This weekend we celebrate Juneteenth, World Refugee Day and Father’s Day. The story of Hagar could be seen to connect all three of these themes – plus other current events. In a strange synchronicity, Genesis 21 is the assigned Old Testament lectionary text for the day. Hagar seeks her freedom. then becomes a refugee. and Abraham is a father of the faith. His fathering is not necessarily something to emulate – but Abraham is a father. And who says the bible isn’t relevant?

We heard the second of two stories of Hagar this morning. Let’s puts these stories in context, start at the beginning – or at least in Genesis 12. Abram is called by God, and he receives the promise of land for his descendants. He faithfully follows God’s instructions to keep moving, from one place to another.

Then there is a bigger move, a more urgent move. There is a famine so Abram and Sarai, go to Egypt, the land of plenty. As a refugee, Abram is afraid of how he might be treated in Egypt, so he comes up with a plan to save himself. Abram says to Sarai his wife, “You are a beautiful woman; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. So say you are my sister, so they treat me well because of you, and I won’t be killed because of you.”

It happens as Abram predicts. Sarai is taken to the Pharaoh’s palace to be the Pharaoh’s wife. This marriage results in Abram receiving sheep, oxen, male donkeys, female and male slaves, female donkeys and camels. Things look pretty good for Abram.

But then, Pharaoh and his entire household get severely ill, (something like a plague,) because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.  Pharaoh calls Abram to him and says:

“What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’, so that I took her for my wife? Here is your wife; take her, and be gone.” Pharaoh orders his officials to see that Sarai and Abram, and their new entourage, leave immediately.

This is how Hagar comes to be in the household of Abram and Sarai, (though she is not named here.) Hagar is one of the female slaves that Abram receives in his dishonest dealings with the Pharaoh. Perhaps Sarai, Abram’s sister/wife, resents Hagar from the very beginning.

Fast forward to chapter 16. For 10 years this threesome has been living together (along with all of the other enslaved people and wealth Abram accumulated from the Pharaoh in Egypt.) Sarai has not gotten pregnant. Sarai experiences a famine in her body, so she does as Abram did, she looks to Egypt in her time of famine. She looks to the Egyptian, Hagar, to save her. Hagar, like the Egyptian land, is fertile.

Sarai does now, to herself, what Abram did to her. She puts herself in a “sister” role instead of a wife role. Sarai gives Hagar to Abram as his wife. Abram doesn’t say a word. He “takes” Hagar as his “wife.” Surrogacy is, after all, common in this time. Hagar has no say in the matter.

After ten years of slavery in the house of Sarai, Hagar finally finds that she is no longer worthless. Now she is pregnant. She is carrying Abram’s heir. She has status and Hagar takes every opportunity to let Sarai know that she, Hagar, is going to have a baby.

Sarai will not have this. She is the wife, the powerful one, not Hagar. Sarai turns to Abram to solve her problem. But Abram refuses to engage in this conflict between the two women, both of whom he knows intimately.

Since Abram will not intervene, Sarai treats Hagar ever more harshly. In a reversal of the bondage and horrors that the children of Israel experience later in Egypt, now the Egyptian is being tortured and tormented. It is the Egyptian Hagar who escapes slavery and seeks freedom in the wilderness, not because God commands it but because she is desperate.

In the wilderness, Hagar meets an angel at a well. The angel calls her by name, “Hagar, slave of Sarai” and asks where she is going.  Hagar says she is running away from Sarai, but the angel tells her to return to captivity, to submit to Sarai! Then Hagar also receives the same promise as Abram: “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted. You shall bear a son; and call him Ishmael.”

The angel’s message is a revelation to Hagar; she names God, El Roi, the God who sees. Many scholars say Hagar is the only one in the bible to name God in this way. Hagar the Egyptian, listens to the angel and returns back – to. submit. to. Sarai. and Abram. She once again becomes Hagar the slave. And she gives birth to a son, Ishmael.

Fast forward a few years, or perhaps it is not forward so much as the same story told with different details? We find the nomads Abraham and Sarah, now with new names, on the road again. They go to Gerar. Abraham plays the sister/wife trick again. He says to the king, “Sarah is my beautiful sister, you can have her as a wife.” But before he even touches Sarah, the king, Abimelech, has a dream. God tells him Sarah is a married woman. The king is mortified and confronts Abraham. Once again, the wily Abraham gets wealthy as he worms his way out of a lie.

