Over these last
three Thursdays we’ve been thinking about the message that all angels
communicate, that God is here, that God sees and knows us. The angels remind us
of God’s presence, in the places where we are, in the times when we are.
In this final
thought for Advent we’ll think a bit about the God who is here in our lives and
the lives of those around us.
It might seem
strange to begin with Hagar and Ishmael. After all, they don’t figure at all in
the story of the Bible after this point, and in some ways, we could argue they
weren’t meant to feature in it at all. Abraham had been promised as many
descendents as the stars in the sky, but his wife, Sarah, bears him no
children. In an attempt to manipulate the situation, she tells Abraham to
father a child with her slave, Hagar. Hagar becomes pregnant and has a son,
Ishmael, Abraham’s first born. But a few years later – we heard this story last
week – Sarah becomes pregnant and also has a son. Now there is a problem. Hagar
and Ishmael are really redundant, no longer needed, and Sarah wants to be rid
of them, in case there is any suggestion that Ishmael should inherit instead of
his younger half-brother, Isaac. So she tells Abraham to drive the mother and
child out into the desert, presumably knowing they are likely to die there. And
die they very nearly do, as we hear. But at the last minute, an angel
intervenes and points the way to a well. They survive and, as the story ends,
we are given just a hint of what is to come – Ishmael becomes a renowned
hunter, we are told, marries an Egyptian and makes the desert of Paran his
home.
They walk off into
the wilderness and into a whole new life. Hagar and Ishmael just seem to be
extras in the Biblical story, with brief walk on parts that move the tale
along, but without any lasting significance, and yet the fact that their
stories are told at all is important.
“God has heard the voice of the boy where he is” says the angel to
Hagar . “I will make a great nation of
him” says God through this angel. We may hear no more of the two of them,
but they matter to God, and he hasn’t finished with them.
It’s interesting
that Arab peoples believe they are descended from this first son of Abraham,
Ishmael. According to Muslim tradition Abraham and Ishmael set up the Kaaba, the sacred stone in Mecca which is still the
focal point of the pilgrimage – the Haj - there.
This story is a
reminder of the significance of every single person, however peripheral they
may seem to our own lives. We may sit next to someone on a train or pass them
in the street, and never know their names, but they are as important to the
world, and to God, as we are.
In the first of this
series of talks I talked about Jacob and his dream of the angels ascending and
descending a heavenly ladder. “Surely God
is in this place, and I did not know it!” he says in wonder. We could say
the same of the people whose lives we only encounter briefly, “Surely God is in this person, in every
person, even if I did not know it!
The story of the
Bible is full of apparently insignificant people who turn out to matter very
much indeed – an apparently abandoned baby in the bulrushes called Moses turns
out to be the liberator of his people. A childless nomad called Abraham turns
out to be the father of not one but two nations. A little shepherd boy, called
David, the youngest of his brothers, is almost overlooked when the prophet
Samuel comes to his home, but eventually becomes the greatest king of Israel.
And it’s the same in
our Gospel reading. A young girl in a backwater town in Galilee, receives a
visit from an angel who tells her that she will bear God’s son. Why her? Is she
holier, braver, more devout than any other young girl of the time? There’s no
reason to think so, and we are never told why she is chosen, and maybe that is
just as well. Because it says to us that
God could, and does, chose and use anyone. He could even choose and use us.
God is here, say the
angels to us; in this place, in this time, in this person. In our place, in our
time, and in our person too, if we will open our eyes to see him, and like
Mary, consent to let him work in us.
Amen
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