Trinity Presbyterian Church

Craig Hunter, Pastor

June 22, 2008

Expulsion of Hagar

Scripture: Matthew 10:40-42

As most of you know, I recently returned from three weeks of vacation in the Netherlands. I had never been there before, and wow!, was it a lot of fun. A total "giddyup" experience, if you will. I went to Amsterdam, to Rotterdam, to Haarlem, the Hague, Delft, and several other Dutch towns. The Netherlands is such a small country, I don't think much more than an hour separated any of the cities I visited from any other. I saw Dutch friends, a French friend, and a British friend, all of whom I had not seen in years. I even saw Trinity's own Jeremy Stones who was kicking musical butt in the Netherlands while being his usual modest self about it. He took me to a traditional Dutch restaurant. Of course, I took him out for ice cream afterwards. I visited the world's oldest and largest cheese market for a cheese auction, I went up a Dutch windmill, I rode one of the millions of Dutch bikes (though I confess it was rather embarrassing, I couldn't figure out how to change gears, so there I was huffing and puffing in first gear, while all the natives went whizzing by). And to top it all off, the piece de resistance, if you will, I had outstanding German chocolate, Dutch chocolate, AND French chocolate. I have never had such fine quality chocolate on any vacation in my life. That by itself makes for a great vacation. As for all the other things I experienced, well, I think I will have to stick by the saying, What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam.

Aside from gorging myself on chocolate, however, I was also guilty of gorging myself on something else as well -- Dutch art. I probably went to about a dozen art museums. I sometimes feel the Europeans are spoiled, they don't realize how lucky they are to have such a long artistic heritage, almost every town features work by master painters. I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, to Vermeer's town and burial place in Delft, to Rembrandt's house, and to numerous other museums in every town I visited. I seriously think I've seen more art in the last month than I had in almost two years.

Most of the art I saw was from the Dutch Golden Age. The phrase "Dutch Golden Age" might not mean much to you, I don't think it had meant much to me prior to my trip. But it was the period in Dutch history from the end of the 16th century through most of the 17th century. It was a special time in Dutch history. For most of this time, they were in the midst of what is known as the 80 year war of independence against Spain and the Hapsburg empire -- anyone want to guess how long that lasted? They were struggling to define themselves as a nation. It was during this period that Reformed Protestantism, the same part of the Christian family tree to which we belong, took hold among the Dutch. It was during this period that the Pilgrims lived in the Netherlands before immigrating to the United States. It was also during this period that the prosperity of the Dutch people rose dramatically. It seems that the standard of living of most of the Dutch became one of the highest in Europe. They became known for both their tolerance and their trade. It was, it would seem, an exciting chapter in history.

It was probably no accident, therefore, that Dutch art experienced an explosion during this period. Paintings were no longer the preserve of only the church and the aristocracy, no, during this period, even an average family would have six or seven paintings adorning the walls of their home. The Dutch developed new genres of painting -- landscapes and still lifes, group portraits and domestic scenes. This was the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer, and numerous others whose names I didn't know a month ago, but have become rather familiar to me now. This was when Rembrandt painted his most famous masterpiece, "The Night Watch", and when Vermeer painted "The Girl With the Pearl Earring", both of which I saw during my trip.

In the midst of all these other paintings that I saw, I remember seeing at least one depiction of our Biblical story from Genesis today, the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael. I hate to disappoint you, but I must confess that I wasn't thinking of this sermon at the time, so my memory is a bit sketchy. Nevertheless, I remember the sympathetic portrayal of Hagar. She was depicted as vulnerable and exposed, looking fearfully to what lay ahead. It seemed clear that the artist, who I can't remember, was attempting to evoke compassion for Hagar from the viewer. From my memory, I would say that he succeeded.

What I didn't know then, but what I have since learned, is that my encounter with such a painting was not unlikely. Rather, as Christina Sellin documents in her book, "Fractured Families and Rebel Maidservants: The Biblical Hagar in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Literature," the depiction of Hagar in Dutch painting from the Golden Age was unparalleled. It was a favorite subject in Dutch painting and prints. According to Sellin, nowhere else in Europe was this scene as popular as it was in the Netherlands during this time. And of all the various sections of Hagar's story, the expulsion scene found in today's text was the most common. Clearly there was something about this story that struck a deep chord with Dutch experience during the time. (Christine Petra Sellin, Fractured Families and Rebel Maidservants: The Biblical in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Literature, New York: T & T Clark International, 2006).

