It’s a delight to have the privilege of sharing this extraordinary story of Hagar and Ishmael with you this morning. I think the hardest part of preparing this sermon was remembering how to tie my tie. You know, I haven’t worn a tie for so long.

How do we respond when we feel abandoned by God? How do we respond when life isn’t turning out the way we thought it should, or hoped it would?

We all know that most parents want the best for their children. Granted, some were abusive and some were neglectful, but most parents are doing the best they can with what they’ve got with where they are. Yet all parents are inadequate.

After our first child was born in Alaska, Kerry and I were so excited to welcome Alison into our life. We were both teaching at a college campus in Sitka. And after a couple of weeks of delight in this child, it was time to do the laundry. And Kerry said, “You stay here with Alyson and I’ll go (we lived on campus) across campus to the laundry room and do our laundry.”

And that was fine. But I was a noble kind of husband, and I didn’t want to have Kerry carry the laundry all the way back to our house. And so, after about an hour, I took off across campus and went to the laundry room. And kerry said, “Where’s Alyson?” And I said, “Who?” “Alyson!”

Even the best intentioned father can at times be utterly neglectful. Our best intentioned efforts may leave our children feeling abandoned. Misunderstood. Forgotten. I’ve come to believe that we’ve not fully grown up until we’ve forgiven our parents for the things they did do, and the things they didn’t do. Because until that point we’re living our lives partially in reaction to them.

There comes a time in many of our lives when not only do we feel abandoned or forgotten by our parents, we feel abandoned or forgotten by God. When God hasn’t shown up. When God seems to have left us alone. When he hasn’t fulfilled God’s promises in the way we thought He would or should.

Genesis 12 and 15, as we’ve looked at over the last few weeks, are extraordinary passages of God’s promise to Abram and Sarai. Chapter 16, our text for today, catapults us 11 years after the promise was first given and still unfulfilled. God hadn’t delivered. God hadn’t acted the way they thought. It’s a story of abandonment. Abram and Sarai feeling abandoned by God, and as we will see Ishmael literally abandoned by his human father.I invite us to look at their response, and more importantly to the response of God.

Read: Genesis 16.

I love this passage, and as it continues in Genesis 21, for I think we see in this passage many of the pressing issues we face in the world today. We see issues of ethnic conflict. We see issues of domestic violence. We see issues of (in a sense), free millennial old form of child trafficking. We see unwanted children. Abandoned children. In chapter 21, we see starvation and hunger and refugees.

Many of the problems we in World Vision are called by God to try and address are found right here in this text. Patriarchy isn’t pretty. It was up to Sarai to provide a son for Abram. Her identity and her worth depended on childbearing. And more importantly on son-bearing. How great their joy when God gave them this unlikely promise in their old age of progeny. But after a decade of disappointment, after a decade of the daily observation of the deterioration of their own physical capacity, desperation set in. Maybe God hadn’t fully explained the process for the fulfillment of the promises, they must have wondered. "Maybe God intended for us to be a little more proactive. Instead of just waiting, maybe God wanted us to take action in this."

Are there times in your life when you’ve struggled with trying to hold on to God’s promises? Are there times when God’s process for the fulfillment of these promises seemed a little bit slow, and maybe confusing?

After I came to Christ, one of the longings of my life was to see my family come to Christ. My father had raised his sons with debate, so it became very natural whenever I was with my Dad to debate the Gospel. And I was continually trying to come up with the best arguments to persuade my father of the truthfulness of the Gospel.

One day as I was driving home from university praying about this, I think for the first time in my life my then (though I didn’t yet know it) Presbyterian-ears were opened and I heard God speak to me. And what He said was something like this, “Tim, if you want to see your dad come to me, then shut up.” For 37 years, I stayed silent, and continually said, “But Lord, your process seems so slow. How do I trust you?” And for 37 years, all I heard was, “Trust me.”

