The Fulfillment of God’s Will… In Spite of Us! (06/22/08)

The Fulfillment of God’s Will… In Spite of Us!

(Genesis 21:8-21)

Now you’ve probably all heard the expressions: “Truth is stranger than fiction,” or “You can’t make this stuff up!”  Consider the following example.

In yesterday’s AJC there was an article about Gloucester, Massachusetts, a small town up in New England which has been particularly hard-hit by declines in the fishing industry.  Besides the serious economic problems they are facing, it also seems that within the past year seventeen teenage girls have become pregnant out of wedlock.  And town officials were, at first, hard pressed to explain it given that, on average, only four girls per year normally turn up in the “family way” (as they used to say).

Even more disturbing than the four-fold increase in teenage pregnancies, however, was the startling revelation that, apparently, these girls had made a “pact” between themselves to purposely get pregnant, and then raise their babies together!  According to yesterday’s article, this story exploded after Joseph Sullivan, principal of Gloucester High School, was quoted by Time magazine as saying that the girls – all 16 years old or younger –actually confessed to making just such a pact.

In the past, of course, a typical teenage girl who suddenly discovered that she was expecting would immediately worry about what to do next, and how she was going to support this child if she decided to keep it, and whether or not she was going to be able to finish school. But none of these traditional concerns seem to have fazed these young women.

And in trying to understand and explain this startling, sad, and strange episode, Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk noted the recent glamorization of teen pregnancy in pop culture.  Similarly, Sarah Brown, the chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies, suggested that some of the blame lies with the nation’s Hollywood-obsessed culture.  “It’s not surprising,” she said, “that teenage girls can get confused or even seduced by the allure of celebrity pregnancy.”  Which is to say, perhaps, that these girls were merely imitating celebrity examples like Ashlee Simpson or Jamie Lynn Spears…  

Well, just to show you that issues related to pregnancy and family planning are not unknown to the Bible, and that, even in scripture, “truth is often stranger than fiction,” we have this morning’s first lesson as a perfect example.  In fact, after reading through it the first time, my initial reaction was, “You can’t make this stuff up!”  Moreover, you wouldn’t!

And what I mean by that is simply this: if the Bible was pure fiction, and if the writers were just making this stuff up as they went along, I seriously doubt they would have ever written a story that is first so disturbing, and second casts those classic biblical heroes, Abraham and Sarah, the patriarch and matriarch of our faith, in such a bad light!  Yet here it is in living color, out in the open; a troubling and tragic tale…

Now how many of you have ever heard a sermon about Hagar and her son Ishmael (although you may have noticed that he is never referred to by name in our passage this morning)?  I certainly haven’t.  Nor have I ever preached one before (which was actually part of the attraction this time around, I have to confess.)  That’s because I can’t ever remember this passage being part of the lectionary.  As a matter of fact, it’s only the alternate reading even today.

But there was something compelling, albeit troubling, about this particular story when I looked at it again this past week.  Not only do these towering biblical heroes, Abraham and Sarah, come across as being so obviously human, they are also portrayed as utterly lacking the faith and understanding that we normally and automatically ascribe to them.  In other words, not only are they just like us, in some respects they are actually even worse than us!

However, in order to get a complete picture of what we’re talking about here, we have to backtrack a few chapters in the story to see how the events in today’s reading actually came about.

It’s back in Chapter 12, for instance, that we are first introduced to Abraham (then known simply as “Abram”), and learn that God has called him to leave his country and his father’s house, and journey to a land that God will show him.  And it is here, says God, that he will make a great nation of Abraham, and make Abraham’s name great, and, in so doing, also make Abraham a blessing to others.

Now that’s all well and good; but there was just one little problem, wasn’t there?  Abraham, and his wife Sarah, had no children.  Even more than that, they were now too old; for both of them were well beyond the normal childbearing age.  So how was God going to make a great nation from them if they had no offspring and no heirs?

