The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Hagar" (June 15, 2025 Sermon)
Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing
Meet Hagar—an Egyptian slave whose extraordinary encounter with the divine remains one of scripture's most radical stories. While Abraham and Sarah typically dominate the narrative of Genesis, this sermon shifts our focus to the woman they exploited, abused, and ultimately abandoned to die in the wilderness.
Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing guides us through Hagar's remarkable journey from nameless object to the only person in all of scripture who dares to name God and lives. When Hagar bestows upon God the name "El Roi"—the God who sees me—she reveals a profound theological truth: the divine gaze prioritizes those society overlooks. Abandoned twice to die in the desert, Hagar experiences God's intervention when human compassion fails.
This story resonates powerfully today. Hagar represents "the undocumented immigrant, the uninsured single parent, the trans person facing discrimination"—all those pushed to society's margins. Her experience illuminates how patriarchal systems pit marginalized people against each other rather than fostering solidarity. Sarah and Hagar, both victims of patriarchy in different ways, become enemies rather than allies.
The sermon challenges us to recognize how we participate in systems that dehumanize others through our language and actions. When we refuse to acknowledge someone's name, when we label groups with dehumanizing terms, we follow Abraham and Sarah's example rather than God's. But Hagar's story offers hope that divine compassion transcends human-made boundaries of nationality, status, and power.
Whatever wilderness you may find yourself in today, remember that you are seen. El Roi—the God who sees—remains especially attentive to those society forgets. In a world of division and dehumanization, may we develop eyes that see as God sees, recognizing the inherent dignity in every person we encounter.
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Let us pray, o God, you have the power to make a desert a place of renewal and a cross a sign of redemption. Send your Holy Spirit so that we can hear you and entrust ourselves completely to you, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior, amen. Amen. For the sake of Jesus Christ, our Savior, amen. I will be reading Genesis, chapter 16, verses 1 through 16. Now Sarah, abram's wife, bore him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said to Abram you see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my slave. It may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah.
Speaker 1:So after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, sarah Abram's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her slave, and gave her to her husband, abram, as a wife. He went into Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarah said to Abram May the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my slave to your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. But Abram said to Sarah. Your slave is in your power, do to her as you please. Then Sarah dealt harshly with her and she ran away from her.
Speaker 1:The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way of shore, and he said and he said, Hagar, slave of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? She said I'm running away from my mistress, sarah. The angel of the Lord said to her return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord also said to her I will so greatly multiply your offspring that you cannot be counted for the multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her Now you have conceived and shall bear a son. You shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He said, in a wild, he shall be a wild ass of a man with his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall live at odds with all his kin, all his kin.
Speaker 1:So she named the Lord who spoke to her. You are Elroy, for she said, have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him? Therefore, the well was called Bir Lahai. It lies between Kadesh and Bared. Hagar bore Abram, a son, and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar was born, bore him Ishmael. Holy wisdom, holy word, Thanks be to God.
Speaker 2:I did want to note that I do not wear this stole often, but this stole was given to me by my previous congregation in Lexington, kentucky, and it depicts Sarah and Abraham gazing upon the promise that God gave them to be the mother and father of a great nation of many people, as many as the stars. But today we turn our attention to someone who is not on this stall the story of Hagar, who was in many ways the collateral damage of Sarah and Abraham's pursuit of that promise. So let us again turn to the words of scripture and hear what God is saying to God's church. In Genesis, chapter 21, verses 8 through 21, the child Ishmael grew and was weaned and Abraham and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian Ishmael, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son, isaac. The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son, but God said to Abraham do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also because he is your offspring.
Speaker 2:So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and skin and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child, and sent them away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. She went and sat down opposite him, a good way off, about the distance of a bow shot, for she said, do not let me look upon the death of the child. As Hagar sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept and God heard the voice of the boy. And the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her what troubles you, 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, for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Speaker 2:Friends, holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. Let us pray, o Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, o Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Sight, o Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Speaker 2:Names are important. It's important that we remember that in the Bible, names serve as a means of storytelling and meaning making. In one of the side columns in your bulletin, you'll find explanations for some of the names that are featured in these stories from Genesis. For example, abram translates to exhausted, to exhausted father. That was a Freudian slip if I've ever heard one Exalted father. While Sarah means princess, their son Isaac, that name means laughter and his brother, ishmael means God hears.
Speaker 2:Today, we've explored a narrative centered on Ishmael's mother, hagar, as we begin our sermon series focusing on the stories of women from the Old Testament. Hagar's name is, as Old Testament scholar Wilda Gaffney puts it, more epithet than name. Hagar means the alien, it means the other. So Hagar is from the get-go of this story. The other Hagar is the undocumented immigrant. Hagar is the uninsured single parent. Hagar is the trans person who avoids traveling to certain parts of this country because of the hateful rhetoric leveled at them. Hagar is the lost, the forgotten and the abused. Hagar is the least of these that Jesus spoke about so frequently.
