Genesis 16 "The Sparrow" Scott Hoezee

Because I think it will be historically interesting in future years, I saved two recent issues of the New York Times: September 11, 2001, and September 12, 2001. The front page of the September 11 edition of the Times featured a large color photograph of people lining up to enter a big fashion show in Bryant Park. Well-dressed people carrying Gucci bags were seen chatting on cell phones and checking palm pilots as an entire week's worth of flashy fashion display was about to begin. This was front-page news the morning of September 11. Other headlines included the debate over stem cell research and a flap in schools around the country over student dress codes. There was also a big article about how lucrative early morning TV programs like the Today show had become. And another headline talked about "Bush under Pressure." It was an article about tax cuts.

The next day's edition of the Times looked rather different. In the largest size print I've ever seen in any newspaper, the September 12 issue blared the headline, "U.S. ATTACKED" with most of the rest of page 1 taken up by a sickening photo of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. In a flash Gary Condit became Gary who? Talk of tax cuts, dress codes, fashion shows, and even something as important as stem cell research all vanished and would remain invisible for weeks and even months to come. As it turned out, the real news of September 11 was lurking off in a corner where no one was looking.

That happens sometimes in life. What we think is the main event of a given day turns out to be minor compared to something that was happening away from the limelight. In some ways this has long been a staple of literature and movies. A woman waits for her dashing Prince Charming to show up, but it turns out that the love of her life has been near her for years. She's been staring at the front door waiting for her prince to arrive but ends up falling in love with the gardener who's been working in the backyard all along.

God seems to enjoy operating this way, too. The Bible is full of feints and surprises when it comes to just where it is that God turns out to be working. While the proud of this world puff up their chests and strut around full of self-importance, God is quietly changing the world through shepherd boys like David, dreamers like Joseph, a foreign widow like Ruth, and pre-eminently a lowly carpenter's son from Nazareth.

The hapless handmaiden named Hagar is a great example of this facet to God's work and character. From Genesis 12 forward, the Bible has shined a 300-watt spotlight onto Abram and Sarai. This light follows this couple wherever they go: Ur, Canaan, Egypt, the Negev, Canaan again. This is the couple of the promise. This is the couple of the covenant. This is where God is going to do the quite amazing thing of granting a child in old age: a child through whom a nation will one day be formed, a nation through which the entire world will one day be blessed. Big-time stuff! On the cable TV channel MSNBC, Today show co-host Matt Lauer hosts a program titled Headliners & Legends, and it profiles all the kinds of people you'd expect: movie stars, former presidents, billionaires, heroes, military generals. Well, in the biblical firmament, you'd certainly have to include Abram and Sarai in the "headliners and legends" category.

Of course, there is no question that God was at work in this couple. They were a biblical "main event" if ever there was one. Compared to these two, everyone else around them were little more than bit players. We are told in these stories that Abram and Sarai had any number of servants and slaves, but we don't know any of their names, nor do we need to know such information. What difference would it make? We know where the principal divine action is, we know which direction to look if we want to see the hand of God at work.

Except in Genesis 16, that is. Because here is yet another biblical example of our getting caught looking the wrong direction. We're watching the main headlines of the day when, as it turns out, a very important story is unfolding in a corner of the world where no one was looking, including Abram and Sarai. While the main buzz in Genesis 12-23 is about that grand covenant God made with Abraham, Genesis 16 quietly reveals a very important feature to God's nature when it shows another covenant getting made, but this one with an Egyptian servant named Hagar. As it turns out, God was active not just on the biblical center stage where the spotlight shined but also off in the wings where Hagar sat crying her eyes out in a desert place. Just why and how God was active for the likes of Hagar tells us a lot about the God of Scripture. So let's get to this story and then see what it maybe all means.

The opening verse of Genesis 16 strikes yet again that hammer blow that has been struck again and again since chapter 12: Abram and Sarai have no kids. And now it's been a good ten years since they flew out of Ur on the wings of God's promise of family and land. This time it's Sarai's turn to be impatient. But in this case it is more than impatience that motivates Sarai: notice that in verse 2 she does not say that so far God has failed to act, but she asserts that as a matter of fact, God has acted: he has prevented pregnancy. It's one thing if I promise to loan you money so you can pay off some debts but then I fail to do so. In that case you might say, "I'm still in debt, partly because you haven't come through with that loan yet." But it would be a different matter altogether if you accused me of keeping you in debt by preventing anyone else for loaning you money, either.

