In Genesis 15 Abram expresses to God his anxiety regarding the promises. He still does not have an heir. If there are to be so many descendents, there has to be at least one to get it all going. Abram refers to a possible heir, Eliezer. Eliezer was one of Abram’s slaves. According to a custom of the time, if a man died without a direct heir, a slave could inherit his possessions. God responds to Abram by assuring him that there will be an heir of his “very own issue.”
There is no immediate resolution. Abram has to wait on God. The fulfillment of God’s promise in Abram’s and Sarai’s lives will require patience on their part, faithful patience. In the next chapter, it is Abram’s wife Sarai who expresses the impatience which is part of waiting on God’s schedule. She decides to speed things along. She has not conceived. She is very old. She offers her slave-girl, Hagar, who is Egyptian, to Abram. Abram, tired of the travail and waiting, goes along with the plan. Hagar conceives and in time bears a son named Ishmael.
At the opening of chapter 17 God again reaffirms the covenant with Abram promising to make a mighty nation from Abram’s descendents. God calls upon Abram and Sarai to become known as Abraham and Sarah. God reiterates the promise to provide a son to Abraham through Sarah. In response to God’s promise, Abraham falls on his face and laughs. He explains that he is laughing at the prospect that people as old as he and Sarah could have a child. It seems more reasonable to Abraham for his descendents to come through Ishmael, the son he already has through Hagar.
God responds by telling Abraham that there will indeed be another son, with Sarah. This son’s name will be Isaac.
Abraham’s view of how to resolve the dilemma of succession and new generations is sensible. From his point of view he has a suitable heir in Ishmael. So Ishmael is the solution. The problem is that God has another heir in mind. God has another solution, not Ishmael but Isaac.
It is just possible that so many of us in our denomination are like so many Abrahams. We are all certain, to one degree or another, that our view is the solution to the debate regarding ordination. We may want matters to stand as they are or we may want them to change in one way or another. The truth for each of us may well be that our own view is just another Ishmael, and not the Isaac God has in mind and may be leading us toward.
It would be helpful if more of us were willing to imagine that we are Abraham here: hoping, longing, waiting, worried, beset by anxieties, struggling with the rigors of the ongoing journey and thus so eager to have our Ishmael be accepted as the solution. While all along God has this other solution in view for us, a solution which may initially seem as unlikely as a couple who are nearly 100 years old being able to conceive an Isaac, not our Ishmael.
Posted May 13, 2004
Laird J. Stuart is pastor of Calvary church, San Francisco.
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