#Subversive Women of the Bible Sermon Series

[dmwelch77]

Hooray for the Matriarchy! Forgotten Voices

Hooray for the Matriarchy!

Week one: Forgotten voices

Matthew 1: 1-6, 12-16

You always know it’s going to be a fun Sunday morning when the sermon starts with a reading of a genealogy. More on that a little bit later.

A couple of years ago I did some work at the Museum of the Bible, in Washington DC. [Yes really, there’s an entire – and pretty large – museum dedicated to the Bible. If you’re ever lucky enough to be in DC, it’s worth a visit for reasons shall we say both good and bad.]

There is a whole floor in the museum describing the ‘global impact’ of the Bible. The exhibit begins with a series of displays about the Bible in American history. It’s a complicated picture. In one cabinet is a volume of ‘The Woman’s Bible’ published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1895. Stanton was an influential advocate for women’s suffrage and blamed the teachings of the church for much of the problem of denying women their rights. Her Bible included commentary interpreting what she saw as the Bible’s real message about women.

In another cabinet is one of the so-called ‘Slave Bibles’ of the early 1800s – part of a large display outlining how the Bible was used both in justifying slavery, and in fighting for its abolition. ‘Slave Bibles’ radically edited the Bible text – missing out stories and sometimes whole books – to downplay themes of freedom and liberation and emphasise themes of obedience and submission. Verses like this one from Titus “teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything” definitely made the cut, used to perpetuate the idea that slavery and ownership was the natural – even God-ordained – order of the world.

In a roundabout way, that’s why we’re beginning a new series this week: Hooray for the Matriarchy! How we read the Bible matters, and for the next four weeks we are going to be exploring the stories of some women from the Bible.

We can’t possibly do that justice in just four weeks – neither incidentally should it be the only time in the year when we talk about women’s stories. In the next three weeks, we’re going to hear the stories of Deborah, Miriam, and Hagar. This week, we’re beginning with the title ‘forgotten voices’ – women whose stories are minimised and marginalised; women who (along with men) are often unnamed in the Bible, yet whose inclusion in the text – I think - tells us something about our own calling in the world. How have women’s voices been forgotten – and why does it matter?

Pop quiz: does anyone know how many women are named in the Hebrew Bible – the Old Testament? I wonder if we started shouting out names, how many we could muster. [Maybe we shouldn’t – we’ll be here all morning]

There are 111 women named – and very many more unnamed. Some we know – Ruth maybe, or Esther – both have books of the Bible named after them which helps. Many we may have never noticed or heard. But the women’s stories are there.

All about the patriarchy

We started with that reading from Matthew 1, listing the ancestors of Jesus – beginning with the patriarchs. Time and again in the Bible we’re told that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Right from Sunday school, we teach stories about the male heroes of faith [or so-called heroes – many of them are pretty violent, interesting that these are the stories we teach children!]. Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, Samson, Gideon – the list goes on. But listen to that reading from Matthew 1 carefully and you’ll notice that – in an absolute break with how genealogies of the time were put together – four women are named. Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Mary. Their inclusion is intriguing – but it’s not an utter surprise. The Bible is a remarkable history. Most histories are written by those who conquered, those who won, these are the ones who control the narrative. Yet the Bible – the Hebrew Bible – tells the story of the Jewish people who are constantly conquered, occupied, and exiled. In that context the Bible is often subversive, often disruptive. It is written in a time and culture completely formed by patriarchy (a system where men hold power and women are largely excluded from power) – so the Bible is this weird mix. It is rich with stories of women who are oppressed, but who sometimes have agency. Women who are silenced, but who sometimes make their voices heard. Many of the women in the Hebrew Bible whose stories we know are foreigners, outsiders in Israel. Their stories aren’t the centre of the text, they appear and disappear. We get a little bit about them, then we never know what happens to them after that. Their feelings and actions are unexplored, their story arcs don’t get completed. In a text that is often about power and nation-building, the men’s stories are the point. But the women’s stories are there.

Because God is the God of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Without these matriarchs we have no more patriarchs.

Without Shiphra and Puah – the Israelite midwives who subvert Pharoah’s orders [to kill every Hebrew baby boy, and instead tell him that Hebrew women just give birth really fast before they can get there – they’ve already pushed them out and hidden them somewhere!]

Without Jochabed who hides her baby in the reeds

Without Miriam who watches over her baby brother and saves his life

Without the Egyptian Princess who raises him

We have no Moses.

And while Moses parts the waters of the red sea – Miriam leads the people of Israel across with dancing.

When Israel sends spies into Canaan, looking for their promised land – it’s Rahab who saves them. Deborah leads the people of Israel in peacetime, as well as in war – a war that’s won when Jael (another woman) puts a tent peg through Sisera’s skull. Tamar, Dinah, the daughters of Zelophehad, Hannah, Esther, Abigail – we don’t have time for their stories, but even to say their names is important, because we don’t. Time and again the fate of the people of Israel pivots on the actions of women. The women’s stories are there.

If we don’t think the Bible celebrates women – as leaders, prophets, a source of wisdom and courage, as leaders of the resistance, subverters, champions of justice – then we’re not reading the Bible very well. Patriarchy is not just a problem in the writing of the text – it’s a problem in our reading of it as well. We continue to emphasise the stories of men, missing out the essential stories of women.

Why is this important? Well – aside from the fact that 50% of the population can’t find themselves in this story if women’s voices are forgotten – when we read the Bible through our own bias, we compound the problem. We weaponise the Bible. We fail to challenge interpretations that justify and lead to injustice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton wasn’t wrong when she argued that the teaching of the church over the centuries – based on this Biblical text which is steeped in patriarchy – has played a huge role in denying women their rights. From Eve to Mary, women have been cast as either sinners (whores) or saints (virgins). It begins with Augustine in the fourth century – but it carries on and it gathers pace. Here are some of my favourite quotes for you [I actually have a document on my computer called ‘quotes about women’, so I picked out a couple of my favourites]:

(This is from the fifteenth-century manual of the Dominican Inquisitors against witches): “When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man. Woman conspired constantly against spiritual good. Her very name, fe-mina means ‘absence of faith’. She is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils. It is for this reason that women are especially prone to the crime of witchcraft, from which men have been preserved by the maleness of Christ.”

One more? Here’s Martin Luther the great reformer, on the subject of marriage: “Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.”

Those are rather extreme examples – but if you go into a Christian bookshop today, or step inside some churches, and you won’t have to look hard to find ideas that are rooted in patriarchy, and that still deny the place, the voice, and the role of women – in church and in society. And ideas like the purity culture that have heaped shame on women for their sexuality and their identity.  

This (weaponising Scripture) is all a problem not just for how we read the Bible in relation to women – but to everyone whose voice is minimalised or marginalised. To every group of people who find themselves pushed to the outside or ignored. I think we all know ways in which the Bible has been used against people because of their race, their gender, their sexuality, or their social status.

The Bible is problematic. Referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, Professor Wil Gafney – a brilliant womanist theologian [if you don’t know her work it’s worth reading – she’s written a brilliant book called Womanist Midrash] – says this about the Bible:

“The reprehensible gender and sexual mores of the Stone and Iron Ages are still in effect for some of the women, men, boys, and girls living in our Digital Age. Our sacred texts do not proclaim or even envision a world without slavery and the subordination of women, but they lay a foundation for us to transcend them and their limitations: ‘Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.’ ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you.’ ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to another.’ ‘In the Messiah there is no longer slave or free, male or female.’”

In celebration of women

The women’s stories are there in the Bible – we need to make sure we tell them well – that means we have to untangle them from their limitations, and from those that we’ve placed on them.

Some of you may know John Bell – if you are a Greenbelt regular. He’s a teacher from the Iona Community, and just a brilliant storyteller around the Bible. He tells a story about leading a retreat with a group of church leaders, where he sets them off into groups. Half of the groups – he asks to write down the names of the twelve male disciples, and also to write down three things that they know about each of them.

To the other half of the group, he says think about all the women who are followers of Jesus in the gospels, and write down what you know about them.

So off they go, when they come back again the men’s groups start and put their sheets on the wall. Most groups have named most of the twelve of the disciples – a few are a bit tricky to remember. What about when it comes to what we know about them? Peter – we know quite a lot about Peter, people could find three things to say about him. Matthew? He’s a tax collector … he collected taxes … James the Less? Lesser than … another James? Andrew? Andrew brought a small boy with loaves and fishes, and some Greeks, and his brother to Jesus.

