all. But while Hagar is pregnant, Sarah thinks that Hagar is looking down on her. Hagar can have a baby, but Sarah can’t. And all this fury and rage and resentment builds up in Sarah. She goes to Abraham and complains about Hagar’s attitude, but he just tells her to treat Hagar however she wishes. And Sarah takes that literally. She is brutal and cruel to Hagar. Our translation of Sarah’s action toward Hagar is weak to say the least. What we read in chapter 16 as “treated harshly” is an understatement. Sarah is as brutal and violent to Hagar as the Egyptians will be to the Israelites when they become the enslaved ones.

            So, Hagar runs. She runs away to the wilderness. She is young and pregnant and alone, and while she is in the wilderness God meets here there. God sends her back to Sarah and Abraham. While that seems terribly unfair and unjust of God to send her back to the person who treated her so horribly, the wilderness was surely no place for a young woman alone to give birth. It would be better and safer for Hagar and the unborn baby to be in the larger community where she could be taken care of when her time came. So, Hagar goes back to Sarah and Abraham and the larger family around them. She goes back, but not before she names God. Hagar, this person that I’ve always believed to be a minor character, names God. She calls God, El-roi, the God who sees because God saw her and she has seen God and walked away from the encounter still alive.

            And now in today’s lesson we come to this part of Hagar’s story. Hagar has given birth to Ishmael, and Sarah has given birth to Isaac. God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah was kept. And when Isaac is weaned, Abraham throws a feast in celebration. But in the midst of these joyful festivities, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac. Traditional interpretations have insinuated that Ishmael was teasing Isaac, or that something was happening that was inappropriate. But the word that is translated as playing shares the same root with the word that inspired Isaac’s name – laughing. Ishmael was laughing. There is nothing nefarious about it. Ishmael was laughing with his brother. So maybe while we’ve been taught that this minor character was threatening or hurting his little brother, and Sarah stepped in to protect her son, maybe something else was happening instead. Maybe Ishmael’s real transgression was that he was, as one commentator wrote, “Isaacing.” There was too much similarity to Isaac. Sarah saw that this eldest child of Abraham would be entitled to first born rights and privileges. Ishmael would be entitled to at least half of Abraham’s wealth. So, when Sarah saw him laughing, Isaacing, she saw not two brothers enjoying the party, but one true heir and one illegitimate son threatening the true heir’s place and position. And Sarah won’t have that.

            She goes to Abraham once more and demands that this woman and her son be cast out. Get rid of them, Abraham! That woman’s son will not take the place of mine. Abraham is distressed, but God tells him to do what Sarah wishes. Early in the morning, Abraham gives Hagar and Ishmael some bread and a skin of water and sends them out into the wilderness. Hagar fled to the wilderness once before because the dangers of the wilderness seemed better than the cruelty she received at home, but now she and her boy have been banished there. And she believed that she and her son would both die there.

            But the God who sees is also the God who hears. God hears the cries of Ishmael, and God is not a passive listener. God hears, and God acts. God saves Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness once again. God told Abraham, just as God told Hagar, that Ishmael would also be the father of a great nation. Just as God kept his promise to Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child, God keeps his promise to Hagar and Ishmael. God was with them just as God was with Abraham and Sarah.

            Perhaps, Hagar is not just a minor character after all. Maybe when it comes to God’s story, there are no minor characters. Maybe there are no insiders and outsiders, just God’s people, God’s children, different from us, strangers to us, but who are loved and cherished by God as much as we are. It seems to me that is the underlying theme of God’s story. It is the heart of the plot, but we miss it over and over again. We see others as minor characters and ourselves as the only main characters. We put people into categories. We create labels. We think that there are main characters and that the ones we see as minor characters don’t matter as much. We all do it. We all try to structure the world in this way. But if as we read in Matthew’s gospel that God watches over a creature as small as the sparrow, then not only does God watch over us, but God watches over all his children. It seems to me that Hagar and Ishmael are as much a part of the promise as Sarah and Abraham.

            There are no minor characters in God’s story. That is good news. That is the good news of the gospel. God sees us, all of us. God hears us, all of us. God is with us, all of us, in the wilderness and beyond. There are no minor characters in God’s story. May we remember that and give thanks.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.