When the Water in the Skin was Gone….

 

 

When the water in the skin was gone….

When the water in the skin was gone….

These words describe a moment of utter desperation.

This is the moment in the story that Judith just read for us – the moment when Hagar, the protagonist of the story, hits “rock bottom.”

Hagar and her son Ishmael are alone in the desert.  The “skin of water” that Abraham had given them has run dry.

As far as Hagar knows, nothing that can save her and her son Ishmael from certain death.  All evidence points to this inevitable conclusion.

At a complete loss, she puts her child down beneath a bush and walks away.  Her words, at this moment,  read like a indictment against a cruel universe:

“Do not” she says “let me look upon the death of my child.”

 

Each of you knows what I mean when I use the phrase… “rock bottom.”

None of you need me to explain that phrase.

Indeed, each and every one of us has been in that place – the place we call “rock bottom.”

“Rock bottom” seems to be a part of what it means to be human.  

But if this is so – if “rock bottom” is part of what it means to be human, then “rock bottom” must also be of real and profound interest to God.  

To me, this feels like an article of faith.  

To have faith in God, is to believe (despite evidence to the contrary) that God has a real and profound interest in the things that are central to our humanity.  

If we accept this basic theological assertion, I hope that we can take it one step further and say that God is not only interested in, but also responds, in some way, to the essential concerns that confront our souls.

How, then, does God respond to “rock bottom?” 

 

Let’s take a more detailed look at Hagar’s predicament, so that we can compare it with our own experience.

 

If it’s been a few years since Sunday school, let me remind you of the complicated family dynamics that lead up to this awful moment.  

In chapter 15 of the book of Genesis, Abraham, the oldest of the Biblical patriarchs, is told, by God, that he will be the father of a great nation.  God leads Abraham outside in the dead of the night and tells him to:

“Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.  So shall your offspring be.”

What a dramatic promise!  

With this promise in mind, you can appreciate Abraham’s confusion and anxiety, when he and his wife Sarah grow into ripe old age without succeeding in having any children at all.  

It doesn’t make any sense.  If God is going to give them descendants who are as numerous as a sky full of stars, why can’t they have any children?  

In response, Sarah comes up with a desperate plan.  She instructs Abraham (in chapter 16 of Genesis) to go and lie with her Egyptian slave, Hagar.  Abraham does as he is told, and the result is immediate: Hagar conceives and soon bears a son.  

That child was named Ishmael.

It was only then – after all of these desperate maneuvers – that Sarah herself miraculously conceives!  Why miraculously?  According to the 17th chapter of Genesis, Abraham was 100 years old, and his wife Sarah was 90 years old when she became pregnant.  Somehow (though modern obstetricians would never allow for such a possibility) an extremely old Sarah gave birth to a son.

That child was named Isaac.

Ishmael and Isaac were half-brothers.  Both were the sons of Abraham, 

Ishmael was the son of Hagar the Egyptian.  

Isaac’s mother was Abraham’s wife, Sarah. 

It is at this point that the events described in today’s reading pick up.  

Sarah, who, let us not forget, orchestrated the conception and birth of Ishmael, sees the two brothers at play, and is dismayed.  

The child Ishmael casts a shadow on the great unexpected joy that she feels with the birth of her own child Isaac.  

I can see where she is coming from.  

Still Sarah’s response to the situation is pretty harsh.  The text tells us that she went to Abraham and told him to:

Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” 

But this development does not sit well with Abraham, who, in spite of Isaac’s birth, continues to be concerned for the well-being of his first son Ishmael.  

What should he do?

Abraham asks God, and God, significantly, answers in this way:

 “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you.

It appears that God’s attitudes are quite conventional when it comes to the customs that control marriage and inheritance.  Nor is God terribly sophisticated when it comes to marriage counseling.  God does not advocate for any kind of compromise.  God simply sides with Sarah.  The message is: Do as you are told.

But… 

But, at this point God lets Abraham in on a significant piece of  information:

As for the son of the slave woman, God says:  I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”

Oh…

Wait….  

Did you catch that?

