“Promises to the ‘Outsiders’”             Dr. Julie Adkins

                   Text: Genesis 21:8-21

 

SERMON

 

This is going to sound like a really weird thing to say,

          but don’t give up; I will explain it.

This story of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, and “the boys”

          is the kind of thing that makes the Bible great.

It’s not a particularly familiar story.

Not like the one we’re going to hear next week,

          about Abraham making ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.

No, this story is frequently left out,

          or relegated to the footnotes,

                   when we are studying Abraham,

                   and the history of God with God’s people.

But what makes this story great is that

          even though it portrays two of our heroes of the faith –

                   Abraham and Sarah –

          as petty and selfish and conflicted,

                   it nevertheless made it into the Bible.

And so it stands there as a reminder

          that God does not require perfection of us.

Even though we are sometimes petty and selfish and conflicted,

          God can and will do great things through us,

                   if we will let God do those things.

 

But let’s review the story,

          since it’s not a very familiar one.

Sarah sees her son, Isaac, playing with Hagar’s son, Ishmael.

Remember that Abraham is the father of both these boys;

          Ishmael is a few years older.

And Sarah gets riled up just thinking that

          Ishmael, who is after all illegitimate,

                   might actually inherit something from Abraham

                             along with her son Isaac, the legitimate heir.

So she wants Abraham to send Ishmael and Hagar away.

Well, under certain circumstances that might be understandable.

But remember, if you will,

          that it was Sarah who got Abraham and Hagar together in the first place!

Hagar was Sarah’s maid, Sarah’s servant.

And when Sarah got old enough that she was sure she wasn’t going to have children,

          she told Abraham to go to Hagar and make her pregnant,

                   so that he would have sons to carry on his name

                   and to carry out God’s promise.

We don’t know whether Abraham thought it was a particularly good idea or not;

          the text is silent about what his thoughts were on the matter;

          but he went ahead and visited Hagar’s tent, so to speak,

                   and in due time Ishmael was born.

One of the strands of tradition in Genesis tells us that

          Hagar became pretty insufferable after that,

                   and was always taunting Sarah with something like,

          “Nyah, nyah, I gave birth to the heir and you didn’t.”

Or even,

          “You may be his legal wife, but I’m more woman than you’ll ever be.”

It has been my experience most of the time

          that most men have no idea

                   how vicious women can be to each other.

And that’s a matter for us to take up another day,

          but suffice it to say that Sarah had had enough of Ishmael and his mommy,

                   and wanted them gone,

          once she had miraculously come up with Isaac.

Doesn’t exactly show her in the best light,

          but perhaps she really was at the end of her patience.

In one account,

          Sarah begins to treat Hagar so badly

                   that she takes the child and runs away of her own free will.

But in the version we heard today,

          Sarah doesn’t do her own dirty work.

She tells Abraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael –

          and Abraham, though “distressed” by her wish,

          and grieved at the thought of losing his first-born son,

                   goes ahead and does it.

God makes it a little easier for him,

          by promising to look after Hagar and Ishmael,

                   and to make a nation of Ishmael also,

                   since he is also a child of Abraham.

Which just goes to show how far God is willing to go

          to redeem even our stupidest choices!

 

At any rate,

          it has long been understood that

                   while Abraham was father of the Jewish people, the Hebrew people,

                             through his son Isaac,

                   he is also the father of an entirely different nation or “race” of people

                             through his son Ishmael:  the Arab people.

And I really think that part of the reason

          that tensions are so high and so vicious between Jews and Arabs in many places

                   is the same reason they get that way in our families.

We are family; we are related; we share a common history,

          and so there is no way for us simply to turn our back and walk away.

We as Christians have traditionally thought of ourselves as

          the children of Abraham and Sarah,

                   through Isaac and Rebekah,

through Jacob and Rachel –

          that we are in some way heirs to the promise

                   that was made to the Hebrew people.

I probably wouldn’t spend so much time on this point

          were it not for the fact that Saturday, a week ago,

                   the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

                   elected a Moderator who is by birth

                             a descendant of Ishmael.

Our new moderator, Fahed Abu-Akel,

          was born 58 years ago in Palestine.

His parents had been converted to Christianity

          by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries.

He has been in the U.S. a long time,

          did his theological training here and was ordained,

          has become a naturalized citizen,

                   and lives and works in the Atlanta area.

Anyway, as we worked and worshiped together this past week,

          and particularly as I was thinking,

                   “Aaak!  I’ve got to preach Sunday when I get back!”

          it became more and more real to me that

                   there, standing before me, was living, breathing evidence

                             that God’s promises to Hagar had also been kept.

That even though Hagar and her son and his descendants

          have been written out of our faith story,

                   they have never been outside of God’s story.

