“GOD DOES NOT HATE”
Genesis 21:8-21
Faith United
June 22, 2008


We all want to know where we came from
and how
Parents love to tell the stories
of their child’s beginnings
there’s always stories to tell
And how we began says a lot about who we are
and what’s inside of us
I came from two people who lived on opposite sides of the world
My mother grew up in the Deep South in Mississippi
and my father grew up as a British subject
in some town in India that I still can’t pronounce
My father came to the United States in 1949
at the age of 20
and he and my mother met
at a Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky
I’ve been told that my southern grandfather
wanted nothing to do with this skinny, dark-skinned foreigner
with a British accent
and he certainly didn’t want him
anywhere near his daughter
Well, obviously, my grandfather was overruled
and his daughter married this skinny, dark-skinned foreigner
from India
who didn’t even know how to drive a car
I’m the youngest of four children
but when Mom and Dad were expecting my oldest brother,
their first-born,
the congregation in their little church in New Jersey
joked about what kind of baby could come
from a Mississippi girl and
and an India-born Brit
The joke was that my brother’s first words
would be, “Bring me the bloody bottle, ya’ll!”

I’ve always liked stories
which is probably how I was first drawn
to the Bible
Some people don’t like to read the Hebrew Testament
because well, sometimes it’s just plain R-rated
and therefore a bit confusing
as to how to explain it to the kids
Veggie Tales does a great job
of transforming R-rated Bible stories
into G
Lustful kings like David
become talking cucumbers
who just want their neighbor’s rubber ducky
But everybody has their stories
even the heroes and she-roes of the Bible
I often tell Sarah that she’ll have plenty of stories
to tell her therapist someday
But I firmly believe that it’s just as important
to tell the difficult stories
in our families and in our lives
as it is to tell the good, warm fuzzy ones
Everybody has stories
Nobody gets out without those embarrassing ones
or the ones that hurt or confuse
the ones we’d rather not talk about
It’s all a part of who we are
and the same is true in the Bible
People don’t like to read about
how people slaughtered people in the thousands
in the name of God
Or how they treated people
because they believed God told them to
But those stories, ancient as they are
are about you and me
we haven’t changed
We still slaughter hundreds of thousands of people
and some believe that God told us to do it
We still use Scripture to justify evil
You don’t have to be as whacked out
as that church down in Kansas
who shows up at military funerals
and proclaims God’s judgment and hate
But maybe it takes someone
that whacked out
to show us how ridiculous it is ever to believe
that God could hate any one of the children
God has created
for any reason
The Bible is big on stories of beginnings
how things began
how people began
It is their story
and it is ours
Abraham was one of God’s best friends
and yet he was just as crazy as any one of us
he was just as prone to be influenced by the world around him
the expectations of manhood
This is one of those stories that perhaps
Abraham hoped no one would remember to write down --
it’s not his finest moment,
nor is it Sarah’s…
but…. it explains a lot
Sarah was so excited about having a baby
at 90
I mean, how crazy is that?
She lived to tell about it
and that little slimy baby
melted that old woman’s heart
at least… for a little while
When God first promised Abraham
that he would have many descendents
as many as there were stars in the sky
Sarah felt the pressure
because she wasn’t getting pregnant
all those years
The pressure was on her,
there was never any thought that it might be the father’s fault
The pressure to conceive
was so great on women then,
because it was their whole life purpose
to put out babies
If you failed at that, what were you?
So she wasn’t going to let her husband
look like a fool
even if it was God’s fault
that she couldn’t get pregnant
She took her servant girl, Hagar
and told Abraham to sleep with her
This was pretty common
because it was that important for a man to have children
the owner of the slave woman
would literally sit behind the slave woman
as she gave birth
and pretend that it was SHE that was giving birth
and then she could therefore claim the slave’s child
as her own
Human beings are a little nuts
We’ll do anything to get what we want
And so it happened
Hagar got pregnant with Abraham
and had a son named Ishmael
Everything was cool for awhile
Sarah was let off the hook
she had a surrogate son for her husband
that’s all that mattered
She didn’t like it
in fact as time went on
she was so bitterly jealous of Hagar
that she couldn’t stand the sight of her
even though the whole surrogate thing
was her idea
It just was that much worse
when God’s sense of humor kicked in
and 90 year old Sarah got pregnant
and gave birth to her own son
By then, Ishmael was about 14
They threw a huge party for baby Isaac
when Isaac was weaned
that wasn’t necessarily a normal thing
but this kid was special!
