Keep Knocking

Rev. Amanda Kemery

Inspired: Deliverance Stories

Scripture: Genesis 16:1-4, 6b-15 (Hagar)

Based on the book Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

The Complexity of Scripture

Here’s the problem: you can interpret and bend scripture to support whatever it is you want to say. If you’re looking to define marriage as a union between two people, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for scripture to support, let’s say, polygamy—it’s there. Scripture to celebrate and uplift the leadership of women? Yes! It's there. Scripture to oppress and silence women? You will find that too. Looking for reasons to wage war? Yeah, you’ll find those. Looking for reasons to promote peace? There are even more.

And it’s because our scripture—yes—is inspired by God, and it also has human fingerprints all over it. It is a living, breathing, confounding, and surprising invitation to wonder and wrestle with God. Because of its complexity and richness, you will find what you’re looking for.

As Rachel Held Evans puts it:

“If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm. With scripture, we’ve been entrusted with some of the most powerful stories ever told. How we harness that power, whether for good or for evil, oppression or liberation, changes everything”.

Hagar: A Text of Terror

Take Hagar’s story for example. This text is what theologian Phyllis Tribble calls a "text of terror," a passage in which women are the victims of extreme suffering, violence, and institutionalized oppression, and where God is depicted as being silent, absent, or even in opposition to the female victim. Tribble argues that these texts are often overlooked or minimized and calls for a re-reading that honors the victims and challenges oppressive interpretations.

Hagar has historically gotten a bad reputation. She is blamed for the abuse she has suffered, and the fact that she was forced into a sexual relationship with a man more than twice her age is just glossed over. What if we came to this text with a different lens? With the knowledge that God is a God of deliverance for the oppressed?

Hagar experiences the "triple threat" of oppression: nationality, class, and gender. She is a foreigner, she is enslaved, and she is a woman. "Hagar" isn’t even her real name. That’s not what her Egyptian parents called her as they held her in their arms; Hagar is a masculine Hebrew name that means "alien" or "foreign thing". Sarah demeans her further by simply calling her “that slave woman”.

But what I find most disturbing about this text is that, when Hagar flees into the wilderness to escape the abuse of Sarah, the first thing that God’s messenger tells her is to go back and to put up with Sarah’s harsh treatment. Not exactly the advised prescription for domestic abuse.

The Lens of Love

The intent that we bring to this story matters. Do we read this story with a prejudice of judgment and power? Are we seeking to promote blind compliance and cooperation with oppression? Because you can support that with this story: "Comply or die." We can read this story that way—but we don’t.

We know better because of who Christ is, how he lived, and what he taught. With Christ as our model, we have to approach the text with a prejudice of love. When we put on that lens, what we find is a deliverance story. What we find is a God that cared. A God that cared about a nameless, foreign, slave woman enough to send a divine messenger to her in the wilderness, twice.

We just read the first part of Hagar’s story—when she flees pregnant and alone into the wilderness. But it happens again. After Sarah gives birth to a son of her own, Isaac, she throws Hagar out—using Hagar when it suited her purpose, and then sending her away. Abraham isn’t any more compassionate, allowing this harsh treatment and not even sending supplies with her and her son when they go.

But God cared. Let’s listen to what happens this second time Hagar finds herself in the wilderness. (READ 54-57). God is a God that cares—a God that sees and hears the cries of the oppressed. Our God makes a way when there seems to be no way. That is a deliverance story.

The Crimson Thread of Justice

Evans notes that her Jewish friends like to joke that nearly every Jewish holiday can be summed up by this: “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat”. It checks out. Look at the story of Exodus and the celebration of Passover. Look at the festival of Purim and the story of Queen Esther and Mordecai. God’s preference for the underdog, for defending the defenseless, and championing the cause of people who are suffering is too common of a biblical theme to ignore.

Our God is a God of liberation—of freedom. Hagar found herself in the wilderness twice, and twice God provided a way. God gave her nourishment and strength for the journey ahead. Rarely does anyone in the Bible reach their promised land without a journey through the wilderness. That’s good news, because we all have our own wildernesses to get through.

Now, that can be hard to believe sometimes. When I look at what’s happening in Minneapolis and across our country right now—lawless ICE agents abusing, kidnapping, shooting, and killing our neighbors; when I hear our political leaders defending lies and violent tactics to promote submission and compliance; when I hear people who call themselves Christian applauding this kind of hate and oppression—I’m lost. I can’t see a way out.

This struggle is not new for our siblings of color. Scripture has been used for centuries to justify bondage and slavery. Allen Dwight Callahan explains that African Americans found the Bible to be both a healing balm and a "poison book". They could not lay claim to the balm without braving the poison. But African slaves, civil rights leaders, and their descendants discerned something in the Bible that they did not find in their hostile American home. What they found woven in the texts of the Bible was a "crimson thread of divine justice" that was the opposite of the injustice they knew all too well.

Evans writes:

“This crimson thread of justice has been traced by marginalized people through the ages, their struggle for freedom sustained by Scripture’s call to honor the poor, welcome the stranger, and liberate the oppressed”.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was sustained by this divine call. When he found himself on his own wilderness journey, he turned to God to find a way. At his kitchen table in the middle of the night, King found himself in a moment of personal crisis. He was feeling weak and afraid. He prayed aloud: "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right... but I am afraid... I'm losing my courage". He felt an inner voice say, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness... I will be at your side... even until the end of the world".

This experience gave King the strength to continue, knowing he wasn't alone. He went on to preach a sermon called “A Knock at Midnight,” identifying the social, psychological, and moral darkness of the time. He quoted the parable from Luke 11:5-8 about the friend who keeps knocking at the door until he is given what he needs. King equated the three loaves to faith, hope, and love.

A Call to Persistence

God makes a way when there seems to be no way, so we keep knocking. We grab hold of that crimson thread of justice and we keep knocking. We keep praying to be part of the great back-and-forth between Creator and created. We keep praying because it roots us in faith instead of letting us be swept away in the darkness of midnight.

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  Keep knocking. Keep donating to local food pantries, mutual aid organizations, and mission agencies.

  
  

• Keep knocking. Keep calling. Resist the urge to think that your voice doesn’t matter. Call your representatives.

  
  

• Keep knocking. Keep caring for yourself. Take breaks and tap out when needed so you can check back in. Everyone can do something.

  
  
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  Keep knocking. Keep looking for love, because you will find it. Read, watch, and listen to stories about empathy, inclusivity, and community and share them.

  
  

If Sarah and Hagar had stopped competing and instead helped one another navigate the oppressive patriarchal system, their story could have been very different. Love is strong enough to make a difference. God delivers us, and love is the ultimate deliverance.

Evans reminds us:

“Love is the law that liberates slave and slave holder alike. Love is the ultimate deliverance story, for only love can sustain the sojourner out of Egypt, through the desert, up the mountain, and into the promised land”.

Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you”. The real question is: what are you looking for? For me, I choose love. Faith, hope, and love. I hope you do too. Keep knocking.