Genesis 21:8-21
This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on June 25, 2017.
Finishing Unfinished Family Business
Family. Simply saying the word stirs us. We feel. The feelings differ according to our personal stories, but everyone has strong feelings about “family.” Hopes & fears, laughter & tears, hugs & stare downs are images we see in our mind’s eye. Around family, there is little neutral ground.
A Complex Family
Our memories may include more – joy or sadness, gratitude or regret, praise or anger, awe or disappointment. And for all of us, there is some unfinished family business. This was particularly true of the complex family of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac.
In Genesis, the book of origins & patterns, God has much to teach us about finishing unfinished family business. Genesis 16 and following connected how Hagar entered this family story. She is Sarah’s Egyptian handmaiden and served as a surrogate wife for Abraham. She bore his children because Sarah was barren. When Ishmael (which means “God hears”) is born Hagar taunts Sarah with her ability to do what her mistress could not. This inability haunted Sarah. Enmity grew between them. Abraham led a tension-filled home life. He was torn between a divided loyalty among his wives and children. A divine breakthrough was desperately needed.
Family bonds continue to strengthen and/or weaken us throughout our lives. What enables family to be positive? The key is to accept God’s blessings and to live the best blessing as it was best given by our family of origin. That may also mean to minimize the “curse.” Family issues continue to play themselves out until we deal with them. God’s grace can heal the wounds. And we must live continually beyond what family “shadows” linger.
Isaac was born 14 years after Ishmael. When Isaac was weaned, his father threw a party to celebrate this rite of passage and Isaac’s good health. Envy and jealousy were tragically at play. Sarah demanded that Abraham discharge Hagar and that she and Ishmael be forever sent away. (Genesis 21:10) Abraham did by offering a prayer for God to protect these refugees from his family. God heard his prayer and promised not only to guide them into safety but into a blessed future. Ishmael would also become “the father” of a great nation.
The Inner Story
The backdrop to this heart-wrenching story is found in Genesis 16 and 17. Particularly in family life, you have to look for the story within the story. After Sarai had felt Hagar’s scorn, Sarai Blamed Abraham for encouraging
her to be happy in her pregnancy. Sarai saw Hagar’s womb as borrowed property, not as a source for Hagar to have her own happiness. Sarai thought the child born by her handmaiden should actually be seen as her own child.
Abraham wasn’t following Sarai’s “family plan” so she chided her husband, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between me and you.” (Genesis 16:5) Trouble in the tent brewed to the boiling point equal to the Negev desert in which they lived. Abram backpedaled to clarify that Hagar was Sarai’s servant and that she could deal with her as she chose. Driven by anguish and resentment, Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that the pregnant mother chose to flee into the wilderness. There God protected Hagar and promised that her offspring would multiply. So under God’s protective covenant, Hagar returned to Abraham’s tent. (Genesis 16:7-15)
The source for this kind of enmity in family life is unhealed hurt caused by crossed expectations and misdirected communication. Then the grief of missed love moves from anguish to tragedy. Unhealed hurt causes anger. Untreated anger causes resentment, then despair, and ultimately contempt. Absent reconciliation, what follows is retaliation.
We see throughout Genesis the tension that we see here and in our 21st-century world. We are confronted with choices we must make. These are not stress-free choices made from the luxury seats of spectators. We are all players, and our decisions carry consequences. These decisions are frequently made while we are situated between the proverbial “rock and hard place.”
Which is why God sent Hagar the message as she and her son were on the edge of dying, “Fear not. For God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.” (Genesis 18:17) She was understandably afraid. Heat. Desert. Thirst. Hunger. She had placed her boy, under a shade tree, at a bow’s distance so she wouldn’t have to watch him die. Fear ruled. Death seemed only hours away.
God’s Promise to Hear
But God had promised good to Hagar when He named her unborn son Ishmael. Now that the boy was a teenager He wasn’t going to forget His promise “to hear.” And with hope displacing her fear, Hagar was able to see what was right in front of her – water. A well of water was ready to quench their thirst and send them into a future beyond displacement. When fear rules all we can see is the threat. With hope, we can see beyond the threat and into the reality of God’s provision.
“After God opened her eyes,” Hagar got up and got her boy to the well of water. From there they moved from survival into thriving. As written in Genesis 21:20, “God was with the boy. He grew up in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.” Hagar then went to her homeland of Egypt and brought Ishmael, a wife.
Ishmael depended on the truth of his name, “God hears.” Knowing this Herman Melville began his great American novel with this simple line, “Call me Ishmael.” With that, the drama was set. Would God hear them on their voyage? Would they listen to God? Do we?
D. Leslie Hollon
Senior Pastor
Trinity Baptist Church, San Antonio, Texas
lhollon@trinitybaptist.org
Tags: family, feelings, complexity, hagar, hear, promise