Hagar, Part I: Using and Being Used

From a Women's Chapel at AACS, during school year 2013-2014. The format was a narrative followed by testimonies from faculty women on their experiences with similar experiences: 

Once upon a time there was a woman, who was a slave. She was in the weakest social position possible- a foreigner and a slave and an unmarried woman. She belonged to a man and a woman who talked to God himself, and who should have provided for her a loving and faithful community. Instead, they used her and abused her as an object for their own purposes, and brought suffering on the whole world. Today, I’d like to tell you her story in a new way, and see how our own stories connect with it.

You know them, of course, by the names of Abram and Sarai, and you know this Egyptian slave woman as Hagar. You remember that God had promised Abram and Sarai a son- in fact, he had promised to DIE if he didn’t give them a son, but Sarai doubted God. And so, because she did not trust that God was good, that he would keep his promises, she took control of the situation and used Hagar to get what she wanted. Listen to the disaster that follows: Sarai tells her own husband, Abram, to have sex with Hagar. Her husband agrees that it is fine to use Hagar sexually in order to please his wife and to get a son. He could have insisted that God would keep his promises, but instead, he has sex with Hagar and gets her pregnant. There is no indication that Hagar was asked, or that she had any choice in the matter. Of course, this caused problems. Hagar, now pregnant, finally had a form of social power, so she looked down on Sarai. In anger, Sarai complained to Abram about how she was being treated, and Abram again ignored Sarai’s unrighteousness and Hagar’s humanity, and told Sarai to do whatever she wanted to Hagar. Keep in mind, Abram isn’t just a husband, he’s the patriarch of their group. He’s the king, which means that Hagar has no judge, no legal recourse. No one would help her if Abram and Sarai were against her. She was completely alone.

This is a case of serious brokenness, and we find it cultivated by the two people who are more specifically called by God than any other human beings on the face of the earth at the time. We see this brokenness in how Abram treats both Sarai and Hagar, in how Sarai treats both Abram and Hagar, and in how Hagar treats Sarai. They use and dehumanize each other in order to get what they want or to feel a sense of power over another person. Men use women. Women also use women. We all know the pain of using others or being used by them. This is what it looked like for Abram, for Sarai, and certainly for Hagar. What has it looked like for you?