Disaster unquestionably often follows when we take the fulfillment of God’s promises into our own hands and assume that we know a process better than God’s. There’s no reference in this passage to Sarai or Abram praying about what to do about this delayed fulfillment. Rather than seeking to discern God’s process, they seemed to conclude, "God hasn’t acted, so we’ll have to act." And one more time in Abram’s life, he wimped out. "Sure. I’ll take Hagar."

Hagar entered their life because they distrusted God. Remember the story: down in Egypt, Pharaoh, Sarai…beautiful, Abram terrified that he’d be killed for the beauty of his wife. So he says, “Pretend you’re my sister.” And Pharaoh takes Sarai into Pharaoh’s house as a concubine. And then to his horror when he discovers that this is not just Moses' sister, it’s a wife. He gives back to Abram not only Sarai but also slaves and gifts. And probably among those slaves was Hagar.

According to Islam, the Muslim faith which also treasures this story, Hagar was actually the daughter of Pharaoh. And Pharaoh was saying in effect, “I have violated your family, so I will give you a part of my family in compensation.” Hagar was the double-victim of hate here. First, sent off as a slave, and then essentially raped by her master to bear a son.

However, her status moved from slave to (in a sense), savior of Abram’s dignity and lineage. This placed her in direct confrontation, direct competition, with Sarai. As her pregnant body swelled, Sarai’s humiliation grew. Finally, Sarai had had enough. “I can’t take this anymore.” Verse 5: claiming that she had been wronged by Hagar’s pregnancy, which Sarai had actually ordered, Sarah ordered the pregnant mother out. “Out of my tent!” Into the wilderness.

The word for "Sarai felt wronged" could also mean violence has been done to me, or injustice has been committed against me. It’s a word we have heard a lot of recently. It’s the word hamas. Hamas has been done to me. How striking that the militant arm of the Palestinian movement, which treasures this story of Hagar, has taken that as their name. The Jews have committed hamas against us, therefore we’ll commit hamas against them.

It’s a human story, isn’t it? Sarai, the one who feels hamas-ed against hamas-es back.

How do we respond when we feel hamas-ed against? When we feel like injustice, violence, wrong-doing has occurred to us - sometimes by the fruit of our own sin, sometimes by the fruit of other’s sin, sometimes by the fruit of our own choices, sometimes by the fruit of our own inadequacy. How do we respond?

Much in life depends on how we respond to our failures, other’s wrongdoing against us, injustices, violence committed against us.

• Do we recover?
• Do we return to God?
• Or do we continue down the path of self-willed folly?

The fruit of Hagar’s womb was the fruit of Sarai’s will. But now she hates Hagar. Probably hates Abram. And maybe even hates God. And Abram wimped out again. Verse 6: “Oh, dear. You rule on matters in the household. Do unto Hagar whatever you wish.” Abram had treated Sarai as disposable before Pharaoh, and now Abram and Sarai try to dispose of Hagar. And this child.

Isn’t it a tragic irony of life that often those who were formerly oppressed become so quickly the oppressors? Those who had wrong done against them so quickly inflict wrong on others?

I was in sixth grade, and it was one of the few basketball games that I ever played. And, unlike Dan, I have to figure out which game it is by the size of the ball. And I remember that this was the big ball, so it’s basketball. So I, during lunch time, was playing a pick up basketball game. And as was always my tradition playing basketball, I was really playing horribly. And I probably scored more points for the other team than I did for my own. It was utterly humiliating, and having experienced this wrong of being so humiliated on the basketball court, I went out to the playground and my best friend greeted me – Charlie. And he said, “Tim, how are you?” And I just punched him right in the face. The only time in my life I think I’ve ever hit anybody in violence.

But violence was done to me, so I did wrong to another. I’d been hamas-ed against, so I hamas-ed back. America set free through a revolutionary war from what we perceived to be the oppression of England did not hesitate to continue to oppress slaves or American Indians. The Jews, set free from one of the most horrific oppressions in history, you would think they’d know better regarding how they respond to the Palestinians. This cycle is as long as human history.