What about the groups that thought about the women? John Bell says that when they came back with their pieces of paper, there was a whole wall full of information. The women at the well – we don’t know her name, but she gets a whole chapter in John’s Gospel, which she shares with Jesus. No other character in the gospel gets a whole chapter of their own. She’s the first evangelist. She brings a whole village to follow Jesus. [John Bell jokes that Andrew brings a small boy, some greeks, and his brother – for which he becomes the patron saint of Scotland. This woman brings a whole village and we don’t know her name.]

Not all are named

“We know more about the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, than we do about five of the disciples after whom cathedrals are named. There has been an imbalance.”

There are 22 women in the gospels whose interactions with Jesus are recorded. We don’t know many of their names – but we know their faith and we do know how Jesus responds to them. The woman who was bleeding, and who touched Jesus. The Syro-Phoenician woman who calls Jesus out on his use of racist language. The woman caught in adultery who walks away, uncondemned. The woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears. The woman who gives away her last coin in the temple offering. The woman who pours expensive oil on Jesus’ head – which Judas thinks is a waste and Jesus chastises him. The women who wait at the cross, while Jesus’ male disciples flee. The women who watch his burial, who visit the tomb, who are the first witnesses of the resurrection.

They are not named – but they are bearers of the most important news in human history.

I want to say clearly: for those of us who have felt excluded or marginalised or unheard by a version of Christianity that has lifted up the powerful, and silenced those on the edges, the place of these women in the text reminds us that we are all equally made in the image of God. We are all included. We are all in. Against the odds, (yes) from the margins, unnamed, imperfect, nonetheless … the women’s stories are there.

Says John Bell:

“Jesus eats with women, is offered hospitality with women, argues with women, and takes their experience seriously. He engages with, eats with, enjoys the company of, and allows himself to be touched by those who are equally made in the image of God.”

Texts of terror

Women’ stories are there in the Bible – and we need to tell them well. But we also need to tell them honestly. And if we’re going to be honest about the story of women in the Bible, then we need to talk about what Rachel Held Evans called the ‘dark stories’ – or as Phyllis Trible calls them, the texts of terror.

I believe the Bible absolutely celebrates women, and we see that most in Jesus’ life and interactions. But the Bible also contains some horrific stories – women suffer beyond all others, and often God is silent about their suffering. Throughout the text, women are the victims of terror and violence and injustice. Even in metaphor – when Israel is in trouble, she is depicted as a woman. A daughter, destitute on the streets. A mother weeping. A harlot cast out. It’s impossible to read the Bible without encountering the voices of women who suffer.    

And as a woman, approaching those stories is hard.

Rachel Held Evans says that as she read these stories as a young woman: “I kept anticipating some sort of postscript or epilogue chastising the major players for their sins, a sort of Arrested Development–style “lesson” to wrap it all up—“And that’s why you should always challenge the patriarchy!” But no such epilogue exists. While women are assaulted, killed, and divided as plunder, God stands by, mute as clay.”

She goes on:

“Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah, and Ruth.”  

The story of the unnamed concubine in Judges 19 strikes me as one of the most terrible stories the Bible offers us. It comes at the end of the days of judges ‘when Israel had no king (and) the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes’. These are dangerous days, violence is everywhere, and those in charge abuse their power. In a gruesome string of events, when the Levite and ‘his concubine’ (or as Wil Gafney translates it, womb-slave [ask me later for Gafney’s translation of Bilhah’s story]) are travelling, they end up in the house of an old man, in a town in the hill country of Benjamin. [In a parallel to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah] a group of men surround the house, demanding that the Levite come outside. Instead, the two men offer up the women to the mob – both the daughter of the old man, and the Levite’s concubine. We don’t know what happens to the daughter, she’s not mentioned again, but the Levite pushes his concubine out, and the woman is sexually assaulted by a group of men and left for dead.

In the morning the Levite gets up to go on his way, seemingly undisturbed about what’s happened to his concubine, opens the door, and finds her on the ground with her hands on the threshold. So he takes her home – it’s not clear whether she’s alive or not – he cuts her body into twelve pieces, and sends one to each tribe of Israel. The story is an indictment (told at the end of the story arc of Judges) of what king-less and law-less Israel has become. Violence begets violence, begets violence, and war ensues between the tribes. [All the men of Benjamin except 600 are killed. All the women are killed, all the children are killed. 400 women are snatched to be wives for the remaining men … etc]

It is a terrible, terrible story. There is no justice for the woman. She is abandoned and used in every way. She is not even named – only the story of the violence done to her lives on. Phyllis Trible says that of all the characters in Scripture she is the least. The least. But her story is there. This nameless woman demands our attention. She doesn’t speak in the text, only her father and her husband speak. And yet she is not silenced. Her suffering speaks for her, calls out for our outrage.

Lest we need reminding, misogyny, violence, and abuse of power are not confined to the distant past. Violence still disproportionately affects women and girls around the globe. Worldwide, one in three women has experienced physical or sexual violence because she is a woman. Women are more at risk of domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, forced marriage, sex trafficking, and genital mutilation.

Although people of all genders experience violence and abuse online, the abuse experienced by women is specifically sexist or misogynistic in nature. Online threats of violence against women are often sexualised or target a specific aspect of a woman’s identity (involving racism or transphobia for example). 21% of women in the UK have experienced online abuse or harassment.

Time and again, in the Bible, the suffering of women points to the need and the fight for justice. To the failure of Israel to live up to its calling to care for the poor, the orphaned, the widow, the stranger. And when you read the story of the Levite’s concubine, or the story of Tamar, or the story of Rizpah … [Rizpah’s story we probably don’t know. She was Saul’s concubine. She sits in the desert with the corpses of her sons for six months after David has had them killed, fending off wild animals and birds, demanding justice for their deaths and burial for their bodies, and she wins – David has them buried along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan …] When we read these stories it’s impossible to not to think about contemporary stories [the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina parallel Rizpah’s story].

I think the Bible teaches us that these terrible stories … [do you know, I’m not ‘glad’ that they’re there – I don’t think ‘oh it’s good that women’s stories are included in the Bible even the violent ones’ … we wish they weren’t there because they’re awful stories.] But they are there and what they point us to is the need and the fight for justice for women and girls and men and boys around the world, and our part in that.

In her book, Texts of terror, Phyllis Trible concludes:

“The story is alive, and all is not well. Beyond confession we must say ‘never again’ … speaking the word not to others but to ourselves: Repent. Repent.”

Here – I think – is the challenge and the invitation to us, as we read the stories of women in the Bible. Yes – to be inspired by their leadership, their courage, their flaws, and their faith. Yes – to be encouraged that their stories are told, even against the odds, from the margins, subverting power, leading the resistance. But most of all to be reminded of our own calling as the people of God always to bring good news that is freedom for the poor, and justice for the oppressed.

Let’s pray

May we – each one of us – find ourselves in this story of faith.

May we know our value, our worth, and our identity – formed, each one of us, in the image of God.

May we learn to listen for the stories from the margins and amplify their voice.

May we be compelled to act for justice, to resolve oppression and exploitation wherever we find it.

May these stories not trouble us in vain – may we use them for some good.

[firstumcschenectady]

“On Not Being Silent in Church” based on 1 Corinthians 14:26-36

This passage starts out so well. It starts out reminding me of the good things about Paul, including that Paul would have made a good Wesleyan since he really likes order. His suggestions are sensible, and aimed at creating a positive experience for everyone present. He suggests that worship should be communal, that all who show up should have something to offer. For a small house church, that's a great model! Even for a larger community, it serves to remind all of us that being the Body of Christ is an active thing, that each of us have things to offer and the Body is at its best when we receive gifts from many people and use them together!

Paul reminds the church in Corinth that the purpose of their shared time of worship is to build each other up. The book of First Corinthians has a whole lot of suggestions like that, and most scholars think that's because the church in Corinth was spending a lot of time fighting with each other.

Paul seeks to limit the gift of tongues, which he does a lot in his letters. Paul is said to have the gift of tongues, but in the early church there were those who believed speaking in tongues was the best gift of the Spirit and the most faithful people all had it. Paul spends a lot of time fighting that, including in this passage. Here he limits the number of people who should do so at any one gathering AND he says that unless a partner in ministry is present who can interpret tongues, they shouldn't be spoken out loud. That is a very inclusive perspective, it means that no one present would end up just listening without getting anything out of it.

