Give Me This Cup: A Meditation for Holy Week 2013

It's almost Easter.

The senses awaken: a whisper in the air, "spring is almost come," and the smell.  Dirt writhes with worms, flowers burst to life.

My mind goes back. I see a cross.

And hanging there, a man looks back at me.

Or maybe he's not looking directly at me. His eyes seem distant--deadened by pain and heartbreak

He says, "I thirst."

My first instinct is to help him, although soldiers guard the condemned, and his mouth would be three feet out of reach even if I did make it to the cross.  I see a soldier wrap a dirty rag around the end of a branch. Perhaps he was listening, too.

The soldier dips the rag into a wooden bucket. He twists it in there.

I wave my arm at the soldier.  He doesn't see me.

I cry out--he doesn't understand a word I say--"That's not what he meant!" I call.

"I thirst."

30 Psalms

The weeks between Epiphany and Lent are among the darkest of the year.

Sure, the sun sets before I can return home from my teaching job on most days, but they are spiritually muddled, too.

I blame New Year's resolutions. The Christian calendar has plenty of opportunities for reflection and the practice of discipline (like Lent), but resolutions throw a secular wrench into the works. I often spend January trying to lose weight, exercise more, avoid eating out, etc.  It is usually one of the more unexciting times of the year to practice my faith.

This year, I made a resolution that resolved this dilemma. In the six weeks between Epiphany Sunday and Ash Wednesday, I would write out 30 psalms by hand.  This idea isn't new, but the practice was for me. I accomplished my goal this week with two days to spare.

(Here's I need to give a shout out to my academy friend, Doug Pratt, who posted the idea to Facebook before Christmas. At the time I read it, I thought how silly it would be to try something like this during the busy, holiday season, but later I was inspired to try writing out 30 psalms after Advent.)

I just wanted to post some of the things I learned about the psalms during this encounter. I have extended my obsession with the Jewish Temple to meditating on psalms 42, 84, 95, 103, 130, and 40 in other blogs on this site, so I won't spend a lot of time on analysis on this blog.

• I tried to be "led" to psalms. I'd hear one referenced in a sermon or on a Facebook post, and I'd plan to transcribe it.  For example, after one NFL playoff game, I saw Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis wearing a shirt that said, "Psalm 91." I hate the Ravens with the bitterness only a Cleveland Browns fan can know, but that night I transcribed the psalm.
• I saved Psalm 30 for one of my last. It was a most pleasant discovery, especially given the context of Lent:  
• "What is it to be gained by my spilled blood, by my going down into the pit?  Does dust thank you? Does it proclaim your faithfulness? Lord, listen and have mercy upon me! Lord, be my helper!" (verses 9-10).
• What follows soon after is a foretaste of Easter: "You changed my mourning into dancing. You took off my funeral clothes and dressed me up in joy so that my whole being might sing praises to you and never stop. Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever."
• I was surprised how many of the 30 psalms dealt with the theme of revenge and retribution. I think of psalms as expressions of praise and devotion. In fact, many of them follow a pretty simple formula:

• "I acknowledge you, God, and I write your praise
• ---> "No other divinity is like you."
• ---> "No other nation is like yours."
• ---> "There are people who oppose your king/your nation" (they're the same thing in the psalms).
• ---> "Please punish them severely. OK?"
• ---> "Then you will be acknowledged and praised once again."
• I love to worship, and I believe the Psalms represent exemplars of worship.
• But I consider the act of begging God to avenge himself upon my enemies to be a sacrilege.
• I transcribed from the Common English Bible--a recent translation that is supported by a number of mainline Protestant denominations--that had been given to Owen when he completed confirmation classes at church. It was the first chance I'd had to really get into this Bible.  
• The language of the CEB was, well, common--as opposed to rich (I prefer the NIV or TNIV). For example, I searched and searched the words, "Be still and know that I am God" (46:10).  So many translations of the Bible fail with the psalms because the King James owns the rhythm and the texture of the words. Reading a translation of the 23rd Psalm without "he leadeth me beside still waters" is about as off-putting as versions of Shakespeare's that rephrase Hamlet, saying, "To exist or maybe not to."  
• In the CEB, Psalm 46:10 reads: "That's enough! Now know that I am God!"
• Really? Can one replace "be still" with an exclamation point? It's jarring. And the rhythm is totally off. At least the double meaning remains
• The CEB overuses exclamation points. I get it with the psalms--they're emotional, they're passionate. But only poor writers mistake exclamation points for passion, yet that's what the translators of this version have done. I won't bother to count them, but 40-60% of the sentences in the psalms I transcribed ended with exclamation points, which is 39-59% too many of them!
• I'm not sure if you can read from the picture, but the psalms I transcribed were the following: 2, 5, 8, 14, 18, 19, 22, 27, 30, 40, 42, 45, 46, 51, 63, 77, 79, 81, 89, 90, 91, 100, 110, 115, 121, 127, 137, 139, 146, 150.

