 Welcome again. Let's good see you again here. If you look at the handout that you should have gotten on your way in, it looks like we're going to stay here till 4. And we will. Workshops are cancelled. Would the ushers please close the doors? We are here to think about how seeing Jesus invites us to see the other and to see ourselves in a new way. We are here to consider how seeing the other helps us encounter Jesus in a new way. What I intend to do this afternoon, is to keep here till 4, is to reflect with you on how this transformation of encountering Jesus and encountering the other happens in the act of reading the biblical text. This hermeneutical process invites us to consider how selves, subjectivity, identity, other and otherness are received as a gift, historicized, negotiated and constructed in the biblical text. Our focus texts come from the book of Genesis chapter 16, 17 and 21. These chapters narrate the stories of Hoggar and Ishmael. I will argue that the characters of Hoggar and Ishmael represent a complex paradigm for how self and other are related. These two characters, as presented in the book of Genesis, question essentialization, problematize, polarizations. They probe domestication and interrogate assimilation. They question essentialization, problematize, polarization, probe domestication and interrogate assimilation. I will begin by offering three examples from history of interpretation. These three examples, which include an introduction to the Bible I will begin by offering three examples from history of interpretation. These three examples, which include an ancient interpretive tradition and two modern traditions will show how the stories of Hoggar and Ishmael have been read in a way in which self and other are polarized and essentialized. A thematic reading of the traditions pertaining Hoggar and Ishmael will follow. This reading will propose that there are three hermetic lenses that nuance our understanding of how self relates to the other in these stories. These lenses are listed on your handout. The first one is intersectionality, interstitiality, and one self as another. Finally, I will offer, if you remain here till four, I will offer some brief remarks on how these insights might help us unpack the complexity of how we understand ourselves and relate to others as we continue our walk of discipleship following Jesus. The first example that I would like to begin with comes from algorithm interpretation that is most familiar to us in Galatians chapter four. Algorithm interpretation was a way of interpreting biblical texts that flourished originally in Alexandria and Egypt in the first century. One of the pioneer Jewish interpreters, Philo of Alexandria, using algorithm interpretation, interpreted the stories of Hoggar and Ishmael as Hoggar represents this kind of ordinary knowledge and Sarah represents the true wisdom that Abraham leaves the ordinary knowledge for the true wisdom. Paul in Galatians chapter four actually follows that tradition in some ways. In Galatians four, the apostle Paul continues his criticism of the Christian Jews who believed that circumcision and observance of the mosaic law was a required step for Gentiles before becoming Christians. Interpreting the story of Hoggar and Ishmael and Sarah and Isaac allegorically, Paul deconstructs the claims of his contemporary Christian Jews by associating the mosaic law with Hoggar and Ishmael. Christians who are free from the mosaic law for him, however, to be associated with Sarah and the child of the promise, Isaac. Thus, the apostle creates a dichotomy between, and you have it on your handout, Hoggar and Ishmael, Sarah, Isaac, slave-free, Egyptian Hebrew, flesh promise, Mount Sinai spirit, present Jerusalem versus Jerusalem above. That's at the beginning of Galatians chapter four. And he concludes by saying, so then friends, we are children, not of the slave, but of the free woman. We see here in this allegorical interpretation of Paul and Philoval Alexandria, Hoggar and Ishmael are treated as symbols. They stand for something else, and this is what allegorical interpretation is about. That when you read a text, you're trying to find a new frame of reference that these individuals, these characters, are actually representing. Despite the fact that Sarah and Hoggar are treated equally in this allegorical system in the sense that they stand for something else beyond themselves, yet this allegorical interpretation maintained an internal logic in which Sarah represented the greater, the bitter, and the ones who are included. And Hoggar, on the other hand, represented the inferior and the ones who are excluded. Binary opposites, where Sarah and Hoggar and Ishmael are put against, over against each other. The second example comes from modern commentators. Mr. Mann approvingly quotes Gonkel, and his quote is in your handout, who describes Ishmael and his mother in the following words. The intractable Ishmael is an unruly son of his stubborn mother, who did not want to submit to the yoke. With regard to the story of Hoggar and Ishmael, E.A. Spicer, in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis writes, Our author must not dwell too long on personalities. Presently, he