Prior to the Dutch Golden Age, Hagar had been an object of contempt in the Christian tradition. Much of this can be traced back to Paul and a heritage of patriarchy. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, Paul seems to contrast Sarah with Hagar, setting up a rather black and white dichotomy. Sarah and Isaac are on the right side, Hagar and Ishmael are on the wrong side. As Christian tradition later developed, Hager became the sinner, the troublemaker, the home-breaker, the infidel.

But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the early Reformers began to see Hagar more positively. People identified more deeply with the story, and as they did so, they couldn't help but feel some compassion for Hagar. After all, the story is more complex that Paul seems to allow, there are various shades of gray.

It features difficult and complex relationships between Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and their children. Marriage problems, infidelity, the threat of violence, sibling rivalry -- it is all there. The Dutch of the time, trying to maintain some sense of order and stability at home with their spouses and children in the midst of momentous changes in society, apparently found this story easy to identify with. As Sellin writes, "Hagar's story fired up the imagination because it offered Dutch artists the storytelling possibilities of something approaching the equivalent of a modern-day family soap opera." (Sellin, p. 2)

The story, you may recall, begins with God's selection of Abraham and Sarah, and God's promise to them to fill the earth with their descendants. Years pass and nothing happens. Sarah decides to try to take matters into her own hands, so to speak, and gives her slave girl Hagar to Abraham. Hagar conceives a son, and apparently looks with contempt upon Sarah. Sarah then persecutes Hagar, driving her away. God rescues her, she returns and gives birth to Ishmael. Years later Abraham and Sarah finally conceive a son, Isaac. Finally, in today's passage, Sarah pressures Abraham to expel Hagar and his first-born son.

If this is a Biblical soap opera, so to speak, I have to say that Abraham doesn't come out looking very good. At least not in his relationship with Sarah. Sarah gives Hagar to him, and what does Abraham say? Nothing, it would seem. Or, as I imagine it, he says, "Okay. Okay, whatever you say, hon." He doesn't seem to have women figured out, at least not his wife Sarah. He makes the mistake of listening to what she says. I mean, what an idiot! He is supposed to listen to what she doesn't say, any good husband knows that, it is completely logical, he is supposed to be in touch with how she feels. He obviously hasn't read, Men are From Mars, Woman are From Venus. When Sarah becomes cold to his touch, didn't he think that something might be wrong?

Now in today's Biblical passage, it is basically the same thing. Sarah says to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and what does Abraham say? Nothing.

You have probably met people like Abraham at one point or another. Most of us have probably been like Abraham at one point or another. Conflict-avoiders. It seems like he doesn't have any backbone. Back in chapter twelve, God says to Abraham to get up and move to a foreign land, and Abraham says, "Okay." In the chapter following today's lesson, God says to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham says, "Okay." Sarah says to take Hagar, then she says to send her away, and Abraham says, "Okay." Now, in the context of the story, I can sort of, sort of understand him not wanting to tick off God, but what kind of marriage is that with Sarah? Abraham is such a conflict-avoider that he even pretends Sarah is his sister and hands her off to King Abimelech in chapter 20. He does this because he is afraid, and he would rather be on the safe side and let the King have his way with his wife. I mean, what does it take for Abraham to say "no."?

Of course, I shouldn't blame Abraham too much, I suppose. He is sort of a refugee from Iraq after all. That is where he was born. He is probably acutely aware that he is an immigrant, in a land that is not his home. Can you blame him for not wanting to rock the boat, for saying "Okay, Sarah, if that's what you want, calm down, let's not make a scene." He doesn't really want to expel Hagar and Ishmael, but it seems that is easier for him than living in close proximity with Sarah's anger.

Sarah is of course another main character in the story. She doesn't really come off looking very well, either. For one thing, she doesn't seem to trust God very much. She more or less laughs in God's face in chapter 18 when God repeats the promise that she will conceive. Worse, she exhibits a singular lack of trust when she takes matters into her own hands and gives Hagar to Abraham. Needless to say, her treatment of Hagar is hardly exemplary. She treats Hagar as an object. She doesn't even address Hagar directly, and when she talks with Abraham about her, she doesn't even say her name. She just says "this slave woman" -- "cast out this slave woman with her son." She uses her words as a weapon, to demonstrate her power over Hagar.