Paul gives instructions to those who speak prophecy too, also very practical stuff. He tells the church to carefully weigh what is said, not to take it as truth without discussion. Furthermore, he suggests that if two people are getting the same message, only one of them has to say it. That suggestion feels very much like a response to a direct complaint, and a reasonable response at that. He returns to the reminder that the work is to build each other up, and encourage each other. He says on theme in the end of the first paragraph, still responding to a direct issue. I imagine he was told, “They say that they can't prophesy one by one because the Spirit is moving in them!” As if in direct response, Paul says, “the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.”

Beautiful. Uplifting. Profound. Reasonable. Paul is building up the church, he is guiding the people, he is dealing with the reality of human struggles, he is doing it all.

And then.

And then I want to duct tape his mouth shut. The rather interesting passage offering insight about the early church and the sensible solutions of Paul takes a turn for the worse, or more precisely it falls off a cliff. We're going to see if we can find a safety net for it in a moment, but first I feel the need to convince you to take it seriously. Those of you in the room who join me in wanting to duct tape Paul's mouth shut may also want to just ignore this passage as irrelevant, or even use it as proof that the Bible is irrelevant. You may not want to talk about it, and you may not think it is worth your time to bother with it.

The issue is that this passage has been used to silence women since the time it was written (which itself is unclear) and is STILL used today. So we need to face the passage and its role in our broken body of Christ, like it or not. The numbers aren't entirely clear, but in the United States about 11% of religious communities over all, and 10% of Christian faith communities have female clergy leading them. If you want to feel good about your denomination, you can here. The highest number of female clergy in any denomination in the USA is in the UMC :) However, that's still about 1/3 of UMC clergy. The numbers of clergy women are low in part because of the many denomination that don't allow clergy women including the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Traditions, most of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Missouri Synod, the Church of Latter-Day Saints and a whole lot of non-denominational churches.1 They quote this passage as justification.

Furthermore, you don't want to know how many times I've gotten this text quoted at me, and been asked to justify my calling. Nor do I really want to relive all of it. This is a safe congregation where the love of God prevails and we all work together to minimize the impact of sexism in our community and our world. The very few overtly sexist comments I've received here have resulted in incredible support coming my way. (Thank you all!) However, as is true for other issues as well, this community of faith is like a well protected and vibrant tidal pool – and the rest of the Christian ocean seems very far away and unimportant. However, the rest of the Christian ocean doesn't actually go away when we ignore it.

People still quote this terrible text, and they still follow its instructions. These simple words are used to justify the institutional sexism of the churches, which are as a whole much more sexist than the culture at large.

So, while I believe that all of you already have ways to respond to this text, I want to make sure we all have a quiver-full of them. You never know when you might want one. Here are a whole lot of ways that a reasonable human could approach this text without assuming that their female pastor should be out of a job, without just ignoring it:

1.  If you read along in the NRSV you'd notice that this text is put in parenthesis. That's because the majority of Biblical scholars believe that it is not an original part of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Rather, they think a later scribe wrote this into the margins to reflect the common practice of his time and it got accidentally moved into the primary text over time. This belief is justified by the fact that in our most ancient manuscripts this paragraph is in two different spots. It is also supported by the fact that in the rest of the 6 authentic Pauline letters, there are ABSOLUTELY NO LIMITS put on the activities of women in churches. To the contrary, in chapter 11 of this letter, women are instructed about how to pray and prophesy in church. There are MANY more examples of Paul speaking to, or about, women leaders of churches and supporting their work, but I think the point is already made: This particular text is unlikely to have been written by Paul, and does not reflect his thinking about women. Instead it looks like the conservative reaction of a later generation of thinker who distrusted women.

2.  If, for some reason, you or someone you are in conversation with doesn't think that is convincing, then we have some ways to work with the text assuming it is authentic to Paul.

a.  If Paul said it, then it said it to one particular community in one place in one time. Since it doesn't fit with other things he said, it seems like he was offering a solution to a particular problem. As no other faith community is the first century Corinthian church, the solution doesn't apply to all of us. (As an amusing aside, the “women” told to be silent in church are ACTUALLY “married women” according to the word used. This would suggest that if I took this text literally and believed it to be God's will then I shouldn't have gotten married this spring.)

b.  If this text is assumed to be authentic to Paul, then perhaps it fits into the argument he is already making in this passage. He has given subgroups limits in order to benefit the whole. He told those speaking in tongues to limit their gift, so as not to take over. He told those prophesying not to repeat each other, so as to respect the time of the others gathered. Many commentators have suggested that the women in the Corinthian church were really excited about Jesus and the chance to learn all they could. Because intensive Torah study had been limited to men in Judaism, the women may have been overwhelming the worship services with their questions. Thus, in order to not take over, Paul suggests that they work those questions out in private. It fits with his reactions to overwhelming subgroups AND his tendency toward practical solutions.

c.  Because of the lack of punctuation, it is not clear if Paul is actually speaking the words OR if he is quoting the men of the church! (This hypothesis holds a surprising amount of water.) In that case Paul is quoting that women should be silent, that they should be subordinate, and even that they should ask their husbands, that it is shameful for a woman to speak. But then HE is responding to those men who said so with, “Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?” (1 Cor 14:36, NRSV)2

Great. So, there are 4 reasonable responses to this passage which do not require that I sit down and stop talking. Amazingly a lot of Bible Commentaries don't come up with any of them though. One of them (that we own) tried to make this passage about keeping women from publicly embarrassing their husbands, and another (that we also currently still own) suggested that Paul was just making a good point about gender differentiated roles. Sometimes I think the Bible is one big ink blot test, something we all just project our already established biases onto. This serves as a commercial for the evening Bible Study: where we together read, question, learn, question, wonder and still question. We do our best to get information from many sources so we aren't led astray by other people's biases or our own.

Speaking of biases, this text has been used to weaken the Body of Christ throughout history. The Body is ALWAYS weaker when it represents less diverse voices. It takes the fullness of humanity to best be the Body of Christ, and the way this text has been used has stood in the way of that. The church has been weakened for nearly 2000 years because of misinterpretation of this passage. Let's be part of turning that around! Everywhere we go we can attend to who is at the table and who isn't. We can be voices that speak when groups of people missing (women, people of color, people living in poverty, members of the LGBTQIA community, younger or older people, etc), and in doing so heal the Body of Christ and the world. Thanks be to God it isn't yet too late. Amen

1 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/09/the-divide-over-ordaining-women/ and http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/quick_question3.html  These numbers are a bit dated, but I don't believe much has changed, unfortunately.

2 Summary worked from the insights found in “First Corinthians” in The New Interpreter's Bible Vol. IX, Leander Kirk, general editors (Abingdon Press, 2002)

--

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 16, 2017

[firstumcschenectady]

“Young, Widowed, Sisters-In-Law” based on Ruth 1

Life didn't go well for Naomi. I mean, it didn't go terribly to begin with: she married, she had two sons. Compared to most heroines of the Bible, that's saying something! She didn't go through the long barren years we're used to hearing about with the matriarchs.

We don't know how her marriage was, but we usually don't. She got married, she had two sons. All that is OK, good even.  If feminine expectation was fulfilled in the procreation of sons, she was successful. Then there was a famine. For ancient Israel that really meant that there was a drought, and food couldn't be grown. In response to that desperation, Naomi and family left their homeland and went in search of place where there was food.

They ended up in the land of Moab, east of the Dead Sea. The book of Genesis tells us that Moab was Lot's son/grandson. I find it interesting that the Bible always identifies enemies as extended family. Throughout much of ancient Israelite history the Moabites were on the opposing sides of wars. Today the land that was called Moab is a part of the nation Jordan, and the boundary lines still run down the middle of the Dead Sea.

Naomi was a refugee, forced to leave her country because of lack of water. This was in the era before climate change, there are many more people in her situation today than there were then.

In ancient Israel, Naomi's family had access to their own land.  They were farmers. Things were so desperate that they left the land they had, that they freely owned, so that he could be a day laborer in a foreign land, because they thought it was more likely that they'd survive the lack of water THAT way. Since this story predates currency, I suspect they left their country without any wealth, with just the clothing on their back and maybe a few farm tools. They were desperate, hungry people, trying to survive when the land they lived in couldn't provide for the people who lived on it.

It seems likely that they lived a live of poverty in Moab. It seems like there WAS enough food, or at least enough MORE food that it was worth stopping there. I'm not entirely convinced there was fully enough food, since we aren't told how all the men die, and malnutrition is an open option. Ancient Israel had some laws in place to minimize the hunger of foreigners, but I don't know if Moab did. Most likely Naomi's husband and sons were day laborers, struggling to make enough for the family to eat day by day.

