May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard.  Amen.
Now, if you missed last week’s sermon, it is a real shame…because I didn’t deliver it!  Our graduating seniors rocked the house with their sermons – it was truly a Spirit filled day.
We are in the Spirit time – the season of Pentecost.  And it is in this moment, the Second Sunday after Pentecost that our lectionary does a fork in the road.  We are in Year A, and we return to a Year A focus on Matthew (we have been hearing a lot of John lately, but now we go back to the focus on Matthew), but we are offered two paths, called Track 1 and Track 2, which provide two different pairings of readings for the Hebrew Testament.  The first track of Hebrew Testament readings (“Track 1”) follows major stories and themes, read mostly continuously from week to week.   Like the way we rotate through Matthew, Mark and Luke in Years A, B & C, we do the same with Track 1.  In Year A we begin with Genesis, in Year B we hear some of the great monarchy narratives, and in Year C we read from the later prophets.  The second track of readings follows the Roman Catholic tradition of thematically pairing the Old Testament reading with the Gospel reading, often using a post resurrection lens – employing a sort of foretelling of Jesus Christ’s life and ministry, if you will. This second track is almost identical to our previous Book of Common Prayer lectionary.  Once you select a Track, you are supposed to stay in it.  The great thing about these tracks is that if you leverage them, you will get a wider variety of readings and there will be a six year cycle before hearing the same set of readings for a given Sunday.
So, why am I telling you all this?  Well, I think we can sometimes look at the season of Pentecost – what we call Ordinary time as well…ordinary.  But, this is really when we have a chance to hear some fantastic narratives, particularly in the Hebrew testament.  And, if you were to go to another church, you might not have heard the story we heard in Genesis and Psalm 86.  We are doing Track 1, but if you went somewhere else where they are doing Track 2, you would have heard a reading from Jeremiah and Psalm 69.  Just a little bit of liturgical trivia, in case it ever comes up in a bar challenge.
So, as you can imagine with that introduction, I want to turn our attention to the passage we heard in the first reading from Genesis – the narrative about Abraham & Sarah, Hagar & Ishmael.  But before we do, I want to share with you a story about another couple.  There was a governor and his wife who were returning to her hometown for a high school reunion.  When they got there, they found they needed to get some gas, so they pulled into a local gas station.  The governor went into the little convenience store to pick up a few items, and when he returned, he found his wife laughing and talking enthusiastically with the gas station attendant who was pumping their gas.  When the governor got back to the car, his wife introduced the two of them.  Seems the attendant was an old boyfriend of hers from back in High School.  As they drove off, the governor looked over at his wife who had a far away look, and he said…  “Just think, if you had married him, you’d have been the wife of a gas station attendant instead of a governor.”  She turned and looked at him and said, “I was just thinking that if I had married him, he would be governor!”
I love that story because of the twist at the end – the unexpected, and our story in Genesis has a few of those too.
Now, Track 1 starts sort of in the middle of the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.  So just to catch us up…earlier in Genesis, Abraham and Sarah (or Abram and Sarai as they were then) were told to leave their home in Ur, and that they would travel to a land to given to them, and they would be the ancestors of many nations favored by God.  But, as they got older, they decided to take things into their own hands…maybe God forgot about the progeny promise or something, so Sarah brought her Egyptian slave to Abraham so that a child might happen for them through her.  Well, Hagar, the slave, does get pregnant, and bears a son – Ishmael.  And Abraham asks God to look with favor on his son.  Later, they are told that the two of them will have a child through Sarah, and that comes to pass.  He is called Isaac.
In our story today, Ishmael and Isaac are playing together.  Sarah isn’t happy about this whole “Modern Family” type of arrangement, and now wants Hagar and Ishmael out of the picture.  She is cast out into the wilderness.  She and her son run out of water, and they are about to die, when God hears them.
As with most of the Hebrew testament, this is a rich narrative with really fascinating characters.  Let’s take a look at some of the word play, gender twists, and other unexpected ways that God speaks to us in this story.
The first thing to notice is that Abraham and Sarah try to control God’s grace.  They do this several times on their journey – not trusting in God to deliver, and God intervenes to bail them out of their trouble.  In fact, not once, but twice, Abraham tries to pass his wife off as his sister, even allowing her to be taken as a new spouse for a King, because he is to afraid that something might happen to him – the one the he thinks is the person God promised all this great stuff too.  Hmmm…
God gets him out of those jams, and for reasons I can’t fathom, Sarah doesn’t kill him when she gets back home.  And then they both figure that this whole promise of offspring has to be something that, well, maybe God forgot about?  Or, maybe sort of like God helps those who help themselves?  Whatever.  So that’s when they take Hagar in to Abraham.
Now about Hagar…I love how some translations like to make it all nice and sweet and say she was Sarah’s handmaiden – you know, like Sarah lived in a medieval castle, and this was one of the local daughters of an aristocrat.  To set the record straight – Hagar was a slave.  And she was an Egyptian, a little twist that is so often overlooked.  How the Hebrew people cried out over their enslavement in Egypt…and yet, as we see here, perhaps that was just a turning of the tables?
Hagar didn’t ask to be a slave – might have been sold by family, or kidnapped into it, we don’t know.  And she didn’t ask to be given over to this man for sex.  She was a victim in this story, and so was her son.  But Hagar does something no other biblical character does… and it shows her strength, her courage, and God’s favor toward her.
