Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, Oregon
By Barbara
Stevens
August 20,
2006
During my last year of seminary, I ended up having to take about five Bible courses. I wasn’t looking forward to it before the year started, but when you go to a non-UU school, that’s how it is. So I took my first class and fell in love with exegesis. Exegesis is when you study a passage or story in depth, attempting to find out the author’s meaning. You can do this for any piece of literature, but of course, we were doing this with Bible verses. And I was amazed by the insights I gained into worldviews incredibly different from my own, by the facts I learned about earlier civilizations, and by the literary, mythological, and psychological meanings tucked into the stories. The ancients lived in a high context society. That means that so much of their culture was shared, writers could use just a few words to create multiple layers of meaning.
One of the Old Testament stories which struck me was about
Hagar. When I read that a slave and a
woman had seen God, that God had blessed her with the promise of a multitude of
descendents, and that she had dared to name God, I decided I had to know more
about this passage, so I did an exegesis on it. What I found was that Hagar’s story is so rich, each line yields
those multiple layers of meaning, and scholars argue about what meaning is
true. The truth I saw embedded in that
story included insights into the power of naming to make a person whole, the
importance of seeing and being seen, of listening, of being present to one
another, and of being in right relationship.
I am going to assume you don’t know the story of Hagar,
because I certainly didn’t. If Hagar is
commonplace for you, please bear with my repeating what you already know. Earlier, I read you the section of Hagar’s
story I analyzed for my Torah class, but there’s more to her tale. Hagar was an Egyptian slave who belonged to
Sarah, the matriarch of the Hebrew people.
Her story starts when Sarah has had enough of being barren and decides
to give her slave woman to her husband Abraham so Sarah could have children
through her.
Sarah’s scheme works, and Hagar becomes pregnant. However, life is not all rosy in the
patriarch’s household after that, for now that she is with child, Hagar looks
with contempt on her mistress. Sarah
gets angry with Abraham, Abraham basically washes his hands of the situation,
telling Sarah that Hagar is her slave, she can do with her as she wants, so
Sarah treats Hagar harshly, and Hagar runs away.
The next we see of Hagar, she is in the wilderness, sitting
by a well on the road to Shur, which is in Egypt, so she is on her way
home. The Angel of the Lord, or Yahweh,
finds her there. Now, in this story,
when the Hebrew text reads “Angel of the Lord,” it does not mean a messenger of
God, which is what “angel” by itself means, but rather God himself – and, yes,
we are talking about a male God here.
So here is God himself appearing in an earthly manifestation to a woman
and a slave, and this God names this woman and slave: Hagar, handmaiden of
Sarai, he calls her.
Up to this point, the only character who has bothered to use
Hagar’s name is the narrator. In fact,
at least in the story of Hagar as we have been given it, neither Sarah nor
Abraham ever use her name. This is
important. In Egypt, at that time, if
you didn’t have a name, you didn’t exist.
You weren’t a real person. In
fact, naming was an act of creation.
Hagar would have known this, for an Egyptian God, Ptah, spoke the name
of all the things of the world and in this way caused them to come into
existence. In Egypt, if one wanted to
honor someone who had died, one kept that person’s name alive. If one wanted to dishonor him or her, one
scratched out that person’s name wherever one found it.
Of course, this un-naming is part of the point. Hagar is a slave. In Mesopotamia, which is where we are in this story, a slave
isn’t a real person. What is so
powerful in this narrative, then, is that Hagar’s existence is confirmed by the
one who matters most in the universe: God.
This is exciting, for this is a God who takes a nothing, a slave, a
female slave, at that, and remember, when this story was written down,
being a woman wasn’t that much different from being a slave, so she is doubly
nothing, and this God takes this creature and gives her a name, affirms that
she is important, that she exists as a real human being. Now, it is true that these ancient peoples
understood the giving of a name to imply dominion over the thing or person so
named, but they also believed that God had dominion over every creature
already, including every human, thus being named by God is hardly a disgrace.
Indeed, Hagar has been named by one whose power diminishes
that of her human owner. She belongs to
God, not Sarah. So when God asks where
she has come from and where she is going, and Hagar replies she is fleeing from
her mistress, we might expect that God would cheer her on. We might expect that God would say, “That’s
exactly the right thing for you to do, let me help.” Is this Yahweh not the God who will free the Israeli slaves from
their Egyptian masters? Is this Yahweh
not the God who is on the side of the poor and oppressed, on the side of
justice? So it is with great surprise
that we hear this God say: “Return to your mistress and submit yourself to her
hands.”
