Do You See What I See?

Abram has had a rough time of it so far in the story of Genesis. He’s been promised by God that he and his wife Sarai will receive a son, a hope for their future. Yet, in Chapter 16, we see that they still haven’t received the child of promise. Things aren’t looking too great for the quickly aging couple. So, frustrated with God, Sarai decides to take things into her own hands.

The New Revised Standard Version The Birth of Ishmael

“You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.”

Sarai has, apparently, lost any confidence she may have had in the LORD. So she takes matters into her own hands. What is she to do, after all? They’ve waited all this time, marched through the desert, followed God on this long journey, and yet they still sit without an heir.

Hagar as Instrument

The way that Sarai chooses to solve this problem no doubt makes many of us uncomfortable. It’s already bad enough that Abram, father of the faith, owned slaves. It is even worse that they would make such an arrangement with one of the female slaves. In their culture, however, Abram and Sarai weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. If the head of a house or tribe couldn’t bear children, they needed an heir. Taking a second wife from among the servants was not unheard of. And yet, something about this passage just doesn’t sit right. Even if this was a common occurence in Abram’s day, Genesis itself seems to suggest that what Sarai has done here is wrong. If we listen closely to this text, we can once again here the whisper of the serpent from the garden, “You will not die… you will be like the gods… You don’t need to wait on God, you can do this yourself...” Immediately, Sarai’s plan seems off to us, because this text begins to sound a lot like the garden of Eden all over again.

Hagar as Instrument

“Take my slave Hagar, we can have children by her… And Abram listened to the voice of his wife.” This is so obviously not what God has said. This plan of Sarai’s is so obviously against the promises of God. And yet, just as Adam did so long ago, Abram listened to the voice of his wife. And so Sarai took Hagar, and gave her to her husband, just as Eve took of the fruit and gave it to her husband.

But now it is not Abram and Sarai that are exiled from God’s presence, but Hagar. Hagar is the one who pays for the sins of her slave-masters. Hagar, who was thrust in to a situation she no doubt did not want to be in, forced to carry a child she had not asked for, used as little more than the means to an end, an instrument, an object, is now punished for what her masters had done! This passage is a mirror of the Garden, for sure, but an even more grotesque, distorted mirror. Not only are the sins of Adam and Eve continued here, they are transformed into something even worse than before!

Curses and Mistreatment

And, seeing that she was pregnant, Hagar looked with contempt on her mistress Sarai. “Contempt” here, comes from the same Hebrew root as “to curse”. Once again, the plans of humans to go outside of the bounds of God’s vision, to procure blessing for themselves outside of God, has lead to curse. The author of Genesis is inviting us back to the garden, to see how that first sin is being mirrored and perpetuated throughout all of time and history, even here with Abram and Sarai, the father of faith, the recipients of God’s promise to the world.

Sarai, blinded by her higher status, doesn’t even realize the terrible thing she’s done to Hagar. Sarai had social status, she had wealth, she had prestige, she had it all, and Hagar had nothing. Sarai, as master of Hagar, could do as she pleased, and there was nothing Hagar could do about it. Yet, because of this power and privilege that Sarai possessed, she became blind to the consequences of her actions. Not only did this power and privilege lead her to break faith with God, in trying to gain blessing for herself outside the bounds of the promise, but this power and privilege also blinded her to the harm she was doing to those around her. All she could see was the child she so desperately wanted. All she could see was a way to provide for her husband what he needed and wanted. There’s nothing inherently bad about Sarai’s ends. She was performing her duty as wife to Abram. It was the means that were horrific. Sarai wanted something, she had the power and social position to get those things, but she lacked the vision and clarity to understand what getting those things might mean.

At no point in the story is Hagar consulted. At no point is she given a voice. She is used, she is a means to an end, and little else. And when, as we might expect, Hagar finally expresses her anger, her indignation at what she’s been put through, Sarai continues to ignore Hagar’s voice. And not just ignore, but stamp out Hagar’s voice. Sarai, seeing the anger Hagar has towards her for what she’s been put through, takes it as an insult. Sarai refuses to acknowledge that Hagar has a right to “look on her with contempt”. And so Sarai does everything in her power, which is far greater than Hagar’s power, to squash the voice of her slave-girl, to wipe away the look of contempt so that she does not have to face the injustice she has perpetuated.

Hagar’s Plight

And so it is Hagar who is exiled for the sins of Sarai and Abram. It is Hagar who pays the ultimate price. She flees from the tents of Abram, out into the wilderness to hide from Sarai’s cruelty. And if we stopped right there, this would be a terrible and tragic story. If we left things in the hands of humans, even humans like Abram, the story would not have so great an ending. Because Abram and Sarai were content to leave the story there.

God’s Mercy

But God was not. Just as he had seen Adam and Eve, cowering in the garden, naked and ashamed of what they had done, God saw the shameful acts perpetuated by Sarai, and he saw the terrified Egyptian slave-girl running away into the desert. And he couldn’t stand by and just watch. So the Angel of Yahweh comes and finds Hagar alone in the wilderness.

The New Revised Standard Version The Birth of Ishmael

And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.”

Notice how God has asked Hagar a two part question here: not just “where have you come from?” but also “where are you going?”. Yet Hagar can only answer the first of these questions, “Where have you come from?” “Away from my mistress, Sarai.” Where have you come from?” “Abuse, mistreatment, injustice, beatings, suffering...”