shifts a different plane and larger issues. It is time to account for the place of the Ishmaelites, in the scheme of things, the role of the Bedouin, who are always in evidence on the border between the desert and the zone. A group as defiant and incontrollable as the young woman from who the narrative drives them. The description of the Bedouin and their ancestors represents a stereotype that emerged from a sedentary context and also modern European understanding of civilization. The Bedouins who are supposedly the descendants of Ishmael and Hoggar, their ancestors described by these commentators as the intractable. They submit to no yoke, defiant and incontrollable. This discourse reflects an orientalist rhetoric that represents the Bedouins as those incontrollable groups that occupy the periphery of civilization. They demand the exercise of power upon them, so they would be ordered and kept under control. Further, this line of interpretation not only does it represent Hoggar's desire for freedom in negative terms, it also essentializes what it means to be a Bedouin based on creating a fixed identity for what it means to be civilized. The civilized versus the Bedouin, a binary opposite. The third example comes from my own context as a Christian Egyptian. As Christian Egyptians struggle with formulating their identity in the light of the negative representation of Egypt in the Hebrew Bible, two approaches emerge. The first one, which is a very minority report among Christian Egyptians, one approach discards the text and refuses to engage with it because it's offensive. After all, Egypt is the bad place to go to, it's the place of oppression. This approach dismisses the religious aspect, namely engaging with the Hebrew Bible as part of their scripture. For the sake of redeeming the political aspect of their identity, I'm an Egyptian. The other approach finds hope in allegorical interpretation, arguing that Egypt in the Bible is just a symbol for something else. And as we appropriate the text of the Hebrew Bible, we should identify ourselves with the Israelites and not the Egyptians. This allegorical approach dismisses the political facet of identity as Christian Egyptian. In order to redeem the religious facet that wants to hold on to the text as scripture, despite it being offensive. In the context of Hagar, Eshmail's story, most Christian Egyptians would identify themselves with Sarah and Isaac. This identification is even a strength in the light of the Christian Muslim tension. For the Christian minority rejecting Hagar, the Egyptian and Eshmail is a way of resisting the Muslim majority who identifies with Hagar and Eshmail. This group of Christian interpreters and readers do not realize that the social location of the oppressed and cast out Hagar, Eshmail, is closer to their location and experience of marginalization. This reading is shaped by the binary opposite worldview in which Sarah, Hagar, Eshmail, Isaac are prototypes of Christian Egyptian versus Muslim Egyptian. Take a deep breath. Now let's turn to what I propose as a way of trying to interrogate identity, a relationship between self and other as we read the biblical text. A relation between self and other is neither straightforward nor is it constructed through a simple binary opposite. The binary opposite way of thinking defines the world through system of pairs that are set off against one another. Men, women, white, black, east, west, us, them, liberal, conservative, and a Baptist Presbyterian, Methodists, United Methodists. It is a simplified and a popular way of thinking but not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Differentiation between self and other is not a simple process. Our identities are complex, hybrid, multivalent and intersectional. Gender, race, economy, class, sexuality, ethnicity and religion, you name it. Complicated the way we understand ourselves and obscure the manner through which we relate to those around us. The first aspect of this interrogation of identity is intersectionality. On your handout there is a definition that comes from a very helpful website that talks about feminist theory and how intersectionality could help us understand and actually help liberate those who are oppressed but those who come from different contexts. While all women are in some ways subject to gender discrimination, other factors including race and skin color, caste, age, ethnicity, language, and history, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic class, ability, culture, geographic location, and status as a migrant, indigenous person, refugee, internally displaced person, child, a person living with HIV AIDS, in a conflict zone or under foreign occupation, combined to determine one's social location. Intersectionality is an analytical tool for studying, understanding and responding to the ways in which gender intersects with other identities and how these intersections contribute to unique experiences of oppression and privilege. The Israelite Society was a patriarchal society in which men held positions of authority, social and religious, as head of the Israelite family, the leaders of the Israelite society. So in terms of gender, Abraham is privileged when