And so the pregnant mother is driven out into the desert to die. Yet (verse 7): God sees her. For the first time in the book of Genesis, we hear Hagar called by name. Previously in the text she’s only the Egyptian slave girl. But now God finds her and speaks to her, and calls to her, and says, “Hagar! Where have you come from, and where are you going?”

For all who were abandoned, God calls. God comes. God names us. And God asks, “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” Because abandoned people usually feel like they’ve come from nowhere and they’re going nowhere. And yet God is the God of origins and destinations. And so he says, “Where have you come from? I’ve named you. You are mine.”

And God repeats to Hagar the original promise given to Abram. "The fruit of your womb will be a great nation." And he tells her her son’s name: Ishmael. Ishmael means “God hears.” God hears. God hears the cry of those who feel abandoned. And Hagar, the outsider to Israel, the slave girl, the abandoned one, becomes the first person in all of Scripture to name God. She names him “Eloi.” God sees.

Shoved out where Abram and Sarai could neither see nor hear her, God does. God hears. God sees. God hears and sees the cries of those who feel abandoned. Forgotten. Ishmael was born out of the faithlessness of Abram and Sarai. But God remains faithful.

Intimacy with God, I think, is often birthed in pain. It’s the pain of our own suffering, the pain of our own sin, the pain of people on the margins, the pain of those who feel abandoned, or have been allowed to abandon others. The outsider. The unseen one. God is not willing to abandon. God is not willing to allow abandonment. God sees. God gives new identity. God comes in and names our name.

God is not a wimp who simply tolerates abandonment.

Thursday night, I was talking with our national director from Honduras. And four-weeks ago on Monday, her staff was gathered for prayer as they always do, and one of the staff members (quite to her surprise) went into a long prayer for her own protection. She was, on the one hand encouraged, but on the other hand, a little bit uncertain about this surprising prayer.

The next morning, she was driving into the parking lot of our office at 8:00 am in the morning. And as she was about to get out of her car, several bandits shoved their way in and pointed a gun at her head. They were shoving her over and carjacking her car. She said her first response was to start praying. And she remembered the prayer of the previous day, that God would protect. She decided, “Instead of just praying, I’m gonna pray out loud.”

So she started praying for these people holding a gun at her head, driving her car. She started praying for their protection and that God would bless them. She started praying for the car, that God would protect the car. And she said, “Oh, yes, Lord. Protect me, too.”

And suddenly the guy holding a gun at her head said, “Lady, shut up. We’re not gonna hurt you if you don’t look at our faces. Climb in the back seat. Put this over your head, and be quiet.” So she prayed silently, and they drove her out into the woods, shoved her out of the car and drove off with her car. She was unharmed. And a few minutes later, another car came by, picked her up, and took her back to the office.

God will not tolerate abandonment. God will not abandon us.

But now comes another strange part of this story. It could be a really disturbing part, because what does God say next to Hagar? “Go back to Sarai.”

Is this just another biblical endorsement of slavery? Is this another biblical endorsement of patriarchy, of “wives submit to your abusive husbands”, “children submit to your abusive parents?” Is that what’s going on here? Certainly the text has been used that way often. I don’t think so. Sometimes our only way out of our problems, out of our suffering, is by going deeper into them. And that sometimes seems like the hardest thing. Rather than escaping from them, entering into them.

Many of you may have seen the movie, or read the book, Into the Void. One of our staff members was telling me it this week. I’d never heard of it before. It’s the story of two men climbing in the Andes. They’re expert mountaineers. They knew what they were doing. They’re climbing one of the most difficult descents of one of the Andean peaks, and one of them fell and broke his knee. So they decided they’d better return down by a quicker route, as he was struggling down the mountain.