It is after this episode that Sarah gets pregnant, fulfilling the promise she and Abraham received by visitors to their tent. Sarah gives birth to Isaac, her very own child in her old age, in Abraham’s old age. This does not make Sarah any less angry at Hagar. Sarah’s jealousy once again turns her toward Abraham to solve her problem. And though Abraham is the father of both these young boys, this time he sides with Sarah. God reassures Abraham that Ishmael will become fruitful and multiply, become a nation. So Abraham gets up early in the cool of the morning and sends Hagar once more out into the wilderness, with bread and water.

The first time Hagar was in the wilderness, it was an exodus of her own choosing and she found a spring of water, she met an angel. This time she is in exile. Her bread and water run out and there is nothing, nobody. She can’t bear to see her darling child die in the heat of the desert so she puts him under a bush for shade. She moves away so that her child cannot hear her weep about his impending death. (Some of these details, as described in the bible, don’t make a lot of sense. Ishmael would be about 13 years old, hardly the size to stay hidden under a scrub bush. But never mind that.)

God hears the cries – the cries of the child, of Ishmael. Hagar hears a voice from heaven that tells her that Ishmael’s cries, and her cries, have been heard. She is reassured once more that a great nation will be made for him, of him. Through her tears she once again sees a well where she fills the flask with water and then gives Ishmael a drink.

The end… almost. A little throw-off verse makes me wonder: God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. What about Hagar, what about his mother. Does God stop being with her? Does she not live in the wilderness with him? He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. 

There are so many layers of meaning, so many lenses through which we might read this story of Hagar. Is this really the basis for ongoing tensions between Jews and Muslims today or is it just a description of the reality that continues to play out? People of the same parentage fighting over land and inheritance.

Womanist theologians find commonality with Hagar’s story and struggle. They read through the lens of enslaved women in this country, who were too often unwilling surrogates, bearing children who were the product of violence and not love. Is it enough that God sees their despair and terror, that God hears their cries?

We can see Hagar’s story as the story of mothers who cannot protect their children from unjust powers. How is Hagar like black and brown mothers in this country who, despite their deep love, cannot protect their darlings from systemic racism, from the criminal legal system? from the ravenous immigration system? Does God see – and hear their cries?

Yesterday was World Refugee Day. 120 million people worldwide are displaced, are refugees. We might read Hagar’s story and see the story of refugees who wish to return home to the land they know, the land that is part of them. Hagar never stopped being Egyptian despite her years of enslavement by Abraham and Sarah. She remained true to her people and went back to Egypt to find a wife for Ishmael. Today, Palestinians claim their identity even after generations of displacement. What does it mean to be driven away from their land? How, when can they return to their land, to teach the next generations about their family, their ancestors? Does God see – and hear their cries?

On Father’s Day, we might read this as the story of fathers – and families who struggle to know how to love their children, to love each other. I just read the memoir, Search for a Blessing by Daniel Shenk and Joyce Maxwell. The subtitle gives you an idea of Daniel’s struggle with his family: A Gay man’s journey from a Mennonite Missionary Childhood to the streets of AIDS activism. What does it mean to be called by God and yet feel deserted by family? to be driven to the wilderness – or the streets of New York City? Is God there too? Does God see – and hear their cries?

On this weekend of Juneteenth, we might wonder what this story has to say about freedom. Did Hagar ever really find freedom? It certainly was delayed like it was for more than 250,000 people in Texas who were still enslaved 2 1/2 more years after the Emancipation Proclamation. For that matter, here in Maryland, a border state, the enslaved were not free until 22 months after freedom was granted by President Lincoln. We celebrate freedom and we wonder: Did God see – and hear the cries of pain and suffering?

Jesus says in Matthew – Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed and nothing is hidden that will not be made known. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, everyone will know how things really are.

            God sees and everyone else will see too. The truth will be known. Does this mean that freedom will come? Even if it takes as long as in Maryland, as long as in Texas? Will freedom come for those in Delaney Hall, New Jersey; in Angola, Louisiana, in Palestine, In Ukraine?

Freedom doesn’t come without effort. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed and nothing is hidden that will not be made known. The truth must be spoken – and acted upon. Hagar’s story has been given to us. It must be told and retold.

Who’s story are we telling today, as difficult as it is to hear? Who’s story must be told – even if it exposes those who are thought to be in the right? those who are thought to be righteous? Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed and nothing is hidden that will not be made known.

May God gives us the stubbornness (without the cruelty) of Sarah. May God give us the wiliness of Abraham. And may God give us the strength of Hagar to speak the truth and call on the God who sees.