In her mind, Sarai has made God the enemy. It's not simply that he hasn't come through on the promise, he has actively taken steps to keep Sarai miserable. And since such a God doesn't seem like the kind of Deity anyone should have to wait around for, Sarai now does what Abram has already done a couple of times in these stories; namely, takes charge herself to see if maybe there is some other way she can have a child to claim as her own.

So Sarai has a plan. When they made that detour into Egypt some years ago, they picked up a young servant girl who, now ten years later, has grown into a striking dark beauty of a woman. Maybe old Sarai noticed Abram cutting his eyes now and again to sneak glances at this lovely lass. So since Hagar seemed young and fertile, since Abram seemed to find her reasonably attractive, and since the legal system of that day would let Sarai in some way claim the child of a servant as more-or-less her own child, Sarai makes the bold suggestion that her husband try out a different bed for awhile.

It works, of course, and so before long Hagar is clearly with child. And suddenly she doesn't feel like the lowly little servant she's been her whole life until then. She's bearing the master's baby. She's a somebody now. The next thing you know, in fine soap opera fashion, Hagar cops a bit of an attitude, especially whenever Sarai is near. She doesn't let Sarai boss her around anymore, and if Sarai objects, Hagar quietly clears her throat and points to her belly. Meanwhile, Abram was doting on Hagar more than Sarai could stand. Every time the girl had a craving for dill pickles and bagels, Abram dashed off to fetch it.

Child or no child, this wasn't worth it, Sarai concluded. So she tells Abram that something had to give. The tone in her voice let Abram know that the only possible answer he could give was along the lines of "Yes, dear." So before Hagar knew what hit her, she found herself on the receiving end of some serious abuse, and Abram said nary a word to stop it. It didn't take long before she fled, pretty much the way Sarai was hoping. This way Sarai could say, "I didn't kick out a pregnant woman! She left of her own accord!"

So Hagar flees. She runs off the biblical main stage, out of that spotlight shining on Abram and Sarai. She's off to the side now, away from the light, in the wings. As a reader, you pretty much expect that this will be the end of the matter. Now we can return to our regularly scheduled program of the drama involving Abram and Sarai. Except it doesn't turn out that way at all. Even Hagar expected that having fled the house, she had left behind also the God whom Abram served. She was headed out into the wilderness, probably trying to get back to her homeland of Egypt. But you don't find God in the desert. The wilderness is an evil and raw place. You might find a demon or two there, but not God. He was back there in Canaan, taking care of the headliners and legends of the story.

But the road back to Egypt was long, and so Hagar, bursting with a child and so with no reserves of energy to go on, finally collapses near a spring, fully expecting that she was finished, forgotten by both God and man. But that's when the Lord's angel appears in a way no one expected. He tells Hagar to go back to Sarai and, what's more, to be nice to her, to submit to her, to put up with her abuse but also to maybe squelch the uppity attitude Hagar herself had been putting on of late. At first it seems like a rather cruel thing for God to say. But there's more: if she does what she's told, the child will be born and she won't miscarry out there in the fierce desert. And once that child is born, God covenants with Hagar that she, too, will become the mother of a vast legion of descendants. She is to name her son "Ishmael," which means "God hears," because out there in the desert where no one thought God would be, God heard her and saved her and even made a covenant with her.

True, her son won't grow up to be Mr. Congeniality and he will, for some unexplained reason, be the kind of person who always brings out the worst in others. But even that, God promises, won't thwart the fact that Hagar could rest assured that something good would come of the child in her womb.

So she goes back. She eats the humble pie. She puts up with Sarai's scorn. But this time she was able to tolerate it all, and even was able to have a better disposition herself, because she knew something Sarai maybe didn't know: Hagar knew that God loved her. She knew that you didn't have to be a title character in the divine drama to be noticed and cared for by God. As we'll see in a few weeks, Hagar's life was not destined to be a bed of roses even so, but once you know how much the God of heaven loves you, much is transformed.

