Father Abraham

Today’s text talks about conflict, family conflict. So it seems like a good text to preach about on Father’s Day — or Mother’s Day or any day really because I don’t think there is any family without conflict! Family conflict happens, of course, along a broad spectrum, everything from mild irritation to vengeful rage which can lead to all kinds of abuse or even murder. We talk about “family values” as if families were just sweetness and light. But all families have conflict and some families have seething conflict. Such was the case in the family of our father Abraham.[1]

We need to recall that Abraham’s wife Sarah could not get pregnant. (See Genesis 16.1-6) But she had an Egyptian slave-girl named Hagar. So Sarah had the notion, a common idea back then, that God was preventing her from bearing children. So she asked her husband to take the slave Hagar as his wife so that, as Sarah said, “It may be that I shall obtain children by her.” This was a perfectly acceptable thing to do in that time. So Abraham did what Sarah asked and Hagar soon conceived. But then we’re told that Hagar looked with contempt on Sarah. That made Sarah mad and she blamed her husband. “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” Then Abraham caved in to his wife’s anger and told Sarah she could do anything she wanted with Hagar. So Sarah treated her harshly and the slave-girl ran away for a time. Family conflict.

Which brings us back to where today’s text picks up. Fourteen years have passed. Abraham’s second son Isaac and his first and only son with Sarah is born and about to be weaned. But when Sarah sees Hagar’s son playing with her son, all the simmering conflicts boil over again. And this time Hagar is put out in the desert with Ishmael where she is quite certain both she and her son will die. Let’s read it in Genesis 21.

The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.

God 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.

Yesterday morning when I was trying to finish this sermon, I almost abandoned it to look for a simpler sermon from my previous church. I almost left behind this sermon because the text challenges us, or at least it challenges me, in complicated ways. There is so much going in and around the text that I despaired making any sense of it. (And when I’m done, you’ll have to decide for yourselves whether I should have abandoned it.)

The complexity of the text begins with Father Abraham. The three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — all trace their spiritual if not their genetic lineage to Abraham. So Abraham has great religious and historical interest and the text hints at ethnic and religious tensions which are still present today. Complexity.

Also, in this case, Father Abraham is of secondary importance because the text tells of the conflict between two women: Sarah, Abraham’s first and primary wife, and Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave and Abraham’s secondary wife. Then the conflict of Sarah and Hagar revolves around three males: Abraham, the common husband and father, Ishmael, the child of Hagar, and Isaac, the child of Sarah. Through their husband and his two sons these females clash.[2] So family conflict adds complexity to the text.

Furthermore, when Abraham ends up caught in the rivalry of his two wives, he acts like a wimp and agrees to Sarah’s demands without argument. Even God seems to take Sarah’s side in the story. So we’re told that Abraham got up early in the morning to take Hagar out into the desert. Old Testament stories typically don’t tell us much about people’s feelings or motives. The stories are more about what people do and in that respect they are more like movies than novels. So what does it mean that Abraham rose early to do the dirty deed? When we get up early in the morning to do something, it typically indicates we are committed to it and want to get it over with.[3] So even though he was distressed, Father Abraham was eager to be rid of Mother Hagar.

More complexity. How can we make sense of this text? I’m not sure I have but I think two things need to be said.

First, the Bible is honest. The Bible doesn’t look at life through rose-colored glasses and neither should we. And the fact that the Bible is honest about life and its hardships is actually quite hopeful for us. It is hopeful because we can’t come into church here or read the Bible and just expect simplistic stuff that is all sweetness and light. When we open and read the Bible honestly there is comfort because it tells us that God loves us. But the Bible is also honest about life’s pain and suffering. We need that honesty

This is why many people, especially women in distress, find their story represented in Mother Hagar. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the “other” woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing persecution, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady, the homeless woman or man, the indigent relying on handouts, the welfare mother, the self-effacing woman whose identity shrinks when around others.[4]

We don’t like to think about any of these circumstances and they may not be our own circumstances. But regardless of our circumstances, the desert is real and not something we can avoid. I called this sermon “Father Abraham” but the text is really about Mother Hagar and she stands in the story to say that life is not as simple as we want to make it. And even then, God is with us.

