Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Good morning.
I got so wrapped up in your reading, Jimmy, that I almost forgot to come up. It was beautiful. Thank you.
So by now, you've probably noticed that we're not doing our traditional liturgy this morning, right?
We're doing something quite different.
This is a version of the liturgy that we do during gathering Women, our women's worship and dinner that we do on the third Tuesday of every month. This liturgy consists of prayers that have been written by some of our women, some that were drafted by our clergy many years ago now when we wrote a heartfelt liturgy. If you remember that, some that I've written or revised along the way, you might notice that a women's liturgy is not just about changing, changing pronouns or saying people rather than men.
Those things are important, and they're pretty easy, really, but they don't actually have as much resonance as you might think.
The language of this service is intentionally expansive.
Holy mystery, Beloved one, loving Spirit, even, heaven forbid, Mother.
The women who gather have been doing the slow and steady work of expanding our sense of who God is and how God moves in our lives.
And the language reflects that.
The liturgy reflects that theology shaped by women's experiences of God.
Not that men can't also share in these experiences, but experiences of love and tenderness, certainly, but also of courage, resistance, grief, anger, joy.
It makes room for dimensions of the divine that have too often been overlooked.
Some of you will connect deeply with this language.
Others will be less comfortable. And I would encourage each of you to open your hearts to hearing a different way of connecting with God. Try to find something this morning that speaks to you, Even quietly, even a little bit. Right? My sermon is also a little different this morning.
Two weekends ago, a group of 14 women gathered in island park for a retreat. It was fabulous.
I was exhausted going into that weekend. It was my third weekend in a row of working around the clock. And I was like, oh, gosh, why did I agree to do this? And I went and it fed me and it gave me energy. And I came out of there thinking, we need to do this. We need to do more of this. It was so beautiful. And I encourage other women to join us next year.
We expect, explored and got to know ancient women, some unnamed or barely named, who had been waiting a long time for someone to take them seriously.
Anna Rizpah, the daughters of Zelophehad named Mahla, Noah, Hula, Milcah, and Tirzah, the woman who anointed Jesus feet in Luke, often mistakenly identified as Mary Magdalene, and others known by name but Seldom focused on Deborah, Jael, Hagar, Miriam.
On Saturday afternoon, we broke into four groups, and each group was given a scripture passage about a different woman or women to focus on. The task was to try to get inside the head and the heart and the lives of these women and present them back to the group as fuller embodiments of who they were or might have been.
Be creative.
Have fun with it. One group was given Deborah.
Were any of the Deborah women here?
No Deborahs, Darn it. Okay.
Have you heard of Deborah? How many of you know Deborah, Right? Deborah's a pretty well known character. She's one of the most powerful figures, strong, certainly most powerful women in Hebrew scriptures. She was a prophetess and a judge, the only woman to hold that role in the entire story. She sits under this palm tree. We had a woman during the reenactment who served as the palm tree standing above her, which was fabulous.
Green ribbons, as I recall. Anyway.
And people came to her to mete out justice, right?
[00:04:50] Speaker B: She.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: When Israel is threatened, God speaks through Deborah and commands General Barak to lead the army into battle. So Barak, this strong, experienced military man, says he will only go if Deborah goes with him.
So she goes. But before she does, she delivers a prophecy. She says, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera, the enemy, into the hand of a woman. We might assume that woman was Deborah, right? She's the judge, the prophetess, the one going into battle. Of course it's her, but it isn't. It isn't her at all. The group recognized this, and they brought in the character of Jael because we need Jael to complete the story.
When the enemy general Sisera flees the battlefield, he ends up in Jael's tent.
She invites him in, gives him milk, covers him with a blanket and waits until he goes to sleep.
And then she drives a tent stake into his temple, right?
Deborah's prophecy is fulfilled by a woman named Nobody Saw Coming.
Not the general, not the judge, the woman in the tent. It usually is the woman nobody Saw Coming.
These are two strong and courageous women, Deborah and Jael, that are often overlooked.
Now let's look at Hagar.
She's probably also familiar to most of you. Hagar is an Egyptian slave, a woman whose life below belongs to someone else.
Sarah gives her to Abraham to bear the child. Sarah cannot. When Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarah turns on her, and Hagar runs into the wilderness, alone and carrying a child.
An angel finds her there, promises her a son whose descendants will Be too many to count.
And tells her to go back.
We usually read this story as a story of rescue. It's a positive story. But our women refused to read it that way.
Their Hagar takes in everything thrown at her. I should say, who are my Hagar people? I know. Jean, Adele, any other Hagar people? Emmy, that was our Hagar team.
