Weaning

FROM CHAOS TO COMMUNITY: Weaning

Preaching

I breastfed both my sons, so I can write about weaning from firsthand experience.

Breastfeeding my children was one of the greatest gifts of my life. It is an amazing thing for a human child to continue to be nourished by the body of its mother after it leaves her womb. I breastfed my first child for about eighteen months. I knew it was time to stop when he started using his legs to climb up my side and onto my shoulder, sometimes rotating all the way around over my head to the other shoulder and down, all while trying to stay latched on. Weaning him was not difficult. He was too active to continue. He had never taken formula, but by the time he was that age, he was fully able to be nourished by solid food.

My second child was completely different. From the beginning, he required additional nourishment beyond what my body could produce. He would breastfeed and then cry for more, so we would give him a bottle of formula too. After about six months of nursing, he was done. He quit. He grew to prefer the bottle. And so, with a great sense of loss that came from knowing that I would never nurse another child, I accepted that my son had weaned himself.

Given time to wean on their own terms and according to their own timing, both of my sons transitioned from breastfeeding to other types of nourishment without much difficulty. It was probably harder on me than it was on either of them.

But I know every woman’s experience with weaning is not like mine.

There are women who choose not to breastfeed, or who cannot breastfeed, or who are separated from their infants at birth. There are women who have difficulty breastfeeding, and who must stop the process even if they don’t want to. There are women who do not want to breastfeed for personal reasons. All of these women must physically bind their breasts to stop the production of breast milk.

In years past, and in some cultures today, there are women called to the work of being wet nurses, who breastfeed the children of women who cannot or who choose not to nurse their own babies. Today, formula and modern breast pumps have made it possible for infants to thrive, whether they are fed by breast milk or in another way.

And there are nursing babies who are suddenly separated from their mothers for all kinds of reasons—accidents, illness, death, deportation, kidnapping, being forcibly removed from a home—to name just a few. All kinds of things happen in this world that can force sudden weaning on an infant and mother.

No matter how it happens, weaning signals a change in the relationship between mother and child. It means the child is less dependent on the mother. It means others may step in to care for the child in ways equal to the mother. It may mean a time of grief for both mother and child. It is a transition.

So now that we’ve opened the pathway to being completely frank by talking about breastfeeding from the pulpit, let’s be equally frank about the difficulties inherent in this story. As always, I am partial to the always thoughtful and challenging work of Douglas E. Wingeier in Keeping Holy Time: Studying the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001, pp.232-233) ,whose words I will try to summarize.

Wingeier notes that throughout the history of biblical interpretation, scholars and preachers have tried to explain, and even condone, the behavior of Sarah toward the slave and concubine, Hagar, and Hagar’s child Ishmael, by chalking it up to acceptable jealousy (even though the behavior of Abraham and Sarah violated the community standards of their time). And perhaps it is the sin of jealousy that is at the root of Sarah’s behavior. Perhaps. But I’m not willing to put it all on Sarah. I think there are other factors at play here.

So the story goes that Abraham throws a feast to celebrate the weaning of Isaac, a ritual that likely took place around Isaac’s third birthday. At this point, says Wingeier, Ishmael would have been around fifteen (although my colleague Taylor Burton-Edwards calculates Ishmael to be a little older– sixteen or seventeen).

TIMELINE
by Taylor Burton-Edwards
The way the story of the expulsion or, we might say, deportation of Hagar and Ishmael is usually depicted in art and common storytelling, we may have the impression Ishmael was a young child (perhaps not much more than a toddler) at the time.

The time cues in Genesis, however, tell a different tale. [continue reading]

In the story, Sarah becomes angry when she sees the two boys playing together. This is not the first time she has dealt with her feelings of jealousy and anger toward Hagar and Ishmael. Back in chapter sixteen, Sarai (as she was still known) complained that after Hagar had conceived, she looked at her mistress “with contempt.”

Since the role of a concubine was to produce a male heir, the child born to that woman would legally be tied to the wife of the child’s father, not the concubine. So the child to be born would be Sarai’s son, not Hagar’s. And yet, Sarai felt angry and jealous toward Hagar, even though it was Sarai who asked Abraham to go to Hagar because she, Sarai, was barren.

It’s a tough situation for all parties involved. In addition to jealousy and anger, there are issues of infertility, sexual infidelity, abuse, slavery, and gender and cultural oppression.

In chapter sixteen, Abraham reminded Sarai that Hagar was her slave, and he told her to handle the perceived insubordination in whatever way she saw fit. So, empowered by her husband, Sarai “dealt harshly” with Hagar. So harshly that Hagar ran away.

But then an angel of the Lord came to Hagar by a spring in the wilderness and told her to return home. The angel promised that she would be the bearer of multitudes. And so Hagar returned to the household of Abraham and Sarai, and life went on. For sixteen or seventeen more years.

In today’s story, when Sarah saw the boys playing together and became jealous, instead of “dealing harshly” with her slave, this time she asked Abraham to deport Hagar and Ishmael. Cast them out. Send the woman and her child back to Egypt where she had come from. After more than sixteen or seventeen years of living as a slave and concubine, under harsh treatment, Hagar and her teenaged son are cast out. They have nowhere to go and no way to support themselves.

