The following is the transcript of a sermon that was delivered via Zoom for the East Jerusalem International Church on Saturday, June 20, 2020 by Rev. Lauren Whitfield.
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Greeting and Gratitude
Well, good evening, or good morning, depending on where you are; good afternoon. I am so thankful to be here. Honestly, I’m deeply humbled just to even have this opportunity to share with you and be in your presence. Thank you to my family and friends who have joined.
Introduction: Recognizing Our Bias as We Read Scripture
Today’s text is the lectionary text for this week: Genesis 21:8–21 (NRSV). In our brief time together today, I would like to propose this focus from the reading of our text: God is with the castaway woman. Again, God is with the castaway woman. Let us pray:
Most gracious God, we thank You for Your presence, we thank You for Your word. I ask that You would speak to us this morning, this evening; Lord, that You would anoint our ears to hear and my lips to speak Your word. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Walter Lippman, in his classic work, “Public Opinion,” published in 1921, wrote the famous header, “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads.” In this work, he went on to coin a term that most of us, we’re probably familiar with, which is the term “stereotype.” Well, we all come to the text with a “picture in our heads.” I know I did. I was very surprised this week when in prayer, and reading the text, that there are so many parts of the story I had missed! Nuances I didn’t remember, words I hadn’t caught. And that’s my prayer for all of us today. That God would take things old and new from this story, and share them with us, God’s treasures.
Biblical Foundation
So here in this particular pericope, we find a young Ishmael “playing” or “laughing” w/Isaac, whose very name means laughter. The Hebrew word here for playing is tsä·khak' (sa-hack), playing/laughing or possibly mocking. This text had started so warmly: right before this story is the birth of Isaac; Isaac is here laughing. Sarah also is happy. “Who would have ever thought that a baby would nurse from Sarah.” Then the passage portrays a celebration. The child has just been weaned, and there’s going to be a great feast!
This warm story doesn’t last long; when Sarah sees Ishmael laughing with her son, something about it just doesn’t sit right with her. She goes to Abraham and demands, “Cast out this slave woman, with her son, for he won’t inherit with my son.”
She’s no longer the surrogate whom Sarah herself had chosen to bear a son for her. Now she refuses even to speak her name. She just calls her, the “slave woman.” Sarah is determined to drive her out. This displeases Abraham, but God tells Abraham to listen to his wife.
In this regard, as theologian Susan Niditch puts it, “the women’s wishes [Sarah’s] and God’s wishes are one.”[1] Niditch highlights this repeated theme among the matriarchs. That “Isaac must come from Sarah;” “Joseph must be Rachael’s son;” and, “The blessing and inheritance go to Rebekah’s favorite.”[2]
So, what of Hagar? What of Hagar who’s sent out into the wilderness by Abraham, with their son; Hagar who wonders if she will make it in the wilderness?
Art and Edmonia Lewis
I’d like to show you two works of art depicting Hagar and Ishmael. Both of these are made by American artists who were living in Rome during the 19th Century, right around the Civil War era. The painting, on the left, was by an artist who was funded by a cotton broker in Mississippi.[3] The sculpture on the right was made by a black woman, Edmonia Lewis. Art curator Tom Strider illuminates how Hagar was treated as a figure during this period in his essay, Two Treatments of Hagar in the Wilderness, stating:
During the nineteenth century, the name Hagar grew in usage, increasingly attached to both black women and references to slavery. Also, nineteenth-century culture typically associated Egypt, the Biblical Hagar’s homeland, with blackness. Despite these associations, both artists depict Hagar with European features. Here the similarities end, however. Although executed in Europe, the works make evident, strong attachments to contemporaneous American social and political concerns. This pairing of pieces, identical in theme, demonstrates how the Biblical Hagar was co-opted by proslavery and abolitionist forces to reinforce differing agendas.[4]
The painting on the left suggests the image of what it meant to be a woman in 19th Century America.[5] She looks domestic, even domesticated, pious, and very tender. On the right, we see Edmonia Lewis’s understanding of Hagar. Hagar’s clothes are disheveled. She looks like she’s on the run. If you look at her feet, it looks like she’s on the move. Half of her dress is off of one shoulder and it’s ruffled up. In her haste, the water jug is overturned. Her hands are folded in prayer.