I point this out, in part, because I want to acknowledge that Ruth and Orpah were likely also from very poor families, because I can't imagine that any family with any sustainable income would have married their daughters off to an impoverished refugee family. (This was not a time when marriages happened because of love.) And Ruth and Naomi WERE married into this family. They were also married into this NUCLEAR family, when that wasn't the norm yet either, and when that would have been a reason to distrust the foreigners further.

Now, as we all know, poverty and wealth do not define happiness. There are very happy, healthy families who live in poverty and very sad, mad, and dysfunctional families who have great wealth. In fact, studies say that money only increases happiness when it makes the difference between being homeless and hungry and being terribly housed and having just enough to eat (even if it isn't that good). After the point when there is housing and food, money doesn't increase happiness. (Though I do wonder if it decreases stress.)

I'm proposing that Ruth and Orpah likely came from families in poverty. We don't know if they came from healthy, happy, loving homes. They seem especially fond of Naomi and well bonded to her. It makes me wonder if she'd been kinder to them than others in their life had been.

On the other hand, perhaps they were just following convention. It is hard to know. The convention at that is defined by levirate marriage. That is, if a married man died before producing an heir, his brother would be responsible for marrying his wife and thereby producing the heir. With both brothers dead, this was a problem. The women were still bound to the family they'd married into, but no spouse was forthcoming. In those days the most vulnerable people in society were the ones who didn't have a NATIVE male to take care of them, including by making a living. The Hebrew Bible of speaks of the vulnerable in society as the widows, orphans, and foreigners – with a note that an orphan was a person without a FATHER. These were the ones for whom special laws existed as protection. All groups of people without a native male who had power in the system and access to land in Israel.

These women qualified. All they had was each other, and none of them had a path to care for themselves much less the others.

Naomi frees the younger women from their bonds to her. I suspect that couldn't really be done without a man doing it, so it sort of didn't count, but they didn't have any men around to do it. I wonder if her lack of authority in the system is part of why Ruth felt she had the freedom to disobey Naomi's instructions.

In any case, both Ruth and Orpah, who made opposite decisions, were disobeying the rules of society. Society didn't have a way to care for them at this level of brokenness. Oprah abandoned the family she'd married into. Ruth disobeyed her elder. They both broke the rules, because there wasn't a way forward within the rules.

Naomi had one what was expected. She'd married and procreated, and then she'd gone with her family to seek enough food to survive, she'd grieved for her husband and children. Her choices were, seemingly, exhausted. Either she could stay in a foreign land with NO ONE to take care of her or she could go home and HOPE that someone still lived who might take responsibility for caring for her. Or, if not, she would at least die at home. She decided to go home.

That left her daughters-in-law to either abandon her (presumably the only family they still had from their so-called adulthood) or their country of origin and all they'd ever known.  They seem to genuinely like, to want to stay with her. Maybe I'm missing cultural memos, but it FEELS like they want to stay with her. This mother-in-law had been good enough to them that they wanted to stay with her rather than return to their own mothers' homes.

We don't know why, and while I could project things, they wouldn't be accurate. But they both said they wanted to go. It was only after Naomi pointed out that staying with her likely meant a life of barrenness without any hope for the future that Orpah reluctantly returned to her family of origin.

We don't know what happened next for Orpah. She's never mentioned again. I don't think anyone would have had a way to know. Perhaps she returned to her mother's house and quickly found a new husband and lived a pretty normal life. Perhaps she was tainted by her first marriage to a foreigner and lived and died a widow. Maybe life changed for her and she had a taste of existence beyond hard work and poverty, although it isn't very likely. In that moment, standing on the road that returned Naomi to Judah, Orpah had no way of knowing how it would end either. She had two terrible choices before her and she picked one, hoping that it would work out.

So did Ruth. She decides to leave family, country, language, culture, and even her faith to follow her mother-in-law to a foreign land. I've often used this text at weddings because it comes from a woman freed to make her own choice, and in that freedom she chooses to bond her life to another's.

“Where you go, I will go;   where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people,   and your God my God. 17 Where you die, I will die—   there will I be buried.”

With the saying of those words her life changes. She becomes an immigrant, and enters Israel as a foreigner and a widow. She doesn't have a reason to expect that she'll find anything easier there, and many things will be harder. Yet, it seems clear, she genuinely loves Naomi and wants to spend her life bonded to Naomi's life.

The book goes on to tell Ruth and Naomi's story, and presents Ruth as a heroine and matriarch of the Davidic line. It seems to suggest that Ruth “choose correctly” but I don't think that conclusion is sustained by the story. These three women were stuck without a clear way forward, with good reason to worry about how long they could live. Each made the best choice she could given the knowledge she had, and given the constraints of her world. I don't think the story would have ended as well if all three went back to Israel, it would have been harder to feed three mouths. I don't think it would have ended as well if only Naomi had returned home, I don't think anyone would have noticed or cared about her. The story ends with a male relative noticing Ruth and deciding to care for them both. What happens when there isn't one?

This story acknowledges the struggles of women without male support in patriarchal systems, it points out the vulnerability of women dependent on men, and makes clear that women end up making impossible decisions to survive – even ones others might want to judge. The story assumes that refugees and immigrants are more vulnerable than natives in their own lands. It also makes it clear that some people have WAY more power than others – that without a native male to care for them, the women had no legal recourse nor means of survival. The story also points out, clearly, that without water, people can't survive. The changing weather patterns of the world are creating more and more Naomis.

The world today has more displaced people than it ever has before. Climate scientists tell us that this is a number that will keep rising. Until we can hear Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah's stories as universal, we may miss the plight of many of God's children. Can we imagine Naomi as a refugee from Yemen today, because of the drought there? Can we imagine Ruth walking “home” with Naomi across the desert to start a new life in a unfriendly foreign land? Can we hear in them refugees from Syria, Somalia, or South Sudan?

I suspect God can hear the echoes. This story speaks through the ages of the difficult choices vulnerable people, particularly refugees and immigrants, make to survive. It reminds us to pay attention to who in our society and world lack access to the means of survival and/or justice.

May we be brave enough to keep listening. Amen

--

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 11, 2017

[firstumcschenectady]

“Taking Her Seat” based on  Isaiah 58:1-12 and Luke 10:38-42

In all the times I've studied – and preached on - this little story from Luke, I've never paid attention to where it falls in the Gospel. I suspect I've  been too busy trying to justify Martha or emulate Mary to attend to such a basic factor.  It turns out that the story of Mary and Martha comes RIGHT AFTER the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  That's a pretty significant location.  The Parable of the Good Samaritan is especially potent and it seems very likely that the brilliant writer Luke would use the story that follows it to strengthen and emphasize it, right?

Right. They are meant to work together!

As the Jesus Seminar puts it, “Both the Samaritan and Mary step out of conventional roles in Luke's examples.  This is Luke's reason for placing the story of Mary and Martha in tandem with the parable of the Samaritan.  The Samaritan for Luke illustrates the second commandment (“Love your neighbor as yourself”), Mary exemplifies the fulfillment of the first commandment (“You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your energy, and with all your mind”).”1 Other commentators point out that where the Samaritan “sees” in the way Jesus wants his followers to see, Mary “hears” as a model for how his followers should listen for God and hear Jesus.  The two characters complement and complete each other.  

Alan Culpepper in the New Interpreter's Bible explains the two stories together in this way:

“In it's own way, the conjunction of the stories about the good Samaritan and the female disciple voice Jesus' protest against the rules and boundaries set by the culture in which he lived.  As they develop seeing and hearing as metaphors for the activity of the kingdom, the twin stories also expose the injustice of social barriers that categorize, restrict, and oppress various groups in any society (Samaritan, victims, woman).  To love God with all one's heart and one's neighbor as oneself meant then and now that one must often reject society's rules in favor of the codes of the kingdom – a society without distinctions and boundaries between its members.  The rules of this society are just two – to love God and one's neighbor - but these rules are so radically different from those of the society in which we live that living by them invariably calls us to disregard all else, break the rules, and follow Jesus' example.”2 (NIB, 232)

It seems this story may pack quite a punch!  So, while remembering to keep the Good Samaritan story close, let's look at this text again. Both stories are set in the beginning of Luke's story of Jesus traveling to Jerusalem, a journey that will be concluded on Palm Sunday.  This is part of a journey narrative.

