Father Abraham

Pentecost 2a

June 22, 2014

Genesis 21:8-21

Father Abraham, had many sons,

Many sons had father Abraham

I am one of them and so are you

So let’s all praise the Lord. 

And so the song goes, right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot, turn around, sit down.

But the problem is, I don’t know if I want to be all that closely associated with this father Abraham.  I mean, he sounds great at a glance.  He believed God and got up to leave his home land for a land he had never seen before, whose location he wasn’t to know until God placed a big, flashing neon arrow above the place and said “here you go!...but I forgot to tell you about the famine.”  He believed God when God entered into a covenant with Abraham that required that he circumcise himself and all the males in his camp as a visible sign of the covenant. He believed God when God told him that his descendants would number as many as the stars in the sky, even though he was getting on in age and Sarah was barren.  He believed at age 99 the promise that God made to him that Sarah, who was still barren and now 98, would give birth to a son.  He pled for the sake of Sodom and Gomorrah, talking God into sparing the city for the sake of 10 righteous, who sadly were nowhere to be found. I can get behind this Abraham.  I can happily claim this Abraham as an ancestor and praise the Lord for his faithfulness.  

That’s only half of Abraham’s story.  The rest isn’t so great. 

When Abraham and Sarah arrived in Canaan, the land the God had promised them, and found that there was a famine there, they took an extended vacation over to Egypt where conditions were much better.  It seemed to Abraham, however, that the couple had a slight problem.  The problem was, though, that Sarah was quite beautiful…so beautiful, in fact, that Abraham became afraid that upon seeing her, Pharaoh would become so taken by her beauty that he would kill Abraham and take Sarah to be his own wife.  So he made Sarah agree that if anyone asked, she was to say that she was his sister and basically was cool when Pharaoh believed them and took her for his wife anyways.  This wasn’t the only incident like this.  It happened one other time, only the second time, they played Sarah off as Abraham’s half-sister.  

Later on, when Sarah and Abraham realized that their biological clocks were not ticking any slower, Sarah presented Abraham with Hagar, her hand servant, with instructions to take her as a second wife and sleep with her in hopes of producing a child.  This was not a show of Sarah’s lack of faith, but rather a regular custom of the time.  You see, if a woman was married and then found to be barren, she could be cast off by her husband and seen by the community as cursed and disgraced.  So women in situations of infertility would often give their husbands other wives or concubines so that an heir might be produced for her husband and that she might remain married to him. In Sarah’s case, the plan worked a little too well and a little too quickly, it seems for the result of Abraham taking Hagar as a wife was the birth of Ishmael, and a very jealous Sarah, who was so mean to Hagar when she was pregnant, that Hagar ran away from the house.  Hagar eventually returned, but Sarah’s jealousy of Hagar and Ishmael persisted, even through the birth of her own son, Isaac. No child of a slave woman would share an inheritance with her son, Sarah thought.    

Abraham and Sarah were certainly no Holy Couple.  They were certainly faithful to the promises made to them by God and we should hold them in high esteem for that.  When it came to human relationships, however, they were extremely flawed self-preservationists.  More worried about themselves than anyone else, even each other.  Notice how Abraham is more concerned with his own death than Sarah being taken as the part of Pharaoh’s harem?  And Sarah is more concerned with her own offspring than about Abraham’s love for his other son.

I don’t think that this story is ultimately about them, however.  Well, in a way it is, but in a way to points to the fact that when we are left to our own devices, we often act just like Abraham and Sarah when it comes to human relationships…flawed self-preservationists. 

But we cannot ignore the fact that the story is also about these two small role characters, Hagar and Ishmael, the wronged woman and her son.  And as much as this is about Hagar and Ishmael, it’s really not about them, either.  It’s about the actions of God within this story and within the human experience. 

In the midst of the mess that Abraham and Sarah have caused on account of trying to make God’s promise of a son come to fruition by pulling Hagar into the midst, and then casting her out on not just one, but two occasions, God comes through and meets Hagar where she is.  In fact, Hagar is one of the few women in the bible to have direct conversations with God.  The first conversation occurs when Hagar has run away from Sarah.  The angel of the Lord finds her off in the wilderness and instructs her to return to Sarah.  Then he makes a promise to her that her offspring will be greatly multiplied and that she shall name her child Ishmael, which means “God hears.” And what is incredible about this first interaction is that Hagar gives God a name “El-roi” which means “God sees.”  The second conversation that Hagar has with God takes place after Sarah has demanded that Abraham throw Hagar and Ishmael out.  God hears the cries of Ishmael and comes to the aid of the boy and his mother by opening her eyes to the presence of a well in the middle of nowhere. 

Earlier, God had assured Abraham that he would be with Ishmael and make of him a great nation.  And God made good on his promise.  God heard Ishmael’s cries in the wilderness and came to him and remained with him as he grew. 

So what we see in this story of a flawed patriarch and his equally flawed wife, both called and chosen to be the ancestors of many nations, is God’s unwavering compassion in spite of, and often despite of our own human failings in tending well to human relationships.  We see a God who not only hears, but also sees through the midst of our own failings and comes to the aid of those who crying out in the wildernesses that they have been abandoned in.  This is a God who doesn’t just swoop in in the moment of need, but remains along the entire road of the journey. 

Ultimately what it comes down to it is this.  Sometimes we are the Abraham and Sarah’s, focusing more on our own self-preservation than the needs of people around us.  Sometimes, when left to our own devices, we needlessly cast others out so that we can feel comfortable.  And sometimes we are the ones whose needs are overlooked and feel cast out for the sake of others feeling better about themselves. 

But in the midst of the brokenness of human relationships, God is still at work.  Meeting us where we are, hearing us when we cry out, opening our eyes to the resources that we need, and sticking with us along the journey.