Sermon: “I will make a nation of him also.”

Text: Genesis 21:8-21

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

June 22, 2008

Scripture introduction.  With our second reading this morning we continue the story of Abraham and Sarah and God’s promise that through them and their descendants God would bless the world.  In the verses that precede our reading we learn that Sarah has given birth to Isaac.  But now Sarah has a problem:  Isaac is not the first-born.  He was born second after his older half-brother Ishmael.  You remember that Sarah, who had been afraid that Abraham and she would have no children, gave Abraham her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar.  Ishmael was the son of that union.  Under the laws of that society, the first-born Ishmael stood to inherit a double portion of Abraham’s property.  The fact that his mother was a concubine rather than a wife made no difference. 

In this morning’s reading we learn that Sarah, unable to bear the thought that her own child Isaac would always play second fiddle to Ishmael, convinced Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away—permanently.  This would seem to be an exercise of raw power that undermined the laws of succession and inheritance.  However, archaeologists and historians know that under the provisions of the ancient Code of Hammurabi, as well as even older law codes, if the concubine were given her freedom, then her children would no longer inherit as if they were children of the slave master.[1]  They were now a family unto themselves—separate from the family in which they had been slaves.  Since Abraham originally lived in the same area where these ancient law codes applied, the tantalizing suggestion is that Sarah convinced Abraham to grant freedom to Hagar so that Ishmael would not inherit.  In order to advance the interests of her own son Isaac, Sarah may have taken advantage of an ancient legal loophole.

Sermon.  This is one of those stories from the Old Testament that may make us scratch our heads.  I mean, except for the fact that God is one of the characters of the story, it could seem like no more than an interesting tale about an ancient family.  How are we to interpret and use this story?  I don’t think it is meant to teach a moral lesson.  If there is a moral lesson in this story, it may be a negative one.  I suspect I am not alone in feeling just a little bit creepy about how Sarah prevailed upon Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.  Even if we accept the point I mentioned earlier—that Abraham was granting Hagar her freedom—it is a harsh freedom to be released into the punishing desert.  Some interpreters attempt to protect the reputation of Abraham and Sarah.  They suggest that Hagar and Ishmael had plenty of water and provisions to make it to the next settlement but that they simply lost their way.  The biblical writer, too, took pains to protect the reputations of Abraham and Sarah; the narrator informs the reader that God told Abraham to do what Sarah suggested.  And of course God later came in and saved Hagar and Ishmael from death.  Even so, the story still feels morally ambivalent to me.

Or maybe this is simply a story about origins.  As I have mentioned before, the Old Testament tells us not only how we are to behave, but also who we are.  This morning’s story probably falls into the second category.  This is another episode in the saga about how God started with a particular family and, through twists and turns, brought forth from them a nation whom God would bless with identity, instruction, and protection.  For the ancient Israelites—and for Jews today—these stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs tell the history of a people and God’s special relationship to them.  Also for us Christians, who have been adopted into the family of faith, the narratives of Genesis tell us, too, who we are.  And let us not forget the Muslims, who consider themselves to be the descendants of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael.  Not surprisingly, they focus on God’s promise to both Abraham and Hagar that God would make a great nation of Ishmael, too.  So, in a sense, there are competing histories as Christians, Jews, and Muslims all attempt to claim the legacy of faithful Abraham.

OK.  So this story may have been intended to tell the origins, the genesis, of national and religious groups.  But is that its meaning?  Is that all its meaning for us today?  We might begin by asking how the early church interpreted this story.  As a matter of fact, we do know of one early interpretation.  The Apostle Paul, in chapter 4 of his letter to the Galatians, used this story as an allegory to illustrate the difference between persons who were still slaves to the flesh and sin, persons who lived under the law, and on the other hand, persons who in Christ were children of God’s promise of grace, who were freed from the law to be the persons God intended.  In this allegory, Hagar and her offspring represented those who were under the law, the residents of the earthly Jerusalem.  Sarah and her offspring represented those who were under grace, the residents of the heavenly Jerusalem.  Surely other early Christians used the story in other ways.

This whole topic makes me wonder, “How would Jesus have interpreted this story?”  On the one hand, it might seem impossible to answer the question because the gospels do not record that Jesus ever mentioned Hagar.  However, Jesus did speak of Abraham several times.  When the Jews of his day claimed a special status because of their origins in Abraham, Jesus was not impressed.  He responded, in effect, “Big deal; God could raise up children of Abraham from the very stones.”[2]  When Jesus told the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, it was another surprising reversal: the rich man was tormented in the flame, and Lazarus was the one enjoying the company of Abraham.[3]  When the Roman centurion came to Jesus in faith, Jesus complimented the gentile:  “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.  I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,  while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” [4] 

So if the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar is a story of origins that tells us who we are, Jesus might have argued with the story.  Since, according to Jesus, being a child of Abraham was not the defining factor for a person’s relationship with God, it surely follows that neither would it matter whether one is a child of Isaac or of Ishmael.  Or Jesus might have emphasized God’s care for, and promises to, the outcasts Hagar and Ishmael. And perhaps this brings us to the same point.  God’s grace and favor and blessing is not limited to the Jews, or the Jews and the Christians.  Maybe God cares for the Muslims, too.  And if a Roman centurion, who had no relation at all to Abraham would be preferred at the heavenly banquet over the descendants of Abraham, doesn’t that imply that the kingdom of God must somehow have room for everyone in the human race? 

Jesus was crucified because he made people mad.  He preached to them that their categories were not important to God.  He called them to a radical vision of what our world would be like if all the barriers were broken down and all of us understood that our neighbors were equally important as we are.  He called them and us to love not only the folks who are a part of our family, our church, our denomination, our religion, or our nation, but to treat all the children of God as sisters and brothers.  If we seriously consider Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom, it may make us mad, too.  What he preached is so drastically different from the world we live in that if we don’t have some emotional reaction to his message, we have not yet heard it.  For those who hear his message and accept it, they have become citizens of the New Jerusalem.  They already are a part of the kingdom of God.  They understand that their welfare is unavoidably bound up with the welfare of all persons. 

We can read today’s story as a story of the origins of division.  We can use it to remind ourselves that some come from one family and others from another.  But Jesus probably would have understood this story as evidence that as creatures of God we are all related to each other.  We are all part of the same family, which can be the family of promise.  When the kingdom of God comes in its fullness, all the great nations—Isaac and Ishmael and all the rest—will become one.  As followers of Jesus, this is the day we long for, and this is the day we work for.