compared to Sarah and Hoggar. In this patriarchal society, women's value was decided based on fulfilling the role in the household and most importantly, producing children. Women were worth their womb. Thus, it is not just Hoggar, the Egyptian slave woman who is held in this societal trap. Her mistress, Sarah, is also a victim of this production culture. But here intersectionality helps us to look at not just the gender problem, but the status of Hoggar as an immigrant, a foreigner, an Egyptian. Though Sarah was marginalized as a woman, she was privileged as a rich, a Hebrew woman when compared to the foreign, poor and enslaved Hoggar, the Egyptian. The story of Hoggar also de-essentializes the way we think about the oppressor and the oppressed. There was an article I looked at a few years ago where Hitler showed up in history as the worst figure in history, it was fair. Hoggar, the Egyptian, is to be mistreated oppressed by Sarah. The same verb, Anna, in Hebrew, that is used to describe Sarah's affliction of Hoggar, the Egyptian, is also used to describe the oppression inflicted upon the Israelites by the Egyptians in Deuteronomy 266. Unable to bear this oppression, Hoggar decided to flee. The Hebrew uses the verb Barach in Genesis 166. It is a verb that is used to describe the flight of the Israelites from oppression in Egypt. Exodus 14.5. In a similar manner, when Sarah commands Abraham to cast out the Egyptian slave woman and her son Eshmael in 2110, the text uses the Hebrew verb garash, which is used also to describe the casting out of the Israelites slaves by Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, in the book of Exodus. The verb shalach, to send, is used in Genesis 21.4 to describe Abraham's sending of Hoggar, the Egyptian, and the wilderness. The same verb is used in Exodus 5, one who, in order to speak of the freeing of the Israelites from the Egyptian oppression. In this way, with this intersectionality, in this way the categories of the oppressed and the oppressors with regard to the Egyptians and the Israelites are confound. The second aspect that invites us to think about identity, relationship between self and other, in a new way, is this interesting word interstitiality. Interstitiality is actually a medical word that refers to the tissues that hold the organs in the human body together. Humibaba is one of the post-colonial trinity figures. He develops some concepts in order to question the simple polarization of the world into self and other. Humibaba's work emphasizes the hybridity of identity. This concept refers to mixedness and impurity of identity. Baba also urges critics to look into what happens at the borderlines of these identities. The liminal, the interstitial, the border, the threshold, the in-between, brings forth new forms of identities that complicate any rigid construction of self and other. Using psychoanalysis, Humibaba argues that identities are incomplete, whether they are individual or collective identities. This incompleteness is not a problem to be solved. And we could never, in principle, have a full or complete identity. Instead, the incompleteness of identity needs to be acknowledged. Identity is neither stable nor coherent. The situation affects the subject just as much as the subject, the way we do, the way we act, acts upon the situation. Choices made by other people affect who we are. Our own choices, in turn, affect identities, ours and others. Our day-to-day activities continue this process of construction. As subjects, we both create on our created. Subjectivity is always in process. What does that mean for us? Is Ishmael an insider or outsider? Does Ishmael fit in the Promised Land? Or should he return to Egypt? His mother is an Egyptian and he married an Egyptian. Ishmael's interstitial location, his hybrid identity, the liminal space that he occupies, invite us to revisit our rigid notions of an insider versus an outsider. Ishmael embodies the in-between. Genesis Chapter 17 is part of the priestly tradition. This chapter has likely gone through a history of redaction. The chapter narrates another form of the covenant between God and Abraham. We already have seen another covenant in Chapter 15. The first formulation of the covenant is stated in verse 2. And I will make my covenant between me and you, God tells Abraham. And will make you exceedingly numerous. Verses 4, 5 and 6 restate the covenant between God and Abraham and clarifies that out of Abraham there will be many nations. And kings note the plural nations. Verses 7 through 14 introduce the terminology of seed and off-spring without specifying who the seed or the off-spring are. Further, the section specifies the point that circumcision is the covenant in the sense that it's the sign for the covenant. Verses 15 and 19 introduce Isaac who is not born yet. That's Chapter 17. So some scholars think that this is an insertion to say something. Verses 15 through 19. In verse 18, Abraham intervenes on behalf of Ishmael and says, May Ishmael live in Yahweh's sight. And to this Yahweh responds with a blessing for Ishmael and affirmation that a covenant will be established with Isaac and his descendants. Note that later Esau was excluded. When the