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What's in a name? One's name, particularly the first name, is important. There are those who say the name a person is given will shape their character throughout life. So, I thought I'd do a little research on our names and see what turns up. First, me; Randall is an English variant of Randolf which means wolf shield, a shield against wolves. How about our Clerks of Session? Starting with our hosts. Don is short for Donald. It has Gaelic origins and roughly means world leader or proud chief. Linda, if its origin is in Spanish, it means “pretty”. In the Germanic languages it means “tender woman”. In Old Norse, Linda means “snake”. Eric is Scandinavian or Old Norse in origin and it means “always ruler” or “forever king”. Will is short for William which comes from the Germanic Wilhelm. Helm is derived from helmet and the whole name means “strong-willed warrior” or “strong-minded”. Well, so it would seem we are well looked after by strong men bent on world domination and a tender, pretty woman who might be a little crafty if you know what I mean. Sounds like the makings of successful TV ministry.
In the Bible and particularly in the Book of Genesis, a person’s name is significant. Let me give you a few examples starting with the first family of Adam and Eve. Adam in Hebrew is Adam. Go figure. Adamcomes from the word Adamah. Adamah is the word for “ground” and it is a feminine noun. Adam is its masculine counterpart. Adam, as we know, is the name of the first human in the Bible and God made him from the dust of the ground. Thus, Adam comes from Adamah to symbolize that there is a crucial relationship between humans and the earth, the dirt, the ground. We do not exist apart from our relationship to the ground. Looking at Eve. Eve is the Englished-up version of the Hebrew word chavah which means “living” for she is the mother of all who are living. Adam and Eve named their two children Cain and Abel. The name Cain is rooted in the Hebrew word qanah which means “to bring forth”, “to produce”, “to be productive”. When Eve gave birth to Cain in a statement of great surprise she said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.”, meaning, “I have produced”. Abel, on the other hand, comes from the Hebrew word hebel which means “vapor”, or “worthless”, or “vanity”. Cain worked the land and produced food. Abel herded sheep. Sheep were good for only wool back then as they didn’t eat meat. When Abel sacrificed a sheep to God, it wasted the sheep’s life. Then, when Cain murdered Abel, Abel's namesake came to fruition. Cain wasted Abel’s life and made it amount to nothing.
That was the first family. Let’s now look at the first family of faith; Abraham and Sarah. Abraham, which means “father of nations” was originally named Abram, or “great father”. Sarah which means “the princess” was originally named Sarai or “my princess”. God changed both of their names when he made the promise to Abraham to give him a land and make his descendants to be a great nation. Their son Isaac is the anglicized version of Yitzchak which means “he laughs”. If you remember Sarah laughed when she overheard the messengers of God telling Abraham that she would bear him a child in her 80's. Getting closer to our text today, Hagar means “to flee”. Earlier in Genesis when Sarah learns that Hagar is pregnant by Abraham, Sarah becomes jealous and deals harshly with her, so Hagar flees into the wilderness but then comes back.
And so, we come to Ishmael, the son of the “other woman”. Hagar was an Egyptian woman, servant of Sarah, whom Sarah let become a wife to Abraham for the purpose of bearing children in Sarah’s name. What's in his name? Ishmael means “God has heard”. In our passage here, Sarah out of jealousy had Abraham send Hagar away for the crime that Ishmael happened to mock Isaac about something on his birthday as older brothers do; a harsh penalty for kid stuff. Abraham cast them off providing only a bit of bread and a water bottle, a symbolic gesture of both divorce and freeing a slave. Wandering off into the wilderness, the water gave out and Hagar, true to fleeing difficult situations, left young Ishmael to die of exposure. She left him and she went a little way away and began to call out to God but rather self-interestedly. She didn’t say anything like “God, save my child”, but rather, “Do not let me see the death of the child.” Then the angel of God came to her and told her that God had heard the crying out of the boy as opposed to her own. God heard the crying of Ishmael, as I said Ishmael means “God has heard.”
God’s hearing Ishmael is something very spectacular when you consider how Ishmael has been portrayed in Scripture and throughout history. He is not the child through whom God's promise to Abraham will be fulfilled. In fact, he is the child of Abraham and Sarah's lack of faith. He is the outcome of Abraham and Sarah trying to make God's promise to Abraham come about by their own efforts. As chapter 16 of Genesis accounts Sarah does not trust the word of God that she will have a child in her old age. So, she sends her Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham so that the girl could bear a child for Sarah. When Abraham divorced and emancipated Hagar, she began to wilderness wander back to Egypt. But the angel of the LORD stopped her and sent her back telling her to name the child Ishmael because God has heard of her misery. The angel also described to her a bit of what Ishmael's character would be. “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." He would apparently be the source of much conflict.
Throughout history, the Israelites have been quite prejudiced against the Ishmaelites. In the Bible, the Ishmaelites are regarded as just another group of Canaanites who bear the odious burden of being the ones who carried Joseph away to Egypt to sell him into slavery to Pharaoh. This prejudice is even evident here in chapter 21 where the son of Hagar is never addressed by name. He is just “the boy.” This prejudice and hostility continue even to today.
In the bigger picture of Middle Eastern History, the Arab peoples on the Arabian Peninsula trace their lineage back to Ishmael. Islam goes as far as to say that God's promise to Abraham was fulfilled through Ishmael rather than Isaac. There is a lesson to be learned here that even with Ishmael and the Ishmaelites being portrayed so negatively and with such prejudice, his name is still Ishmael, “God hears”. God does indeed hear his crying, his misery, and harkens to it. God still blesses Ishmael and makes him to be a great nation. Yet, that is only half of the promise. Ishmael did not get the land nor was it through Ishmael that salvation would come.
Ishmael and his name stand as a corrective to all those religious people that snobbishly say, “We are God's people and you are not. God hears us and not you. We are the holy and you are the heathen. God is on our side, not yours. God will not hear and bless you because you are not one of us.” God hears the crying of the outcast, period. He sees the misery of those who have to flee because of injustice and even if they aren't of the “right religion” God still hears them and will and does act to bring them justice. Ishmael reminds us that God still inclines to hear even those who are “a wild donkey” of a human being and who mock the promise and faithfulness of God to his people. God still hears even them. Ishmael reminds us that there is lack of faith and a cruelty even among God's people and that God will indeed look out after the good of those to whom we have wrongfully been wicked in God’s name. God hears the crying of the outcast no matter who they are. Amen.
