Written by: United Theological Seminary January 10, 2018

Readings on Rosh Hashana: Hagar, Abraham, and the Reality of Pain

This semester I am taking Interpretation as Resistance: Womanist, Feminist, and Queer Approaches to the Bible taught by Professors Alika Galloway and Carolyn Pressler. This week’s reading concerns the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Sarah is unable to bare children, which is unfortunate since her husband Abraham is supposed to father “a great nation” (Gen. 12.2). Sarah comes up with a plan to have Abraham use a surrogate: her Egyptian slave Hagar. Abraham agrees, lays with Hagar, and Hagar conceives. The Bible then tells us that Hagar “saw that she had conceived [and] looked with contempt on her mistress”(Gen.16.4). Sarah responds by being so cruel to Hagar that she runs away to the desert. Upon finding a spring of water, Hagar meets an angel of God who gives her an ambivalent message: go back and submit to a life of cruelty but also your son Ishmael will be the father of nations. A mixed bag, for sure.

The story transitions to Abraham being visited by three angels, who announce that Sarah will give birth to a son. Sarah, eavesdropping, laughs to herself at the thought of being able to give birth in her old age. But the joke’s on her, I guess, because she gives birth to Isaac or Yitzhaq, whose name means laughing. Haha! Oh, except, the story kind of takes some pretty dark turns. Time passes and Sarah sees Ishmael and Isaac playing, hears Ishmael’s laughter, and commands Abraham to exile Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. Even God talks to Abraham, backing up Sarah’s plan. Abraham acquiesces. Hagar and Ishmael travel through the desert with little food and water. Close to burying her own son, Hagar weeps and cries out: “Do not let me look on the death of the child!” God, hearing Ishmael cries, talks once more to Hagar. God says:

“What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”

Then God makes a spring of water appear, Hagar and Ishmael are saved, and Ishmael grows to be a skilled archer and father of many sons. It’s a happy ending! Well, except that the next major story for the family is the Akedah, or binding of Isaac by his own father.

Now, it is always exciting when my academic work corresponds to what is going on in my religious world. Our examination of this story corresponds with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to read the story of Hagar’s exile and the binding of Isaac from the Torah. We read these stories of sending children to the brink of death right as we celebrate the change of seasons. As we make wishes for the future. As we dream of sweetness and good fortune. As we prepare to open up our bodies and souls for the ten days between now and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In this milieu we tackle Hagar and the Akedah.

Over the years, I have heard many sermons comparing Hagar’s wilderness to the days of awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, days of uncertainty when we are being judged by God whether to be placed in the book of life or the book of death. But in 2017, amidst fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, threats of nuclear war, and fascists marching on the street, wilderness seems something different. More tangible. The wilderness is our normal. Or at least, we have normalized the wilderness. Or at least there is a danger of doing this.

The stories of Hagar in the wilderness and the binding of Isaac even show an evolution from discomfort at violence to accepting it. Earlier, we have Abraham actually arguing with God to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So, when Sarah asks Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away, “ The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son.” (21.11). But by the time God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham goes without complaint, without talking back. On one hand, it is possible to see how Abraham might be afraid, and will not argue because he has already seen cities destroyed and his family torn apart by God. On the other hand, I wonder if Abraham goes willingly to kill his son, because he has seen the power of being willing to sacrifice those you supposedly love, for is not God not all powerful? And has God not demonstrated His power through spectacles of violence and force? Does Abraham go along, because to be good, to be devoted, to be holy, to be a father like The Father, he must be willing and able to kill? After all, Abraham was willing to put both Sarah and Hagar in danger at different points, willing to use them to fulfil his name. Is it so far a stretch to see how he might be willing to shed life, after being taught to abuse it?

This is a dangerous story, to me. And a particularly potent depiction of patriarchal violence. It becomes second nature for Abraham allow pain to shape him and in turn to cause pain. His role as a forefather seems contingent on rites of violence.

Nationalism, xenophobia and hatred of immigrants, racism, obstructing health care, and denying rights to LGBTQ people come from the same impulse as Abraham’s to accept the cycle as long as the father is still in his place. To be a patriarch, is to perpetuate everyone else’s suffering.