Of Spider Fathers and Christmas Day

This article in the Economist magazine just blew my mind. Researchers took wolf spiders and ran experiments to see why female spiders consumed their mates following copulation.

What they found was shocking. When they looked at the hatchlings of mothers that feasted on fathers and those that didn't, here's what they found: when mommy ate daddy, 48% of babies survived one month after hatching. When daddy survived mommy, only 12% of the hatchlings survived.

Put simply: a dead daddy produced four times as many surviving hatchlings as a live one.

So what's more important: babies' lives or daddy's? The researchers hypothesize that, in giving up his life to his mate, the male wolf spider provides fuel to his offspring that make their survival more likely.

While I am happy to relate that I survived the creation of three children (100% of which survive, thanks be to God) with the partnership of a vegetarian wife, this story reminds me that fatherhood is filled with sacrifice. American fathers aren't consumed by our wives but by our children: braces, clothes, Christmas presents--and don't even get me started about the cost of college or driving.

Whether it's hobbies that we give up or careers, human fathers make these sacrifices for the same reason that wolf spiders do: because seeing our children prosper is more precious than anything--including Life Itself.

I'm reminded as we enter Advent today, of a father who gave up home, reputation and livelihood for the sake of a Son he did not create. There is no record that Joseph survived to see Jesus' adulthood, but Joseph's sacrifice set history in motion.

Idols in our Pockets

"What's in your wallet?"

 It's a fair question, considering the world we live in.

What's in my wallet is identification. There is some cash in there--or at least there was before my daughter asked me for some money to cover her weekend expenses. There are credit cards, health insurance cards, "frequent shopper" benefits, and stuff like that.

 "What's in your wallet?"

 It's the tag line for a credit card company, too. I won't promote the name, but their ads often feature pagan spokespeople who take time from pillaging (and Christmas shopping) to inquire about viewers' means of payment.

"What's in your wallet?"

It's a leading question, one that was asked by Jesus Christ at a time and in a context that placed his ministry in political peril. Every student of the gospels know that Jesus instructed his followers to "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" (Mark 12 and Luke 20).

Few may remember that before he stated that, Jesus asked: "What's in your wallet?" (Or something like that.) In my version of the Bible, the TNIV, he actually says, "Bring me a denarius and let me look at it" (Mark 12.15).

It's a funny question because it was supposed to be a trap.  Should we pay taxes to Caesar?  There was no easy answer to that question in 1st-century Judaea.  No one liked taxes, yet there was one thing more fatal to a public career than endorsing Roman taxes, and that was challenging them.

It was a trap that Jesus answered first with the words, "what's in your wallet?" or "show me a denarius."

We infer from Jesus' words that he didn't have a denarius on him.  We might even wonder if Jesus knew what a denarius looked like.  With a little digging into scripture, we can understand why he didn't have one.

A Roman denarius was worth a day's wages for a laborer, around $80 today, so perhaps it's not surprising that Jesus didn't carry these coins around with him. But it wasn't just the value that may have prevented Jesus from carrying one of his own, it was the appearance of these coins, too: encircling the image of Caesar on the "heads" side were the words, "Son of the divine (Augustus)," and on back, the words, "high priest" surrounded the image of a goddess.

In other words, the coins born inscriptions quite similar to those that Jesus' followers would make about him in the weeks after his Resurrection.  But Christ's accusers carried more than words in their wallets.

