“Hope” based on Genesis 16:7-13 and Luke 1:26-38

This Advent
starts with annunciations – announcements to two women of what life
they are bringing forth into the world.  These are told as God’s
mighty acts, the ways God impacts the world through these women and
their sons.  They set up the anticipation of Advent  – a knowing of
what is coming, an awareness that it is not here yet, and some rather
significant worries about the journey from here to there.  

The
two stories today are united not only by the announcements they
contain, nor the scared young women, nor the extraordinary sons they
will have.  In a way we might not have noticed before, the stories
are united by slavery.

Hagar
IS enslaved.  Mary’s response to God, once it is translated without
attempting to soften it, is  “Here am I, the woman-slave of God;
let it be with me according to your word.”
This response reminds me that Mary was a vulnerable girl, one who was
responding to the STATEMENT (not question or request) from a Powerful
God of what would happen to her.  

Does Mary respond, “I have no
power here, so do what you wish”? Or “I am willing?”  Would it
matter?  The messenger had told her what would be, not asked her if
she was willing.  The response that says, “I am a woman-slave of
God” could be humility and respect, or a desire not to be killed
for disagreeing.  Mary is written into a no win situation.  To say no
to God, when a direct messenger is sent, is known to be a bad idea.
(Yet, many of us do it regularly with only continued nagging to pay
for it… so, there is that.)  To agree to a pregnancy while engaged
and not sleeping with one’s fiance is to become eligible for stoning.
It would be proof of adultery.  

Mary’s response says she is
God’s slave.  Hagar’s life is one of a slave.  These are not the same
thing, but the connection between should be unsettling.  

Hagar
is enslaved.  She is enslaved and endures both physical and sexual
violence.  Before our story begins, she runs away into the
wilderness, which means she was deciding to die rather than endure
more.  Yet, in the wilderness, by spring of water which meant life
could continue, Hagar had an encounter with the Divine.  (She is the
first woman to do so, also the first woman to be told directly she
will bear a child…. one of only three.)  She is addressed, by name,
by the Holy Messenger.  She is told what will happen.

And,
she is told to return to the violence she had run from.  Further,
she is told that the
violence she experiences will become the legacy of the child she
bears, who will struggle against those he will call kin, as well
those who come after him.  (This is an ancestor story, where the
ancestors serve as symbols for the people who claim their names.)
Then Hagar NAMES God, which is a HUGE deal, and calls God, “The God
who sees me.”   Ishmael’s name mean’s God hears.

These indicate a powerful
blessing experience.  These indicate she took hope from this
encounter.  She feels seen, and heard.  Now, of course, an experience
of the Divine IS a blessing, and would be one that she couldn’t have
expected.  EVEN THOUGH she gets sent back to slavery, back to
violence, back to abuse, Hagar calls God, “God who sees me” and
calls her son, “God hears.”

Phew.

I find myself wishing God had
changed things for her, not just sent her back to the same situation
as a slave, experiencing violence.  Yet, I cannot dismiss the power
of her experience.  It wasn’t perfect, it didn’t end with happily
ever after.  Oppression, even, continued.  And, for Hagar, there was
hope.  

But, hope is sturdier than
perfection.  Hope is grounded.  Hope is real and faces the world as
it is.  Hope doesn’t require fairy tale endings, it means us where we
are.  

This is good, because if only
people who know no oppression can have hope, few people could.

Hagar’s story isn’t particularly
unique.  Many people have been enslaved in human history, including
to this day.  Many people have experienced sexual violence.  Many
people have been forced into marriages where sex is expected, but not
truly consented to.  I fear that most women in history can identify
with Hagar.

And yet, there has been hope.

Hagar’s pregnancy was
complicated.  I think maybe Mary’s was too.  And, the Bible says,
their pregnancies changed the world for the better.  We needed
Ishmael.  We needed Jesus.  We needed them raised by their mothers,
who had particular wisdom, particular faith, particular experiences
of the Divine, particular gifts.

This idea of a complicated
pregnancies, ones that threatened the life and well-being of the
mother, ones that changed the course of history, THESE are stories of
Advent.