So they’re going down a very steep ice field. And suddenly the one with the broken knee couldn’t keep his grip any longer and started sliding. They were roped up, but the ice field was too steep and too slick. The one belaying him couldn’t hold on any longer and they both started careening down this ice field. The one behind did that which every mountaineer knew you’re supposed to do at that moment. When they couldn’t stop themselves from tumbling, he cut the rope, and was able to stop himself as he watched his friend go shooting off of the cliff, out of sight in the dark.

He waited until morning to see if he could see where his friend might be, and if he might be able to recover him. And looking over the edge of this cliff, there was just a precipice for hundreds of meters, and below that a crevice in a glacier, and no sign of his friend. In absolute dismay, he abandoned his friend and went back to base camp.

That morning, when his friend came to not only hundreds of yards down this cliff, but now hundreds of yards into the heart of a crevice, with his leg broken now by the fall, having landed on a little ledge in this cravas partway down, there was no point in calling for help. He was too far down for any help to come. He tried to pull his way back up the cravice, but with his broken leg and all the trauma of this fall, there was no way he had enough strength to do that. His only option was to lay there and die, or to go further down the crevice.

For several days he lowered his body bit-by-bit down this crevice, deeper and deeper and deeper into what felt like abandonment, until he reached the ground underneath and the stream bed that flows underneath the crevice. For 6 days, he worked his way out of this crevice, along this streambed, back to their base camp, crawling as he went. And as he was about to collapse in sheer exhaustion, he saw their tent and called out to his friend, who’d been waiting there not wanting to pack up yet. Not wanting to leave. And hearing this cry in the night, found his friend, and they were able to get into safety.

Sometimes, the only way out of our problems is to go deeper into them. And so God sends Hagar back. As God names us, as God gives us a new identity, we receive the strength to enter back into our misery. We are set free from being controlled by it.

In fact, in this story, it seems almost as if Hagar is more in control than Sarai. Hagar the slave has more freedom than Sarai, the master. She’s not bound any longer, or defined by her circumstances, or her social status.

But God hasn't abandoned Abram and Sarai either. God has a promise still for them. God had promised that Sarai would have a child.

I wonder if one of the reasons why Hagar went back was to give the two masters the opportunity to be redeemed and to be restored to faith. Hagar obviously must have talked to Abram about what had happened in the desert, because in verse 15, when Ishmael was born, Abram gives him the name that God had given to Hagar: Ishmael. This is the first of several times…striking times in Scripture…where the social norm is broken and the woman chooses the name of the son. Because God gave the name to the woman, not to the man.

And there’s still good news for this faithless married couple. God hadn’t abandoned them, so one more time in chapter 17, God comes to Abram and Sarai and says, “Sarai, you’re going to have a son.” Thirteen years after Ishmael’s birth, this promise is given. Twenty five years after the first time the promise was given.

It’s repeated. God is so faithful, He redeems our faithlessness. God is so loving, he overlooks our wimpishness. God smiles on us even though we laugh at derision at God’s promises, disbelieving that it’s even possible. How many years have we waited for the fulfillment of a promise? How many times have we seen God redeem our own lack of faith? Though God redeems, He doesn’t necessarily remove the consequences.

Ishmael, the Ishmaelites later on in Genesis, are the ones who bought Joseph out of slavery and took him down to Egypt. The Ishmaelites and the Hebrews were never good neighbors. They were continually conflicting with each other. Muslims trace their lineage to Abraham through Ishmael. Muslims believe that Ishmael was the promised son, the heir of the covenant, the one who received the blessing.

In Genesis 21, after Isaac was born and Ishmael was now a teenager, Sarai [now Sarah] couldn’t tolerate the threat to the inheritance of this slave girl’s son, and so she one more time drives them out. And Abram [now Abraham] one more time wimps out. And this time, the abandonment is meant to be total and permanent. Ishmael and Hagar are sent into the desert. And in Genesis 21, one more time God meets them. They’re starving in the desert. They’ve run out of food. They’re waiting to die. God comes, hears them, sees them, redeems them, and reiterates the promise: “Ishmael will be a great nation.” Provides water for them. And they’re set free.

