BY KENDRA HALOVIAK

The following was a baccalaureate sermon for Columbia Union College seniors, delivered May 3, 2003, at the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland. We leave the message virtually intact, so that readers might experience its full flavor.

The Freedom Writers Diary¹
n 1994 Erin Gruwell was 23 and recently out of college. Having accepted a position as a freshman English teacher in a public high school outside of Los Angeles, she found herself standing before a group of students whose category was basic--the term used to describe students with below-par reading skills. The students in Room 203 were "problem kids."

For most of her students, daily life included gang involvement and its required violence. Her classroom was divided based on ethnic background: Latinos, Blacks, Asians, Whites. They had witnessed riots, drive-by shootings, and acts of abuse directed at children by other children. The students in Room 203 carried with them the stories of funerals for their friends. To the majority of them, death was more real than the possibility of a high school diploma.

Erin Gruwell decided that her students needed new stories--stories they could relate to, yet stories of hope. "Ms. G," as she came to be called by her class, invited her students to read the stories of two teenagers who also knew violence, prejudice, and abuse. They read stories written by Anne Frank, who died at the age of 15, and Zlata Filipovic, an 11-year-old Bosnian girl who kept a diary while witnessing the destruction of her town of Sarajevo.² Like the teenagers whose works they read, these "basic" students were also to keep diaries of their own lives. As one reads some of the diary entries of these students, one quickly learns what Erin Gruwell discovered--these young people are far from "basic"; they are extraordinary.

As the students read the stories of Anne and Zlata, they noticed the connections to their own experiences, and the stories transformed them. Stories can do that. Stories have that kind of power. The stories we keep shape us. They can transform us. Stories can help us imagine new possibilities. Erin Gruwell's students read about courage, about teenagers who refused to accept another's label of them, who refused to give up on goodness, who had the courage to stop racism in their own hearts. And these stories helped the young people of Room 203 imagine new possible futures. From one entry:

"Ms. G had been talking for a long time about bringing in a Holocaust survivor named Gerda Seifer. Well, today we actually met her. . . . Just as Anne was trapped, Gerda was trapped. Neither Gerda nor Anne could lead normal teenage lives. They lost their innocence because of uncontrollable circumstances. Whenever they ventured outdoors they faced the possibility of being captured by the gestapo. . . . Unfortunately, I know exactly what it feels like not to be able to go outside, not because of the gestapo, but because of gangs. When I walk outside, I constantly glance from side to side, watching those standing around me. . . . It amazed me how I could empathize not only with Anne Frank, but also with a Holocaust survivor. I'm glad I had the opportunity to hear about the past through Gerda. She is living proof of history. This experience will help me pass on the message of tolerance that Anne died for and that Gerda survived for."³

In entry after entry, similar thoughtful connections are made by Erin Gruwell's students. Page after page, student after student writes about embracing a life of tolerance toward others. In the tradition of the Freedom Riders, who fought segregation and prejudice in this country, the students of Room 203 took on the name "Freedom Writers." Over the past several years 150 high school students have become "Freedom Writers," and every single one--all 150--have graduated from high school and are now attending college or have already completed their college degree.

The stories we keep shape us. They can transform us! Stories spark our imaginations! Stories influence our convictions and commitments. Stories create new possibilities.

Graduates, out of all the experiences you have had on this campus, out of all the stories you have heard, which stories will you keep? Next year, when you return here for alumni weekend, as you run into each other, perhaps for the first time since this weekend, and you say, "Remember when . . . ?" what will you say? You might be surprised at what will stand out, and what will have been forgotten. What will have become the stories you keep? Five, 10, 20 years from now, what stories will you still keep? The stories we keep shape us; they transform us!

Columbia Union College (CUC) staff members and faculty, after years of service at this college, what stories do you keep? Friends and family members here celebrating this weekend, what stories do you keep close to you? Sligo church members, after months or decades of sermons and services, Bible study groups, Pathfinders, Sabbath school classes in this place, what stories does Sligo keep? Those listening on the radio, what stories are precious to you, to your journey?

The stories we keep shape us. They transform us! They can transform gang members into college students! As the Freedom Writers have shown, stories of horror and terror can create courage and hope.

