Invisible People

Do you believe in invisible people? I do. I think that at one time or another in our lives we become invisible people. Either because of the way we look or talk or because we are from a different country or state we are overlooked or ignored. Sookhee Choe Kim was a South Korean woman who immigrated to America. She lived here for seventeen years. And then she returned to the land of her birth. Something had changed for Sookhee, though. Something was dramatically different for she was not fully accepted in America because she was an immigrant and then she was not fully accepted in Korea because of her time in America. In the book East to America, she recounts how she felt “perpetually marginal”—never quite at home again.

A number of years ago I read a remarkable book entitled Black Like Me. John Howard Griffin was a journalist in the late 1950’s. He had been writing about the civil rights movement and the horrors of prejudice, but he did not really know how it felt. As a white journalist he embarked on a striking experiment. He obtained a medicine that would turn his skin dark over a number of days. While his skin was still white, he drove into the deep South and walked around a small town, eating at the diners, frequenting the drug stores and gas stations. Then he sequestered himself in a motel room and took the medication that made him appear as if he was African-American. This is some of what he wrote about his experience.

I went into a drugstore that I had patronized every day since my arrival. I walked to the cigarette counter where the same girl I had talked with everyday waited on me.

"Package of [cigarettes], please.” I said in response to her blank look.

She handed them to me, took my bill and gave me change with no sign of recognition, none of the banter of previous days.

Again my reaction was that of a child. I was aware that the street smells, and the drugstore odors of perfume and arnica, were exactly the same . . . as they had been to the white. Only this time I could not go to the soda fountain and order a limeade or ask for a glass of water. (p. 18)

Many of us and in so many different ways have been or still feel invisible. I would like to talk with you today about an invisible person named Hagar. Hagar's story comes out of the story of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah found in Genesis 16. It is later in Genesis that God changes their names from Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah.

God made a promise to this man named Abram. Genesis 12:2-3 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." What an incredible promise this is! Through one man and his wife all the peoples of the earth will be blessed. This promise made centuries ago is why we today receive blessing from God.

There was a problem, though. Sarai could not conceive. Therefore the promise of a great nation seemed hopeless. Abram and Sarai found themselves years in the waiting for this child to be born. Ten years is a very long time, especially for a woman who was barren and who could not have children. This was Sarai's plight. She is called "Sarai the barren" in the Bible.

In those days a woman's role was almost exclusively to bear children. Sarai got anxious and needed to see God's promise fulfilled. So, Sarai noticed Hagar her servant. Now Hagar was invisible in many ways. 1) She was a servant. 2) She was an Egyptian servant in the Hebrew society. 3) She was a female servant with even less worth than a male servant. She had no rights, no privileges, nothing.

And yet there was another way Hagar was invisible. Read with me Genesis 16:1-6.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."

"Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

Sarai needed to find someone who could help her fulfill God's promise. So one day she saw her servant Hagar in a new way. Hagar could be the way to fulfill God's promise! Sarai had to give Hagar to Abram as another wife and she could bear the child that they were waiting for. Now here is the other level of Hagar's invisibility. She was simply a fertile womb. In the biblical text Sarai and Abram never call her by name. She is "the servant" or "the handmaiden." They never called Hagar by her name. She was not a person. She was a means to make God's will happen.

This is a tragedy because God is the God who makes promises and keeps them. When he made his promise to Abram and Sarai they were to simply wait for God to do his work. It was not theirs to make it happen on their own.

But Sarai had to make something happen. Sarai gave Hagar as a piece of property to Abram—a concubine. In those days a female servant could be given to a man as a second wife with all the duties and responsibilities of a wife but without status or privilege. Again, Hagar is seen simply as a means to an end.

We may wonder why Abram and Sarai made such choices as followers of the one true God. What we need to recognize is that Abram was called out of a pagan society by God. His understanding of God and God's expectations were an emerging faith. Some of the things we see in their lifestyle do not seem to fit into what we expect today of a godly marriage. But keep this in mind, Abram and Sarai were learning about God in the same way that we learn about God. And aren’t we grateful that God is very gracious and patient with us, teaching us as we walk with him?

So, Abram takes Hagar as a second wife—which could not have been too difficult. But this is in fact the greater tragedy. Sarai took God's work into her own hands and Abram did as well! Neither of them were willing to wait for God's perfect plan.

So Hagar conceived and became pregnant. In a very short time Hager became proud, understanding that she had something Sarai did not have. And she made sure she let Sarai know all about it. She became an oppressor. How quickly the oppressed becomes the oppressor! This is Hagar's sin. At this point she is the objectified, victimized, invisible person who at the moment she gains any kind of position or power abuses it.

We have seen Sarai's sin, Abram's sin and now we see Hagar’s sin. And what we really see is that all three of these people are sinners. The ground is immediately leveled—no more status, privilege or hierarchy. They are all at the same level. This is important to understand because God's Word says in Romans 3:23 that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Just because someone has been a victim does not give them the privilege to be sinful or abusive to other people. There is a new way and an open way given to us. That way is the way of Jesus Christ who forgives and forgives and forgives.