So, therefore, in Chapter 15 Abraham points out the obvious to God, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?  …You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.”  Without much luck in the “getting pregnant” department, Abraham naturally begins to assume (and also to regret) that apparently a mere slave is actually going to be the vehicle through whom God will make of Abraham this great nation.

But God immediately takes Abraham outside, and shows him the night sky, and challenges Abraham to count the stars – if he can. And then God simply says to him, “So shall your descendents be.”

Then some more time passes, but still no child.  We can safely assume that Abraham and Sarah, despite their advanced age and decreased stamina, were still having fun doing their best to conceive – it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it! – yet nothing.

And so it’s at this point that they begin to lose patience with God and even go so far as to decide to take matters into their own hands.  And by doing so, they actually sow the seeds for what was to come in our lesson this morning.  You see, instead of “hanging in there” and trusting that God would somehow make good on his promise to them, Sarah says to Abraham:  “This just isn’t working.”  And so she convinces Abraham to sleep with her Egyptian-born slave-girl named Hagar saying, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children… it may be that I shall obtain children by her.”

Now this sudden turn of events is completely foreign to us, I know. But it was not at all unusual in the ancient world.  Indeed, these kinds of relationships, such as the one between Hagar and Abraham, were both an accepted and legal custom at that time.

Therefore, it was a perfectly legitimate and reasonable way of supposing that the promise that Abraham would have an heir might be fulfilled.  It just wasn’t what God had planned.

Now do you remember my sermon series back in Lent about the “will of God”?  At that time, using the insights of Leslie B. Weatherhead, an English pastor during World War Two, I suggested that one way of thinking about this is to consider that God’s will is not a single, all-encompassing, master plan, but actually can be broken down into God’s intentional will, God’s circumstantial will, and finally God’s ultimate will.

As we noted at the time, God’s “intentional will” is simply what God intended for his creation from the very beginning.  But because God gave us the gift of free will, and therefore, we have the opportunity, as well as the ability, to resist God’s will, it is also possible for us to talk about God’s “circumstantial will” in which God is forced to respond to the circumstances, we ourselves have created – and not all of them are good.

For instance, Weatherhead dealt with the question of whether Christ’s death on the cross was God’s original intention.  Probably not, he concluded.  Rather, the cross was clearly the result of human rebellion and sinfulness. However, God took these circumstances; that is, the human evil which then led to the cross, and then completely transformed the event bringing victory out of defeat, love out of hate, hope out of despair, and life out of death.  And in so doing, God also brought about, and revealed to us, his ultimate will – which absolutely nothing we do can ever change or deny…

Well, I think Weatherhead’s attempt to understand the will of God in this way is also helpful here.  You see, the Book of Genesis makes it perfectly clear that it was God’s will for Abraham and Sarah to have a child, a son from whom there would descend this great nation.  Not a household slave.  Not even a son born to Abraham and a servant-girl.  But a child born to both Abraham and Sarah.

But, again, when Sarah proposed that Abraham father this child and heir through Hagar, not only were they revealing their lack of trust in God, they were also taking matters into their own hands and creating an entirely new set of circumstances for God to deal with; circumstances that were not a part of God’s original plan.  And the interesting thing for us, now, is to see how God actually dealt with these circumstances.

One more note before we reach today’s lesson itself.  According to Chapter 16, Hagar became pregnant almost immediately which resulted in two things.  Number one, since Hagar had no difficulty getting pregnant it was now obvious that the problem was with Sarah, not Abraham.  And number two, it was pretty much inevitable, then, that Hagar would now hold this pregnancy over Sarah’s head.  “…when she saw that she had conceived,” says the Bible, “she looked with contempt on her mistress.”  (That is, Hagar, herself, is not without blame in these events.)

The irony here, of course, is that all of this was Sarah’s plan – no one else’s, although Abraham was certainly a willing co-conspirator.  She brought it all upon herself, so to speak; she had no one else to blame.  As the Bible says, “what you sow, you shall reap.” And that was exactly the case for Sarah.

