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SERMON
The lead story on the front page of the December 26, 2004 issue of
the New York Times had the following headline: "Have No
Baggage, Can't Travel." It continued: "Thousands of travelers
separated from their luggage." That's what made it into the
spotlight three weeks ago this morning in New York. Meanwhile, deep
beneath the Indian Ocean, an earthquake had triggered tsunamis that
would claim at least 150,000 lives and leave millions devastated. But
when the Times went to press, it was the luggage handling fiasco
that claimed center stage.
That happens sometimes. What we think deserves the headlines on a given
day can turn out to be insignificant compared to something that was
happening away from the limelight. In some ways this has long been a
staple of literature and movies. A woman waits for her Prince Charming
to show up, but it turns out that the love of her life has been near her
for years. She's been looking out the front window waiting for her
prince to arrive, but ends up falling in love with the farm boy who's
been working in the back forty all along.
God seems to enjoy operating that way as well. In fact, the Bible is
full of surprises when it comes to where God is at work. While the
so-called "movers and shakers" strutted around full of self-importance,
God was quietly at work, shaping the destiny of the world through a
dreamer whose name was Joseph; or a shepherd boy whose name was David;
and preeminently, of course, through a carpenter's son from Nazareth
whose name is above all names. And so it is with our text today.
A hapless handmaid named Hagar turns out to be a prime example of the
peculiar way God sometimes works. From Genesis 12 forward, the Bible
shines its spotlight on Abram and Sarai, and it follows this couple
wherever they go: from Ur to Canaan, to Egypt and then back to Canaan
again. This is the couple of God's promise – the couple of the covenant.
They seem to get all the attention. And why not? These are the special
ones to whom God would grant a very special child in their advanced age;
a child through whom a nation would one day be formed; a nation through
which the entire world would one day be blessed. This was big-time
stuff.
Of course, there is no doubt that God was at work in this couple. They
were, without question, biblical "headliners." Compared to these two,
everyone else around them played only bit parts. We are told that Abram
and Sarai had any number of servants, but we don't know any of their
names. And why should we? What difference would it make? We know who the
important people were. We know where to look if we want to see the hand
of God at work. Except, that is, in Genesis 16.
Here is yet another biblical example of our getting caught looking in
the wrong direction. We're watching the main headlines of the day when,
as it turns out, a very important story was unfolding in a corner of the
world where no one was looking, including Abram and Sarai. While the
main focus in Genesis 12-23 is on that grand covenant God made with
Abraham, Genesis 16 quietly reveals a very important part of God's
nature when it shows another covenant getting made – but this one with
an Egyptian servant girl named Hagar. It turns out that God was active
not just center stage where the spotlight was shining, but also in the
wings where Hagar sat crying her eyes out in a desolate place. Just why
and how God was active for the likes of Hagar tells us a great deal
about the God of Scripture. Let's get into the story and see what it all
means.
The opening verse of Genesis 16 sets the stage: Sarai had borne Abram no
children. It had been a good ten years since they had flown from Ur on
the wings of God's promise of family and land. On a couple of occasions
Abram had already tried to second-guess God. This time it was Sarai's
turn to be impatient. But you'll notice that it was more than impatience
that motivated her. In verse 2 she said to her husband, "The Lord has
kept me from having children." As if to say, "It's not my fault
you don't have any children yet! Talk to God about it!" (One has the
distinct impression that Sarai wasn't a particularly pleasant woman to
be around – not at that point in her life.) And you'll notice she didn't
say that God had failed to act. She asserted that God had acted. In
fact, he was the one who had prevented her from getting pregnant.
In her mind, God was the one at fault. It wasn't simply that he had
failed to deliver on his promise. According to Sarai, God had actively
taken steps to keep her miserable. And so, since God didn't seem to be
the kind of deity anyone should have to wait around for, Sarai did the
same thing Abram had already done a couple of times: she decided to take
matters into her own hands and see if there was some other way she could
have a child to claim as her own.
