Proper 7 Year A
June 19, 2005
Fr. Ralph Carskadden

Many of us of a certain age grew up learning Old Testament bible stories in Sunday School or at home. As a child, I remember hearing a lot about aged Abraham and his wife Sarah and their miracle child Isaac. I remember some of the pictures which were printed in the bibles we read from at home and in church. I think all the important biblical people looked like members of my family or our Lutheran congregation. Everyone was white. Their costumes were foreign and the men had more facial hair than anyone I knew but they were white folks. By the side of my bed, as I was growing up, there was a print of Salman’s painting of the Head of Christ – that classic “Breck Girl” Jesus with the fine aquiline nose and the radiant brown hair with the golden highlights – the last thing I saw every night as I reached over to turn off the wall light beside my bed. (Different image than the rough and ready laughing cowboy Jesus by Frances Hook which Mother Melissa spoke of in her sermon last week!)

In college and seminary I began to realize the cultural, racial, ethnic historic identities of some of the people whose stories of struggle, battle, journey, salvation are recorded in what we sometimes call the Old Testament. However it wasn’t until I began receiving anti-racism training a few years ago that I began to catch on to some of the dynamics of racism, class-ism and sexism which abound in stories such as our Genesis reading of today – the story of Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave, the mother of Abraham’s first son, Ishmael. Until the New Revised Common Lectionary which we are using here at St. Paul’s, this passage has never been read at public worship in an Episcopal church on a Sunday – at least none of our lectionaries ever scheduled it. At last, we hear of Hagar.

She is of course the mother of Ishmael – Abraham’s first son – the one through whom Arabs are said to descend. The stories of Lady Hagar and Ishmael are important passages in the Koran, the sacred book of Islam. In the Hebrew scriptures from which we read, the power and class differences between Sarah and Hagar are clear. We don’t know how Hagar came to be Sarah’s slave but we know that Sarah outranked her and had authority and power over Hagar’s life, her body and fate. Remember that Abraham had been promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of heaven – but he and Sarah had been unable to conceive and in her late 80s or 90s when all hope of bearing a child was gone, Sarah decided to “give” Hagar to her husband so that Hagar would conceive and become the surrogate mother. Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham and after his sexual relations with her Hagar conceived. In her pregnancy she apparently lorded her ability to conceive over Sarah who became so infuriated that with Abraham’s permission Sarah abused Hagar so terribly that she fled into the wilderness. Near a spring God appeared to Hagar and revealed to her that she was to bear a son who she should name Ishmael which means “God has heard” for God had heard the her cries of despair. Ishmael would be a real Bedouin, fierce and warlike. For the sake of the child she returned to Abraham and Sarah and her son was born and grew.

After the visit of the three angels (last week’s first reading) Sarah herself did conceive and bore Isaac. One day she saw the two little boys playing together and was overcome with fear that Ishmael might someday share the inheritance of her son, Isaac. She forced Abraham to cast Hagar and little Ishmael out into the wilderness. Because they had no provisions, Hagar feared her little child would die. In her despair she placed him under a big shrub and went some distance so she would not have to hear his crying as he died.

But the angel of God revealed a well of water and assured her that God did hear her son’s cries- he would not die but become the father of a great nation. Ishmael grew up as a Bedouin, well skilled with the bow and arrow and in time married an Egyptian woman.

During anti-racism training I learned that many women of color, African American women in particular see in Hagar a woman whose story and experience parallels their own. Hagar was Egyptian, a woman from the continent of Africa, a woman of color who became enslaved to non-Africans. She was marginalized by her low social and economic status. She was given to Master Abraham for sexual purposes and for surrogacy. She was subjected to at least verbal abuse by her owners; abuse so severe that she risked death in the wilderness to run away. She became a single mother who had to fight to protect her child. She and her child were exiled, left out in the wilderness to die, and yet her first hand experiences of God assured her that God cared for her and for her child. No wonder Hagar, survivor, protector, provider, slave woman of faith is so dearly loved by many women of color, Muslim and Christian – her story of God’s compassion and care is an important balance to the Abraham and Sarah saga with which most of us are far more familiar.

Racism and sexism and class-ism are alive and well in our contemporary society – most of us who are not of color, who are heterosexual and financially secure can live oblivious to these dynamics – and in our blindness or ignorance actually benefit from them – certainly we ourselves don’t have to contend with them on a daily basis. But, by virtue of our baptisms into the body of Christ, we are called upon to become conscious, become aware of the pain and suffering which other members of Christ’s body do experience – and, most importantly, to seek ways in which we can change our behavior, challenge systems and customs and laws which hurt, impede, burden and bind those who are our sisters, our brothers in Christ.

The gospel and epistle readings for today are a splendid sequel to the Hagar story. In the gospel Jesus instructs those who wish to follow him regarding the risks and costs of discipleship. They, and we are to pattern our lives after Jesus – to live as one who crosses the lines of religious law and social custom, to actively work to establish God’s reign of justice and peace. And when we do that we will threaten those who hold power and can expect to incur their wrath. Existing ties to power, prestige, position, and privilege which we have inherited by birth, race, family, nationality, must be severed for the sake of the new order of justice and peace. Jesus promises that those who give up the old life for Christ’s sake will find a new life, new ways of being in relationship.

And, as St. Paul wrote to the first Christians in Rome centuries ago, by virtue of our Baptism into Christ we have already died to the old ways and now are being called to live “in newness of life” as resurrected people. Giving up the sinful old ways of racism, sexism, class-ism we can be free to experience new relationships with people from whom prejudice or ignorance had separated us. And old relationships which had been based on or distorted by power inequalities can be reformed. We can find forgiveness from our willful ignorance and complicity of the oppression of others.

The contemporary hymn writer Brian Wren has given us an excellent text to inspire us in the work that our faith in Christ compels to do and with that hymn text I close:

Hymn 603 (The Hymnal 1982)

When Christ was lifted from the earth, his arms stretched out above
through every culture, every birth, to draw an answering love.
Still east and west his love extends and always, near or far,
he calls and claims us as his friends and loves us as we are.
Where generation, class, or race divide us to our shame,
he sees not labels but a face, a person, and a name.
thus freely loved, though fully known, may I in Christ be free
to welcome and accept his own as Christ accepted me.

Note: To learn more about an African American woman’s perspective on Hagar see Sisters in the Wilderness by Delores S. Williams | ORBIS | ISBN 0-8834-772-X