Welcome to Wading in the Waters of the Word™ with A Women’s Lectionary
Gentle Readers, Followers, Preachers, Pray-ers, Thinkers and Visitors, Welcome!
Welcome to this space where you can share your worship – liturgy and preaching – preparations – using A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. We begin in Advent 2021 with Year W, a single, standalone Lectionary volume that includes readings from all four Gospels. (We will continue with Year A in Advent 2022 to align with the broader Church.) In advance of each week, I will start the conversation and set the space for you all. I will come through time to time, but this is your space. Welcome!
Media Resources
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 1, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 1 | Translating Women Back Into Scripture for A #WomensLectionary
This session introduces participants to frequently unexamined aspects of biblical translation in commonly available bibles and the intentional choices made in “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.”
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 2, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 2 | Reading Women in Scripture for Preaching, Study, and Devotion
This session provides an overview of “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” its genesis, production, and content. There is also an in-depth exploration of specific passages appointed for specific days including time for public and private reading and discussion.
Lectionary Lectio
Click the Comment links to add to the conversation
The Will of God
Proper 23, Year C, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–10; Psalm 133:1–3; 2 Corinthians 2:14–16; Mark 14:3–9
“The Will of God.” Not this Wil of God (one L). The will of God with two L’s.
Let us pray:
May God who is Majesty, Mercy, and Mystery speak words of life, love, and liberation through these words. Amen.
God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberation to the captives,
and freedom to the prisoners…
to comfort all children, women, and men who mourn…
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall restore the ruined cities…
With one word, עֲנָוִים, rendered as two in translation, “the oppressed,” the prophet identifies the very specific kind of oppression that is the result of manufactured poverty; both that poverty and the oppression that maintains it, trapping people in cycles of poverty. The prophet is preaching about profit and it is going to get political because, the use and abuse of money at a societal, structural, level is always political. So this is going to be a political sermon for:
It is the will of God that this good news be proclaimed to those oppressed by the wealthy:
It is the will of God that the the hearts of the brokenhearted be stitched back together.
It is the will of God that liberation comes to all held in captivity.
It is the will of God that those unjustly or justly incarcerated be set free.
It is the will of God that all who mourn, be they children, women, men, non-binary persons, trans folk, be comforted.
Liberation is the will of God.
Restoration is the will of God.
This is the good news God sent God’s servant, more than 2500 years ago, to declare to their people who had been crushed and broken by wave after wave after wave of invasion, colonization and, oppression. But who also, in the beginning of their restoration, broke into factions along economic lines and became the oppressors of their own people as well.
This prophetic sermonic poem is addressed to the oppressed, the poor who are kept in poverty and then punished for their poverty. It is addressed to the brokenhearted, to those in captivity, to those in prison without preconditions or exclusions based on guilt or innocence; it is addressed to those who mourn all of these devastations and more.
But it is written for all of who will hear and read, knowing that some will not be among those living under the oppression of a man-made poverty, brokenhearted, held captive or imprisoned – rightly or wrongly. These words will reach the ears of those who have their thumbs on the scales of justice and the economy, those who are indifferent in the face of the human suffering from which they profit, those who barter and bargain with the lives of others, those who cage people like animals, and those who pervert justice to such a degree that the system breaks and kills those who are supposed to be in their care and custody. And the question is, who are you in the prophet’s audience? Who are we?
If we start by ticking off the elements of our identities, privileges and vulnerabilities, by acknowledging we are – most of us – Americans and Christians, we have already started on the side of the oppressors. Because, in spite of their inspiring foundational literature – and one might say scriptures, for the Constitution has near scriptural authority – in spite of the soaring hopes and aspirations (for some) of the foundational documents, this nation and the Church, in its long history, have been agents of oppression that did more to multiply and enshrine poverty – for some – than to relieve it. And neither has remediated all of the harm of its ancestors, from which they still benefit, down to the present day. For some, these privileges are nominal and in spite of our passports, we live under threat in this country. But within our religious and national identities, most of us without society preferred gender and orientation and ethnicity and physical abilities and migration, immigration and documentation status will find ourselves on the lists of the privileged and the vulnerable.
Yet there are other others who by their very being and doing participate in the structures of oppression and perpetuate them. And, at the same time most of the rest of us are complicit with them without conscious thought or intent; it is our tax dollars that are taken from native and rural hospitals and poor and underfunded schools and given to the wealthy who were already paying their children’s 30 and $50,000 a year tuition with ease.