God just told Abraham that neither Ishmael, nor Hagar will perish in the wilderness!

 

Who is in the know here?

Purely from a story-telling point of view I want you to understand the importance of this detail… 

God gives this information to Abraham – so God and Abraham are in the know. 

As readers of the story, you and I also know that, even though it looks really bad for Hagar and her son Ishmael, they are ultimately destined to survive the fearful experience of being cast out into the desert.

But the three other key characters in the story – Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael?

They do not know!

Perhaps it’s just as well that Sarah be kept in the dark about this – her intentions, in this narrative at least, are not all that pleasant.  If she knew, she might propose a solution that is even more perilous for the unfortunate exiles.

But Abraham could have told Hagar.  He could have let her know that God did not want her and her son to perish in the wilderness.

There is no indication, in the text, that God required Abraham to keep these facts from her.

If Abraham did indeed care for his son Ishmael, and Hagar, wouldn’t he tell them that, as bad as it looked, they really had nothing to worry about?

Wouldn’t that have been the compassionate thing to do? 

But Abraham did not tell Hagar the crucial information.

Instead of letting her know, Abraham gave Hagar some bread and a skin full of water, and sent her and their son off into the wilderness of Beersheba, in the early morning when no one else could witness their expulsion.

Abraham treated the whole episode like a kind of conspiracy – a plan that he and God were carrying out at Hagar and Ishmael’s expense… 

and God made no move to intervene.

As a result, mother and son set out into the wilderness filled with the fear of almost certain death.  

It’s almost like Abraham and God intended to make Hagar – the devoted mother who was responsible for the well being of her son – hit “rock bottom.”

Now you might be thinking, at this point, that I’m going to say that this conspiracy was all orchestrated for the sake of Hagar’s well being.

This would be the “everything happens for a reason” interpretation of the story.

Abraham and God conspired to let Hagar hit “rock bottom” so that she would, in her extremity, ask God for help, and learn the resilience of that experience to help her son become great.

I suppose this could be one way of interpreting the story, but I don’t like it.

I don’t like the way such an interpretation uses Hagar.

No one in the story treats her like a person.

Abraham, Sarah…  even God.

Everyone in the story treats her like a slave.

Is that what she is?

You might say so…

But if you did, you would reduce her entire “being” – her whole identity to this one demeaning role that she has been forced into – this role of serving people without ever being be given anything – any payment, or even any respect, in return. 

Just like every person in human history who has ever been enslaved, Hagar was not a slave.

Hagar was a child of God, who had been enslaved by other people.   

There is no such thing as a slave.  

There are just enslaved people.

Because “slave” is not an identity.  Rather, “enslavement” is a sin that one human imposes upon another.

I do not think that God necessarily intended for Hagar to remain ignorant of the divine plan established for her.  

If so, God would have been a part of Hagar’s enslavement.

When this story, like so many stories in the Bible, seems to condone slavery and also conveniently conforms to all the cultural  norms of marriage and inheritance, I often suspect that these parts of the Bible were written by people in power to legitimize their power. 

God, in such cases, is made in our image. 

The God who accepts slavery is, without a doubt, a God made in our image.

Rather, I celebrate the God who appears in the final act of this story.

The final act that takes place after Hagar hits “rock bottom.”

Hagar is separated from everything – from Abraham’s troubling family dynamics – from the laws of marriage and inheritance.  She is even separated, for a moment, from the hope of survival.  

She is raw.  She is desperate.  She is down to nothing.  

And it is at this point – when she is less than nothing – when…

God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

God calls Hagar by her name.  The idea of slave and slavery is nowhere to be seen.

Hagar had to reach “rock bottom” so that all the constructs of human culture – all the rules that have systematically oppressed her all her life – can be stripped away and God can affirm her essential worth.

For it is not power…

or legitimacy,

or inheritance 

that brings us close to God.

Sometimes we must reach “rock bottom” before we hear God calling us by name.

And when God calls each of us by name, what does God say?

Do not be afraid.

Hold your son in our arms.

And give him water to drink.

Amen.