God Hears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Op010iPjM

Fourth Sunday of Pentecost

Father’s Day

Rev. Dr. David M. Oliver

First United Methodist Church

Massillon, Ohio

June 21, 2026

Text: Genesis 21:8-21

Opening Prayer:

God, you heard the cry of the child Ishmael in his trauma of being cast out of the home where he had grown up with Abraham and Sarah and his mother Hagar. You listened to his distress of being abandoned and left alone in the desert. Thank you for not abandoning him. Thank you for hearing his cries. Remind us this morning that you hear our cries, our distress, our frustration and anger as well…and you do not abandon us or forsake us. Thank you so much! Speak to us now your Good News in the midst of the painful, bad news of this passage. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you wish to complete the sermon listening guide in your bulletin, please take it out at this time.

When I looked at the lectionary text for this morning, I thought that it was an unfortunate selection for Father’s Day. Jane agreed. Nevertheless, I stepped up to the challenge to deliver God’s word using a story that doesn’t show our spiritual ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, in a good light.

One of the things that I really appreciate about the Bible is that it doesn’t pretend. It doesn’t whitewash. What you see, hear about, and learn from its stories is sometimes raw, always real.

The biblical witness does not tell only the good side of a story. Today’s text is no sanitized version of human activity. It is full of sinfulness, selfishness, and short-sightedness. Who comes out well in our text for this week? Does anyone? Even God seems to be making choices that don’t sit well with us as we read. Granted, the divine view is always larger than ours; but still, it feels wrong to let Hagar and Ishmael bear the weight of the wrong choices of Sarah and Abraham.

As we wrestle with difficult biblical accounts like this, we are not called to make excuses or explain away bad behavior. It is true that we don’t have the whole picture at any time and that God’s ways are not our ways. Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves what do we do with texts like these? The answer is to do what we are always called to do, and that is to listen for where the good news is.

To begin this process, let’s look more closely at the story of Hagar and Ishmael and then make applications to our lives.

Many of you know from previous readings and messages on Genesis 12:1-9 that God made a covenant with Abraham. God promised Abraham land. God also promised that through Abraham that all the world would be blessed. God further promised Sarah and him children, descendants numbering the stars of heaven.

Following this wonderful, encouraging encounter, however, we find that Abraham and Sarah were unable to have children. For years they prayed, yet no children were given them despite their faithfulness and hopeful expectations.

When God’s promise was not fulfilled after eleven years of waiting, Sarah gave Abraham one of her slaves by whom they could have a child. She falsely reasoned that God needed help in delivering and fulfilling God’s promises.

The slave’s name was Hagar and the child born was called Ishmael (which means God will hear/God hears). Ishmael’s birth caused a great deal on jealousy and conflict in the household, especially between Sarah and Hagar. You can read about this in Genesis 16. As is the case with most sin, both women bear some responsibility for the deteriorating relationship but as the one who had power over her slave, Sarah has the greatest responsibility and culpability.

Fourteen years later, after Ishmael’s birth, Sarah miraculously gave birth to Isaac. She was elated with the gift of this son. We see in Scripture that Isaac represents the promise of God being fulfilled, not by human manipulation or contrivance, but by God’s sovereignty.

As the story continues, one day Sarah witnessed Ishmael playing with Isaac. She became jealous and covetous. She didn’t want Ishmael to have any of Abraham’s abundant wealth as an inheritance. She insisted that Abraham send Hagar and her son away into the wilderness with some bread and a container of water. She insisted that Abraham abandon his first son and the mother of his son, all of which had been orchestrated by Sarah herself. We see here that Sarah wasn’t happy with the outcome of her actions. She decided that Hagar and Ishmael had to go. To his discredit, Abraham did not stand up to Sarah. He chose to go along to get along. He sent Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. This wilderness was dangerous. It was not likely that the mother or son would long be able to survive.

Essentially, Abraham sent these two members of his household to their deaths. This is exactly what Hagar expected would happen. When the food and water were consumed, she felt helpless and hopeless. She placed her son under a bush and went a far distance away because she could not bear to watch him die of thirst. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.

It was then that God showed up in an unexpected way. God heard the cry of the young boy (who was probably 15 years of age by then). God also spoke through an angel to Hagar saying, “What troubles you, Hagar? 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 her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink” (Genesis 21:17-19).

We know very little of what transpired after that. We do know that Hagar raised her son in the vast wilderness of Paran in the southern part of what is now Israel. He was an expert bow hunter and according to Genesis 16, Ishmael was a fighter who provoked fights with others. He was against everyone else and everyone else was against him. This was some of the legacy of his trauma and abandonment by Abraham and Sarah.

We know that the Islamic faith traces their lineage to Ishmael while the Jewish faith traces their lineage to Isaac. While both were the children of Abraham, they have been in opposition since this time centuries ago. This enmity was brought on largely by the envy, jealousy, and selfish decisions of Sarah and Abraham.