Now Muslims change this story slightly. And they add that Abraham went into the wilderness with Hagar and Ishmael because he so loved Ishmael. And actually Abraham, Hagar, and his teenager son went to Mecca in Islam, and there they built together the Kabba…the black box. The central holiest place in Islam, were built by Abram and Ishmael, and then Abraham returned home to Sarai.

God doesn’t necessarily remove the consequences, remove the scars of our being abandoned, of our abandonment, of our faithlessness, of our wimpishness. Some wounds only heaven can heal. Some wounds will only be healed when the kingdom comes in its fullness. But God won’t abandon us.

We revisit this story in this complicated passage in Galatians, chapter 4, where Paul picks out Hagar and Sarai as metaphors- allegories of faith and faithlessness. Hagar symbolizes, as Paul says, how we act as if our relationship with God depended totally on us. Sarah symbolizes acting as though our relationship with God is a gift. Hagar the slave symbolizes the human effort to provide for ourselves, to overcome our abandonment. Actually it was Abraham and Sarah’s human efforts to overcome their abandonment. Sarah symbolizes God’s provision. Regardless of our faithlessness, God is faithful.

But earlier in Galatians, a most fascinating passage, Paul sets the stage for what we’ve just read in chapter 4. Galatians 3:28: All of the systems of patriarchy, all of the systems of insider-outsider are overcome as Paul proclaims that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek. For we are all made one in Christ.

God reverses, God shatters, the patriarchal male-female, gender defined roles. God reverses, God shatters, the insider-outsider social systems in which some people’s worth is defined by their accomplishments, or their gender, or their race. We’re all made one.

And so in chapter 4, just before this passage, where he talks about Hagar and Sarah as metaphors, God says, “Look. We’ve all been slaves. We’ve all felt abandoned. We’ve all felt orphaned." But now He says, “In the fullness of time, God sent his Son that we might all receive adoption as sons and daughters, and now by the Spirit we address God in the family intimacy of Father, Abba. Now in Christ, we’ve all been made heirs of the promise. God our father will never abandon us, will never leave us orphaned, will never leave us on the outside. God pursues those who feel abandoned.

Kerry and I love the fact that Bethany is a church that welcomes and pursues those who feel abandoned: our Wednesday night community dinner, all the outreach activities locally and globally, the ways in our worship that we want to make sure all feel welcomed and no one has to feel like you can only come if you’re worthy. the ways that we want to make sure in our own vocational life and our neighborhood involvement that we’re continually, relentlessly reaching out to those who feel outsiders - through Alpha, through all the other things that this church does to say, “God welcomes us.”

Where do you see yourself in this story? Do you feel like abused Hagar? Do you feel like abandoned Ishmael? Or maybe distrustful Sarai, or wimpy Abram?

Do you feel trapped by the fruit of your own choices or other’s choices? Do you feel trapped by circumstances?

Are you struggling to believe that God is actually faithful? That God actually remembers your name? Do the wounds that you’re carrying feel too burdensome…just too much?

Maybe you’re carrying the wound of having abandoned others and feeling the guilt of that.

Maybe we need to forgive our parents, or others who we have felt have let us down.

In the midst of this, God hears. God sees. God is faithful to God’s promises. God even redeems our faithlessness and our wimpiness. But God may call us to enter down ever more deeply into our difficulties, going through them rather than trying to escape from them in order to find freedom and life.

Our world is filled with millions, millions of literally abandoned people, especially children orphaned by AIDS, by abuse, by war, by poverty, by illness, by their parents being in prison. Isn’t it interested that James proclaims in chapter 1:27 that true religion, religion that is pleasing to God is religion that welcomes widows and orphans in their distress? God our Father calls us to him as beloved sons and daughters.

Let’s come to the Lord’s table.