Fourth Sunday after Pentecost June 21, 2026 with The Rev. Angela Compton-Nelson

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp7_RCL.html

Transcript

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Attempt to fulfill the promise though, Sarah takes Hagar, her enslaved Egyptian woman, and gives him to Abraham. Like the fruit in the Garden of Eden, Eden, which is taken and given against the command of God. Adam and Eve attempt to secure what they've been asked to trust to God for, and Sarah, too, attempts to secure what God has promised, an heir for Abraham. But before we leave this point too much, we would be right to ask again and again whether Hagar is Sarah's to take, something that the composers of Genesis are not unaware of. Hagar conceives a child and becomes the target then of Sarah's anger and jealousy. In making Hagar Abraham's wife, Sarah has lost her own security and ranking to a woman who has now given Abraham an heir. And then rejecting any responsibility that he has in the entire setup, Abraham responds to Sarah's jealousy, suggesting that she should do whatever she wants with Hagar. And Sarah casts Hagar out into the wilderness. Not the wilderness story of this week's lectionary, but she does this like a first time before we even get to today's lectionary. Hagar finds herself in Shur, a location between the lands of Canaan and Egypt, halfway to a return home. She is the first in scripture to flee into the wilderness, and she soon becomes the first in the Bible to be visited by a messenger of God. And having been seen and addressed by God, Hagar then becomes the first in the Bible to give God a name. Elroi, the God who sees me. Returning to Sarah and Abraham shortly after, she bears her son, naming him Ishmael, God hears. Elroy, the God who sees me, Ishmael, God hears. Hagar begins raising Ishmael alongside Sarah's own son, Isaac. But Sarah is worried that Ishmael will become a rival to Isaac's inheritance and her jealousy returns. This leads to Hagar's second expulsion in the wilderness. That's where the lectionary from today picks up. This time, when Hagar is expelled, she is desperate, without water and without hope for her child. She casts the child into a bush and walks a distance away. Unlike Moses' mother, who fashioned for him a basket, an ark, to place him in the rivers of Egypt, on Pharaoh's command that all infants be killed, all male infants be killed, a last effort at his protection, Hagar runs out of water and then casts her child away from her under the bush, hopeless in her circumstance. Unlike Moses, who is watched over from the banks of the river, Hagar walks a bowshot away, unable to look at Ishmael as he dies. Her child, the source of her claim to any kind of power and security in her life with Abraham and Sarah, is relinquished. It's just the most desperate moment. But here, Hagar has a second encounter with El Roy. Her plight is seen by God, her wailing child has been heard. Her own eyes are opened and she sees a spring of water, and God cooperates with her for her survival. She raises the child Ishmael in the wilderness, and he becomes the father of many, still within the blessing of God. I love biblical scholar Ellen Davis's passing comment about this story. If a people were going to make up a story about how they were chosen and elected by God, this would not be the story they would tell. In a theme that will recur, Abraham and Sarah, the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel, do not come off looking very good. They spend the entirety of the story receiving the promises of God and then struggling to trust in God. Repeatedly, they seek to secure their future apart from God's direction, grasping in their own ways. And this grasping is so often the occasion for deceit and violence. And this is a major theme in Genesis, which repeatedly portrays humans attempting to grasp control over God's promises rather than receiving them as a gift. And this is a central drama of the covenant. Will God's people be able to trust the promises of God even when the promises are impossible? Will the human proclivity to violence and extraction and consumption ever be overcome by fidelity to the covenant? Perhaps this seems a long time ago and far away, but more likely you are hearing in it as I am perennial themes of human nature. The quest for security and status, the desire for a future in the midst of precarity, the ways our quest for these things lead to our own grasping. This repeated look at human corruption, captivity to power, and the securing of oneself highlights how difficult God's project of partnership with human creation is, how much it depends on God's care, initiative, cooperation, and persistence. The God of Covenant does not choose a perfect people but forms a people who must learn to receive God's promises rather than grasp after them. And in the very story of that failure, God reveals Himself again and again as the one who sees and hears. The one who sees and hears those whom others cast aside and then partners with them. God's covenant and God's promises are not a reward for human goodness, but the gift through which God keeps working for the blessing of the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.