Through Stained Glass: Advent Word of the Day-Sees

Day 4:  El-roi [sees]

Hagar named God, “You are El-roi.” [The God who sees.]

It was my first record. Yeah, one of those big black circular things you play on a record player. I looked fervently for it.

The record I was searching for was released in 1976 by Motown recording artist Stevie Wonder. The double-sided album masterpiece was called Songs in the Key of Life, which gave a brilliant and beautiful voice to the joys and struggles of life in inner city America.

My favorite track off the album is “Village Ghetto Land.” While I was not even alive when the album came out and at times still can’t grasp the social complexity of the song, the artistry of it broke my imaginative horizons wide open. What I mean by this is how in “Village Ghetto Land,” Stevie juxtaposes disturbing images of “life the way it is” in the inner city over the serene instrumentation of a chamber quartet:

"Village Ghetto Land"

Would you like to go with me
Down my dead end street
Would you like to come with me
To Village Ghetto Land

See the people lock their doors
While robbers laugh and steal
Beggars watch and eat their meal -from garbage cans

Broken glass is everywhere
It's a bloody scene
Killing plagues the citizens
Unless they own police

Children play with rusted cars
Sores cover their hands
Politicians laugh and drink-drunk to all demands

Families buying dog food now
Starvation roams the streets
Babies die before they're born
Infected by the grief

Now some folks say that we should be
Glad for what we have
Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land

         The album was recently re-released and listening to it today, one might be tempted to celebrate just how much things have changed in so-called post-racial America, “where a black man resides with his beautiful family in the White House and projects American military power across the world stage.”[1] The opening of “Village Ghetto Land”—Would you like to go with me / down my dead end street?—still resonates today as both an accusation and an invitation:  an accusation of social blindness but also an invitation to wake up, to come and see life as it is more clearly than I have seen it before from my perspective of social particularity.

         Again Dr. Pramuk writes, “To say yes to the invitation is to discover that what is at stake is not strictly my grasp of ghetto life so much as the music of life itself, life in the key of humanity, black, white, brown, red, or yellow. It is about the music of human relationships, sorrowful and joyful, broken and redeemed.”[2]

If there is ever a story about brokenness and redemption, it can be found in Genesis 16 & 21.

        

This is a photo done by Luba Lukova. The title
of it is "Hagar Suffering."

Hagar’s story is one of a servant and her mistress, or in modern terms, an employer and employee. It is the story of struggle for status. It is sadly also the story of abuse and exile. While it may be easy to focus entirely on the difficulty of Hagar’s story—a story of ethnic prejudice exacerbated by economic and sexual exploitation—we don’t want to miss the important moment in Hagar’s story:  She is the first person—not the first woman, but the first person—in the Bible who is visited by a divine messenger.

Even more astonishing is that she is the only biblical character who dares to name God. Hers is the story of a woman who sees and names God and is the mother of a great nation. Hagar's story instills courage to us when we face the cruel realities of this world. We must see it and be not afraid to name it. When we confront the 'isms we face, only then will we be able to end them.

Today’s word is sees, inspired by Hagar’s naming of God—El-roi.

What Hagar’s story and Stevie Wonder’s song have in common is an invitation for us to see the pain and injustices, the hurt and the sorrow, that is unfolding in our lives, in our communities, in our own neighborhoods, right now. But an invitation not only to see it, but to respond to it with acts of love and advocacy.

If Advent is a time of hoping and dreaming, I can’t help but to ask: what will it take for us to see beyond our comfort zones and begin to build relationships with those whom conventional wisdom tells us to avoid?

Advent is a time for us to see with eyes and minds wide open the world as it is, while living the dream of another world being possible.

May we have eyes to see not only the beauty that waits, but also the pain in our neighbor’s eyes. May we have the courage to not simply see it, but to stand in solidarity with them. Then, maybe, we will see each other as God sees all of us: the beautiful children of God’s eye.

---

[1] Christopher Pramuk. “Hope Sings So Beautiful:  Graced Encounters Across the Color Lines.”  (Minnesota:  Liturgical Press, 2013.)  page 89.

[2] Ibid.