Fearing, now, that Hagar might take her own place as mistress of the house, and ancestress of that great nation of God’s people he had promised them, Sarah goes to Abraham to complain, and to his detriment he tells her, “She’s your slave-girl.  Do with her as you please.”  (Abraham’s not such a nice guy at this point either.)

And so Sarah “dealt harshly” with her, says the Bible, forcing Hagar to run away.

Now that might very well have been the end of it.  You see, if Hagar had simply run away and never returned, we never would have had the events which were recorded in this morning’s reading.

But even though these were circumstances of Sarah and Abraham’s making, and not God’s; God, nevertheless, intervened in a loving and gracious way.  Knowing that she was unlikely to survive by herself, pregnant and alone in the wilderness, an angel of the Lord found Hagar by a spring of water, and told her to return and to submit to her mistress.  But this angel of the Lord also promised Hagar that she would have a son, and that his name would be “Ishmael” which means “God hears” for “the Lord has heard of your misery.”  And that, through this son, her descendants would be too numerous to count.  Almost the very same promise that God had made to Abraham and Sarah.

In response to God’s mercy and grace, Hagar refers to God as “the God who sees me,” and, in a delightful play on words, she exclaims, “I have seen the One who sees me!”

We are told that Abraham was 86 years old when Ishmael was born, and now more years go by during which Abraham and Sarah still remain childless.  Finally, one day, God, in the form of three strangers, approaches Abraham’s tent.  And after Abraham feeds them and allows them to take their rest under a tree, they ask about Sarah and then one of them says, “I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”  Of course, Sarah, listening from just inside the tent, and knowing that this was impossible, given her age, can’t help but laugh at the preposterous idea that she and Abraham might actually become parents after all.

But as Chapter 21 opens, we hear that, in fact, “The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.”  And so Sarah conceived and bore Abraham’s son in his old age. Abraham was now 100 years old.  And Abraham named this son, Isaac, which means “he laughs.”  Sarah laughed at the idea of giving birth to a son in their old age, but God had the last laugh…

And so finally we’ve have reached the point in the story recounted in today’s passage.  As we heard, it was time for Isaac to be weaned, which – in the ancient world – meant that he was now about three or four years old.  And during the party that Abraham has thrown to mark this happy milestone, Sarah suddenly notices Ishmael “playing” with her son Isaac.  So, once again, she goes immediately to Abraham and demands that he now get rid of both Hagar and her son.

“What gives?” you might very well ask.  Granted there has been some bad blood, insecurity, and jealousy over the years; and in the past Sarah has been pretty touchy about anything having to do with Hagar or her son.  But to demand that Abraham kick them out just because Ishmael was playing with his little step-brother?  Come on.  That’s a bit much – even for Sarah.

Yet, as is so often the case, the issue here hinges on a translation – in this instance, the word “playing.”  For example, there are scholars who see the word as referring to some sort of “rough-housing,” and therefore propose that Sarah is merely concerned for her young son’s safety.  Keep in mind that if Ishmael, as previously noted, was born when Abraham was 86 years old, and Isaac when he was 100 years old, and this is some 3 or 4 years later, it would then make Ishmael 17 or 18 years old at this point.  A little too big and strong, especially if he wasn’t careful, to be horsing around with a little pre-schooler.

But the problem with this interpretation, however, is that Sarah’s reaction and remedy are undeniably a little extreme.  After all, all she had to do was simply break it up and then warn Ishmael to be more careful around Isaac.

