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A Well of Water by Dr. Christine (Tina) Blair, Associate Pastor 23 June 2002--- Ordinary 12 TEXT: Genesis 21:8-21 © 2002 C. E. Blair

Have you ever had your life as you have known it come to a complete and utter end? Those of you who have been refugees do, I know, and quite a few in this congregation have had the unfortunate experience of encountering catastrophe and having normal life come to a complete halt. The often over-used phrase, "Life will never be the same again," takes on new, deeper and terrifying meaning.

That's what is happening to Hagar. You remember the story:

God promised the very elderly Abraham that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. But years passed; he wasn't getting any younger, and no child came to his wife Sarah. So they tried to help God out: Sarah gave Abraham her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar to be a second wife, and Hagar became pregnant (this was an acceptable practice of surrogate motherhood in ancient times).

Imagine the change for Hagar at this point! She has gone from being a slave to being the mother of the heir! Genesis 16 tells us that she was not very respectful to Sarah in her pregnancy, so Sarah treated her harshly and Hagar ran away. Out in that wilderness, God spoke to Hagar, promised her that she would be the mother of a great nation, told her to go back to Abraham and Sarah, and showed her a well of water. Hagar is, by the way, the first woman in the Bible to be spoken to directly by God -- quite an honor. Hagar gave birth to her son, Abraham's first born, Ishmael, who was the apple of Abraham's eye -- until Sarah finally gave birth to her son, Isaac.

This is where we take up the story today: Tensions between the 2 mothers are rising even further, and finally Sarah commands that Hagar and "her" son be cast out. Abraham is a little less passive this time and resists, but is told by God to go ahead and do what Sarah asks. All will be well Abraham is told; Ishmael will also be the father of a great nation, like Isaac.

But notice that Hagar does not get any reassurance at this point: all of a sudden, having struggled to have a decent life, she finds herself in a desert with a child, and only a little water. Have any of you seen the wilderness near Beersheba? It looks a lot like the northern Arizona high desert: hills of red rock, brown rock, gray rock, a few scrub bushes... lizards, snakes, wild animals... The odds of survival are not good.

Hagar despairs: she is going to die, her child is going to die. Where is God now? What happened to that promise the last time she was in the desert? But as she waits for death, God speaks to her, repeating the promise that Ishmael will father a great nation. And then God opens her eyes to see a nearby well of water. We are told that they continued to live in the wilderness until Ishmael grew up and married a woman from his mother's homeland of Egypt.

This is a terrible story of oppression, a troubling story; feminists have called it "a text of terror" -- it used to be omitted from the weekly readings for the church lectionary, I believe. It raises questions we would rather not deal with about suffering, oppression and about God. And it paints an unflattering picture of our esteemed ancestors in the faith, Abraham and Sarah.

For most of us who wrestle with this passage, the main problem is understanding where God is when oppression is getting worse and worse. Why didn't God tell Abraham or Sarah to treat Hagar better?

And isn't that the question at the heart of society today: where is God when military governments execute hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people? What is God up to, that millions of people in this world are refugees, thousands are homeless in rich countries like France and the United States? Why is God allowing millions of children to die of starvation or AIDS in Africa and Asia?

We cry out in today's world, just like Hagar did, and some of our brothers and sisters in this world, like Hagar, give up: they put their child under a bush a bowshot away so that they don't have to watch him or her die.

And isn't that the question that we get as Christians from those who have left the church or do not know God: how can you believe in a God who allowed the Holocaust to happen? How do you know God exists when my child, or my friend's child, was so hurt in an accident? And don't we find ourselves wishing we had an easy and clear way to answer them? We need more than the platitudes, the simplistic pat on the back: "Oh don't worry. God will work it out in your life." For people for whom life has come to an end, as far as they can tell, this is not sufficient. What do we say and do to help them see the well of water God provides?

And that is why we are given the story of Hagar. For it describes the real world, the world as it is and the ways God acts, working in and around our human failings.

As we look at this story in more depth and see how it helps us with this difficult question we turn first to the actions of the human players in this scene, especially Sarah and Abraham.

Those of you raised in Sunday Schools around the world: remember all those stories about the wonderful faith of Abraham and Sarah and the way they obeyed God? They became, for many of us, larger than life, heroes, above reproach.

