Genesis 21:9-21
Matthew 10:24-39

I enjoy interacting with children, and I enjoy observing children as they play and interact with each other.  Their relationships often clearly reveal the means and methods of relating that have been modeled by the adults in their lives.  Have you ever noticed that when three children are playing together there seems to be more tension and conflict than is evident when there are two or four children relating to each other?  Why is this?  What dynamics are involved in the interaction of three that results in more tension and conflict?  Often what happens is that two of the three team up and overrule the third in deciding what game to play or what the rules of the game are.  Or two begin to whisper messages to each other leaving out the third person.  The third child responds angrily because he feels rejected, unaccepted, left out.  The third child attempts to be accepted by forcing issues with the other two, yelling foul, or just yelling.  The situation becomes worse and the strained feelings are intensified. 
           
The interaction I have described that all of us have observed is not limited to children.  Similar tension and struggle occur within families, between co‑workers, and among church members.  A triangular relationship is formed when three people relate to each other but two of the three team up to maintain a secret from the third, agree to do things together regardless of the wishes or interests of the third, or collaborate to work against the third.  A triangular relationship may also develop when one person in the triangle is unaware of the relationship of the other two as happens in a marriage when one of the spouses becomes emotionally involved with another person.  Triangular relationships often develop in the church when two or more people discuss an issue or situation related to a third person and then at some point use their conversation and discussion as leverage against the third party. Triangulation in its worst form is when abuse occurs and secrecy is urged by the abuser of the victim.  The remedy for triangulation is Jesus’ statement recorded by Matthew in our Gospel text for today: “Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered, and every secret will be made known.  What I am telling you in the dark you must repeat in broad daylight and what you have heard in private you must announce from the housetops” (Matthew 10:26-27).
           
The first triangular relationship recorded in the Bible occurred in the first patriarch's family.  I want us to explore this thread in Abraham's story that often is either skimmed over rapidly or omitted entirely.  What do you know about Hagar and Ishmael?  How do they fit into the lives of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac?  Why were they mistreated and why do we omit them when we remember and repeat the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac?
           
From the beginning of Abraham and Sarah's involvement with God, the writers of Scripture expressed a basic belief in God.  They did not attempt to prove God.  For them, God's existence was a given, and their efforts were to tell about why and when people related and responded to God.  However you deal with the ages of Abraham and Sarah, it is safe to say that both were older adults when they began their journey of faith, going out from Haran not knowing where they were going but confident with whom they were going. 
           
In the making of a covenant‑relationship with God, Abraham understood that relationship to include having many descendants.  After this understanding, the months rolled into years and the years rolled into a decade.  Both Abraham and Sarah got nervous about the situation.  Obviously, they weren't getting any younger.  Sarah had an Egyptian slave named Hagar.  They probably obtained her in Egypt during their sojourn there when Canaan was experiencing a famine.  When they had gone to Egypt Abraham assumed the king would want Sarah for himself since she was so beautiful.  In order to make that possible and save his own life, Abraham and Sarah pretended to be brother and sister.  The Egyptian king indeed did want Sarah and paid a big dowry for her, flocks of sheep and goats, cattle, slaves, and camels.  When the king learned that Abraham and Sarah had lied to him, triangulated against him, he kicked them out of the country along with their slaves and their flocks (Gen. 12:20).  Probably this is how Hagar came to live with them. 
           
Ten years had passed, and Sarah had not had the first hint of morning sickness or any other early sign of pregnancy.  She suggested that Hagar serve as a substitute for her and that Abraham and Hagar have a child.   Sarah got no objection from either Abraham or Hagar.  It sounded like a great idea to them.  The plan worked because Hagar did become pregnant.  There is no hint in the story that there was anything wrong with this arrangement.  This was common practice in that culture.  According to the customs of the time it was right and generous of Sarah to be willing‑‑since she seemed unable to become pregnant‑‑to allow her slave to bear a child for her husband.  Soon after Hagar became pregnant problems began to arise.  The way Sarah saw it, Hagar no longer walked around the tent, she flounced and bounced.  When she had a craving for bagels and lox, Abraham got on his camel and got them for her.  Sarah was livid, concluded that Hagar despised her and said it was Abraham's fault.  Abraham said, "She's your slave.  Do what you want to with her.  If firing her will make you feel better, then do it."  Sarah didn't fire Hagar.  She just made life so miserable for her, treated her so cruelly that Hagar packed up her belongings and hit the path into the desert.  Abraham sat watching all of this happen neither saying nor doing anything for Hagar.   By his silence Abraham teamed with Sarah in the triangle that was an accessory to the offenses.   Hagar felt the rejection, felt deserted, and went to the deserted land to live. 
           