Why is Hagar presented in this way in Lewis’ work? Perhaps, Edmonia Lewis had a stake in her art, in her making of Hagar, that others did not.[6]
Here, she is — Edmonia Lewis. Lewis was half Native American, half black, her mother being a Chippewa Indian from New York, near the Canadian border. Her father was a free black Haitian immigrant. She was orphaned before she was five and raised by her mother’s nomadic Chippewa tribe. Her name growing up was Wildfire. She changed it later in college. Her older brother, Sunrise, financed his sister’s education so that she was able to attend Oberlin College in 1859 (one of the first schools to accept women and black students.)
Well, the glory of that moment at Oberlin College didn’t last long. She was accused of poisoning two of her white roommates. These charges went to trial and it was refuted, but she never was able to rise above that accusation at Oberlin. She was beaten by white vigilantes. Later she was accused of stealing art supplies and not permitted to graduate. So, from there she went to Boston, where she honed her skills as a sculptor, making busts of abolitionists and saving up money to move to Rome.[7]
Well, she went to Rome and she became the first professional African American and Native American sculptor to receive international recognition (while she was alive). Like Hagar, Edmonia Lewis knew the nomadic life. And not just as a child with her tribe, but throughout her wanderings. Lewis, in reflection on another Hagar she had created, now lost, commented, “I have a strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered.”[8]
Hagar as a paradigm for present action
In today’s text, we see Hagar and Ishmael wander in the wilderness, with Ishmael on the verge of death and Hagar crying, weeping aloud. Many of us too are daily facing our wilderness, like Hagar. Whether by choice—choosing to be peacemakers, choosing to see, and work for justice—or by birth we face this wilderness—being born black, being born Palestinian. Some could even say being born a woman—you face challenges.
It’s in the wilderness we ask, “How long will we watch black people killed on cameras?” It’s in the wilderness that we wrestle with George Floyd’s words: “I can’t breathe.” Words that have become a rallying cry for justice around the world. It’s in the wilderness we work and pray, as I read on Bethlehem Bible College’s blog, for “Not another Nakbah.” It’s in the wilderness that we long, like Hagar and Ishmael, to live.
God always hears the castaway woman
I’m so glad that God always hears the castaway woman. Hagar casts the child under a bush, moving to a bowshot away, hoping not to watch him die. God hears the boy; opens her eyes to see a well and rescues them from dying of thirst. God then repeats God’s promise, to make a great nation of him. And God is with the boy.
I am glad that God hears and answers prayers. Not just Isaac’s prayer in the Bible, but God hears and answers Ishmael’s prayer under the bush. Ishmael’s very name meaning, “God hears.” We’re challenged to know that God may hear the prayers of unlikely people, in unlikely places. God hears the cries of a castaway woman and her son, keeps them alive in the wilderness, stays with the boy, and makes her son a great nation.
Where are we?
So, where does that leave us now? We are left often wondering, how to make sense of so much pain in the world. It’s ever before us. The trauma that still reverberates even in your land—in Jerusalem and Bethlehem—reverberating from injustice and ongoing conflict and violence; and hope deferred. The trauma and pain that my people face, blacks in America, and other countries in the West, due to years of systemic oppression and racism.
Others too, who may not belong to an oppressed people group, but you choose to identify with them, carrying our burdens and seeking justice. We, like Hagar, wonder, “how long?” How long will we be in the wilderness, and want to turn our eyes, and not see our son die?
Who are we and who is God for us in the world?
I have found in this time that the negro spirituals and slave songs have a lot to teach us about injustice. They show us that even in pain, we can be a hope-filled people. Their songs were filled with pain and grief, prayers and subverted messages, and also hope. Who we are? We’re those that, when we pray, God hears us. Through Jesus Christ, we’ve been reconciled to God, and we’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation. We are God’s messengers. Yes, we’re pressed by the weight of oppression and sin. But not crushed. We’re struck down, but not destroyed.
