The Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 27, 2022)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

The story of Hagar and Ishmael figures prominently in our Epistle reading today. I actually did my thesis for my Master of Divinity at Liberty University on this particular story which is found in Genesis 16 and 22. But don’t worry, I won’t read you all 65 pages of that thesis today.

One of the reasons we read Galatians 4:21-31 today is that it’s Mothering Sunday. Mothering Sunday is basically British Mother’s Day. It includes a tradition to visit mother churches, that is the Church in which one was baptized, on this Sunday. It was also a day when domestic servants would go back home to visit their parents and go to church with their mothers, often making Simnel cakes. We wear rose because this day is a day of celebration, a reprieve during the somber season of fasting that is Lent. It often goes by the name Laetare Sunday, which means “rejoice,” a title derived from the Introit for the day. Since it is Mothering Sunday, it makes sense that our Epistle would include the story of two mothers, Hagar and Sarah, which point us to the significance of our Mother, the Church.

To understand Paul’s reading of Hagar and Sarah story, it’s helpful to review some of the background underlying the Epistle to the Galatians. The Galatian community was ensconced in a large region in southern Asia Minor that had been annexed by the Romans in 25 BC. Over their time as Roman subjects, the area became dedicated to the imperial cult. The Galatian church was founded by Paul during his missionary journeys detailed in Acts chapters 16 and 18, probably around 47-48 AD. Like many of the communities he established, they had a struggle, namely that Paul couldn’t be everywhere at once. In his absence, the church in Galatia had been infiltrated by false teachers, a group we now call the Judaizers. What were these Judaizers teaching? Probably, they were Jewish Christians who were telling Gentile converts to Christianity that, in order for them to really be Christians, these Gentiles had to become Jewish by getting circumcised, observing Jewish feast days, and following Jewish dietary restrictions. The teachings of the Judaizers illicited a visceral opposition from St. Paul who argued that the Church is not an ethnic enclave nor are its rituals ethnocentric; in effect, he emphasizes the point that one does not need to be Jewish in order to be a Christian. The culmination of his argument can be found in chapter 3, verses 27-29: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

To illustrate this point, Paul turns to the Old Testament story of Hagar and Sarah that he reads allegorically. The story, I think is often misread. Hagar is often viewed as bad or wrong but she actually tells Israel’s story in reverse: she was an Egyptian woman whose name means “sojourner.” She was a slave to a Hebrew woman, Sarah (whose name meant “princess). She was given to Abraham by Sarah to be his surrogate so that Sarah could be “built up” through her servant, language that parallels Sarah’s behavior to Pharaohs exploitation of the Israelites at the beginning of Exodus. After Hagar bore Abraham a son, she was cast out at Sarah’s request once Isaac was born. While in the desert, God showed her a well that saved her and her son, Ishmael. In the wake of this salvific event, she was the first character to give God a name, calling him El-Roi which means “the God who sees.” God brought her to her homeland and caused the flourishing of her progeny, a participation in the promise that God gave to Abraham.

It seems likely that Paul’s opponents in Galatia, the Judaizers, employed this story in their teaching. “Hey, if you become Jewish, then you’re a better Christian because you have a genealogical connection to Abraham through Isaac and Israel, the line of his chosen son rather than that illegitimate son, Ishmael.” So Paul engages his interlocutors by reading the story allegorically. An allegory is when we read something into the text that isn’t evident at the “literal level.” Some have speculated that Paul’s allegorical reading is ironic, intended to poke fun at the allegorical rabbinical exegesis employed by his opponents. I don’t necessarily think that’s the best read of what he’s doing because I’d argue he employs allegorical reading elsewhere unironically. But I do think he does something pretty genius here: he turns their argument on its head. He does this Hagar, he argues, stands allegorically for the covenant at Mt. Sinai. She is the Mosaic Law. This law, he argues only ever leads to the bondage of sin because the law lacks a salvific aspect. This is not a problem with the Law, it’s a problem with our sin. Our sin means the Law only ever condemns us. So, Paul says that to Hagar was born a son of the flesh. This has two meanings. First, it can refer to the circumstances that produced Ishmael’s birth, namely the fleshly mode of reasoning employed by Abraham and Sarah in trying to achieve God’s promise of a son without consulting their Lord first and instead engaging in some really poor behavior. But also, Ishmael was born of the flesh because he was born through normal means; there was no divine intervention in his birth like there was with Isaac. So if Hagar was the Mosaic Law, Sarah stands not for the earthly Jerusalem, which is a synecdoche for Judaism, but for the heavenly Jerusalem, which Paul says is the mother of us all. To this end, he quotes Isaiah 54:1, “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.” The New Covenant is our Mother; our Mother is the Church because she administers the sacrament of Baptism through which we are born again. So, in this allegory, we have two women, two mountains, and two covenants all in seeming diametric opposition.

What does this mean? Well, Paul tells his Galatian readers an important truth: All Christians, not just Jewish Christians, are children of the promise like Isaac. The promises made to Abraham are answered in Christ and his Church. So, the Christian has a genealogical connection to Isaac, but it’s not necessarily or primarily a biological connection so much as a spiritual one. And so Paul begins the next chapter in Galatians with a remarkable statement that I wish the Book of Common Prayer had retained: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” In effect, Paul is telling the Galatians that all Christians should live into their primary identity as Christians, sons and daughters of the Church, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, most of us today are not told that we need to be circumcised to be Christians. That Judaizing tendency does exist in some circles; I’ve encountered it. But it’s pretty uncommon. So is this reading applicable to us today? I think so because that warning that we shouldn’t fall into bondage but live into the freedom of being children of the Church remains pertinent. Like I said, the Church is our Mother because in Baptism, we are born again. Further, the Church sustains us by feeding us with the Eucharist and the Word (a feeding which was prefigured by our Gospel this morning). What have we been set free from? From the idea that our faith is just a nice thing we do on Sundays, from the idea that other facets of our identity control who we are, from the prioritization of our sex, class, or ethnicity over the fact that we are “in Christ.” We have been set free, Paul tells us. This is not a lasseiz-faire freedom that tells us we can behave however we want; rather, we have been set free in order to be holy, which, as Dcn. David reminded us last week consists of a lot more than just obeying the 10 Commandments. Galatians 5:13-14 “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” He goes on to say, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Walking in the Spirit is more than a mechanistic checking off on our to do list; walking in the Spirit requires imagination, it requires us to be human. It’s to learn from Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother who, at the Annunciation which we observed Friday, said, “be it unto me according to thy word.” So for today, since it’s Mother Sunday, it’s a good day to call our mothers but it’s also a day where we should reflect on the Church as our Mother and our status as children of the promise. What does that mean? It means, above all things, that we should seek to live out what our baptism says about us: namely, that we are in Christ.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.