Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
A Sermon for Foundry United Methodist Church by Rev. Shalom Agtarap
July 18th, 2021
Genesis 21:14
Focus Statement: When systems are not made for us, god gives us blessing, shows us compassion, revives us with life-giving water — to go our own way!
Opening Prayer —
I am the daughter of Filipino immigrants, hard-working, intelligent, spirit-filled people who migrated to California. While I am a cradle United Methodist, my sisters and I were often the only kids of color in a sea of white churches that my father was appointed to. In ministry, I am a brown woman, ordained in an institution that never sought to ordain women, much more Southeast Asian women. And my job is to reflect on scripture compiled without a Hagar in mind. It’s as though I am a plant, whose roots are watered in another garden. They had to be! If I were to be of any help to the Filipino immigrant local church that sent me to seminary, I would have to divest from white ways of knowing, storytelling and preaching. If I were to honor the elders who stuffed $20 bills in my pocket as they pulled me in for a hug, blessing me in prayer and pocket money, I would have to learn to bring the gospel to life in ways that honored indigenous ways of being. The quickest way to dishonor them, would be to hide the parts of myself they knew and loved and celebrated, in the pursuit of bringing the gospel fully alive.
A garden opened up in my time at Wesley Seminary, just up the road from Foundry, I soaked up the water that flowed from womanist, mujerista and other liberation theologies. But I didn’t know how to hold the tension of being a second-gen Filipino woman learning theology in a predominantly black and white context. God-talk facilitated and imagined by people who have lived experience of marginalization and resilience makes all the difference to our collective liberation but I still needed to fill in the gaps. I found myself at crossroads many times. Socialized as an Asian American, I’m taught to not rock the boat and fit in wherever I can. To always excel, but to do so with great humility. What are you? Where are you from? Where are you really from? Are questions I’ve been asked all my life and it has only accelerated since I began serving as a pastor in predominantly white denomination. Instead of seeing my identities as a curse, however, the gifts of womanist theologies remind me I come from a place that I can be curious about. That I come from a people. That I come from a culture. None of these can be erased and all of them are integral to how I experience the world, to how I understand God at work.
Womanist theology, I have learned, is a gift of intersections. And a central character who helps inform this theology is the witness of Hagar in Genesis.
As Delores Williams wrote in Sisters in the Wilderness, a seminal work in womanist theology, “there are striking similarities between Hagar’s story and the story of African American women. Hagar’s heritage was African, from Egypt, scripture says. Hagar was
enslaved. Black American women had emerged from a slaved heritage and still lived in its long shadow. Hagar was brutalized by her slave owner the woman named Sarah. The narratives of enslaved women in the United States and even narratives of modern day workers tell of brutal or cruel treatment from the wives of slave owners and from contemporary white female employers.”1
Hagar continues to speak to us today. Dr. Wil Gafney comments Hagar’s story has a little something for everyone from enslavement on this continent and elsewhere — to all the resistance and revolutionary spirit that has ever risen up against oppressive forces. “Hagar is the mother of Harriet Tubman and the women who freed themselves..I see God’s return of Hagar to her servitude as the tendency of some religious communities to side with the abuser at the expense of abused women and their children. Ultimately Hagar escapes her slaveholders and abusers and receives her inheritance from God, and God fulfills all of God’s promises to her.”
To the white folks at church today, who is Hagar for you? Who is Hagar for me? Though I’ve been invited into Black church communities, though I am deeply accompanied by African American friends, I cannot appropriate these historical and cultural stories as my own. It is my responsibility, and all those who love and celebrate black women, to extend Hagar’s story beyond the black and white paradigm that is so often the framework for race and class in the United States.
For me, to invoke the name of Hagar is to invoke the woman who exists at intersections. And beyond those who identify as women; Hagar to me, is the patron saint of those who dwell in multiple layers of identity. She receives the prayers of those who are enslaved and yet hold great power. People who are frontline workers that in this pandemic have quickly become disposable. Sex workers who are celebrated during Pride events and yet are killed at high rates because of the color of their skin, and for how they break gender norms, all in one body.
What I know, as a clergywoman of color in a mainline denomination is what those who have come before me have long experienced: that we are set within what bell hooks calls interlocking systems of domination: white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Our church is set within these interlocking systems, our schools, our homes, and even our relationships.
