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 his fortieth birthday that Steve had received his sense of call to the ministry, clear and urgent. He had been praying, after reflecting on the minister’s sermon in worship that morning about “Ask, and it will be given you” (Matt 7:7a, NRSV). What he had prayed for was guidance in deciding whether to remain in the grocery business, or try something new, recognizing that it would mean risking all that was comfortable and familiar. But Steve was just about ready to take the risk rather than committing himself to spending the rest of his life doing what he had done all of his life, and what his father had done all of his life before him.
His father, in fact, had retired and moved to Florida a year earlier, leaving Steve to persist, so he thought, in something that was more of a habit than a joy, more of a routine than a passion. And that very night, Reverend Andrews had called to invite him to attend a meeting hosted by the presbytery, encouraging people to consider ministry as a second career. The denomination was forecasting a shortage of ministers, and meetings like this were being held all across the country to ask people who had had some adult experience in business or other occupations to consider whether God might be calling them to ministry. Steve had interpreted it as a sign from God, and the very next week found himself sitting in the church parlor with a woman from the denominational headquarters and two others—a woman younger than he, who was a social worker, and a man somewhat older than he, an insurance salesman—discussing the looming threat posed to the church by too few candidates for too many pulpits. “We need bearers of the promise,” the woman from the national office had said. “We need planters of the seed that will grow into a thriving tree.” Three months later, Steve and Sally found themselves in a tiny one-bedroom apartment three blocks from the Broadview subway station, seven subway stops and a transfer from Knox College.
Over the years of seminary training, Steve had been a good student, managing to keep up his grades while working in a Sobey’s grocery store two nights a week plus Saturdays. He remained true to his conviction that God was calling him to the ministry, and he and his classmates spoke of doing great things, preaching compelling sermons, teaching insightful classes, battling spiritual diseases, opening dull minds. But then, as graduation neared and he began looking closely at vacancies, Steve had been dismayed to discover that the majority of the church openings were quite small congregations in quite rural communities or struggling congregations in the inner city. That was not the vision that had come to him when he had discerned God’s call. He would eventually serve in both kinds of churches—two in small farming communities, four years in the first parish and six years in the second, and then three years in a small financially-ailing church in an unfashionable urban neighborhood where the people were aging even faster than the little brick bungalows. He had never preached to more than thirty people on a Sunday; had never had a class of more than half a dozen, whether it be children or youth or adults; had never saved a soul to the best of his knowledge, at least not in the way that makes a gripping story; had never fundamentally changed a single parishioner’s mind about anything that really mattered. Each of the church buildings had been run-down, could hardly accommodate any new members even if there had