It has the feel, almost, of a Jerry Springer episode which may make some relieved that we didn't read it. Yet there is so much pathos and hurt here that to miss it is to miss, I think, one of the crucial themes of Genesis. The "family values" here are, well...complicated.
One father, two mothers, two sons. The man, even if he will one day be called "the father of faith," is torn and in many ways paralyzed. The mother of the younger son (she is the one, I hope you remember, who came up with the plan for surrogate motherhood in the first place; or at least so says the narrator) can no longer stand to have her own sweet, dear boy in the same room as his half-brother Ishmael. Actually that doesn’t quite get it right: to name him, to name the relationship is more than Sarah can bear. So the narrator refers to him only as “the lad.” That son of Hagar...playing with her own dear sweet Isaac. Enough!
I think some of us tend to carry around in our heads a kind of picture of Bible-land: a world of smiling people dressed in flowing robes and painted with pastel colors. A world that seems very distant from us and even unreal to us. But the truth of the matter is that this is partly so because our reading of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament, has been so selective. The truth is that the people in the Bible are far more like us than we usually dare to admit. Saul’s lust for power, David’s lust for Bathsheba, Solomon’s lust for wealth—the stories of those politicians could be ripped from the day’s headlines.
That is also the case with today’s reading, a rather ironic one for Father’s Day Weekend, I think. This is a family in crisis. The father is passive, weak, and paralyzed. Sarah is Hebrew, married, rich, and free; while her counterpart Hagar is Egyptian, single, poor, and a servant. And yet Sarah had, until the birth of Isaac, spent the better part of her life with the label “barren.” She certainly isn’t getting any younger and this is clearly going to be her only child. Hagar, while powerless in every other way is young and fertile. (Abraham practically looked at her and she got pregnant!)
In the scene before us today, baby Isaac has just been weaned. Anyone who has ever nursed a child (I have not!) knows that such an event is a bit of a mixed blessing. Glad in part to be done with that, maybe. But there is also a sense of loss as well. Moreover as with all changes in our kids lives there is this dreadful reminder that there is no stopping the process; each stage seems to pass by much too quickly. There is, I suspect a sense on that day for Sarah that if she blinks Isaac will be going off to college. And there is nothing she can do to stop it.
On the day that Isaac is weaned, Abraham throws a great party. And all hell breaks loose. Sarah looks at the two boys playing together, her own precious boy and “that lad” of Hagar’s and she just kind of loses it.
She sees Ishmael laughing. Now the text is ambiguous. The Hebrew word is a kind of pun on Isaac’s own name. The NRSV skips over the pun and just says the two boys were playing together. It’s hard to know what Sarah saw, hard to know if what she saw given her own inner turmoil was accurate. Is Ishmael laughing at the kid named “Laughter?” Is he picking on him or even bullying him? Or is he just laughing with his little brother? The text seems to be intentionally ambivalent. We don’t know. The story isn't focused on what happened; the story is focused on Sarah's reaction.
So what the text does know is that Sarah tells her husband, Abraham, that she wants "that woman" and her son gone! And Abraham reluctantly follows through on that, trusting that God will somehow be with Hagar and Ishmael as they depart. Abraham seems at least good at trusting God, even if he never seems to act on his own.
So: that’s the story.
But what does it mean? What might a preacher say? Well like any good story, it may have many different meanings and multiple layers. So if you need to let your mind wander from here that’s okay. Write your own sermon, make your own connections. Perhaps you grew up in a "blended" family and lectio divina on this text is going to take you in some clear directions about the challenges of family. I'm just glad for readers to know this is even in the Bible because it changes, I think, how we think about the Bible if we take it seriously. It reminds us there is no "Bible-land" and the Bible is no book of rules for how to be nice to the nice. It's about the challenges of being human, and the complexity of human relationships, and about choices. And also about hurt and shame and betrayal. All wrapped up into one little scene on the day that Isaac was weaned, that impacts on not just everyone in the story but everything that will happen in the rest of the Bible and in the Middle East today. It's big!
For my own part, I want to simply offer two possible trajectories for this text, two possible meanings: one more global and theological and one very local and more personal.
First, I think is is helpful to be reminded that God is bigger than the Church. We follow the narrative from chapter twenty-one through Isaac, and through his second son, Jacob—and from there to Joseph with his amazing technicolor coat. With our Jewish friends we tell the story as it moves toward the fulfillment of the Promise—to Exodus and King David and to Exile and Homecoming; ultimately to Jews waiting for Messiah to come, and Christians waiting for Messiah to come again. But we should notice at the end of this vignette that God’s mercy and God’s grace and God’s blessing are not limited to Isaac and to Jacob. The narrative is taking us that way to be sure. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But we don't get there before the narrator is clear that God is also going to make of Ishmael a great nation too. (And so also, by the way, ditto with Esau as we’ll read later on in Genesis.) God doesn’t leave human beings discarded by the side of the road. Even when we do. In today’s story, God takes care of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness—just as one day God will care for the Hebrew people in the Sinai Desert. The text seems (at least to me) to be suggesting that God can do things beyond the scope of the Bible. That God does do things beyond the scope of the Bible. There are story-lines that will continue in different directions than the story we tell. We have every right to tell our own story, but we needn’t limit God’s grace to this one particular narrative. God was with the boy. And he grew up...