Of course, there's some irony here, too. Hagar ends up looking more faithful than Abram or Sarai. It was their impatience--worse, it was Sarai's calling God her opponent--that led to Hagar's getting caught up in all this. But once she does become involved, Hagar at least was obedient to God even though God's request was a bit difficult. But by hanging onto the promise in faith, Hagar found it possible to move forward despite hardship. As such, at least in this chapter, Hagar shines a bit more brightly than even Abram and Sarai. She doesn't need the spotlight: her faith shines wherever she is!

Since in coming weeks we'll have plenty more to say about Abram and Sarai and the genuine difficulties they had in maintaining faith, tonight we'll simply stick with Hagar and make a few concluding observations about what her role in this story teaches us about God. Hagar is a reminder that God's activity cannot be restricted to only those who are obviously at the center of divine action. That is a truth that remains on display throughout the Old Testament (and into the New Testament, too). But it's always a struggle for God's people to remember this. Right from the start God told Abram that this plan of salvation would spill over beyond just Abram and his descendants to encompass the whole earth.

But it would be perennially difficult for later Israel to remember that. Sometimes they didn't even like it very much! But again and again God works great things through outsiders and people on the margins of life and society. Small wonder that by the time you get to Matthew's opening family tree of Jesus, you discover there several foreign women (a few with dubious moral credentials) who had become great-great-great grandmothers of the Christ. While Israel was looking center stage, God was marching history toward the advent of the Messiah by bringing in from the wings a prostitute from Jericho named Rahab and a Moabite widow named Ruth.

Still, it's difficult to remember how diverse God's work can be. Eventually, it can get to the point where even if you do remember God's larger, world-wide goals, you maybe don't like it, as happened when the Lord told Jonah to go save the Ninevites, but Jonah high-tails it in the other direction because he didn't particularly want to share God's kingdom with those greasy outsiders. A couple of weeks ago we saw something similar in even the New Testament when we thought about how difficult it was for the apostles to accept that God was bringing Greeks and Egyptians and other non-Jews into the church without waiting for them to become Jews first.

There's even a wonderful touch in the Book of Acts. As you may recall, in Acts 10 the apostle Peter has a vision of a big buffet of non-kosher foods: ham, lobster, clams, BLTs. God tells him to help himself, but Peter refuses to associate with non-Jewish things. But God insists Peter eat anyway as a sign that Peter had to accept God's activity in people and places well beyond the boundary lines to which Peter was so accustomed . The wonderful touch of that story is that when Peter has this vision, he's in Joppa, the same city to which Jonah fled precisely because he didn't want to be around non-Israelites, either!

We always err when we think we know exactly what God is doing and where he's doing it. We always make a mistake when we assume that the shank of God's actions are in the spotlight of only the faithful. Hagar's story reminds us that our God in Christ is, as Hagar pegged him, "the God who sees." He sees the people we don't always see. His eye is on the desert wastelands of life as surely as it is on the church.

We often like to quote the line from Jesus that if God's eye is on the sparrow, we can be assured the divine gaze most certainly rests on also us. What we sometimes forget in that, however, is the fact that God's eye really is on the sparrow in the first place! And the reason God's eye is on the sparrow is not first of all to provide an extra re-assurance for us but sheerly because the sparrow has value and worth irrespective of us.

Hagar is a kind of sparrow. She's not a center-stage player like Abram and Sarai but is more like a little bird twittering away up in the branches of a tree just off to the side of where the Genesis spotlight shines. But God sees and loves her nevertheless. I suppose someone could claim that the only reason Hagar receives such care is because she's riding Abram's coat tails. It's the holy patriarch's baby she's carrying, after all, so maybe that alone warranted God's care for Hagar in a way that wouldn't be true otherwise. But there's no hint in this story that Hagar is loved only because she shared a bed with Abram.

Somehow you get the feeling that she's simply one example of those untold throngs of people from around the world whom God promised to save in the long run. No one gets saved simply because of a connection with Abram, not even, as we saw last week, Abram himself! In the long run the only person to whom you need a connection is Jesus. And once he showed up on this earth, he was always singling out the sparrows of the world as candidates for love and grace. Hagar called Yahweh "the God who sees." Just so. Maybe that's why over and over again in the gospels you read lines that say something like, "And Jesus lifted up his eyes and, seeing the crowds, he had compassion on them." May God grant us just this kind of vision and sight so that our eyes, too, may see in love all the sparrows of the world. Amen.