Being Seen

This week has been difficult, knowing that brutal violence has erupted in the Holy Land and sensing the heightened emotions of grief and horror and reading one-sided or poorly articulated views on what is happening that are gaining wide audiences. My heart breaks for all those directly and indirectly impacted.

I had chosen weeks ago to preach on Hagar escaping to the desert after being treated harshly by Sarai. It is not the lectionary, and yet the idea of being seen has kept popping up in my facebook feed and e-mail. Why does that matter? Because Hagar, a foreigner, pregnant and alone in the wilderness, comes upon a life-giving spring of water and God sends an angel of the Lord to talk to her. After this encounter, she calls this divine presence El-roi, the God who sees.

Hagar is astonished that God would give her the time of day. But God has a message for her. Not only is she to return to Sarai (likely so that she would not be alone and would actually survive and Abram’s baby inside her as well), but she is going to birth a different nation than Sarai. She will become mother of the Arab people and her son Ishmael will lead them.

God saw her in her fragility and vulnerability, and her spite of Sarai and the resulting abuse of her mistress. God still chose to show up for her and give her purpose and a reason to go on. Sarai’s offspring would produce the Jewish race and Hagar’s the Muslim race. Thousands of years later, there is still friction which has once again bubbled over into unspeakable violence. How little has changed. We still want to feel that we are the most important and chosen people of God. We still want to protect our turf and then some.

God saw Sarai too, but this story is more about Hagar. And I wonder how different things were when she returned and if, because she now had been validated by God, she was less triggered by Sarai’s nastiness arising out of jealousy. I wonder if she had more compassion for what Sarai was navigating and the stress of heading up the household and the shame of infertility. I wonder if the impact of this divine appointment would mean a softened approach to Sarai that could open the door to healing.

God sees us in all our mess and vulnerability and knows all the cracks in our armour. We don’t need to hide because we can’t anyway. If we embrace that God sees all of us and still loves us, then how do we not offer the same grace to others who are also imperfect? I believe that we are called to truly see those around us, whether family or partners or friends or neighbours or strangers in the store. There is much heightened emotion right now and little things can trigger us as we grieve what is happening and the wrongs we see.

Our triggers are about how we are feeling, but if we instead turn our focus outward to try to notice what God sees and to look beyond the exterior of those we encounter, our hearts may soften a bit. We may find kindness and compassion. Our looking for the humanity in the other, the need of the other, and our openness to hearing their story or just acknowledging their pain or offering grace when they are grumpy and closed, may be a turning point in their day or week.

There is a post on facebook going around about a Palestinian Muslim woman who is a neighbour to a Jewish woman. They continually talk and share favourite foods and hug and this week, have cried together. They see each other beyond labels as just human beings who care about their families. They recognize that what they have in common far outweighs their religious differences. They bless each other and are a Godly presence in each other’s lives. This is what we are all called to be.

An Indigenous healer, mentor and author named Asha Frost in her weekly e-mail said this, and it took my breath away as I prepared for my sermon this week:
”I see you.
I see your heartache and heartbreak for this world.
I see your generations of stories, unacknowledged pain and trauma where no eyes have seen you.
I see the tending you are offering those in your home and those in your community.
I see you.
What I know to be true is that our stories need a witness.”

She and I have little in common and yet in reality we have much in common. We may not worship or experience our spirituality in the same way, but these words are universal. Do we have the courage and energy to say them to each other and mean them - to our families, friends, the people in the pews this Sunday? Do we truly see each other and are we willing to hear and witness to the stories of others?

I believe this is the pathway to peace and healing for all people, and especially in the Middle East. May it be so. Shalom.