"In the Wilderness" given June 25

 You may not be familiar with this morning’s reading from the Book of Genesis. Having encountered the story, you may not like it. You will find very little in it to recommend Abraham as a hero of faith, or a model for living the godly life, or even as a good man-- much less a father.

He comes across henpecked, weak-willed, emotionally distant as a man, feckless and uncaring as a father. It’s one thing when a wife finally confronts her husband with that ultimate “her or me-- choose now” demand. But it’s quite something else to allow that wife to banish the other woman to die.

In the beginning, Hagar had no choice but to go to Abraham’s bed. We don’t know if there was eventually any sort of love between Hagar and Abram. But, she’d given him his only child—a child who was also being condemned. What kind of lily-livered excuse for a man and a father would allow such a thing to happen?

You’ll find even less to recommend Sarah. Yes, I did say some nice things about her last week. But in this incident, we see the dark side of the mother of monotheism-- a jealous insecure shrew, petty and vindictive and acquisitive, and in the end, downright heartless. What kind of woman-- what kind of mother-- would condemn a child-- even a child not her own-- even a child who by his very presence threatens her marriage, her home, her own child’s inheritance-- to slow death in the wilderness?

Sure, God saves Hagar and Ishmael at the last minute. But when Abraham was looking for his friend Yahweh to bail him out of this painful, difficult choice-- did God intervene with a command not to banish the pair? All it would have taken was a simple “no, don‘t do it, Abraham” on God’s part, and ol’ Abe would have been legitimately off the hook. But God didn’t say no. God wanted Abraham to do the right thing on his own.God respected Abraham and Sarah’s free choice—however cruel and painful the consequences. It must have been hard for God to watch Abraham acquiesce to Sarah’s demand-- send this foreign slave girl turned second wife and her half-breed son away. But God knew how the scenario would end.

God wanted Abraham and Sarah and Isaac-- and yes Hagar and Ishmael too— to choose the good-- to be absolutely free to overcome the situation, and learn and grow from it-- and choose to follow-- choose to come closer to God.

So Yahweh God sat back and let the story play itself out.

Sure, down through the ages, the rabbis and later Christian preachers have justified Abraham’s passive-aggressive inaction and Sarah’s paranoid cruelty. In Galatians 4, Paul says the story is a simile-- comparing Hagar to the old Covenant of Law and Sarah to the new Covenant of Freedom in Christ.

OK, you could argue that Hagar was tactless and arrogant in her behavior toward her former mistress. Sure, you can see Ishmael as condescending and insensitive in his treatment of his younger half brother.

To be sure, Abraham’s union with Hagar was Sarah’s idea in the first place. And it was perfectly acceptable behavior for that time and place-- behavior designed to protect Sarah’s place as mistress of her own household. Though the original Hebrew text makes clear she was actually a second wife to Abraham, Hagar was still a foreigner and still a slave.

And sure, it was actually a requirement in many ancient near Eastern cultures to free a son you had by your slave girl if you weren’t going to name him as your heir. And sure, the order of the passages that come before this story imply that Ishmael might well have been an adolescent at the time of banishment rather than an infant. And of course, you could argue that Theologically speaking, it was necessary for Ishmael to leave the tribe in order for Isaac to become the inheritor of God’ promises.

And sure, Yahweh God did in fact, listen to Hagar’s prayer when she cried out in despair and grief for aid in the wilderness-- even though she was a slave and a pagan Gentile. And sure, Ishmael did eventually receive the compensation that just like his baby brother, he too, would become the ancestor of a great nation-- the Arab people and a partner in blessing. “I will be with him and bless him.“ . And sure, today Moslems honor Ishmael in the same way Jews regard Isaac.

And lastly, if you want to, you can certainly argue that the story has a lot more metaphor and myth than actual history in it. But having said all that-- I still can’t find it in me to let Abraham off the hook-- nor Sarah, either.

One of the great things about these very oldest stories in the Torah is the unflinchingly honest portrait we get of our ancient ancestors in the faith. Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Ishmael and all their relations and descendants jump off the pages of the Hebrew Bible warts and all-- jealous, forgiving, sneaky, forthright, manipulative, idealistic, conniving, honest, generous, greedy, brave, fearful, smart, dumb, petty, great-- in a word-- human.

Once we stop and think about it-- we realize that at bottom, they aren’t a bit different than men and women in our own day. Abraham and Sarah aren’t

so much role models for us, as they are mirrors. It’s because these early biblical figures' lives have raw, rough edges, that you and I are able to identify with them.

The story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar speaks directly to the kind of people we are, and to the kind of lives we lead. Sarah could easily have been that mom in Texas a few years ago who tried to have the mother of her daughter’s rival for a cheerleading spot murdered. Certainly Abraham could have been one of the uncounted legions of men who every day, turn their backs on wives and children and family responsibility without a second thought.

Like Abraham and Sarah, we can become so focused on what we want, that we justify it as right. Then we kid ourselves that it’s best in the long run, even best for our victims. By then, we have totally lost any sort of perspective or integrity.

We all know the occasional uncertainties, the stress and sheer effort involved in maintaining a primary relationship. And like Sarah, Abraham and Hagar, some of us know all too well the painful experience of another person coming between us and someone else with whom we had once had a meaningful and precious relationship.

Like Sarah, we’ve all felt occasionally insecure in our partner’s affections. Like Abraham, we’ve all given in sometimes when we should have stood up in order to avoid a conflict. Like Hagar, we’ve all at times yielded to that insidious “neener-neener-boo-boo” temptation when fate has given us a sudden leg up on a rival-- or better yet a former boss.