conversation between Yahweh and Abraham has ended, the text states in three times. List the reader would miss that Abraham and Ishmael were circumcised. Ishmael was circumcised. Verses 23, 25 and 26. The off-spring that will keep the covenant of circumcision will have the land as a perpetual holding. Now there is this insertion. These verses, Chapter 17 verses 19 to 21, which I will read for you. God said, No. After Abraham intervened on behalf of Ishmael. Let Ishmael live in Yahweh's sight. And then God says, No. But your wife Sarah shall bear you a son and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for this off-spring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. I will bless him and make him a fruitful and exceedingly numerous. He shall be the father of twelve princes. And I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year. So the traditional reading of these verses is that now God is excluding Ishmael. In your handout there is an interesting quote from a recent article by Konrad Schmid who is actually arguing that these verses are not meant to exclude Ishmael but to include Isaac. That these verses are insertion not to exclude Ishmael but to include Isaac. But he doesn't let it go this way because he wants to read the text as well in the light of the whole priestly tradition. Where he is making the point that the conclusion remains that Ishmael is not the same type of partner in the covenant of God as Isaac is. They are equal with regard to fertility and land holdings within the greater region of the whole land of Canaan. But they are not equal with regard to the possibility of the cultic proximity. And this is what Abraham meant when he said to God, let Ishmael live before Yahweh. It's not about survival, it's about the proximity being closer to the cult. So here we have attention in the text. It's not about the exclusion of Ishmael, it's about the inclusion of Isaac. But it's not about taking all of the differences out. It's about still maintaining this tension of sameness and difference. That being said, those who argue for a rigid categorization of Ishmael's identity as an insider ignore the differences that are set between Ishmael and Isaac. While those who argue for a rigid categorization of Ishmael's identity as an outsider ignore the fact that Ishmael was circumcised and that God was with him in the wilderness according to Genesis 21-20. Thus I propose that we are better off if we understand Ishmael's identity as an interstitial character that is simultaneously an insider and outsider. This understanding acknowledges and negotiates sameness and difference between self and other. Ishmael is a model for many of us who confound rigid categories. Ishmael represents those who are in between. For the time, this is also reflected in the way and the place where Ishmael resides. He doesn't go back to Egypt. He lives according to some traditions in 2020-21 in Paran and according to 2518 his descendants live in a place that is described as Khavela or opposite to Egypt on your way to Assyria. Not in Egypt, not in Jerusalem, not in the Promised Land, but in between. Ishmael, the product of an Israelite and Egyptian escape or escapes easy identification. This hybrid son Ishmael born to an Israelite father and an Egyptian mother was a liminal character. He did not dwell in Egypt or Canaan. He is an outsider and an insider for both the Israelites and Egyptians. He muddies rigid categories. The third point that I would like to offer as a way of problematizing a rigid understanding of identity is looking at oneself as an other. Negotiating sameness and difference between self and other help us to treat the other as a self. And we hope that the other would treat and consider themselves as an other. Maintaining tension between sameness and difference allows us to avoid assimilation. That I want you to be whom I want you to be. And it protects us from making the other the ultimate transcendent or the terrible monster which could result in the impossibility of relating to the other. Sometimes we make the other this transcendent being to the point that we can't relate to them or we demonize them to the point that we are scared of them and we want to avoid them. The foreigner comes in when consciousness of my differences arise and he or she disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners. We are aliens, unminable to bonds and communities. To put it in another way, knowing how strange I am to myself helps me at least to tolerate the strangeness of other. A strangeness that can be so easily viewed as threatening to myself identity. One of my favorite quotes about self and other comes from Richard Kearney's article on the aliens. One of the best ways to delineate the other is to recognize oneself as an other and the other as in part another self. For if ethics rightly requires me to respect the singularity of the other person it equally requires me to recognize the other as another self. Bearing universal rights and responsibilities that is as someone capable of recognizing me in turn as a self capable of recognition and esteem. It's a relationship in which we recognize the otherness within ourselves and we recognize the other as a self. We