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February 26, 2023
by Sara Baron

“What To Do With Creation Stories” Based on Psalm 104:1-4, 10-15, 27-30 and Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25

I was really excited about the idea of starting Lent with Creation. After all, Lent is a season of preparation, a time when we are reflective and attending to the needs of our faith, and what better way to start that work than with the beginning of our shared story?

That excitement lasted until I sat down to reread the texts. At which point I began to question my sanity itself, and why I would set myself up to try to make meaning out of the Adam and Eve story. After all this story has been one of the primary ones used to subjugate women, not to mention queer and trans people AND has a bonus narrative of over emphasizing a duality of gender. My concerns about preaching about this led me down a line of thinking where I started to wonder if Creation itself really matters to Christianity and if perhaps we would be better off just ignoring all stories of Creation so I don’t have to preach on Adam and Eve.

That should count as a red flag in my thinking processes, because my faith is at the root a Creation-based faith. Creation is how I make sense of EVERYTHING. The Bible starts and ends with creation. We as people are co-creators with God, working towards the world as God would have it be (“the kindom”). Creation is sacred. The natural world is one of my best teachers. All of creation sings praises to the Creator. There is wisdom in every rock and stream and leaf. This is how I think. This is how I am!

I myself learned how deeply all of this is engrained when my beloved 2 year old spent last summer curiously pulling leaves and flowers off of living things, while I found myself assessing the health of the plants and inserting myself between him and any plant I deemed likely to be hurt by the loss of a single leaf. The lectures that came out of my mouth about respecting all of living creation were an excellent clue as to what I believe, although – as you might expect – not terribly convincing to the one who heard them.

So, what to do with creation stories?

And, before anyone gets too concerned listening to me, this seems like a prime time to talk about science and how great it is. To take a creation story seriously is not to assume it is factual about history and science, it is to consider it as a meaning making narrative and look for the clues of what it was trying to explain and why. I am DEEPLY committed to understanding God as Creator, it is inseparable from my faith as well as my world view, but I believe God created through the big bang and continued to create through evolution and continues to create today, along with us and beyond us.

For me, to claim God as creator isn’t about denying science. It is about believing there is sacredness in all that is, and that goodness is possible because God is the root of all being.

But, still, what are we to do with creation stories?

Well, I guess, we take them as they are: stories to help us understand the challenges of life, and we listen for their wisdom. Of course, the Bible has a multitude of creation stories because the Bible is working to make meaning and creation stories are particularly good at that. Phyllis Trible, starts the book God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality with the words “The Bible is a pilgrim wandering through history to merge past and present.”1 Looking at creation stories is the same as looking at the rest of the Bible. To make sense of it for the present requires some sense of what it may have meant in the past, but also a firm grounding in the present to see what it means now.

Now, as creation narratives go, Psalm 104 is one of my favorites. It seems to focus on the goodness and majesty of creation, and I like that theme. It also focuses on God’s presence within creation, another one I really like. Best of all, Psalm 104 presents God as active in caring for creation for the goodness of creation itself – us included. It serves as a reminder to be grateful for water, which brings life, and for grass which sustains cattle, for edible plants we get to eat and wine and water and bread to satisfy people. If Psalm 104 does all this while having some weird conceptions about what the sky is and some odd ideas about punishment, I can let it be, because I need the reminders of awe and care and hope that I hear in the text.

However, as creation narratives go, Genesis 2 is probably my least favorite. To be fair though, I dislike the text because of what others have done with it more than because of the text itself. So I forced myself to actually listen to it, and it turns out to be WAY more interesting and life giving than I expected.

Dr. Gafney says the first created human in this story is an “entity that will be divided into equal halves to form two human persons, yielding different theological implications than turning a man’s rib into a woman.”2 She is working on the interpretation from Phyllis Trible, which I’d like to point out was published in 1978 and continues to be one of the best texts on the subject.

