Genesis 16:1-11, 13 (NIV)
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The God has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the God judge between you and me.”
“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the God found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the God told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the God also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, for the God has heard of your misery.
13 Hagar gave this name to the God who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The God has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the God judge between you and me.”
“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the God found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.
And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the God told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the God also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, for the God has heard of your misery.
13 Hagar gave this name to the God who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
Reflection
I have a few heroes in my life – I bet you do , too. I’m not sure how we get them but: heroes – people we look up to, people we look to five our lives direction, values, people who shape us. inspire us, people we want to emulate.
My heroes, now that I look at it, were people who stood up for something in the face of overwhelming odds; the David and Goliath story in our day and age.
One cluster of my heroes were: Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela on the one hand and Martin Luther King, Jr, on the other – if I had a third hand I would put Martin Luther, Bonhoeffer and the Dalai Lama there.
These were people who exhibited great courage and strength, pushed or pulled into the positions they found themselves, they stood firm in their convictions when confronted with insults, hatred and threats. None of them had an easy time yet all were conscious that they needed by their time, by their people, by their nation.
These are not people and causes divorced from our Christian message – in fact, I would say they are the Christian message. Desmond Tutu wrote this:
“ If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is the Bible. There is nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”
Jesus announces in our scripture reading today
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.”
Jesus is outright telling everyone in his hometown exactly who he is and where he stands. These are his people, he’s not announcing this Good News to the bigwigs in Jerusalem – yet. And he begins his ministry which right from the beginning emphasized inclusion. “Samaritians – sure I will come and talk with you and stay with you, eat and drink with you and teach you what I know about this God of ours and the Kingdom of God which is to come” he tell the woman at the well. “Of course, I will heal your servant” he tells the Roman centurion, “OK, I will heal you” he says to the Syro-Phenecian woman even though he tells her his ministry is primarily to the lost sheep of Israel. What does this last story tell us about Jesus: maybe that he couldn’t imagine farther than his people, his tribe, the Jews because wasn’t God the God Abraham and Issac, of Jacob and David, wasn’t God the God of the Jews.
But still Jesus cracks open the door, his compassion extends to beyond his circle, and Paul just takes that opening and flings the door wide open. Paul expands the audience for the disciples and the early church, to the Gentiles. And he does it in a way that defines our faith and our church forever. “There is no Greek or Jew, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female.” Before God, in the body of Christ; we are all equal, we are all included, we are all beloved.
So, how could we, the Church and Christians get it so wrong for hundreds of years? The Inquisition, the witch trials, selling Indulgences as a pass into heaven, going to church on Sunday and showing up at a slave auction on Monday, the Nazi Germany state was overwhelmingly Christian and yet was able to organized the Shoa; the Holocaust through a fanatical hatred of the Jews, Emancipation came to the US on Jan. 1, 1863 and segregation laws – the Jim Crow laws began appearing in the southern states in 1867. Slavery began in South Africa by the Dutch, was eventually banned with the Abolition Act by the British Government which abolishes slavery throughout the British Empire in 1834 and Apartheid begins in 1948 with the election of the Afrikaner National Party. Following their election, they begin implementing its policy of racial segregation. (white, black, coloured and Indian– like Ghandi who worked as a lawyer in South Africa). The National Party come to power and does the same year the United Nations passes its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
How could Christians get it so wrong? How could “we” run Indigenous and Metis peoples off their land and then turn around and offer it for free to Europeans willing to emigrate to Canada. How could “we” call other human beings, children savages and say that we preach and teach a loving God. How could “we” rip families apart with no sense of responsibility to those parents or communities or to the children taken away?
Well, one way we do it is to say: it isn’t us, it was in the past, it was “those people”. You see – it wasn’t me, it wasn’t you. So it’s confusing isn’t it. How can I be culpable when I wasn’t even born.
And yet somehow we care called to stand with all the voices today, voices and causes calling for our attention, we are called to listen and try to understand complex political, social and moral matters because we are Christian and because we are human. We are called to educate ourselves in what is our history, not just as a country but as a world.
Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Canadian Reconciliation have called us to move towards some kind of understanding of the times we live in, to listen carefully to the stories people have to tell about their truth- their lives- their experiences. We are called to be better than we were. I have always admired the Maya Angelou quote that says: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
So what do we know? We know that the Bible was a source of comfort and strength and inspiration for many of the people fighting for the rights for indigenous and black people around the world.
Liberation theology doesn’t begin with Paulo Fiere in Latin America. And it doesn’t even begin with Moses and Pharaoh in Egypt although that is a motif that is used quite often, and Let My People Go is quite catchy.
It begins with our first scripture passage today: the story of Hagar, which is really only a part of the Abraham and Sarah story in Genesis.