For some here today this is a new story, and for others it is very familiar.  Often, I hear people talk about which sister they identify with, this is one of the stories people use to make sense of their own lives!  It is sometimes tempting to make the story overly symbolic, but there are reasons to refrain from that temptation. John Fitzmyer in the Anchor Bible Series says, “To read this episode as a commendation of contemplative life over against active life is to allegorize it beyond recognition and to introduce a distinction that was born only of later preoccupation. The episode is addressed to the Christian who is expected to be contemplativus(a) in actione.”3

The challenge of keeping this story in perspective is that we are easily drawn into particularities.  Jesus likely traveled WITH a large group of followers and Martha was thus expected to prepare a large meal for all of them, in this case without help.  We want to wonder if she was trying to be too elaborate, or if Jesus was simply taking the side of Mary because Martha triangulated, or if Mary was usually “lazy.” It is easy to find ourselves in this story, but that makes it harder to hear this story.  This is a story that KNOWS that faithfulness to God requires learning AND action.  This is a story about Jesus, who called people to change their whole lives.  It isn't about who is stuck doing the dishes, even though we know that story well.  And for today at least (we'll get to Martha in the future), it isn't about Martha at all!  Today is all about Mary ;)

Mary appears deceptively passive in this story.  She doesn't speak, she's simply spoken about.  In fact, all we really know is that she sat and listened.  Well, that and her sister didn't appreciate it.  Is sitting and listening really so radical?

Yes. It is radical because sitting at the feet of a teacher, a rabbi, was the position of a disciple. And in that time, women were not usually allowed to be disciples. As the IVP Women's Bible explains, “In the first century women usually had no part in organized education. Few were literate.  Their education was confined to domestic and family matters.  Thus the considerable evidence that women were followers of Jesus and played a significant part in the disciple band is in contrast to the accepted practices of the day.”4

Mary's action isn't just reflective of her radical choice because it wasn't one that she could take on her own.  Her action reflects the radical inclusion of Jesus.  Back to the IVP Women's Bible, “Jesus welcomed many different women as learners (Mary of Bethany, Luke 10:39, 42) and encouraged them to engage with him in his theological conversations (Martha, Jn 11:21-27; Canaanite woman, Mt 15:24-28; Samaritan woman, Jn 4:7-26).  This was in contrast to the rabbinic practice of excluding women.”5 Throughout Luke, Jesus offered instruction in synagogues, homes, and in personal conversations to WOMEN.6 Jesus was a radical teacher willing to accept many kinds of students, and a radical student willing to claim her spot no matter what others thought of her!  

I'm told that Jesus taking on abnormal disciples extended well beyond Mary and the teaching of women.  Most rabbi's took on only the brightest and best pupils and nurtured them from their childhoods to be excellent scholars.  Jesus took on adult men who had been making livings as fisherman, thus clearly not the perfect pupils another rabbi had snapped up.  Jesus refused hierarchies – EVEN the ones that might have been seen as reasonable and helpful!!  

The writers in the Women's Bible also pointed out that Luke's account of Mary and Martha seems to reflect a slightly later Christian tradition.  By the time of Acts, it was common for evangelists to travel around preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus.  They were often hosted by women, who were then responsible for two tasks: hospitality AND discernment.  Clearly if a wealthy woman was going to use her resources to support a traveling preacher, she needed to be able to tell if the preacher was worth learning from!  The radical inclusion of women extended into the early church.  The Women's Bible explains it this way,

“In accounts of the early church we are made especially aware of the women who revived traveling evangelists into their homes (Acts 16:15; 40; 18:2-3).  More often than those of men, we are told the names women in those houses the early churches met (Acts 12:12; 16:13-15; 40; Rom 16:3-5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15).  Theirs was the responsibility not only to provide food and housing of the itinerate missionary but also to assess the message that was brought (see2 John; 3 John).  This required that the women must be carefully taught and possess a strong understanding of the fundamentals of the gospel. … The story before us presents a paradigm of the attitude and activities of women who opened their homes for gospel ministry.”7

Thus, in this story, Mary IS doing half of the work – she is learning and listening so that she will be able to discern who is worth listening to in the future!!

I really appreciate this idea that the women who offered hospitality also had to be careful about whose perspective they empowered.  I like the reminder that hospitality, and extending one's home, is a powerful and important action that these women played a curating role in who got to talk!!!  I also think it is helpful to think of Mary as listening, learning, and sitting AT THIS MOMENT in time so that she would be of GREATER USE later.  This is often how I think of YOU.  FUMC Schenectady's identity statement is, “We are a church that loves to learn and yearns to be a gift from God to our communities.”  These are two connected statements.  This church loves to learn because this church loves being useful in building the kin-dom and in being a gift from God to our communities.  This is a church who cares enough to do things WELL, and that often means slowing down and listening before acting.

For Mary, like for us, listening precedes service so that service can be done well.  And that's imperative.  Simply following our instincts often means doing more harm than good.  Those who created “Indian Missionary Schools” and those who taught in them meant to do GOOD, but they did harm that has been passed down through generations!! They didn't listen to those they were trying to help.  In the past few years I've been part of a group trying to rethink the global structure of the United Methodist Church to eliminate colonialism and become true partners around the world.  A few weeks ago I got to talk to members of the UMC from Africa and in one succinct sentence they proved to me that the plan was fundamentally flawed.  We didn't listen to the people we were trying to include!

Listening and learning is an imperative first step to any acts of service. Transforming the world, or loving our neighbors with the love they really need, or responding to the needs of people around us, or even finding the ways to be whole and peace-filled people whose presence is a gift of grace requires listening and learning first – to God, to ourselves, AND to others.  The Hebrew Bible lesson today suggests that the people of God were not listening to what God needed nor to what people living in poverty in their midst needed.  Listening and learning are of equal value and importance to action and service. Together Mary and her sister show us what it can look like, just as together Mary and the Good Samaritian show us what it is like to see and hear.

Mary listened.  Mary learned.  It was radical and subversive of her to sit at Jesus' feet as a disciple, and it was radical and subversive of Jesus to teach women alongside men.  Yet Jesus defends Mary's right to listen and learn, claiming that it is a good way to be in the world.  As important as action and service are, rushed action that comes before listening and learning is often more harm than good. May we leave this place open to the experiences of listening, and may we sit down to learn from those are good and worthy teachers.  May we listen, like Mary.  Because she sat, let us learn to sit and listen. Amen

1 Robert W. Funk, Roy W Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperOneUSA, 1993), 325.

2 R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in The New Interpreter's Bible Vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 232.

3 Joesph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, (Doubleday and Co.: NY, NY,  1985) p. 892-3.

4 Catherine Clark Kroeger and Mary J. Evans, editors, The IVP Women's Bible Commentary (InverVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 2002), p 571.

5 Ibid

6 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),124.

7 IVP Women's Bible Commentary, 574.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

[firstumcschenectady]

“In the Midst of the Mess” based on 1 Kings 1:11-31 and 2:13-25

By the time we get to 1 Kings, many of us are lost in the storyline of the Hebrew Bible. It has been an intense soap opera for quite a while, and the intricacies are often convoluted and subtle. This leaves me with the task of setting the stage for the story we just read, a task I'm not entirely sure I'm up to. Nevertheless, I'll give it a try ;)

You remember the story of Moses, right? Well Moses led the people the the border of the Promised Land before he died. Then Joshua led the people into the land. What followed was about 350 years of various leaders emerging as needed, which was when the tribes were under threat. That 350 year period is described in the book of Judges, and archaeologists tell us that is the period when the people occupying ancient Israel were most consistently living out the rules of the Torah. All the homes seem to be about the same size, meaning that wealth was neither being accumulated nor lost. That's a significant part of the goal of the laws of the Torah.

Then, there came King Saul. The Bible says that the people wanted a King, but God didn't want the people to have a King. The prophets kept telling the people that God is their Ruler, but the people wanted a human one anyway. You may be shocked, but I don't quite believe that one. I think it is much more likely that Saul wanted to be King, and once he was King he made sure that the story being told was that he was King because everyone wanted him to be. I do, however, believe that the prophets thought this was a terrible plan!

Then, somehow, David becomes King. I say “somehow” because the Bible tells several versions of this and they don't make much sense individually or together. Basically, David led a coup against Saul with military leadership from Judea supported by external mercenaries soldiers. The Bible claims Saul was crazy. It is very difficult to tell if that is propaganda from David. (Then again, historians aren't sure either of them ever existed, which could potentially resolve this issue for us. However, we're going with the story as its told, even with ALL of its complications.)