Hagar's Story⁴
Phyllis Trible, a scholar who has dedicated her life to the difficult stories found in the Old Testament, suggests: "Sad stories may yield new beginnings."⁵ In her Texts of Terror Trible spends a chapter looking at the story of an Egyptian woman named Hagar. It is surprising that the Hebrew people kept the story of Hagar. It is an embarrassing story. It is a story about the lack of faith. It is a story that does not make Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of Israel, look very good.

Hagar enters the story only because Abraham doubts that God will really give him a son through Sarah. Hagar has no choices in the matter. She is a female slave. Sarah decides what happens to her, and Abraham goes along with it. No one has any dialogue with Hagar. "Hagar is an instrument, not a person."⁶ She is given to Abraham, she conceives, and Sarah begins mistreating her. And "mistreating" is probably a nice way to put it. The story says that Hagar ran away (Gen. 16:6).

Hagar goes to a spring of water in the wilderness. Her story foreshadows Israel, who will also find water in the wilderness after being freed from slavery. Only this time, the slave is an Egyptian; the slave owners, Hebrew.⁷ Hagar has left Abraham and Sarah, pregnant with Abraham's baby. The story says that the messenger of the Lord finds her "by [the] spring of water in the wilderness" (verse 7, NRSV). The messenger of the Lord finds her, a runaway slave. And this slave is the first person in all of Scripture that such a messenger visits.⁸

For the first time in the story, someone speaks directly to Hagar, uses her name, acknowledges her personhood.⁹ And during this encounter the story says that the messenger said to her: "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude" (verse 10, NRSV). This is the only time a woman receives such words--words that include the promise of descendants. Hagar is the "prototype of special mothers in Israel."¹⁰ After Hagar receives this amazing, unusual promise, the story says: "So she named the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are El-roi'" (verse 13, NRSV). For she said, 'Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?'" (verse 13).

This is the only time in all of Scripture that a person names God.¹¹ Hagar names God the "God of seeing." This is the One who has seen her. Most of us yawn, because we know that God sees everything, that this is nothing new. But imagine the time of this story. Imagine the insight, the new idea this story holds. God is the God of seeing. God sees a runaway Egyptian slave woman. The story is amazing, shocking, unexpected, full of hope and new possibilities. God is the God of seeing. Hagar says: "Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?" It is a story of lack of faith, and slavery, and escape. And it is a story of an encounter, and a new way of thinking about God.

And it is a story Israel keeps. It is part of the first book in the Jewish Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament. It is a story Israel keeps. God saw Hagar's affliction. God is present with her in the wilderness. God promises to make her child a great nation. Hagar has a future.

After several chapters Hagar surfaces once again in the story of Abraham and Sarah and the miraculous beginning of the Israelite people. Isaac, the son of promise, is finally born to Sarah (Gen. 21:1-3). Once again Sarah decides what will happen to Hagar. She wants Hagar and her son Ishmael banished. It is too risky to have Ishmael around. Ishmael might claim firstborn status and take Isaac's inheritance. Hagar and Ishmael must be banished. And Abraham is distressed, not because of Hagar, but because of his son Ishmael (verse 11). But, after receiving God's assurance (not an easy part of the story), Abraham sends Hagar and their son away with some bread and a skin of water. Here is the picture, not of exodus, not of freedom from slavery, but of exile and banishment.¹²

The water quickly runs out. This time in the wilderness there is no spring, no messenger, no promise. Hagar and her son are dying of dehydration. She places her boy under a bush, then walks a short distance away and weeps. Hagar does not want to witness her son's death.

Suddenly a voice from the heavens addresses her. It tells her not to be afraid. Then, in very similar language to the event with Abraham and Isaac in the next chapter (when God opens Abraham's eyes to see a ram that saves his second son), the story says: "Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink" (verse 19, NRSV).

The God she had earlier named the "God of seeing" helped her see a well of water; helped her survive. Hagar's story concludes with the words: "God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt" (verses 20, 21, NRSV).

Hagar's story is one of wandering in the wilderness without ever receiving land. Hagar's story is one of "exile without return."¹³ Hagar's story is one of oppression because of nationality, class, and gender. Yet the Hebrew people kept Hagar's story, the story of an Egyptian woman that Abraham and Sarah treated much like the Egyptians would someday treat Israel's descendants.

The Hebrew people keep Hagar's story, a story that sounds so much like their own. God saw Hagar's/Israel's affliction. God is present with her in the wilderness. God promises to make her [child] a great nation. Hagar/Israel has a future. It is a surprising story, a story that shapes the Hebrew people. It is a story that has the power to transform the Hebrew people.