In the actions of Abraham and Sarah we do not see the covenant of blessing be lived out. Rather, we see rejection. This is a witness not of love but envy and strife, not of generosity and care but abandonment and neglect. Abraham’s and Sarah’s sin has impacted the world. It continues to be felt today with warfare occurring in the Middle East across the very divides which were begun by them centuries ago.

Why would God allow Abraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael? What was Abraham thinking? Why in the world is Abraham upheld as the “father of many nations” if he couldn’t be a good father to his own son? These are all legitimate questions.

The Bible does not offer simple answers. It doesn’t address all the questions we might raise.

The good news is that we can relate to some of these people and their situations. When have we been quiet or submissive, as was Abraham, when speaking up and speaking out would have been more appropriate to counter unjust attitudes?

Who of us has not been jealous of the success or recognition of others while feeling slighted, even forsaken and hopeless, as Sarah did, when Hagar gave birth to a son which obviously delighted Abraham.

When have you been at the end of your rope, surrounded by shattered dreams, missed opportunities, and abundant regrets? Sarah must have felt some of this oppressive shame. Perhaps she even felt cursed by God for not being able to have a child. Such was common thinking in her day.

Into the circumstances causing despair, anger and myriad other feelings, God comes. God hears the cries of the brokenhearted. God heard Sarah’s cries as well as those of Hagar and Ishmael. He heard Abraham’s cries as he took his first-born son and Hagar into the wilderness. God hears your cries whether or not you know it, whether or not you feel it.

God comes alongside of those who are suffering. God is with those who cry out in suffering and anger because of mistreatment at the hands of parents, supervisors, authorities, and those in power. God comes to us. God hears us. God cares. God loves you, perhaps especially when you aren’t very lovable in order to bring you back to your better self.

God calls you and me to be his embodiment with others, to give them what we have received…grace, care, mercy especially when the person feels undeserving. When it comes to grace we are all undeserving.

Friends, this biblical account reveals that God is on the side of the sufferers, the victims, the hurting. God doesn’t excuse the sin of others any more than God excused the sin of Abraham and Sarah. They paid a price and we do as well when we sin. God’s judgment against unrighteous actions rarely comes quickly but it does come. We are all accountable both in this life and the life to come.

The Good News, however, is that our sin does not have the last word. It is not the most important word about us. Our failures are not final. Our future is not dictated by our past. God is in charge even when we forget God, even when you and I resist God.

God is the Advocate of the disadvantaged, the marginalized, those who suffer as exemplified by Hagar and Ishmael in this story. That is why we are engaged in addressing food insecurity, homelessness, and ministry with the elderly. Our call is to stand with the disadvantaged and minister with those in need, with those who cannot do something for us, with those who cannot repay us.

Our ministry is important work for us because it reminds us that we are doing with others what God has done with us. We cannot repay God. We can only accept what God offers and pass it on to others in the same way we have received it.

I am reminded of the fact that none of us can stand the justice of God. Justice is getting what we deserve. If we got what we deserved from God, we would be burned to ashes. We couldn’t and wouldn’t live. Our sin deserves death. Scripture says, “The wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23).

This same passage goes on the say, “…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the Gospel. You and I don’t get what we deserve. We get mercy and grace, eternal life, through our faith in Christ.

What you and I desperately need, and what Jesus supplied to us in his perfect life, horrific suffering, and glorious resurrection, is God’s mercy and grace instead of God’s justice. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.  The Good News of the Gospel is that God does not treat us justly. Instead, God treats us generously, gracefully, mercifully. What an amazing gift grace is! Thanks be to God!

When we treat others in the way God has treated us, we are embodying Jesus Christ with them. We are giving them what every human being needs – love, security, understanding, purpose, significance, and belonging. In essence, we are helping to re-dig the wells of deep joy and lasting peace in their lives.

God helped Hagar see a well that she had missed. God opened her eyes. God also opens our eyes. Perhaps God will help us open the eyes of others to the wells that God is offering…wells of hope, wells of healing, wells of faith, wells of belonging, love, worth and value.

So, in the midst of the sin and complicated mess of this passage, if we look carefully with the eyes of faith, we can come away with some good news.

The next time you or someone you know is in a difficult, painful, makes- no-sense place, I hope that you will remember that God enters into these difficulties and has something to say to us that is greater than the challenge, bigger than the pain, larger than the losses.

The bottom line is that God hears you. God sees you. God cares for you. God loves you. God will never leave you nor forsake you.

Let us pray.

O Lord, in your mercy hear our prayers. We say this not to wake you up or to make you listen to us. Rather, we say this to remind ourselves that you do indeed hear our prayers. Thank you for hearing our voices, even as you hear the voices of all who cry out in this world. We are grateful for your good news and today’s reminder that we worship the God who hears, who understands, who is with us in all of life’s ups and downs, our victories and our valleys, our sins and our sanctified living. Because you do this for us, we want to do the same for others. May it be so. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.