OK. So David is King, which happens to mean he has a whole bunch of wives. Some of the wives predate his kingship. Many of his wives he “inherited” from Saul with the kingship. #sentencesIwishIdidnthavetosay Once David is serving as King in Jerusalem, he acquires more wives. The most famous story of his acquiring a wife is the story of David and Bathsheba. David's palace was now larger and higher than the homes around his, and thus when Bathsheba was bathing herself on her roof top one day, David saw her and lusted after her. He had her brought to him, raped her, impregnated her, tried to cover for it, and then and had her husband killed on the front lines when the cover didn't work.

In response, the prophet Nathan brought accusations against him. David turns to God in repentant prayer. David and Bathsheba's infant son dies, which the Bible tells as if it is God's punishment (you can tell from my phrasing I don't believe that either). Bathsheba stays in the palace as David's wife. She appears to remain his favorite wife according to the stories. Also, she ends up giving birth to 4 more sons, the youngest of which is Solomon. Please note we don't know if she had daughters because they're generally not worth talking about as far as the Bible sees it.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? We are caught up to the start of 1 Kings. Oh shoot! We aren't. I need to remind you of another messy bit of this story, in order to make sense of this one. King David's oldest sons were born to his earliest wives, before he was King. The oldest was Amnon. He was the one who raped his half-sister Tamar, who was a full-sister to the third son, Absalom. Absalom killed Amnon in revenge, years later. Absalom then attempted to claim the kingship of Israel in a coup and was killed by one of David's generals. The 2nd son is assumed to have died in infancy. The 4th son was Adonijah, who was thus the oldest surviving son as of this point in the story. The Bible says there were about 20 sons, Solomon wasn't one of the oldest 10.

According to normal inheritance laws, Adonijah had a far stronger claim to the throne than Solomon did. The Bible often tells stories that ignore normal inheritance laws. According to the beginning of 1 Kings, the parts we skipped, David was very old and impotent. A new young, beautiful wife, was brought to “warm his bed” but that didn't work. Her name was Abishag. With awareness of David's condition, Adonijah holds a coup and claims the kingship. He raises support from his father's old guard, the part of David's leadership that was Judea-centric and NOT representative of the whole kingdom of Israel. He excludes ONLY his brother Solomon, which I think would imply that he saw only his brother Solomon as a threat to his claim. David's newer advisors refuse to attend, and seem to decide to thrown in their lots with Solomon.

The story says that Nathan approaches Bathsheba with a plan. Bathsheba accepts it and goes to King David's bedroom to make her plea. There may be a new, young, wife in town but Bathsheba still has the privilege of entering David's bedroom at will and being greeted with an offer to give her whatever she wants.

She takes Nathans suggestions and runs with them. She tells David that he promised her Solomon could be king after him (Nathan said she should SUGGEST it in a question), she tells him Adonijah has claimed the kingship and makes sure it sounds particularly insulting to David himself, she tells him who among his servants have supported his son's coup, she implies that the whole nation of Israel needs his leadership and that Adonijah will only care about the southern part of Judah, and she names for him the threat to her life and Solomon's if David lets the coup stand.

There is just one little issue with what she says: there is no reason to believe that David had promised the kingship to Solomon. It is never previously mentioned. The possibility of Solomon as a contender only emerges when Adonijah doesn't invite him to his coup. Most likely, it wasn't true. David is likely experiencing memory loss by this point, and Bathsheba manipulates him into doing what she wants. She plays the role of king-maker, and she makes sure it is HER kid who on the throne. Her role has changed a bit since she was first introduced.

Then Nathan backs her up, sort of. He at least backs up the fact that Adonijah has held a coup. He lets her stand on her own in terms of the claim that Solomon would be king. Based on their words, Solomon is named and anointed King.

Then Solomon promises his brother Adonijah that he can live as long as he keeps supporting Solomon's kingship. David dies, and then comes the next bit of our story. Now, if this part of the Bible is historical, and if all these characters existed, and if things more or less went down the way this story says they went down, I STILL don't believe this part. Under those circumstances, I think that either Solomon or Bathsheba make it up.

The story SAYS that Adonijah, the eldest living son of David, comes to King Solomon's mother and asks her to ask her son King Solomon if he can have his father's youngest wife as his own. Since the King's harem is seen as part of the King's rightful possession, getting to marry one of David's wives would have strengthened Adonijah's claim to the throne. I don't quite believe he would have been stupid enough to ask for that, especially when his continued life was already tenuous. However, the story says he asked, and says that Bathsheba goes right to the throne room. Her son bows to her has a THRONE brought out to her, indicative of his affection for his mother (or perhaps of her power in his kingship), and she publicly tells him about this request. In response, Solomon orders the death of Adonijah. It seems a bit too easy, especially in the first days after David dies, and if the story stands as written, I only wonder if Solomon was in on Bathsheba's plan or not.

All in all, this leaves us with a whole bunch of questions. The most difficult question is one that was posed in Bible Study: is Bathsheba a subversive woman? In terms of saying, “Yes! Of course she is!” we have the following evidence: she made a king, she eliminated his rivals, and she got what she wanted out of the leadership of the country. On the other side, the side that says, “Nope, not a subversive women” we have the following arguments: manipulating people for power and influence is one of the most normal of all human activities, and even more normal when it comes to royal lineage. That argument says that no matter how you worked it, doing the work to get your son on the throne is playing with power, not subverting it.

For me, both of those perspectives hold a lot of water. I kept her story in this sermon series because I love that she has such a complicated life story and significant character development, particularly from being a passive object of lust into being the most powerful agent of her own life and one of the most powerful agents in the country. However, she still mostly exists within those terrible constraints of oppressive power. She just moves from being oppressed to being the oppressor, she doesn't change the way the game itself is played.

The other big question is: how can the kingship be such a complete and utter mess????? This is the time of history that the rest of the Bible looked to as the golden age. There are only three kings of the United Kingdom (of Israel and Judea) and they are: Saul, David, and Solomon. And all three, and their families, are total messes. They make modern soap operas look boring. They make truly broken modern families look picture perfect. If that was the golden age, heaven help the rest of the ages!

Actually, while the drama factor is higher in the Jerusalem palace, all of the characters of the Hebrew Bible are ridiculous messes. Some are richer than others, some are smarter than others, but they're all messes. They don't even look impressive as compared to average humans. (And I think most humans are struggling rather mightily.) And yet, the Bible contends, God CHOOSES to work with and through those messy people. God doesn't just give up on them because they are terrible parents, or greedy rulers, or manipulative queens, nor manipulated kings. God doesn't even give up on the ones who are murders (David and Moses). Yeah, think about that for a bit. And who are the most famous murders in the Hebrew Bible? David and Moses. Who are the most celebrated leaders of the Hebrew Bible? David. And. Moses.

God doesn't give up on us. Ever.

And the Hebrew Bible makes it plain to see that we can't be so messy that God ever will give up on us. Even better, God keeps working with us to take our messes and make them into something beautiful. Solomon was known for his wisdom.  David was known for his Psalms of Praise. Bathsheba found a way to be an agent of her own life (and help a very wise man take the throne). God isn't scared off by messes, God can work with whatever we are, and bring wonder and beauty out of it all. Thanks be to God for that. Amen

--

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

August 6, 2017

[firstumcschenectady]

“As if Jesus Cared About THAT” based on Luke 10:38-42

In my experience, there is very little in the world more frustrating to the hard workers in church congregations than a sermon dismissing Martha. About 4 months ago the Subversive Women of the Bible Sermon Series celebrated Mary's subversive action of sitting at Jesus' feet and claiming her place as one of his disciples. Today, at last, we get to celebrate Martha's subversive action – and her acts of service!

I think I've been waiting my whole life to preach exclusively in support of Martha, and I've been told by several of you that you've been waiting to hear such a sermon. When the Young Adult Bible Study came back to this text to hear it on Martha's behalf, it rather surprised us. You'd think that 5 verses we'd looked at only a few months earlier would have been sort of boring the second time around, but we've been learning through this study that perspective is EVERYTHING. The story sounded different taking Martha as the heroine, in the same ways that we've been hearing deep wisdom in other stories we thought we knew but had only heard from the male perspective previously.