In Trible’s translation of this Genesis creation story we start with, “And YHWH God formed hā-’ādām [of] dust from hā’adāmâ and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life and hā-‘ādām became a living nephesh.”3 From the beginning, Trible says, “Hā-‘ādām is the focus of God’s pleasure.”4 She translates hā-‘ādām as “earth creature” as it is a pun on the word for earth, and points out that the earth creature is NOT identified sexually. Rather the earth creatures is “precisely and only the human being so far sexually undifferentiated.”5 Further, “only two ingredients constitute its life, and both are tenuous: dusty earth and divine breath. One from above, one from below. One is visible, the other invisible.”6

And here I start to get a sense of the meaning the early story tellers were trying to get to. They wondered about this fragile reality called life, they noticed that we are interrelated with earth, but also more, at least while we are alive. These metaphors for what we “are” make a lot of sense if you are thinking meaning making and not science, right? Also, if you are listening to what the text says and not assuming that “earth creature” is “man.”

Now, if I were to pick one point from this story as the key thing that I think should be taken from it, I would pick the line “it is not good for the earth creature to be alone” which, as Trible says, “contrasts wholeness with isolation.”7 Please note that this is said while the earth creature is still… one. So I don’t think this is actually about romantic or sexual love, but rather the need for companionship and RELATIONSHIP. Further, God has been quite present with the earth-creature to this point, and it seems that God rather LIKES the earth-creature, but God still senses that the earth-creature is MADE FOR RELATIONSHIP with other earth creatures TOO.

And that, dear ones, I think holds throughout time. Trible says, “Since the earth-creature is not only part of the earth but also other than the earth, it needs fulfillment from that which is other than in the earth.”8 And, I’ve got to say, that feels right. And she points out that the ACTUAL phrase attributed to God says, “I will make a companion corresponding to it.” If you have a word other than companion, particularly one with a hierarchical basis in your mind, know that it is not fair to the Hebrew the story is told in. Trible explains, “According to Yahweh God, what the earth creature needs is a companion, one who is neither subordinate nor superior, one who alleviates isolation through identity.”9 Then God makes the animals, and they don’t fit. This reflects a God who is flexible, and working out with the earth creature looking for what that one needs, right? I like that metaphor too!

And then, God tries something else. Trible says, “In becoming material for creation, the earth creature changes character. Whereas the making of the plants and animals were divine acts extrinsic to the earth creature itself, the making of the sexes is intrinsic. Indeed, this act has altered the very flesh of the creature: from one come two. After this intrinsic division, hā-‘ādām is no longer identical with its past, so that when next it speaks a different creature is speaking.”10

“And hā-‘ādām said,

This, finally, bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh

This shall be called woman [’iŝŝâ]

because from man [’îš] was taken this.”11

Trible again, “the female pronoun this (zō’t) unmistakably emphasizes the woman whose creation has made the earth creature different. Only after surgery does this creature, for the very first time, identify itself as male.” “No ambiguity clouds the words used ’iŝŝâ and îš. One is female, the other male. Their creation is simultaneous, not sequential. … Moreover, one is not opposite of the other. In the very act of distinguishing female from male, the earth creature describes her as “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” These words speak unity, solidarity, mutuality, and equality. Accordingly, in this poem the man does not depict himself as either prior to or superior to the woman. … For both of them sexuality oringinates in the one flesh of humanity.” I’m going to take this a step further and say that if this story claims the first earth creature was not gendered (non-binary perhaps?) and that humanity comes before gender, sex, or sexuality. The human experience is primary. The human need for relationship is primary.

This story seems to be trying to figure out not just where we came from, but what relationships we are supposed to have with God, with earth, with plants, with animals, and with each other. While it is at it, it is trying to figure out the pull of sexuality and the power of new love, the form of families, the role of gender, and what makes humans unique. That’s a lot to try to answer for one story. It is a lot more than the Big Bang Theory is able to offer too.

The Bible gives us multiple creation stories. I think that means we are to take seriously the sacredness of creation, but not fuss over the facts presented in each one. But we do have these stories to help us make sense of the big questions of life. Some of the answers will work for us, some won’t. It is OK to take what brings life and leave the rest.

For me, today, I like the idea of being an earth creature with Divine breath, I appreciate the reminders of awe and beauty, and the ones that say that I was MADE for relationships and that’s why they matter so much to me. What will I do with creation stories? Fight with them and savor them. Thank God. Amen

1Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978) page 1.

2Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 78.

3Trible, 79.

4Trible, 80.

5Trible, 80.

6Trible, 80.

7Trible, 89.

8Trible, 90.

9Trible, 90.

10Trible, 97.

11Trible, 97.

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

February 26, 2023

Sermons

“A Nameless Wordless Woman” based on Judges 19

September 17, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today we conclude the Subversive Women of the Bible Sermon series with this, the absolutely worst story in the Bible. Unfortunately the story doesn’t really end where we leave it, and it does keep getting worse. Our heroine is certainly subversive, but unfortunately her subversion is not the final word; the final word is violence.

Phyllis Trible is a feminist Biblical Scholar whose career included teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York and Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC. In 1984 she published Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives in which she carefully explains and comments on four “texts of terror” in the Bible. This is, of course, one of them. She opens the chapter on this story with these words:

“The betrayal, rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment of an unnamed woman is a story we want to forget but are commanded to speak. It depicts the horrors of male power, brutality, and triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse, and annihilation. To hear this story is to inhabit a world of unrelenting terror that refuses to let us pass by on the other side.”¹

Unrelenting terror is a reasonable description of this story. I think that she oversimplifies the gendered aspects of power and abuse, but only from a modern perspective. From within the story her description is right on, from within life in the United States now it is both true and untrue. We want to be careful with that today, because this story is strikingly relevant to life. Trible ends her chapter on this story saying:

“Violence and vengeance are not just characteristics of a distant, pre-Christian past; they infect the community of the elect to this day. Woman as object is still captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered, and scattered. To take to heart this ancient story, then, is to confess its present reality. The story is alive and not all is well. Beyond confession we must take counsel to say, ‘Never again.’ Yet this counsel is itself ineffectual unless we direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the word not to others but to ourselves: Repent. Repent.”²

Let’s take a little bit of time to highlight the big questions in this story and clarify some of the confusing parts. To begin with, a “concubine” is a second class wife. Trible says, “Legally and socially, she is not the equivalent of a wife, but is virtually a slave, secured by a man for his own purposes.”³ Other famous concubines in the Bible include Hagar, and the maidservants of Rachel and Leah. Our heroine’s status as concubine leads to the subversive action that takes place, one that is so radical that no one even tries to figure it out.

The concubine leaves. She leaves her husband, but that wasn’t done. It couldn’t be done. At that time, and by later Torah regulations, only men had the right to initiate divorce. A wife couldn’t leave. This feels way MORE true for a concubine, a second class wife, one who lacked even the dignity and respect given to first class wives who had close to no power to begin with. Leaving husbands wasn’t a thing. And the story says she left, got to her father’s house, and stayed for FOUR MONTHS. This heroine left her husband.

I’m not really sure why her father sheltered her, doing put him into a power battle with her husband when her husband had the legal upper hand. It is possible that this woman lied to her father and told him that her husband had divorced her, or even that her husband HAD divorced her and changed his mind. The father seems to be trying to buy her time when her husband arrives. Her father seems to be trying to keep her sheltered. That’s notable.

I don’t know what it would take for a woman, a concubine, to leave her husband at that time. It seems likely that many concubines were raped and abused, particularly since most women got no choice in their marriages. It seems fair to assume she was being abused, yet most women accepted the social norms that kept them in place and didn’t leave to try to stop it. The biggest question is why this woman was so brave! She left. And it seems like it almost works, but eventually he decides he wants her back. This whole things feels like the cycle of abuse. Likely the motivation for this woman to leave was that the last incident of abuse was so terrible that the next one was going to be deadly. (Terrifying how powerful the norms were that only she is said to leave.)

Trible points out that in Hebrew the woman’s “master” (her word) is said to come after her to “speak to her heart, to bring her back.”⁴This, too, is part of a cycle of abuse. The text never says he actually does so, but the speaking kindly after abuse is part of the cycle. When the husband/master gets to his concubine’s father’s house, he seems open to flattery and being treated well. The woman’s father is able to keep them for several days, I suspect at great expense. If her father had been wealthy, she would not have been a concubine. Yet the food and wine flow freely, and the husband/master struggles to leave the comfortable living.

