Naming God: The Story of Hagar - A Sermon (Genesis 16)
The story of Abraham begins in Genesis 11, when Abraham and Sarah, then known as Abram and Sarai, follow Abraham’s father from Ur to Haran. Then in chapter 12, God appears to Abram and tells him to move his family from Haran to a yet undisclosed location. If Abram does this God promises to make him a great people that would bless the nations (Gen. 12:1-3). There’s just one problem with this scenario. You see, Abram and Sarai are rather old by this point and they don’t have any children. So, how is God going to fulfill this promise?
While it’s nice to be noticed by God, some things are simply impossible. Having a baby long after your childbearing years are over is a problem. At least that’s what Sarai thought after God gave the land of Canaan to Abram’s descendants (Gen. 15). So, Sarai came up with a brilliant solution to this fertility problem. She decided to fulfill the promise by using a surrogate. If she couldn’t provide Abram an heir then perhaps she could use one of her slaves as a surrogate. Through her slave, she could have that child. So, Sarai told Abram to go to her slave Hagar and have a baby! That’s what Abram did.
Now there are lots of problems with this story since Hagar is a slave and doesn’t have any choice in the matter. She’s not the other woman, she’s simply a tool that Sarai uses to provide an heir for Abram. While this is true, as the story proceeds, we discover that Hagar is more than a slave or a tool. She has an identity of her own and becomes an important figure in the Abrahamic story.
The story of Abraham and his descendants has deep meaning for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. That’s because all three religions trace our origins to Abraham and to two matriarchs, Sarah and Hagar. It’s my opinion that all three religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—are heirs of God’s covenant with Abraham. Therefore, together we are God’s agents of blessing to the nations.
While we as Christians tend to focus on Abraham and Sarah, we shouldn’t forget the role Hagar plays in the Abrahamic story. She is the mother of Abraham’s firstborn son. Because this is true, you can understand why Hagar might have looked at Sarai with a bit of contempt after she, not Sarai, got pregnant with Abram’s heir. Perhaps God was honoring her over Sarai?
The story then takes a grim turn, because Sarai doesn’t take Hagar’s gloating very well. After Abram doesn’t do anything to defend her honor, Sarai treats Hagar harshly. Hagar responds by running away into the desert.
It’s out there in the desert that something amazing took place. The narrator tells us that Hagar headed toward her Egyptian homeland. Along the way she found a spring where an angel appeared and asked her where she was going?
What’s interesting about this encounter is that, unlike Abram and Sarai, the angel calls Hagar by her name. Now, the angel also acknowledges her status as Sarai’s slave, but by calling her by her name, the angel acknowledged Hagar’s value as a person in her own right in the eyes of God. Yes, God sees Hagar as a person with her own distinct identity. That might not change her societal status at that moment, but Hagar receives God’s affirmation.
After Hagar told the angel why she fled from her oppressor, the angel told her to return and submit to Sarai’s authority. While that message is problematic, the angel has another message that we need to take notice of. According to the angel’s word, Yahweh will “so greatly multiply [Hagar’s] offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” In other words, God is going to make a great nation from Hagar’s descendants. That’s the same promise God made to Abram in Genesis 12.
The angel also provided Hagar’s child with a divinely-appointed name—Ishmael, which means “God Heeds.” The angel then tells Hagar that Ishmael will be a “wild ass of a man.” In other words, Ishmael will be free and not a slave. Therefore, Hagar will become the matriarch of a great nation.
As the Abrahamic story continues to unfold, Sarai will have a child of her own. This child will carry the name Isaac. It’s through Isaac that Jews and Christians trace our lineage back to Abraham. When it comes to our place in the family tree as Christians, according to Paul, it’s by faith in Jesus that gentile Christians are adopted into Abraham’s family tree (Gal. 4:4-6).
