Heard and Seen

Sarah and Abraham’s son, Isaac, had made it through the most vulnerable years of his life, and a feast was planned for dinner to celebrate. Isaac was weaned, he was toddling now and spent more and more time away from his mother’s skirts. Sarah was humming as she walked through camp, musing at his future, and she must have smiled as the notes of his laughter wafted on the wind to her.

And then she turned the corner and saw them together. Ishmael, 17, and at the threshold of manhood, playing with Isaac her 3 year old, literally the word translated “playing” means “laughing” and comes from the same Hebrew root word as the name Isaac. And in that moment, the future flashed before her and fear filled her.

Ishmael had been Abraham’s heir, but he was the child of a their slave girl, Hagar, and even though he was Abraham’s oldest son, now that Sarah, Abraham’s first-rank wife, had born a son, the birthright had shifted. Upon Abraham’s death, the law dictated that Ishmael and Hagar would be given their freedom.

But what if? What if Ishmael took advantage of Isaac’s newfound independence and lured him into a trap? What if Hagar did something horrible to Isaac to regain Ishmael’s place as heir? What if Ishmael and Isaac became friends? What if her horrible mistake, sending her slave girl to be with her husband, meant less for her child?

She went to Abraham, so upset she couldn’t even speak their names. “That WOMAN and her SON have to GO.” Reluctantly, with God’s promise to make a great nation of him also, after waiting until the cool of early morning, Abraham packed up Hagar and Ishmael with water and food to journey in the wilderness back home to Egypt. And Scripture tells us they wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. It is important to know where they were because Beer-sheba means “well of seven,” where even today there are 2 deep wells and 5 smaller wells.

In his 1925 book of sermons on Old Testament Characters, Rev. Clovis Chappell poetically describes their journey, “The scene of this story is a desert. As far as the eye can see the weird waste stretches. Above it the heat specters dance, and here and there the scorching sands drift in swirling eddies as the winds play with them. From out a hot and copper sky the sun shoots its arrow of fire. And there is not a tree in sight with an offer of friendly shade. The only visible protection is a few dwarfed and scraggy bushes whose shelter is little more than a meager mockery. In this pitiless furnace silence reigns – a silence deep and profound.

Suddenly that silence is broken. There is a low moan followed by the abandoned sobbing of a woman. She is weeping as only those weep whose hearts are broken. As we hurry forward, we find a lad lying under one of the scraggy bushes. His lips are cracked. His tongue is swollen. His eyes are bloodshot. He is weakly calling for water. Over there a bow-shot away sits a woman, his mother. Her back is turned upon her boy. She has not the heart to see him die. At her feet is a water bottle as dry as the sands of the desert. The only moisture in all the wide waste is the hot tears that flow down her swarthy cheeks.

Why is she sitting here? She is not waiting for help. She is waiting for death. She has lost her way. Weary hour upon weary hour she has tramped in the trackless desert to no avail. Her water supply has given out. Her strength has failed. Her hope has died. And now, utterly spent, she sits upon the hot sands heedless of the fiery rays of the sun and gives herself to an abandon of grief as she waits for ghastly death.”

“WHY? Why? Why? ,” she cried as she heard her son begging God for mercy. And God heard. And as she silently sobbed because she had no words, God spoke, “What troubles you?” God invited her to pour out her heart, to share her troubles, to let God fully see her.

Then, when she is fully seen by God, God opens her eyes to see the well – water, life!

It had been there all the time, but she hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t known that right there, water was flowing to sustain her, to save her son, to quench their thirst, and to give them strength for the journey and hope in the wilderness.

Here at Christ’s Table, we gather from the wildernesses of our lives. God hears our cries, and asks, “What troubles you?” Not because God doesn’t know what is happening, but because God wants to see and understand and know our pain not from a distance, not from assumptions about what is troubling us, but from our hearts. And when we allow God to see us deep inside, God reveals wells of water in the desert. We see what we didn’t see before. We approach this Table to receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation that give us strength for the journey and hope in the dry and dusty deserts of our lives.

Here, we come to drink and remember the One who told the Samaritan woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.”

Here we remember his invitation, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”

And his promise, ““Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.