I know that makes some Christians freak out, but I see no way around it and for me it is very good news that I did learn in Sunday School, even if we didn't study this text: God loves all the little children of the world. God will not simply discard Ishmael. Christians are called by our Baptismal Covenant to commend the faith that is in us: to be evangelists and to share the “good news” with others. But we need to do that always with a sense of humility and also with a willingness to seek Christ wherever Christ may be found, even in the religion of the stranger. Sometimes in serious theological conversations with others who see the world from another angle we have the greatest chance to grow in our own faith and commitment to Jesus. At least that has been my own good fortune on various occasions.
It therefore matters to me a great deal that the Bible wants to insist that in spite of all the turmoil in the Middle East that has gone on for centuries that there is also this deep awareness that Iraqis and Iranians and Syrians and Egyptians and Israelis and Palestinians are all cousins. all part of one big odd dysfunctional family. And that God is somehow present in the midst of all of that. Genesis 21 shows us the wideness of God’s mercy—the love of a God that extends beyond those included in the Promise, and specifically of a God who is present to Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.God was with the boy...and he grew up...and his mother found him a wife in Egypt.
But there is another way to go with this text, and maybe it is even more relevant for most of us as we try to make sense of the Bible in our daily lives. I think about my own family, and the families that make up every congregation I know. The two I got to know best as a pastor were both in relatively affluent suburbs. Yet even there, I am aware how so many feel they don’t measure up. Sometimes people feel like if others knew our little dark family secrets then we somehow wouldn’t be accepted in those nice suburban communities. But let me tell you this, if I have learned anything at all from being a parish priest in those communities, it is that every family has their secrets. Every family has at least one story like the one in Genesis 21. And those moments, when the decision is made but could have been otherwise, haunt people for the rest of their lives. I assure you that Abraham and Sarah were never the same after that day. Not to mention Hagar and Ishmael. And of course Isaac himself. If you like lectio divina then try imagining and telling this story not from the perspective of the narrator but from the perspective of each of those characters. Jews call it midrash. We read not to create doctrine, but to find meaning. Stories generate stories. One could preach this whole story in the voice of Isaac - who of course wasn't yet speaking when it happened. But he knew something happened. He knew he had a brother, and then the brother was gone one day...
The really great thing about the Bible is that it turns out that none of these characters are painted in pastel colors. Rather, all the dirty laundry is there for generations to read about. We speak of “Father Abraham” and all the rest, and that’s great and it’s true. But the stories like this one are also there for us to see him and his family in all their complexity and all of the challenges they face. The same holds true for the great King David, specifically the fact that his affair with Bathsheba is not covered up, but also in the ways that his family life even beyond that is described.
I joke about how dysfunctional these people are. But I hear in that very good news for all of us whose families are more like the Gallaghers (Shameless) than the Cleavers (Leave it to Beaver.) That doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to strive for health. It does mean we don’t have to strive for perfection. And it clearly means that God has been in the business of using people who are far from perfect for a very long time now to bring good news to the world.
Most of us are probably not worthy—or at least we don’t feel worthy—so much as to gather up the crumbs under the table. And yet God keeps on pouring abundant grace and love over us. And that is precisely the point. The Church isn’t supposed to be in the business of feeding and reinforcing perfectionism (which is in fact I think may be one of the really great sins) but in the business of remembering God’s love and God’s grace offered to imperfect people in an effort to make them more whole. When we allow shame to rule our lives, we disregard the power of God's love to heal us.
For us, though, the time has come to say goodbye to Hagar and Ishmael. We leave them in the wilderness knowing that God at least has not forgotten them, that there truly is a wideness in God’s mercy. If we want to hear more about their story we have to listen to our Muslim friends.
But let me add just one more thing, and say that this is not the last we see of Ishmael in the Scroll of Genesis. So I am going to offer a follow-up post on this one in a couple of days, that does not come up in the lectionary. We'll call it Proper 7.5.
And then we'll be able to move on to tell the rest of our story, the future for Jews and by God's mercy, for Christians too: the story of this little boy Isaac, the boy called Laughter. When we see him next, he and his dad will be climbing Mount Moriah, and it will be our task to wrestle with one of the most haunting and difficult texts in all the Bible.
Stay tuned...
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