For God is committed to not forsaking the castaway woman. God sees the banished ones. Edmonia Lewis, that artist, driven out from Oberlin College, slandered and falsely accused. She was beaten by white vigilantes. Unable to graduate, Lewis went on to Boston to hone her skills as a sculptor. She created busts of abolitionists, doubtlessly hearing the stories of slaves, as she worked, saving up her money to move to Rome. I see Hagar in Edmonia Lewis. She could have been ruined when she wasn’t able to finish Oberlin College—when she was rejected and dejected; yet, God puts treasures in earthly vessels and unlikely places.
Edmonia Lewis in society’s eyes was supposed to be nothing but bad words in America—an N-word. An Indian. A woman. Yet, what is she doing in Rome; this Chippewa black woman in the 1860s? God did something with that castaway woman. Just like he did something with Hagar too. God told her He would not forget about the boy. God would provide for him, even in the wilderness.
Be careful how you treat the castaway woman. God can, and will, use anybody, today.
God can still do something with the castaway woman.
Amen.
Contemplative Meditation
Well, now we will have a meditative prayer time, a lament for injustice. But I would like us to start with getting in a comfortable position if you’re not already. Closing your eyes, or just, moving your gaze downward in a humble position. First we will start with just establishing coherent breathing so that our breath and prayers will kind of be synchronized here. So, let’s inhale for five seconds, and exhale for five. I can count. Let’s inhale… and exhale…
And in this same posture of noticing the rising and falling of your belly and paying attention to your breath. As you breathe, just listen to me read, the word of the Lord. [Reads Gen. 21:8-21, NRSV.] With your eyes closed and continuing with those deep breaths, listen to me as we prayerfully put ourselves in the story.
Look at the boy of the slave woman. Look at Ishmael, dying of thirst under the bush. Now see Hagar, a bowshot away in distance. Weeping aloud because her son lay dying underneath the bush. Imagine now, what is Hagar saying? (Pause) How would you feel to know your son lay dying and there’s nothing you can do about it? (Pause) If you find you lose your concentration you can always go back to your breath.
Now, see Ishmael in the story. The angel said that it was in response to the boy that God moved. Had Abraham taught his son how to pray? (Pause) Imagine now, what is Ishmael saying underneath that bush? (Long Pause) In closing, speak anything you would like, now, to the Lord, in these final moments. [Congregation prays aloud and silently] Glory Patria.
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[1] If she worked with abolitionists, she knew the stories of slaves.
[2] Kimberly Towne, Making Art Against the Odds: The Triumph of Edmonia Lewis (n.d.)
[3] Tom Strider, Two Treatments of Hagar in the Wilderness (2015), Web.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Edmonia Lewis’ sculpture seems to represent her people. Not in racial features, but in Hagar’s spirit. (The Smithsonian American Art writes of Lewis, “Egypt represents black Africa, and Hagar is a symbol of courage.”).
[7] Carol Newsom, et. al, eds. Women’s Bible Commentary. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992), p. 16.
[8] Ibid.
References:
“Edmonia Lewis.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914. Accessed, 22 Sept. 2020
Newsom, Carol A., and Sharon H. Ringe. The Women’s Bible Commentary. WJK, 2002.
Strider, Tom. “Two Treatments of Hagar in the Wilderness.” From Slave Mothers & Southern Belles to Radical Reformers & Lost Cause Ladies, Tulane University, 2015, civilwarwomen.wp.tulane.edu/essays-3/hagar-in-the-wilderness/. Web. 22 Sept. 2020.
Towne, Kimberly. “Making Art Against the Odds: The Triumph of Edmonia Lewis.” 14.01.10: Making Art Against the Odds: The Triumph of Edmonia Lewis, Yale National Initiative, teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_14.01.10_u.
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Lauren Whitfield, M.Div, is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary who has served both internationally and domestically for over 19 years. She and her husband, Omar, reside in Philadelphia with their one year old daughter, Adrienne-Renee.
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