Father Abraham

 

Genesis 21:8-21

June 21, 2026

 

The child 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. 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.

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.

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            There’s some background to today’s reading from Genesis.  Last week we heard about the birth of Isaac to Sarah and Abraham when he was a hundred years old, and the passage for this morning refers to that.  However, this episode involves two other people affected by Isaac’s birth.  They are Sarah’s slave-woman Hagar and Hagar’s young son Ishmael.

            Now, after Abram and Sarai had left their settled life in Haran on the strength of God’s promise that he would make them the ancestors of a great nation that would fill the land God showed them, there came a time when it became clear that nothing was happening for them in the obstetrics department.  Sarah was no longer of child-bearing age.  After considerable agonizing over the prospects, she developed a plan and convinced Abraham to go with it.  He fathered a child with her maid, Hagar, with the understanding that if she had a son (as she did), he would be treated as Abraham’s legitimate heir.

            There’s a whole lot here that is questionable, but in that setting, where polygamy was accepted, this at least meant there was some level of consent involved.  But it also raised the issue afterward of the relative status of Sarah and Hagar, one the acknowledged wife and the other the mother of his child.  After the birth of Ishmael, Hagar began to get “uppity”.  Looking ahead, it was becoming clear that there would be an eventual conflict when either Abraham or Sarah died – remember, they are both north of eighty at this point.  How would Isaac be protected?  And hadn’t God’s miraculous intervention to bring about his birth shown that Isaac, not Ishmael, was the chosen one? 

            I want to put in a good word here for monogamy and for marital fidelity.  I want to put in a good word for adoption.  I want to put in a good word for not ending up in these situations to begin with.  Don’t think they don’t happen.  Slavery, whether in the ancient world or in the U.S., made these matters more complicated.  Thomas Jefferson is by now mostly acknowledged to have had a longtime extramarital arrangement with a black woman named Sally Hemmings – who may have been his deceased wife’s half-sister by her father.  Even without slavery, in our own day you might know Lyle Lovett’s song “Friend of the Devil” that has the words,

“I’ve got a wife in Chino, and one in Cherokee.

The first one says she has my child, but it don’t look like me.”

 

            So, getting back to the Bible, you can see Sarai’s worries were not totally unreasonable.  Her solution, though, was unjust to Ishmael and possibly punitive to Hagar who had not really had a choice in any of this to begin with.

"Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac."  [Genesis 21:10]

Abraham was caught in the middle. (And, yes, it was as much his fault as anyone else’s.)

“The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.” [Genesis 21:11]

Notice the wording here: “his son.” Which son was that?  No matter which path he took, he would endanger a 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.’" [Genesis 21:12-13]

But what about Hagar?

            How can her story not rip your heart out? Abraham tried to salve his conscience a little bit by sending her off with some bread and water.  That’s pretty meagre child support, and ran out quickly. 

“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. 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.” [Genesis 21:14-16]

God intervened.  God extended the promises made to Abraham to her and to Ishmael, though they would play out in a different way.  Isaac and his own descendants would still inherit the blessing, but Ishmael was also under God’s care.

            Part of that care, I believe, is that once they were grown up neither Isaac nor Ishmael let the enmity between their mothers define their relationship to their father or to one another.  That doesn’t always happen.  Relationships among half-siblings can be complicated, and you can count on it that Isaac and Ishmael her different versions of the same events as they grew up.  But there seems to have been communication between them and some sort of understanding and respect.  Genesis 25:8-10 says:

“Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.  His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites.  There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah.”

That last bit must have been hard on Ishmael.  Where was his own mother buried?  We don’t know – but it was not with his father.

            These are emotionally complicated matters, and one thing that we see is that they don’t all resolve easily and that they leave us with the awareness to be careful about putting anybody on a pedestal or tearing them down too quickly.  Our lives may send ripples across generations. That’s true in both good and bad ways.  There are times that God steps in and helps the helpless but it’s on us not to create those situations.  There are more lessons in this incident than I’ve touched on, and that’s one of the wonders of these accounts.

            The Bible has much more to tell us about Abraham’s life, and the life of his family, and we’ll be looking at that in upcoming weeks but, that said, this piece of it is probably enough to think about on Fathers’ Day.

Yes, You Did Laugh

Genesis 18:1-15

June 14, 2026

 

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.  He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground.  He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.  Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.  Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on--since you have come to your servant."  So they said, "Do as you have said."

And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes."  Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it.  Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent."

Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him.  Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.  So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?"

The Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son."

But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid.

He said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

 

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            There are solemn moments when for some reason somebody starts giggling.  The more they try, the harder it is to stop.  That has even influenced how the Bible has been translated.  There’s a part of II Corinthians where Paul writes about the trials he has come through and the physical punishments that were inflicted on him. He tells of being given thirty-nine lashes five different times and being beaten with rods three times.  In the Revised Standard Version, published in 1946, he goes on to say how he had survived the same kind of brutality that had killed Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  Says Paul:

“One time I was stoned.”  [II Corinthians 11:25]

That made enough teenagers giggle in the 1960’s and 1970’s that when the New Revised Standard Version was published in 1989, the words had turned into

“Once I received a stoning.” 

Sarah found herself in one of those situations because she overheard the promise, solemnly propagated to Abraham, that they would soon have a son, and she found even the thought so silly that it was laughable.  The Bible politely puts it,

“Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” [Genesis 18:11]

Sarah was a little bit earthier than that.

“Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?’" [Genesis 18:12]

Of course, the mysterious visitor called her out on that.  And, of course,

“Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid. He said, ‘Yes, you did laugh.’" [Genesis 18:15]

It was a “gotcha” moment.  She wouldn’t want to offend a guest by implying he must be crazy – but come on!  Still, she got ahold of herself and must have stifled the chuckling somehow.