Speaker 2:Hagar was a slave. Her owners had been promised many children, but year after painful year had passed without that promise coming to fruition. The bitterness consumed them. It's a particular kind of agony that I trust is known by some among us, especially on days like today, father's Day, if you know that feeling of longing and lament, know that you're seen and know that you're loved. Abraham and Sarah had waited a long, long time. They decided to take matters into their own hands through a custom that was very common in those times surrogacy or, as Hagar likely would have called it, rape. But we must not make the mistake of letting the normalcy of this practice diminish the violence it caused.
Speaker 2:The text introduces us to Hagar by giving her two verbs in the passive voice. First she is taken by Sarah and then she is given to Abram. She was not asked, she was not given the option of saying no. Her agency was non-existent. Her lack of agency is evident by the way in the text that Abraham and Sarai disregard her very personhood. Note that not once in today's stories or anywhere else in the text do either Abraham or Sarah refer to Hagar by her name. She is referred to as slave or slave girl or slave woman.
Speaker 2:It's easier to disregard someone's dignity when you choose to ignore their name. We distance ourselves from those we despise. Undocumented immigrants are called illegals or aliens because it's easier to disparage them with that nomenclature. On Memorial Day weekend, the President of the United States called those of us who disagree with him scum. And just yesterday a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were fatally gunned down in a politically motivated act of violence. Gunned down in a politically motivated act of violence. We dehumanize each other by taking names out of the equation, but we will not forget Hagar's name today, because God doesn't play that game. No, our God is a God who names. In fact, god is the only character in today's story who calls Hagar by her name. Hagar, the Lord calls out to her in a moment of terror and desperation Hagar, you see? Hagar fled the anger of her owner.
Speaker 2:The text tells us that the reason for Sarah's wrath was that Hagar looked upon her with contempt. This, of course, ought to be taken with a grain of salt, as the opinion of the oppressor towards the oppressed is rarely an objective one. However, it should also be noted that Sarah occupies a unique position in this story, both as a person of privilege and as a person who is, in her own way, marginalized. Yes, she has power over Hagar and exercises that power in a way that benefits her, but it's also true that Sarah was simultaneously a victim of a patriarchal culture that valued her only to the extent to which she could bear children. Womanist and feminist scholars have noted that perhaps the saddest part of the story is that the two women were pitted against each other due to societal forces beyond their control. Instead of standing with and for one another in solidarity, sarah and Hagar held contempt for one another. The patriarchy benefits when one woman is pitted against another, just as racism thrives when one race of people is pitted against another. And while Sarah and Hagar's contempt for one another might have been a two-way street, the power differential was unquestionably on Sarah's side, and so Hagar flees, pregnant and powerless.
Speaker 2:Pregnant and powerless, hagar escapes Sarah's wrath into an unforgiving wilderness, as Tolkien would call it, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Yet in the midst of her powerlessness, a name calls out to her Her name Hagar. God promises Hagar and her offspring a future that must have seemed impossible in that moment. God names Hagar in a way that her oppressors refused to do, and that holy naming conferred a blessing upon Hagar and the child in her womb. And then y'all. What happens next is truly one of the most remarkable things. In all of Scripture, hagar gives God a name. In all of Scripture, god is the one who does the naming. God names the earthling Adam and his companion Eve. God renames Saul as Paul and then Simon as Peter. You see, naming someone was thought of as having some sort of authority or dominion over them.
Speaker 2:God named Adam and Eve and then gave them the authority to name the other creatures over which they would have dominion. And if God reveals God's name, it's always on God's terms and God's terms alone. But as such, no one, no one, names God, except that is a woman in scripture by the name of Hagar. She is literally the only person in the whole Bible who gives God a name and then lives to tell the tale. If Hagar's name embodies her otherness, the name she gives to God illustrates God's priority to the forgotten and the abused. Elroy is the name she gives God. Everybody say that with me, elroy. Is anybody else thinking about the Jetsons right now? No, not that Elroy. She names God, elroy, which means simply the God who has seen me. Finally Hagar has been seen. Finally Hagar is no longer other but seen. Finally Hagar has an advocate, and so she returns to her enslaver, but she returns with the blessing of a God who has seen her in her plight, has heard her cry. Maybe you understand what it's like to finally be seen after years of invisibility. Maybe you know what it's like to have someone call you by your name after being labeled with whatever terms others find more convenient to describe you. Maybe you know what it's like for someone to finally honor the name you've chosen for yourself. Maybe you know what it's like to have a sacred encounter with Elroy, the God who sees you. If you know that feeling, then you know that you don't walk away from it unchanged. And so Hagar returns to Sarah and Abraham Ishmael is born.
