Today's Epistle reading (Galatians 4:22-27) is challenging, especially for a contemporary audience. Unfortunately, Hagar can be unjustly maligned in modern Christian preaching. While it is true that she used her pregnancy as an opportunity to belittle her mistress Sarai and achieve a higher status with Abram (see Genesis 16:4), we must not neglect the whole context of Genesis 16 in understanding Hagar's plight.
Hagar was operating within the constraints of a pre-Christian, patriarchal culture that did not fully understand nor respect the integrity of marriage and human sexuality. Thus, Hagar ended up suffering many of the consequences of Abram's and Sarai's doubt that God would give the couple a son. It must be emphasized that Abram and Sarai sinned by disbelieving God's promise and turning to sex slavery to produce an heir. This was a terrible thing to do. God saw Hagar's distress and Christ himself, the "Angel of the Lord," appeared to console her and bless her descendants (Genesis 16:7-14).
Hagar's dishonor would be avenged by her descendants, and ultimately, the division between her son Ishmael and Abram's second son Isaac would be healed in the Church by the Gospel. Thankfully, in Christ, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female" (Galatians 3:28). When we enter into the New Covenant, our old enmities, resentments, and feelings of superiority must die. Before, we were victims like Hagar, but now we must leave that painful way of life behind. And this is precisely St. Paul's point in today's Epistle reading, so we must not think that the Apostle is insulting Hagar.
Instead, St. Paul is saying that believers in Christ no longer need to live like Hagar, enslaved by worldly powers and concerns and schemes to force God's hand in selfish ways. In St. Paul's day, the Jewish people were not just in legal bondage to the Romans, but they were also under spiritual bondage. Jerusalem had become both a victim and a victimizer. The Jewish people were obsessed with reacquiring their lost political and military power at any cost. They could only see the world in terms of oppressors and the oppressed and had lost sight of people's common humanity. They wanted to see God's kingdom fulfilled on their own earthly terms and mistook their violent will for his.
How similar are we to ancient Jerusalem! Do we trust in God's promises and believe that he can even bring children forth from a barren womb? Or do we get in God's way and try to fulfill his promises for him, in earthly ways, by our own strength to the injury of other people? How often we despair and think God has forgotten us! May God free us from our arrogance and doubt! We cannot help but sin and hurt each other if we do not embrace the radical freedom and peace of faith in Christ. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1).