Anyway, y' all refuse to take it that way or leave it there, there. Hagar takes in everything that's thrown at her. The loss of choice, the cruelty, the flight, the promise. And she answers back.
She doesn't rage and she doesn't give up. She asks the question no one in her story ever asks.
What about?
I'm going to read to you Hagar's lines from this skit.
My daughter Adele was Hagar. She did a great job.
But she said to tell you she sings in front of people, but doesn't perform or act. So anyway, no one asked me.
No one ever asks me. I wonder what it would feel like to belong to my song.
I don't know where I'm going.
I'm carrying a child and I can't even protect myself.
But I can't stay here. And yet you ask me to return to the very place I fled.
You promised greatness for my son, but what about me?
Does my life matter beyond what I can give?
You've promised me a few future, but you've not promised me freedom.
And it changed the way we all thought about who Hagar was.
Thought about Hagar as a person, a human being reaching out for something.
Then the Daughters of Zelophehad.
Mala, Noah, Hogla, Milcah and Tirzah.
Anyone know? Anyone ever heard of the Daughters of Zelophehad before?
Except for the women who acted out this part in a tradition that often leaves women unnamed. The fact that we know all five of these women's names is noteworthy. And you've never heard of them or know their story.
So their father died, leaving five daughters and no sons. By law, they could not inherit his wealth.
The women argued amongst themselves.
Should they call out this injustice?
Right, Patty? Should they call out this injustice or simply accept their fate?
It was the law after all.
They summoned their courage and together, buoying each other up, had the courage to go and confront Moses. And pleading their case, Moses took it directly to God.
And do you know what God said?
You know, they're right. It isn't fair if a man has no sons, give the inheritance to his daughters, right? This was groundbreaking in rabbinic tradition. Their case became A model of legal argumentation.
These five daughters, the daughters are cited in the Talmud as women who understood the law better than the administrators and used it to demand justice. They're held up not just as recipients of divine favor, but as legal minds, smart women who knew exactly what they were doing.
They actually changed Jewish inheritance law. And that is so cool. And yet we've never heard of that them.
So we honor them today, then, the group of women who looked at Rizpah. Has anyone heard of Rizpah?
No.
Right.
So Rizba.
Rizba was the mother of two of Saul's children. And after Saul died, God was angry at Saul. And so after Saul died, there was a famine for three years.
David blamed Saul for the famine and killed seven of his children.
And the group that had Rizba, who they'd never heard of before, rewrote the story a little bit, focusing not on just what she did, but imagining who she might have been as a loving mother. And they also imagined how the women in the community might have supported her in her work. The Rizba beneath the actions. I'm going to invite Ruth Glass to come up and read us their version of Rizba's story.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Word was brought to Rizba, the daughter of Ayah, of the death of her two sons and five other sons of soldiers, all of whom she considered her own.
When she learned the bodies of the seven young men were left unburied, she knew that she could not let them be desecrated. She quickly took a mat and went to sit with the bodies.
Night and day, Rizba sat, driving away birds and animals, intent on devouring what was left of the men.
Her friends heard of her personal sacrifice and brought her sustenance, thereby supporting her protection of Saul's children.
The women of the village cared for Rizba as she cared for Saul's children.
She remained not sure what would happen next, but knowing she was being true to love, she was a mother to the end.
Rizba was totally unaware that her selflessness and sacrifice were noteworthy. She had no idea how holy she was. But her selfless acts, her true protection of Saul's children, and her singular commitment were brought to the attention of David, who reconsidered his own actions.
Rizpah's loving act changed the king's heart.
He gathered the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan, then came to Rizbah and acknowledged her sacrifice. He gathered the bones of the young men and buried them as they should have been.
When David acknowledged Rizpah's sacrifice and honored the deceased. God blessed the land by ending the famine.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Thank you, Ruth.
Powerful.
Her actions changed David's heart. That's beautiful.
So we learned these stories and got to know these women in a really fun and playful way. We had a great time with it. We laughed a lot. We talked very deeply, and we wondered why we don't know more about these women.
And then Ruth asked, I thought, a really beautiful, important question, because we know that these stories were included by a group of men. Women didn't get a say in that. And her question was, what men made sure that these stories of women were included in our story.
And it's a great question.
We'll never know.
Those were the women we met together on Saturday afternoon. But there are a few more I want you to know. Women who were woven through our weekend. First, Anna. Do any of you know Anna?
All right. Her story is told in three lines in Luke. That's all she gets. Anna is called a prophet, which is unusual for a woman in scripture. So we know immediately we're dealing with someone special.
She is one of the first people in Luke's Gospel to proclaim the significance of Jesus publicly.
And Anna shows us that women's strength doesn't always come through confronting power like the daughters.