Our tax dollars are used to fund the engines of war grinding the bodies of Palestinian people – babies, children, women, men, the elderly and disabled – grinding them into dust under their collapsed homes and hospitals. Our tax dollars are being used to form and fund a white supremacist militia to kidnap black and brown folk off the street and ship them to random countries without regard to their citizenship or legal standing in this country. But more than that, without regard to their humanity or their place in the fabric of our lives as family and friends and, not just community members, but community builders. While some of us wrestle and resist being part of the structures of oppression that hurt us and those for whom we care.
And be clear, it is a white supremacist project even when black, brown and beige folk are participating in it, even at very senior levels. The ground troops of white supremacy have always included those who aspire to whiteness – not the artificially constructed racialized ethnicity, but the power structure built around that constructed identity. Some are implicated by much more than the passive use of our tax dollars.
And some of us have been broken by these systems and structures functioning just as they were designed. To keep folk poor. To keep healthcare unaffordable. To hoard the stolen resources of this country. To use the labor, skills, and ingenuity of our neighbors and co-laborers from around the world and then discard and criminalize them for having shared their gifts and talents to make us be more healthy, eat more deliciously, see more beauty and envision what we could not have imagined by ourselves. Who are you in in the prophet’s audience?
To those who are oppressed by the wealthy and the systems they have built to profit off the labor and ingenuities of others and, keep workers trapped in jobs without enough hours and and salaries and wages at or below the poverty line, often with no benefits and in some cases subject to wage theft, the prophet declares a message of good news.
To those whose hearts and hopes are broken, the prophet says that though it may not look like it now, you will not always be in this ragged broken place. There is no person, no betrayal, no wicked system whose hurt and harm cannot be healed. There is no heart so broken that it cannot be made whole. These broken hearts of ours can be bound like a broken limb and held in place by a supportive embrace until they are strong enough to navigate the world at their own pace. We are called to bind up each other’s wounds, to hold each other in our brokenness, even as we are being held. The prophet does not predicate the comfort of the brokenhearted on the destruction or reversal of any of the systems of oppression that hold the people captive. We don’t have to wait for the world to be made right in order for we, ourselves, to be made whole or to hold others on their journey to wholeness.
And to those who are held captive and imprisoned, physically and metaphorically, to those seized by military forces denied their legal, civil and human legal rights, to those snatched up and roughed up by policing and civil forces because of the color of their skin and the place that they are in, to those held captive by desires, diseases and addictions against which they struggle and sometimes lose, to those held captive and imprisoned in communities without public transportation or grocery stores or – still in this day and age – running water, the prophet declares freedom and liberation.
This is more than the physical turning of the keys and opening prison doors for, the prisons in minds and hearts have to be not just opened, but deconstructed. Dismantling the structures that imprison, that lead to incarceration is the way to liberation. Dismantling the precursors of poverty, lack of opportunity, over policing, vigilantism, underfunded and under-resourced education, racial, ethnic and cultural biases – dismantling these will set folk free. Free from predatory behavior born of previous cycles of predation, rage, hopelessness and helplessness and, free from those who would prey on them.
Liberation is the will of God. But precious few of us are partnering with God in this holy work. Perhaps because it seems like so much, too much. But God does not ask us to tear down all of these systems by ourselves. God calls us to do the work of liberation that is ours to do with what we have in our hands wherever we are.
Jesus said:
For always shall you have the poor with you
and whenever you wish you can do good by them…
Poverty endures because we as a society, and sometimes as individuals, choose not to address the causes nor even the symptoms of poverty with any regularity or consistency. Not enough of us bring what we have, whether it’s the widow’s mite or our prize possession alabaster jar to the work. And so poverty persists.
The good news in this passage is not that Jesus will come and fix it. The good news is that we have it within us, within our hands to do more than just proclaim this gospel, this good news, but also, to do it. To live it. To undermine and even tear down the structures that oppress people. To feed the poor and address the structural causes of poverty. To fight against oppression with the tools and resources we have at hand. It’s not easy work and it is not fast work but it is our work.
The unnamed woman whose gospel is to be proclaimed and preached in memory of her – even as the recorders and preservers of the gospels contrive to do so while erasing her name or lumping her in with all of the other Mary’s – this woman did the part of the work that was hers to do. It was not to sell this precious vessel and its expensive oil to feed the poor. It was to comfort a man already identified as an enemy of the state and its dictator, soon to be placed, unjustly, on death row. To claim his body for God so that no matter what state sponsored torturers and executioners did to it, he would be reminded by the scent of that precious oil that permeated the mud and blood, of who he was, of whose he was. The epistle uses that very image, of a fragrant aroma, to identify us as belonging with and to Jesus. We don’t all have the same work. It’s not always financial, even when combating poverty. But if we all do our work all of the work will get done: resisting, disrupting, undermining the structures that oppress and hold captive, that break and wound hearts and keep the poor poor.