And yet look at how human and faulty they really are, like you and me: they make a real mess of things. This is especially clear from the beginning of the story of Hagar in Genesis 16: Abraham and Sarah don't trust God enough, and so find a surrogate mother to bear Abraham's child. When this arrangement creates a series of problems, they don't deal with them well. Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar's son, doesn't want her own son to share any of Abraham's wealth with a brother( though, in fact, Ishmael is the first born and there is plenty to go around). Hagar becomes defiant, Sarah mean. Passive Abraham does not put his foot down and defend his second wife or his son, but muddles about until God tells him what to do. In sum, these founders of the faith for Jews and Christians demonstrate a surprising lack of faith and compassion. This is the material God has to work with.

All this puts to rest the question: did God cause bad things to happen to Hagar? Did God choose to let her suffer? No! the situation and people set all this up.

And this question is often very real in our lives today.

I bet this has crossed your mind in your life. I remember one day at the end of a week when more things had gone wrong than I can tell you about -- when suddenly, 2 blocks from home and from my rest, a young driver suddenly pulled out of a side street and hit my car, full force. My first thought was, "God, why are you punishing me?"

We hear Christians hear this sentiment in a variety of forms: "God sent you this trial so that you would grow, or learn faith..." or some such reasoning that implies that God wants you to suffer. Or it gets twisted some other way: "I have been spared suffering so I must be specially called by God" (which implies that those who suffer are somehow less called, less special, and perhaps even deserving of suffering).

But the Bible rejects this view of God in many places, especially in the book of Job.

God, the Bible tells us, makes it rain on the just and the unjust alike, treating them in a similar generous manner. Jesus also rejects the Pharisees doctrine that sickness was caused by the sin of the parents or the sufferer.

Suffering does not come about because God has caused it, but because humans, their actions, their institutions and societies, create it. Hagar is not to blame here; the situation, and the human beings in this situation are. Those who suffer -- the poor, the refugees, the hungry -- are not being punished by God, or being allowed to suffer so that they can "learn" or "develop faith." Their suffering comes from the human situations within which they live; sometimes they have contributed to that situation; oftentimes they are completely innocent, like the hungry children, the homeless refugee.

So is God absent? Do humans run the world willy-nilly, with the callous and powerful in charge, causing misery?

No, again, no!

This story of Hagar shows us more about this God we worship, the Holy One who is in charge of the world.

God takes the situation, the human players, and finds a way to create a new reality. God gets Hagar out of a no-win situation and then provides small steps towards restoration and a new life, beginning with a well of water. Hagar does not know that the move to the wilderness is a step of life -- it looks and feels like a step of death. But when she listens to God's voice and opens her eyes, she sees the new life begin with that thing most essential to life, water.

So it is for us and the world: even though we are very good at blocking God's wonderful reality for us, God continues to work. When we hit the desert and total catastrophe, God provides us with a well of water to keep going and to start anew. God does help us to learn and grow in faith in this situation. Notice that God does not provide Hagar with a materially rich new existence, even a comfortable one. It could not have been easy raising a child among the nomads of the wilderness. But I wonder if she did not at times feel freer and more whole than she ever had before.

God will not promise us ease and comfort. But God will promise to be with us and open

our eyes to see a well of water. This well of water will take many different forms, depending on what you are able to see and hear and on what you need. It may be the helping hand of a stranger, a verse from Scripture that someone shares, help through the French or American legal systems so that you can function, or a literal crust of bread and glass of water. Can you think of times you were given a well of water?

God provides us a well of water in the wilderness and then leads us in small steps a new reality of life and toward deeper faith. God takes even the cross, and turns it, eventually, into a resurrection, whenever possible.

Let me leave you with two more brief insights from this story: take them with you to reflect upon and pray about this week.

1. First, we don't want to be like Sarah or Abraham in this episode; so let us work to be compassionate and to work for justice for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed. I pray that God will open my eyes not only to a well of water when I need it, but to the ways in which I am keeping others in situations of poverty and suffering.

2. Second, we, the church community, are called to be the provider of a well of water for others in need. That's what it means to be Christ's Body, Christ's caring hands and feet, in this world. God invites us to join in the work of providing wells of water: clearly, from the numbers still dying, God needs more helpers to work against injustice and disease and hunger.

So take courage from this story, my friends, if you find yourself in need of a well of water. Listen for God's voice, open your eyes, and drink from God's well. And may the rest of us with extra water learn to share and spread God's help throughout the suffering world.

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