Hagar: The Woman Who Names God

God’s grace and desire for relationship is stronger than our worst sin. We must have faith that God sees us in our afflictions and reaches out to help us. Gen. 16.1-16

Last time I preached it was about faith and promises. The danger of stepping out into faith. We forge out in faith because we believe that God has promised grace. It isn’t about what we do, just that we believe about what God will do. If Noah had not been able to build the ark. If he ran out of wood or like getting something from Ikea, you have to build it and the directions are in Swedish, so it never turns out quite right… No matter what, because he believed that God’s promise to save him was real, he would be saved. God would have found a way to get it done. God’s grace saves us despite how many mistakes we make. Despite our imperfections. After all, that is the point of Jesus. The Hebrews were given the code of laws to follow and no matter how hard they tried they could not do it perfectly. We needed help. Jesus was sent. Grace abounds.

Abram and Sarai believed but they are human. Their story is filled with mistakes and doubts. John Calvin would later call their faith ‘faulty’. There is some story to be had before we get to our text today. Their story, like many of us as humans, is filled with things we may not want to remember and probably didn’t want written down in a book. The good news is that God gives grace no matter what.

After we leave Abram and Sarai and the first encounter that Abram has with God for a promise that he will become a great nation and possess the land, he goes forth on a very memorable faith journey. Then the years start to roll by. Abram finds himself in Egypt because of a famine. While there, he becomes afraid and decides to lie about Sarai. He tells her to go along with him in a lie stating that she is his sister. For if the Pharaoh finds her beautiful, Abram does not want to die when Pharaoh takes her by force.

The Pharaoh does in fact want to invite her into his harem and Abram lets her go. A costly mistake for Pharaoh. For he is plagued as if in a foreshadowing of the later plagues that release the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, so much so that he discovers that she should be with Abram and not him. She is taken back to Abram with a little extra property for good measure. Pharaoh fears Abram’s God. Abram did not have enough faith, yet God went ahead and showed grace. In some Muslim and Jewish Rabbinic scholarship, they note that this may in fact be where Hagar is given to Sarai. If that is true It proves costly for Abram too.

After Egypt, Abram and Lot (Abram’s nephew) split up because they have acquired too much stuff. The land cannot support both of their herds of animals, slaves, and family. Lot does get in some local trouble after moving away, but Abram bails him out. They have been blessed with wealth, but there is still no heir. No one to fulfill the promise from God.

Abram runs into a few rulers as he abides in the land and one of note, Melchizedek, blesses Abram. He greets him with bread and wine and is a follower of God the Most High, Yahweh, God of all creation. Abram is good and honest in his dealings with these rulers.

Then just before our text today God makes a covenant with Abram and renews the promise with him. Abram is a bit more questioning this time around. He is growing impatient. “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue [to be] childless”… and then complains that one of his servants will become his heir because he has no one else to give it to. God is patient and tells him that he will have a child of his own. That it will not be someone other than his own offspring that is heir to the promised land.

Sometimes we get impatient. Humans are like that. I remember our impatience every time a professional athlete gets injured. They sometimes may play injured or come back too early. If they had stayed out for the prescribed time they could have fully healed. They would be playing up to their expected level. Maybe pressure to play or to get cut, grays their ability to make the best health decision. They become restless and feel better… just not 100%. While they play with that not quite healed limb, another injury happens and now they will potentially never play again. Impatience can be destructive. It can cause grief later on, down the line. Our actions have consequences.

Sarai has also grown impatient. She knows the stakes, and she has less standing in society without a child. Unfortunately, in ancient times women were judged by their ability to have children. Many societies still have this ideology. Women are supposed to be married with kids… Not be professionals. Not have jobs. And not be single. Women today if they find themselves in that position feel pressure and go to extraordinary lengths to become pregnant. Invitro, fertility shots, surrogacy, adoption… All of these are not only stressful but cost well into the tens of thousands or potentially more, and then you have to have enough money left to support the child… Marriages split because of these issues. The absence of children, the stress of trying so many things, and spending so much time and money. Disappointment. Heartache.