Earlier in Genesis, after she becomes pregnant, Sarah (then Sarai) finds her pregnancy intolerable, complains to Abram and he tells her to do with Hagar as she wished (I suppose he figured -why not, he had, so why shouldn’t she).  She beats her, and Hagar flees.  And here is where it gets interesting.  God finds her in the wilderness.  God finds her.  And God asks Hagar what she is doing.  When Hagar tries to explain, God tells her that she will bear a son, and his name will be Ishmael (another twist we will get to in a minute), and he will be the beginning of many nations – just like the promise God made for Abram and Sarai – but she had to go back to those crazy two.  And here is the best part… she names God!  No one ever does that – not before or after – not a man or woman – in the bible.  Hagar stands looking right at God and speaks God’s name.  Quoting from Genesis 16:15 “So she named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing?”  Hagar was one amazing woman to be sure…unexpectedly so.  And the name that she gives to God means “God sees.”
She goes back, Ishmael is born…and then another plot twist.  Seems that this whole promise thing…it isn’t about Abraham – well, not entirely.  It is about Abraham AND Sarah!  Those two tried to manipulate the situation – tried to force the promise to happen, but they made an assumption that it was Abraham’s seed that was important.  But God makes it clear that it is the child of Abraham and Sarah, not Abraham and a player to be named later in the next draft that will build nations.  And so we end up hearing that they are indeed given a child – Isaac.
And so now we are back to that moment when Hagar and Ishmael are cast out by Abraham and Sarah.  Again, the text finds Abraham thinking only of himself and the male heir.  The text tells us that “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.  But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman…”  Again here – Abraham is concerned about the boy, not the woman, but God is concerned for both.   And Hagar goes with Ishmael back out into the wilderness – They run out water, and Hagar places her now weak son under a bush out of the sun.  She is unable to bear the sight of her son dying, and she is dying herself – physically and emotionally.  And in that moment, as all hope seems lost, God finds them again!  God hears them.  The God who sees, is also the God who hears!  After all – that is what Ishmael means – God hears.  Another of those interesting character points in the story.  And the God who hears is also the God who can be experienced in the most unexpected places – the moments in our lives when we are feeling the most lost.
“Through the story of Hagar and Ishmael, we know that no matter how we are treated by others, no matter how uncertain our future may look, no matter how hopeless things may seem- God hears…And that when we are in that situation, when things have gotten so dry and parched and close to death that you feel like you can’t go on… God tells us hold on… and hold on tightly- that we are to lift up those things that we think are beyond hope to the one who IS hope… and to be still enough to let hope touch our eyes…gently…that there may be a new way of seeing things- new vision, possibilities… to follow the finger of God to life giving water that we weren’t able to see before.”1
See – that is the fascinating part.  Was the water brought by God?  Look at the text.  It says, “Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”  It doesn’t say, “Then God brought water from the earth.”  God opened her eyes to see what was already there.”
This seemingly simple act of God was really much “more difficult than its sounds. Because when we are in a desperate situation, or a helpless situation, most of the time we close our ears and eyes and hearts to anything that coupe take our focus off of what’s dying in our hearts…Yet it’s what we’re told to do over and over… focus on what God is showing us… take the relief God offers…”2
See, that is one of the wonderful takeaways from this story… terrible things happen to us, but the God who sees, the God who hears, is with us most closely when we feel at our weakest and darkest point.  And, it is also true that God is at work not only through men, but women, and not only in those in positions of power, but those on the margins.
This incredible narrative, with its subtle and not so subtle plot devices, is giving us all some very powerful lessons.  We learn that God works in God’s time – in Kairos (Greek for God’s time), we live in Chronos or human time.  When we try to control everything, when we fail to “let go and let God,” we have lost our way.  Most important of all, we learn that God finds us – seeks us out – sees and hears us – when we are most in need of love and grace.  And with that lesson comes another…one that Jesus taught us…
Jesus too saw the marginalized, the lonely, the poor, the outcast, the hungry, the sick…he taught us that we are to care for them, and that when we do, we care for him.  If we would model God – the one who sees the plight of the less fortunate, the one who hears their calls for help, we would be truly followers of Christ. It is not enough for us to follow doctrine and dogma, if we are blind and deaf to the suffering in the world.  We are called to listen – really listen…do you know what real listening is?  When one is really listening, they are not talking, nor are they thinking of what to say next when there is a gap in the conversation.  The one who listens is taking in all that is being said – verbally and non-verbally in the conversation.  Their ears and hearts and minds are open – and then they truly hear.  We are called also to be the one who sees.  The one who sees doesn’t walk around with blinders, but with eyes fully open to all that is around them.  Perhaps even carrying a light into the darkness to see what is being hidden in the shadows.  If we are listening and watching, we cannot be speaking and blind to the God that is at work in our midst – to the people Jesus called us to love and serve in his name.
The story of Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael reminds us that everyone – men and women, people of all races and cultures, of all levels of society – everyone is a beloved child of God, and heirs of the promise of God’s grace.  And it is a reminder as well to all of us who follow Christ that we are to model him – to see, to hear, to love and to serve.
There are many in the world today who are enslaved – the scourge of slavery is still a reality for many modern day Hagars.  And there are many as well enslaved in the horror of poverty, violence, and oppression.  Let us have ears open to hear their cries, and eyes open to see them where they are – that they may drink of the life giving water of God’s love.  Amen.

Note:  The sermon as written may not be as delivered on any given Sunday.

The Rev. Diana Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 22, 2014
Pent 2, Proper 7 – Year A – Track 1
1st Reading – Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
2nd Reading – Romans 6:1b-11
Gospel – Matthew 10:24-39