Mothers and Sons

Sermon

Well, it’s Mother’s Day, and knowing there are many perspectives on Mother’s Day in the congregation, let me simply say that I love my mother, and I love being a mother, and all I need on Mother’s Day is a card and someone else making dinner. But because it’s Mother’s Day, let me propose, for the purposes of this sermon, a thought about mother-ness. For today, I’d like for us to consider that a mother is anyone who is concerned about the welfare of children, regardless of their sex or whether they’ve given birth. A mother is anyone who is concerned about the welfare of children.

Now you may think, but what about the welfare of the elderly? What about the welfare of those who live in abject poverty, or with addiction, or in places of violence? It is a good and holy thing to be concerned about the welfare of those people, too, but sometimes a sermon needs to be a little specific, so today, we are all mothers and we will look to the welfare of children.

That sentiment is certainly present in today’s story. This is a story, not history. If the stories of Hagar and Abraham and Sarah were historical they would have taken place in a time when people did not write down their history. Like so much of the book of Genesis, this is a story about the origins of the people of God. Interestingly, the three monotheistic religions all claim Abraham as their forefather – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all claim Abraham, or Ibrahim, as their great patriarch.

And he was a great patriarch, but for a while in his story, it looked as though his line would die with him. His wife Sarah had been unable to bear him a son, so she took it upon herself to make sure he had a son and, as was the ugly custom, offered her slave girl, an Egyptian woman named Hagar, to him. Sarah had power but no child; Hagar was powerless but fertile. This story should not end well.

Hagar does bear Abraham a son, whose name is Ishmael. And then Sarah bears Abraham a son, whose name is Isaac. Both mothers care very deeply about their sons, as does their father. But do these women care about each other’s sons?

Certainly Sarah does not care about Hagar. Neither she nor Abraham ever call Hagar by name. And that name, Hagar, is not an Egyptian name. In Hebrew, the word is a masculine one and means “foreign thing.” Which is ironic, really, because Abraham and Sarah are themselves foreigners. They came from Ur, from Mesopotamia, and have been in Canaan only for a decade or so. No one calls them “foreign things.”

But have a little empathy for Sarah—in her world, women lost their status when they did not bear children. Surely Sarah knew all sorts of trauma. And yet—did that make her empathetic to this slave girl Hagar? No. It made her jealous of the other woman, and it made her despise that child, Ishmael.

Because Ishmael, according to the laws back then, as the first-born son, would receive his father’s inheritance. It didn’t matter who the mother was; the father’s first-born son would receive the inheritance and so Sarah commands Abraham to send out Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness where they will undoubtedly die. Sarah will be #1 wife, and Isaac will receive the inheritance because Ishmael will be out of the picture and possibly dead.

It is a terrible thing, to not care for someone else’s child, however complicated or valid or invalid the reasons. It feels morally wrong not to be utterly committed to the welfare of all of our children. Children are not just our future but are a present delight, and we who were here last week were graced and gifted by the children and youth of our congregation as they led worship and preached the word.

Remember our children and youth as you hear this next part.

Right now in Haiti, 3 million children require humanitarian intervention as violent gangs ravage that county.

Right now in Sudan, 4.5 million children have been displaced, and many of those are suffering from malnutrition and disease because of the violence in the Darfur region.

In Ukraine, an average of one child a day has died during the war that Russian began.

On October 7, Hamas killed 38 Israeli children in their acts of terror. More children are still being held hostage in Gaza.

Since October 7, in Gaza, over 13,000 children have been killed because of the Israeli military campaigns there.

In the U.S., 1,300 children were killed by gun violence last year.

And none of those statistics takes into account children imperiled by disease and starvation, homelessness, or domestic violence.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

We have been perhaps short-sighted in our care for children. But God is always far-sighted. Even though they have been exiled to the desert, Hagar and Ishmael live. God provides for them. The messenger of God—or maybe it is God Godself—visits Hagar in her despair, tells her that her son will be the father of multitudes, and then provides a well of water.