Finally he breaks free, but does so too late to complete the journey in one day. This seems like a good point to acknowledge that some parts of this story are mean to villify King Saul. This is yet another piece of “David is God’s choosen King” propaganda. The strongest theme in the book of Judges is that the people do evil things without a King, and they need a King. However, multiple parts of this story connect King Saul to the terror and evil of this story: he is said to be from the Tribe whose lands it happens on, his capital is in the city it happens in, a village named later is also relevant in his leadership. Some of this story is anti-Saul propaganda, but it isn’t at all clear which parts. I’m choosing to assume that the propaganda is ONLY in connecting Saul to the story, because I find the story uncomfortably plausible.

The man, his servant, his donkeys, and his concubine arrive in the Benjaminite village of Gibeah rather late and no one invited them in to their homes. This is already evil in the eyes of people for whom hospitality was the highest form of morality. Finally, another outsider, an older man, acknowledges them and the two men talk. Terrifying, as Trible points out, the husband/master “refers to his own concubine as the old man’s property, thereby offering her as bait”.⁵ Once they are in, the story starts to sound strikingly like the story of Sodom in Genesis 19. They eat, drink, and are merry until an angry male mob appears at the door and demands the opportunity to rape the newcomer. It continues with the resonance of Genesis 19. The host offers women instead. In Genesis it was two virgin daughters, here it is one virgin daughter and the concubine. The host negotiates, and it is terrifying. Trible writes:

“No restrictions whatsoever does this lord place upon the use of the two women. Instead he gives the wicked men a license to rape them. His final words of negative command emphasize again the point of it all. ‘But to this man do not do this vial thing.’ If done to a man, such an act is a vile thing; if done to women it is ‘the good’ in the eyes of men. Thus the old man mediates between males to give each side what it wants. No male is to be violated. All males, even wicked ones, are to be granted their wishes. Conflict among them can be solved with the sacrifice of females.”⁶

In Genesis, the messengers of God intervene and no one is harmed. In Johnathan Kirsh’s book The Harlot at the Side of the Road, he writes, “From what we recall about the intervention of the angels in Sodom, we do not really expect the young women in Gibeah to be cast into the arms of the mob – something, angelic or human, will spare them at the very last moment.”⁷ Nothing does.

Instead, the husband/master seizes the concubine and throws her out to the men who rape and torture her until sunrise. As light dawns she summons all of her remaining strength to find her way back to the home where her husband/master was, and fell on the threshold of the home. The story indicates he slept just fine, and when he woke up he decided to go on his way. He seems a bit annoyed to find her blocking his way on the doorstep, but he doesn’t let it slow him down. To this woman who he had pushed out the door, who fought her way back after an unspeakably terrible night, he says, “Get up, we are going.” There is no answer. The text seems intentionally vague about when she dies. Trible says, “Her silence, be it exhaustion or death, deters the master not at all.”⁸ Her death may be after she gets to the threshold. It may be on the journey. It may not be until he takes his knife to cut her into pieces. At the end of this harrowing story, she is dead. It seems to me that if she hadn’t left, this would have been her fate. In leaving she gained herself months of freedom from abuse and hope. Her husband/master was going to kill her. As it happened, he used her to protect himself, nonchalantly. That protection she offered him either killed her, or he did anyway in the end. Their reunion was only a source of violence and terror for her.

Afterward he sends out the pieces of her body to the 12 tribes and call them together to tell his story, but he tells it quite differently than Judges 19 does. When he tells it, he looks better. In both his telling and the responses of the tribes, it is clear that the objections are to: the lack of hospitality, the threat to the man’s well-being, and his loss of property with what was done to the concubine. The horror and the response in the text are not because of what SHE lived through. (Mine is.) In fact, the next two chapters continue the story with civil war, massacre, and at least 600 more women being raped. Still, the narrator remains unconcerned about the women.