And then:
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall restore the ruined cities…
The survivors of every kind of destruction and devastation shall rebuild. And they shall raise up. And they shall restore. They will rebuild their families, homes and communities. They shall raise up children and grandchildren. They shall raise up new life from the soil that had only seen blood and death. They shall raise up new homes on new foundations. And they shall restore their neighborhoods, homes and schools. They shall see liberation right here, in this world. Because liberation is not some cloud bound heavenly reward. Liberation is freedom from oppression right here. They shall transform the world around them. And they shall be transformed. Just look at Jesus, his ruined, devastated body raised up to new life.
Liberation is the will of God.
Restoration is the will of God.
Transformation is the will of God.
Resurrection is the will of God.
It is not enough to crack the foundations of the structures that oppress us, our friends and kin. We are called to the sacred work of rebuilding and restoring. A deconstruction without reconstruction is not liberation. But when we do our work, pour our oil, stand with the condemned, comfort those who mourn, wrap our arms around the brokenhearted, reject the kingship of the national tyrant, preach and prophesy, live this gospel, and when necessary, lay down our lives for the sake of the gospel then, may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Liberator Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do God’s will, working among us that which is pleasing in God’s sight, through Jesus our Liberator, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
May God the restorer of broken hearts, minds and bodies
Accompany you through the gaps and brokenness in your life
Nurture, sustain and transform you to change the world around you. Amen.
Wisdom the Mother of Salvation
Wisdom the Mother of Salvation
Epiphany V: A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church Year C
Proverbs 8:1–4, 10–17; Psalm 111; James 3:13–18 ; Luke 7:18–35
Does not Wisdom call…
Holy Fount of Wisdom, I dare suggest that is not the question. The question for our time is not, “is Wisdom calling.” It is, is anybody listening?
Wisdom is calling. Wisdom is calling. Wisdom the Mother of Salvation is calling.
Let us pray:
Sophia with Dove, Sue Ellen Parkinson
My prayer is Miriam’s prayer,
Mother Mary’s prayer – Let it be.
Let it be with your woman-servant
according to your word.
With these words
the Word of God was formed
in the woman of God.
On this day, as on that day,
let the daughter of God
bring forth the word of God again. Amen.
Wisdom is calling gold plated tin pot dictators in white houses. Wisdom is calling the worshipers of white supremacy. Wisdom is calling plutocrats and autocrats. Wisdom is calling the selfish, the warmongers, the bullies, the unmerciful; those to whom James chapter 3 speaks. Wisdom is calling those who use their power for the benefit of those who look like them, think like them, pray like them, love like them, lie like them, cheat like them, defraud like them, steal like them, discriminate like them, hate like them. Wisdom is calling the fake and the phony in pulpits and at podiums and in political office. But is anyone listening?
Wisdom is calling in Proverbs. Take my instruction and not silver, and knowledge but not choice gold. But the ones most in need of instruction at Wisdom’s knee are hoarding silver and hungry for gold though they are full to bursting and vomit it out to make room for more. They build enterprises whose value could feed hungry children but instead, launch midlife crisis phallus shaped rockets into the already crowded heavens. Hungry and hoarding and hungry for yet more. Wealth enough to buy a small country or an even smaller president is not enough. Wisdom is calling and they won’t even take the call. Wisdom is calling those robbing the Earth of her resources, polluting her seas and skies and stripping and razing her forests and jungles, bleaching her coral and starving her children while they gorge themselves. Wisdom is calling.
Wisdom is calling to us too, for all the the woman-born, all earth’s children are all her children. Mother is calling. She who is Understanding calls the mighty and the minute, the wealthy and the ones in want, the conqueror and the conquered, the pious and the pitiless, the innocent and the iniquitous. Mother Wisdom is calling out in our first lesson:
By me royals reign,
and rulers decree what is just.
By me governors govern,
and nobles, all who judge rightly.
If I were the kind of preacher of take the poetic imagination of scripture literally, I might say that Wisdom is calling but the phone lines and fiber cables and satellites are down. For there is no Wisdom in the governing structures of the land when legal asylum claims are dismissed, appointments broken and websites and apps taken down; not just to suspend operations, but to create confusion and fear, weaponized to intimidate.
