Hagar and Other Outcastes

At the Heifer Ranch our group participated in an overnight activity called “The Global Village”. The young people and their leaders are divided up between six or seven different villages, representing the way poor and subsistence farmers live around the world. We were given resources that represented the relative poverty or prosperity of our villages and expected to barter, work and trade to get dinner and get through the night. There were Guatemalans who got eggs, water, corn meal and rice, relative wealth in the global village. Thai farmers were also at a higher level. Appalachian farmers were poor with only firewood and a little corn meal. African (Zambians) had rice and vegetables in plentiful supply. We were in the Urban Slum, the most populous area and had only ¼ cup of rice per person. We also had poor accommodations as we were sleeping (or not sleeping) in cardboard, wood and tin huts on dirt floors. The Guatemalans, for example, had beds, and the Thai farmers had wooden floors to sleep on. The worst off were the refugees. They had a refugee tent such as the UN gives out and no resources. Nothing. And they couldn’t speak to anyone in order to barter, for they were considered to be speaking a foreign language. It was a great learning experience as groups experienced minor hunger, poor sleeping arrangements, anger at more prosperous groups, stealing and a feeling of vulnerability. Some groups, I’m told, don’t make it through even one night of this and retreat to the air conditioned cabins. Our group made it through the Urban Slum, sleeplessness in the dirt with many bugs, rice and vegetables for dinner and high heat and humidity. Even yet, our hearts went out to the refugees who came begging.

I don’t remember when I first read the story of Hagar and understood it, but it was pretty late, certainly after I went to Seminary. But I was shocked by it and wondered what it was doing in the Bible. Here’s Abraham and Sarah trying to have a son (not a daughter, of course) and failing, so according to the tradition of the time, Sarah offers her servant woman, Hagar, to Abraham to have a child with. Ishmael, the resulting offspring is honored and loved by Abraham, until Sarah successfully gives birth to a son and now Ishmael is seen as a threat. So Sarah now demands that Abraham get rid of Ishmael and his mother and Abraham does it. Even God seems to be in on it and reassures Abraham that it will be ok. At least Abraham is unhappy about it. God does preserve Hagar and Ishmael, and they go off out of our story to be the parents of nations.

Here the Muslims take up the story, for they claim Ishmael as the father of their people. In the Qur’an (19:54-55) it says, “And make mention in the scriptures of Ishmael. Lo! He was the keeper of his promise, and he was the messenger of Allah, a Prophet. He enjoined upon hi people worship and almsgiving, and was acceptable in the sight of the Lord.” For Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, Ishmael and Hagar play and important role; pilgrims walk seven times around the Ka’ba, the holiest shrine in Mecca, the cube shaped structure that according to tradition was built by Abraham when he paid a visit to Ishmael. Near the Ka’ba is the holy well Zamzam, whose waters miraculously appeared before Hagar when she was waiting for Ishmael to die and its waters saved their lives. The pilgrims trot, with shoulders quaking in fear, seven times between two low hills in imitation of the frantic Hagar searching for water for her crying, dying child. So Hagar and Ishmael are central to Islam as Moses in the bulrushes is to Judaism and Jesus saved from Herod is to Christianity.

God was with Hagar and this is a witness that needs to be repeated to refugees and oppressed women everywhere. Surely, Jesus would have stood with Hagar outside the camp and thirsted with her in the desert. This Jesus who ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, who healed the Gentile child and the Roman Centurion's servant, who saved the woman caught in adultery. Our Jesus stood with outcastes and outsiders like Hagar. The Old Testament preserves this story and shows that God stands with outcastes. Islam sees itself as a religion of outsiders. Buddhism teaches compassion to all beings. Surely, every spiritual community is called to respond with compassion to the Hagars of the world.

Phyllis Trible speaks about Hagar’s witness. “Most especially, all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her. She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of  the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother and  the self effacing female whose identity shrinks in service to others”. How does the community of faith respond to these Hagars of the world?

One thing I know for sure about Jesus; he stood with and for the outcastes and outsiders. If we seek to follow him, we too must stand with them. We must seek our best to be part of the solution and not the problem. We must look around ourselves and decide who the outcastes and outsiders are in our communities, nation and the world. Refugees are easy to see. Harder to see perhaps are others who have been shunned by some in our culture: illegal immigrants, the GLBTQ community, Muslims in the US, disabled persons, obese persons, the child at school who does not fit in with the majority, the thousands of people rotting in jails in this country, 70% of whom are there on drug convictions of some sort. The list goes on and on and is depressing. It is hopeful to remember that in our story, as Hagar is alone and neglected, dying and moving far away from her child so as not to listen to him die, the one who comes to her is none other than God. Outcastes and outsiders are not alone; we must trust that God is with them. But we must also remember that sometimes we are God’s hands and feet.