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

November 27, 2022
by Sara Baron

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

Sermons

“The Hard Work of Departing” based on Genesis 16:7-15 and…

November 6, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We are told that in order for life to exist three things are necessary: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals. To expand on the last of these, “Life as we know it contains specific combinations of elements including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that combine to form proteins and nucleic acids which can replicate genetic code.”¹ It could be that life could exist with a different combination of chemicals, but the theory remains: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals are necessary to life.

Those three things exist on this planet, and given that reality, life seems irrepressible. Tiny cracks in pavement or cement sidewalks sprout grass and weeds. Puddles that stand too long grow algae, wet wood grows mold and moss. I’ve been considering this unstoppable quality of life ever since I visited Bryce Cannon National Park and was motivated to take this picture. At one and the same time there is a huge evergreen growing at the base of “hoodoos” easily 5 times its size AND there are tiny little evergreens popping up at the top of hoodoos with remarkably little soil available to them. Yet, life won’t stop. The trees grow.

The Bible is a remarkably interesting document, and within its complexity and contradictions it sometimes feels like there are unquenchable truths gleaming through it. These truths are like the force of life on our planet – no matter what is done to try to stop them and no matter the strength of the circumstances that would prevent them – they prevail. Our two stories today tell profoundly of a God who cares about ALL people, while existing within a narrative about God choosing to focus on just one people.

The story going on here is supposed to be about God choosing Abraham. There is supposed to be a special bond with Abraham, and less so with Sarah, and yet the story keeps diverging to include and bless others. It is as if the universal love of God cannot be contained, even in the stories trying to tell the back-story of the people who long claimed God’s love was particularly for them.

Our two readings today are most likely two versions of the same story that were adapted differently with time. The one in Genesis 16, which we read first, is the version from the Southern Kingdom and much older. The one in Genesis 21 is the version from the Northern Kingdom. The Bible got edited A LOT. Most of the stories in the Torah (first 5 books) were passed on in oral tradition for centuries before they first got written down, and oral tradition naturally changes stories as it goes. Likely each version had changed over time in different ways to suit different time-relevant needs. Then, after being written down, the stories continued to get adapted, including by editors so that they would make a more coherent story. The people responsible for translating the Bible into English also made difficult decisions that functioned as further editing. The stories we have now are the complicated compilations of milenia, with many fingerprints on them.

That is, the two stories we read today are likely the same story with different fingerprints on them. Yet, they are edited into the current version of Genesis whereby they fill two different roles. They are, at one and the same time ONE story and TWO stories that happen sequentially. The editors aren’t perfect, in the second version Ishmael is a 17 year old that his mother carried away into the wilderness in her arms like a baby. (Oops.) But the work of the editors to make a coherent story makes both stories important, and not just the older one.

Throughout both stories, extraordinary things happen to Hagar. Explains of this are coming from the work of the amazing Biblical Scholar Phyllis Trible. In Genesis 16 Hagar has run away from Sarai/Sarah because of Sarai/Sarah’s harsh treatment of her. Hagar is a subversive woman choosing to run away, likely to die, and taking with her the heir that her slave-master husband wants most desperately. She reaches a point where she claims her life as her own, and she acts on it. In Genesis 16, Hagar is pregnant, and when she runs away she is near the border with Egypt, and finds a spring to sustain herself.

“The Hebrew word ‘spring’ (’ayn) also means ‘eye.’ The association resonates with Hagar’s having acquired a new vision of Sarai, and it anticipates the new vision of God that she will soon acquire. She, an Egyptian and a slave, is the first person in the Bible to whom such a messenger visits. Moreover, for the first time in the narrative a character speaks to Hagar (rather than about her) and uses her name. … The messenger promise Hagar innumerable descendants, thereby according her the special status of being the only woman in the Bible to receive such a promise. … The messenger affirms Hagar’s conceiving. She will bear a son and will name him Ishmael. Hagar becomes the first woman in the Bible to receive such an annunciation. … The messenger specifies the meaning of the name Ishamel (God hears): ‘For God heard your affliction.’”²

Now, unfortunately, in the form of this story that we have now, the messenger of God tells Hagar that God hears and knows her affliction, AND sends Hagar back to it anyway. The first act of subversiveness doesn’t get her free, although she is different afterward. Perhaps the only reason it doesn’t work is so that we can get to the second story though. After the words of the messenger, Hagar speaks for the second time, and from the way the story explains it, what happens is astounding. Trible puts it this way:

