The story of Avra(ha)m takes up most of this parsha and the next one, and that’s great. There is so much to learn from him. But today I want to put our focus on a more marginalized voice, that of Hagar. Hagar is doubly, triply a person without power. She is a woman in a male dominated society, a maidservant in Avraham and Sarah’s household, and an Egyptian, a foreigner in a culture and country not her own. The only time she speaks – is given a voice – is in her encounter with God. Her very name, if you change the vocalization, can be read as HaGer, “the stranger. “
Avraham and Hagar
And yet the Torah records that God loves her and attends to her (a precursor perhaps to the many enjoinments to love the ger later in the Torah: God is the first to do this), and that she knows and feels this. Even as Avraham is developing a relationship with God throughout these texts, Hagar is having her own private encounters with God out in the desert (Genesis 16 and 21). Indeed, the two characters seem to be involved in a parallel process, both developing a similar conception of God related to the root ra’ah, to see (Genesis 16:13 for Hagar and 22:14 for Avraham; note that Hagar’s is more personal).
The implication of this parallel process between Avraham and Hagar – between a wealthy famous world class patriarch with unimaginable levels of faith and a simple maidservant who is just trying to survive the day – the implication is that God doesn’t make such distinctions. God is equally accessible to all of us. You don’t have to be superman to have a relationship with God. You don’t have to be like Avraham, playing on the world stage, concerned with the welfare of those suffering in Sodom, strong enough to fight battles to rescue your nephew, and faithful enough to pick up and move at God’s command. That’s great if that’s who you are, and God will meet you there.
But God will also meet you lonely and distraught in the desert, running away from your difficulties, like Hagar on the run from her mistress. The Torah says that an angel of God “found” Hagar, vayimtzaeha (16:7), out in the desert. God will send messengers out to find us wherever we are.
Wherever We Are
Wherever we are: even if we feel a deep sense of shame about where we are, that we have not earned the right to connect to God, that we have disappointed God or are not living up to expectations, that we are running away from our destiny like Hagar. Even if we feel less than in so many ways, even if we look at the world and see many brave Avrahams doing great things and feel smaller than a pea by contrast, still, God will send messengers out to find us where we are and meet us there.
We need not be Avraham to connect to God. We can be HaGer, the paradigmatic stranger, the ultimate outsider, not feeling that we fully belong anywhere we go. We can feel estranged from everything and everyone, running off to seclude ourselves in the desert, and God will still meet us there.
Maybe you feel some of that or maybe you feel something else. Everyone has their own reason for not feeling worthy or capable of connecting to God. I invite you to sense that block in you, the block of – well, if I were a better person, if I were more like so and so, more faithful, more sincere, more disciplined, less scattered, if my sufferings were more worthy of attention. . . maybe when I finally do improve, then I will be able to connect to God, but not now, not where I am, the way I am. Sensing that block in you. Not arguing with it. Letting it be here. And at the same time, maybe also sensing the angels that keep knocking at your door anyway, despite all of that, the angels that keep “finding” you, asking to come in not tomorrow, but today, not when you are different and perfect, but right now, as you are, broken and a mess.
The Angels
Oh, those angels! They make me laugh sometimes. In the Hagar story, the Torah keeps saying, again and again, And then an angel said to her something . . . And then an angel said to her something else (16:8-12). Rashi explains that there was not one angel but multiple angels and that each of these little speeches was spoken by a different one (Rashi on 16:9). That feels about right, that what happens is that God sends a group of angels down to take care of Hagar, to comfort her and strengthen her and get her to come back into the world and live her life. But angels aren’t perfect and maybe they don’t quite know how to do this job, how to help a human feel better; maybe they are a little awkward and incompetent about it, stumbling over themselves as they try to make their earnest way to reach her.
My Imagined Scenario (A New Midrash)
Here is how I picture it: As the angels approach Hagar, they gather and decide: ok, let’s first find out what’s going on. Great idea. So the first one says, all official like – ahem, ahem. Hagar the maidservant of Sarai, where are you coming from and where are you going (16:8). And Hagar answers simply – I’m running away from my mistress. The angels huddle again. Oh, no. What do we do now? How do we help her? I know, another one pipes up. We’ll give her advice. We’ll tell her what she should do. Humans love that. So he says to her in his most commanding authoritative tone – you must return to your mistress and keep suffering under her hands (verse 9). Well, that doesn’t go over too well. Hagar is crying harder now.