That just as God has been faithful to the promises God made

          to and through Isaac, and Jacob, and David, and the prophets …

so God has also been faithful to the promises God made

          to and through Ishmael and his descendants,

                   whose names we don’t even know because they aren’t in “our” book.

For at least the next year,

          the Presbyterian Church is going to have in front of us

                   a constant reminder that God’s promises

                             are bigger than the limits we place and the boundaries we draw.

 

So, what does that have to do with living and working in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas?

Aside from being interested in a Palestinian-American-Presbyterian,

why should we care that God followed through

                   with some ancient promise made to ancient people

                   whose story is not our own?

Don’t we have enough to do,

          trying to keep up with God in familiar ways and familiar places?

Well –

God certainly does give us a lot to think about; I’ll grant that.

But I do believe that God has something to teach us

          through Hagar and Ishmael,

                   their story and their history.

And it is this:

Even though they disappear from our history;

          they vanish from the pages of our Bible;

                   they are invisible in God’s story as it has come to us …

          they are nevertheless a part of that story.

Even though the Bible is our sacred text

          of God at work with us and in relationship with us,

                   and even though it is our guidebook and our scripture and is holy to us …

          God has been at work and in relationship

                   outside of the people and the pages of the Bible as well.

God has done and is doing things

          that the Bible doesn’t know about

                   and the Bible can’t guide us on, at least not directly.

God has done and is doing things

          with people who are “outsiders” to us …

God makes and keeps promises with and to people

          whom we think of as being outside of God’s view or God’s care.

And what that means is that insofar as we can,

          we need to gain a larger view;

                   we need to see a bigger picture.

There are people whose stories are foreign to us,

          whom we need to hear.

People we think of as outsiders,

          whom God does not see in that way.

 

The challenge for us in living in a nation and a community that are quite diverse,

          is in figuring out how to be open to the stories and experiences and gifts

                   both of the people who share our version of God’s story,

                   and the people who seem to us to be outsiders.

One of the painful lessons we have learned as we have had

          more theology and biblical study written

                   by women, and African-Americans, and Hispanics,

                             and Asians, and other traditional “outsiders”

          is that, when our theology doesn’t make sense of people’s lived experience,

          when it doesn’t address their story,

                   the problem is not with those people and their story.

The problem is with a theology that has for many centuries

          limited itself to the insiders.

This is not to say or even to imply that the Bible is wrong:

          it is the story of God;

                   it’s just not the whole story of God.

For example,

          we have discovered and learned pretty much in just the last century,

                   that God can and does speak to and through women,

          in a way that the biblical writers would never have imagined possible.

Women are “outsiders” in much of the Bible.

          We are not outsiders to God.

Likewise, when we hear the voices around us from immigrants,

          people from many ethnic and national backgrounds,

                   whose stories are so very different from our own,

                   and who challenge us in ways that sometimes make us uncomfortable,

          we simply have to recognize

                   that although they may be “outsiders” to the story as we have know it,

                             they are not outside of God’s story.

When we listen to the stories and the pain of our brothers and sisters

          who are gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered …

                   for many of us, their experiences and their stories

                   are so different from our own that

they might as well be in a foreign language!

Nevertheless, just because their story is foreign to us,

                   does not make it foreign to God;

and just because their experience falls outside our own,

                   does not mean that they are “outsiders” to God.

The hymn text reminds us,

          “For the love of God is broader

            than the measure of our minds.”

God’s promises are not only for us,

          but also for those people who are so unlike us

                   that we can scarcely imagine what their lives might be like.

Not only for Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac;

          but also for Abraham and Hagar, and Ishmael.

 

Once we understand that,

          how we respond is still left up to us.

Are there grounds on which

          we might exclude people whom God includes?

Can we, or should we, draw boundaries

          which leave some people on the outside

                   although they are “insiders” to God?

Most difficult of all, how do we try to include and live with people

          who want to draw the boundaries that would leave us on the outside?

It’s a challenge facing our Presbyterian church;

          it’s a challenge facing this congregation;

          it’s a challenge that many of us face personally.

Emily Dickinson, in her usual childlike yet profound style, suggests this:

          “He drew a circle that shut me out:

                   Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

            But Love and I had the wit to win:

                   We drew a circle that took him in.”

Can we draw a circle that includes us,

          and the children of Hagar and Ishmael,

like our Palestinian-Presbyterian moderator,

          and others whose stories are strange to us,

                   though not to God?

Is there a way for us to see God’s promises at work

          in the lives of people who don’t share a common history with us?

Will we put “out”

          people whom God “includes in”?

And if we do,

          whom or what are we really worshipping?

 

Amen.

 

© 2002 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)