At this point, many commentators either condemn God’s action
or scramble to find some way to excuse his cruelty. Some scholars reject the authority of the Bible because of
stories like these, or they may reject the authority of particular
stories. But there are some committed
Christian scholars who argue that their God is a liberating and loving deity,
and the biblical story about this God’s relationship with human beings always,
always speaks to the message of love and liberation. If a text seems to dispute this message, you need to look deeper
rather than dismiss the text. If a text
has been used to justify oppression and subjugation, you need to explore that
text and see how those human interpreters are wrong. So I decided that, even though I do not identify as Christian or
Jewish, I would honor this text that is sacred to so many people and look for
the message of liberation and love even when it seemed it was not there.
One thing I discovered on my journey through this text is
that the scene I read to you earlier had been created in a particular structure
called a chiasm. This is where the
first line has the same elements as the last line, the second has the same
elements as the second to last line, and so on until you get to the central
line or lines which is where you will find the main message of the text. What is even more exciting, for those of us
who love language and writing, the lines that relate to one another often
include what is called a reversal, and this is exactly how the Hagar story was
written. The lines not only connected,
but they held opposite meanings. Now
tuck this into the back of your minds, please, because I’ll get to it, but
first I want to return to our story.
God tells Hagar to return to Sarah, but he’s not finished
talking to her. He continues that Hagar
will have so many descendants she will not be able to count them, and that she
is pregnant now with a son whom she is to call Ishmael because God has heard
your affliction. That’s what Ishmael
means – “God hears.” God listens. God sees.
God knows Hagar so well that he can name her. He has heard her cries, and he responds by giving her a son who
will be wild and whose hand shall be against everyone. Hagar has to stay a slave, but her son will
be free. Is that all the consolation he
gives her? She gets to be the matriarch
of a free people? What about her own
life?
There are probably as many theories about why God sends
Hagar back to slavery as there are commentators who care about the
problem. For instance, Hagar doesn’t
know where she’s going; she’s pregnant and can’t live by herself in the
wilderness; even if she makes it back to Egypt, where will she go, a woman on
her own? I would argue that all these
issues are valid, but I submit that there’s another reason God sends Hagar back
to Sarah, because the two women are bonded in some important ways and need to
reconcile. This is a story about
relationships, mostly abusive and unequal relationships. However, God has given Hagar a name. She is now a person, and not just a person,
but a matriarch of an entire people.
She has dignity. So God sends
this new woman back to Sarah to submit under the latter’s hands. But why?
Let’s return to our chiasm, that form in which one line is
the opposite of another. The line that
matches up with God’s sending Hagar back to Sarah is the one about Ishmael’s
hand being against everyone and everyone’s hand being against his. Ishmael’s is a hand raised in
animosity. If I am correct and we have
a chiasm with reversals, meaning that the matching sentences mean opposite
things, then we have Hagar going back to slavery, instead of freedom, under the
hands of Sarah that are opposite animosity, and what is opposite
animosity? Peace. I admit that God is telling Hagar to return
to slavery, but not as a non-human. She is now a dignified person, capable of
reconciling with her mistress whose hand is raised in friendship. Perhaps God can’t do anything about the
choices Ishmael will make in his freedom, but he can instruct Hagar on how to
live.
Slavery is an evil thing, and we would hope God would come
down strongly against it, but in the face of human institutions that God cannot
change, for that is up to us, he can point out that pure freedom is pure
individuality, and pure individuality is wrong relationship. If we all cared only about ourselves, if we were
all free to do just as we pleased, is we were all individuals who did not
acknowledge our interdependence, our world would fall apart. We need relationships. So God sent Hagar back to repent to her
mistress, and if it would be better for Sarah to repent first, life doesn’t
always go that way. And while
reconciliation is not always an option in an abusive relationship, in my
imagination, the two women understand their need for support in the face of a
world that was quickly becoming more and more patriarchal, so they bond.
Unfortunately, when we see them next, twelve years later,
Sarah succumbs once more to jealous emotions, stops using Hagar’s name, and
sends her into the wilderness. Whatever
peace the two women may have found with one another, it didn’t last. Bible stories don’t reflect the world as we
would like to see it; they reflect the world as it is, filled with humans doing
human things.
But before Hagar goes back to Sarah, she has something to
say to God. First, she names God. “You are El Roi,” she tells him, which means
the God who sees. Now, as we know from
the hymn we just sang, God is not simple, so God has many names. Later in the Bible, he will call himself El
Shaddai. He is Yahweh, Allah, Ganesh,
Ptuh, and he is also aspects of reality, like Mother, Tailor, Father,
Washerwoman. All the ways we can
imagine God, God exists. But right now,
in this moment, Hagar sees God in this way, as El Roi, and thus she honors his
incredible vision.
Then Hagar says a sentence no modern scholars appear to
understand. Literally she says
something like what I read to you: “Also here see I after he seeing me?” It is a question and appears to reflect
Hagar’s amazement at being alive after she has seen God, for there is a
tradition that one can’t look on the face of God and live.