THE LEGACY OF ISHMAEL
by Dawn Chesser
Perhaps most disturbing in this story is not only is Abraham willing to have his concubine and child deported, but God is portrayed as complicit in this action. God comes to Abraham to assure him that his son will be protected and that Ishmael’s offspring will be counted among Abraham’s heirs. Like Isaac, Ishmael will become a “nation” in accordance with God’s promise. [continue reading]

I want to suggest that we approach weaning as something that is not limited to its strict physical meaning. Weaning can be a metaphor for any kind of breaking apart of the bonds of relationship. Weaning can be the fracturing of the relationship between a mother and daughter, a father and son, or two friends. Weaning can be applied to any transition that leads to separation from another in the life of a human being. We must wean ourselves from all kinds of relationships in this life, and each time we do it, we are thrown into the chaos of transition.

So this casting out, this deportation of Hagar and her child, is in my mind a kind of “weaning.” It is a transition from a state of dependence to one of independence. It is a break in a family relationship. It is a transition from one kind of life to another. And in this case, it is a weaning that is troubling no matter how you look at it. Because the relationship from which Hagar and Ishmael are deported was not a healthy, loving, supportive situation. It was abusive and oppressive for them both. Unfortunately for them, as for so many people who are cast out of relationships that are abusive, the departure does not necessarily lead to a better situation. People who are cast out, or who are deported, or who leave willing to escape an impossible or abusive situation, are often sent away with nothing: no food, no money, no way of supporting themselves and their offspring in a new place.

So once again we have a chaotic, jumbled, messy life transition. But what is it we said the last two weeks? When things get chaotic, jumbled, and messy, look for signs of God. God is always present with us, no matter how hard the going gets.

In the case of Sarah and Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael, some of God’s responses are hard to understand. God’s apparent support of something we find deplorable is difficult to explain.

But then, that’s the way it always is.

We know God is with us. And we know that although God is present, difficult times still come our way. We get thrown into chaos over and over. The hard truth is: God does not always prevent people from doing things that are wrong.

It is true that Sarah made a decision to trust in her ability to handle the situation. It is true that Sarah indulged her own feelings of anger, jealousy, and resentment rather than trusting God’s purpose and vision for this family. It is true that Abraham supported Sarah’s unlawful and sinful behavior, and in doing so, engaged in unrighteous behavior himself. And it is true that God didn’t prevent Sarah and Abraham from doing this terrible thing. God didn’t stop them from deporting Hagar and Ishmael. God didn’t stop them from acting inhumanely toward their fellow human beings, their own family members.

Just as God does not prevent us from acting in ways that are harmful for others.

The good news is, God is with us, even when we do not act in Christlike ways toward our sisters and brothers. God is with us, sending messages through “angels” to encourage us to engage the really hard questions, admit to our sins, own up to our mistakes, turn our lives around, and head in a new direction.

• God is with us, inviting us to trust in God more than in ourselves.
• God is with us, offering us grace so that we may have the faith to trust in God.
• God is with us, allowing us to fall down and urging us to learn from our mistakes so that we will not repeat them.
• God is with us, sometimes saying and doing things that are confusing and difficult to hear, let alone, understand.
• God is with us, watching over brothers and sisters in our own Christian faith and our brothers and sisters in nations born to the cousins of our faith.
• God is with us. Emmanuel, God with us.

Timeline

by Taylor Burton-Edwards

The way the story of the expulsion or, we might say, deportation of Hagar and Ishmael is usually depicted in art and common storytelling, we may have the impression Ishmael was a young child (perhaps not much more than a toddler) at the time.

The time cues in Genesis, however, tell a different tale. In Genesis 16:16, we read “Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael” (NRSV). Genesis 17:24 notes Abraham (renamed at his circumcision) was 99 when he was circumcised, and the next verse tells us that Ishmael was thirteen years old at that time. Finally, the birth of Isaac took place when Abraham was 100 years old (Genesis 21:5), which puts Ishmael at fourteen years old.

The deportation, however, happened only after Isaac was weaned. The expected age of weaning in this culture during this time period appears to have been two to three years old (see I Samuel 1:20-24), meaning Ishmael was likely sixteen or seventeen years old at the time of his deportation.

This is why we have cast Ishmael as a teenager in the reading of today’s story.

The Legacy of Ishmael

by Dawn Chesser

Perhaps most disturbing in this story is not only is Abraham willing to have his concubine and child deported, but God is portrayed as complicit in this action. God comes to Abraham to assure him that his son will be protected and that Ishmael’s offspring will be counted among Abraham’s heirs. Like Isaac, Ishmael will become a “nation” in accordance with God’s promise. And in fact, God confirms this to Hagar, when God hears “the voice of the boy” and sends an angel to tell Hagar not to be afraid, but to go to her son and comfort him.

The “Ishmaelites” became traders. They were a nomadic tribe that thrived in the southern deserts, and their lineage continues to this day in the form of the Arab people. Ishmael is honored by Muslims all over the world as the forebear of the Arab nation and a child of divine promise (information summarized from Wingeier, Keeping Holy Time, Year A233).