Change in Plans
Genesis 16
We continue the story of Abraham and Sarah, skipping from God blessing them and their descendants in chapter 12 to chapter 16. In between the two chapters ten years pass.
Abraham and Sarah journey to Egypt and back due to famine, their nephew Lot strikes out on his own in the area of Sodom, and God promises once again that Abraham will have many descendants.
As chapter 16 begins, Sarah decides that it is time for her to take matters into her own hands when it comes to having a child.
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children and she had an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, “Look, pray, the Lord has kept me from bearing children. Pray, come to bed with my slave girl. Perhaps I shall be built up through her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
And Sarai Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave girl, after Abram had dwelled ten years in the land of Canaan, and she gave her to Abram as a wife.
And he came to bed with Hagar and she conceived and she saw that she had conceived and her mistress seemed slight in her eyes. And Sarai said to Abram, “This outrage against me is because of you! I myself put my slave girl in your embrace and when she saw she had conceived, I became slight in her eyes. Let the Lord judge between you and me!”
And Abram said to Sarai, “Look your slave girl is in your hands. Do to her whatever you think right.” And Sarai harassed her and she fled from her.
And the Lord's messenger found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave girl of Sarai! Where have you come from and where are you going?”
And she said, “From Sarai my mistress I am fleeing.”
And the Lord's messenger said to her, “I will surely multiply your seed and it will be beyond all counting.” And the Lord's messenger said to her:
“Look, you have conceived and will bear a son and you will call his name Ishmael, for the Lord has heeded your suffering. And he will be a wild ass of a man – his hand against all, the hand of all against him, he will encamp in despite of of all his kin.”
And she called the name of the Lord who had addressed her, “El-Roi,” for she said, “Did not I go on seeing here after he saw me?” And Hagar bore a son to Abram, and Abram called his son whom Hagar had born, Ishmael. And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.
Today's story begins with a very powerful figure, a fed up woman. As we heard two weeks ago, God promised Abraham that if he moved to Canaan, God would give him many descendants and make of him a great nation. It didn't matter that Sara was barren and Abraham getting old, God would make it happen.
Well, here we are ten years later, still no baby. So Sara decides it's time to take things into her own hands. She was past the age of child bearing, God wasn't doing anything, and neither was Abraham, someone had to take charge.
You get the feeling Abraham is used to Sara taking charge, he doesn't offer any argument to her plan that he take her slave girl and have a child with her.
To be fair, this was a very common arrangement at that time, similar to surrogate mothers or even IVF today. If you can't have children of your own, you figure out some way to make it happen.
Interestingly enough, the Bible does not refer to Hagar as a concubine, it says Sara gave her to Abraham as a wife. So her status changed significantly. Perhaps it's not surprising that once Hagar conceived a baby, Sara “seemed slight in her eyes.” Hagar had gone from slave to wife to mother, while Sara was still barren. In the eyes of that society, Hagar could be seen as the one with more status.
We don't know exactly what Hagar does to Sara, but Sara is clearly offended. And no matter what Hagar's status, Sara is equally clear that she still outranks Hagar in the eyes of Abraham. Sara has no doubts that Abraham will support her in putting Hagar back in her place. Sure enough he does, referring to Hagar once again as Sara's slave girl, rather than his wife.
Sara then “harasses” Hagar. It made me think of how we use the word harassment when speaking of inappropriate sexual behaviour. It's a bit of a euphemism, to say the least. Clearly Sara is abusing Hagar if her behaviour is bad enough to drive Hagar to leave their camp and head into the wilderness. There's not much chance for a lone woman to survive on her own out there, yet that is preferable to staying with Sara.
This is where the key event of the whole story takes place. Because who does God appear to? Not Sara, the rightful wife of Abraham who is desperate to have a child, not to Abraham, his faithful follower, but to Hagar, an Egyptian slave who is pregnant not by choice, but by command of Sara. God appears to the most powerless person in the whole story, and promises her that she is not alone, God will look after her and more importantly in that society, God will give her many descendants and create a nation from her and Abraham, just as the descendants of Abraham and Sara will create a nation.
God even calls Hagar by name, which is extremely rare. According to Biblical scholar Lora Copley, “this is the only known instance in ALL of ancient Near Eastern literature where a deity addresses a woman by name.” Not only the Hebrew God, but no other god of that time and place ever addresses a woman by name the way that God talks to Hagar.
Hagar responds by calling God “El Roi”, which can be translated as, “God who sees me.” She knows that something exceptional has happened. It gives her the strength to go back to Sara and deal with whatever may happen there.
