4th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

Ishmael and Freedom of Religion

Happy Father’s Day to all you paternal-types.  Fatherhood plays a large role in the stories I want to share with you today.  In fact, it drives the plot in the Genesis reading.

God had chosen Abraham to make him the father of a great nation through whom all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. Abraham was 75 years old when God made that promise and he was father to no children. His wife Sarah, was barren and had been for their entire marriage..

A decade later, God appeared again to Abraham and affirmed his promises to Abraham.  Abraham pointed out that he was still childless and that a slave in his household was his “heir.” God said, No, that guy won’t inherit.  Abraham would have his own biological son and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky.

When Abraham told Sarah what God had promised, she took a long look at her body and decided that there was no way God was going to be able to fulfill his promise to Abraham with her. Sarah decided the only way God could give Abraham a son would be through a surrogate or a concubine, because the reality was she was just too old. So Sarah chose her Egyptian slave girl, Hagar (whose name in Hebrew literally means, “The Foreigner/Stranger) and gave her to Abraham as his “wife” to produce a biological son for Abraham, just like God promised. Even though this is a legal and  socially-acceptable way for a barren couple to have children, Abraham doesn’t like the idea – but he goes along with it.

Then Hagar quickly becomes pregnant. Which should be good news right?  Wrong because once Hagar is aware she is pregnant, Hagar treats Sarah scornfully.  And Sarah is furious – even though this plan was her idea.

In her anger, Sarah mistreats and abuses her pregnant slave girl  and Abraham lets her.

Hagar runs away to the desert.  There an angel of God appears to Hagar. Hagar is told that she is going to have a son, which is great news because being the mother of Abraham’s heir would increase her social position. The angel tells Hagar to go back and submit to Sarah because God is going to increase Hagar’s descendants until they are too numerous to count!  Huh, kinda like the stars in the sky?  This promise to Hagar the slave sounds a lot like the promise made to Abraham right?  So, maybe all this drama will  work out in the end.

Then Hagar does something that no other person in the Bible does. Hagar names the God who has revealed himself to her.  She names God “El-Roi”” which in Hebrew means “the God who sees me”  Hagar goes back to Sarah and Abraham and she gives birth to her promised son.  Abraham names his son, Ishmael which means “God hears”  Abraham was 86 years old.

For the next 13 years Sarah, Abraham, Ishmael and Hagar all lived together. Abraham took great joy in his son Ishmael. He loved being a Dad.  But things between Sarah and Hagar weren’t good, and Sarah never sees Ishmael as her son.

God appears again to Abraham.  He calls on Abraham to “walk before him faithfully” reaffirms that Abraham will be the father of many nations and promises to establish an “everlasting covenant” with all Abraham’s descendants.  But then God says something totally unexpected, “I will bless Sarah and will give you a son by HER. She will be the mother of many nations.

The Bible says that Abraham fell facedown and laughed.”  Right, like that’s going to happen, he thinks.  But then the penny drops.  But wait, if Sarah has a child, what about Ishmael?  What about Ishmael, LORD?

God says he will bless Ishmael and make him into a great nation, but that its through Sarah’s son God’s promises will flow. Sarah’s son is the son of God’s covenant with Abraham.

Well Sarah does get pregnant and she laughs too and Abraham names his son “laughter in Hebrew or Isaac” because both Sarah & Abraham laughed that God would give them a child so very, very late in life.

When Isaac, or Laughter, was weaned 3 years later, there was a great celebration. Ishmael, Abraham’s oldest son, is at the party with Isaac.  Something happens at the party that ignites Sarah’s fury because she says to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and HER son, for THAT woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with MY son, Isaac.”

Abraham is deeply grieved by Sarah’s words. He loves both of his sons. Abraham didn’t want to lose his son Ishmael, but God said, “Don’t worry”. Sarah is correct that it is through Isaac that the descendants of the promise will come. So do what she wants.  I’ll take care of Ishmael.

The next morning, Abraham gave Hagar food and water and sent her and Ishmael away. They wander in the desert and of course, the water runs out. Hagar puts the boy under a bush and moves further away, weeping because she doesn’t want to watch her son die. God hears (remember Ishmael means God hears in Hebrew).  God says “Don’t be afraid, Hagar.  Neither you or your son is going to die.  Go take Ishmael by the hand because I’m going to make him into a great nation.”  Then Hagar’s God, The God who Sees me”, opened her eyes and she saw a well and drew water for both of them

And at this point, the Scripture says something unexpected, “And God was with the boy as he grew.”  God isn’t going to use Ishamel to bless all the nations of the world,  Ishamel isn’t the child that God planned!  He is the child of Sarah’s human intervention. But nonetheless – God was with Ishmael.