But if I stop for a moment and reflect . . . it must not have been easy for Sarah. I suspect that part of what made her so skilled at manipulating Abraham and treating Hagar as an object was that she was familiar with such an experience herself. She knew what it was like to feel invisible, that she didn't matter, that she was just another piece of baggage. Did Abraham consult her before deciding to move to Canaan? Did Abraham consult her before deciding to sacrifice her only son? How do you think it felt when, out of fear, Abraham pawned her off to King Abimelech, denying that she was his own wife? When did anyone notice her, not just as an attractive object, but as a person, when did anyone ever really see her? She was a woman in a man's world, living in a patriarchal time, nobody ever gave her anything. Can you blame her for playing hardball? While I don't condone her behavior, it is all too easy to condemn it without having been in her shoes.

I can't help but think it would have turned out a bit differently, a little less painfully, if Abraham had just said to her in a soft voice with a tender touch, "Sarah, Sarah. It is going to be okay, Sarah. I know you are frightened and lonely, and it is hard to be patient, but you are not alone. I'm with you, and it will be okay."

At the bottom of the totem pole is Hagar. Like Abraham she is a foreigner, like Sarah she is a woman, but she is also a slave. Like water down a slope, the abuse flows downhill, and she is at the bottom. Sarah uses her, Abraham disappoints her. She is a victim of the victims. She has no one. A sex slave no longer needed for that purpose.

It makes me wonder about who we use and throw away. Perhaps an easier way of finding

an answer to that is to ask, over whom do we have power? The poor, the uneducated, women, foreign immigrants. The list goes on.

But the main character in this story is not Abraham or Sarah or Hagar, the main character in our story is not us, but God. At the edge of the abyss, or perhaps already in it, when Hagar has given up her only child to death, God encounters her. God hears her, God sees her. God sees the invisible, what no one else sees. The writer of Genesis tells it more tenderly and compassionately than I ever could in an especially poignant passage of Scripture: When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept."

She lifted up her voice and wept.

"And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid.' " Do not be afraid, there is that phrase again. "'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 to drink."

This God that Hagar encounters, it is a God that sees. Indeed, what haunts me most about Hagar is the fact that she is apparently the only one in the Bible to name God. In an earlier chapter, she names God, El-roi, God who sees. With this God, no one is invisible. With this God, all cries are heard.

The God of this story is a patient God, you might even say a slow God. I don't know why. God's promise to Abraham and Sarah isn't fulfilled right away. Maybe there is something that waiting has to teach us.

But the thing that strikes me most about the God that we encounter in this passage is a rather strange and holy combination of, how do I put it, faithfulness and adaptability. On the one hand, God is faithful. God has promised to bless the child of Abraham and Sarah, and God stands by that promise, God always stands by God's promises. And yet, through their involvement with Hagar, Abraham and Sarah have complicated things. So God does something rather remarkable, God changes God's plan. We see in this story that God's plans aren't fixed, God's activity in our world isn't set, God's blessings aren't limited. Rather, God's plans change. There is an abundance to what God does, to the blessings that God shares, to who God is. Ishmael is an unexpected child, born in difficult circumstances, but what the hell, what the heaven, God will bless him too. In God's family, there is more than enough to go around. God's plans change because we change, because we get things wrong and screw things up. We exploit our neighbors, we fail to see. So God just keeps re-writing the plan, God's patience is inexhaustible, God showers blessings upon us, freeing us to live with the assurance of God's grace.

I'd like to think the Dutch were reminded of that as they gazed upon paintings of Hagar. At war with Europe's superpower, trying to find their way as a new nation, Hagar must have reminded them of their own vulnerability. Not only that, but more than that, it must have reminded them of the God who is a God of weird and messy family situations, even families such as our own, a God who sees, a God who meets them and provides for them in the wilderness of their lives. As Sellin writes in her book,

"For the Dutch, the most highly urbanized culture in Europe, the events that left Hagar and her son homeless were especially troubling, and they made a place for her in their hearts. As the imagery reflects, the Dutch develop a tenderness, understanding, and compassion for Hagar that the world had never seen before. Exiled in scripture, cast off by Paul, Hagar came to find refuge among the burghers of the Dutch Republic and given pride of place on the walls of their homes.” (Sellin, p.2)