Hagar found an oasis in the desert where she could survive.  This oasis was located on the road to Shur which was on the Sinai Peninsula between Haran and Egypt.  No doubt Hagar was on her way back to her homeland and why not?  She had been treated so cruelly by Sarah and Abraham, their tent wasn't any place to stay.  She didn't want to bring up her child to be mistreated and rejected as was being done to her.  While Hagar was at this spring a messenger from God met her and talked with her.  The word translated messenger means a messenger of any sort, human or divine.  The Latin word angelus in the Vulgate was the first fixed term for heavenly beings and unfortunately many of us hear the word angel and immediately form an image of some heavenly being with wings floating back and forth between this life and some other life.  The tellers of Hagar's story do not tell us what the messenger was like.  They were interested in the message and what Hagar did as a result of the message. 
           
Feeling deserted in the middle of the desert, Hagar pondered two questions, "Where have I come from and where am I going?"  These two questions are inescapably linked.  The future is related to the past.  In order to determine where we are going in life, we need to examine from where we have come.  Hagar was faced with this dilemma, and she concluded she was running away.  By drawing this conclusion, Hagar was able to hear an important word from God.  Rather than running from her past, she needed to go back and face it.  Then, there was a promise to her that she would have so many descendants that nobody would be able to count them.   The promise made to Hagar was the same that God had made to Abraham.  God always is on the side of the oppressed.  The promise of descendants was the assurance of acceptance and approval, the sign of blessing.  Since Hagar really had nothing better in mind and having had time to experience and reflect on what life was like alone in the desert, she headed back to patch things up with Sarah. 
           
There is no indication of any great welcome home, but things must have been some better than when Hagar left.  Maybe Hagar didn't flaunt her pregnancy as she had done before leaving.  Maybe Sarah had dealt better with her feelings and concluded she wanted/needed her slave, Hagar.  In any event Hagar stayed and in a few months she gave birth to Ishmael.  The name means "God hears the cry of one in distress."  Every time anyone called Ishmael by name they were saying something about God and being reminded that God had heard Hagar's cry of distress in the desert. 
           
Life went along fairly smoothly for thirteen or fourteen years.  But Hagar's troubles weren't over.  Sarah surprised her gynecologist with the news that she was pregnant and would spend her ninetieth birthday in the maternity ward.  After she got over the shock of it all and was able to stop laughing at the prospects of her situation, Sarah was as happy as she could be for awhile.  Then one day after Isaac had been weaned, which would have made him about three, Sarah saw Ishmael, who was seventeen by now, playing with her little Isaac.  As the colloquial expression states, “the fat was in the fire” because Sarah was convinced that her son would have to split the family inheritance with that brat that belonged to her slave.  She used the importance of Isaac as the child of promise to nag Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael permanently.  These two stories (Gen. 16 and 21) about Hagar leaving reveal reluctance of the compilers to sacrifice any of the traditions that had become established in Israel.  What is strange in telling about Hagar and Ishmael leaving in chapter 21 is that Abraham gave Hagar some food, a leather bag of water, and put Ishmael on her back.  He was an able bodied seventeen-year-old.  Why did she carry him?  Obviously, this account came from another tradition and no effort was made to reconcile the differences in the various threads when they were woven together to form this story.  No one proofread the file before it was printed.
           
