Genesis 21:8-21 and Isaiah 56:1-8

In the first reading today, from the book of Genesis, we hear the story of how Hagar and her son Ishmael were banished by Abraham and Sarah. The story is basically about a struggle over legitimacy, in which God takes the side of the weak, the side of those whose legitimacy is denied by the strong. In this story, Hagar wants her son, Ishmael to receive recognition as a legitimate son of Abraham. Sarah fears that if Ishmael is recognized as legitimate that it will somehow detract from the legitimacy of her own son Isaac. But the playing fiend for this struggle over legitimacy between Sarah and Hagar is not equal. Sarah is Abraham's first wife, and occupies a higher place in the patriarchal family hierarchy than Hagar, who is a concubine, a foreigner (she's Egyptian), and a slave. Sarah wins the struggle and has Hagar banished. And at this point, God intervenes in the story. God saves Hagar and her son Ishmael from certain death, and God recognizes Hagar's claims as legitimate. God grants Hagar an inheritance equal to that of Sarah: God promises to make a nation out of Hagar's son Ishmael just as God has promised to make a nation out of Sarah's son Isaac. In essence, God takes the side of the outcast, recognizes the justice of their claims, and grants them legitimacy which those with wealth, status, and power refuses to grant.

A few aspects of this story deserve some notice. First, it should be obvious to the most casual twentieth century student of these verses, that God chose to work through a family structure and a family value system which today would be considered repulsive, immoral, crass, and exploitive. I count one man, and at least two wives. Let me qualify that. One of them is not actually a wife, she is a concubine. Hagar was Sarah's slave. But, in the set of assumptions surrounding marriage in those days, Sarah was Abraham's property, as was Sarah's servant Hagar. In fact, everybody attached to Abraham's household was considered to be under Abraham's direct authority, and a form of property. So both Sarah and Hagar were subject to Abraham as a form of property -- the main difference being that Sarah's male offspring would one day have the right to inherit everything that Abraham owned, while Hagar's offspring would one day become property of Sarah's male offspring. By convention and law, Abraham was allowed sexual access to both women, for the purpose of procreation but also for sexual pleasure. Furthermore, this type of family allowed for an ancient form of surrogate motherhood. Surrogate motherhood, which in our day has aroused the wrath of Christian conservatives, Protestant and Catholic alike, is not, contrary to popular belief, a modern concept but a very ancient one which is sanctioned by the Bible. If Sarah was barren, her servant Hagar could be used by Abraham to provide Sarah with offspring which she could then claim as her own. I will come back to that in a moment. But the other thing worth noting here is that marriage is seen primarily in economic terms -- in terms of who has access to and inheritance rights over property. Where a person stood within the patriarchal family hierarchy determined one's rights and economic status. Wives had pre-eminence over concubines. First born had pre-eminence over later-born. Property was passed from male to male. This is not to say that there was no room for love, tenderness, or sexual pleasure within ancient marriage. Far from it. Love and sexual attraction could be used by women to win concessions from the patriarch; they could also cement a union which had already been contracted for political or economic reasons. But personal attachments and emotions had to be subordinate to economic rights granted within the patriarchal hierarchy.

Such cultural values and assumptions seem radically at odds with the values which we cherish most highly in our marriages and families today. Personal feelings, love, attachment, tenderness, and sexual attraction provide the central motivation in choosing a mate today. Economic motives for marriage are considered base and unworthy of the institution. (We ridicule women who seek wealthy husbands as "gold-diggers," though such motivations for seeking a mate in ancient times were considered praiseworthy.) Today children are not seen as economic assets or a means of perpetuating family wealthy, but as valuable ends in themselves. We generally assume that children, far from being an asset, will be a drain on personal resources, but we consider the value of children to outweigh the economic burdens. We value relative equality between marriage partners. And we consider polygamy to be an unacceptable form of sexual license: we expect (though few in our society strictly fulfill this expectation) that marriage partners will be totally devoted to one partner for life. None of these values -- which Christian conservatives claim as the epitome of "family values" -- were manifested in the patriarchal household of Abraham. In fact, ironically, in the values they embrace with regards to the family, Christian conservatives have much more in common with modern gay and lesbian families than they do with the kinds of families typically portrayed in the Bible -- Abraham's family a case in point.

