Have you heard that old conundrum about God’s omnipotence? It asks, “Can God make a boulder so big that God can’t move it?” If you ever need it, the correct response to that is, “I don’t care, that has nothing to do with helping us be more loving.” Today’s story raises a similar concern: are we humans capable of screwing up so badly that God can’t bring good out of it? Please hear that question with caution. I fully believe we humans are capable of screwing up BADLY and ruining each other’s lives. The question is, once the damage is done, is there anything that God can’t make better?

Sarai, is the matriarch of both Judaism and Christianity. You may remember her as Sarah. She is the matriarch of ONLY Judaism and Christianity while her husband Abram/Abraham is the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Neither of them do good in the this story.

Let’s go over the name thing to get confusion out of the way. In the next chapter of Genesis (17), God changes their names to Abraham and Sarah – which is how most people remember their names. The name changed signified God’s promise changing their lives. However, at this point in the story they are still called Abram and Sarai, so that’s what we’re going to call them today.

Abram was one of three sons born in land now called Iraq, whose family had moved to land now called Syria, and continued to reside there until he was quite elderly. The book of Genesis says that when he was 75, God spoke to Abram and said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3) The book of Genesis rarely seems to understand how numbers work or what a reasonable human lifespan is, but it is clear that it is saying Abram and Sarai were old.

Phyllis Trible has done great work with these stories. She writes about this first promise made to Abram, pointing out that:

“The Divine imperative requires Abram to break with all that identifies a man in his ancient world, from the large category of native land through clan to the small unit of ‘father’s house.’ In effect, Abram must relinquish his past and present and go forth to an unknown future in an unspecified land. Although the command does not require him to give up Sarai, his wife, of what value for life, family, and future is barren property?”¹ (35)

So that you don’t think Trible is actually supporting the Biblical assumption about people unable to procreate, let me also quote her saying, “However we may view barrenness, within the biblical narrative it is a tragic flaw. It robs a woman of her labor and her status.  It undercuts patriarchy, upsets family values, and negates life.²” Sarai is introduced to the Bible as a barren woman, it is her defining characteristic, and her barrenness is the central issue of their story for 9 chapters.

Abram goes as he is told to go in that first encounter with the Divine. He goes to the land of Canaan and he lives there for a while until there is a famine and he and Sarai go to Egypt. On their way, Abram decides that Sarai is too beautiful and if he admits that she’s his wife they will try to kill him to get to her. So, while the Bible is messed up about the inherent value of women whether or not they can procreate, at least it recognizes the attractiveness of women in their 70s. Score one for Genesis.

Abram is self-protective and thereby lets his wife Sarai be taken into the Pharoah’s harem. He is paid VERY well for Sarai. Eventually the Pharaoh learns what Abram has done and both Abram and Sarai are kicked out of Egypt for it. When they get kicked out, Abram left a wealthy man with all his possessions. That is, his lie and use of his wife made him wealthy. Likely Hagar, Sarai’s slave, was part of the wealth they left with.

They went back to Canaan and lived peaceably there for 10 years. It has been a long time since God’s promise came… 15 years? 20? The Biblical chronology is messy, conflicting, and obviously untrustworthy, but suffice to say, according to the internal logic of the story it has been more than a generation’s time since God promised Abram offspring and nothing has happened. Sarai is just as barren as ever and nothing seems to be changing. The promise was reliant on a 2^nd generation, and wouldn’t work without one.

So Sarai decides to take this into her own hands. Clearly the 2^nd generation wasn’t going to happen through her, and yet she didn’t want to give up on the promise. Abram had to have descendants. She wasn’t to bear them. They’d waited years and years…. so she found a way. This passage contains the first words Sarai speaks in the Bible. Sarai speaks to Abram and makes the action happen. She uses her voice to change their reality.

Now, Sarai has been condemned through the ages for this action – but I don’t think she’s been condemned for the right things. Usually, she’s condemned for lack of faith. People suggest that if God said it would happen then God would make it happen and Sarai taking it into her own hands showed that she didn’t truly trust God.

That perspective implies that God’s ways make human action irrelevant. It fails to acknowledge that we work to be a part of building the kindom. It ignores free will. It depends on the supernatural. It suggests that humans have no responsibility for creating the world into a place of justice and peace, and that any action we take would be trying to take over God’s exclusive work of changing the world. That is to say, I think condemning Sarai for taking actions into her own hands is theologically unsound and STUPID.