But the story we tell on Rosh Hashanah is also the story of Hagar–she is not just a prop in Abraham’s tale. It is by her example that I believe the Bible sets up a potential critique of the forefather. For unlike Abraham, Hagar voices her pain. She weeps. She excises her suffering in an exclamation to God: “Do not let me look on the death of the child” (21.16). She speaks her pain, locates God as a player in her suffering and commands Him to take responsibility for her and her child. Hagar has spoken to God before, and her relationship with God is different from Abraham’s. After God told the then pregnant Hagar to go back to her suffering, she asks “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” There is in her exclamation profound ambivalence to God. She recognize a danger in God and a disbelief in surviving Him. But from that space between trust and doubt, in that semi-acceptance of her lot, she lives. She eventually thrives. And she is able to address God as an agent in her own right. Not just the passive receptacle of God’s command, but someone who has seen the beauty and the terror of the divine, and spoken it. She has addressed her pain, not hidden it or perpetuated it through others, but reflected it back onto the source.

When I first heard Leonard Cohen’s song “You Know Who I Am” from Songs from a Room, I thought the lyrics were in God’s perspective to someone, probably Abraham based on the other songs from the album. God describes Himself requiring incredible asks:

Sometimes I need you naked,

Sometimes I need you wild,

I need you to carry my children in

And I need you to kill a child.

But God is also the revealer of remarkable truths and healing.

“If you should ever track me down

I will surrender there

And I will leave with you one broken man

Whom I will teach you to repair.

As I reflect on the particular understanding that Hagar has of God, I wonder if she is a better “you” for the song to be addressing:

You know who I am,

You've stared at the sun,

Well I am the one who loves

Changing from nothing to one.

I imagine Hagar in the desert indeed staring at the sun, which gives life, but in that moment most assuredly would have implied death. And she knows God and speaks to God and dialogues with the deadly and life-giving God, even as He plays a more sinister character in Abraham’s adjacent story. To speak to power is to know power and in turn to know yourself, to know your own pain and investigate it. To know God is to know what and you are and to use your voice. Abraham once cried out. Hence argued with God to save lives, but in becoming the de facto patriarch, that ability to speak to God turned to only being able to listen to God and then, after the Akedah, to silence.

As move into another year, another wilderness, I hope that we as individuals, as a country, as a world, can look at our pains and name them, instead simply passing it onto others. I hope that I will be held accountable for the pain I cause, just as I vow–through my art and through my academics–to hold accountable the structures that perpetuate my own pain. And in doing this, in reaching to God, talking to God, loving and fearing and wondering about and speaking up to God, I hope for a year, where even in this wilderness we may find moments of sweetness that do not perpetuate the suffering of others and that indicate the potential for liberation. Shana Tova Umetuka!