The Stories We Keep
Is Hagar's story one that we keep? What might it mean today if communities of faith were to keep Hagar's story? if Egyptians are the oppressed, as well as oppressors? if Israel is oppressor, as well as those who are oppressed? What stories will we keep? How will we keep them? How will our keeping of the stories reshape them in new ways?

I have seen this church family, the Sligo church, the college church, keep the story of Hagar. I have seen this church reach out to single mothers, women rejected by husbands, abused by society, left alone. Throughout its history Sligo has embraced Hagar, and Hagar has helped Sligo see aspects of God; names for God we never knew. The stories we keep shape us, they transform us, they help us see new possibilities. Stories help us to imagine a future that is better than our present.

Ah, some of you suspected I would get there--to a future that is better than our present, and to that amazing story that concludes the Christian canon: to the story recorded in the book of Revelation! It was such fun reading through the list of graduates, remembering where you sat in Jesus and the Gospels, or Hebrew Prophets, or Introduction to the Old Testament, or Introduction to the New Testament, or Revelation class. Some of the stories I keep from my many memories of CUC include the thoughtful and insightful papers many of you wrote for those classes.

I remember our last day of Revelation class, spring semester, 2001. I asked those of you in the class if I could copy all the last papers of the semester--those you had just written on Revelation 21-22. They were all so outstanding. In reading them, I had been so blessed, and wanted to keep them.

This week I took out that file. As I was reading them again, I remembered that one of you told me that your mom had died not long before that semester. And I thought about your loss as we studied the book of Revelation together. In your final paper you talked about the "tree of life" growing on either side of the "river of the water of life" which flows from the throne of God. You wrote the following: "This is part of [what] we look forward to as we go to heaven, a river of water and a new tree of life so that we may live forever." Graduates, what stories will you keep?

This weekend you graduate from a Seventh-day Adventist college. I hope you know by now that whatever is your faith tradition, wherever you are right now in your faith journey, your voice has been and is valued by this community.

I also hope you know that the Adventist tradition includes a vision of the future that is full of hope, rather than despair. Not that all Adventists have the same ideas concerning the details of the future. But that Adventists believe in a vision of a new earth and a new time and that that vision motivated people to build this college and this church. It is a vision, a story of the future, that is full of hope. It is a story well worth keeping. It is a story renewed by your presence here today. The future is full of hope.

The Bible concludes with a story, the story of an earth made new. Where moms and dads do not die anymore. Where gangs are no more. Racial prejudice is no more. Slavery as Hagar experienced it is no more. Holocausts and acts of genocide are no more. Where Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic and children in L.A. and D.C. never hear another gunshot. Where all sad stories--all texts of terror--are made new, restored.

Graduates, I pray that in the months and years to come you keep lots of wonderful CUC stories. I pray that in the months and years to come you remain or become part of faith communities that are attempting, however imperfectly, to keep Hagar's story. Maybe if you are there, one less Hagar will show up at church and still feel alone. And I pray that in the months and years to come you keep the story of an earth made new. It is an amazing story.

It is a story of a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth will have passed away, and the sea will be no more.

It is a story of a New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

It is a story of a voice from the throne at the center of the universe, saying: "See! The home of God is among people, He will dwell with them as their God they will be his peoples, God himself will be with them.

It is a story of that God wiping every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more. For the first things have passed away.

"Behold," says the one seated on the throne, "I am making everything new!" (see Rev. 21:1-5, NRSV).

Amen.

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¹ The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary (New York: Broadway Books, 1999).
² See Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, trans. B. M. Mooyaart (Prentice Hall, 1993); Zlata Filipovic, Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo, trans. Christina Pribichevich-Zoric (Penguin, 1995).
³ The Freedom Writers Diary, pp. 84, 85.
⁴ Hagar's story is found in Genesis 16:1-16 and 21:8-21.
⁵ Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 2.
⁶ Ibid., p. 11
⁷ Ibid., p. 13.
⁸ Ibid., p. 14.
⁹ Ibid., p. 15.
¹⁰ Ibid., p. 17.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 18.
¹² Ibid., p. 23.
¹³ Ibid., p. 28.

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Kendra Haloviak is an assistant professor of the School of Religion at La Sierra University in Riverside, California.