Speaker 2:Years later, sarah becomes pregnant herself and gives birth to Isaac. But the uneasy truce between Sarah and Hagar comes to an end when Sarah sees the boys playing together and her anger yet again burns within her. It's at this point that the text gives us a particularly telling phrase. As the conflict between Sarah and Hagar once again escalates, the text tells us that the matter was very distressing to Abraham. No matter that Hagar is once again taking the full brunt of Sarah's wrath, no matter that Hagar already has had to flee for her life once and is about to have to do that all over again. No one in this story other than God cares for Hagar's well-being. Instead, the text draws our attention to how stressful this must have been for the man. The patriarchy strikes again. Although Abraham could have intervened on Hagar's behalf at any step of this story, this dispute, the text suggests to us that he's the victim.
Speaker 2:The next day, the distressed, abraham gives Hagar and his own son, ishmael, a loaf of bread and a flask of water and sends them off to fend for themselves in the wilderness. It doesn't take long for Hagar to find herself in a desperate situation, once again Consigned to death due to exposure. Hagar can't bring herself to witness Ishmael's death and sets him under a bush and goes off a ways to weep and die. But God yet again intervenes and hears her cry, for our God always hears the cries of the oppressed. God again calls to Hagar by name, because God has seen her and sees her once again. Her Elroy has come once again to provide the mercy that Abraham and Sarah time and time again withheld. Elroy gives Hagar and Ishmael water, saves them from their plight, and the text concludes by telling us that they found a home and that Ishmael grew up to be an expert archer.
Speaker 2:Hagar is never mentioned again in scripture, save for a brief mention in a genealogy later on in Genesis and a fleeting reference in Paul's letter to the Galatians. So what does this text say about God and what does this text say about us? We'll return to these questions frequently as we delve into these stories of women in the Old Testament. What does the story of Hagar say about God and about us? The story of Hagar conveys this truth about God that God is first and foremost on the side of the forgotten.
Speaker 2:In these days when nationalism rears its ugly head and tanks roll through the streets of our nation's capital, the story of Hagar reminds the church that God isn't only a God of Israel or the United States or any nation for that matter. No, ours is a God of all nations, of all people and all creation. Hagar's very name meant other or alien. So we cannot read this text in one hand and disparage the stranger with the other. To do so is the very definition of hypocrisy. If God showed such deference to a foreign woman, a slave no less, to the extent that God allowed that person to give God a name and live to tell the tale, then that God in no way blesses any attempt for one segment of humanity to benefit at the expense of another.
Speaker 2:Secondly, the story of Hagar tells us this additional truth about God God sees you, yes, you, you, yes you. In your mess and in your muck, in your uncertainty and in your fear, in your desperation and in your laments, god sees you. God is your elroy, whether you are oppressed like hagar, or wandering in a wilderness of some other kind. God you, and that's good news. And speaking of mess and muck, we must reckon with what the story says about us, and that's, I think, is this God does not allow our brokenness to have the final word.
Speaker 2:Sarah and Abraham did some pretty abysmal things. They treated Hagar as an object to be used instead of a person to be loved, and God didn't allow their sin to have the final word, just as God doesn't allow our sin to have the final word. And hear me, church, this is in no way to give Sarah and Abraham a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is in no way to diminish the harm they imparted upon Hagar and Ishmael. Instead, it compels us to have meaningful conversations about power and accountability and to have frank dialogue about the harmful systems we construct that bring pain to others. Yes, indeed, what does this story say about us after another whirlwind of a week in this disturbed world in which we find ourselves? What does this text tell us when Israel begins bombing Iran, or when millions around the country took to the streets yesterday to protest a presidential administration that cares not for the likes of people like Hagar? What does this text tell us when elected officials are gunned down in their homes by a man pretending to be a police officer.
Speaker 2:I struggle with this, friends. I'm sure that you do too. Your pastor doesn't pretend to have all the answers, and I know that faithful people wrestle with these issues and maybe come to different conclusions than I do, and that's okay. I do believe that this text reminds us that the powers that cause such pain and suffering in the world are our creation and not God's.
Speaker 2:The patriarchy that drove a wedge between Sarah and Hagar was not of God's design. The institution of slavery that placed Hagar on the receiving end of a deadly power dynamic was not of God's design. The forces of nationalism and xenophobia that threaten our country were not of God's design. The forces of nationalism and xenophobia that threaten our country were not of God's design. Nevertheless, nevertheless, god is still El Roy. Say it with me one more time El Roy.
Speaker 2:Nevertheless, god is a God who sees. Nevertheless, god is a God who sees those who cry out for justice. In the story of Hagar, we are gifted a testament to God's divine, nevertheless. And so today we gather and we remember the woman who did not make it onto this stole. We remember a woman named Hagar, who cried out to God. Today we remember and give thanks for God, who sees us. Today we remember that Hagar's divine protest was not met with indifference, but with the listening ear and the caring heart of a God who always, always sides with those who seek justice. In the name of God, the creator, redeemer and sustainer, may all of us, god's beloved children, say amen.