Bringing Division
Sermon preached by the Rev. John Elliott Lein at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on June 21, 2020, on the following texts: Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, and Matthew 10:24-39.
Two days ago, many Americans celebrated a special holiday called Juneteenth. Yet it is a holiday that many others in our country aren’t aware of, or have heard of only recently. While it has been celebrated since 1866, I myself first heard of it only a few years ago.
Juneteenth is a commemoration of the 19th of June in 1865, the day that a Union army general showed up in Texas and told the last group of enslaved Americans that they had been set free nearly two and a half years earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Two days after this celebration, we find ourselves here in church listening to an account in Holy Scripture of a slave of our forefather Abraham.
There are two halves of this story. It begins in chapter 16 of Genesis, and then jumps to chapter 21 where we are today.
In the first half, we are in the middle of the story of the patriarch and matriarch of all Israel, Abraham and Sarah. It is clear from recent events that they are at the head of a powerful nomadic organization, one powerful enough to destroy an alliance of kings and wealthy enough to return all plunder to its rightful owners. In the region surrounding Hebron, in the hills between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, north of Egypt and south of Assyria, Abraham’s clan was at the top of the pecking order.
Yet not all is well. Sarah has been unable to bear a child—a rightful heir to the inheritance and the first step toward the establishment of a dynasty. The continuance of a bloodline in this culture is of such importance for both political and religious reasons that there are multiple acceptable routes around this problem. The one chosen is deliberate, not the only choice.
If Abraham were to take another wife to bear a child, from one of the kings of the land, Sarah would lose the inherited power and status that she has being attached to Abraham. As a woman in a patriarchal setting, she has little value apart from her role and connection to this man. And so she takes control of the situation, putting events in motion to retain her place even if it comes at the expense of another woman’s personhood.
And so enters a new figure into the story, a woman named Hagar.
Though technically that’s not quite accurate. While our English Bibles capitalize “Hagar” and use it as a proper name in a way that seems quite conventional, the Hebrew used here is h’Gar. The ha’ is the definite article: “the”. And “Gar” is a masculine noun that means “foreigner, alien, sojourner”.
The epithet reduces this woman to an object rather than a person. She is “the foreign object,” reminiscent of how some in our country today label certain people as “an illegal.”
We don’t know how she came to be with Sarah, but the text tells us that she is Egyptian and Sarah initially refers to her as her “maid-servant.” Yet the way that she is treated makes the revised title in chapter 21 more accurate.
Sarah approaches Abraham and offers her “foreigner” as a surrogate mother for an heir. The Gar has no choice in the matter. She is a sex slave with no status or even a proper name, a tool to be used which can be thrown aside when no longer valuable. And thus, Abraham gains a concubine and Sarah a son, because the Gar cannot even retain rights connected to her own offspring. All the Gar receives are beatings from the jealous Sarah.
Five chapters later, we come to a second turning point. In the intervening story, the Gar’s child Ishmael has grown into his early teenage years, God’s promise to Abraham has been renewed, and Sarah has miraculously given birth to her own son Isaac.
One day, Sarah sees Ishmael laughing at his young brother Isaac, and she is outraged. Although Ishmael is officially her son by surrogate since the Gar has no rights, Sarah’s natural son Isaac is her stronger connection to dynastic power and she wants no equals involved.
Sarah storms into Abraham’s tent and demands, “Drive that slave out, her and her son, for neither shall share inheritance with me and mine!”
Abraham is reluctant, but does not resist. The Gar is sent out into a desert, bearing only Ishmael and a day’s provisions. Her years of faithful service, her lack of any personhood or life agency, none of it matters when it is more convenient to the powerful that she and her child be discarded.
In spite of Sarah’s pitiless abuse and effective sentence of death, God intervenes on the very brink and provides a dynasty of her own to the Gar, whose ancestry leads to Muhammad and the great nations of Islam. And the Hebrew epithet Gar is transformed into the Arabic proper name Hajar, meaning “splendid, nourishing”, favored for women across Arabia and Africa for millennia. Yet none of this absolves the guilt of Abraham and Sarah for taking the price of an easy “peace” out of the flesh of another human.
So, what might we learn from this story today?
Well, for one it reminds us of the numerous texts in the Bible that were used so effectively by Christian denominations, theologians, and ministers—including Episcopal priests in our own diocese—to establish and defend chattel slavery for centuries. Because of stories like this, the abolitionists were left to argue on vaguely liberal grounds of “the spirit of the text” while the establishment pointed at the clear conservative textual basis for their doctrines of dehumanization. This is something that the white Christians of today like myself must fully repent of, as has never been accomplished, not only by ceasing the injustices which still continue in more subtle ways but making things right in relinquishing the unequal power and wealth we have inherited on the backs of people of color.
For another, this story might encourage Christian people of color to see how God is on their side even when the systems of power are against them. This is why some African-American Christians refer to themselves as “Hagar’s children,” recognizing their heritage of African ancestry and oppression alike contained in her body.
And finally, I believe we can turn to Jesus’ words in Matthew to see what our next steps as both black and white Christians may look like, in ways that directly reflect both the past decades and centuries of American history as well as the moment we find ourselves in right now.
In the tenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus is giving instructions to his disciples on how to be on mission, to be his people. They are to proclaim the message that the kingdom of God has come and provide healing for the people. And they are to be marked as itinerant, impoverished, defenseless workers, reliant solely on the hospitality of those they serve.
And what might these followers, these “Christians,” expect to gain from this work? In a word, suffering. In terms which likely reflect the experience of the early church as well as Jesus’ first disciples, they will face enmity, rejection, and death. Not as an accident, but as a direct result of the message they are bringing.
Jesus says,
“...Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.“For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”
“To bring a sword” is not literally about a weapon of war—this after all is the Gospeler who later records Jesus’ saying “Those who live by the sword die by the sword” in rebuking a disciple who attempts to use a weapon for defense. As Luke’s version puts it, this is about division.
Because the peace of God that Jesus brings is not the kind of peace which comes at the expense of the oppressed on behalf of the powerful.
Abraham chose “peace” in his family by upholding a hierarchy of oppression, sacrificing “the Gar” and son on the altar of propriety and order. Jesus’ peace shows how inherently broken that is, and would bring forth the division that already exists.
Early 19th century white America chose “peace” by allowing half the country to continue treating Black people as subhuman. Jesus’ peace in the hands of abolitionists did not cause division—it revealed the division already there.
Early 20th century white America chose “peace” by segregation and systemic oppression so that the actual division would be suppressed under the surface. Jesus’ peace in the hands of people like minister Martin Luther King, Jr, writer James Baldwin, and politician John Lewis brought those real divisions back to light so that they could be worked on.
Today once again, just as in the 1860’s and 1960’s, that false peace is being shown for the lie that it has always been. Once again, Jesus’ peace calls us to pursue a course that must begin in the division of society-as-usual, because society-as-usual has been deliberately constructed as unjust in favor of those who will do anything to keep it that way.
Peace through oppression is too high a price. Peace through police brutality is not true peace. Peace that condemns those who protest injustice more than it condemns the oppressors is not Jesus’ peace.
So today, let us remember that Jesus calls us to a way that will divide our families, alienate our neighbors, and be condemned by the establishment, because so many don’t want to face the reality of injustice around us. Let us resolve to pursue this course even knowing the rejection and suffering we might face, because it is the very mission and kingdom of God.
AMEN.
