The Daughters of Abraham

We’re walking through the whole Bible this year with our 7th graders. That means we are attempting to address the entire Hebrew Scripture by Christmas– no small task. This week we are studying the story of Abraham and Sarah:

They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.”  Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.  So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son….The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Genesis 18:9-14, 17-19

It’s a great story, one of hospitality, kept promises and Sarah’s laughter. We are thinking about how God uses specific, particular, ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. Abraham and Sarah are, in some ways, unexpected candidates to have a child that will grow into a mighty nation. It is so unexpected, in fact, that the only appropriate response is laughter. Amused, joyful, bewildered, unbelieving, frightened, excited laughter. For me, at the heart of Sarah’s laughter is her being chosen. Being called out. Being blessed. Being seen and named and highlighted by God in a way that she can’t see herself- as mother, as fertile. Particular. Singular. Specific. Having a new hope, a new role, a new life that is almost too good to be true.

As an expecting mother, it is easy for me to relate to Sarah’s laughter. I am not very old, and my child will not carry on its shoulders the promise and charge of God to multiply the nations, yet still the good news brought me to laughter. The moment I knew I was pregnant, I felt it as an important part of my story. I expect that to multiply exponentially once I meet my child. It is easy, I think, for women who are in love with motherhood to think that it is our best calling from God. Yet not every woman chooses to have children. Not every woman can have children. So I have to believe there is more to being a woman than being a mother.

In her Work of the People video, Sarah Bessey addresses this by talking about Luke 11: 27-28:

While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”

Yes, motherhood is a blessed calling, but so is being a person who hears the word and acts on it. Bessey, in highlighting minor female characters in the Bible, also mentions Luke 13:15-17, when Jesus chooses to heal a crippled woman on the Sabbath:

But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him? “And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?”As He said this, all His opponents were being humiliated; and the entire crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by Him.

This is the first time the term “daughters of Abraham” is used. It has been just the sons until this moment. Jesus, by calling the woman a daughter of Abraham, is saying that she, too, matters. She is counted. She has a place. She belongs. She is part of the lineage. “That,” Bessey says, “makes me straighten my spine, even more than the healing does.”

This fall, we’ll look at the particularity and ordinariness of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, and how God used them to do extraordinary things. We’ll look at the promises that God made to Noah, Abraham, David and Jeremiah. Sarah is the last woman we will focus on specifically in our study of the Hebrew Scriptures. And even as I relate to Sarah in her laughter, it will be important for me to help both the young male and female students that women have meaning beyond their womb. Sarah mattered before she gave birth. She was blessed when she believed she was barren. It will be important for me, in studying the sons of Abraham, that we know that women receive God’s blessing as well. We are loved. We are called. We are blessed. We are daughters of Abraham.