treat each other with equal respect. We don't deny ourselves in the sense that we make ourselves disappear because that's not going to help anybody. But we don't get scared of the other who is different that much to the point that we make them monsters who are always threatening our being. The blessing that Hager receives on behalf of Ishmael is similar to that of Isaac, progeny, but also is different, weird and odd. It is an odd expression of a blessing. It's a blessing that emerged out of the wild life in the wilderness. The ambiguity of Genesis 1612 emerged from our sedentary culture. Ishmael as a dweller of the desert is blessed with a different style of life that is different from the ancient Israelites. So in terms of sameness, both of them are promised a nation and a multitude. The angel of the Lord also said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for a multitude. If we did not read this in chapter 16, you would remember Abraham and Sarah. You would not remember Hager. And to Hager in 2118, come lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand for I will make a great nation of him. A great nation of him. The promise concerning Ishmael means that the effect of God's blessing extends beyond Israel to other nations as well. That universal trait which appeared in Genesis 1 and Genesis 10 continues here. The God of Israel has to do not only with Israel, but also with other nations. God's blessing is not confined to the borders of Israel. But the blessing that Ishmael receives is odd. He's going to be a wild ass of a man, a zebra. This verse describes Ishmael's future destiny to enjoy free roaming. Bid will like existence. The freedom his mother sought will be his one day. The zebra, the wild ass, lives in the desert. Looks more like a horse than a donkey. It is used in the Old Testament as a figure of individualistic lifestyle, untrammeled by social convention. They inhibit the waste, deserts, bear heights and trails. They want her alone. They work hard and toil to find food for their little ones in Job 24-5. And God provides for them. Psalm 104-11, Job 39-5. His hand and his dwelling are also described in a very odd way. His hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he shall live at odds with all his kin. This blessing is odd, almost sounds like a curse. But when we consider the lifestyle of the desert inhabitants, we realize that this is a blessing peculiar to their setting. It is different from the lifestyle of the nomads or the lifestyle of Mesopotamia or Egypt. God blesses even the odd who do not inhabit the cultures or civilizations as we envision them. I think as we look at the character of Ishmael Hager, that question rigid understandings of identity have implications for us today. We are called to be liminal and in between. Thus I want us to be liberated when we read the Ishmael Hager story a little bit from just taking Hager and Ishmael to be Muslims. What do these texts mean to you as a Christian reader reading these texts? And you believe that they still speak to you as a Christian reader of the texts? Away from this polarization, Hager, Ishmael, Muslims, Sarah, Isaac, Jews, Christians, can they still speak to us? We are called to be liminal and in between just like our teacher. Jesus fully human, fully divine. A liminal preacher. A prophet that did not fit anywhere. Crossified but raised from the dead, humiliated but glorified. Calls us to follow him, to be his disciples, like our by like students. We are liminal, interstitial. We are in this world but not of this world. We acknowledge the ugliness and the beauty of the world. We recognize despair but remain hopeful. We live in the already, not yet. We are the foolish, the weak, the poor. And when we think we are something, we look inside ourselves and realize how hollow we are without him, without Jesus. Have you ever felt that you fit nowhere? Do you feel that wherever you go that you might have something common but yet there is something different, missing about you. Go out to the wilderness. There you will encounter God. This is not a call to abandon people, although sometimes that's helpful. But it is a call. It is a call to be reconciled with oneself. It is a call to claim the odd, the wild in us. It is a call to open our hearts to God's companionship out of the known and the familiar. This story has an implication for Christian Egyptians. In the light of this dichotomy, tension and paradox that Christian Egyptians experience when they encounter the Hebrew Bible. I believe that the way post-colonial criticism problematizes this binary opposition between self and other provides some insights in the process of constructing a hybrid identity. And a third space, a liminal space, an in-between space in which paradoxical components of identity can coexist. In this case, the political and the religious facet of the Christian Egyptian identity. This might sound weird in an abaptist context. Why would you worry so much about your national identity? But this is different when you are in a minority sitting. This is different when you read how Egypt is a horrible place of oppression in the Old Testament and you read this almost every day in the church. This might sound