The sense of tragedy surrounding Hagar's situation is deepened when we understand it in its full historical context. In the events leading up to the story, Sarah and Abraham had discovered that Sarah was barren. In a desperate attempt to fulfill her role as the provider of a male heir to Abraham, Sarah offered her slave Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate mother, to provide Abraham with the son that Sarah was apparently incapable of providing. Hagar proved fertile, and succeeded in bearing Abraham a son: Ishmael. Although Hagar was Ishmael's biological mother, however, Sarah would claim him as her son. Hagar had the satisfaction of knowing that her son might become Abraham's primary heir, but his status in the family did not change her status as a concubine, nor would it necessarily benefit other children that she would bear for Abraham. Then, unexpectedly, Sarah found herself pregnant and bore her own biological son for Abraham. The birth of Isaac dramatically shifted the balance of power in the household. Now, Hagar's role as surrogate mother was obviated; Ishmael was reduced to the status of servant and concubine's son. The one trump card held by Hagar was that Abraham evidently had a soft spot in his heart for her and her son. Sarah perceived Abraham's tenderness toward Hagar as a threat to her status, and the status and power of her son. Eventually she demanded that Hagar and the boy Ishmael be banished. Her status as Abraham's first wife gave her some right to consideration in such matters. Abraham acquiesced. Although the rivalry between Sarah and Hagar troubled him, and though he apparently felt some attachment to Hagar, Sarah's status as wife had to take precedence over Hagar's status as concubine. Abraham sent Hagar and her son into the desert to die. Make no mistake: in ancient times, no one would have sent a female slave with a dependent child into the desert with only a few rations with any expectation but that they would die. Hagar had lost her virginity to Abraham, and with it any hope of a respectable marriage and the protection of another patriarch. If she and the boy did not die of starvation and thirst, they would be fair game for robbers, raiders, slave-traders, or other predators. Sarah won, and Hagar lost big time. She had been used to advance the dynastic, economic, and political agendas of Abraham and Sarah, and once her usefulness was over, indeed once she was perceived to be a threat to those agendas, she was cast out to die.

She went and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. When the skin of water was exhausted, she left the child under a bush. Then she went and sat down across from the child, about a bow-shot away, saying, "Please don't let me see the child die." Thus she sat across from him and began to weep.

It is hard to imagine a more pitiful scene: a woman and her small child on the verge of starvation, the child crying for water under the bush, the mother heart-broken, powerless to stop her child from slowly dying. All she could do was delay his inevitable death by sheltering him from the sweltering desert sun under a bush. How must it have felt to know that she was cast into this predicament not by accident but by design -- by the hatred of a rival and the complacence of her former protector.

Yet, as shocking as we might find this kind of no-holds-barred family rivalry -- a rivalry which in this case sentenced two people to death -- in the context of ancient mores, law and conventions, this was less shocking than what happened next in the story. God's intervention in the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar represented a dramatic reversal of conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between wives and concubines. God flouted the laws and conventions of the day by granting legitimacy and an inheritance to one who was considered illegitimate. And as far as I can tell, God did so purely out of a sense of compassion and justice. I use the term justice here in the sense of "fairness," not in the sense of recognizing legal claims, since Hagar had none. Hagar had been done wrong, not in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of God. Hagar had had her virginity -- the only marketable commodity a woman had -- taken from her by her mistress and her master. But instead of being taken care of, because of jealousy and fear she was cast out to die. And as far as I can tell, God did not find this to be fair. God did not find this to be just. God did not find this to be equitable. And so God established a new covenant with Hagar and her son Ishmael. God went outside the traditions, the conventions, the expectations of the day and set up a new covenant with a concubine and a slave who had fallen into disfavor with her mistress. And through this covenant, Hagar's and Ishmael's lives were spared, and a new nation was created:

God heard the cries of the child, and an angel of God called Hagar from the heavens and said to her: "Hagar, what is wrong? Have no fear, for God has heard the cries of the boy, there where he is."

God spoke to Hagar and said, "I have heard the cry of your son, there where he is." Earlier in the narrative, God told Abraham, "I will make a nation of the son of your servant, for he is your posterity." But to Hagar God said, "I have heard his cry." When push comes to shove, God does not hear our prayers because of our status or ancestry or claims to earthly legitimacy. God hears our cry because God is on the side of all those who are in need. God hears the cry of those who are in distress. God hears the cry of the oppressed. God hears the cry of the poor. And God will hear your cry, when you are in distress. If you have suffered injustice; if it seems like there is hatred and jealousy all around you; if there is no mercy for you, no money, no livelihood, no hope in this world, remember that all the hate, envy, fear, and injustice in the world is like a drop of water in the ocean of God's love and grace. And God will save you.