This story carries a lot of baggage, particularly it carries a history of being read with the world's misogyny. Most Biblical commentators from the earliest times to the present have indicated that Martha's work was less important than Mary's, and associated Martha with the “concerns of the world” while Mary is seen as caring about “the things of God.” There are a few issues with this: in the story Martha is in a traditionally feminine role while Mary is in a masculine one. Celebrating Mary thus became another way of dismissing the work of women. Similarly, associating women with earthiness, worldliness, practical matters, AND negativity perpetuates the view that women are of less value in the world. The contrast, Mary's role which fits into masculine norms, which is presented as Godly, holy, good, and right continues the idea that women just aren't of that much value.

Let's be practical for a minute here. Jesus traveled with an entourage. We know about the 12 disciples who seemed always to be with him, and we reasonably assume that their families were with them. We also know that the crowds around Jesus grew with his ministry. This story takes place on the journey to Jerusalem, so near the end of his year of active ministry according to the Synoptic Gospels. There were likely a LOT of people traveling with Jesus and Martha was offering them ALL hospitality. I mean, I'm thinking 50-200 people??? I know very few humans who can offer hospitality to 50-200 people without being a LITTLE frenetic about it, and even fewer who would be happy to do so without any help.

Furthermore, it is all fine and good to acknowledge that learning about God in study is an excellent priority to have, but it is much easier to make those claims when one is well-fed and has one's with thirst quenched. Any time a person or group of people are given the opportunity to focus on study and learning we can assume that happens because some other person or group of people are doing the practical work of preparing food, drink, and lodging, and errands to support them. The traditional work of women; the undervalued work of this world in caregiving, cleaning, and food preparation; simply have to be done, and it is only because someone else is doing them that anyone is free to devote their life to study (or anything else for that matter).

Sometimes those doing the work are spouses, sometimes they're people being paid to offer services. I recently read a ridiculous article proclaiming how much easier it was to be a self-sufficient woman in a big city because of the availability of take out food and laundry services. The author seemed to miss that the work she wasn't doing was still being done by human beings (and mostly by women of color), that she wasn't actually making her life work on her own, she was merely ignoring in the work involved in supporting her life!

Now, as to the truly radical thing that Martha does, the thing that I will be grateful to Martha for the rest my life: Martha assumes that Jesus cares about “women's work.” She thinks Jesus has a clue of how much work there is to be done to offer this hospitality, she thinks that Jesus will seek justice for her and create a better balance, she thinks the work she does matters enough to interrupt Jesus while he's teaching!!!! Martha herself thinks “women's work” matters, and she thinks Jesus does too. She seems to have a healthy does of self-esteem and a good relationship with Jesus to be willing to initiate this conversation.

Many times in history the work of offering hospitality has been invisible to those who receive it, and it might have been common for women offering hospitality to assume that the men who received it neither knew that it happened nor cared how much work was involved. They would only notice if something went wrong. But Martha, who knew Jesus well, trusted him with reality that it WAS a lot of work and that she needed help, and that he wouldn't laugh at her or ignore her or her concerns. She is the only one of the sisters who speaks, and she speaks to Jesus about her concerns about women's work. She acts as if Jesus cares about women's work, about women's LIVES, and thus about women!!

Now, Jesus may not have done exactly as Martha wanted, but he didn't dismiss her either. He didn't instruct Mary to get up and work with her sister as requested. Jesus doesn't ever tend to do the that he is asked to do when he is triangulated, and this is no exception. But he also doesn't yell at Martha for asking, or make fun of her before the others. Jesus's response supports Mary's right to learn from him, and to make her own choices, without dismissing Martha or her concerns.

I admit, he says Mary has made the better choice. Furthermore, his answer MAY imply that he thinks Martha is making things more complicated than they need to be. But he doesn't tell her stop! He doesn't instruct her to sit down and let the work go undone. He doesn't actually imply that the work Martha is devoting herself to is unimportant. He backs up Mary and her choice, and refuses to ask her to leave. He supports the more radical option, the person acting out of the norms society puts people in. He gently chides Martha.

But his words leave a lot of space for interpretation. Or, to say it with more integrity, Luke's words placed in Jesus' mouth leave a lot of space for interpretation. As intriguing as I find this story, as much as it is the second time I'm preaching on it this year, I do need to tell you that the Jesus seminar puts Jesus' words in black. That means they don't think there is any chance that Jesus actually said them. These words indicate Luke's perspective on Jesus and Luke's understanding of how Jesus acted in the world. That means that they fit how an early Christian community understood Jesus, which makes them very important, but doesn't mean that they actually fit something Jesus said. Nevertheless, the story has been used for all of Christian history to make sense of our world, and I think there are new lessons in it that can make it richer, so we are going to keep working with it.

The words attributed to Jesus leave a lot of space for interpretation. Some have said it means that Jesus thought Martha should cook only one dish. Some say it had more to do with her actions of serving than cooking. Most commonly people have said this has nothing to do with cooking or serving but is instead about the world vs. God. (Eye roll.) As if God and the world are entirely separate and don't inform each other. (Sigh.) Some, though, suggest that the thing Martha is chided for is the kind of energy she brings to the work. Jesus is not upset at her choices to serve or to be hospitable (which makes a lot of sense since in other places those who welcome Jesus are praised), but rather for being worried and distracted. The Africa Bible Commentary offers a beautiful example of this perspective:

“the name Martha is an Aramaic one that means 'sovereign lady', 'ruling lady' or 'lady'. The name helps to emphasize Martha's autonomous, well-off and dominate position. She is the hospitable mother of the house who welcomes a preacher and performs the practical tasks that the visit demands. In fact, her work is repeatedly described as diakonia, which would later become a technical term referring to serving at the Lord's table, proclaiming his message, and providing leadership in the church. Given that diakonia is presented positively everywhere else in the NT, it is difficult to see that here is should suddenly represent a mistaken choice. Rather what Jesus disapproves of is the way in which Martha goes about her work, with fuss and agitation. We do not need to separate the gentle, listening, self-surrendering Marys and the pragmatic, busy Marthas. In other words, the Mary in me ought not to repress the Martha, and the Martha in me ought not to repress the Mary.”1

Ah! The freedom of that idea! The recognition that each of us have within us the prayerful scholar AND the hard-worker! No single person is fully one or the other, and the balance between them exists within each of us. That's much more realistic that separating them out into two groups of people, and even better, the commentator suggests that and that neither part within us need to judge or repress the other! Extended this idea out even further, to counter the common readings of the passage, it serves to remind us that the stereotypical attributes of both gender identities ALSO exist within each of us, and need not be repressed either.

In this perspective, I'm not entirely sure what Jesus most wanted for Martha. What was he hoping would happen next? What did she need? Was she to make a self assessment and simply stop working if she wasn't enjoying it? Was she simply to check her attitude at the door? Was she to figure out what would make things more reasonable (without demanding action of her sister) and figure out how to offer the hospitality without running herself ragged? I'm not sure. But I think that some of those are within the answer.

I have said it before, but I've gotten feedback that it needs to be heard more often: doing work we resent does NOT build up the kindom of God. There are many jobs within the Body of Christ and there is much work to be done to build justice and peace into the fabric of societies, but we don't get there doing work we hate and resenting it. That leaves us all with several options:

We can stop doing work we can't find joy or meaning in.

We can check in with ourselves to find out why we do what we do, and assess if we think our reasons are worthwhile.

We can rebalance what we offer to the world so that the way we offer it brings joy or meaning to us and thus into the world.

There is much work to be done, Martha has that right! But there are a lot of ways to do it (or not do it)! If you are doing things you hate out of obligation with resentment, stop!!! The kindom of God needs joy and meaning, gratitude and delight. Please, don't give gifts you resent. It will do more harm than good!

Martha believed that Jesus cared about women's work, and it seems she was right. Now all of have the responsibility that Martha has after Jesus speaks to her: to figure out what gifts we will offer and how we can do so with joy, meaning, gratitude or delight - OR to stop giving those gifts so we can find ourselves free of distraction and worry. May God help us find our way. Amen

1Paul John Isaak, “Luke” in the Africa Bible Commentary, Tokunboh Adeyemo, general editor (Nairobi, Kenya: WordAlive Publishers, 2006), page 1226.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

[firstumcschenectady]

“Favoritism in the Family” based on  Genesis 27:1-29

If I have a favorite matriarch, its Rebekah. This is not because of this story. This story is Rebekah at her worst. However, her worst isn't as bad as Sarah, whose treatment of Hagar is atrocious. Nor does Rebekah's worst even relate to being married to the same man as her sister, a reality that make Leah and Rachel appear rather petty and immature.