It wasn’t forgotten, though.  In a section of the story that we didn’t hear this morning, we learn the outcome:

“The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.  Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.  Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him.” [Genesis 21:1-3]

The word “Isaac” means “laughter”.  So you could say that God let her have the last laugh.

            It is alright, in fact it is more than alright, to find joy in what God does.  If that joy bursts out in laughter, that’s fine.  Yes, laughter can sometimes be bitter.  Sometimes it can be meanspirited.  I’m not talking about those.  I’m talking about the times when it arises as an aspect of gratitude and of surprise at just how wonderful God can be.  Laughter, like song, can be a genuine, heartfelt expression of praise – and no genuine expression of wonder at God’s goodness and care (let’s use the word “praise”) should never be undervalued.

            We have to learn that, though – at least some of us.  Sarah was living in a world where women were supposed to keep their thoughts to themselves.  We live in a world with its own rules of decorum that find their way even into our spiritual lives.  C.S. Lewis wrote,

“When I first began to draw near to belief in God, and even for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should ‘praise’ God; still more in the suggestion that God himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratifies that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and of his worshipers, threatened to appear in my mind. The psalms were specially troublesome in this way – ‘praise the Lord’, ‘O praise the Lord with me’, ‘O praise him.’ (And why, incidentally, did praising God so often consist of telling other people to praise him? Even in telling whales, snowstorms, etc. to go on doing what they would certainly do whether we told them or not?)” …

He continued,

“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I have never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness with the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical percentages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time, most balanced and capacious, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least.”[1]

            Sarah laughed.  Maybe it was inappropriate but it was real.  Maybe it was out of line from someone whose place was to wait silently behind the tent flap until it was time to serve dinner.  God was challenging her reality, announcing that her troubles would be over in an unlikely way.  It was funny.  But it was even funnier that it was true.  She would give birth – at her age! – to a son and his name itself would be a reminder of God’s faithfulness to her and to everyone.

Praise the Lord, then, however you do it, for his unexpected miracles of grace.  Praise God for the shade of an oak tree on a hot day.  Praise him for strangers passing by and for those who offer hospitality.  Praise God for solemn messages of joy or oddly deadpan delivery of good news.  Praise him for late-life pregnancies.  Praise him for safe deliveries.

While we’re at it, praise God for his own Son, born in a yet more miraculous way than Isaac was, and for the rebirth that was his resurrection.  Praise him for the chance he gives us all to be born of his Spirit and to know the freedom that lets us laugh and the joy that makes us sing and clap because we’ve seen for ourselves that “His steadfast love endures forever.” 

Amen.

 

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[1] C.S. Lewis, “Reflections on the Psalms: ‘A Word about Praising’” in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis (New York: Inspirational Press, 1987), pp. 177 and 179. 

A Complicated Prologue

 

Genesis 12:1-9

June 7, 2026

 

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan,

Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.

And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

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            Genesis is largely a family epic.  Beginning with what we’ve heard today, it tells us about the ups and downs of an extended family that moved around the Middle East, from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean coast to Syria to Egypt, over a period of generations during the Bronze Age.  We cannot put solid dates on any of it, but we’re talking about somewhere from 2000 B.C. to 1300 B.C., give or take.

            There’s a lot in their lives that is strange to us.  Slavery and polygamy play a big part.  There are examples of fortune-telling and idol worship and echoes of child sacrifice.  We hear about desert chieftans and absolute monarchs.  There are horses, but camels had not yet been domesticated.  Many events hinge on finding enough water and pasture for the sheep and goats.

            Much of the tension comes from situations that are familiar, though.  There are marital arguments.  Parents play favorites.  Teenagers fall in love.  People try to scam each other on business deals.  Some of them become refugees from natural disasters or get caught between warring neighbors.  Disagreements over inheritance turn ugly.  Babies are born and people get themselves cushy jobs.  They worry about aging.  Life goes on.

            That life that continues from generation to generation is defined by the underlying guidance and protection of the Lord who singles out a seventy-five-year-old man named Abram who is living in Haran, in what’s now southeastern Turkey, and living (apparently) quite comfortably, and tells him to leave it all.

"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." [Genesis 12:1-3]

There is so much missing from this statement.  Was Abram used to hearing from God?  Did he question his sanity?  Did Sarai, his wife, have a word or two to say about this?  They had a nephew who seems to be a part of their household.  What led them to take him with them and what led him to go along?  They had so much going for them:

“all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran,” [Genesis 12:5]

and the trip was taking them through some decent land along the eastern Mediterranean, and as they passed through there

“the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring [which he did not have] I will give this land.’" [Genesis 12:7]

Instead, Abram and Sarai and Lot and the crew kept traveling south toward the Negeb, that is the desert. [Genesis 12:9]

            Everything that happened to them, and to the family that they unexpectedly continued, had the same divine presence and divine promise in the background.  God spoke to some of them, but maybe not to all of them, across the centuries.  At times they are intimately aware of him and at other points they just wonder whether he has been at work without their knowledge behind the scenes, so that when you take not just the lives of Abram and Sarai but also the lives of their descendants all together, what we end up seeing is that rather than God being part of their story, they are part of God’s story.

            Their world was one filled with petty kings who considered themselves mighty warriors and overlapped with an age when the first large empires on earth were taking shape.  Yet it was into the seemingly insignificant and often messed-up family that looked back to Abram and Sarai and in the middle of that particularly chaotic part of the world that the God who had called Abram and Sarai to make some strange choices would himself, through a similarly inexplicable, miraculous birth, take on human form.  At that moment, another descendant of theirs would write,

“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” [John 1:14]

The blessing God gave that family made the way for all people of the earth to be blessed, to be redeemed, to be one family, fully his own.