 Good morning. Isn't the weather lovely? I'm lovin' it here, so. Once a very wise theologian said, Nearly all the wisdom which we possess that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. What Calvin meant by this statement is that you cannot know God without knowing yourself, and you cannot know yourself without knowing God. Seeing our ignorance, infirmity and depravity makes us realize the full abundance of every good, purity and righteousness. Rest in the Lord alone. Looking upon the face of God exposes who we really are. At the same time, it reveals the power of the grace of God that reaches out to us. And transforms us to the people whom God wants to see. In the story of Hagar and Ishmael, there are two different kinds of gazes. Encounters, looks that the eyes behold. When humans encounter each other, when they gaze at each other, all that is seen is low self-esteem, oppression, distress, and alluming death. When the eyes of the beholder encounter God, a potential of life brings forth. Sarah, the Hebrew mistress, was barren. Unlike many other barren mistresses of her culture, Sarah gave her slave the Egyptian Hagar to Abraham as a wife. In this culture where any disaster would come and wipe out a whole clan, giving birth, establishing descendants, and progeny was important, an essential way of surviving. In this culture, a woman was worth her womb. Understanding the culture and the historical context might put what Sarah did in perspective, but does not justify it. It shows us that the family called by God is not an ideal family. They were influenced, shaped by their culture. Sarah gave to Abraham Hagar as a wife. So that she, that is Sarah, can have children. As always, the obedient Abraham went into Hagar and lo and behold, she conceived. And when she saw she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. The voiceless, objectified, exploited Egyptian slave now sees herself in a new way. And she sees her mistress in a new way. The gaze of the pregnant slave onto a barren mistress disrupted the status quo of power and privilege in the household of Abraham. It destabilized the relation between the self and the other. The self knowledge here is dependent not on seeing God, but rather on seeing the other. Seeing the other away from God and based only on mistaken cultural assumptions about self value and self worth yields oppression, exploitation, an endless cycle of violence. Refusing to take any responsibility, Sarah blames Abraham, and she goes on to misname what Hagar did to her, not as the NRSV puts it as the wrong, but in the Hebrew it means the violence, the violence that she did to her. Do you see the way she looks at me? Sarah says to Abraham, do you see the way she looks at herself? Was that Sarah's perception of things? Was that how Hagar, the exploited Egyptian slave, saw that she is redeemed through that pregnancy? We don't know. Only the narrator and Sarah know. Hagar is still voiceless. She has not said one single word in the narrative so far. But we know from that text that seeing matters, seeing the way we relate to oneself and seeing the way we relate to others matter in that story. The gaze of the exploited foreign slave haunts the self and the sense of self of the privileged mistress. Going along with the tide, Abraham takes no responsibility. He decides to check out. She's your slave, due to her what is good in your eyes. Though Sarah invoked God as a judge to mediate between her and Abraham, she acts with supremacy on her Egyptian slave. In revenge for her imagined violence, Sarah oppresses Hagar. Due to her what is good in your eyes, those eyes that gaze on the pregnant Egyptian slave could not see beyond low self-esteem and pain. What was good in Sarah's eyes was oppression. A few years later, when Eshmail was 13 years old and Isaac was recently born and circumcised, Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, playing with Isaac. Eshmail was not persecuting Isaac as Paul says in Galatians 429. He was Isaac-ing. It's the same root of Isaac's name. He was laughing, playing with Isaac. Behind Sarah's misjudging gaze was the inheritance. She did not want the slave's child to inherit with her son. The indifferent Abraham of the first episode is now distressed because of Sarah's desire to cast the child and his mother out. God comforts Abraham who's concerned about Eshmail and promises a blessing for Eshmail. As a result, Hagar and Eshmail were cast out to the wilderness with some supplies that did not last too long. Cast out, lost in the wilderness, her eyes looking everywhere for a sign of life, for survival, for a companion. Arana Way, slave, cries out, I don't want to see my child die. I don't want to see my child die. A mother closes her eyes, refusing to look at her child who's dying because she has nothing to offer. The food stamps that Abraham gave to her did not last too long and now death lurks on the horizon. Brothers and sisters, have you seen Hagar? Are you a Hagar? Cast out, wandering, barely surviving in the desert. Hagar is a church member, a pastor, a worship leader who feels alienated because they might be perceived as a threat to some theological or liturgical order. Hagar is a family member who is voiceless. Hagar is an Egyptian protester, a Syrian refugee who are seeking livelihood, freedom and social justice and they can't find it. Hagar is the faithful maid, exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien, without legal resources, the