Sarah, as we know is barren but Abraham so wants to have a child to carry on his name and legacy, so Sarah decides to give Hagar to Abraham that he might have a child. Hagar indeed does become pregnant with Abraham’s child but Sarah doesn’t like the way Hagar looks at her after wards she goes to Abraham complaining. Abraham says to his wife ,”She’s your slave do whatever you want.” So Sarah beats Hagar and treats her badly.
Hagar is so distraught that she runs away into the desert thinking “even death is better than this life I am living” But an angel of God comes to Hagar calling her by name, and tells her to go back to Sarah and Abraham and to call the son she will have Ishmael meaning “God Hears or listens” And something else happens: Hagar is the first person to give a name to God; she calls God El Roi – the God who sees me.
So lets look at this a little more because Hagar is a slave. She was bought in Egypt to serve Sarah. Sarah owns Hagar, and when she (Sarah) cannot give Abraham a child why – she gives Hagar to Abraham and Abraham takes Hagar and she indeed does get pregnant. Is Hagar happy about this: any of it, I’m guessing not, by the way she’s looking at Sarah – who doesn’t think she should have to put up with attitude from Hagar. So Sarah goes and complains to her husband who doesn’t care what she does with Hagar after all he’s done his bit, so Sarah now has permission to beat the slave who maybe is not happy about being impregnated by her slave master. Then about 10-14 years later after Sarah has given birth to Issac, Sarah just tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael because she doesn’t want Ishmael to inherit anything of Abraham’s.
Hagar has no say in her life. She is a slave. She can be bought and sold. She can be treated harshly, beaten. She can be impregnated against her will. She can be thrown out into the desert to die without any resources whatsoever. She is a slave.
Slaves are bought and sold. They have no lives of their own. They are worked. They are to produce other slaves at the direction of their masters because slaves are capital not only do they provide labour but they provide mortgages for loans to buys land and build houses. Their partners and children can be sold at any time. They have no family. They own nothing. Everything they have belongs to their masters, their owners.
So when emancipation comes, when abolition of slavery is declared- former slaves have nothing except the clothes on their back and even those belong to their owner. They have nowhere to live, they have nothing to eat, they have no family, they have no money, they have no education. It is a frightening, terrible time for former slaves, many die, many are forced by circumstances to work for the very people who once were their owners. Many find ways and means to support themselves and build lives.
Harriet Tubman was born a slave, she escaped and then helped 70 other slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railway. One of her quotes “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” has years of dreaming behind, and a strength and passion that led her to many great accomplishments in her life.
Martin Luther King is famous for his dream speech made in 1963 and so famous today; that he even has a day named after him, but his life was filled with death threats and articles in newspapers vilified him rather than praised him.
He was fearless, as he fought and preached tirelessly for the rights and protection of black people in the U.S. and he understood the connection between the economic and the social and the spiritual. He wanted liberation for the whole person.
He preached about a new way of being in the family, in the community, in the world. Martin Luther King preached non-violence, he preached love, he preached change but not just to change the rulers and the ruled he wanted to change the rules of the structure of society.
The question he asked over and over : “Is how do you fight evil without becoming evil, how do you fight violence without becoming violent?” You don’t fight a fire with fire but with water” And his counterforce to hate was love.
Knowing that people who are in power never give up power willing, knowing that the violence can be hidden in the name of freedom, law and justice, Martin Luther King’s legacy in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was what he preached. He preached love and non-violence and he preached protest and standing up, and using the law and the Constitution to claim what had belonged to every person in the United States all along: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”Matin Luther King wanted those words not just to be rhetoric on a piece of paper he wanted them to be real, and he fought to make them real- for everyone.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu holds a special place in my heart. I am in awe of the man, who laughed with the Dalai Lama, who stood up to well everyone and everything that needed standing up to: apartheid and segregationist policies, Ronald Regan when he as president of the United States and Margaret Thatcher when they refused to impose sanctions against South Africa in 1986, Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, and he stood up for people who needed to hear his support for blacks in South Africa, for the poor, for the oppressed, for the child soldiers, for the LGBTQ community, for climate change.
His wisdom and rootedness in his faith gave him an optimism that permeated everything he wrote or said.
In 1990 I would never have believed that Nelson Mandela would ever have been released from prison. That apartheid would be over by 1994.
That the Civil Right Movement would result in real civil rights : which ended segregation in public places, and banned employment discrimination on basis of race, colour, religion, gender, or national origin, ended black voter suppression and discriminatory housing practices.
