Hagar and Ishmael and God: Giving Gifts

Genesis 21:8-21

November 11, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Hagar’s thirsty throat and defeated spirit cried out to God, and when the angel answered that cry by saying, “What troubles you, Hagar?” it makes me want to cry out “How can you ask that question? This woman, like too many other women and men and children over many generations, has been used and abandoned by those more powerful. Not only is she hungry and thirsty with no food or water in sight, but she hears her child cry out from hunger and thirst. She is helpless to save his life, and the anguish that pours from her is deeper than most of us can imagine. She cries the cries of refugees, of the famine-starved, of any parent who has sat at the side of a dying child.” What troubles you, Hagar?

But the angel of God does not stop with that question. As every angel does, this one continues by saying, “Do not be afraid.” Don’t be afraid that you do not have enough to survive. Don’t be afraid for the child or for yourself. And that would also seem a ridiculous statement given the situation at hand, if the angel did not keep speaking. “Take the boy, and keep him safe, for I will make of him a great nation.” At first glance, this seems to pile ridiculous statement upon ridiculous statement. This child has just been rejected by his father and tossed out to die in the wilderness. Hagar comes from slavery to Sarah and Abraham with no property, no position, and no visible means of support. A great nation? Yeah, right.

Perhaps it would have made more sense for God to have given Hagar and Ishmael a good meal first, and then talked about the nation part, at least from our point of view. But God always takes our points of view and expands them to see the bigger picture. The first gift Hagar needed from God was the motivation to live, a reason to take this child and keep walking, a hope that all was not lost because Abraham and Sarah had rejected both of them. The first gift given is that of a vision of the future, a vision which seems incongruous in the present, but a vision from God, which means looking past incongruity to the possibility of miracle. Hagar looked at Ishmael and saw a dying child. God looked at Ishmael and saw a great nation. The vision makes all the difference.

Then, of course, God did take care of the present. God opened her eyes and cleared them of tears and exhaustion, and she saw right in front of her a well. A well in the wilderness meant not only water to sustain life, but the a spot where others would come to get water, traveling herders or nomadic traders. Hagar and Ishmael would have the water they needed to stay alive in the wilderness along with the probability of others coming with food and work and a connection to the wider world, and, eventually, a wife and other companions for Ishmael to start forming that great nation. Within the grandiose vision, God also made room for the needs of the day and the days beyond, water and food: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Sometimes when churches get to talking about Stewardship and Giving, we stay put in the territory of this second gift to Hagar, the gift of what she and Ishmael need to live. We talk about budgets and bills, how much money it takes to keep the lights on and pay the staff and paint the Sanctuary. We talk about how much money we should be giving away to organizations which help people like Hagar and Ishmael: the hungry, homeless, the refugees and rejected of the world. We need to talk about these things, just as much as Hagar and Ishmael needed God to point them in the direction of that well! We need to talk about them not just in the context of once-a-year when we decide how much money we will give to this church, but also in our personal economic lives and in the politics of our nation’s economic life.

As Christians, however, we do not talk about these things in a vacuum. The first gift Hagar and Ishmael received was not water; it was a vision, a purpose, a sense of the big picture of God’s vision for their lives. If we talk about money without looking first at vision and purpose, then we ignore the gift that God has given us, the gift we are called to turn around and give to the world. God did not give Isaac to Sarah and Abraham or Ishmael to Hagar and Abraham just so they could have children. God made it clear that these two boys bore a promise and that the nations they would found would serve God in a way none had before. We do not have this building and this music and the staff here just to meet the needs of those who are members of this congregation, but we are truly Stewards of these things which God uses for much bigger purposes, stewards of a vision the transcends the Church of the Redeemer or New Haven. All we are and have is about living into God’s vision for all people articulated so clearly by Jesus, that all would have life, life abundant, and that we would love God with all our beings, and that we would love our neighbors as ourselves.

The capacity to have vision beyond the present was one of the most amazing gifts Doc Edmonds gave to so many of us. Though physically blind for much of his life, there was nothing wrong with his vision, and he lived fearlessly into that vision.

Here at the Church of the Redeemer, we, too, have been given the gift of a vision that precedes all the “daily bread” kinds of gifts we have. It is not a vision of us forming a “great nation” in the way that Ishmael would. We say it differently. If you look in your bulletin to the page where the worship participants are listed, you will find that vision. It’s really an extraordinarily clear sense of God gifting us and then calling us to gift the world.

I want us to read it together, but to do so carefully. You’ll see it is broken up into three stanzas. Let us read them together, but pause after each one to think about what we have just said and its implications for how we participate in God’s giving with our giving.

We are the Church of the Redeemer, United Church of Christ,

An inclusive community committed to the worship of God, the work of justice,

And the recognition of our common humanity in the struggles of life.

We follow Jesus Christ who welcomes all people to his table.

We celebrate the rich diversity of God’s people:

In race, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical and mental abilities,

Marital and economic status and culture.

Join us on a journey of the Holy Spirit,

Were faith and intellect meet,

Learning never ends/And music and the arts draw us closer to our Creator.

We look at the church and we see the building and the people. God looks at us and sees this vision and its fulfillment in us. In the words of the angel to Hagar: Do not be afraid. Come! Amen.