Explore More Articles

June 25, 2026

Activism Alums immigration justice Liberation Theology

Alum Rev. Todd Lippert (’03): Living a Public Ministry

As Rev. Todd Lippert was growing up, his life was dominated by two constants: music and church. Both of his parents were music teachers. His dad was the high school choir director, and his mom was the elementary school music teacher. Though his family had been Baptist for generations, they ended up attending a United Church of Christ (UCC) church where his mom was hired to play the organ. It was also much closer to home than the nearest Baptist church. “I always took Christian faith very seriously,” Todd asserts. “The church was a sacred and holy place to me.” In seventh grade, Todd remembers talking to his father. “I was at the bottom of the stairs talking to my dad at the top of the stairs. And that was when I said for the first time, ‘I wonder if I might want to be a pastor someday.’” But, Todd adds, “the idea was really terrifying to me,” so he put it out of his mind. At the University of Iowa, he pursued a music degree. During a philosophy class toward the end of college, a professed atheist professor began asking some of the same questions about faith that Todd was confronting. “I was wrestling with whether I was a Christian or not.” Deciding on Seminary The turning point came one Sunday morning after graduation when Todd and his wife were at church. At the time, he was selling Yellow Pages ads and contemplating an MBA. “I hated it,” Todd confesses. “I was miserable.” Watching the preacher at First United Methodist Church in Iowa City, he thought, “Maybe I could do that, and maybe I need to pay attention to this call to ministry that keeps bubbling up.” United was the first UCC seminary that came up on the computer, and when Todd visited, “it felt like home for me as soon as I arrived.” Since his wife was doing graduate work at the University of Minnesota, they moved to the Twin Cities. “At United,” Todd recalls, “I had the space to figure out how Christianity was meaningful and how this faith fit together for me.” Professors who welcomed and encouraged his questions were key to his faith formation, and the “liberation theology that moved through the curriculum, with its focus on justice, was extremely appealing to me.” Todd was also inspired by his classmates. “I saw the student body deeply engaged in the political and social questions of the day.” At United from 2000 to 2003, Todd experienced the Bush v. Gore lawsuit, 9/11 terror attacks, Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone’s tragic death, and the Iraq war launch as he was earning his MDiv. Public Theology Justice-seeking activism, Todd asserts, “really cemented my understanding that the body of Christ is about bringing the realm of God into being wherever it is. And that was something that would have to make my life better and make my community better.” Since graduating, Todd has worked as a UCC pastor, a Minnesota state legislator (2018–2022), a community organizer with ISAIAH, and a community minister with Creekside Church. The clergy organizing work during Operation Metro Surge was especially impactful and reconnected him with United. Todd went through “nonviolent direct action training with Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, one of the authors I read.” He also worked with Rev. Dr. Carolyn Pressler, his former Hebrew scripture professor. United, notes Todd, equipped him “to be able to understand what is going on in our world, and in our communities, and I had the tools to get better and better at that, reading the present through a biblical and theological lens.” He is extraordinarily proud of the way the church showed up in Minnesota and grateful for United. “I really want,” Todd concludes, “the love-your-neighbor values of the church to be a force in our public life, not an afterthought. I want it to be a force in our political life.”

Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman Promoted to Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, supported by the McVay Endowment

Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, June 24, 2026 —United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities is delighted to announce that, effective July 1, 2026, Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman will become the Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, supported by the McVay Endowment, and Director for Formation. This promotion to an endowed chair follows Rev. Dr. Justin Sabis-Tanis’ appointment as the inaugural Wilson Yates Chair in Theology and the Arts. Announced during Commencement in April, the McVay chairship reflects the esteem with which United’s board and faculty members regard Professor Packman. In February, Dean Kyle Roberts proudly reported that Dr. Packman was being promoted from assistant to associate professor and transitioning from a three-year contract into a tenure-track position. Dr. Packman joined United in July 2021 as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics and Practical Theology. At the Spring 2022 Convocation to welcome and bless our new faculty member, Dr. Packman—who holds an MDiv and PhD from the University of Chicago—presented on “The Atmospherics of Theological Education.” By December 2022, Dr. Packman’s “teaching, mentoring, and other stellar capabilities” prompted United to offer him a contract to continue teaching past the terms of his Louisville Fellowship. Since then, he has co-authored an article in The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher, had a paper (“The Consolation of Studying Theology”) published in the Christian Century, and presented at the September 2025 Schleiermacher Kongress in Kiel, Germany. Spiritual and personal formation is a vital component of Packman’s work with students, and he will continue in his role as the director for Formation. In May of 2025, he began a new initiative, the Formation Pilot Program, to gauge the foundational axis points of students’ formation at United. “This is a remarkable moment in theological education,” Dr. Packman explained this spring, “where what it means to be a theological learning community is being reimagined in real time. This pilot program is designed to interrogate this question from across the life of the seminary, and to build up our community in the process.” “Dr. Packman’s doctoral studies,” observed Dean Roberts in his April announcement, “focused on Christian theology and ethics, and his current research explores questions about racism, intransigent evil, and Friedrich Schleiermacher’s philosophical and theological ethics. Combined with his MDiv studies in pastoral formation, these make Dr. Packman well-suited to occupy this chair while he continues…serving as the Director for Formation.” President Molly T. Marshall reflects, “Dr. Packman brings academic excellence and pastoral sensitivity to his teaching, collegial relationships, and community involvement. His theological depth suffuses his courses in ethics and formation, seeking to form good human beings as transformative agents for a world in travail. I am delighted by this appointment.” As Dr. Packman shared when he was offered a chance to continue teaching at United past his Louisville Fellowship, “It’s such an immense gift to get to do this work, and it’s an honor to get to do it with folks like you. I’m so eager to see what we build together!” Now, as a new chapter begins with his elevation to the McVay Chair, we are overjoyed that such a prodigiously talented scholar and teacher can continue to journey with our dedicated and curious students. About United Founded by the United Church of Christ (UCC) as a welcoming, ecumenical school that embraces all denominations and faith traditions, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities has been on the creative edge of progressive theological thought and leadership since it was established in 1962. Today, United continues to educate leaders who, through the eyes of faith, engage in the dismantling of systems of oppression, exploring multi-faith spirituality, and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Contact Nathanial Green (he/him) Director of Marketing and Communications press@unitedseminary.edu • 651.255.6138 Admissions and Enrollment admissions@unitedseminary.edu