Probably the best explanation I’ve read comes from Mark Throntveit, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Luther Seminary.  Dr. Throntveit points out that the word translated as “playing” in verse nine, is – in other instances – often translated as “laughing.”  Now that seems pretty harmless as well.  But then Dr. Throntveit reminds us that Isaac’s name, “he laughs,” comes from this very same word.  “We might literally translate ‘playing’… as ‘Isaacing,’” writes Dr. Throntveit, “that is, Sarah saw Ishmael ‘playing the part’ of Isaac, pretending to take Isaac’s place as heir of the promise.  Certainty is impossible,” he adds, “but the view that Ishmael was pretending to be Isaac and usurping his future role would explain Sarah’s actions.”

If this explanation is correct, then Sarah clearly saw Ishmael as Isaac’s rival.  Sarah Buteux has written, “all her old fears and her old hurts rose to the surface.”  And as long as Ishmael remained in Abraham’s household, he would forever be a threat to Isaac’s inheritance.

So Sarah demands that both Hagar and Ishmael be sent away.  And actually her demand was not without precedent.  In her culture, she was well within her rights as the primary wife, now that her son had survived the early years of life.  Furthermore, in some parts of the ancient world, the children of slaves – who were not made heirs – were actually required to be set free in order to give them an opportunity to make a life of their own.  So what, at first glance, seems utterly cruel and heartless on Sarah’s part was not really all that unusual under the circumstances.  Although it still doesn’t make it right.

There’s that word again, though, circumstances. God’s original plan and intent was simply for Abraham and Sarah to have a son from whom there would emerge this great nation that he had promised them.  But they had a problem believing in this promise, they lost patience with God, and they finally took matters into their own hands.  And now they’ve created, not only a complete mess of things, they have also created a set of “circumstances” to which God must, once again, respond.

Because, you see, the simple, undeniable fact is that Abraham loved Ishmael, his first-born son.  What father wouldn’t?  “The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son,” said our lesson in understated fashion.  Another way of putting it is that Abraham was truly torn over what to do.  You see, Ishmael was never second best in Abraham’s eyes.

But Abraham was, nevertheless, being forced to choose.  There was Isaac and Sarah and God’s promise on the one hand, and then Ishmael and Hagar and the love he had for them on the other.  And apparently Abraham simply wasn’t able, or willing, to choose between them.

But then, as we heard, God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed… whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.”  In other words, even though Abraham and Sarah have made a complete mess of things, God now repeats his promise to Abraham and reminds Abraham of his ultimate will – and that not even these unfortunate circumstances can, or will, change it.

And yet God’s words to Abraham are not without grace as well.  Ishmael must go, it is true, but “I will make a nation of him also,” says God, “because he is your offspring.”

So Abraham rises early in the morning, either to simply avoid Sarah or to perhaps give Hagar and Ishmael a head start while it was still cool out, and he sends them away.  And once again, just as we saw earlier, it all could have ended right here.  In fact, Hagar actually feared and, frankly, expected that it would.  After wandering aimlessly in the desert, she and her son ran out of bread and water.  Leaving Ishmael behind under some bushes, she then walked away from him so that she would not have to watch him die.

But once again, God heard the cries of Hagar, and the voice of Ishmael, whose name, remember, means “God hears.”  And God opened Hagar’s eyes to a well of water, and she gave her son a drink.  And then God, we are told, “was with the boy and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.  He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”

As Sarah Buteux has written, “And so, in Hagar (and Ishmael’s) story, as awful and tragic as it might be, we actually find hope.  Hagar brings us face to face with our God, a God who sees us, a God who hears us, a God who does not, who can not, who will not turn away from our pain.  We know, through her experience, that our cries do not go unheeded.”

We also see in this story the fulfillment of God’s will… even, at times, in spite of us.  God’s intended and ultimate will was for Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of his chosen people.  It was an honor for which they were hardly prepared, and, as we saw this morning, completely unworthy.  But that’s the nature of God’s grace.

And it is also the nature of Gods’ grace that when we lose patience, and take matters into our own hands, and totally screw things up, that he will respond to the unfortunate, and sometimes tragic, circumstances we create with love and with mercy and with caring.

Amen