What is it you fear?
Link to Video: https://www.facebook.com/138797592802860/videos/920519411692560
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
June 21, 2020—Proper 7A
Genesis 21:8-21; Matthew 10:24-39
What is it about following Jesus that might scare a person?
Clearly, there’s something to be afraid of, since Jesus repeats it three times: Have no fear. Do not fear. Don’t be afraid. And then he’s off and running, launched into a discussion of how very, very risky discipleship will be.
He doesn’t give us an out, urging us to shout it from the rooftops. Say it right out there in public, for everyone to hear. This good news is for everyone, and you have to share it, even though some people will react badly.
Because there will be push-back, he assures us, and reactivity, and hostility. Even your family might not take it well. It will cause fights over the dinner table. It will lead to long arguments. It might well cause actual rifts between you and those you have always loved. Son against father. Daughter against mother. At war against each other.
That could, in fact, be frightening.
I can’t help but think, in this present moment, of the renewed challenge to take up the work of anti-racism. And my gut tightens. I want to “get it right,” and I’m anxious about stumbling through, and getting challenged, and having to admit my mistakes and still keep going and learning and trying. It scares me. Scares me because the path isn’t entirely clear. And scares me because Jesus is obviously right: there will be push back. There are not only those who will let me know when I’m fumbling the ball, but also those who will push back on the idea that we even need to do this work.
Is that what scares you too?
This is also a gospel that is rooted in forgiveness of sins, which means you will need to admit your own woundedness, your own complicity, your own willful blindness. And once you’ve done that work, you might need to ask people to examine their own hearts, their own willingness to leave the structures of our society unexamined.
Don’t be afraid, he says, even though the way will not be easy.
Many, it seems, are afraid of what will be lost, if this country takes seriously the voices of black Americans, if we admit the ways in which inequality has been baked into the system from the beginning, admit that changing laws has not always changed realities. Many are uncertain what things might look like, when we take the steps necessary to actually create equal opportunity for all.
Have no fear, Jesus says. And though we are terrified of the unknown, we will try to keep listening. Try to hear and trust when he teaches over and over that the Kingdom of God is not about destroying one group and putting another in its place. It is about the liberation of all people, and the healing of systems that make us ALL sick, no matter where we dwell within them.
What scares you, about living and preaching the gospel?
Is it the uncertainty and vulnerability? The opposition and pushback? The need for self-examination and confession? The possible change and upheaval? All of these things I’ve mentioned, and maybe a few others, I’m guessing. But … if you’re a black American, there’s another big fear at the moment: the fear that nothing at all will change. The fear that we white Americans will only be able to see and hear so much, before we shut down, slap on a band-aid, and go back to our regular lives.
That temptation will be strong, especially with all those fear responses kicking in. It’s hard to stick with this kind of work for the long haul, because it’s so raw and so exhausting. Which is why I’m so grateful for all the biblical stories that can ground us in the holiness of the task and remind us of God’s place in it all. Hagar and Ishmael, I believe, can be just such a touchstone for us.
It’s a hard story. Even Hagar’s name makes it clear, as scholar Wil Gafney points out: “ha gar” means “the resident alien;” she is a foreigner, an enslaved woman who doesn’t even get a real name.[i] Small wonder, then, how much she suffers at the hand of her mistress.
When Sarah thought she could not have her own child, she gave Hagar as a wife to Abraham, and Hagar gave birth to his first son, Ishmael. But when we enter the story today, Sarah has finally borne her own son with Abraham, and she’s watching Isaac playing happily with his older brother. Consumed by the fear that Ishmael will take what she feels belongs only to Isaac, Sarah decides to cast Hagar and her child out from the safety of their household.
With nothing more than a skin of water and a piece of bread, Hagar the nameless one, Hagar the foreigner has been banished to the wilderness. As an enslaved woman, she has made none of the choices that brought her and her child to that barren place. At every step, it was Abraham and Sarah’s actions, Abraham and Sarah’s needs, Abraham and Sarah’s feelings that had decided Hagar and Ishmael’s fate.
And now, they are in the wilderness: hungry, thirsty, and scared to death. In a gut-wrenching image of parental heartbreak, Hagar leaves Ishmael under a bush and walks away, rather than have to watch her child die. She has forgotten, or perhaps no longer believes that the child’s name means “God will hear.” She has also lost touch with the previous time she encountered God in the wilderness, when a messenger assured her that God had taken heed of her affliction (just as God had taken heed of the affliction of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt). In response, she took the extraordinary action of naming God, addressing him with a name that could mean “God I have seen” or “God sees me.”[ii]
God sees the nameless one. And God hears the cries of the child he promised to hear. And God saves them, bringing them back into the promise that Ishmael too would be the father of a great nation.
There is blessing enough for all. And God can redeem even the most convoluted and human systems, no matter how caught up in fear, jealousy, pride, and anger we might get ourselves.
We do get really, really caught up. Especially when we refuse to hear each other. Refuse to see each other. Refuse to give each other a name.
That is something that is truly, bone-chillingly frightening. That is something we should indeed be afraid of. And it’s what Jesus invites us to work against with all the strength and love that comes from him and lives in us.
Even when the work is hard. Even when it scares you, in any number of ways. Because it is kingdom work, and it is work that brings Jesus to our side, slipping into the yoke and pulling alongside us. The work is long, but the company is unrivaled, and the goal is the liberation and healing of us all. May it be so. Amen.
[i] Wil Gafney, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/main-articles/hagar
[ii] ibid