An Alternative Narrative

 

Genesis 21:8-21

Proper 7 / Year A

Five people are walking down the street when a loud, cracking bang occurs.  In the milliseconds after it is heard, each processes the sound and their brain begins to respond.  One ran track in college and her brain, harkening back to the sound of a starting pistol, readies her body for motion.  Another is an auto mechanic and his default reaction is to hear it as the sound of a car backfiring.  A third spent time on a tour of duty in a war zone.  He hears it as gun fire and his first urge is to duck and seek cover.  The fourth gives it no thought at all because he works in a warehouse where loud sounds are commonplace and he is conditioned to tune them out.  The fifth is taken back to fond memories of duck hunting with her grandfather.  Five people, five different initial reactions.  Past experiences influence how we process data in the present.

Imagine a group of us attends a wedding where the Flower Girl keeps twirling around.  One of us might think she is cute and steals the show.  Another might bemoan how today’s parents are failures at raising children.  A third may harken back to a memory of when she was a Flower Girl.  Still another may be so taken in by the flowers she never even notices the girl!  Do you see what I am getting at?  It is possible – in fact, likely – for a group of people to experience the same event in profoundly different ways. 

Reality has both an objective component – what happens – and a subjective component – how individually we interpret what happens and determine what it means to us.  The loud sound is caused by an objective event, but each person’s initial reaction is subjective and rooted in previous experience.  The Flower Girl also is an objective event, but each person’s reaction to it says more about that person than actual the event.  Aldous Huxley said, “Experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.”  Anais Nin contends, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

Keep all of this in mind as I invite you to ponder the first reading we heard this morning: the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  I trust you know at least some of the backstory: how God promises Abraham he will be the father of a great nation, but he and Sarah are childless; how Sarah offers her handmaiden to be a surrogate, but then becomes jealous once Hagar conceives; how she demands Abraham banish the expectant mother to the wilderness; how God appears to Hagar there and directs her to return; how, after Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, Sarah conceives and gives birth to Isaac; and then, as we heard, the handmaiden and her son are sent away.

We might want to ask ourselves how these different people “experience” the objective events of the story.  Abraham.  Sarah.  Hagar.  Ishmael.  Isaac.  Whatever the objective reality is, it means something different for each person because each person is different and comes to it from a uniquely personal perspective and, to be sure, the objective events affect each of them differently.

Because we read this story from the bible’s Book of Genesis, we tend to see it through the eyes of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac.  And because we are rooted in the Judeo/Christian tradition and trace our story through this lineage, we tend to see it in a particular way; a way which tends to diminish aspects of the story which do not concern our story. 

For us, this is what is called the Dominant Narrative.  It is the prism through which we look at these objective events.  In short, the Dominate Narrative holds Isaac is good, Ishmael is bad, Isaac is legitimate, Ishmael is illegitimate, Isaac is blessed, Ishmael is cursed.  In our narrative, Ishmael has to be sent away in order for God’s promises to come to fruition through Isaac.  Is there another way to look at all of this?

English fox hunts date back to the 15^th century.  The nobility mounted up on their horses and raced through the countryside in pursuit of their quarry.  At the end, it was “jolly good fun”, “sport.”  This was their Dominate Narrative.  There are at least two Alternative Narratives.  One is told by the fox [Spoiler Alert: its story doesn’t end well] and the other is told by local peasants whose fields and crops get trampled under hoof.  These unfortunates experience this objective event from the perspective of the food lost and how it will impact their bellies.

You may be aware that Islam traces its lineage back to Abraham through Ishmael.  Their’s is also an Alternative Narrative and, because it does not place the Judeo/Christian heritage at the pinnacle, we tend to be dismissive of it.  But what would we learn if we tried to understand how Ishmael and his descendants experience these objective events? 

Why do this?  Because every person’s perspective matters.  Why?  Because every person matters.  How do I know this?  Because, according to our Dominate Narrative found in Genesis, God hears Hagar crying and asks what is wrong, because God has compassion on the boy and his mother, because God promises to bless the child and his descendants just as God promised to bless Isaac and his, because God is with the boy as he grows up, and because God’s promise to him comes to pass.  Clearly God cares about Ishmael.  Why?  Because God cares about every person.  In this story God is revealed as being sympathetic to each person’s experience and values each unique perspective.

I try to keep this mind as I engage with people in a wide variety of situations.  For example, I don’t approach a Vestry meeting attempting to win people over to my point of view.  I seek to listen to each person.  I want to understand each perspective and ponder the clues each holds for charting a path forward we can walk together.

And I think about it as we observe our nation’s 250^th Anniversary.  For much of my life, our nation has been trying to listen to those with Alternative Narratives asking for a voice: the Native American story, the African/American story, the Immigrant story, the Women’s story, to name a few.  Each is asking us to see our country through their eyes, from their perspective.  This can be threatening because some perceive it as an attempt to invalidate their own experience.  I don’t see it like this.  We are only being asked to appreciate why one person hears a starter’s gun while another person hears a backfire.  Alternative Narratives also can be threatening because they may infer moral judgements on the Dominate Narrative.  And this does happen.  Why should the fun of the hunt supersede food security for the poor?

The story of Hagar and Ishmael invites us to see the world as other people see it; to understand how other people experience objective reality in a way which may be very different from ours.  Why do this?  Think about what we hear in today’s gospel reading.  There was a time when the Christian life and witness was an Alternative Narrative and our ancestors in the faith were subject to marginalization, arrest, imprisonment, beatings, and martyrdom all because they wanted to tell their story.  Thanks be to God they persevered and thanks be to God some people were open enough to consider a perspective different from their own, otherwise we would not be here this morning.