What happens next is really quite awful. Because of Hagar despising her, Sarai responded back and began to abuse her. Sarai was so abusive that Hagar felt compelled to run away. She ran out into the desert. We are talking about a seriously troubling home situation here. There was Hagar, a woman who most likely had never really been seen by anyone. She was objectified, no status, no voice—and then she was broken away from shelter and food.

The desert has to be the most solitary place. There is no one there. It was just Hagar. Hagar and her anxiety. Hagar and her bitterness. Hagar and her loneliness. And now she had this child within her. What's to become of this child?

It is here that we need to understand something very important. The Bible is not a book about humanity and its goodness. It's a book about God's faithfulness. It is so important to see this and know this. If the Bible is about us, we have a pretty ugly thing to look at in the mirror. But, the Bible is about God's love and faithfulness!

Read with me Genesis 16:7-14.

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"

"I'm running away from my mistress Sara," she answered.

Then the angel of the Lord told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The angel added, "I will so increase your descendents that they will be too numerous to count."

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 of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers."

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." That is why the well was called Beer Lahi Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

So now we see God's faithfulness. Hagar was sitting in the desert by herself suffering, alone, betrayed and broken. And an angel of the Lord comes to her. An angel of the Lord is a full representation of the Lord. The angel is an emissary of God. The angel speaks the very words of God. He speaks the words of God to Hagar. The most incredible thing about this is that the first way that God address is Hagar is by her name, something Abram and Sarai never did. He calls to her, he knows her name. And then he asks her, "Where are you coming from and where you going?" In other words, "We have to talk about this. We have to talk about what you did and talk about why you are leaving and what must be done about this.

Do you know what Ishmael means? Ishmael means "God hears." There she was, in absolute invisibility and God hears her! And God sees her! And God calls her by name. Oh, what a wonder that the God of the universe would look down and see a broken woman in the desert and go to her!

And then God calls her to return. In Hebrew to return is the same word that it means to repent. If you look at her entire circumstance, this call of God is more than a little distressing. To return means that Hagar not only has to go back to the woman who has abused her, but she has to return in order to reconcile with her. She has to go back into that abusive situation and live on the promise that God had just given to her. This must have been a difficult thing.

Here is the truth about our life with God. Yes, he calls us by name and knows us individually; and he calls us to reconciliation and repentance. And in and through that God will bless us. God says something spectacular about Ishmael—that his descendents will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Does that sound a little familiar to the promise made to Abram and Sarai? So, here we have God redeeming and blessing the situation no matter how sinful anyone has been. He called her to go back.

Here is what Hagar said, and this is quite incredible. In verse 13 we read: She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her; "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the one who sees me." So many people had never seen Hagar. But the One most important to her saw her. God saw Hagar and called her by name.

God calls each of us by name. He knows us in our mother's womb, as he knew Ishmael in his mother's womb. Psalm 139 exalts in the fact that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that God formed us and shape us into the people that we are. What a marvelous thing this is that God knows us and calls us by name! He has called so many people by name. We can see this throughout the biblical text. Saul was persecuting the early Christian church and God intersected his life by calling out, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He called him by name. He called him to repentance and then he declared a new name over Saul. Saul became the apostle Paul and God worked through him a mighty work. Then there is that little tax collector running into the street trying to catch up with the crowd because he has heard about this man named Jesus. He climbed into a tree and what did Jesus say to him? "Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down. I want to go to your house for dinner tonight." Mary of Magdalene was weeping in the garden after Jesus had been crucified and buried. She did not know where the body was. She was distraught and weeping. Jesus came near to her and said, "Mary." Immediately she knew the One who called her. Immediately she knew that this was her Rabbi, her Teacher, the One who loved her and was risen again.

He calls us all by name and he sees us. And God does not see us just to condemn us, but he sees us and hears us so that he can redeem us. God did not see Hagar to say, "Look what you did you bad girl! You should not have done that to Sarai." He did not go to Abram and Sarai and shake his finger at them and say, "You had better straighten up!" He came in and his very presence confronted them with their sin and then he offered them redemption and hope again. What a marvelous thing it is that God calls us and sees us for this reason! John 3:17 says, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

God sees us in all of our fearful, lonely, distressed invisible states. This is expressed ultimately and finally in his self-giving love. Sending his son Jesus Christ to be the One who can make the way for us today makes all the difference. It is Jesus Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. God has come to make the difference so that when we are confronted with our sin we have a way out. And then we can be blessed with the abiding, guiding and comforting presence of the Holy Spirit.

The God of Abraham and Sarai was the Way, the Truth and the Life for Hagar and Ishmael, too. I hope that you know this today for yourself, that you have received this and believe it that today. It would be wonderful if each one of us could say with the Psalmist in Psalm 66:16-20—Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him with my mouth, his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!

Copyright M.R.HYDE 2011