he formed and then clothed with vegetation and then created animals to benefit from it and then populated it with human beings of every race and custom and language, even religion.
The world’s one-and-a-quarter billion Muslims point to the event reported in today’s reading from Genesis as the origin of their faith. Ishmael, the son of Sarah’s slave-girl Hagar, fathered by Abraham but not destined to be the bearer of the covenant, was sent out with his mother into the desert to die but was cared for by God and himself became the progenitor of a great people, the Muslims. Historically, that assertion requires a lot of qualification, since Islam did not begin until it was announced by Mohammed, who didn’t live until the sixth century after Christ. It is probably not even an ethnologically accurate explanation for the Bedouins among whom Islam spread so rapidly once it did get started. But the story is an important corrective to the misguided belief that God cares only for the biological and spiritual descendants of Abraham. “As for the son of the slave woman,” God said to Abraham, “I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring” (Gen 21:13, NRSV). And the Bible testifies that “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” (Gen 21:20–21, NRSV). When Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael buried him together. Genesis tells us that Ishmael had twelve sons, the same number as the sons of Jacob, who fathered the twelve tribes of Israel. Except for some genealogical references, that is the last that Israel’s Bible tells us about Ishmael. But if God was faithful to this promise he made to Abraham—and God’s faithfulness to his other promises to Abraham makes that a certainty—God cared for Ishmael and his descendants, and reckoned them, too, into God’s plan for redeeming creation.
Actually, that very term, “plan,” is somewhat misleading. It is probably better to use the word “purpose,” for “plan” makes it sound as if it’s all drawn up in schematic form in some heavenly workroom, intolerant of deviations, impossible of surprise. Not everything that happens is necessarily according to a “plan,” although God is able to and does use it to fulfill his purpose. For instance, God certainly is not a God who wills violence, though violence is a part of the history that the Bible tells. God is not a God who approves of deception, though Abraham used deception to preserve his and Sarah’s life, as did his son Isaac, as did many other heroes of the Bible. And I don’t think that we should accuse God of promoting jealousy, although the fact that God’s directive to Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness happened to coincide with Sarah’s jealous ultimatum shows that God pursues the great divine purpose in, with, and under the twists and turns of human emotion. As far as the plot of the Bible is concerned, the birth of Ishmael was a rather irrelevant footnote to the tale, a mistake taken care of by sending him and his mother away with a loaf of bread and a canteen of water—hardly enough to see the boy through to the greatness God promised. But God does not so casually dismiss those whom he loves.
When the water in the skin was gone, [Hagar the slave woman] cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off . . . ; 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, . . .”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 [Hagar’s] eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. (Gen 21:15–19, NRSV)
And, while the Bible’s attention turns back to Abraham’s descendants through Isaac, God is also busy fulfilling the promise God had made to Abraham about Ishmael’s progeny becoming a great nation.
Do we think that God was not at work among the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Romans, the Goths, the native peoples of North and Central and South America, the Pacific islanders, working out his purpose of bringing all of creation in line with his intention? The Israelites had done nothing more to earn God’s favor than any of the other tribes and nations of the world. God selected them, without precondition, for the special blessing and privilege and obligation of being in covenant with him to obey his commands and bear a testimony that would constitute a blessing to all these others. But God did not disparage the others. God’s ancient promise to Ishmael remains a contemporary theological reality; God’s loving concern extends to the Bedouins of Muslim faith, as it does to all the peoples of the earth, whatever their religion. God does not perfect people before deciding to work through them to bring about God’s purpose that is greater than one individual or one tribe or one nation or even one religion. God has a life beyond our seeing, beyond our knowing. God is at work among the outcasts and refugees of the world, the exploited and the abused, like Hagar and Ishmael. God has a concern beyond our horizon of interest. The God of the chosen people is also the God of the whole creation, including even people who have never seen the Bible or heard the gospel. God has a love beyond those who worship him as the commandments prescribe, including those whom we are accustomed to count as enemies and aliens, foreigners beyond our political and economic and religious borders and strangers to our ways of thinking and acting.
We have a responsibility to give witness to God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. But we mustn’t assume that what we know of God is God’s only story, or the whole one. To do so is to put God in a box. That’s what Solomon tried to do with the temple. That’s what the Pharisees and the scribes and the chief priests tried to do with the cross. That’s what some early Christian leaders did by insisting that Gentiles must be circumcised and obey the Jewish dietary laws. In each case, the insiders thought God had no life beyond the one they knew, no purpose that could encompass people different from themselves, no blessing that could claim them, too, as his own to be cherished and to be redeemed. The Bible tells of Israel’s experience of and with God. But the Bible informs us, in telling of God’s provision for Hagar and Ishmael, that God has a life beyond its pages.
I puzzled over my new knowledge of life outside of Mrs. McCreary’s classroom, was amazed to learn about its existence, wondered why I hadn’t realized it before. All of those people, carrying on their business, fulfilling their responsibilities, pursuing their interests! But at the end of my father’s speech, my mother brought me back to Mesita School where, for the time being, I belonged, to learn the lessons I needed to learn before I became a part of that bigger world.
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Spanish Springs Presbyterian Church, Sparks, Nevada
June 26, 2005
Genesis 22:1–14
Romans 6:12–23
Matthew 10:40–42
“The Test”
Reverend Stephen McDermott stood in the recently-paved parking lot of the new church building, admiring the beautiful structure about which he had dreamed for so many years. It had been a long journey of ministry through several unexpected places, far from what he had imagined when he first sensed the call to enter seminary and then seek ordination. That was almost two decades ago, now, when he was a clerk in his father’s grocery store in Campbellton. He had been to university, but when he graduated, his father had asked him to come back home to help in the family business. He had married the girl next door, literally—Sally Warfield—and they had settled down to a conventional life of husband and wife, assuming, though without much enthusiasm, that Steve would one day inherit the store, and their son, should they have one, would come to work at the store and eventually inherit it in turn. But the son had never come, even after fifteen years of marriage, then, and it seemed that, now, he never would. Steve’s brother had moved away after attending university and entered the engineering field, clearly having no interest in the grocery business.
It was on the eve of