The engravings of Tiberius and the godess found on the denarius would seem to violate the prohibition in the 2nd Commandment: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below" (Ex 20.4).  The word, "graven" (from the Middle English word "grafen,") carries two meanings. It can mean an image that is sculpted, much like the idols of the near east. It can also mean "to stamp or impress deeply."  After all, it's the root of the word, "engrave."

Deuteronomy 4.16 strengthens this prohibition.  It warns Israel against making "any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air."  A similar prohibition continues in Islam today, which forbids the use of images in art, particularly those of Mohammed.

Pagans and wallets. They weren't merely subjects for an ad campaign in Jesus' day, they were at the center of contentious, theological debate.

In a way, Jesus' question, "What's in your wallet?" was another way to demand, "Bring out your idols."

And when someone produced a coin, it meant that Jesus had out-radicalized them before he could get to the words, "Give unto Caesar...."  The questioner carried in his wallet Caesar's image--which happened to be very valuable to the bearer--far too valuable to give back in the form of a tax.  Jesus didn't carry Caesar's image. Therefore there was little for him to hold onto--little for him to tug back and forth with the Roman authorities--little for Jesus to hold closer to his heart than the Father.

I am left to wonder, then, what's in my wallet--whether I might be carrying idols around on my person.

Foreign Coins, Foreign Figures
I've long been as fascinated with the appearance of money as with the accumulation of it.  The bill and the coin is an avenue into the heart of a nation's culture--and the more I have traveled, the more I have learned to appreciate how coins represent cultures.

I have a jar of coins on my living room mantle left over from my days adventuring over Europe before the age of the Euro. There are about ten countries represented. When I look for gods I find them on the "heads" of coins from Switzerland, France, Greece and Italy. All but Greece feature goddesses.  Italy and Greece feature the heads of the goddess & god in profile while France and Switzerland feature the image from head to toe.

Other countries feature political figures. England and Canada are engraved with Queen Elizabeth's image.  I have two Spanish coins, one with the dictator Franco (1966) and one with King Juan Carlos (1980).  I have a Turkish coin and one from Hungary that feature their nations' founders, Kemal Ataturk and Lajos Kossuth, respectively. (The coins featured in the picture are--clockwise from top left--England, Turkey, Italy, US nickel (front), US penny (tails), Greece and Switzerland.)

Even more fascinating than the coins are the bills. Coins have changed very little since the days of Tiberius Caesar. Bills are a modern development, and they are far more customized to describe their country.  From my travels in Europe throughout the 1990s, I remember the British pound proudly promoting three titans of the nation's history: the Duke of Wellington, William Shakespeare and James Watt.  I have a ten-pound note that I keep (my first paid writing commission) that bears the image of Florence Nightingale  Of course every British banknote also features one side with Queen Elizabeth's portrait.

I don't have a wide collection, but my 100,000 Turkish Lira note bears Ataturk's image on both sides--his portrait on one, and a picture of him accepting flowers from children on the other. I collected this note in 1999, 60 years after Ataturk's death, no less, demonstrating the enormous power that Turkey's founder continues to wield.  My 1,000,000 Turkish Lira note (which was worth about $2.50 when I visited in 1999) had a picture of a dam.

My 1000 Italian Lira note bears Maria Montessori's image. I can't emphasize how cool it is that a nation would feature a teacher on a banknote.  My communist-era Albanian note is a fascinating look at the darkest year (1976) of that nation's red paranoia.  A pickaxe and a gun mark one side, guarding the construction of an apartment building (complete with cranes and scaffolding), while on the other side young men and women march in military formation, carrying the Albanian flag (and Kalashnikovs) [Pictured].

I remember seeing Austrian "schilling" bills with doctors and engineers on them and thinking to myself: wow, science and technology is really important to this country.  What is important in mine?

American Gods
A look at American coins and bills shows a fascination with government, plain and simple.  The graven images on the coins that Americans carry are of politicians, not of gods (I'll let someone else explain the "tails" sides of American coinage).  Do Americans worship great presidents?  I think we do to a certain extent. One need only visit the U.S. Capitol, tour the Rotunda and stare up at the Apotheosis of Washington painted on the dome's interior in 1865 to verify this tendency.