Sometimes it comes through faith, faithful presence, through paying attention.
Anna was widowed as a young woman just seven years after marrying, and she spent the rest of her life in the temple.
Literally.
She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.
I always imagine that those women who brought food and sustenance to Rizpah probably brought food and sustenance to Anna.
Anna, when we meet her, is 84 years old and has probably been in the temple for 60 years.
When Mary and Joseph walked into the temple carrying the baby Jesus, Anna knew instantly who he was, and she proclaims him to all.
But we know very little about Anna other than those three short little lines, Right?
Luckily, there's a poem about Anna written by a woman named Mary Lou Sleevy that helps us to imagine her more fully. It's a very, very long poem, like 100 pages, you know, one of those epic poems. But we read excerpts from, from the poem that gave us a sense of who Anna might have been.
Again, creatively, Sleevy's poem gives Anna the voice and the inner life that Scripture doesn't. I'd like to invite Joanne to come forward and read us part of the poem.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: An excerpt from Anna by Mary Lou Slievey.
Her laugh is Simply happy.
Exuberantly, Anna recognizes a child at his presentation in the temple.
She talks of him in no uncertain terms.
Her particular words are shrouded. But delight registers profoundly under the veil of widow black.
A lifetime of focus is all in her eyes.
The old woman is truly beautiful and beautifully true.
Anna comes to her moment laughing.
Her face, the free expression of all that's inside.
Those eyes have twinkled as she wrinkled constantly in the temple, the temple of her heart.
She became familiar with every inch of her living space, including its limitations and the beneficence of Sister Wisdom dwelling therein.
Anna liked the view from her window and a comfortable chair.
She shoulders him closely, absorbing the softness, his heartbeat, his breathing, experiencing a benediction of years between them.
Anna, dimming, eyes still forward looking, crinkle with joy.
Anna is anticipation, solitude. As Anna lived it lessens fear of the death moment.
With God.
One never stops saying hello.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Thank you, Joanne. That's how I imagine Anna.
Beautiful.
There are two more women I want you to know. The first is the woman who anoints Jesus in Luke.
Again, Jimmy, you read it from your heart.
So you kind of blew my entry, like. We listened with our brains, now we have to listen with our hearts. Because that was so beautiful. It was really beautiful.
You are familiar with this woman? We just read her story. And we read her story frequently. But we began Saturday morning with a guided meditation on this passage.
It provoked probably our deepest, most wonderful conversation of the weekend.
We each saw this woman through new eyes. We understood the incredible courage it took for her to enter that room full of men and unseen women who were quietly serving them in the background. Right?
All of whom judged her. And I want to take you into that room for just a minute. I want you to, if you're comfortable, close your eyes. I'm going to do a mini version of what we did on Saturday morning. So if you're comfortable doing so, close your eyes. Or just relax yourself and take a deep breath and listen.
It is a well to do house in Galilee. A prosperous house.
Lamp oil burning at the entrance.
You can smell the oil, the smell of fresh bread, lentil stew thick with cumin.
You can see men reclining at the table with their wine.
It's the kind of dinner where everyone is watching each other, managing the impressions they are making.
Can you see it?
Smell it?
And then she comes in.
Everyone knows who she is.
You can feel the shift the moment she appears.
Conversation doesn't stop, but it changes.
Eyes move towards her.
Something in the room tightens, tenses.
You can feel that she is the town harlot.
That's the only thing they know about her.
She knows what they think.
She's always known.
She walked through that door knowing and she came anyway.
She makes her way to Jesus and kneels at his feet.
And she begins to weep.
Not politely, not quietly, the way the body weeps when it has been holding something for a very long time and finally sets it down.
She loosens her hair and wipes her tears from his feet.
Sit with that for a minute, wiping his tears from his feet.
She opens a jar. Expensive. The most precious thing she owns. Perhaps. Can you smell the frankincense and sandalwood? Maybe a little bit of orange fills the room.
And she takes the perfumed ointment and anoints his feet with it, lovingly caressing his feet. Feet as the fragrance fills the room.
Everyone smells it at the same moment. You can't be in that room and not experience what she is giving.
Simon watches and he thinks, if this man were a real prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is.
But Jesus doesn't pull away. His feet watch her.
She's not performing.
She's not managing.
She is pouring out all of her love in that room.
And yet the room is still judging her.
Simon is still thinking his thoughts.
Nothing has changed except that she is here and she is pouring out everything she has and she is not stopping.
And then Jesus turns to her directly in front of everyone and he says, your sins are forgiven.
Your faith has saved you.
Go in peace.
She came into that room carrying everything she has that the jar, the tears, the weight of what the world had made of her.