There's a lot going on in this story! I want to start by looking at the whole business of Sara taking things into her own hands. Interestingly, she is never chastised by God or by anyone else for this. In other places in the Bible it's made clear that people should abide by God's choices and timelines, but nothing negative is ever said about Sara's actions. There is no judgment, even though she is not being faithful, not abiding by God's timing.
I don't know about you, but I have always found it a bit hard to figure out when I should make my own decisions and when I should wait for guidance from God. It's part of that whole question, how much does God direct us? Does God have a detailed plan for our lives? Or is God a source of love and strength we draw upon when making our own independent decisions? No matter how we understand God's role in the events of our lives, I am sure we can all think of times when we made a decision that we later regretted, or one that we very quickly realized was a mistake.
From an Old Testament point of view, Sara's decision that Abraham should have a child with Hagar was definitely not following God's plan. And clearly Sara regretted it when Hagar became pregnant and their relationship changed.
There's no repentance on Sara's part though. She sees herself as the wronged party and takes it out on Hagar. She doesn't see that she used her power over Hagar to create the whole situation, that maybe Hagar is the one who was wronged, by being forced to sleep with a man many times her age, one who presumably she was not in love with or attracted to. Sara doesn't see that all of this is the consequence of her actions, her decision to take things into her own hands. She just takes out her frustration and anger on Hagar, the only person with no power in their triangle.
God's response to all of this is interesting. Because in that culture, Sara wasn't out of line. Hagar was her property, to be treated as she chose. Hagar had been out of line lording it over Sara. And yet out of all these upset and hurting people, who does God go to? Hagar.
Just like God overturned expectations in the original blessing of Abraham by including other nations, so God overturns expectations here. Hagar was not part of God's original plan and she is of no importance, she is not part of God's new chosen people, she is a foreigner and a slave. It would make perfect sense in that culture for God to say, good riddance, that complication is gone, let's get on with giving Sara a baby.
But instead God defies all expectations and tracks down Hagar in the wilderness, calls her by name, tells her there is a plan for her and her descendants. God takes Sara's change of plans and works with it, to create a new plan and a new people.
I think there's a lesson there for us, that when we think we have messed things up with a bad decision or direction, God can work with it, and make something good come out of it, if we give God room to work. That's the big difference between Sara and Hagar, isn't it. Sara never gives God any room to work with her and the changes she brought about. She just continues to do everything her way. At the end of the story as far as we can tell she is still angry, still bitter, still abusing Hagar.
Hagar on the other hand, makes room for God. God calls her by name and she listens. By the end of the story she has whole new sense of self. In the eyes of Sara she might still be a slave girl, but she knows that in the eyes of God she is the mother of a nation. She is grateful and gives thanks, knowing that with God's help she can face whatever trials will come her way.
In this story we see echoes of Jesus' experiences and teachings, the way he treated all people as being worthy of God's love and of respect from their fellow human beings. Here we see God setting that pattern of reaching out to those on the margins, those who are abused and treated as lesser.
And like with many stories of and by Jesus, we need to ask ourselves, who are we most like in this story? If we are honest, we will see that most of us are far more like Sara than like Hagar. It all comes down to resources and choice. Both Sara and Hagar are understandably desperate. Sara is barren in a society that only values women for child bearing, Hagar is an abused slave. Both are horrific places to be in.
But Sara has some resources. She has a husband who values her and listens to her despite her barrenness. She has status as a free woman and the wife of a wealthy man. Hagar has nothing except her unborn child -- and Sara and Abraham have made it clear they don't value that child. That total desperation and lack of resources make Hagar far more open to God's presence and guidance than Sara is.
Like it or not, most of us more like Sara than Hagar. Because if you live in Canada, you most likely have more resources than the majority of people in our world. And the more resources you have, the harder it is to trust God, however you understand that holy presence and guidance in your life.
Think about it, when making important decisions that impact the direction of your life, who do you turn to, God or your financial advisor? Do you pray or check your bank balance?
This story of Hagar and Sara is an important one for us to sit with, to be honest about where we see ourselves in it, to look at our own lives and reflect on how we make decisions and when and how we turn to the divine for guidance.
It's easy for us to be like Sara, to count on status and resources to carry us through, even when we make mistakes or hurt people. But perhaps this story calls us to both be aware of the Hagars in our society and to be like Hagar, as much as we can, to let go of our status and resources and turn to God, our source of love and ground of our being, that we might see another path, another way of being.