But Hagar can’t answer the second question. How could she? Where was there for someone like her to go? Women in these times were already often mistreated. Yes, it was bad enough to be a woman, but a pregnant escaped slave woman? That was a truly hopeless position to be in. There was nowhere for Hagar to go, no road ahead for her. And so here she sat, by a spring, lost in the wilderness.

And so, in his mercy and grace, God offers an answer to that second question. God offers a place for this desperate woman to go. It’s not an easy solution, “Go back” the Lord says, “go back and submit to your master, go back and endure the harshness of Sarai.” Of course, Hagar could have thought of that without God’s help. She knew that going back was an option, but it’s an option she didn’t want to take. If anything was worse than wandering in the wilderness, it was returning to the harsh bondage of slavery under her angry master Sarai. That is, of course, why Hagar had found herself in the wilderness to begin with! But that’s not all God says. He doesn’t just offer her a general direction to head in, “Back to Sarai,” but offers her hope to make the journey. God makes a covenant promise with Hagar, with this escaped slave that no one else would have paid any attention to. God makes a promise with her that is strikingly similar to the promise given to Abram:

The New Revised Standard Version The Birth of Ishmael

The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the LORD said to her,

“Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;

you shall call him Ishmael,

for the LORD has given heed to your affliction.

12 He shall be a wild ass of a man,

with his hand against everyone,

and everyone’s hand against him;

and he shall live at odds with all his kin.”

Now, at first, this doesn’t seem like such a great blessing. “I’ll give you a son, but he’ll be like a wild donkey.” For Hagar, however, this is the best of news. For Hagar, this is a promise that her children will be free. That they won’t be under the bondage of slavery as she is. That they won’t have to endure the things she has endured. God is not only promising Hagar that she will have children, but that those children will be set apart from Abram, that they will be free from bondage, that they will be their own people. And for someone like Hagar, there was no more wonderful gift that God could give her.

The God who Sees

So Hagar names this God “El-Roi”, “The God who Sees”. What a beautiful name. What a wonderful God it is that we worship, the God Who Sees.

I love this story. It might be one of my favorite parts of the Bible. This story about the God Who Sees serves as both hope and warning for us, depending on where we might see ourselves fitting into the tale. Maybe we find ourselves most clearly in Hagar. Despised, rejected by society, downtrodden, poor and powerless. Women, and especially African-American women, throughout history, have been able to identify with Hagar. If you’re one of those people, someone who’s been used, abused, mistreated, neglected, cast out, the victim of sexual assault, of physical and mental abuse, or poverty, or any hardship, then know that God’s promise to Hagar is his promise to you as well. Not that you may escape from the hardship now, but that one day you and your children will be free. It is for this freedom and liberation that Jesus Christ has come. It is for the sake of people like you , like Hagar, the poor, powerless, the lepers, the prostitutes, the slaves, and victims of injustice that Jesus Christ has come. In Christ we find hope to endure the hardships, the hope of future freedom and liberation. Whatever you may be going through, know that you can rightfully call God El-Roi, the God Who Sees you.

This story about the God Who Sees serves as both hope and warning for us, depending on where we might see ourselves fitting into the tale. If we find ourselves

But for many of us, Hagar might not be the one we identify as. For some of us, we might find that our heightened social status and wealth might mean we look a lot more like Sarai in this story. If that’s the case, then it’s still good for us to be reminded that God is indeed still called El-roi, the God Who Sees. He sees all of us, even the low, the poor, the uneducated, the people “beneath” us. And he sees what we do to them, intentionally or unintentionally. He sees the hurt that we cause those around us when we act in our own self-interest, he sees the damage we do by abusing our power and privilege, he sees when we mistreat or abuse others, he sees when we’ve mistreated someone but are content to put them out of sight and out of mind as Sarai did when Hagar fled, and he sees even when our own power and privilege might prevent us from seeing. For those of us who aren’t the poor and powerless, but are the wealthy (and even “middle-class” is wealthier than most people!) and powerful, God is still El-Roi for us to.

But that name of God might more often take on a much different meaning for us: a reminder that God sees the poor and lowly, and that we should to. That God heard the voice of Hagar, crying out in the wilderness, and we also should listen to the voice of the voiceless, lest we misuse our power over them and perpetuate the sins of Sarai.

But whether we are like Hagar or Sarai, the name El-Roi is call for us to see as God sees. This beautiful name is a call to share in God’s vision for us, even in the midst of our plight. To see as he sees, not a hopeless person, but a beloved son or daughter with hope for the future. And El-Roi is a call for us to see the injustice, the mistreatment, and abuse of other people in the same way that God Sees. Not to ignore the cry of the hungry man we pass on the streets, the frightened young woman who’s been kicked out of her home becuase she got pregnant in high school, the sickly looking person that no one else wants to be around because of their disease, the many people outcast, stigmatized, and abused by society. These are the people our Lord Jesus Christ invited to the table for dinner. The people whom he reached out to hold their hands. These are the people Jesus came to save, because they’re the ones that God Sees.

In the name of our beautiful God, El-Roi, may we know that we are seen, and may we See all of those who God sees as well.

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