The story says that when her body is sent out the Israelites are instructed to “consider, take counsel, and speak out.” Trible responds, “’Direct your heart to her, take counsel, and speak.’ From their ancient setting, these imperatives move into the present, challenging us to answer anew. … Truly, to speak for this woman is to interpret against the narrator, plot, other characters, and the biblical tradition because they have shown her neither compassion nor attention.”⁹

Another feminist author writes, “The ideologies expressed through these [stories] are both degrading and deadly for women.”¹⁰ This is the problem. If this story had happened once, it would be enough to be an atrocity. However, this story is common enough. According to research done by the Center for Disease Control, “Intimate partner contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/ or stalking was experienced by 37.3% of U.S. women during their lifetime…and 30.9% of U.S. Men.”¹¹ At its extreme, it is as deadly as this story.

This man used his partner’s body for his own protection. It seems almost certain there had been previous violence toward her, and the way he treats her during and after this episode is a further experience of abuse and violence. While he didn’t get financial gain from it, only protect, I think it is fair to say that this man sexually trafficked his concubine. He used the power he had over her and her body for his well-being.

Sexual trafficking hasn’t stopped since those ancient times. According to The Atlantic, sexual trafficking today is a business worth $150 billion worldwide, and most of those who are trafficked are minors.¹² Worse yet, the laws and the ways they’re implemented make those who are trafficked more vulnerable to arrest than those who traffick them.

This is a modern story set in a far away time. This text of terror to this one nameless wordless woman is a terrifyingly common and universal story. And, to the depth of my being, I believe that God is horrified. And when God is horrified, God’s people are being called to change horrible realities. While my heart is with this nameless heroine, much of my curiosity focuses on her husband. Like many people who are human trafficked, she used all the power she had to get free and the system pulled her back in. I want to know why her husband so deeply devalued her, and what was so broken in him!

Similarly, I want to know what would have stopped that mob in Gibeah from wanting to rape? In today’s terms, what would stop adult men (it is nearly always men, but not always always men) from paying money to rape children? I don’t entirely know, despite pontificating about this for most of a year. If we want a final word other than violence, these are the things I know: taking women’s points of view in stories helps us understand their experiences and moves us toward gender equality; cultures that have more respect for woman and greater gender equality have fewer instances of intimate partner violence and rape; talking about texts of terror and horrifying realities is imperative if we want to be part of changing those realities.

This sermon series has been LONG. I think many of us have been tired of it at points, and I don’t mind if you celebrate its end. This feels like an odd text to end with, but I’m still trying to respond to Pete Huston asking about the women whose stories aren’t told. Those women are all too often reflected in this nameless and wordless woman’s story. They are all a call to action for us, a reminder that while it may get annoying to talk about women, sexism, and misogyny for a WHOLE YEAR, taking up our part in addressing and working toward ending such injustices necessitates that we talk about and acknowledge them.

Over this year, it has been through taking the points of view of biblical characters that we have been trained and conditioned not to notice, that we have have been able to see and learn so much from stories we thought we knew! For me it been a transformational opportunity to hear the Bible anew, and to finally meet heroines who have been hiding in plain site all along. I hope transformation will stay, even as we leave the sermon series behind.

There is, of course, plenty of work still to be done in relation to the injustices created by sexism, misogyny and patriarchy, and it still very much matters. May God guide us all to do the work. Amen

1Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1984) 65.

2Trible, 87.

3Trible, 66.

4Trible, 67.

5Trible, 72.

6Trible, 74

7Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot By the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible (Ballantine Books: New York, 1997) 244.

8Trible, 79.

9Trible, 86.

10Kirsch quoting Tapp, 253.

11Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010-2012 State Report tps://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS-StateReportBook.pdf

12Pricilla Alvarez, “When Sex Trafficking Goes Unnoticed in America” in The Atlantic (Feb. 23, 2016) found at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/how-sex-trafficking-goes-unnoticed-in-america/470166/ on September 14, 2017. Statistic comes from International Labour Organization http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_243201/lang–en/index.htm

–

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

September 17. 2017

Sermons

“Making a Way Forward”based on Genesis 16:1-6

November 1, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

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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