There is no Wisdom in a land where governors round up suspected immigrants or anyone else with brown and black skin and spend millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars shipping people, families and children to communities where different values and policies predominate; but, refuse to coordinate, to make the lives of the hungry poor even more difficult and as a first step towards their white American, Ameriklan paradise.
Weaponizing God’s children, Mother Wisdom’s children, in their petty power games, while women bleed to death and die from easily treatable miscarriages and pregnancy complications or, after spending days in their car or on a plane until they can find someone who can and will treat them often, at the cost of their fertility; in pro-life states with the highest maternal morbidity in the nation.
Wisdom is calling governors and legislators and those who would puppeteer presidents. Wisdom is calling those once-noble black robed judges who sit high and low and rip the right to medical care from women and trans children and their parents. Wisdom is calling. Pick up the phone America – that’s with KKKs. Wisdom, the Mother of Salvation is calling.
Wisdom is calling. And just who, might you ask, is this God-like, Goddess-like Wisdom? The Scriptures tell us in Proverbs – in today’s reading in chapter 8 and earlier on in chapter 3:
She is the Divine Subcontractor: the Ageless God through Wisdom founded the Earth.
She is the Sanctified Street Walker: crying out at the corners and in the alleyways.
She is the Holy Hostess: setting a table for the simple, the foolish and the ignorant.
She is the Womb Of Life: the Maker of All created her as the beginning of this journey, as the first of their work from the time before time.
She is a Tree Of Life: Shelter under her shade and suckle on her fruit.
The embrace of Wisdom was so scintillating that these few verses in Proverbs were not enough and there is an entire book devoted to her glory and her splendor. Wisdom – one of those books some think are extra, but are canonical to the majority of Christians on the planet; for they were indeed included in the very first two testament Christian Bibles and have been faithfully passed down to us who still deem them scripture. And Wisdom chapter 6 – my students would say that was not on the assigned reading but a professor and a preacher can add an extra texts anytime she chooses! Wisdom chapter 6 says:
The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction,
and concern for instruction is love of her,
and love of her is the keeping of her laws,
and giving heed to her laws is assurance of immortality,
and immortality brings one near to God…
Wisdom is calling. Is anyone listening?
Is anyone listening to a Wisdom that says truth and understanding are better than silver and gold. Does anyone want to hear anything about a Wisdom that is, in the words of James: unselfish, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere?
Is anyone listening? For that matter, is anyone listening to Jesus?
John listened to the talk about Jesus and he was determined to find out if this holy gossip was indeed the holy gospel. He sent the two of his disciples who asked their question and they listened, perhaps with bated breath: are you the one or should we wait for another? Because we have been waiting Jesus. We have been waiting for you to fix this mess. I mean, that’s what John’s disciples were saying 2000 years ago. We have been waiting, living under the subjugation of this occupying empire that thinks nothing of throwing us to the ground with a police boot, I mean a Roman boot, or a knee upon our necks.
In my sanctified imagination, like our Mexican and Guatemalan kinfolk, John’s disciples said: we go hungry while the food we grow is taken in taxes and tariffs to feed them and, they grow fat on our labor but consider us an infestation in our own country. Some of us have been uprooted and had our homes seized so that they could build palaces upon the bones of our dead. So Jesus, we are listening for a word of wisdom. Are you the one?
Are you the One we can trust with our hopes and dreams; our sorrows and our schemes. Are you the One? Are you the One Jesus, who will redeem us from this fascist self-absorbed emperor and his greed and his ruthlessness and petty violence and all the ways it beats down upon us, denying us our very human dignity, are you the One? Are you the One who will liberate us, free us, save us? Jesus, are you the One? Are you the One they say is God’s child? Are you the One whose mother said the wings of Wisdom enfolded her in a holy embrace impregnating her with the love of God, are you the One?
Blessed is the one who has the good sense not to be scandalized by Jesus. Jesus said:
Blessed is the one who is not offended by me, by my words, by my witness, by my wisdom.
But some of his kinfolk and his skin folk rejected his teaching. His disciples began singing, “They not like us.” And the damnable Christian tradition of emphasizing the Jewishness of some of those who did not accept his teaching laid the foundation for Christian antisemitism and anti-Judaism. The folk that turned away from Jesus and his teaching were no more or less Jewish than Jesus’s disciples. There were Pharisees and biblical scholars (you know them as scribes) in both groups. Paul never stopped being a Pharisee. To be perfectly honest, Jesus was probably a Pharisee by formation. He never rejected his own Judaism. He saw it more expansively than some of the folk around him could comprehend.