I am going to get imaginative again. I think there’s something in Hagar’s
sentence about the power of being seen.
God sees her, but what does that mean, to see? Now because it’s God, and because the God in this story has
abilities and traits way above anything humans could ever conceive of, I
imagine that to be seen by this eternal being is incredible. I suspect that if God sees us, he looks so
deep inside us, he sees things we never knew were there. For we humans have many names, as well, and
yet God sees the totality of all our being and all our names, and he sees it
with love and liberation, because he is a God of love and liberation.
So Hagar feels loved; and Hagar feels liberated. Perhaps she feels so liberated that even
slavery means nothing to her any longer, although I realize that is a
potentially dangerous thing to say, in part because it is easy to misconstrue
or misrepresent. The point is, God has
seen her in her broken and fearful and amazing and beautiful totality, and to
be seen by God is an experience that never completely goes away. And when she says “Also here see I,” she
means that her vision is changed, as well.
She is seeing in a new way, and she asks the question because wants to
know, is this true? Is this real?
Because of her experience, it seems she knows now how to see
in an entirely new way. That is my imaginative reconstruction. Hagar was seen and now she can see, perhaps
not like a god, but with greater vision and understanding than before. And I submit that if we, as human beings,
are able to look upon one another with love and liberation, we, too will be
liberated, and the power of our seeing will be magnified.
This sentence is also about listening. Listening, seeing, it is the same. In fact, what I said about reconciliation
and about relationship are both part of the seeing/listening, and about the
naming. In the end, the seeing,
listening, naming, relationship are all about being present. God is completely present. That may be what it means to be God, to be
present to every single event in every single life at every single moment,
truly seeing, truly listening, truly there.
If we could give one another even a tiny piece of that presence, what an
amazing gift that would be. And so we
get back to naming, for that is the gift.
When we are truly present to one another, when we truly see the other,
we help the other find his or her own true name.
Interestingly, Hagar is not a real name. It’s just a word. Some people think it means “to flee.” I am of the camp that believes it means “stranger” or
“sojourner.” Perhaps both. Like all of us, Hagar is a stranger and a
traveler in this world.
As I was doing research for this sermon, I discovered that
there are two Jewish names that mean the same thing as Barbara: one is Sarida;
the other is Hagar. My name means
“foreigner,” which is enough like sojourner that I claim that, as well. Like Hagar, Barbara also means “stranger.” Thus I stand before you, a sojourner and a
stranger. I have been told that I am
difficult to get to know, perhaps because of my introverted nature. But my middle name, Eleanor, means
“light.” I like to think that if you
can get past the stranger in me, you will see the light. During the next six months, I hope we will
learn to see the light in one another.
I hope we will learn to truly know one another, to be present to one
another, and that by so doing, we will help one another find our true
names.
Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, Oregon
by Barbara
Stevens
August 20,
2006
Welcome and Announcements
Prelude
Chalice Lighting
Opening Words
We come together this morning to
remind one another
To rest for a moment on the
forming edge of our lives,
To resist the headlong tumble into
the next moment,
Until we claim for ourselves
Awareness and gratitude.
Taking the time to look into one
another’s faces
And see there communion: the
reflection of our own eyes.
This house of laughter and
silence, memory and hope,
is hallowed by our presence
together.
Kathleen
McTigue
Opening Song
#346 “Come Sing a Song with Me”
Reading
Gen
16:7-14
(a fairly literal translation; if it doesn’t make sense, don’t worry; it should become clear during the sermon.)
7] And the Angel of Yahweh found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, the fountain of water on the road to Shur. 8] And he said, “Hagar, maidservant of Sarai’s, where have you come from and where do you go?” And she said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9] And the Angel of Yahweh commanded, “Turn back to your mistress and submit yourself under her hands.” 10] And the Angel of Yahweh said to her, “I will so multiply your descendants that they will be too abundant to count.” 11] And the Angel of Yahweh said to her, “Behold, you are with child and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael because Yahweh has heard your affliction. 12] And he will be a wild-ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in the presence of his brothers.” 13] And she called Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are El Roi,” for she said, “Also here see I after he seeing me?” 14] Therefore the fountain was called the well of the living one who sees me.
Sung Response
Celebrating with Music
Candles of Joy and Sorrow/Offering
Meditation
Closing Song
#212 “We Are Dancing Sarah’s Circle” (verses 1,2, 3)
Closing Words
May the power of seeing, and the power of listening, give you the power to name the core of your being and reflect that being into the world in light, love, peace, and joy.
Closing Song
#212 “We Are Dancing Sarah’s Circle” (verses 4, 5)