Sarai/Sarah and the Perils of Living in a Female Body

Our exploration of interesting women in the Bible brings us to Sarai who becomes Sarah. She's the wife of Abram, who becomes Abraham. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to both of them as Sarah and Abraham.

If Abraham is the father of 3 major religions, then she is surely the mother. But I confess to having an excruciating dislike of Sarah. My memory of her revolves around the way she treated Hagar, whom we will talk about next week. Sarah can't have a child, so she wants Abraham to impregnate her slave, Hagar. My brain has recoiled at this approach since I was a child.

I had Sunday school teachers who taught this story as a morality tale, as a way that things can go terribly wrong when we try to micromanage the miracles that aren't coming in the way we anticipate. Sarah is unable to conceive, but Abraham has been promised that he'll have descendants. So Sarah comes up with a plan that ultimately results in a pregnancy--but also in mistreatment and expulsion.

I'm repulsed by the treatment of the enslaved woman Hagar, who has no say in the matter. I'm repulsed by Sarah's actions, by her inability to live with the consequences. I'm repulsed that Hagar must leave--and then come back!

I wasn't able to articulate these ideas in my childhood Sunday School, and perhaps that's for the best. As a much older woman now, I am able to see the story differently. As I look at the book of Genesis, I'm struck by how hazardous the world was for women. I'm struck by the fact that not once, but twice, did Abraham claim that Sarah was his sister, not his wife. In Egypt, that lie results in Sarah being taken as wife to a Pharaoh, while Abraham amasses great wealth. Later, they face a similar circumstance. Each time, they are berated by powerful men for not telling the truth.

We might see this story as a cautionary tale about the importance of telling the truth--or we might look at all these story lines and see how difficult life was for all of these women--and indeed, for all but the most powerful men. Sadly, in many parts of the world today, our bodies are not our own, no matter where we live on the gender spectrum.

As I look at the last part of the story, I'm struck by the age of Sarah and Abraham, by how long they had to wait for God's promise. I'm struck by the fact that the fulfillment of the promise leads to the banishing of Hagar, a woman in an even more precarious position. It's hard for me to read this text without thinking about slavery, both the kind in the 19th century and the kind we see today--more on that idea next week.

I wish that Sarah was an easier old woman to love--she's no Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist and cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus. But maybe the fact that I can't like her is important too--God can use many types of humans in the creation of a better world.

I have said more than once that if you were choosing a team, you wouldn't choose many of the people that God chooses--and here we see that's true for some of the women as well as many of the men that God chooses. But that's good news for imperfect people like you and me. We may send people into exile and make any number of other catastrophic choices--and still, God can utilize us for the fulfillment of the promise.