While Jews and Christians look to Isaac as our ancestor, our Muslim friends, trace their spiritual lineage to Abraham through Ishmael and therefore through Hagar. In Islam, Hagar is known as Hajar. Although Hajar doesn’t appear by name in the Qur’an, she does appear by name in the Hadiths, the stories of the prophet Muhammad. According to the Hadiths, Hajar is not only an Egyptian, she’s Pharaoh’s daughter. In these stories, while Pharaoh gives Hajar to Sarah as a servant, she is destined to become Abraham’s wife and the mother of Abraham’s heir, Ishmael.
In the Islamic story, Abraham eventually takes Hajar and her son Ishmael to the desert where together they found the city of Mecca. Therefore, Hagar or Hajar, is a family matriarch, just like Sarah. Therefore, as I read the story, her descendants are also charged with being a blessing to the nations.
I greatly appreciate the story of Hagar or Hajar because it brings together three faith traditions. While we as Christians might focus on our connection to Isaac, according to the Genesis story God chooses to bless the descendants of both Isaac and Ishmael. That means both brothers and their descendants are important to God. If this is true, then let us honor both of these matriarchs and their sons, who serve as the foundation for God’s work of blessing the nations.
Before we move on I want to point out that in this story Hagar is a theologian. Before Hagar heads back to Abram’s camp to give birth to Abram’s firstborn son, she gives God a name. Yes, Hagar “named the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are El-Roi,’ for she said ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”” (Gen. 16:13). What’s important about this particular verse is that Hagar is the only person in Scripture who gives God a name. That name is “El-Roi,” which means “God sees.”
Hagar gives God this name because God saw her in her moment of distress, and blessed her with a promise. In fact, it’s not just a promise, it’s a covenant in which God promises to make Hagar’s descendants through her son Ishmael a multitude too great to number. Again, that’s essentially the same promise God made to Abram.
Hagar returns to the Abrahamic story in Genesis 21. Once again Hagar’s life is put in danger. At this point in the story, Sarah finally has a child of her own and she’s worried that Ishmael, who is now about twelve years old, could supplant Isaac as Abraham’s primary heir. So, even though Ishmael, who like his father has been circumcised, and is an heir to God’s covenant promises, Sarah convinces Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Though Abraham will grieve the loss of his firstborn, he agrees to Sarah’s request and sends Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. When the bread and water Abraham provided Hagar begins to run out, she sits down in the desert and begins to weep because she doesn’t want to watch her beloved child die of thirst. Once again the God whom she named El-Roi sees her in her distress and sends an angel to attend to the needs of mother and son. The angel says to 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” (Gen. 21:17-18). Then the angel points to a well, where Hagar can fill the skin with water to give to her son so he won’t die of thirst. According to the narrator, from then on “God was with the boy and he grew up” becoming an expert in the bow, and his mother found a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Because Ishmael plays a significant role in Islamic tradition, that tradition adds many more details to the story of Hagar and Ishmael. In the interest of our interfaith conversations, it’s worth paying attention to those traditions. My friend Amin sent me a story from the Hadiths that tells of Hagar and Ishmael. In the closing paragraph of that story Muslims, are called upon to “re-acknowledge [Hajar’s] supreme sacrifice, perseverance, fighting spirit, enduring hope, and her ‘unique’ ability to look at the bigger picture. There is a lot to emulate here, from this iron-willed woman, our mother Hajra ASW.”
I have to agree with this message. There is a lot to emulate when it comes to Hagar. So, may we, along with our Jewish and Muslim siblings, honor Hagar as the one who recognized that God sees and hears and who gave God the name El-Roi. Let us remember that according to Hagar the Theologian, God is the one who sees and hears us, especially in our moments of distress. May we join with all of Abraham’s children, whose mothers are Sarah and Hagar, and claim God’s covenant promise, that through Abraham’s descendants the nations would be blessed! May we embrace this promise as we live as members of Abraham’s extended family in a broken world that God dearly loves! If we do this, we honor the legacy of Hagar who gave God a name!
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
Journey of Faith Christian Church
Ann Arbor, Michigan
July 3, 2022
Pentecost 4C
Image Attributioni: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Hagar Speaking with the Angel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59241 [retrieved July 2, 2022]. Original source: Estate of Frank Wesley, http://www.frankwesleyart.com/main_page.htm.
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