NRS Genesis 16:
1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, 2 and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. 4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!"6 But Abram said to Sarai, "Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
7 The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" She said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai."9 The angel of the LORD said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her. 10 The angel of the LORD also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude."
11 And the angel of the LORD said to her,
"Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
you shall call him Ishmael,
for the LORD has given heed to your affliction.
12 He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone's hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin."
13 So she named the LORD who spoke to her, "You are El-roi"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?"
14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

NRS Genesis 21:
1 The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised.
2 Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me." 7 And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age." 8 The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
9 But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. 10 So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." 11 The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. 12 But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. 13 As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring." 14 So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
15 When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes.
16 Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; 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. 17 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him." 19 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.
20 God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. 21 He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

Dear Friends in Christ, may the Lord lead you in faith and keep you in hope; for the sake of Jesus. Amen.

Have you ever had a friend, relative, or neighbor approach you with a "big idea?" You can tell they're really excited by what they clearly believe to be the best thing since sliced bread, but as they're pouring out their hearts you're thinking, "Boy, this is really dumb. This is really stupid. This makes no sense at all." But because they are a friend or a relative or a neighbor, you don't want to rain on their parade or dump on their big idea, so you say something non-committal, like, "Oh! Yeah. That's interesting." But all the while what you're really thinking is, "This is going to be a train wreck. Somebody stop this person before they run themselves to rack and ruin." Know the feeling?

Well, that's the feeling I get when I hear tonight's story of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are, you know, considered the father and mother of faith, and for good reason. According to Genesis 12, Abraham and Sarah both embraced God's call to leave their country and kindred and father's house to go to a land that God would show them. All they had to go on was the bare promise God had spoken to Abraham: "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing" (v. 2). That's an awesome promise, made even more awesome by information shared just a little earlier in Genesis 11:30: "Now Sarai was barren; she had no child." Or in other words: The man who would be father to a multitude was married to a woman who couldn't have a baby.

Now there's a mighty fine line between faith and desperation, and I have no doubt that faith led Abraham and Sarah into God's great adventure. But every month, every year, every decade without the child of promise took, I'm sure, a great toll on them, and over the years I'd guess that for Abraham and Sarah the balance of faith tipped ever so gradually in the direction of desperation. Although God had assured and reassured Abraham, still it's not hard to imagine the anxiety that inspired Sarah to approach Abraham with her "big idea."

Sarah had an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. Since the Lord had, in Sarah's words, "prevented" her from bearing children, Sarah tells Abraham, "Go into my slave girl; it may be that I may obtain children by her" (Genesis 16:2). The Bible says that "Abram listened to the voice of Sarai" (16:3), and right here is where you think the "Lost in Space" robot ought to be flashing lights and blaring, "Warning! Warning! Danger Abraham and Sarah!" I mean, what were they thinking? Couldn't they see all the pitfalls of what they were attempting? Maybe they had never seen "Oprah" or watched "Dr. Phil," but come on: two women, both claiming one child, from the same man! You don't need to be a marriage counselor to see where this is going.

Now bear in mind that at that time in that context securing an heir through a slave girl was considered neither immoral nor illegal. Later biblical matriarchs would do the same thing, but in taking this alternate route to parenthood you can see Abraham and Sarah are fudging on God's promise. Abraham and Sarah are not rejecting wholesale the covenant God had sworn to Abraham, but they are acting in a way that suggests that maybe God needs a little help in bringing his word to pass. They assume that God has hit a roadblock, which requires their intervention to keep God's promise on track. Herein lies the real problem with what they are attempting, and so it's no wonder that their plans quickly go astray.

No sooner does Hagar conceive than Sarah perceives Hagar as acting scornfully toward her. Maybe Hagar rubbed Sarah's nose in the fact that she was pregnant and Sarah was not, or maybe Hagar just resented Sarah for forcing her to bear a child that would never be her own. (After all, Hagar was never asked if she wanted to bear Abraham's son. Abraham just showed up at her tent door.) But infuriated, Sarah complains to Abraham, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!" (16:5). Rather than defend Hagar or just somehow mediate the conflict, rather than stand up to Sarah as he would stand up to God over Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham instead just caves and tells Sarah, ""Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." The Bible then says that Sarah "dealt harshly" with Hagar. (The verb "to deal harshly" also means to oppress, and it's the same word used in the Book of Exodus for how the Pharaoh treated the children of God.)

So now Abraham's household is in an uproar, and to make matters worse, Hagar runs away. A slave girl, a minority person, far, far from home, and pregnant, God finds her in the wilderness trying to get back to her native Egypt. Here God calls her by name, "Hagar." Up to this point in the story neither Abraham nor Sarah have referred to her as anything but a slave, but now the angel of the Lord addresses her as a person, "Hagar." God then urges her to return to Abraham and Sarah, but not before blessing her and promising that her son, to be named Ishmael, will himself be the father of a great multitude. Hagar responds by naming God El-roi, the "God who sees me," making her the first person in the Bible to do that.

So believing God's promise, Hagar returns and submits to Sarah. She gives birth to her son Ishmael, and it looks like this chapter of the story is over. Abraham and Sarah assume that Ishmael is the child of promise, and for the next 13 years or so it appears that everyone is more than content to leave well enough alone. That is, everyone but God! Rather than leave Abraham and Sarah to assume that they had fulfilled God's word, God fulfills his own word in a way that leaves both Abraham and Sarah laughing out loud and thinking that maybe God is pulling their legs. But against all odds, Sarah becomes pregnant, and within three years of her son Isaac's birth, their happy little home is once more on the rocks.

As we saw earlier, Sarah has a little mean streak in her, and when she sees Ishmael, then 16, playing with her toddler Isaac, Sarah gets anxious that Ishmael will inherit the lion's share of Abraham's wealth. She orders Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." (Notice, too, how once more she doesn't refer to Hagar by name, but instead calls her just "this slave woman.") Abraham, though, has by this time grown attached to Hagar and Ishmael, and at Sarah's big idea he now becomes greatly distressed. But here God intervenes to save Abraham and Sarah from their own intervention. God coaches Abraham to let Hagar and Ishmael go, and although Hagar is also tempted to give up on God, God comes through to keep his promise to her and to her son, to make a great nation of Ishmael as God would also make a great nation through his brother Isaac.

How many times do we come up with these big ideas over which God just cringes? How many times do we think we're going to help God out only to discover that God doesn't really need our help? Or how many times does our helping just make more problems for God to get done what we lacked the faith to wait for in the first place?

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.