SUNDAY, JUNE 21ST, 2026 – FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
GOD HEARS
THE REV. RICHARD BURDEN
Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash
Title: God hears
Collect: God who hears the cries of the outcast and erased…Open our eyes to see your ever-present overflowing wellspring of love in the world…even the world as it is. Amen.
Sarah says: “Cast out this slave woman with her son…” God tells Abraham: “Do not be distressed because of the boy and your slave woman.”
Then in the desert with all the water gone, the woman “casts the child under one of the bushes…” and goes away…waiting for them both to die.
Genesis is full of complicated, mixed families…and today we have Sarah…Abraham…even Isaac on one side…who are all named. The other side…we have…an unnamed woman and a boy.
No character in the story — only the narrator — names the woman…Hagar. Sarah’s Egyptian slave, whom she gave to Abram because Sarai couldn’t conceive…and as soon as Abram got Hagar pregnant Sarai flipped out and treated Hagar so badly she fled to the wilderness. But an angel found her and told her to return…assuring her that she would bear a son…and revealing what that son’s name would be…Ishmael.
Hagar and Ishmael … like so many people in our world who are cast off…abused…ignored…erased…go cruelly unnamed by all the other characters in this story. To Sarah she is simply “this slave woman” … her property…and Hagar’s son…Abraham’s son…is “the boy”…
You might also catch a double indignity here, because neither Sarah nor God names the woman or her male child…and then when Hagar “leaves the child (although he’s a teenager by this point) under one of the bushes” and goes a away and lifts up her voice and weeps…God hears….not her but “the voice of the boy.” Who has said absolutely nothing this whole time.
That could certainly be read as more patriarchy seeping in…And…And it is also where the Hebrew is able to do things that even the very best English translation is incapable of. Because the boy has a name…and the whole story hangs on it…hinges on God hearing the voice of the boy… Ishmael means, “God will hear.” Like the well of water that is there the whole time but Hagar can’t see it until God opens her eyes…Ishmael’s name is in plain sight the whole time too, we just have trouble hearing it…but God hears.
Sarah is the legitimate wife of a wealthy patriarch. She views Hagar as her property and Ishmael as a threat to her son’s inheritance. It’s a tale as old as time…the powerful exerting their influence to marginalize and erase people out of existence…How many trans children of God are being told today their names and their pronouns don’t matter…that who God made them to be has no legal standing? … How many migrants and refugees, fleeing from violent, abusive systems, are being dehumanized…demonized…disappeared…into contemporary deserts? How many people are being erased from SNAP, and Medicaid benefits? Do we imagine that the God of Ishmael—the God who hears the names that the powerful refuse to say—do we imagine that God will not hear the voices of those being cast out?
Of course, the world is complicated…and there are plenty of people who choose to go unnamed…not for nefarious reasons, and not always out of weakness or complicity…but often out of a deep-seated knowing of what the powerful will do to you…if they have your real name. The migrant parent who pulls their children out of school…the family who signs up for help from a food pantry under a pseudonym and a different address for fear of becoming a target. The self-imposed exile of not traveling…not going out…for fear of being stopped simply for being black, or brown in a predominantly white space. But again, people who exist on the down-low…who are simply trying to retain a modicum of protection from the very real threats that surround them…they are not hidden from God. God sees and hears them.
Of course, the powerful also choose silence and obfuscation to protect themselves…to cover up misdeeds and corruption. Remember, Sarah engineered this whole thing from the start…giving Hagar to Abram…trying to drive Hagar away…and now the threat has grown and she just wants it to disappear…wants to make them—Hagar and Ishmael—disappear. Tale as old as time. The files gets shredded…witnesses gets intimidated…some names get removed from monuments and others get added…programs get defunded… “lawyers, guns, and money” are thrown at the problem and the principalities and powers try to control the narrative.
For them Matthew’s gospel today and the promise that “there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered,” probably sounds like a threat…like judgement.
But for those who have have been erased, cast out…who live in the shadows not because of villainy but out of necessity…to them Matthew’s gospel might sound like very good news…”nothing covered that will not be uncovered” might be read as, “they can not suppress your existence forever… “Nothing secret that will not become known,” might echo as a promise…A promise that God sees and hears and knows them in all their full human blessedness…that is what will be revealed.
In other words: whether you receive this section of Matthew’s gospel as an encouraging promise or as a prophetic warning may depend on which side of the these multiple erasures you find yourself at any given moment.
If we’re honest—and depending on our various levels of privilege and our self-awareness—we can probably locate ourselves on both sides of that line at different times. Hidden and revealed…in the dark and in the light…whispering and whispered about.
And I imagine the reason this part of Matthew’s gospel always lands as challenging and uncomfortable is because it is…challenging and uncomfortable.
It asks: Are we willing to say the names…to speak the truth…to proclaim our faith in places where it is most meaningful…most needed…and maybe the scariest. And that place may or may not be the halls of power, or your workplace…it might be at home with members of your own household.
Hagar doesn’t need a housetop to proclaim from…doesn’t even have one…But in the wilderness, she lifts up her voice and that is enough. Faith doesn’t require a megaphone…or a press release or some viral content…True proclamation comes from the ground of our being…from the depths of our soul… and when we stand in that place…no matter where it is…God will hear.
Amen.