While historical record clearly states the 1956 General Conference voted to grant women full rights just as any pastor in good standing, it was only in the last few years
1 Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, pg 3
we’ve celebrated more black clergywomen’s election as bishops and our first openly queer bishop in the west.
We must read history clearly: that as we celebrated 65 years of full ordination rights to women, that many women — immigrant women, women of color, and transgender women — still lack access to all levels of leadership in our church. Beloveds, we have so much further to go!
Which brings us back to Sister Hagar. She’s got a ways to go before she gets free...she is Othered because of her ethnic background. She is treated like property when Sarah seizes her for her productivity to produce an heir. She is a problem to be solved, not a human being with dignity. Yes, we’re talking about Hagar but can we just talk about Sarah for a minute? She’s got some issues! What prevents a sisterhood from forming, what blocks solidarity from building is that Sarah is consumed by the patriarchy and believes she is entitled to more access and privilege than any other woman in that camp.
The event that ultimately expels Hagar from the community, leaving her and her child vulnerable, is that Sarah heard something. She heard kids at play. In Chapter 21:9 The Common English says she heard laughter.
This woman who holds power, heard joy, mirth, lightheartedness and it triggered in her frustration, resentment, anger.
We need not stretch our imaginations very far to come up with modern day examples of when women in power were threatened by others enjoying life. Whether it’s Amy Cooper calling out a birdwatcher in Central Park, or BBQ Becky at the local picnic or countless white women who called the police on black people over trivial or nonexistent offenses. We have a problem that predates our current struggle with white supremacy— I submit to you that when Sarah heard laughter, she heard life! And the life of Ishmael, was a perceived threat to the life of her son, Isaac — another vestige of patriarchy and who is the rightful heir. Sarah is reminded, with each breath that Ishmael draws, that her own security is at risk and she must protect it at all costs. Why else do so many feel the need to police joy?
To white women, and those who experience the benefits of whiteness, who feel threatened, who feel like their security, or reputation, or way of life is at risk because of the full-throated, belly filling laughter of others — may I offer a word. The God who sees Hagar also sees you. God sees your effort. God sees the ways you’ve been shut down and left behind. God has heard your silent cries. And God will not leave you barren — without joy, without hope.
To beloved ones who exist at intersections, the helpless and harassed who are, in audre Lorde’s words “triple oppression” , the hear the good news: just as Sarah and Abraham were promised provision, so too are Hagar and Ishmael. “Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy’s cries over there. Get up, pick up the boy, and take him by the hand because I will make of him a great nation.”
Would Hagar have lived in the 20th century, I’m certain she would have picked up some audre lorde.
"A Litany for Survival": audre lorde
when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
or welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid.
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
I invoke the life and witness of audre lorde in sharing her poem, a litany for survival, as we think about the witness of Hagar. Audre lorde was speaking to other black lesbians like herself but the message resonates through the lens of Hagar. There were forces in
life that never meant for Hagar and Ishmael’s survival and yet, Hagar has a relationship with the divine. She is the only one to name God in all of scripture. In Chapter 16, Hagar says to the Holy One “You are El Ro’i, the God who sees.” This relationship allows Hagar to be seen and heard in return. In the midst of exhaustion and desperation, having been kicked out, sent away, expelled, deported, Hagar cries out to God and weeps. The water spent in salty tears returns to sustain her.
After an encounter with the Divine, water is given to Hagar and Ishmael. I do not believe the messenger of God intended for them to build up the energy to make it back to Abraham and Sarah’s camp! Life giving water is given so they continue moving in parched places. There is someone listening today who’s been saved from, given distance, broken out of, walked away from a place where love no longer lives. The best way to honor that gift of water is to not return to the place of death. To break free of the status quo and the ways that white supremacy and capitalism tell us to make do with the scraps we’re given. The good news is that when we follow a different path, away from hierarchies that demean, toward round tables where more varieties of God’s creation can gather — God will go with us and sustain our very breath.
The beauty of reading this story in modern times is that we know the rest of the story! We know God fulfills ALL of God’s promises to Hagar, Ishmael and all of his descendants.
If I may offer a word of encouragement to you today, in the off chance, you are discerning next steps, whether it’s a job, ending a relationship, the grueling task of healing from trauma, or beginning or even harder, continuing the work of anti-racism, — the God who sees, is present to us now in the form of Christ who offers life-sustaining water. And this liberating presence will accompany you in parched places — Christ will not do the work for you, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, will give you compassion and confidence as you make your own way.
Pray: You are the God who sees…
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