The angels huddle again. Oh no. What now? This isn’t working. God is going to be so mad at us! Ok, ok, let’s try a different tack. Let’s offer her something positive to look forward to, help her see that her future is bright. That always works with Avram, promising him countless descendants. So another angel steps up now and says, borrowing a line used with Avram, speaking on God’s behalf – I will make your seed so numerous, they will not be able to be counted (verse 10). Ok, a little better. Maybe Hagar stops crying and looks up, curious, listening now. But still not moving, still not totally convinced. The angels confer again. She’s not like Avram, they say. She can’t hold out for some amorphous imagined future. But this positive visioning thing – that’s working. We gotta stay positive. And maybe help her see that God cares about her suffering, too. Some compassion and some immediacy, that’s what she needs. So finally the last angel says – Hinakh harah. Hineh at – Behold right now you are pregnant with a son and you will call that son Yishmael because God hears your suffering. Get that – God hears your suffering (verses 11-12).
Her Understanding: God Sees Me
Well, it’s a little bumbling but it works. The Torah doesn’t say that the result is that she goes back to Sarai, though that does happen, of course. The Torah says that what happens next is that she realizes that God sees and cares about her, that she names this God who spoke to her El Roi, the One who sees me (verse 13). The result of this angelic intervention, in other words, is an awareness of God’s accompaniment and care and witnessing of all that happens to her. That’s what penetrates from all the angels’ meandering imperfect attempts to reach her, just this one message – God sees and cares about you. That’s what she needed to hear.
Our Own Divine Messengers
The divine messengers in our own lives are often pretty bumbling, too. They rarely say the right thing. Sometimes they say pretty stupid things that make us mad and it’s only later that we realize that’s what we needed. They go this way and that, trying to weave a path to reach us, and we can be pretty obstinate, refusing the divine love they are offering. But eventually, it begins to dawn on us the core message that is coming at us from all sides – I am seen and loved. Some days the messengers are our partners or friends and other days they are strangers or a tree or a butterfly. They can come in pretty ridiculous guises. And they try so hard, one after another knocking at our door. What if we say this? And what if we do this clown dance for you? Well, you might not love the clown dance, but eventually you have to open the door, chuckling at their inanity and touched by their persistence, by the ends to which God will go to let you know you are seen and loved.
When We Are The Imperfect Messengers
Sometimes of course, it is we who are the messengers, and we do our bumbling best, too, trying to pick up on the cues of those we care for and serve. Do they need direction or compassion or vision or just holding? Mostly, in the end they forgive our inadequacy and inability to meet them perfectly, and they teach us, as Hagar teaches the angels, what really matters – all I need is to know that I am seen. Oh, right. So many words, directions, tools. It’s all pretty simple. Yes, God sees you and cares about you. Always. The angels and Hagar and all of us, messenger and recipient alike, God sees and loves us all. As we are. It turns out it is not about meeting expectations, but about receiving love. God is sending messengers, over and over, to let us know we are loved. We thought we had to perform, to earn, to measure up, but no, just opening, receiving, connecting, building a relationship. That’s what God wants.
Hagar Names God!
And for Hagar, part of that relationship, part of that intimacy, involves giving God a name. Holy camoly! Hagar names God! While in the “real” world, she is not even empowered enough to name her own son (though the angels think she will), out in the desert with God, she can even name God! This is no small feat. No one else in the entire Torah does that exactly. The others, they name places in God’s honor or they call out in God’s name, but Hagar is different; the Torah says she calls God by a new name, her own personal name, almost like a nickname – Atah El Ro’i, “You Are the God who Sees Me” (16:13). Her name for God is about her relationship, not about God in the abstract, who God is, but about me and You and how it feels for me to be with You. It’s so intimate. Avraham models for us so many things of great value, but here Hagar offers us something else: permission to be that close, that personal, that intimate with God.
How intimate would you need to feel to be able to give God a private name? Can you allow yourself to touch that sense of personal connection, even to imagine it, to feel the cord between you? And maybe taking this question with you as you go, letting it percolate inside: What private name would you give God? What name might express how it is that God has been revealing Godself to you lately, how you feel in that relationship?
Because you don’t have to be Avraham to have such a relationship. You can be an outcast, a loser, a mess. You can be less than, imperfect, unsure, obstinate, distracted, running away, whatever. Just know that right now, God is sending out those bumbling angels to find you. So beware!
Photo by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová at Pexels
