Ready for a big question? Try this one on for size.
What defines you?
I told you it was a big one.
Think about it for a minute. What kinds of things would you say that would let someone know just who you really are. Telling someone your name doesn’t really do much. It has to be something else. Here is what my class came up with:
Race
Beliefs
Friends
Family
Job
Location
Character
That’s not a bad list, and it does cover many of the bases, so to speak. Now, ask yourself a similar question. Pick someone “famous” from the bible and go through the same exercise. Take Abram/Abraham for instance. What would you say would be the defining characteristics of him? We thought about it for a minute and came up with one big answer: his connection to God.
We are introduced to Abram in that way, aren’t we? Not many verses go by before God tells him to pick up everything and move. And the rest of the stories about him center around his divine connection.
What about his wife, Sarai/Sarah? How would you define her? Here is the first thing said about her in the bible:
Genesis 12:27-30
27 Now these are the descendants of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran was the father of Lot. 28 Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
What do we learn about Sarai here? She is the wife of Abram, and she was barren. Why is this important? Why would the bible point this out to us as a defining characteristic? How would people feel nowadays if they were defined as either able to have children or not able to have them?
There are six stories of barren women in the Old Testament. Sarai is the first, but here is a list of the rest:
Rebekah
Rachel
Hannah
Samson’s mother
The Shunammite acolyte of Elisha
In a way this is a common theme. What do you think these women would think of Mother’s Day? Here is an excerpt from a blog titled “Infertility and the Bible: Recovering Mother’s Day from Hallmak”
This Mother’s Day will be my first since my family buried my mother. Yet the pangs that come with the day’s approach have an odd familiarity. During the decade when my husband and I experienced infertility, multiple pregnancy losses, and three failed adoptions, I found it difficult enough to hear all the mom-centered greetings on M-Day. But then the mothers were asked to stand, and some of us remained conspicuously seated. Following most such services, each mother would receive a carnation on her way out the door. But first she had to answer “yes” to the dreaded question: “Are you a mother?” On Mother’s Day, going to a house of worship sometimes felt more like going to a house of mourning.
In biblical times (and throughout most of human history), if a couple could not conceive it was thought of as the fault of the woman. Also it may have been common to link infertility with sin. If a woman was barren then it might have been a divine punishment. This is really ironic with the story of Sarah, because her husband was promised a multitude of descendants. A whole nation was to come from Abraham. Can you imagine how that must have made Sarah feel? Maybe she wasn’t the one that was going to help bring this about. It is no wonder that she chose to bring Hagar into the picture:
Genesis 16:1-5
16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”
How do you think Hagar defined herself before she was with child? How do you think this changed when she found out she was pregnant? Now all of a sudden everything is changed. She is the favored one. She begins to disdain Sarah. Status was linked to your ability to literally produce.
When Mother’s Day rolls around we can get pulled into an easy Sunday School lesson of “emulate these matriarchs of the bible.” The easy lesson is to look at a prominent female mother from the bible and say to ourselves “shouldn’t we be like her?”
But there is a problem with this line of thinking, and I can show that to you by asking just one question.
Was Sarah a good person?
My immediate response is to say of course she was. But let’s look at the evidence. She certainly wasn’t good to Hagar. And she laughed at the idea that she would bear a son in her old age. Then she lied about laughing. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of great qualities to emulate there.
Of course we have to remember that the bible is not a novel, nor is it a history book. Sarah’s whole life is not featured in the text. Like most of the people in scripture we only get a glimpse into their lives. We see dots on their whole timeline. It wouldn’t be right to infer too much with the little events we do know.
Is there a better lesson here? I think there is. First we see with this story (and with the stories of the other women mentioned earlier) that God is the one who holds the keys to life. If God says there will be life, then there will indeed be life. And another thing that may be even more important is this: God works with flawed people. Abraham and Sarah had their moments, but they also had their faults. And yet these failings did not stop the Great Covenant from being realized. A great nation was created, sometimes despite the efforts to the contrary by the humans involved.
So if God works so well with flawed people, what can God do for us? Is anything impossible? The scripture comes right out and tells us that “nothing is too hard for the Lord.” Each story of the biblical matriarchs tells us that.
God Bless