Then Jesus answered them, “Go and take this news to John – run tell dat – what you have seen and heard:
those who were blind receive sight,
those who were lame walk,
those who were diseased-in-skin are cleansed,
those who were deaf hear,
those who were dead are raised,
those who are poor have good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the woman or man who is not scandalized by me.
Jesus called the crowd out on it hypocrisy, the whole crowd, everybody in the street: women and men, children and elders, Jews and gentiles, enslaved persons and free persons, those who owned slaves and those who owned nothing, folk just trying to get through the marketplace without running into traffic.
Jesus said they were like children who didn’t know what they wanted. Or, they knew exactly what they wanted but Jesus would not comply: dance when we say dance, weep when we say weep, jump when we say jump. Assume the position young black and Hispanic men. Comply, comply, comply! Submit. But there are some things you don’t submit to. There are some things you don’t comply with. We are living in an age where the test of faith is not just whether you proclaim Jesus as the Messiah and Liberator but whether you comply with and submit to the evil of this age.
They were arguing over the form, expression and public facing witness of religious faith. John came as a monastic and they said that’s demonic. Jesus came on the get down, laughing and drinking – and I mean drinking – and eating and they said Jesus was a drunk and a glutton. You know those folk: preachers shouldn’t look like that, dress like that, go to those places, drink like that, eat like that – especially if it’s expensive. But on the other hand, poor folk shouldn’t eat like that, spend their benefits like that. They are the folk who tell you you are too charismatic or not charismatic enough; you preach too long, too loud or your sermons are too short and too monotone.
But Jesus said, that’s all right. They can call me everything but a child of God for, Wisdom is
vindicated by all her children. Wisdom, the Mother of Salvation, his other mother. Jesus had two mommies: the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit who is female according to the feminine gender with which she is always articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures of Jesus. That’s a whole other Trinity right there.
In his mother tongues, the languages he learned at the knee of his holy mother Miriam called Mary to erase her Jewishness, in Hebrew and in Aramaic, Wisdom and the Spirit of God were feminine. Jesus would have had to have invented an imaginary language in order to refer to the Holy Spirit as he/him. Remember that the next time you read your Bibles and remember that translation choices have been made for you by scholars who sometimes not only don’t look like you but who don’t even see you. Divinity was more than a father to him; his God language was flexible and inclusive reflecting his understanding of God and of Wisdom, the Mother of Salvation; perhaps they were one and the same.
Wisdom is calling. Are you listening? Or did you miss her because her voice was in a different register than you were expecting, than the one in which you were told power resides.
Jesus told John’s listening disciple: One day, Wisdom will be vindicated by all her children. Though they be pressed hard and long, Wisdom’s children will endure to bear witness that Wisdom’s ways are God’s ways. When it looks like it’s all over; when it looks like the enemy has won, just remember: Wisdom will be vindicated by all her children. We are in hard times right now. Harder times are yet coming. And not everyone will make it. Yet and still Jesus says: Wisdom will be vindicated by all her children. Because empires fall prey to their own rot and ruin. And God’s children, like Jesus, God’s very own most precious Child, though they die; yet shall they live. That was the gossip turned gospel on the lips of Jesus.
Jesus is that One. The one who raises the living from the dead. That one. Jesus is the one. The one who is born in spit and shit yet for whom the angel sang. Jesus is that one. The one who hails, not just from the line of David, but from the line of Bath-Sheba. Jesus is that one. Jesus is the one. Jesus is that one who touched the untouchable and forgave the unforgivable and loved the unlovable while seeing the invisible and doing the impossible. Jesus is the one whom the grave could not hold. Jesus is that one. Jesus is the one who opens the door of salvation into his mother’s house. Jesus is that one. Jesus is the one who is endures eternally as the love of God poured into human form. Jesus is that one. Jesus is the one whose life eternal is offered to us through the bloody passage of Calvary. Jesus is that one. Jesus is God’s child. Jesus is Mary’s child. Jesus is wisdom’s child. And Jesus is our elder brother, our holy sibling our hope of liberation here in this world and, our way of salvation and in the one to come.
Jesus is the one of God and God’s Child, the one of Wisdom and Wisdom’s Child.
In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s womb, walked the way of suffering as one of the woman-born, and woke from the grasp of death in the deep darkness of the morning. Amen.