Women Bullying Women — A Bible Story

I’ve blogged on it before — I’m really excited about the new Sarah Sisterhood “more-than-a-Bible-study” I’ll be leading at First Baptist Church Pensacola starting January 12. I’ve been writing the first chapter on the disastrous sisterhood of Sarah and Hagar and thought I’d share this part of the introduction with you to whet your appetite…

She was known as the wife of a strange man who had been blessed by God. Years ago, the story went, God told her husband, “I will make you a great nation.” And then later, he said, “You shall have a son.” They had left home and country as God commanded, always on the lookout for the promise, always expecting Sarah’s barrenness to be interrupted by a season of fruitfulness.

Sarah herself was really pretty weary of it all. The promise, the promise. “We just have to trust God,” Abraham told her (Where was that trust when he risked her life by telling Pharaoh she was his sister?). But that wasn’t what pained her most. It was just so obvious to everyone, except apparently God, that her body would not conceive a child. Not now, not ever.

The plan seemed logical enough. Lots of people did it. She trusted Hagar. Hagar had been with her for many of the years of their wandering. She knew Hagar. Why not give her maidservant to her husband to bring forth the promised child? The simple plan born out of Sarah’s impatience turns quickly into one of the more appalling stories of sisterhood the Bible recounts. Control, manipulation, pride, contempt, and abuse choke the womens’ relationship. If anything, this story may seem to offer justification for giving up on sisterhood altogether.

But we must look closely. Indeed, in the account, there are slender reasons for hope. And then, as we trace the lineage of the promise through to the Son born to save us from our self-sabotage, we learn the good news that deconstructs all of the bad news about women’s relationships. True, it’s hard to understand…but our hope comes in Christ the Son of God, who surrenders his power in order to become the savior of the proud, controlling, and manipulative. It is in gospel-cultivated humility that we find hope for true sisterhood. Read about Christ’s humility in Phil. 2:1-18, and reflect on this question… How could humbling yourself change a current problematic relationship?