She left with courage, her humanity, her true history, her capacity to love and Jesus freeing are forgiven.
Go in peace.
If your eyes are closed, you may open them.
It's such a tactile passage. It's quite beautiful, but if you allow yourself to really get into it. Our conversation centered around her strength and her courage, but also wondering how was she changed by that experience.
She walked into that room knowing exactly what everyone thought of her.
She walked out knowing what Jesus thought of her and perhaps what she could now believe of herself.
Our final woman is Miriam.
We ended the retreat with Miriam. We started our worship today with Miriam.
Miriam represents hope and joy.
We know a lot about Miriam, but still most of us don't know a whole lot about her. Miriam is the older sister of Aaron and Moses, probably about 8 or 9 when Moses was born.
We meet her first as a child, unnamed, standing at the edge of the Nile. Her baby brother has been hidden in a basket. You all know the story, right?
Pharaoh has ordered every Hebrew boy to be killed. Mom puts the baby in the basket, walks away. Probably can't bear to see what happens. But Miriam stays and watches, hidden.
And when Pharaoh's daughter finds the basket and opens it, this child, eight or nine years old, a slave girl with no power and no status, walks up to a princess of Egypt and offers to find a Hebrew wet nurse.
Moses. Mother.
And Moses is raised, in effect, by his mother because of the quick thinking and the courage of this little girl to walk up to a princess of Egypt and say, I'll find you a wet nurse. Thinking on her feet.
We don't learn her name until Exodus 15, when she picks up her tambourine. We'll talk about that in a second, but I want to jump ahead for a minute to numbers. Numbers 12. Specifically, Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses, and God strikes her with leprosy. Not Aaron, mind you, just Miriam. Think about that for a minute.
Moses begs God to heal her. And God says if she. She stays outside of the camp for seven days, when she comes back, she'll be healed.
The entire community waits for her. They refuse to leave her behind.
For me, that tells me how much they loved and respected her. She mattered to them. And so they waited for the week.
And then in numbers 20, which was, I don't really know how much further, but they have moved forward. They're in a new location. A lot has happened.
There is one sentence.
Miriam died there and was buried there.
No elaboration, no mourning, described one sentence. And immediately after her death, the people have no water.
In Rabbinic tradition, a miraculous well had followed Israel through the wilderness. They called it Miriam's well.
When she died, the water stopped. She carried them through the wilderness, and they didn't fully know it until she was gone.
So I want to go back again to Exodus 15 when we learn Miriam's name, back to that moment after the crossing of the Red Sea. The water has closed behind them, and they are standing on the other shore, free, truly free. For the first time in living memory, they are free.
Before anyone has processed what just happened or been able to feel the rush of relief, Miriam picks up her tambourine.
She brought that tambourine with her.
She brought it into Egypt, into slavery, through plagues across the sea, on dry ground. She carried a tambourine through all of it, as if she knew, as if she trusted, even in the darkest years, that there would someday be a day worth dancing.
She doesn't wait for Permission. She doesn't wait for Moses to organize a party. She goes out ahead of everyone, dancing and singing and shaking her tambourine. And all the women follow her, dancing and singing and shaking their tambourines.
The body knows joy before the mind catches up. That is Miriam.
These tambourines hanging around the church were decorated by the women who were in island park two weeks ago. They decorated them with the ribbons and paint and little felt stickers and things. And when our final service was over on Sunday morning, I put on this journey by the Resistance Revival Chorus.
And we all shook our tambourines and a bunch of old, sort of uptight white ladies. Not old, mixed ages. Some were young, some were old, danced and shook our tambourines, and it was fabulous.
Miriam was fully present with us that morning.
And she belongs to all of us, not just the women of the retreat, all of us.
She is a part of our story. She is a part of all of us. So why have I spent this morning introducing you to these women?
Because they are ours.
They are part of our story, our scripture, our tradition, our inheritance. And most of us have walked past them our entire lives without stopping to look.
These women have been waiting a long time for someone to take them through seriously. The women of Gathering Women have been doing that work for four years now.
Getting to know them, sitting with their stories, arguing about them, laughing with them, weeping a little, sometimes a lot.
And discovering again and again that when we stop long enough to really look, we find women full of complexity and courage and grief and. And joy throughout our story.
Women who challenge what we think we know about Scripture, about faith, and even about God.
Because this isn't simply about recovering women's voices or finding ourselves in their stories. It's about discovering a more expansive, more surprising God.
One who has been present in these stories all along, waiting for. For us to notice.
And perhaps that's what Miriam understood. She carried the tambourine with her through slavery and across the sea because she trusted that there would be a day worth dancing for.
And that, my friends, is today.
Amen.
It.