Sarai had a plan. When they made a detour into Egypt some years earlier,
they picked up a young servant girl who, now ten years later, had grown
into a young woman. Maybe Sarai had noticed Abram glancing at the lovely
lass on occasion. We don't know. But since Hagar seemed young and
fertile, since Abram seemed to find her reasonably attractive, and since
the legal system of that day would let Sarai in some way claim the child
of a servant as more-or-less her own child, Sarai suggested that her
husband try out a different bed for awhile.
It worked, of course, and before long Hagar was clearly with child. And
I can imagine how, gradually, she no longer felt like the lowly servant
she had been all her life. After all, she was carrying the master's
baby. She was a "somebody" now. Soon Hagar began developing a bit of an
attitude – especially when Sarai was nearby. I suspect she didn't let
Sarai boss her around anymore. And if her mistress objected, Hagar would
quietly clear her throat and point to her belly. Meanwhile, I can
imagine Abram doting on Hagar more than Sarai thought appropriate. Every
time the girl had a craving for kosher dill pickles, Abram dashed off to
fetch some.
Eventually Sarai concluded that, child or no child, it wasn't worth it.
So she told Abram that something had to give. And I'm sure the tone in
her voice made it very clear to Abram that the only answer he'd better
give was along the lines of "Yes, dear." So, before Hagar knew
what hit her, she found herself on the receiving end of some serious
abuse, and Abram did nothing to stop it. It didn't take long before she
fled – which is what I suspect Sarai was hoping would happen. That way
Sarai could say, "I didn't kick out a pregnant woman! She left of her
own accord!"
So Hagar fled. She ran off the biblical stage, out of that spotlight
shining on Abram and Sarai. And as a reader, you would expect that to be
the end of the matter. You could return to the drama of Abram and Sarai.
But it didn't turn out that way. Even Hagar expected that, having fled
the protection of Abram, she had also left behind the God whom Abram
served. She fled into the wilderness, probably trying to get back to her
home in Egypt.
Now, the common assumption was that you don't find God in the desert.
The wilderness is an evil and desolate place. Oh, you might find a demon
or two out there, but not God. God was back in Canaan, taking care of
the important people in the story. Well, the road back to Egypt was
long. And so, near full-term and with no reserves of energy to carry on,
Hagar finally collapsed near a spring, fully expecting that she was
finished – forgotten by both God and man.
But then the Lord's angel appeared in a way nobody expected. He told
Hagar to go back to Sarai and be nice to her, submit to her, put up with
her abuse and put a lid on that uppity attitude she'd been displaying of
late. At first it seems like a rather cruel thing for God to say. But
there was more to it. There was a promise. If Hagar did what she was
told, she wouldn't die or miscarry out there in the wilderness. God made
a covenant with Hagar that she would become the mother of countless
descendants. She was to name her son "Ishmael" – a name that means "God
hears" – because out there in the desert, where no one thought God would
be, God heard her, and saved her, and made a covenant with her.
True, her son would not grow up to be Mr. Congeniality. For some
unexplained reason he would be the kind of person who always brings out
the worst in others. But even that, God promised, would not thwart the
fact that Hagar could rest assured that something good would come of
this pregnancy. God made a promise, and God keeps his promises.
So she went back and put up with the scorn and abuse that I'm sure Sarai
dished out. But this time she was able to tolerate it; she was even able
to have a better disposition herself. Why? It's because she knew
something Sarai apparently didn't know. Hagar knew that God cared for
her. She knew that you didn't have to be a title character in the divine
drama to be noticed and tenderly cared for by God. Once you begin to
know how much the God of heaven cares for you, things start to change
for the better – because your perspective changes.
Of course, there's some irony in the story as well. Hagar ended up
looking more faithful than Abram or Sarai. It was their impatience – no,
it was worse than that – it was Sarai calling God her opponent that led
to Hagar getting embroiled in all this. But once she did become
involved, Hagar was obedient to God, even though God's direction was
difficult. But by hanging on to God's promise in faith, Hagar found it
possible to move forward, despite the hardships. And so, at least in
this chapter of the drama, Hagar shines a bit more brightly than even
Abram and Sarai. She didn't need the spotlight: her faith was bright
enough.