God's saving action in the case of Hagar -- in the context of the overall narrative of Genesis -- seems like a digression from the main story line. After all, the dominant narrative is about Abraham's legitimate line of inheritance: from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, from Jacob to the twelve sons of Israel, to the story of the twelve tribes. Hagar and Ishmael are a brief by-line -- a quick tangent before the narrative hurries back to the tale of the Israelites and their founding fathers. But the lesson of Hagar and Ishmael becomes the central moral paradigm in the teaching of the great prophets of the post-captivity era. God is with those who are on the margins. God is with the distressed, the outcast, the poor, the oppressed. Every act of injustice committed against them, every atrocity committed against them, is an injustice, an atrocity committed against God and a violation of the law -- no matter how scrupulous one is in obedience to every other aspect of the law. Just as God promised an inheritance to Hagar -- an Egyptian slave woman with an illegitimate child -- God would, in the teachings of Isaiah, promise an inheritance to two groups of people would could have no rightful inheritance in ancient Israelite law: eunuchs and foreigners. Hear the words of comfort spoken by Isaiah to the sexual and racial minorities of his day, two minorities excluded and marginalized under the law as it was then interpreted:

Let not the foreigner who cleaves to the Lord say, "The Lord shall surely separate me from his people." And let not the eunuch say, "I am a withered tree." For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose that which is agreeable unto me, and who dwell firmly in my covenant, I will give them in my house and inside my walls a monument and an inheritance greater than sons and daughters. I will give them an eternal name which shall never be cut off.

And according to Isaiah, who "keeps the Sabbath" and "dwells firmly in my covenant"? According to 56 vs. 1, those who "practice justice."

The story of Hagar is not a story primarily about Sarah's cruelty and mean-spiritedness, or Abraham's ineffectual love -- his inability to turn his love for Hagar into concrete material support and protection when she needed it most. It is a story about the grace of God, which is greater than any human stupidity or injustice, and it is a story to those who have been pushed to the margins by others' fear, cruelty, and greed. It is a message of hope. This is how great the grace of God is. Hagar was surrounded by hatred, jealousy, and fear. Her enemy sent her away to die, and the person she thought she could count on to protect her abandoned her, but God had another purpose. God said, "Nobody else recognizes your relationship to Abraham. But I God recognize your relationship. I recognize you, and I recognize your son. And I will give you what Abraham and Sarah denied you: a place, an inheritance, and a nation. I will give you an inheritance equal to that of Sarah and Isaac." And then God opened her eyes to see a way out of her desperate situation. God gave her the strength to survive, and to save the life of her son. Just at the moment of death, God spoke to her and showed her a way out. Likewise, God recognizes your humanity when no one else does. God recognizes your needs, your claims, your fears, your hopes, when no one else does. God recognizes your love, your relationships, your commitments, your family, even if no one else does, and even if Paul Wellstone doesn't, and even if Bill Clinton doesn't, and even if the entire U.S. government doesn't. God recognizes your family. And God will give you an inheritance that is greater than what you would receive under the authority of an earthly government.

During the past few weeks, I have been involved in an extended verbal wrestling match with my brother via e-mail My brother believes what the Mormon Church teaches about me and my relationship -- namely that I and my relationship are sinful and illegitimate. Although he claims to support my civil rights, he does not know whether gay marriages should receive legal recognition, and defends the church's attacks on my identity and my family. I have been surprised at how deeply wounded I have felt by his unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of my relationship even as he takes for granted the legitimacy of his own marriage and family.

In the story of Hagar, I see a fundamental affirmation of the humanizing effects of recognizing the legitimacy of the basic relationships people claim. What is legitimacy? It is essentially the recognition of an individual's rightful place in the scheme of things. It is recognition of the relationships within which an individual is bound, relationships by which an individual can rightfully claim certain benefits assigned by convention, law, and tradition. The story will always be to me a promise from God to the dispossessed, to those who are in pain, to those whom the world ever delegitimizes, that God -- the words of Isaiah, "will give you an eternal name which shall never be cut off." The call to those dispossessed, as Isaiah discerned it, was to cleave to God, the source of all legitimacy, to walk in God's path trusting that this inheritance, though not easy, is greater than any crown assigned by the world.

In Jesus' eternal name, through which every one of us have salvation, Amen.