Proper 7, Year A 2023: Genesis 21:8-21

In the movie Dogma, the main character Bethany is sent on a mission from God. Bethany does not want this mission. And as she tells her story of why she isn’t interested in what God wants from her - even as she is on the mission she continues to resist  - she shares her grievances. To combine a couple of exchanges for clarity, she asks, “when the doctor botched my procedure leaving me unable to have children, where was God? And when my husband decided he didn’t want to be with a woman who couldn’t carry his children, where was God?” and while she was going through her divorce, her mother said to her, “Bethany, God has a plan,” to which she responded, “What about my plans? Weren’t my plans good enough for God?”

It’s been many years since I last watched Dogma, but that scene has stuck with me. Not because her mother’s response, while intended to comfort, ended up causing her more pain - something we have all experienced as both the well-intended giver and receiver. What struck me is how I could relate then, and still today, to that question: Weren’t my plans good enough for God? Most of us have had or know someone who had what seemed like simple but good plans. Plans that didn’t involve moving heaven and earth, but good nonetheless. And then those plans fell apart. Oftentimes it’s family plans: I wanted to raise a family with my spouse. Go to work, come home, see my spouse and children. Grow old together, watch our children grow up and see what they become. And then. Someone gets sick. Someone dies. Someone is unfaithful to their spouse. And people are left behind in the rubble thinking, “I didn’t think I was asking for much. How was this too much to ask for?”

Hagar was a woman who didn’t ask for much. She is described in the Hebrew text as a shiphchah, which is translated numerous ways: “maidservant,” “slave-girl,” or “handmaid.” What is clear is that Hagar belongs to Sarah and is subservient to her. It’s safe to say that Hagar didn’t have grand dreams of taking on the world. Hagar was a woman who did not have control over her own body or future, and who got further trapped by her mistress’s desires. 

The story of Hagar and Ishmael is troubling from beginning to end. It’s supposed to be. We know that Abraham and Sarah are supposed to be the heroes of this story, but neither one acts in a heroic way, even with God telling Abraham it’ll be ok. That part of the story is not meant to absolve Abraham. Sarah, in desperation for a child, takes things into her own hands and gives her maid Hagar to her husband Abraham. It is from this union that Ishmael comes. This is not the only time this happens in Genesis, let alone in antiquity. Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson to Abraham, does the same thing. His wives, Leah and Rachel, have a kind of children arms race, including their maids Zilpah and Bilhah. Between the four women, the twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel are born. This all feels really gross in modernity. But in antiquity, Zilpah, Bilhah, and Hagar bearing the children of their mistresses’ husbands is not out of line with ancient Near Eastern or biblical custom, and there are numerous laws and contracts from ancient Mesopotamia legislating this. So we can’t let our modern sensibilities cause us to get distracted. As much as it is absolutely problematic to treat women this way, that is not the point of this story.

It is also not the point of this story to show how Abraham’s faith was tested and he “passed” by listening to God’s assurances and sending his child and the child’s mother out into the wilderness to presumably die. This part of the story is not about Abraham. Or about Sarah. It is about how God sees the woman and child who no one else wants to see. With the birth of Isaac, their usefulness to Sarah has ended, and Hagar and Ishmael have become a threat to Sarah. Sarah mangaes, in a few short verses, to promote, enslave, oppress, and free Hagar - Hagar, who is never named by Abraham and Sarah but whom the text, and more importantly God, calls by name. God hears the cries of her child, who nobody else wants to hear - not even Hagar, although for different reasons. This story reminds us that no one is a throwaway to God. That no matter what the world may seem to think or feel about you, that God sees you, and God has plans for you.

When I say “God has plans for you,” I don’t mean it in the “God has a plan, so you shouldn’t feel sad or discouraged or angry about the way things are going.” I don’t believe that God is a bored puppetmaster, running amok throwing grenades into our lives. I don’t believe in the old adage, “man plans and God laughs.” I do believe that sometimes God smiles knowingly, in the way that adults sometimes do at children. But laughs? No. I don’t believe that God watches us without emotion. Scripture tells me that God sees every heartache and hears every cry. And, I don't believe that “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” which is at best misquoted scripture and at worst idolatry of the self cloaked in spiritual language. People are dealing with more they can handle all the time. We’re not meant to handle everything ourselves. God gave us relationship with Godself, and relationship with one another to help us handle things. As (saint and poet) John Donne wrote, “no man is an island.”

While God is not a puppetmaster, God is still working in the world, only in much more interesting ways. God is in the transformation business. The story of Hagar and Ishmael isn’t a miracle story. The text doesn’t say, “and then God created a well from which Hagar filled the skin.” It says, “God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.” God helped Hagar see what was already there. And in so doing, transforms the cast off woman and child into a nation in their own right.

This transformative nature of God continues to be seen throughout biblical texts. Also in Genesis, God transforms Esau, a man who was wronged by Jacob, his preferred brother. We see nothing in the text to tell us how, exactly, Esau’s transformation happens. When Jacob leaves home, Esau is in a murderous rage. When Jacob prepares to return to Esau many years later, he sends gifts ahead of himself, but the text says nothing about how Esau receives these gifts. But as Jacob approaches home, Esau has a reaction that Jesus later evokes in his telling of the parable of the prodigal son. “Esau ran to meet (Jacob), and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” (Gen. 33:4)

God transforms Mary Magdalene, who had been afflicted with “seven demons” - demons here not representing sins, but illnesses, and “seven” indicating the severity of her illness. This woman was not merely transformed from a sick woman into a well woman, but into a follower of Jesus to the extent where she did not abandon him at the crucifixion, she witnessed his resurrection, and she served as an apostle to the apostles, being the first to share the news of their risen Lord.

God continues to transform us through his abiding love and ever-present being. Your plans are good enough for God. But know that if those plans fall apart, from things under or outside of your control or your own heart, God is there to help you pick up the pieces and put them back together into something new. Maybe something that you never expected. Maybe you become someone you never thought you’d have the strength to be. Maybe you build new relationships or rebuild an old relationship in a new way. No one is a throwaway to God. God sees you. And God has plans for you. Amen.