We men have all made the mistake of trying to “fix” a situation for someone we loved, instead of simply listening and affirming and understanding when our partner comes to us simply to vent and be heard. And perhaps like Sarah, finding herself suddenly brushed off with a brusque “do what you need to do”, we’ve all been too proud to backtrack on a hasty ultimatum.

And we all know what it is to be in the desert of this world. Like Hagar, like the children of Israel under Pharaoh, we’ve all cried out in the wilderness for succor-- for redemption-- for the strength to swallow our pride, for the wisdom to recognize and heal the other’s hurt. We’ve all prayed for the compassion to mend our broken relationships rather than toss in the towel.

The story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and their sons speaks deeply to the kind of family life many contemporary people experience. Now as then, families come in many configurations. And like the Brady kids, many children today grow up alongside ”brothers and sisters” with whom they actually have no blood relationship to at all. Siblings, half-siblings, step siblings, foster siblings, adopted siblings, and assorted cousins and aunts and uncles being raised together in many families. It must be tough to be a kid in those sort of families-- it’s tough enough sometimes to be in a so called “traditional” family-- where everybody is physical kin to everybody else. We like to say that “blood is thicker than water”, but blood is also a lot more lumpy and messy and painful than water. Even between children of the same parents, there are often bitter conflicts. Grudges and resentments can easily last into adulthood. And sometimes the ways we treat one another as children can last even into old age.

And when it comes to parenting-- mom and dad may say they don’t play favorites. We may even tell ourselves that we love each child individually and in their own way. We may claim that we’re not comparing our children or forcing them to compete with one another for our affection and approval. But it doesn’t always look like that to our kids. And the sad truth is that like Abraham, many parents actually do play favorites among their offspring.

And like Sarah with her fanatical advocacy of Isaac as the one and only heir, concerns around inheritance can wreck family relationships years before either mom or dad actually dies. We’ve all heard stories of relatives sneaking into the house and taking their pick of memorabilia and valuables while the rest of the family is attending the wake. Those incidents occur far more often

than you might imagine. More than once, I’ve had to minister in the midst of those kinds of bitter family squabbles-- even before I’ve conducted the funeral. At such times, I’m reminded that there are advantages to being an only child.

And so deep within us, like Hagar, we too cry out in the wilderness to our God-- for salvation-- for the wisdom to find new ways of relating together and becoming a true family, for the compassion to forgive, for the courage to ask for forgiveness, for the strength to persevere in our commitments rather than banish one another to the wilderness of loneliness and broken relationships and might-have-beens.

The story of Hagar points directly to the life many women are in one way or another living in our time. So many women find themselves trapped in the many wildernesses of our world, crying out in pain and despair. Hagar is a Jew, a Moslem, a Christian. She is brown, tan, pink, black. She cries out for her dying child, for her missing and kidnapped and murdered children. She cries out in every tongue, in every land, on every continent. And the story reminds us that God hears her prayers.

Hagar lives in a shack in Appalachia, with no running water, no toilet, no garbage pick-up, and with her food stamps and medical card cancelled. She sleeps with her family on an inherited piece of sidewalk on the open streets of Delhi. She survives in a refugee camp in Nablis or Kabul or somewhere else all too much like it. She cries for her innocent baby dying of AIDS in Africa-- even as she lies dying herself. She weeps in China for her child buried beneath the rubble of a school or apartment building that turned out not to be earthquake proof. And this story reminds us that God hears her prayers.

And so deep within us, like Hagar, we too cry out in the wilderness to our God-- for all the children-- missing and kidnapped, molested and neglected, abused and murdered. And the story reminds us that God hears Hagar’s prayer-- and ours, and calls us to do something about it.

And in the Middle East today-- the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael-- brothers and sisters in their shared humanity and in their common ethnic heritage, and in much of their religious tradition, still squabble-- with tanks and jets and rocks and suicide bombs-- over the land promised to them both.

So the story of Hagar and Ishmael’s expulsion is still being lived out. But the story also gives us hope that there is a possible closure to this sad tale. It’s a closure provided by God. And it offers the only way out from this tragic blood-soaked tale for all of Abraham’s descendants. It is the only closure that can finally end the cycle of pain and deadly strife between Palestinian and Israeli. And it’s also a closure for those of us who continue to live out our lives and relationships trapped in endless loops of resentment and mistrust and anger.

God’s closure lies in precisely what Abraham is not in this reading-- he is not a hero of faith, not a model for the life of integrity. Someone else is-- Ishmael. Ishmael was eventually able to come to terms with all the pain of his tragic past, and walk away from it. Ishmael is the only one in this tragic tale who is able to grow into what we would call a mature faith in God.

Somehow he found it within himself to move on from his pain and resentment. Somehow he found it in himself to forgive the father who had abandoned him and his mother to the elements.

Genesis 25 tells us that when Abraham died, somehow-- with the help of God-- Ishmael was able to bridge the gap of his alienation from Isaac, and join his half-brother in a son’s duty, building a tomb together, burying and honoring the father who had been willing to sacrifice them both at different times.

I wonder what they said to one another as they worked together side by side? I wonder if we were able to listen, what that meeting of Isaac and Ishmael might teach us and teach our world?

In any argument, there’s got to be someone willing to take the first step toward reconciliation. And surely at that moment in the story, through tears of grief and frustration, God at last smiled. Somebody got the point!