Think of Hagar’s situation. She was in a desert of terrible injustice. She was alone and humiliated, facing death, and unable to protect her son. Back when Ishmael was born, God promised that her descendants through Ishmael would be so numerous as to be uncountable. (Genesis 16.10) But now that appeared to be a broken promise. So Hagar needed many things — safety, understanding, food and shelter, direction. She probably felt she needed vengeance on Father Abraham and Mother Sarah who cruelly cast her out. Most of all she was wondering if God still had a plan for her. And with all that need, all she got was water.

The problem is that we always think we need more than we really need. But the story of Mother Hagar is a story of beginnings, not fulfillment. Everything she needed wasn’t there in the desert. But what she most needed was — water. And God gave her eyes to see it. With a drink of water she could go on to the next step. That’s what faith is about. The Bible is honest that sometimes all we get is a drink of water. And it is enough.[5]

The second point follows naturally from the first. The Bible is honest and, therefore, we need to hear the bad news before the good news. You see, the greatest enemy of faith is not suffering but self-satisfaction. When we trust ourselves most we have the least faith in God. That’s why the bad news about us — we can’t make it on our own — comes before good news — God is with us.

This is the point of one of my favorite Garrison Keillor stories. It’s a Christmas story so let’s have a little Christmas in June this year. Keillor writes about wayward Catholics who return home to Lake Wobegon on Christmas Eve.

“Dozens of exiles returned for Christmas. At Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, Father Emil roused himself from bed, where he’s been down with cancer since Columbus Day, and said Christmas Eve Mass. He was inspired by the sight of all the lapsed Catholics parading into church with their unbaptized children, and he gave them a hard homily, strolling right down into the congregation.

“‘Shame. Shame on us for leaving what we were given that was true and good,’ he said. ‘To receive a great treasure in our younger days and to abandon it so that we can lie down in the mud with swine.’ He stood, one hand on the back of a pew, and everyone in that pew — children of this church who grew up and moved away and did well and now tell humorous stories at parties about Father Emil and what it was like to grow up Catholic — all of them shuddered a little, afraid he might grab them by their Harris-tweed collars and stand them up and ask them questions. ‘What a shame. What a shame.’

“They came for Christmas, to hear music, and see the candles, and smell incense, and feel hopeful, and here was their old priest with hair in his ears whacking them around — was it a brain cancer he had? Shame, shame on us. He looked around at all the little children he’d given first communion to, now grown heavy and prosperous, sad and indolent, but clever enough to explain their indolence and sadness as a rebellion against orthodoxy, a protest, adventurous, intellectual, which really was only dullness of spirit.

“He stopped. It was so quiet you could hear them not breathing. Then he said that this was why Our Lord had come, to rescue us from dullness of spirit, and so the shepherds had found and so shall we, and then it was Christmas again.”[6]

It was Christmas again in Lake Wobegon when Father Emil got through their lazy and thick skulls the bad news about themselves. Then they could hear the good news about God. God is with us and that will be a lot more obvious when we quit trying to make it all by ourselves.

Sometimes we end up in the desert because unjust or evil things happen to us. Sometimes the desert comes from our own fatness and dullness of spirit. However, we end up in the desert, the conflict of Father Abraham along with Mother Sarah and Mother Hagar tells us one thing, the same thing that Christmas tells us. God is there and will give us what we need in the moment. Not what we want, but what we need. And what we really need is God.

The life of faith is learning to trust how God, even in conflict, will be with us. We learn that faith in the desert with Mother Hagar. We learn it even from the cruelty of Mother Sarah and the foolishness of Father Abraham. We learn it when we know that bad news comes before good news. But good news does come. Thanks be to God.

[1] There is the tradition, familiarly expressed in the camp song “Father Abraham,” that the patriarch had seven sons. But in addition to Ishmael and Isaac, Genesis describes six more sons born after Sarah died. (Genesis 25.1-2: “Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.”) The “seven” sons reflects that Ishmael “didn’t count.”

[2] Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) 28.

[3] Roger E. Van Harn, ed., The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, The First Readings (The Old Testament and Acts) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001) zzzz.

[4] These descriptions are mostly from Trible.

[5] Erin Wathen, “A Drink of Water,” Biblical Preaching Journal 18.2 (2005): 37.

[6] Garrison Keillor, “Exiles” in Listening for God, Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, eds. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994) 119-120.