Now I pray for reconciliation with our indigenous brothers and sisters. Now I pray for the poor and oppressed on our streets and in our communities. I pray for the uplifting of all peoples, because before God, in the body of Christ; we are all equal, we are all included, we are all beloved. We are called as Christians to make sure that where we can, when we can, when we know better, we do better!
Amen
I have a few heroes in my life – I bet you do , too. I’m not sure how we get them but: heroes – people we look up to, people we look to five our lives direction, values, people who shape us. inspire us, people we want to emulate.
My heroes, now that I look at it, were people who stood up for something in the face of overwhelming odds; the David and Goliath story in our day and age.
One cluster of my heroes were: Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela on the one hand and Martin Luther King, Jr, on the other – if I had a third hand I would put Martin Luther, Bonhoeffer and the Dalai Lama there.
These were people who exhibited great courage and strength, pushed or pulled into the positions they found themselves, they stood firm in their convictions when confronted with insults, hatred and threats. None of them had an easy time yet all were conscious that they needed by their time, by their people, by their nation.
These are not people and causes divorced from our Christian message – in fact, I would say they are the Christian message. Desmond Tutu wrote this:
“ If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is the Bible. There is nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”
Jesus announces in our scripture reading today
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.”
Jesus is outright telling everyone in his hometown exactly who he is and where he stands. These are his people, he’s not announcing this Good News to the bigwigs in Jerusalem – yet. And he begins his ministry which right from the beginning emphasized inclusion. “Samaritians – sure I will come and talk with you and stay with you, eat and drink with you and teach you what I know about this God of ours and the Kingdom of God which is to come” he tell the woman at the well. “Of course, I will heal your servant” he tells the Roman centurion, “OK, I will heal you” he says to the Syro-Phenecian woman even though he tells her his ministry is primarily to the lost sheep of Israel. What does this last story tell us about Jesus: maybe that he couldn’t imagine farther than his people, his tribe, the Jews because wasn’t God the God Abraham and Issac, of Jacob and David, wasn’t God the God of the Jews.
But still Jesus cracks open the door, his compassion extends to beyond his circle, and Paul just takes that opening and flings the door wide open. Paul expands the audience for the disciples and the early church, to the Gentiles. And he does it in a way that defines our faith and our church forever. “There is no Greek or Jew, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female.” Before God, in the body of Christ; we are all equal, we are all included, we are all beloved.
So, how could we, the Church and Christians get it so wrong for hundreds of years? The Inquisition, the witch trials, selling Indulgences as a pass into heaven, going to church on Sunday and showing up at a slave auction on Monday, the Nazi Germany state was overwhelmingly Christian and yet was able to organized the Shoa; the Holocaust through a fanatical hatred of the Jews, Emancipation came to the US on Jan. 1, 1863 and segregation laws – the Jim Crow laws began appearing in the southern states in 1867. Slavery began in South Africa by the Dutch, was eventually banned with the Abolition Act by the British Government which abolishes slavery throughout the British Empire in 1834 and Apartheid begins in 1948 with the election of the Afrikaner National Party. Following their election, they begin implementing its policy of racial segregation. (white, black, coloured and Indian– like Ghandi who worked as a lawyer in South Africa). The National Party come to power and does the same year the United Nations passes its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
How could Christians get it so wrong? How could “we” run Indigenous and Metis peoples off their land and then turn around and offer it for free to Europeans willing to emigrate to Canada. How could “we” call other human beings, children savages and say that we preach and teach a loving God. How could “we” rip families apart with no sense of responsibility to those parents or communities or to the children taken away?
Well, one way we do it is to say: it isn’t us, it was in the past, it was “those people”. You see – it wasn’t me, it wasn’t you. So it’s confusing isn’t it. How can I be culpable when I wasn’t even born.
And yet somehow we care called to stand with all the voices today, voices and causes calling for our attention, we are called to listen and try to understand complex political, social and moral matters because we are Christian and because we are human. We are called to educate ourselves in what is our history, not just as a country but as a world.
Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Canadian Reconciliation have called us to move towards some kind of understanding of the times we live in, to listen carefully to the stories people have to tell about their truth- their lives- their experiences. We are called to be better than we were. I have always admired the Maya Angelou quote that says: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
So what do we know? We know that the Bible was a source of comfort and strength and inspiration for many of the people fighting for the rights for indigenous and black people around the world.
Liberation theology doesn’t begin with Paulo Fiere in Latin America. And it doesn’t even begin with Moses and Pharaoh in Egypt although that is a motif that is used quite often, and Let My People Go is quite catchy.
It begins with our first scripture passage today: the story of Hagar, which is really only a part of the Abraham and Sarah story in Genesis.