He was born in the assisted living residence
It just wasn’t enough for Sarah
the past was too painful
and Ismael and Hagar were a constant reminder
of Sarah’s shame
She would not have it
She couldn’t stand the sight of them
So she told Abraham to get rid of them
both of them
throw them out
that… that… BOY
would not share an inheritance with her son
even though she had claimed That Boy
when she thought she couldn’t have her own
Now he was nothing to her
And Hagar had never been anything to her
but a tool, a baby machine
and she was done using her
Get them out of here, she told her husband
I think her menopause was acting up that day
And Abraham, the great and wonderful Abraham
faithful to the Lord
couldn’t stand up to his own wife
Ishmael was his son!
He didn’t care about Hagar
she was just a slave girl
she was nothing to him
but Ishmael was his first-born son
I don’t know why God let this happen
I don’t know why God didn’t intervene
and tell them both to shape up
but I guess back then, like now,
God knows that people will be cruel
no matter what
and God chooses to bring some good
out of absolute evil
So Abraham, in one of his wimpier moments,
sent Hagar and his first born son
away, out into the desert
with a meager loaf of bread
and a skin of water
he knew he’d never see them again
he knew they’d never survive
but he thought there was nothing he could do
And so they wandered, just the two of them
a boy and his mother
with no place to go
nothing to eat or drink
Until the water ran out
By then, you can imagine,
Hagar had reached the depths of despair
as she watched her son
weaken with dehydration
She turned away from him and wept
she could not, absolutely could not watch her son die
I bet she wailed
Who was gonna hear her anyway?
What else did she have to lose?
She’d lost her dignity many times already
and now she was thrown out like a piece of garbage
that she could deal with
but she could not deal with watching her son die
while she looked helplessly on
But out there in the middle of nowhere,
it says God heard her
She wouldn’t necessarily have said that she was praying
she was just weeping and wailing in despair
but God received that as a prayer
And an angel, a voice from somewhere
said to her
“Hagar, what troubles you?”
If Hagar was in her right mind
she would have said, “are you kidding me?
What TROUBLES me??”
But she wasn’t in her right mind
and the angel didn’t wait for her obvious answer
but went on to say,
“Do not be afraid, Hagar,
for God has heard you and your son,
right where you are …
out here in the middle of nothing…
Take his hand, lift him up,
for I will make a great nation of him.”
And while she was perhaps thinking
that she was hallucinating and hearing voices
because of heat stroke,
Hagar blinked and saw a well
a well of water
out in the middle of nowhere
in the middle of the desert
there was a well of water
With her legs and hands still shaking
from the heat,
she approached the well
and filled the water skin with water
and gave her boy a drink
maybe, she poured some over her own face
and her boy’s face, to wash away her tears
to revive his delirious face
and then went on to weep with relief
Ishmael, the boy’s name
means “God hears.”
Because God heard her cries in the desert
in the place of absolute despair and wretched thirst
and God gave her a well of water
in the middle of the wilderness
And Ishmael
would grow up
and become the ancestor of his own nation
much like his brother Isaac
Ishmael is the heir of Islam
The people of Islamic faith
claim Abraham as their father and ancestor in the faith
alongside the Jews
And when Abraham would come to die
both of his sons would come together
to bury their father in peace
It’s one of those embarrassing family stories
one of those stories of shame
of a father casting out his own son
his own flesh and blood
just because he was born of a foreigner
a hated foreigner
But God didn’t see the distinction
between the two boys
God didn’t see Hagar
as a piece of trash to be thrown out to die
But the story may explain
why the children of Isaac
and the children of Ishmael
are still fighting
We still convince ourselves
that some of God’s children are better than others
that some are God’s favorites
and some don’t even deserve to live
Whether it’s race, or occupation or religion
or in what country they happen to be born
We still do it
we still cast some of God’s children out
as if they were nothing but trash
as if they were unworthy of life itself
But God doesn’t hate anyone
That’s what I believe
God doesn’t hate anyone
no matter how much we try to pin our own hatred on God
God’s very being is love
and God creates in love
hate is not something that is even in God’s DNA
it’s in ours
and God gives us our stories
to remind us that we can be better
that we can, by God’s grace,
become more like God
When the rest of the world
makes us feel like garbage
or when we participate in making someone else
feel like garbage,
God weeps for the world
and God makes a way in the desert
provides an abundant well of living water
to give us life again
to remind us of who we are
and who we are born to be
children of the living, loving God
who simply doesn’t know how… to hate