Now, let me make a few observations about what Hagar's role in this
story can teach us about God. First, Hagar is a reminder that we're
going to miss the mark if we try to limit God's activity to those who
are obviously at the center of divine action. And yet, even though we're
reminded of that truth all through the Old Testament (and into the New
Testament as well) it seems perennially difficult for God's people to
remember that. Right from the start, God told Abram that his plan of
salvation would spill over beyond just Abram and his descendants to
embrace the whole world.
Yet it was difficult for later Israel to remember that. Sometimes they
didn't like the idea much. But that didn't stop God from working great
things through outsiders and people on the margins of life and society.
By the time we get to Jesus' family tree in the opening lines of
Matthew, we discover there some foreign women (a few with dubious moral
credentials) who had become great-great-great grandmothers of the
Christ. Israel was looking center stage, expecting God to work there.
Meanwhile God was marching history toward the advent of the Messiah by
bringing in from the wings a prostitute from Jericho named Rahab and a
migrant Moabite widow named Ruth.
Even so, it's difficult to keep in mind how far and wide God is willing
to cast the net of his covenant. Eventually, it can get to the point
where, even if you do remember God's worldwide goals, that doesn't
necessarily mean you're going to like it. That was certainly the case
when the Lord told Jonah to go save the Ninevites. Jonah high-tailed it
the other direction because he didn't think those greasy outsiders had
any business sharing in God's kingdom.
Then there's that marvelous object lesson in Acts chapter 10. God
presented Peter with a vision of a big buffet of non-kosher foods: ham,
lobster, clams and BLTs. Then God told him to help himself. But Peter
refused to touch those "unclean" things. So the Lord nailed Peter with
the words, "Don't you dare call ‘unclean' anything I say is
clean." And then God ordered Peter to ingest that food as a sign
that Peter had to swallow the fact that God is free to act in people and
places beyond the boundary lines with which Peter was comfortable. The
wonderful twist to that story is that Peter had that vision when he was
in Joppa – the same city to which Jonah had fled from God precisely
because he didn't want to have anything to do with non-Israelites,
either.
We are always in danger of erring when we think we know exactly what God
is doing and where he's doing it. It is always a mistake to assume that
God prefers to act only in the spotlight that shines on the faithful.
Hagar's story reminds us that the God we know in Jesus Christ is, as
Hagar correctly named him, "the God who sees me." He sees the people we
don't always see. His eye is on the desert wastelands of life just as
surely as it is on the church.
Some people find it comforting to quote that line from Jesus that, if
God's eye is on the sparrow, we can be sure that the divine gaze rests
on us who claim his name. That is a comforting thought. What we're in
danger of overlooking, however, is the fact that God's eye was on the
sparrow in the first place. And the reason God's eye is on the sparrow
is not, first of all, to reassure us of our worth in his eyes. God is
watching out for the sparrow because he knows that that sparrow has
worth, irrespective of us.
Hagar was a kind of sparrow. She wasn't a center-stage player like Abram
and Sarai. She was more like a little bird chirping in a tree just off
to the side of where the Genesis spotlight was shining. But God saw and
loved her nonetheless. I suppose one could claim the only reason Hagar
received such care was because she was carrying the patriarch's baby.
Perhaps that alone warranted God's care for Hagar in a way that wouldn't
have been true otherwise. But there was no hint in this story that God
loved Hagar only because she shared a bed with Abram.
You get the feeling that she is simply one of those untold throngs of
people around the world whom God promised to save in the long run.
Nobody gets saved simply because of a connection with Abram – not even
Abram himself! In the long run the only person to whom you need to be
connected is Jesus. And we would do well to remember that, once he
showed up on this earth, he was always singling out the sparrows of the
world as candidates for God's love and grace. Hagar called Yahweh "the
God who sees me." Maybe that's why in the gospels, you read lines like:
"Jesus looked up and, seeing the crowds, he had compassion on them"
or "Jesus looked at him and loved him." God grant us that kind of
vision so that we, too, might see in love all the sparrows of the world.
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