kind of like unsettling in a context where we live in the empire. It might be quite different context when you are a minority. Looking at identity as something fluid and hybrid, recognizing that formulating an identity is an ongoing process, enables us or enables one to live with paradox. In post-colonial discourse, the relation between the self and the other represents the relation between the colonizer and the colonized. In the process of thinking about the Egyptian identity, Christian Egyptian identity, self and other represents the relation between the political and the religious facets. Constructing identity by means of binary opposition. One has to choose one or the other. Discard the Bible, don't read it and just be an Egyptian. Or, you know, just be an Israelite in the church and go outside be an Egyptian. But if I do not associate with Egypt in the Bible, am I escaping from repentance for the oppression that the Egyptians in my history have inflicted on others? And I just want to find Egypt that is said, bless be my people, Egypt. Isaiah 1925. And Jesus goes to Egypt, right? So the positive and I don't want to deal with the negative. Sometimes when we try to distance ourselves because we don't want to confront the ugliness. It's easier. Formulating a hybrid identity allows us to embrace both aspects or different aspects and layers of identities. By embracing both being an Egyptian and being an Israelite, one negotiates difference and sameness, not with an other that is outside of self, but rather with an other that is within. Vocationally, and here is the implication for us. One learns how to live with one's own inner otherness and sees oneself as another. One would be bitter off and in a bitter place for dialogue with those others who are outside of oneself. Recognizing oneself as another and the other as a self, negotiating difference and sameness, help us to do a communicable and interreligious dialogue in a way that is honest and productive. One does not have to negate being a Christian in order to have dialogue with Muslims and Jews. One is bitter off in interreligious dialogue when we claim our identity. Because in that context we allow others to be themselves as well. Relationships with others are about crossing the boundaries and also maintaining the boundaries. The third point, breaking the cycle of violence. Seeing oneself in relation to the other is a complex process that must happen in a conscious, intentional and a reflective way. Wrong perceptions of self and wrong perception of the other produces fear and will likely yield oppression. Abuse and oppression and exploitative treatment to the other impact how we see ourselves and how we see the other. All sides are hurt from oppression, the oppressed and the oppressor. Breaking the cycle of oppression where the oppressed turn into an oppressor when they are liberated is a necessity. The story of Haagar is told and written by the Israelites. It was not the Egyptians who wrote it. It is a narrative of self-criticism in some ways. As we consider the relation between Haagar and Sarah, we should be cautious not to blame the victim. Let us not blame Haagar for looking with contempt at her mistress if she did. But at the same time, I and we should hope that the oppressed finds some power to break the cycle of oppression and violence. Violent otherizing through taming the eligible feeling of hurt and anger against the oppressor. Seeing Jesus calls us to expose the oppression that we inflict on others and the marginalization that we experience from others. Seeing Jesus calls us to repentance. Seeing Jesus also heals us. We repent for every time we oppressed, marginalized and pushed people outside of our circles because they are different. We pray for healing because the oppression that we have experienced and the rejection that makes our face can turn into anger, revenge and counter oppression. We can't break the cycle of violence without seeing Jesus and seeing others as Jesus sees them. The final implication that I will finish with, when you are doing counseling or social work, what does this story tell us? There is a set of questions that are listed in the website that I mentioned earlier from the Association of Women. So there is these interesting questions that I think we should embrace as we think and do social work. What forms of identity are critical organizing principles of the community that you're serving? Beyond gender, consider race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, age, ability. The second question, who are the most marginalized women, girls, men and boys in the community and why? What social and economic programs are available to different groups in the community? Who does and does not have access or control over productive resources and why? Which groups have the lowest and highest levels of public representation and why? That's beyond just gender differences. What laws, policies and organizational practices that we do in the church too? Limit opportunities of different groups. What opportunities facilitate the advancement of different groups? And finally, what initiatives would address the needs of the most marginalized or discriminated groups in society? Thank you.