Moreover, the presidents featured on American coins share one common feature: they presided over significant steps in the establishment and expansion of American government.  Washington fought to establish the United States, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and served only two terms as the nation's first president.  As president, Jefferson doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase and presided over America's first overseas military adventure "to the shores of Tripoli," as the Marine hymn says.  Lincoln fought to keep the Union together in the face of rebellion and then oversaw an enormous increase in federal power established in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.  And FDR set the federal government on the course to where it is today, acting more as an insurer of economic security than a defender of national security.  These men weren't gods, per se, but they were key players who brought the U.S. government to greater heights of power.

Now look at American bills.  Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson have their own bills.  The other bills feature general-presidents like Andrew Jackson, who crushed native power in the Southeast as a general and expelled them as president, and Ulysses S Grant whose generalship saved the union in the Civil War and whose presidency shamelessly rewarded private railroad and mining interests.  Two non-presidents are also featured as well, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

Apparently no public figure since Grant has been worthy of having his or her image on a bill. I think that part of this is because few people idolize public figures anymore. World War I ended the age of kings in Europe, and it is no coincidence that--in America at least--no public figure since (with the exception of FDR on the tiny dime) has been engraved into metal or paper.

The backs of U.S. bills are no less revealing. With the exception of the $1 (US symbols) and the $2 (portrait of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) bills, they all feature government buildings: the White House, the Capitol, the U.S. Treasury, the Lincoln Temple/Memorial.

What's in my wallet?  It's the United States government and the men who consecrated it.

It isn't Caesar's graven image that holds me in thrall, it's Washington's, Lincoln's and Franklin's.  It isn't a priestess engraved on the "tails" side but martial eagles, eye-capped pyramids, and public temples

And despite every coin's engraving, "In God we Trust," my money isn't God.

It is as divisive as it was in Christ's day. In an era when pushing the nation over a "fiscal cliff" is seen by some as preferable to paying taxes, "what's in your wallet?" engenders a religious fervor equivalent to that which confronted Jesus in the day of the Tiberian denarius.

And I think that Christ's question remains a challenge that may be even more difficult for Christ-followers to accept today than it was among his homeless band of disciples. "Show me a denarius." A denarius was anathema to Christ and his followers, who trafficked a currency that--like its kingdom--was not of this world.

Looking back, I think that the best response to Jesus' direction, "show me a denarius," would have been this: "What's a denarius?"

Looking forward, perhaps Christians' best responses to "what's in your wallet?" just might eventually become--in that perfect Kingdom--"What is a wallet?"

Two Notes:
If I were in Congress (don't worry, I never will be), I would like to see U.S. currency feature a broader range of historical figures, much like the European bills did in the decades before the Euro.  To me, American Inventors should be celebrated for a time.  I would nominate 

• Thomas Edison ($1)
• Eli Whitney ($5)
• Orville & Wilbur Wright ($10)
• George Washington Carver ($20)
• Alexander Graham Bell ($100)

Possible alternatives: Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Samuel F.B. Morse, Cyrus McCormick, Steve Jobs

Comment below and tell me what you think.  Would you add writers? Civil Rights Figures? Movie Stars?

This blog owes a debt to N.T. Wright's book, How God Became King, and his description of the exchange found on pages 147-149. Suffice it to say, I recommend the book. This is one of many fascinating ideas I got from reading it.

"Tree of Life" and the Search for God

Every year, I get the chance to see one "grown-up movie."  Usually it comes around my birthday at the end of January, just after Academy Awards nominations are made.  With the help of On Demand this year, we've been able to watch both The Help and Tree of Life, and it's the latter movie that I feel is worthy of an Oscar-season review here at Point Pleasant.

I'm always amazed at the overt spirituality of the best films that are released every year.  Hollywood seems like such a bastion of secularism, but time and again I am humbled by the spiritual connections made in some of my favorite movies.  Two years, I blogged about the Easter-connected film, Slumdog Millionaire.  I didn't have time last year to discuss my favorite movie of 2010, True Grit.

First, a note about the term, "Tree of Life."  As I grew up, I understood that this was the tree that grew in the Garden of Eden, a symbol of eternal life that Adam and Eve consumed, and from which they were blocked by an angel with a flaming sword after their capital-f, Fall (Genesis 3.22-25).  

