Frustration & Faith: The Story of Sarah
In the course of his argument in the Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul appeals to the biblical account of barren Sarah to illustrate the Christian covenant, especially the component of faith, man’s faith in God’s fidelity. Paul writes, “It is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic” (4:22–24).
The Greek word translated by the NKJV as “symbolic” is allegoroumena, which literally means “things said in allegory.” This is our first instance of the word “allegory” in Christian thought, where it properly means the New Testament meaning of an Old Testament text. Indeed, this is why Paul brings up the subject of barren Sarah: her historical and symbolic relevance to the Christian covenant.
The apostle’s insertion of this image into his exposition of the Christian covenant prompts the Christian mind to reflect further on what the story of ancient Sarah means to the life of faith. I propose to structure this reflection under two headings: frustration and faith.
First, all of us remember Sarah’s frustration; she wanted a son. She knew, moreover, that God had promised her husband that they would have a son. As the years went by, nonetheless, they remained childless, and in due course a profound sense of frustration filled the soul of Sarah. She was willing to do just about anything to get that son.
We know the story of her attempt to use ancient Middle Eastern adoption laws to have her handmaid, Hagar, act as her surrogate. With the intent to adopt Hagar’s offspring as her own, she urged Abraham to father a child with that servant. We also recall, alas, that her plan did not work out very well.
This should not have been surprising. God alone gives life, and human life in particular is not just a matter of biology. Sarah stands in history as an excellent example of those who try to take the place of God with respect to their offspring. In the case of Hagar and her child, this was very much a “planned” pregnancy.
Forgetting that children are a gift and a blessing from God, Sarah contrived to impose her own will on the order of nature in order to achieve what she wanted.
Planning parenthood is a very presumptuous way to start a family, because it treats children as the products of a human strategy instead of precious gifts from the creating hand of God.
Frustrated Sarah appears as an early example of all attempts to produce human life by counterfeit contrivances, to overcome barrenness through artificial insemination, IVF, surrogate motherhood, and all other manufactured and mechanical attempts to produce a baby, to make the child a merely human product, something other than a pure gift from God.
As we know, in Sarah’s case the entire enterprise backfired, and after the birth of Ishmael her life became more frustrated than ever. Eventually Hagar and her baby were driven out into the desert, where Ishmael became the father of the Arabs. That is to say, things did not turn out as the mother of the Chosen People had in mind.
The God that brings good out of evil, however, still had his own plans, and this consideration brings us to our second point, the faith of Sarah.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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