Rev. Dr. Tim McGregor (’26) Finds Hope for Healing in Exploratory Theology

Rev. Dr. Tim McGregor (’26) has been a chaplain, pastor, and church planter for years. How did he find this well-trodden path? Tim says his mother introduced him to Christ. “She was very devout,” he explains. Unfortunately, she was also very sick, so Tim spent more time in hospitals than in church as a child. Still, he recalls one incident during communion when he was 11. Tim shares that he “had a very out-of-body experience with the divine while I was in church, and it touched my soul.” Tim grew up and pursued a BA at Tuskegee University. While there, he experienced another out-of-body experience when he was robbed at gunpoint and stabbed. “At that point,” he reflects, “I decided to rethink some of my living and some of my decisions. It reignited my spiritual walk.” As he changed the way he lived, Tim felt a spiritual nudge. Others observed that they “saw the calling” on his life. And dreams about preaching began to recur. “Before I ever preached a sermon, I dreamed I was preaching…in the same church where I ended up preaching later on.” Christian Theological Seminary Though Tim identified as National Baptist, he decided to attend Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indiana—a progressive school aligned with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It helped that Dr. Edward Wheeler, an ordained Baptist minister whom Tim knew when Wheeler worked at Tuskegee, was CTS’s president. During a United chapel service this March, Tim described his experience at CTS as “quite grueling,” but also that he “learned a lot.” As he clarified more recently, he had to “let go of a very fundamentalist perspective,” and that sort of deconstruction was difficult. “It was a crucible situation,” Tim asserts. Chaplaining and Church Planting After earning his MDiv in 2003, Tim spent years in Mississippi and Texas planting churches and working as a hospital chaplain. Since returning to Minnesota, he’s been a chaplain at Regions Hospital, Abbott Northwestern, and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, and pastored at Family Bible Church. He suspects that the time he spent with his mother in hospitals likely inclined him toward hospital chaplaincy. When he decided to pursue a DMin, Tim reviewed his options. Only United, he found, had the interreligious chaplaincy program and liberal ethos that made his MDiv work transformational. Plus, he could attend onsite or online as his schedule allowed. “It was a great benefit,” Tim attests, “to do both.” United and Nat Turner Tim credits Dr. Jessica Chapman Lape, former director of the Interreligious Chaplaincy program, with positively shaping his education. Her theological knowledge and emphasis on her African American heritage impressed him. Dr. Munjed Murad’s Comparative Theology course elevated Tim’s intercultural acuity. Munjed is an assistant professor of World Religions and Intercultural Studies, supported by the Johnson-Fry Endowment. Tim describes his dissertation, “The Exploratory Theology of Nat Turner and Its Effects on African and African American PTSD,” as “a labor of love.” Why Nat Turner? “I appreciate his passion and his desire to live and fight for the rights of his people,” Tim explains, “and his willingness to do so in the name of his religious beliefs.” In addition, “I’m always interested in people that…have been misunderstood or written off as villains.” Shepherded with vital support from Rev. Dr. Andrew Packman (assistant professor of Theological Ethics and Formation), Tim’s dissertation studies Nat Turner, his traumatic experiences as a slave, and his burgeoning theology. It also traces links to the moral injury, trauma, and PTSD endemic to military service, especially for African American veterans. Tim wants to “understand more about…how to be an asset to my community.” He feels that “United was a really good place for that” and is a rich resource for “clergy…and spiritual caregivers” who are going to help us “keep pressing toward better understandings.” Tim is grateful for United’s role in honing his academic and spiritual voice.