Hagar: An Apology

        Last Sunday I preached on Hagar as part of my summer sermon series on minor characters in the Bible. After the worship service a member of the congregation confronted me about the content of that sermon. She felt that I had been insensitive in some of my comments, and she was right. I misrepresented the situation Hagar and Sarah found themselves in, and I made light of what must have been for them a very serious situation. Please accept this as my apology and my commitment to be more sensitive in the future.

        In my sermon I presented Sarah as a sort of domineering wife and Hagar as a more-or-less willing participant in the plan to get Abraham a child. Neither of these circumstances is plausible historically. Sarah was constrained by the patriarchal system, and, although in the text of Genesis 16 she is presented as coming up with the scheme herself, the irony is that the success of her plan may have made her position in Abraham’s household precarious. As a non-childbearing wife, she was at the mercy of her husband, who might have chosen to dismiss her in favor of the slave girl who had conceived. I failed to hear the panic in Sarah’s voice and the frantic nature of her desire to get rid of Hagar and her son. As long as they were around, her status and that of her son Isaac would not be entirely secure, so the other woman had to go. It’s a harsh example of the way patriarchy pits natural allies such as these two women against each other as adversaries. They should have been on the same side, but the system led Sarah to see Hagar as the enemy.

        Hagar is even more of a victim than Sarah. She is a slave and has no say in what is to happen to her. If you have watched any of the Democratic National Convention this week you have heard a lot of speakers bemoan the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the way it has taken away millions of women’s autonomy over their own bodies. For Hagar and other enslaved women throughout history, that autonomy never existed. The person who confronted me last Sunday pointed out in no uncertain terms that what Hagar experiences in this story is rape. Dress it up any way you like, but when an enslaved person is made to have sexual relations with the person who “owns” her, those relations by definition constitute rape. Hagar had no say in the matter. In my sermon I made light of the situation, and I repent of that gross mischaracterization.

        The points I made about the plight of refugees and our responsibility as the church to be Christ’s hands and feet to all the forgotten ones of our world still stand. But my failure to take seriously the plight of these ancient women (that has distinct parallels in our modern world) is inexcusable. I was preaching about the God Who Sees, and I myself was blind to the pain and violence lurking in this story. For that I apologize, and I thank the person who confronted me for opening my eyes to the ways I contributed to the hurt. It was hard to hear, but I value that kind of feedback. I hope and trust it will make me a better preacher, a more faithful pastor, and a more compassionate human being.

Grace and peace,

bob