(Four years ago, I blogged about this Tree of Life after I had found the species of tree that grew in the garden.)  This tree makes a return appearance in Revelation 22.1-5, bearing twelve different fruits every season and engendering "the healing of the nations."

But there is a different Tree of Life I have studied in recent years--one that draws from Charles Darwin.  When I studied biology in school, I understood the plant and animal kingdoms, and I broke those into phyla and other, smaller groups, each kingdom was a pyramid that grew broader and broader toward its base, where I found homo sapien among the list of primate species..

The biological Tree of Life illustrates the biological principal that life is truly broader than mere plants and animals.  Ninety percent (or more) of all living things cannot be seen by the human eye, and the Tree of Life tries to incorporate bacteria, viruses, fungi, and the huge assortment of living things into one, circular family--quite a contrast to the pyramidal structure of life that I learned in my high school biology classes (a picture of this tree of life is included into the blog, a more three-dimensional representation can be found here).

This is the proper setup for the movie, Tree of Life, which is obsessed with spirituality, with prayer, with God, but not with Genesis.  Instead, the film begins with a quote from the book of Job (my favorite creation account found in the Bible): 

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand."  Job 38. 4

The central character in the film is a man named Jack O'Brian (yes, the initials spell, "Job"), who has come to question his faith following the death of his brother.  The plot of the film takes place inside Jack's head, in a series of recollections of childhood, of whispered prayers, and of wildly fantastical imaginings.  Because it takes place inside Jack's head, don't necessarily expect a beginning and middle--nor should the viewer expect to know for sure which of Jack's two brothers has died--I think it's pretty easy to figure out.

At his core, Jack has a God problem.  There are two forms of God who battle for Jack's affection and respect--a conundrum that most people of faith would understand.  The dilemma is stated succinctly by Mrs. O'Brian:  "There are two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.

Jack's mother represents God the Nurturer--the way of grace.  She is full of wonder.  She is loving.  She comforts Jack and his brothers.  In one of her voiceovers, she whispers, "Do good to them. Wonder. Hope."  This is the kind of God she is--and Jack adores her.

But there is a second embodiment of God, found in Jack's father:  God the Naturer, the Striver, the Responsible.  "You are not to call me, 'Dad,'" he bellows in one contentious scene, "You are to call me 'Father!'"  He tries to instruct Jack, to teach him manners, to toughen him up for the challenges that life will throw at him.  (In a particularly heartfelt scene, Mr. O'Brian teaches Jack to fight him, challenging the son to punch him in the face.)

These two forces seem to tear at Jack, who like St. Paul wrestles with the desires to do the things he doesn't want to do while failing to do that which he should do.  An illustration of this comes in one of the scenes at church.  Soon after a funeral where Mr. O'Brian's strictness and reverence has been on display, Jack can be seen in the empty sanctuary walking across the tops of the pews!

The movie never gives one form of God preference over the other.  In the scene where Jack enters transcendence, both of them are there, and both greet him warmly.

The whisper is an important part of the movie.  By my recollection, about 15% of the dialogue is whispered in voice over, sounding almost like prayers:  

• "Are you there?"
• "Do you know what happened?  Do you care?"
• "Where do you live?"
• "Are you watching me? I want to see what you see."

I'm not sure how this appears to someone who doesn't have a faith background.  It must seem terribly random, this hidden, disembodied dialogue.  To me, though, this is the "true" story of experience--the questions that linger, that bring both sadness and wonder.

I was also struck by the dynamic between the two oldest brothers featured in the movie.  While Jack is frustrated by the different natures of his parents, his younger brother, R.L, seems to embody them effortlessly.  In another transcendent scene, R.L. practices his guitar on the porch outside the room in which his father plays the piano.  The two instruments gradually fade into an impromptu duet on Pachelbel's Canon.  The look of pride on Mr. O'Brian's face is unmistakable--"This is the one who gets it."

And with mother, the relationship is also warm.  R.L. asks Mrs. O'Brian, "Tell us a story from before we can remember," and the movie launches into it's most talked-about scene: a cosmos-spanning depiction of the creation of the Universe.  This stunning, watching galaxies spin into existence, seeing the sun emerge through the dust of forming planets, peeking in on two dinosaurs that play in a riverbed.