Rebekah has a chance to shine her own light through the texts, and they show her as a woman who chooses. Not only does she choose, but her choices change history, repeatedly. The first time we meet her she's at a well. Abraham's servant has been sent to find a wife for Issac from Abraham's home country. The story is told well in scripture, from Genesis 24:

“Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.’ The servant said to him, ‘Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land; must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?’ Abraham said to him, ‘See to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and swore to me, “To your offspring I will give this land”, he will send his angel before you; you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.’So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.”(Genesis 24:2-9)

The servant, still rather overwhelmed with his task, comes up with a plan. He'll head to the well, which would be both practical for accessing water after a desert journey AND practical for finding a woman as the women tended to gather at the well. Then he prays asking for God's help in identifying the woman. He asks for God's guidance so that that whichever woman he asks for water from who ALSO offers to water his camels will be the woman he's seeking.

Then the beautiful young Rebekah attracts his eye and he asks her for a drink. She immediate responds with water and then offers to water to water his camels too. Since there were 10 camels, this seems like a rather vigorous task, indicating rather significant hospitality and a commitment to the care of a stranger. The servant's plan worked out to identify a hard working and caring young woman. Even better, she was kindred to Abraham, granddaughter to his brother, which was the goal. (The matriarchs and patriarchs are incredibly inbred, sort of like the European royal families in the 19th century, please don't get too distracted by it.)

Then Rebekah invites Abraham's servant to stay with her family and heads home to prepare the welcome. When the servant comes to her family home and tells his story, her father and brother IMMEDIATELY offer to send her off to marry Abraham's son. As she was still unmarried and available, it is likely that she was also pretty young, prepubescent. Perhaps the journey home took long enough for her to grow up a bit more. (Let's hope!) In any case, they did forget to ask her if she wanted to go initially, but when the servant wanted to leave immediately the next morning, they asked Rebekah if she wanted to go, and she agreed to it, including the immediately part.

Now, in these first few choices, we already see that Rebekah's open heart and hard working nature are changing the course of history! She choose to give him a drink, to water his camels, to invite him into her family's home, and agreed to go and marry a man she'd never met (nor heard of previously), and to do so immediately.

If she had not, the story suggests, Issac would not have married and the lineage would have stopped there. But it doesn't. In fact, Issac and Rebekah's meeting continues to indicate Rebekah's openness to this marriage and her willingness to engage in it. (Here you see why I hope the journey was long enough for her to mature a bit.)

“Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was settled in the Negeb. Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, ‘Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?’ The servant said, ‘It is my master.’ So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.: (Genesis 24:62-67)

The next time we hear of Rebekah is said to be 20 years later when she hasn't get gotten pregnant. #AllTheMatriarchsStruggledWithInfertility Issac prays for her and she gets pregnant, with twins. I know that the Bible predates the modern concept of romance, but it is SO easy to project it onto these two. Until this point, that is. Once pregnant,and for the first time, we hear of Rebekah praying to God. This is significant because the monotheism of the Bible starts with Abraham and Sarah on their journey away from their home-country. It is not assumed to extend to the family they left back home, and it is clearly a choice on Rebekah's part to accept the faith of Issac's family.

The story goes on to say that Rebekah had a terrible pregnancy:

The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb,   and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other,   the elder shall serve the younger.’  (Genesis 25:22-23.)

Sarah never had direct contact with YHWH, although Hagar did. In fact, I think Rebekah is the only one of the matriarchs who is said to have an experience of the Divine. None of us are shocked that the result of the Divine experience is an inverting of the normal ordering of human society. God is like that. The order of human life mean that the elder son would be the one in charge, the inheritor of a double portion, the patriarch. Yet, Rebekah hears otherwise while they are still in her womb.

The story continues to indicate that the parents had different favorites in the family, “When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.” (Genesis 25:27-28) This little snippet reminds us that the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs are meant to function in two ways simultaneously: both to tell a good story that makes sense about an individual, and to explain relationships between groups claiming to be the descendants of those individuals. Thus the story is about relations between nations AND about individuals at the same time. This little bit reminds us that the ancient Israelites, by the time they wrote this story down, were domesticated people who had distanced themselves from the nomadic hunter-gatherers of their recent past.

And now, we are caught up and ready to deal with the story read today! Rebekah is committed to the fulfillment of the prediction she'd heard during her pregnancy. She acts as if it is very important. The story believes that blessing is … an act of God of some sort. Issac needs to strengthen himself so that he can function as God's emissary in the giving of the blessing, and the story clearly believes that the future itself is changed by the speaking of the words. The blessing can't be taken back, but it can be tricked onto landing on the wrong person. This is an OLD story. The blessing seems to reflect back on the words of God that Rebekah heard during her pregnancy, ones that guided her to make them true.

Rebekah has a plan on hand. (I've been told that this subversive women sermon series could also be called “women who plan.”) She is willing to take any curses onto herself. She pushes her favorite son to trick her husband into giving him the blessing he'd reserve for HIS favorite and eldest. She is remarkably committed to fulfilling the words of God, even at cost to her own existence. She pays a high cost for it too. By the end of the story her favorite son is sent away, and we don't think they ever meet again. I say we don't think because her death is never mentioned in scripture. Her participation in this deception and her final work to have her son sent back to her family for safety (and the marrying of a woman from Abraham's home country and family) are her last notated actions. These are the final choices she makes. She fulfills the words of her husband's God, even at the risk of his fury and curses.

Rebekah starts out leaving her home and her family to marry a man she's never met who is following a God she doesn't know. (Seriously.  The radical openness and adventurous spirit of these ancient women is astounding.) Then she has an experience of this God, more of one than her husband is ever said to have. Issac is said to have prayers answered but not to hear God's responses. Furthermore, given the narrative about child sacrifice, Issac also has some serious reasons to distrust God. But Rebekah is given comfort and knowledge to use.  Her actions, ones that seem like they break apart the family she created, are done to fulfill the promises God made to her. Her husband's God at that. She leaves her own family, and then willingly participates in breaking her family out of her faith in this God! By the end of the story she loses her favorite son, her husband is near death, and her other son is (appropriately) mightily angry with her. And she's not mentioned again. She burns all of her power and influence in this one story that disrupts her entire life.

So, there she is, this adventurous, courageous, pushy, manipulative, faithful matriarch. However, I'm not sure I want anyone to mimic her choices, and there aren't a lot of moral compass points in this story if you take it directly.

Many scholars have suggested that the Northern Tribes (Israel) identified Jacob as their primary ancestor while the Southern Tribes (Judah – Jew) identified Abraham. In the process of forming a united identity the two were linked. In order to make it less hierarchical, neither was made the son of the other, instead they were separated by Issac. Issac, indeed, is more visible as the son of his father and the father of his sons than he is a stand alone figure. He's the link. These stories exist to create shared identity! They are successful in doing so, in part, by having a very relatable matriarch, and in part by naming an enemy as the “other” that the group can differentiate from.

Those the Bible identifies as Edomites (descendants of Esau) were the nation to the south of Judah, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies of the Israelites. They became a vassal of Judah for a while, but also contributed to their destruction and exile. This relationship is all being explained with the characters of Esau and Jacob, and in this story the behavior of their parents.

Which is to say, that this is a formative story about the nation, and its relationship with other nations. Similarly, we have narratives that explain our different relationships to Canada and Mexico, ones that aren't entirely honest about the reasons we worry more about one border than another. We have stories about our relationships with Great Britain as our (I recently heard this) “longest standing ally,” which conveniently forgets that they were our first opponent in wary; we have stories that pervade our subconscious about the relationships between European Americans and Native Americans, ones that include the idea that Columbus “discovered” a continent with millions of people living on it; we have stories about relationships between people of different races that dismiss the history of slavery, segregation, and choices to limit US citizenship to people who were “white enough.” We have stories, as a nation, who tell us who we are, who we are supposed to be, and who we need to exclude and dis-empower to get there.

Those stories today are more overt and readable than they've been in my lifetime. More than ever the stories that are being told to our nation sound like telling the so-called descendants of Jacob that Esau (and thus his descendants) was freakishly hairy, smelly, and uncouth. In fact, many of the stories I hear today are intended to create fear of the people who claim to descend from Ishmael (the Muslims). It turns out that the patriarchs, the matriarchs, and their stories still impact global relations today.

It also turns out that at the end of this narrative Esau marries a daughter of Ishmael, symbolically restoring relationships between the two “unblessed” parts of Abraham's family. While I don't actually encourage marriages as means of restoration (symbolic or otherwise), I hear God calling us to expand our definition of family, including by telling new stories about who we are and who we can be. May we hear, and tell such stories. Amen

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 18, 2017