The child [Issac] grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.[a] So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
Genesis 21:8-21
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 21, 2026) on Genesis 21:8-21.
For today’s sermon, I’d like to switch from focusing on the gospel according to Matthew and sit with Abraham and his family in the book of Genesis. When it comes to Abraham, we tend to focus on how God called him to leave what is modern day Iraq and move to Israel and Palestine; the promise God made that his descendants would outnumber the stars and how all families, through his, would be blessed; we remember how weird this promise seemed since Abraham and Sarah struggled to conceive, and when the promise of an heir was fulfilled, Abraham tried to sacrifice that child on a mountaintop. There are ways we can celebrate Abraham as a parental ancestor for our faith while also recognizing how a mug saying “World’s Greatest Dad” might not be a good gift for him on Father’s Day. His family’s story, though, is much bigger than what we typically hear in worship and he isn’t always the hero we always assume he is. Holding the good bits of his story next to the parts that are hard does more than reveal how human Abraham was. It also, I think, shows who our God chooses to be too.
Way back in chapter 11 is when we’re first told Sarah and Abraham are struggling having children. The reasons why aren’t explicitly shared but we can safely assume it impacted their life together. Back then, as well as today, women were often unjustly blamed for reproductive struggles and this shame projected by the wider community was internalized by those who were struggling. Abraham and Sarah had, together, formed a large and wealthy nomadic community that even nearby kings felt the need to negotiate with. They were a force to be reckoned with and yet what might come next was always on their mind. Abraham prepared for the future by naming one of his slaves his legal heir. And while this created a way to have descendants that would follow, they wondered if there might be another way to create their future. So in chapter 16, Sarah told Abraham to sleep with Hagar who was one of Sarah’s slaves. God’s promise to Abraham did not fully identify who the mother of his child might be and so the cultural practice of letting a child’s parentage be transferred to whoever owned the mother was something they chose to embrace. This wasn’t, however, something they had to do. Sarah didn’t have to act as if our ways are also God’s way nor did Abraham have to simply do whatSarah said. Both of them had the capacity and power to say “no” while Hagar, who was enslaved, was the only one who couldn’t. Once Abraham exerted his power over her, everyone’s relationship with one another became strained. Sarah decided to deal with the pregnant Hagar harshly and so Hagar fled towards home through a wilderness full of dangers. While stopped at a spring, an angel came and convinced her to return to Abraham’s household. God, though, also gave her a promise that – like Abraham – her descendants would be uncountable. Hagar, then, did something no other person in our Bible does. She gave God a name. She named God “El-roi – which might mean “the God who sees.” And when Hagar returned to Abraham and Sarah, she gave birth to a son who was named Ishmael and it appeared as if God’s promise was becoming fulfilled.
But everything changed once Sarah gave birth to Issac and seemed like he’d survive through the ancient world’s very high infant mortality rate. Ishamel was no longer simply Sarah’s legal son and Abraham’s firstborn heir. He was now only the son of an enslaved woman. Vanessa Lovelace, in a commentary on this passage, described how Sarah’s perspective shifted when he saw Ishamel being affectionate to his much younger brother. The word for “playing” is rooted in the word for “laughter” which is a deliberate play on Issac’s name which meant laughter too. What Sarah saw was “Ishmael behaving in a way that imitated her son Isaac” and she might have been worried their relationship would interfere with God’s promise since there were cultural rules about who has value, who matters, and who gets what when the future comes our way. Sarah demanded Abraham to send Hagar and Ishamel away so they wouldn’t get in the way of what she wanted her tomorrow to be. Abraham was conflicted by this request but he didn’t come out and say “no.” God, though, spoke up and appeared to let Sarah’s fears, worries, anxieties, and way of life shape what happened next. And so early the next morning, before the household started to stir, Abraham gave Hagar and Ishamel some meager supplies before casting them out into the wilderness.
There was, though, something about this moment that was different from the last time she was in the wilderness. Back then, she executed a plan to return home but this journey was different. Without purpose, direction, and having lived within Abraham’s household for a number of years, she wept and waited for her future to end. We might assume, like before, an angel would show up to respond to her cries for help. But what we heard instead was that Ishamel had to grow up way too soon and the one who didn’t seem to have a say in his own future chose to cry out too. He did the very faithful and very human thing of not letting this be the limit of what could be. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly what he said which means we’re allowed to let our imagination fill out that gap ourselves. And while our first instinct might be to assume Ishamel was reverent and spoke to God in what we might say is the proper way, I think it’s okay to not limit the words he uttered. Rage, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety – all the stuff we say when the future we expected is no longer on its way – would have been on his lips too. Ishamel, who didn’t ask to be brought into a world that devalued who he was based on what he was born into, imagined a different kind of tomorrow. And God, rather than letting Sarah and Abraham’s vision be all that could be, affirmed that the one who we pushed to the margins will always have a place in God’s kingdom too.
Now we never hear if any kind of resolution or reconciliation between Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishamel ever took place. Hagar disappears from the book of Genesis and Ishamel only shows up in one verse to help Issac bury Abraham after he died. Like a lot of families, the unresolved harm, conflict, and violence, ends up having a permanent place at the table too. We might imagine that a peaceful family is a sign God is really with us. Yet even in the very mess bits that make up the families we’re born into and the families we choose, God’s promises always remain. When the water was poured over you and God declared you really are a beloved child of God, every other claim on your life and soul was overwritten. You are not limited by what other people say about you nor is every cultural rule and tradition good and true. Rather the God who heard the cry of Hagar, who heard the cry of Ishamel, and who hears every cry we make is also a God who promises to hold you through. And while what comes next is a mystery that doesn’t always match our expectations, the God who never left Ishmael is a God who will never leave you too.
Amen.