Despite our tendency to put these sons of Abraham at odds with each other—though the scripture never does that—the two brothers come together at the end of their father’s life to bury him together. Then Isaac lives his life, and Ishmael lives his, and their stories wind in different directions.

God cared for both Ishmael and his half-brother Issac. Whom does God care for that we do not? Whom does God see that we do not? And how does God call us to be mothers of the world, to have concern for the welfare of the world’s children?

These days, with U.S. politics a mess, and with the situation in Palestine and Israel, not to mention in Ukraine and Sudan and places I am ignorant of, I often think about Ann Huntwork. Some of you will remember Ann, who was a longtime member of this congregation and a Christian who was utterly dedicated to the work of peace.

At one point in her life, she was arrested for protesting at the entrance to the School of the Americas. In her last years she was decrying the use of drones in warfare, when flying robots could kill without a human being ever having to see that another human being was being killed. Some of you will remember her steady presence at the Portland Pride Parade in June, when you would push Ann around in her wheelchair as she celebrated that day.

In some ways, Ann was and is my Jiminy Cricket, that conscience that sits on my shoulder and whispers to me. Just about every day I wonder what I should say about these conflicts, about war, and especially about the situation in Gaza.

For some of you, this sermon is already too much. For others, it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be said. That’s how it is these days—we know where we stand, and we do not always like it when someone stands elsewhere. Some of you have talked with me about all of this, bewildered, or angered, or grieved. Some of you have gotten rather angry that we as a congregation have not said or done more. Some of you are relieved that we as a congregation haven’t said or done more.

Allow me to speak briefly, then, about Gaza. I believe Hamas committed an act of terrorism on October 7, and I do not believe Hamas cares about the well being of the Palestinian people. I believe the response of the state of Israel has been disproportionately cruel and may indeed be genocide. I believe that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia play a part in the rancorous responses to all of this. I believe we should have demanded a ceasefire months ago. I believe some of you will disagree vehemently with me about any or all of these things.

I don’t pretend to understand geopolitics. I don’t pretend to have a full grasp on security needs around the world. I read some but not as much as I could, and I could read more broadly for wider perspectives.

So I do what I know how to do, which is to approach a situation from one particular point of view and today, from the perspective of the welfare of children. I believe that God calls us to care for everyone’s children, because, as author Glennon Doyle noted, there is no such thing as other peoples’ children.

What if we decided to send humanitarian aid to the children of Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Russia, Congo, and what if we decided to stop sending military aid? I’m not sure that would work out well but it’s lovely to dream.

We can be concrete about tending to the wellbeing of children. We can think globally and act locally, and we can consider the needs of children in the greater Portland and Vancouver area. We can support the Community Transition School, which provides education to children experiencing homelessness. We can support Habitat for Humanity, which provides stable housing for families. We can advocate for those laws and bond measures that we think will help children in school and at home. We can tutor. We can be volunteer readers.

We can advocate to our elected officials on the national level our concerns about the many conflicts around the world and how the U.S. is responding. We can call them, email them, and write them letters, especially those that are in an election year. We can let them know that innocent children are suffering because of decisions they make.

We can pray and hope that God hears us, as God heard Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness. Better than that, we can pray that God hears the voices of the children in Darfur, the children in Palestine, the children in Ukraine.

I know this may not be the sermon you were hoping to hear on Mother’s Day, and yet, if we are going to have a day that lifts up motherhood, then we need to remember that children are a part of that.

Many years ago I heard Mandy Patinkin in concert, and he sang my favorite song from one of my favorite musicals, Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

In this song, the Baker (one of the leads) sings a lament that giants have come down from the sky, wreaking havoc on their community and killing people, including his own wife, leaving him with their infant son. He sings,

No more giants
Waging war.
Can’t we just pursue our lives
With our children and our wives?
‘Til that happy day arrives,
How do you ignore…
All the children…
All the giants…
No more.