But R.L. is an Abel to Jack's Cain.  Jack's deepest conflicts come to the fore when he is around his brother. At one point, Jack demands that R.L. stick a wire into a lamp.  When he isn't shocked, R.L. says, "I trust you."  Later, though, Jack asks R.L. to put his finger over the tip of his BB gun, and here R.L.'s faith is destroyed.  If Mr. and Mrs. O'Brian are the two sides of God, then R.L. and Jack are the two sides of humanity.

Tree of Life.  It's a prayer and a meditation more than it is a story--which is why I don't necessarily think of it as a great movie.  Still, it was an opportunity for me to seek God and see God again through Job's eyes and through those of the fictional O'Brian family, too.

Book Review: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

Fine Just the Way it Is by Annie Proulx
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've been to Wyoming. Once. It was late spring. I crossed the northern part of the state from the Black Hills to Yellowstone, then climbed down the spine of the Tetons to Colorado. It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen: lush and green, bursting with wildlife, hot springs, and geysers. The worst thing I can say about Wyoming is that I've never been back...

...save through the writing of Annie Proulx. She's been to Wyoming, too, and she's been there a long time. And her time in Wyoming wasn't just a verdant two weeks in spring. And her writing captures with stark realism a Wyoming that isn't just smiling hotel clerks, and dude-ranch cowboys. And yet there is real beauty hidden throughout this book--beauty that one finds in no other American place.

For example, the spectacular scenery of Catlin's hike in "Testimony of the Donkey": hidden lakes, decades-old signatures on the rocks, a splendid scene, all for one dangerous element. I loved the fairy-tale feel of "The Sagebrush Kid" and the interweaving of various histories of the West into the tales.

I completely skipped the two stories about the Devil, though. And while Proulx's prose is often praised, I tried to read "The Sagebrush Kid" out loud to my wife, and found myself tongue tied and stammering.

Still, the book is a pleasant return to a wonderfully beautiful, haunted place: Wyoming.

View all my reviews

And His Name... Shall be Called... Ishmael

The Advent Season is the best time to be a Christian, and it's not just because of Christmas presents or the yummy food at Grandma's house.

The Advent Season is a season of promise.  Emmanuel is coming!  And the promise of "God with Us" is a realization that I treasure year after year after year.

It's just that every year, I find Emmanuel in a new place. It may be in the glow of candlelight or in the words of a Christmas carol.  I may find it in a gift or scrawled on the back of a Christmas card.  It's always such a surprise.  I know I will find "God with Me," and I will be blessed by that revelation.

There is one place I find Emmanuel more than any other, and that is in the Bible.  Advent is a time for scripture, and whether it is in the Psalms, the Gospels, or the lyrical prophecies of Isaiah, Emmanuel is often there waiting.

This year I found it in a Bible study I attend at Oasis Church.  We've been making our way through Genesis, and the text for study was chapter 16: the birth of Ishmael.  What I found there was the Christmas story--yes, perhaps one with Father Abraham instead of St. Nicholas, but a story with a special meaning for gentile Christians (like me) nonetheless.

The chapter begins with the matriarch of the Jewish faith, Sarai.  (Abram was a patriarch, indeed, but he fathered many different nations.  The strain of the Jewish story in the Old Testament wends back to Sarai/Sarah and the child God promised through her, not through Abram.)

Sarai gives up waiting for a child, and she gives her slave to Abram as a surrogate mother.  There is no mention of the enslaved woman's feelings about this arrangement--the prospect of a union with an 85-year-old man could not have felt too enticing.  The slave--an exiled Egyptian girl named Hagar who was part of the human bounty of Sarai's brief marriage to Pharoah--becomes pregnant, however, and soon begins to "despise her mistress" (verse 4).  The context of the verse implies an "I'm pregnant and you're not" attitude, 

but I would posit that Hagar is enslaved by Sarai, forced into a sexual union with Sarai's elderly husband, and impregnated with a child that will legally become Sarai's.  I would argue that there are very many reasons for Hagar to "despise her mistress."

What follows is abuse.  Sarai mistreats Hagar; Abram abandons her to Sarai's vengeance, "Your servant is in your hands" (verse 6).