On the other hand, this story says that Sarai is culpable of getting Hagar raped, and that seems worth condemnation. Sarai was likely raped by the Pharaoh herself, but that doesn’t excuse her. I would hope it would have brought her to a place of compassion rather than condemnation of another woman. Trible explains it this way:

“As Abram schemed to save himself by manipulating Sarai and Pharaoh, so Sarai schemes to promote herself by manipulating Abram and Hagar. As Abram tricked Pharaoh into manhandling Sarai, so Sarai would persuade Abram to manhandle Hagar. Like husband, like wife. Altogether, Sarai would treat Hagar in Canaan much as she herself was treated in Egypt; the object of use for the desires of others. Like oppressor, like oppressed.”³

Now, according to custom, Sarai was in her rights to do this. Her slave belonged to her, including her reproductive function, and the baby born would be understood to be hers. It is a projection of 21^st century morality to object, and yet I’m doing so. Thus, it IS morally reprehensible AND it didn’t work out. Something fundamental changes when Hagar gets pregnant. The dynamic has been, according to Trible that, “Sarai the Hebrew is married, rich, and free but also old and barren. Hagar the Egyptian is singe, poor, and a slave, but also young and fertile. Power belongs to Sarai; powerlessness marks Hagar.”⁴But Sarai’s greatest weakness is being barren when child-bearing was the single most important factor in a woman’s life, and the power dynamics switch when her otherwise powerless slave is carrying her husband’s child.

Trible continues:

“As the story moves into a crowded marriage of three, the focus rests on Hagar. ‘She conceived’ (Gen 16:4) The news is precisely what Sarai wants, but it leads to an insight on Hagar’s part that her mistress has not anticipated. ‘And [when] she [Hagar] saw that she had conceived, her mistress became slight in her eyes’ (Gen 16:4*). In the Hebrew syntax, words of sight, connoting understanding, begin and end this sentence: the verb ‘see’ and the phrase ‘in her eyes.’ Structurally and substantively, new understanding encircles Hagar’s view of herself and her mistress. Hierarchical blinders drop. The exulted mistress decreases, the lowly slave increases. Not hatred or contempt but a reordering of the relationship emerges.”⁵

But Sarai’s view of Hagar does NOT change, and she feels slighted by the move toward equality. She wants to return them to their previous, hierarchical relationship. She wants to regain her power.

Sarai does not talk directly to Hagar, she doesn’t attempt to fix the relationship, and she surely doesn’t try to understand Hagar. Instead she turns to the biggest source of power: Abram. She brings her problem to him and demands that he fixes it. Abram refuses responsibility, and gives her back the power she needs to do harm to Hagar. Hagar HAD BEEN Sarai’s slave, but when she became a secondary wife to Abram, she was no longer a slave. Yet, Abram returns her to the status of slave, permitting Sarai to do her harm, and Sarai does. After demanding that Abram rape Hagar, Sarai “treats her harshly” – which is the same phrasing as how the Hebrew people were treated as slaves in Egypt.

Sarai is an undeniably strong woman who charts the course of Biblical history. She got the ball rolling. She took the power into her own hands. She did it. And she did an enormous amount of damage in doing so. Her actions are HORRIFYING and yet it was a subversive choice to claim her own power and use it to make sure that Abram got an heir. Her choice not to claim Ishmael as her own is also HORRIFYING and yet again subversive by claiming her own power.

In the metaphors of the world, the child Hagar bears, Ishmael, becomes the father of the Muslims. Hagar is their matriarch. In the continued narrative of Genesis, Sarai bears her own child, Issac, and through him becomes the matriarch of the Jews and Christians. Three world’s major religions emerge from this set of messed up people in broken relationships. I’ve often wondered why the Bible is comfortable as presenting them as so HUMAN, but the Bible doesn’t seem to be under the impression that God is looking for perfect humans in order to act.

More so, out of these atrocities: the barrenness of Sarai, the willingness of Abram to sell his wife, slavery, the willingness of Sarai and Abram to use Hagar as an un-consenting wife and surrogate mother, and Sarai’s harsh treatment of Hagar comes GOOD. Doesn’t make any sense, does it? I think that’s one of the mysteries of God. We can mess up, but God doesn’t just leave things be and allow brokenness to stand. God works through the realities of life, the horrendous brokenness in lives, and the pain we cause each other and finds a way to transform it all. My answer? There is nothing we can do that God can’t bring good out of. The net result may still be harm, but God is creative, powerful, and good. We can’t stop that. Thanks be to God! Amen

1Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing” in Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, editors, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian PerspectivesTrible, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2006) p. 35.

2Trible, 34.

3Trible, 38.

4Trible, 37.

5Trible, 39.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 30, 2016