By the time that Hagar and Ishmael arrived at Beersheba they were out of water.  Hagar had Ishmael sit down under a tree and she sat down some distance away because she could not bear to watch her son die.  She began to cry.  In the midst of her crying Hagar received a message from God that Ishmael would have many descendants, and they would form a great nation.  She looked out across the desert and through her tears she saw a well she had not seen previously.  She went to the well, filled her leather bag and gave her son a drink of water.  They survived that ordeal. Ishmael lived in the wilderness of Paran and became a skillful hunter.  Hagar arranged a marriage for him with an Egyptian woman.  They became the parents of twelve sons who were ancestors of twelve tribes that settled in the territory east of Egypt in the direction of Assyria.  When Abraham died, Ishmael went back to Canaan where he and Isaac buried their father in the cave of Machpelah where Abraham had buried Sarah. 
           
The thread about Hagar and Ishmael in Abraham's story apparently was told and retold because of a double interest.  First, it was told to explain the relationship between the Israelites and the Ishmaelites.  Because the Ishmaelites lived to the east of the Israelites, first Ishmael and then his descendants were said to have lived over against or in the face of the Israelites who faced East when they worshiped God.  The Ishmaelites and Israelites were the shadow sides of each other.  Ishmael had twelve sons who became the heads of the twelve tribes of the Ishmaelites.  Isaac had twin sons.  One of them was Jacob who had twelve sons who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Because Ishmael and Hagar were sent away by Abraham and Ishmael later roamed the wilderness of Paran, this was read back into the story to say that he lived like a wild donkey and lived apart from his relatives.  After all, he was rejected, turned away by his father, and must have felt very much the outcast.  The Ishmaelites became the Bedouins whose descendants can be seen in Israel today living in tents in the desert.  To see their tents and flocks dotting the desert landscape is like stepping back in time and seeing Ishmael and his family wandering from oasis to oasis.   
           
The other interest in telling Hagar and Ishmael's story is that through tangled human relationships God's mercy does not fail but is offered to all people.  Hagar knew how to roll with the punches and was able to survive both Sarah and Abraham.  In the process she was surprised that God cared for her and watched over her, and she made this discovery in the empty desert rather than at a shrine or in the tent of Abraham. 
           
One of the intended insights in the stories of Ishmael and Isaac is they had the same father.  They were both created by the same God.  The God of Ishmael and Isaac is your God and my God.  We can learn from this story on this Father’s Day, some parental principles.  While many of the lessons from Abraham are lessons of how not to do things as a father, what is being portrayed is how rightly to relate as a parent, treating children equally with love and respect, accepting each child as a gift, and doing what is just, fair, loving, and merciful for children.  In spite of the mess that Abraham and Sarah made of their lives, in spite of the way they mistreated Hagar and Ishmael, and in spite of the way Ishmael became an outcast, it was not God’s intent that Hagar and Ishmael be mistreated, abused and that Ishmael become an outcast.  All of that resulted from the triangulation of Abraham and Sarah against Hagar and Ishmael.   God loved them all and sought to be related to all of them.  This extremely unhealthy way of relating was destructive to the lives of Hagar and Ishmael.  Their experience reveals how deeply destructive triangulation can be if not corrected.  And the corrective is clearly stated by Jesus in our Gospel lesson, “Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered, and every secret will be made known.  What I am telling you in the dark you must repeat in broad daylight and what you have heard in private you must announce from the housetops” (Matthew 10:26-27).  With all of the conflict, hurt, and destruction that this triangular relationship caused, this story contains a great nugget of truth.  Contained in the story of Hagar and Ishmael is the story of God half tipsy with compassion who went around making marvelous promises to everybody, loving everybody, and creating great nations, like the last of the big‑time spenders handing out thousand dollar bills.  What a powerful lesson of God’s mercy, love and grace!  May we learn the lesson well, so well that it becomes imbedded in our lives.  May we relate to others as God related to and cared for Hagar and Ishmael.  May we see that it is in treating and relating to all people equally that we prevent triangulation and promote open, honest, healthy relationships. What better skill can we develop, what better gift can we give than open, honest, healthy relationships!