Sarai was now faced with this stress, so she choses surrogacy. A common practice in her time was to have children by another woman that you owned. She had Hagar, the Egyptian. A much younger woman who had no choice but to comply. By their socially acceptable customs Hagar became Abram’s second wife. Verse 3 states, “So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave, and gave her to her husband Abram as a WIFE.” Not concubine or consort but wife. Any child by Hagar would have all the same rights as a child would have by Sarai. In fact, according to custom Hagar’s first born would and should be the heir. But it is Sarai that has made this choice not God. It is not part of the promise between God and Abram.

When Hagar became pregnant Sarai was filled with jealousy and did not want Hagar around. Sarai’s stature in the situation was that she would be seen by anyone of that custom to be less than Hagar. Since Sarai had no children. Maybe Hagar made this apparent, or maybe it was Sarai who was reminded of her barrenness. Sarai was trying to ‘help God’… We get into trouble when we try to ‘help God’. It’s not happening the way I want or as fast as I want, so I should make it happen the way I want it to happen. God’s ways are not our ways. God’s timing is not our timing.

This text gives us a look at God from Hagar’s perspective. Sarai is allowed by Abram to mistreat her and so she flees. She is scared and probably fed up with her treatment. First, she was given away as a slave, then in her slavery she was given as a wife, and then when she did exactly what Sarai and Abram wanted to happen, she was treated with malice. She finds herself wandering in the wilderness, lost and without hope.

Hagar is approached by an angel of the LORD who asks what she is doing. When she says she is fleeing she gets a very counter-intuitive response. Go back to mistreatment. Go back… Why in the world would that be a good thing? Why would she ever do this? Because in this ancient society her son would not live without the care and protection of an adult male. She and her son will not live if she remains away from her dysfunctional family. She needs food and water and protection from the world so that her and her son may live. Here we see an invitation from God. To submit, to go back into slavery and mistreatment. Attached is a promise and blessing. This promise is given to Hagar, a woman. A slave.

Sarai was never directly given a promise; it was only through Abram that she was to participate in the promised heir and lands. Hagar not only gets a rare encounter with God, but she gets her own promise stating that, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” There is no land attached to the promise so it is not the same as Abram’s but is a promise that she and her son will flourish.

Hagar hears the word of the LORD and responds by giving God the name El-roi or ‘the God who sees”. Because the LORD saw her in her affliction. Hagar becomes the only person in ALL of scripture to give God a name. God reached out to Hagar. The oppressed slave that had been mistreated by the woman that is supposed to bear the child that will become a blessing to us all. Go back to Sarai and her faulty faith and her faulty treatment of others. Hagar is seen by God. And God reaches out to bless her. Hagar is proof that God’s grace is for ALL, even the outsider, the oppressed, the stranger, the immigrant and the slave… Grace is for everyone. Her child will become many nations, just as Sarai’s will become many nations. In a book called Rival Telling’s a Muslim scholar notes that “the sons are together counted worthy of God’s blessing”. They will live in the same regions and not get along, but they will live. Both will be blessed with flourishing. With becoming. With God being involved in their lives to help each grow and be multiplied into nations.

What word is this for us today? Faith is messy. Humans are messy. Faith is imperfect. We all doubt. We all make mistakes. Thinking of our civic holiday of our country’s freedom, remember that it came with mistakes and was not pretty or neat. The oppression of others is found in our history and current political arena. Many are fighting against oppression from the government in this country as well as other countries. Saria had been oppressed by her husband in Egypt as they lied about their relationship. Given away to another man as property. In Sarai’s impatience to raise her status and ‘help God’, she turned around and oppressed someone under her care. The consequences of which have been seen for millennia. We repeat these cycles of oppression and oppressed throughout history.

God’s grace and desire for relationship is stronger than our worst sin. Stronger than our worst day. We must have faith that God sees us in our afflictions and reaches out to help us. Our faith should be in God’s promises of grace through our Lord Jesus Christ. That we too are now the promised descendants, of Abraham through our faith in Jesus. God will always find a way. Amen.

Bibliography

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