Sarah, as we know is barren but Abraham so wants to have a child to carry on his name and legacy, so Sarah decides to give Hagar to Abraham that he might have a child. Hagar indeed does become pregnant with Abraham’s child but Sarah doesn’t like the way Hagar looks at her after wards she goes to Abraham complaining. Abraham says to his wife ,”She’s your slave do whatever you want.” So Sarah beats Hagar and treats her badly.
Hagar is so distraught that she runs away into the desert thinking “even death is better than this life I am living” But an angel of God comes to Hagar calling her by name, and tells her to go back to Sarah and Abraham and to call the son she will have Ishmael meaning “God Hears or listens” And something else happens: Hagar is the first person to give a name to God; she calls God El Roi – the God who sees me.
So lets look at this a little more because Hagar is a slave. She was bought in Egypt to serve Sarah. Sarah owns Hagar, and when she (Sarah) cannot give Abraham a child why – she gives Hagar to Abraham and Abraham takes Hagar and she indeed does get pregnant. Is Hagar happy about this: any of it, I’m guessing not, by the way she’s looking at Sarah – who doesn’t think she should have to put up with attitude from Hagar. So Sarah goes and complains to her husband who doesn’t care what she does with Hagar after all he’s done his bit, so Sarah now has permission to beat the slave who maybe is not happy about being impregnated by her slave master. Then about 10-14 years later after Sarah has given birth to Issac, Sarah just tells Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael because she doesn’t want Ishmael to inherit anything of Abraham’s.
Hagar has no say in her life. She is a slave. She can be bought and sold. She can be treated harshly, beaten. She can be impregnated against her will. She can be thrown out into the desert to die without any resources whatsoever. She is a slave.
Slaves are bought and sold. They have no lives of their own. They are worked. They are to produce other slaves at the direction of their masters because slaves are capital not only do they provide labour but they provide mortgages for loans to buys land and build houses. Their partners and children can be sold at any time. They have no family. They own nothing. Everything they have belongs to their masters, their owners.
So when emancipation comes, when abolition of slavery is declared- former slaves have nothing except the clothes on their back and even those belong to their owner. They have nowhere to live, they have nothing to eat, they have no family, they have no money, they have no education. It is a frightening, terrible time for former slaves, many die, many are forced by circumstances to work for the very people who once were their owners. Many find ways and means to support themselves and build lives.
Harriet Tubman was born a slave, she escaped and then helped 70 other slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railway. One of her quotes “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” has years of dreaming behind, and a strength and passion that led her to many great accomplishments in her life.
Martin Luther King is famous for his dream speech made in 1963 and so famous today; that he even has a day named after him, but his life was filled with death threats and articles in newspapers vilified him rather than praised him.
He was fearless, as he fought and preached tirelessly for the rights and protection of black people in the U.S. and he understood the connection between the economic and the social and the spiritual. He wanted liberation for the whole person.
He preached about a new way of being in the family, in the community, in the world. Martin Luther King preached non-violence, he preached love, he preached change but not just to change the rulers and the ruled he wanted to change the rules of the structure of society.
The question he asked over and over : “Is how do you fight evil without becoming evil, how do you fight violence without becoming violent?” You don’t fight a fire with fire but with water” And his counterforce to hate was love.
Knowing that people who are in power never give up power willing, knowing that the violence can be hidden in the name of freedom, law and justice, Martin Luther King’s legacy in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was what he preached. He preached love and non-violence and he preached protest and standing up, and using the law and the Constitution to claim what had belonged to every person in the United States all along: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”Matin Luther King wanted those words not just to be rhetoric on a piece of paper he wanted them to be real, and he fought to make them real- for everyone.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu holds a special place in my heart. I am in awe of the man, who laughed with the Dalai Lama, who stood up to well everyone and everything that needed standing up to: apartheid and segregationist policies, Ronald Regan when he as president of the United States and Margaret Thatcher when they refused to impose sanctions against South Africa in 1986, Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, and he stood up for people who needed to hear his support for blacks in South Africa, for the poor, for the oppressed, for the child soldiers, for the LGBTQ community, for climate change.
His wisdom and rootedness in his faith gave him an optimism that permeated everything he wrote or said.
In 1990 I would never have believed that Nelson Mandela would ever have been released from prison. That apartheid would be over by 1994.
That the Civil Right Movement would result in real civil rights : which ended segregation in public places, and banned employment discrimination on basis of race, colour, religion, gender, or national origin, ended black voter suppression and discriminatory housing practices.
Now I pray for reconciliation with our indigenous brothers and sisters. Now I pray for the poor and oppressed on our streets and in our communities. I pray for the uplifting of all peoples, because before God, in the body of Christ; we are all equal, we are all included, we are all beloved. We are called as Christians to make sure that where we can, when we can, when we know better, we do better!
Amen