These are stories of things NOT
being as they should be.

These are stories of waiting for
God to act to make things better.

Hagar felt blessed by her
encounter.  A miracle here is that the people who wrote the book
understood themselves to be Issac’s descendants, but they wrote the
story of Ishmael’s mother.  And they admitted the wrong done to her.
And they thought of her as blessed.  And they perceived in her
experiences of God, EVEN THOUGH they thought of her descendants as
their enemies.  That has a sense of the hand of God in the telling of
the stories to me.  That’s not generally how we tell the stories, the
way the victor’s narrative reigns.

Whatever Mary’s experience of
her pregnancy was, I still believe that the life and faith of Jesus
were formed by his family, and his mother.  And somewhere along the
line I do believe she had profound experiences of God, and was able
to teach them to her son.

Hagar and Mary were people with
limited choices.  These women were on the margins, their sons were on
the margins, but their sons ALSO cared for others on the margins and
in doing so changed human history.  Even encounters with God didn’t
make everything better.  But being HEARD, being SEEN, being CHOSEN,
mattered.  It gave them hope.  It gave them meaning.  It gave them
strength.  

And, I believe, it gave their
sons compassion.  And I note, as well, the power of being heard,
seen, and loved.

That’s another of those weird
things about real hope.  It can take the hard, the horrible, the
ugly, the painful, even the traumatic, and work with it.  Real hope
doesn’t require a pristine, hygienic, sterile environment.  It meets
us where we are, just like God.  And it works from here.  

Hagar being enslaved was not OK.
It has never been OK for any human who was enslaved. And, those who
have lived as enslaved people still had hope.  They had hope for the
end of slavery. They had hope things wouldn’t always be that way.  

Some had hope of escape.  Some
had hope of little moments of connection or compassion with others.
Many had hope in God, the one who never stops caring no matter how
hard things get.

And, changes are pretty high the
mother of Jesus didn’t get pregnant after choosing her marital
partner, experiencing desire, and consenting to intercourse.  This,
too, is not OK.  And, this too happened to many, many, many women.
It continues to happen.  It is not OK.  But it isn’t the end of hope.

I
am now preaching after the most recent attack on the LGBTQIA+
community in the form of a gunman attacking Club Q in Colorado
Springs.  The attack was less deadly than it might have been because
of the actions of a vet and a drag queen, who took down the gunman.
Thank God they stopped him.  And yet 5 people are dead, 19 are
injured, and once again the safety and sanctity of the club has been
violated.  Trauma abounds.  Grief abounds.  The sickening reality of
the danger of being queer or trans is affirmed.  The still present
horrors from the similar attack on Pulse Nightclub are resurgent.

And I wonder about this sticky,
sturdy, real hope I’m talking about.  What does it even look like?
Is this a hope that someday our children will be able to dance in
peace?   Is this a hope that maybe one person who might commit
violence like that could receive love in ways that prevent it?  Is it
a hope that reasonable gun laws might make these shootings harder
accomplish?  

Cause I still want hope to look
perfect.  I want it to be that there is NO more violence against
queer and trans people ever again.  I want an end to gun violence,
and an end to violence.  I want clubs to thump and throb with music,
never again interrupted by gun fire.  I want veterans to come home
without PTSD, and not need to position themselves to see exits, and
not be needed to stop shooters.  Ok, I want there to be no need for
veterans.

And, I’m struck by both God and
hope being more willing to be in this reality than I am.  To know the
brokenness we live in, and not give up.  To see how hard things are,
to see how interconnected the struggles are, and not be overcome.  To
know the grief, the heartache, the violation, the trauma, and not let
it be the only or the final word.

Our God is a God who sees.

A God who hears.

And a God of hope.  

God calls us from this world of
violence into the kindom of peace.  God gives us gifts of peace, love, joy, and hope.
God calls us to be peace-makers, love-sharers, joy-spreaders,
hope-increasers.  May we receive and act on God’s call.  May this
Advent be a time of quiet transformation so that what God is growing
us may soon break forth.  Amen

November 27, 2022

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady