The Blog That Speaks: When God Ministers Through Listening
My mother had a keepsake memory book for my school years in which space was provided for me to write what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Thanks for Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
Starting in the third grade, and for several years thereafter, I scribbled in the designated space the word “writer.”
I eventually entered writing contests, including one at the state fair, in which I competed against others of a similar age. It was during my senior year in high school that I eventually received ribbons for writing, including best of show.
But then I entered the world of preparation for full-time Christian ministry. My living examples included pastors, missionaries, and teachers, all of which belonged to the speaking profession. My writing was placed on a back burner and eventually forgotten amidst this world of orality. Written words were supplanted by spoken words. Preaching, teaching, and evangelizing were apparently the preferred modes of communication in a ministerial vocation as they were repeatedly highlighted, underlined, and emphasized. My childhood longing faded as my sights were set on my spoken words becoming like salt.
Approximately twenty-five years passed before a forgotten desire was slowly awakened from its long, deep slumber. I was conducting research and writing for my dissertation when the longing from my youth to be a writer began to emerge, groggily at first. I was hesitant to embrace it. I wondered, questioned, and argued, “Research and writing are not viewed as genuine ministry within my circles.” Surely this latent longing is simply a childhood fantasy, not of the real world of speaking.
After someone suggested I read Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, I listened more to the desires I had had as a child. I learned that it was possible that my childhood self was perhaps more in tune to my heart’s genuine desires.
Today, I continue to listen to my childhood self. I am learning that my isolated rural upbringing and my adult experiences have prepared me for my current practical theological work of researching and writing, specifically in contributing to a pentecostal theological praxis of suffering and healing.
The focus of my work as a writer tends to prioritize deep listening, even though I am giving voice to my words on a page.
Writing a book (over which I have been laboring for the last couple of years) includes listening to participants, listening to other authors via the reading of articles and books, and listening to culture. In the case of the participants, I listened to each participant on a video call after the potential participant agreed to an extended interview. Since each call was recorded, I listened again as I personally transcribed each interview. Once an interview was transcribed, I read through it multiple times, searching for themes in a systematic manner and eventually comparing those themes with the other participants. This process was my attempt to genuinely hear each voice.
However, this does not mean that I was simply a machine, AI responding to a computer code. An audience is a participant in the storytelling. How I sat with persons during the video calls had an impact on how they told their stories and answered questions. The way in which I searched for themes influenced the themes I found. As a listener, every experience I have had impacts how I listen. As I have said elsewhere, when I listen to the other, I am not listening alone, but every experience, conversation, and interaction is with me. Every other voice I have heard has an effect on my listening. As the audience to a story being told, I share in the storytelling; thus, it is important that I listen to me as well as the other.
This work of listening is in stark contrast to what seems to me to be that which is in vogue in today’s society: railing against the other.
This current trend ignores not only listening to the other but also listening to me. It sports a myopic lens of proclaiming my voice, loudly. Whether it is raising our discontent through horn honking, gun blasting, or social media posting, publicly raging against others is now highly fashionable.
Admittedly, the pressure from the outside (both from the culture and the church) has been substantial during my journey toward the discovery of writing and listening. Ministerial wise, I have secretly feared falling farther down the totem pole, of what is considered to be authentic ministry, into oblivion—a space where genuine ministry is null and void. At one time, I had reached the grand heights of ministry within my tradition by serving overseas, only to plummet from that pedestal when we strongly sensed we were to return home. When I began to teach undergraduate classes, I knew I was close to the ministerial bottom when I frequently heard, “Those who can’t, teach.” Still, I was practicing valid ministry—I was speaking. However, now I have fallen even farther—a ministry without verbal communication. Is that even ministry?
Perhaps for some, it is not justifiable ministry. However, evidence exists to the contrary. As I listened to my participants who spoke about healing from sexual violence, many talked about reading books and completing Bible studies that helped to facilitate healing in their lives. And how many times have I personally experienced increased understanding, more healing, or deeper transformation because of written words on a page (or on my Kindle)?
Listening to others matters. It has the possibility of producing healing for me and the other.
One would think pentecostals would extol the virtues of listening, not speaking, since we have often promoted listening to God. Pentecostals are frequently filled with an expectation that God will speak in their services through the gifts of the Spirit, or that God will speak to their hearts in prayer or through the scriptures during times of private meditation. I have heard pentecostal preachers state that hearing from God is like listening to a radio: it is our responsibility to tune into the right channel. Unfortunately, this indicates it is up to us to hear from God, placing blame on us if we fail. This assumes, it seems to me, that God is always talking, but I need to point out this assumption is being made within a culture that exalts speaking. It overlooks Genesis 16, which indicates that God is a listener and listening is a way God ministers to humanity.
Prior to Genesis 16, Abram (later called Abraham) heard God (Yahweh) speak to him, promising him descendants.
When chapter 16 begins, it is approximately ten years since that promise was made, but a child is yet to appear. For a young couple, this may create impatient questions, but for Abram and Sarai (later called Sarah), they are already old, beyond child-bearing years. They are not some version of the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. They are physically closer to dying than to the possibility of chasing a toddler around a nomadic tent. Since a promise was made but there was no child, the solution in Sarah’s mind was Hagar, her young maidservant. God seems absent, or at least silent, in these verses (1-4) as they portray Sarah as still barren but Hagar available.
Sarah tells her husband to take her maidservant so that a son may come to Sarah by way of the maidservant. Notice that the maidservant is not called by name by either Sarah or Abraham. The text indicates she is female, a maidservant, and an Egyptian, thereby a foreigner, whose name is Hagar, her name being that which is stated last in the Hebrew text (16:1). Sarah’s command to Abraham to take her maidservant may seem questionable to us today, but it was an acceptable practice in the ancient Near East.
No emotion is indicated in the text: Sarah took and gave Hagar to Abraham. Abraham has intercourse with Hagar. She conceived. Hagar is not asked as she is simply a womb. The female Egyptian maidservant is not the one who acts but is acted upon.
The problem appears to be solved. Abraham has an heir. End of story, right?
Unfortunately, a new problem is created: Hagar’s pregnancy causes Sarah to lose face in the eyes of Hagar. Hagar no longer highly esteems Sarah but treats her with disrespect. This reminds Sarah of her own disgrace and shame of being barren, a great dishonor for a woman at that time.
Hagar has Abraham’s child in her womb, and Sarah does not. This makes Hagar a threat, causing Sarah to humiliate Hagar. As such, two impossible situations emerge: Sarah is in an impossible situation since she is childless, so she makes an impossible situation for Hagar by oppressing her. This results in Hagar becoming a runaway pregnant female, a homeless teen carrying Abraham’s heir.
It is here where the story takes a turn.
The story shifts from following Sarah, a woman married to the man with a promise, to following Hagar, the female, Egyptian slave. She is an oppressed nobody, alone in the wilderness where no human sees nor hears.
But God sees. God hears.
Verse 7 describes Yahweh’s angel, a visible manifestation of Yahweh, as finding Hagar, implying that Yahweh searches for the female, Egyptian runaway slave. God reveals God’s self to an oppressed foreigner. God’s searching and finding of Hagar is who God is.
Yahweh sees. Yahweh searches. Yahweh finds.
Contrary to Sarah and Abraham, Yahweh’s angel calls this foreign female runaway slave by name: Hagar. Unlike Sarah and Abraham, the angel invites Hagar to speak. Through this invitation to speak, Hagar is affirmed and validated as a person. She is heard. She is not property but a human with dignity. Even though the angel asks questions to which the angel probably knows the answers, the questions allow Hagar to tell her story, to use her voice.
This means God enters Hagar’s story as a minister by searching, finding, and listening. God ministers to Hagar by entering into this impossible, no-win situation through listening. God reveals God’s self as a minister who listens. This characteristic of God is confirmed when God informs Hagar that she is pregnant with a son who is to be called Ishmael, which means God has been attentive to your humiliation. In other words, God hears.
There is no indication in the text that Hagar is praying to or seeking God. She is alone in an impossible situation, young, on the run, homeless, and pregnant when this divine revelation comes to her. Because of this visitation, she becomes the only woman in Genesis who is given a divine promise of descendants. No other woman in Genesis but Hagar, the young, female, Egyptian slave, is told that her descendants will be too many to count.
During this divine encounter, Hagar is instructed to return to Sarah. Hagar might be punished for running away, or she may continue to be oppressed by Sarah. But she knows one thing: she will not die as she has been given a hope-filled promise of heirs. The instructions given to Hagar remind us that God may not always intervene according to our fancy, but God sees and hears our cries. It indicates God continues to minister, no matter if God supernaturally intervenes or helps us to persevere. What we need today is a theology and ministry that supports both the divine intervention and one of care and support through listening for those who seek to persevere.
Hagar has a singular response to her encounter with the angel of Yahweh: she names the deity “God of seeing.” No other character in the First Testament names God. Hagar’s relational experience with Yahweh is the God who sees. God, then, is revealed here as a minister who enters into impossible situations, listens, and sees.
In light of this story, I desire to be a follower of Jesus Christ who reflects God’s image to the world around me. This account of Hagar behooves me to be a person who sees and listens to the other. The other may be the one who covers their fear with anger, is politically opposite of me, abuses others on social media, or cuts me off in traffic. In a world where screaming, yelling, and railing are quickly being experienced as the norm, Hagar’s story reminds me that I have numerous opportunities to mirror God and participate in God’s ministry to the world through seeing and listening. This is a way to love the world that God loves. To quote Fred Rogers:
“Listening is where love begins.”
Please note that the section on Genesis 16 draws from the following:
A. Rebecca Basdeo-Hill, “Seeing and Hearing Hagar: An Affective Reading of Genesis 16,” (a paper presented at the 51st annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Costa Mesa, CA, March 24-26, 2022.)
John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Pentateuch) (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), accessed August 3, 2023, ProQuest Ebook Central.
Victor Hamilton, New International Commentary on the Old Testament — Genesis (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), Accordance ed.
Andrew Root, The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), Kindle ed.
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