Reflection 21st June 2026
Cast aside
By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai
Talofa lava and greetings to our livestream viewers glad you could join us this morning.
I wonder how many of us suffered from trauma during our childhood, being abandoned, rejected. I remember there was this boy in my class who would sit and wait for others to throw their food scraps in the bin and then he would rush to retrieve it and eat it quickly. One day it was a piece of watermelon that still had little bits of red flesh on it and when he retrieved it he ate it like it was the first bit of food he’d had for a while. Kids in my time didn’t rush to share, they just went “ew yucky, what a scab”. We joined society and placed this kid in the outcast basket, he along with his whole family.
Rejection is not a word we like to encounter in our lives for ourselves and for those whom we love. Perhaps for some of us this first happened at primary school when we were not picked for a sports team or did not get an invitation to a birthday party. As we grew older it was being rejected because we felt different or we didn’t fit the mold society expected us to fit into. Rejection morphs into feelings of abandonment. Missing out on a job opportunity, not going to university because mum and dad needed you to work because money was scarce. The examples are many.
For us this morning, our Genesis story about Hagar and make us uncomfortable.
The story comes from Genesis 21, but its roots begin much earlier. Abraham and Sarah had been promised descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet year after year passed, and no child arrived.
In the ancient world and even in different societies in today’s world having children was not simply about family life. It was tied to inheritance, security, status, and survival.
As Sarah grew older and the promise seemed increasingly impossible, she followed a custom that was not uncommon in the ancient Near East. She gave her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abraham so that a child might be born through her. Hagar conceived and gave birth to a son named Ishmael, which means “God hears.”
For thirteen years Ishmael was Abraham’s only son. Then, against all expectations as we explored last Sunday during the surprise visit of the three strangers who prophesied that Sarah would get pregnant. When she overheard she laughed in disbelief. But true to this prophesy Sarah did get pregnant and eventually gave birth to a son Isaac.
Overtime however, what should have been a time of joy became a source of fear and tension. Sarah worried about Isaac’s future and saw Ishmael as a threat to her son’s inheritance. And so Hagar and Ishmael were sent away. Just like that. They were cast aside they became outcasts. Discarded. Sent into the wilderness with little more than a skin of water and some food. The Bible does not attempt to justify what happened. It simply tells the story.
Sometimes people suffer because of the fears and insecurities of others. Sometimes the vulnerable pay the price for decisions they did not make.
The Hebrew Bible tells us very little about Hagar’s background. It simply describes her as an Egyptian servant belonging to Sarah. Some later Jewish and Islamic traditions suggest that Hagar may have been of noble or even royal Egyptian descent, perhaps a princess. We cannot verify that historically, but what is clear is that by the time we meet her in Genesis, she occupies one of the lowest positions in society. Firstly she is a foreigner. Secondly, she is enslaved. But most importantly, she is merely a mother trying to protect her child. And eventually she becomes an outcast.
Earlier in Genesis, when she flees Sarah’s mistreatment, she encounters God in the wilderness. She becomes the first person in scripture to give God a name. She calls God El Roi “the God who sees me.” Abraham does not name God. Sarah does not name God. It is Hagar, the foreign servant woman, who first declares that God is the One who sees.
This is not simply a story about Abraham’s family. It is a story about who gets seen and who gets overlooked. It is also worth remembering that this story is not only important for Jews and Christians. It is also deeply important for Muslims. All three faiths referred to as the Abrahamic faiths have Abraham as their common ancestor.
For Christians and Jews, the covenant story continues through Abraham and Isaac. For Muslims, Ishmael is honoured as a prophet. Hagar is remembered as a woman of extraordinary courage and faith. Islamic tradition tells how Hagar searched desperately for water in the desert, running seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa. God heard the cries of Ishmael and provided water through the spring known as Zamzam. To this day, millions of Muslims retrace Hagar’s journey during the Hajj pilgrimage. Muslims also trace the ancestry of the Prophet Muhammad through Ishmael.
Hagar, a woman who appears only briefly in the biblical story becomes one of the most remembered women in the world. A child cast out into the wilderness becomes the ancestor of Islam.
What others rejected, God blessed. What others saw as a problem, God saw as possibility. And perhaps that is one of the recurring themes throughout scripture. Again and again, God seems to choose those whom society overlooks. God is found among those on the margins. That is what happens in today’s story.
When the water finally runs out and Hagar can no longer bear to watch her son suffer, she places him under a bush and walks away. She sits down at a distance and begins to weep. It is heartbreaking. A mother watching helplessly as her child suffers. A woman abandoned. A child forgotten. A family cast aside.
And then something remarkable happens. God hears the cries coming from the wilderness. The cries of the child. God sees the woman whom everyone else has forgotten. And God opens Hagar’s eyes. There before her is a well of water. Hope appears where she had seen only despair. Suddenly life appears where she had expected death and for her and her son Ishmael the wilderness is transformed.
Many people know what it feels like to be cast aside. Some of those people become famous. Many do not. But all of them teach us something about resilience.
Like her or not, Oprah Winfrey for example was born into poverty, she experienced abuse as a child she lost a child she bore through rape. Later on in her life she was told early in her career that she was not suited for television. Yet the very voice that others tried to silence became one of the most influential voices in the world.
J.K. Rowling. Before Harry Potter became a global phenomenon, she was a single mother struggling financially, battling depression, and receiving rejection after rejection from publishers. The manuscript that many people dismissed eventually captured the imagination of millions.
Their stories are different from Hagar’s story, but they remind us that being rejected is not the end of the story. What others discard may yet flourish. What others overlook may yet transform the world.
Yet most of us will never become Oprah Winfrey or J.K. Rowling. Hagar herself was simply a mother trying to keep her child alive. And perhaps that is where this story touches us. Because most of us have known a wilderness of some kind. The wilderness may not be a desert. It may be grief after losing someone we love. It may be illness. It may be loneliness. It may be unemployment. It may be rejection.
It may be the feeling that everyone else has moved on while we remain stranded.
Many people in our world know what it feels like to be cast aside.
Refugees seeking safety. Families displaced by war. People sleeping rough on our streets. Those living with mental illness. Members of the rainbow community who have been told they are not welcome. Older people who feel forgotten. Those who have been made to feel invisible because of race, gender, disability, sexuality, poverty, or circumstance.
The wilderness takes many forms.
When we consider todays reflection we may ask “where is God is at work in the world today? The answer is simple. God is found among those whom society overlooks. The little boy waiting to eat the leftover food scraps of his classroom peers. God is found among the displaced, the excluded, the forgotten, and the vulnerable. God is not standing with those who cast people out. God is standing beside those who have been cast out. And if that is where God is, perhaps that is where we as the church should be too. Not simply feeling sorry for people in the wilderness and saying “ew yucky under out breath” but standing alongside them. Listening. Welcoming. Advocating. Creating communities where no one is disposable. Reminding people that their worth is not determined by wealth, status, race, age, gend 4er, sexuality, ability, or circumstance. Because like Hagar and Ishmael, every person is seen by God.
The story of Hagar and Ishmael ends not with death but with life. The wilderness does not have the final word.
For Hagar discovers what many of us discover eventually: that even when others have forgotten us, God has not. Even when we feel cast aside, we are not cast out of God’s vision and love. And sometimes, when all we can see is dry desert, God opens our eyes to a spring that was there all along. Amen.
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