"Abraham Part 3: The Need for Children"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on August 20, 2006

Text — Genesis 21:8-21

The child [Isaac] grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.  9 But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. †  10 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.”  11 The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.  12 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.  13 As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”  14 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.

15 When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.  16 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.  17 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.  18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”  19 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.

20 God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.  21 He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

This August, my sermons pick up on the big themes of the Abraham stories. I’ve talked about Abraham and Sarah being sent to a land they didn’t know, which leads to our sense of dislocation in the world.  We’re never completely settled. Last week, our text was God’s covenant with Abraham, which was a chance to think about our tribal nature and the problems with that. 

Today the theme is the need for children. Children are a big deal in life, whether you’re a parent or not.  How children act, how they do in school, and what they make of their lives — all of this gets a lot of attention and rightfully so. For brothers and sisters, which child gets the blessing, from which parent, is another issue in many of these Bible stories, and our stories

Today, I want to give an overview of the various passages involving Abraham and Sarah and their desire or need for a child.  The fancy terms are generativity: what is the fruit of our lives?  Paternity — who is the father of whom?  We always know who the mother of a child is; the father’s identity is in question, at least in the days before paternity tests..  And legacy — what do we leave behind, what endures? 

First, Sarah and Abraham were old and not likely to have any children. To use the unfortunate Biblical term, Sarah was “barren.”  Then we have the story I mentioned two weeks ago, in which Abraham , to protect himself, tells the Egyptian pharaoh that  Sarah is his sister; so Sarah is taken into the pharaoh’s harem.

This raises tension in the narrative because turning Sarah over to the Pharaoh doesn’t help the chances that Sarah will ever bear Abraham’s child.

A few chapters later, Sarah becomes so desperate about her childless condition that she tells Abraham, “Go into my slave girl [Hagar]so that I can have children by her.” Hagar is Sarah’s property, any child born to Hagar would be Sarah’s legally. 

How did Abraham respond to this offer?  It says, “Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah.”  He didn’t say “Oh, Sarah, I could never do that.” He didn’t say, “Oh goodie.”  He kept his mouth shut and did what he was told. Hagar gets pregnant with Abraham’s child, and (not surprisingly) the relationship between Sarah and Hagar deteriorates.

Hagar gives birth to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, but from the Jewish perspective (which is what we have in the Bible) Ishmael is not the promised son.  In the tradition, Ishmael is the father of the Arab people.  Listen to how he’s described. God tells Hagar, “He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” That sounds a lot like the Middle East today.

Then we have the famous three angels who visit Abraham and Sarah in their tent and promise that Sarah will bear Abraham a son.  This is what we call a “type scene” for the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.  The scenes are similar since they both involve angels and both pregnancies are unlikely, in Mary’s case because she’s a virgin, in this case because Sarah is 90 and Abraham is 100.

But while we’re waiting to see if the promise will be fulfilled, we have two very strange episodes  to pass time and build tension.

The first one is about the city of Sodom.  The evil crowd wants to rape the angels who are visiting Lot’s house.  Lot protects the angels (he’s a good host) and offers to hand over his daughters instead (he’s not so good a father). More of those Biblical family values.

Lot and his family escape the destruction of Sodom, but Lot’s wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt.  (In the Bible, we have many lessons that looking back is a bad idea)  Then, after Lot’s daughters lose their prospective husband in the destruction of Sodom, they get their father drunk and sleep with him so they can have children. We don’t cover this story in our Sunday School.

The second episode in this interlude, while were waiting to see if Sarah will get pregnant, is another one about Abraham pretending that Sarah is his sister, which results in Sarah being taken into another harem, this time by King Abimelech.  This really throws open the question of paternity, because right afterwards, Sarah realizes she’s pregnant and Isaac is born.

Which leads to today’s passage.  The interesting thing here is we read very little about Isaac himself.  More attention is paid to what happens to the first son, Ishmael. Ishmael, and his mother Hagar, are rejected, as you heard.  They’re pushed out of their home into the desert.  They run out of water. Hagar puts the boy under a bush to die, and then withdraws the distance of a bowshot so she won’t hear him cry and he dies. It’s a heart-wrenching story. 

So, stepping back, there’s a long drawn-out account of Abraham’s and Sarah’s struggle over their lack of children, and when they do have children, they have struggles over that too. There’s a message in all of this about why children are important.

Parents worry a lot about their children — about their safety, their health, about their friends.  We want them to flourish.  We want them to be smart and strong.  We want them to be happy.

But children are important not just for the children’s sake.  They’re important for the parents’ sake too. In Abraham’s case, they are clearly more important for the parent’s sake.

This is almost a taboo subject.  You don’t hear parents say, “I want my child to succeed as emotional compensation for my own sense of failure.”  You don’t’ hear parents say, “I push my kid in sports to get back at the world for the pain and embarrassment I felt for always being the last one to get picked for a softball team in 7^th grade.”

Parents don’t usually say things like that.  And we have appropriate disdain for the most blatant forms of parents trying to live vicariously through their children — parents yelling at the little league coach.  I’ve heard of parents lobbying teachers to give their kids a higher grade. Parents do their kids’ homework and write their kids’ papers. In my last church, I had a mother who was filling out her son’s confirmation class worksheets. 

This is all for the parents’ sake, not the children’s.  Parents want children they can be proud of, even if they have to fake it.  I often smile at how parents use the annual Christmas letter to tell us the wonderful accomplishments of their children.  It’s a way of saying, “We gave birth to a little Jesus too.” I’ve never gotten a Christmas letter which said, “Tommy got expelled for spray painting dirty pictures on the walls of the school bathroom.”

But beneath the over-parenting are legitimate needs that parents have.  Being a parent is hard work.  It demands a lot of sacrifice.  It’s not always inspiring. The story of Abraham and Sarah tells us that parents have children because there’s something in it for the parents. 

I never raised children.  I have three stepchildren, but Robin’s kids were teenagers when I appeared on the scene. I have a nephew and a niece, but I’m not real close to them either. So the thought occurs to me, and maybe this has occurred to you: What would it be like to be old and alone in the world without any children, without anyone from the next generation to do something for me when I can’t do it myself.

And then, I sometimes think, “The church is really my family.”  The church will be here a long time.  In some ways, it’s more secure family than a blood-based family. Your own kids might end up living in Uzbekistan — at little too far away to help. First Church probably won’t move to Uzbekistan. 

I seriously propose this as a way for all of us to think about the church, even if you do have children.  The church is a way for us to stick together and grow old together, and take care of each other.  We’re a kind of tribe.  There’s security in numbers and in our familiarity each other.

But getting back to Abraham, the sad thing about the Abraham story is that he longs for children through most of his life, but when he gets children, two sons, he doesn’t seem to care that much about them. Ishmael is cast out. Isaac suffers the rest of his life from the trauma of almost becoming a burnt offering.

Of course, Abraham would argue it wasn’t to serve his own needs.  It was to serve God’s needs.  God is the one who asked for the sacrifice.  What about that?  According to the Bible, what kind of parent is God?

According to the Bible, God wants us to worship him.  God wants sacrifice.  God wants obedience.  Jesus prayed, “Not what I will, but what you will.”

This makes it sound as if God needs us.  Can that be?  I’ll deal with it next week when our text will be the binding of Isaac or the sacrifice of Isaac.

I’ll close with this question.  It’s a fruitful question. What might God need from us?  And if God does need something, how does that change our idea of who or what God is?