Okay, put a pin in that  and let’s pivot to another father story. This story is about a King who desperately wants a son. He had been married to his wife for 23 years and their only living child was a girl. Now his wife is in her 40’s and the King is desperate. The Pope refuses to grant the King an annulment so he can marry a younger, and hopefully more fertile queen. So the King decides to hitch his wagon to this new Protestant religion and become the head of his own Protestant church, The Church of England. And the King’s church immediately grants him an annulment from his wife.  For the King is now the head of the state and the church.  To be English is to be a Protestant, specifically Church of England. Simple, right?

Nope, because there were other devoutly religious people in England who dissented with the theology or practices of the CofE. These dissenters: Puritans, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Calvinists, Mennonites, Quakers were persecuted right alongside the Catholics. To go against the church was to defy the King. The same thing was happening on the European continent. The Catholic French King butchered the French Protestants because they were Protestant and he was Catholic and they wouldn’t switch religions when he told them to.  .

It was bloody and horrible and went on for years and years creating this deep desire among “dissenters” for a land where you had the freedom to worship your God in your way  – so these persecuted Christians came to the new world. The irony is these “dissenters” then establish their religion as the official religion of their colony to the exclusion of all others.

But why?  Because there was a religious conviction of the time, held by Protestants, Dissenters and Catholics alike, that the uniformity of religion is necessary in society.  Because there is only one true religious expression, it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, on their citizens for the good of their souls.

But there were two men who established colonies with a very different religious perspective.  Roger Williams, originally a Puritan minister in the Massachusetts colony, insisted on what he called “soul liberty” as the indispensable condition of true faith. He said that because faith is a disposition of the heart, it cannot be subject to the coercion of the state. The church must be a voluntary community. The church must be a voluntary community.  This was a revolutionary thought. So Roger Williams sought and received a charter from the King and purchased land from the local indigenous tribes and founded the colony of Rhode Island: pledging “full liberty in religious concerns.”

William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, offered a place of refuge for Quakers facing persecution in England and Ireland, yet his vision did not stop there. He believed that religious conscience should be kept separate from civil matters and resisted the establishment of any religion. Even “toleration” of other religions was not enough. He offered the active protection of freedom of religious practice. In Pennsylvania, all persons of religious faith, so long as they shared an acknowledgment of God as the creator, thus including the indigenous tribes of Pennsylvania, were welcome and protected in his colony.

In the US today, there is the re-emergence of the viewpoint that First Amendment religious protections should only be offered to Christianity. That as a Christian, we should not tolerate other “false” religions. That the Founding Fathers would be horrified to see religious freedom in the US extended to Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam.  And perhaps some of the founding fathers would  be.  But I don’t think God is. 

For God was with Ishmael….  And Hagar said YOU are the God who sees me.

There was no reason for God to save Hagar. If Hagar died in the desert God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants wouldn’t be affected.  God didn’t need Hagar or Ishmael.  They were outside his plan.

And yet, to use Hagar’s word, He saw them.  And he saved them.  He revealed himself to Hagar.  He was with Ishmael.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son, into the world, to condemn the world.  But that the world, through him, might be saved.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, the Narnians say of Aslan, the Christ figure, “He is not a tame lion.”  They mean that Aslan acts in totally unexpected ways that defy their presuppositions.

The Jews of 1st century Palestine would understand.  They prayed for a messiah who would liberate them from their Romans conquerors.  God answered their prayers with a baby that grew to be a man who taught them to Love those Roman enemies – a messiah who saved them by allowing himself to be crucified on a Roman cross – and then rose from the dead. .

Totally unexpected actions that upend our assumptions of who God is and how he acts.

My God is strong enough and loving enough to draw all people to him – in his way and in his time. He doesn’t need Christianity to be the established religion of the Empire.  In fact, history shows us that doing so defiles the church. As Roger Williams said, “The church must be a voluntary community”  And for the choice of Christianity to be authentic, there must be other options.  There must be freedom of religion.

Christ is with all the Ishmaels of the world and speaks to the Hagars. Those that others call outsiders are safely inside his love.  It is for them, as for us, that he died on that cross, the child of God’s promise to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham.      Thanks be to God.