“Hagar’s next words bypass the messenger’s words. She does not comment on her continued affliction, the promise of descendants, the naming of her son, the meaning of his name, or his future. Nor does she comment on the God who hears. Instead she names the Lord who sees. The narrator introduces her words with a striking expression that accords her a power attributed to no one else in the Bible. Hagar ‘calls the name of the Lord who spoke to her’ (Gen 16:13*). She does not invoke the Lord; she names the Lord. She calls the name; she does not call up on the name. ‘You are El-roi [God of seeing],’ she says.”³

And then, after all of that astounding-ness, the text seems to revert to the mundane. “Hagar bore Abram a son.” (Genesis 15a). It isn’t as mundane as it seems. Trible says, “Hagar becomes the first woman in the ancestor stories to bear a child.”⁴ Mostly sons are attributed as coming to their fathers (as if that’s how it works.) But, that isn’t all. Hagar gets a lot of “firsts” in the Bible. Moving onto the Genesis 21 version, according to Trible “She is the first slave in Scripture to be freed. At the same time, she becomes the first divorced wife – banished by her husband at the command of his first wife and God.”⁵

In the Genesis 21 version of the story, Hagar prepares a deathbed for her son, and sits to wait for his death. The story is clearly about a very young child. Within this story, Hagar “becomes the first character in the Bible to weep.”⁶ According to Trible, “The God who she saw (r’h) long ago in Shur opens her eyes enabling her to see (r’h) a well of water at the site of the ‘well of seven’ (Beersheba).”⁷

Whether the stories are taken sequentially or as two versions of the same narrative, some themes emerge. First and foremost, God takes care of Hagar and cares about Hagar. She is given extraordinary access to the Divine, paralleling Abraham’s. Unlike any other person in the Bible, she gets to NAME God. Her survival, which is inherently threatened by being sent out alone into the barren wilderness of the desert, is assured by God who SHE renames “The God who sees.” It feels like she names God, “The God who sees ME” because that seems to more completely articulate the wonder spoken by Hagar. She knows she’s a woman, a foreigner, a slave, and in both stories she is profoundly alone and utterly powerless.

Yet, God sees her.

Isn’t it weird? Throughout the rest of the Bible, God is referred to as the “God of Abraham”, but “The God of Abraham” goes with Hagar to care for her. God refuses to be contained by the stories boundaries. God’s love and grace are too expansive to be held within the walls of the narrative. Hagar is meant to be placeholder for Sarah, simply the womb to the woman who matters – and THAT woman only matters enough to be the one to provide descendants. That’s how this is supposed to go, according to the story itself! Instead we get Hagar naming God in the desert.

God disrespects human separations, especially about who matters in the world, even within a story trying to articulate how the ancestors of Israel came to be in the world! Even in that story, the sparkle of God’s love for outsiders shines through. Hagar is one of the least empowered characters in the Bible, by any set of human standards, and she is one of the people given the most access to God in the Bible. Her experiences of God are more expressive and profound than Abraham’s.

That is, Hagar matters. Those like Hagar matter. The Native Americans whose tribal lands were taken by the United States matter, even when the USA disregards its treaties, even with energy companies want protests squelched, even when protesters get arrested. Those seeking to protect the land from the Dakotas Access Pipeline matter like Hagar matters. Women and girls who are used in sexual trafficking matter, even when they are being used to make profits for others, even when they are using drugs to try to escape, even when they are being raped for other people’s pleasures. Women and girls living in modern sexual slavery matter like Hagar matters. Refugees around the world fleeing violence and horrors matter, even when no country wants to welcome them in, even when they use all that they have to get onto ships that may sink, even when getting to a new country means they’ll be labeled ‘illegal.” Refugees and immigrants matter like Hagar matters.

If a refugee, a slave girl of an ancient nomadic herder was important enough to name God, then the world’s standards are COMPLETELY irrelevant. Everyone matters because Hagar matters. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Life Needs” found at http://phillips.seti.org/kids/what-life-needs.html on 11/3/2016

2Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing” in Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, editors, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian PerspectivesTrible, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2006) p. 40-41.

3Trible, 41.

4Trible, 41.

5Trible, 46.

6Trible, 49

7Trible, 49.

–

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

November 6, 2016