Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 21 verses 8 through 17:
8 The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. 9But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 10So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.’ 11The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. 12But God said to Abraham, ‘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 after you. 13As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.’ 14So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
15 When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16Then 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. 17And 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; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
This may well be one of the most troubling stories in the Bible — a book not short on troubling stories. The one time I dared to preach on this text a woman came up to me afterwards and said that had she known this would be the story for that particular Sunday she would not have come.
It would be simpler if we were able to blame the whole thing on Abraham. There was Abraham’s taking of a slave girl Hagar and his copulation with her. This points to the tremendous ways in which patriarchy and male domination have also been entangled with the exploitative system of slavery.
Yet, the Bible is clear to say that Hagar was Sarah’s slave, which complicates the dynamic and points to a system of domination, in which women were both victims and also victimizers. The terror and pathos of this story then leads to Sarah demanding that the slave girl and her child be cast out into the wilderness.
And yet again, the writer is very clear to say that it is not Sarah, or even Abraham who make the decision to cast Hagar into the wilderness — it is the LORD.
We might wonder why this was done. On first appearance it seems cruel. And yet, being cast out may in fact have been no crueler than having to remain enslaved in Abraham’s and Sarah’s home. Perhaps the wilderness was the only way to save the child in the end. Perhaps it was the only way to save anything. All this is too much for us to know, what we do know is that when this fragile child is almost lost to the harsh conditions of the wilderness, the LORD sees the child and watches over him and also his mother. The LORD is watching over this child also. He too, we are told, has been included in the promise.
In the midst of so much human frailty, cruelty, and tragedy this child will grow up separated from his father and the father will be haunted by the sting of his own moral choices. The consequences of sin remain. And yet the promise remains also. God watches over both children, the child of the free woman and also the child of the slave girl.
“His eye is on the sparrow,” the old hymn says — even the sparrow in life’s harsh, harsh wilderness.
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