What follows is escape.  Hagar runs away, and she doesn't stop running until she's on the road back home to Egypt.

What follows is Christmas.

The way to Egypt is perilous for a pregnant young woman to travel alone.  Hagar finds a well and waits there for help.  The Bible doesn't say it explicitly, but it's safe to say that Hagar prays for help there--begging from the merchants who passed by, and calling out to the God of her elderly protector.  (To understand the scene and her need for assistance at the well, consider the assistance her nephew, Jacob, would later give Rachael at a well in Genesis 29: 6-10).

It is at this well that Hagar meets "the angel of the Lord."

The angel encourages Hagar to return to Abram and Sarai, promising not just one child but many descendants.

The angel of the Lord also said to her:
"You are now with child
     and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
     for the Lord has heard you" (Genesis 16.11)

Christmas suddenly seems closer.  This seems very close to the directions an angel later gave to Mary:  

"You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.  For he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High" (Luke 1.32)

The names are different, but the stories share key elements.  The message is delivered by an angel; the promise is for everyone.

Ishmael means "God listens."  In Hagar's distress, God listened.  And the woman whom God heard was no patriarch or matriarch, but an enslaved, abused, runaway, foreign girl.

I know far less of Mary's background than of Hagar's, but the words of her Magnificat echo back in time to paint the picture of Hagar's redemption at the well which she would later name, Lahai Roi, or "The Living One who Sees Me."

My Soul glorifies the Lord
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant" (Luke 1.46-48).

The name Ishmael--"God listens"--seems very close in spirit to the name that Mary gave her child, Immanuel, "God within us."

Even as Advent is a time when I rededicate myself to "God within," the message of Ishmael's name also resounds.  God listens.  When we are trapped in the desert, God listens.  When we are enslaved, God listens.  When all hope seems lost "God listens"...Ishmael--"God listens"...Ishmael, Ishmael, Ishmael.

I'm not the only writer to connect Mary with Hagar.  Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, included in the Qur'an a description of Jesus' birth much different from the ones found in the gospels.

"So [Mary] conceived [Jesus]
And she retired with him
To a remote place.
And the pains of childbirth
Drove her to the trunk
Of a palm tree:
She cried in her anguish"
"Ah! would that I had
Died before this...!
But a voice cried to her
From beneath the palm tree:
"Grieve not! for thy Lord
Hath provided a rivulet
Beneath thee
And shake towards thyself
The trunk of the palm tree;
It will let fall
Fresh ripe dates upon thee...
At length she brought
The babe to her people,
Carrying him in her arms.  (Surah 19. 22-27)

When I read this text, I don't see Mary.  I need Joseph in my Christmas narratives, and a cave in Bethlehem is just too much for me to give up for a lonely birth at the base of a date palm.

When I read this text, though, I see Hagar.  She is alone.  The son she carries isn't hers--it's Sarai's.  A return to her mistress may not necessarily be a return to slavery, but it feels just as bad.  Yet here in the desert, Ishmael--God listens.  And a stream appears (a reference to Hagar's final escape in Genesis 21.19). And sweet, nourishing dates fall all around her as she strains against the tree in her labor.

I freely admit that I read the Qur'an just as I read the Old Testament: not as a believer, per se, but as a Christian seeking to understand the truth of my Savior, Emmanuel.  But I must also admit that I am rooting for Hagar and Ishmael as this story unfolds.

God promises, and the birth of Abram's second son, Isaac, would fulfill the promise that Sarai had sought to circumvent by giving her slave to her husband.  It was through Isaac's line that David would rise and the Christ child would be born.

But God listens, as Ishmael's name attests, and God blessed Ishmael and Abraham's other sons with another promise of source.  At the time Isaac and Ishmael were being born, I had ancestors living.  Most likely they roamed the forests of Northern Europe completely unaware of the machinations of Sarai and her slave.  The hope of their deliverance--and of mine--comes through Ishmael as well as Isaac.

God listen then (Ishmael), and God Ishmael's today

And that is the special message Advent has given me this year.

(I did not have time to add Paul's commentary from Galatians 4.21-28.  Suffice it to say, he takes a different take on the Ishmael story--demeaning him as a representative of the old law, not as a part of the promise that Isaac represented.)