Arana Way youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless, the deprived relying upon the handouts of the power structures. Brothers and sisters, we say help me see Jesus. Help me see Hagar, Jesus. We are saying we do not want to be the complacent Abraham or the bitter Sarah. We're willing to see how our social and economic structures continue to oppress women, the poor and the immigrant. We're willing to see how we get caught on the promise. Get caught on a theological conviction. Get caught on a style of worship and a style of leadership. Become self-centered, just to fight violence and cast people out. When oppression and rejection persisted, Hagar escaped. She ran away, she ran away to the unknown, to the wilderness. Her experience of oppression was not the end of her story. There is a wilderness and in the wilderness, there is a peculiar blessing for those who resist oppression. In the least of places to find life, value and purpose, in the wilderness, Hagar encountered God twice. And let me correct that. It is God who encountered her. It was God who searched out for her. The God who is seen in this story is an unsettling God. The same deity who tells her, go back and be afflicted under the hand of your mistress. The same deity who agreed with Sarah's plan to cast Hagar and Ishmael out, is the same deity who appears to Hagar twice in the wilderness, telling her that I have heard your cry and Ishmael's cry for life and plea for justice. It is the same God. Was God here acting as an ethicist who chooses between two evils for Hagar to go back to Sarah's house despite the oppression, is better of a place for a pregnant woman than the wilderness? Was God here acting as a realist, not as an idealist? The God who seemed in agreement with oppression and rejection opened Hagar's eyes to see a will of living water for her and for the child to drink and survive the hardship of the wilderness. Above all, God accompanies them in the wilderness so that they would become the people whom God promises them to be. God in this story acts like a conflict transformation agent who transforms a lose-lose situation into a win-win situation. Seeing God in this story, as we say, help me see Jesus. Seeing God in this story is about encountering God as a transcendent and a mysterious other who does not conform with our preconceived notions of who God is and how God should act. God in this story acts in ways that disturb those who want to tame God and those who want to create a God in their image. God appears to those who are outside. God is not confined to Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. God is also involved in the messy situations that the insiders create when they act in selfish and uncompassionate ways. The ambivalence that surrounds the way God is seen in this story is reflected in the perplexing statement that Hager authored upon seeing God in the wilderness. In Genesis 16-13, so she named the Lord who spoke to her, you are El-Roy, for she said, have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him? Which can be translated in different ways. She called the name of the Lord Yahweh who spoke to her, you are El, who sees me, for she said, truly here I have seen him who looks after me. Or, and she called the name of Yahweh who is speaking to her, you are the God who sees me. She said, indeed, truly I have seen God after he saw me. Hager's Hebrew is not that clear. After all, it was her second language. At any rate, we are sure that she saw God and that she is the only woman in the Bible who names God. And she was seen by God. Isn't it interesting that when Hager encountered God, she did not demand revenge? Or punishment for her oppressors? Rather, her eyes were opened to see a will of water. The eyes of the cast out encounter God who listens to the cries of the oppressed. They reject it. Though she is perplexed by what she saw, Hager receives the gift of freedom from God, sustained by a will. Every time she draws from that will, she sees the reflection of her face. She gazes back into her own eyes to see the light of that one who cares for her, who blessed her and her child, who healed her from oppression. She looks at her reflection on the water, not to see herself worth as a pregnant woman, not to look with anger at her oppressive mistress, but to see God and to see herself and you. We are here to say, help me see Jesus. Help me see Jesus. We are here to say that seeing matters. Seeing Jesus and seeing the other are related. Sometimes we let our self-interest, our fears determine the way we gaze at others. We look at them with anger, manipulation, rejection. Other times we let pain, hurt and oppression control the way we gaze back at others. So we stare at them with revenge. Seeing Jesus calls us to repent for every time we have closed our eyes because the world was too painful. We repent for the many times people were not able to see Jesus because we have let them go hungry or because we have driven them outside our borders or because we told them they do not fit our standards. Open our eyes, Jesus. Our world is confusing. Our world is confusing, Lord, and our relationships are perplexing. Open our eyes to see you in the midst of the messy life that we have. Open our eyes to see the world that springs life, even in the wilderness. Heal our weary souls that thirst for your companionship. Teach us how to share this living water with others, even with those who don't want to see us. Amen.