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

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How Long O Lord is a Womanish Question

21 July: Proper 11, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church

Ruth 1:1–14; Psalm 80:1–7; 1 Thessalonians 5:12–24; Mark 12:41–44Let us pray:

May God who is Majesty, Mercy and Mystery speak words of life, hope and healing through these words. Amen.

 

How long O Lord?!

The cry of the psalmist is the cry of God’s people across the ages, how long? How long will this go on? The “this” changes from age to age but the how long does not change. It is a cry full of hope and faith and trust in the faithfulness of God.

How long O Lord is a cry that begins with the knowledge of God: I know who you are and what you can do. I know your great power. I know your words of love and covenant and promise. I know what you have done for my ancestors. I know you. You are a God who lets yourself be known. I know you.

 How long O Lord is a testimony to the power of God: You are the God of Hagar’s spring of salvation, saving water in the desert that would have killed her and her child. You are Miriam’s walkway through the waters of captivity. You are Deborah’s sword and Delilah’s escape plan. You are Esther’s courage, and Ruth’s security. You are the God who saves. How long O Lord is a cry that signifies relationship.

How long O Lord is not a rhetorical question. It seeks a response in the same way as, “how long will you let the dishes pile up in the kitchen sink” or, “how long are you going to keep dealing with that pain rather than go to the doctor.” It does not necessarily seek a response in words or a specific measure of time, though that would be acceptable. It is a call for action.

How long O Lord is bold and brash and full of sass like womanist biblical interpretation, for it includes a note of accusation. How long O Lord is an accusation in that the question assumes and presumes that were God to turn her attention to the matter at hand, she could resolve it in the blink of an eye, at the flutter of a divine eyelash, but for some unknown, some unfathomable reason, God is not intervening. God is not responding to the pleas and prayers of the psalmist or her people.

How long O Lord is a declaration that something is wrong in and with this world, something that only God can repair.

In the psalm appointed for today’s reading, the psalmist asks, “how long will you fume at the prayers of your people?” How long will you be so angry with us that you won’t even hear us and turn your head in disgust at the sound of our prayers? How long O Lord?! How long?!

We don’t know how long the psalmist and her people have been crying out or what it was that led to this prayer. We just know that her prayer has gone unanswered long enough for her to knock on heaven’s door and cry out, “How long O Lord?!” As her prayer of petition continues the psalmist reminds God of her saving work, of her might and miracles from ages past but, having received no response or divine intervention, concludes the psalm by continuing to cry out, “How long O Lord.

This is the hard word of today’s lessons. One we already know. Sometimes we pray and cry and nothing happens. Sometimes God does not answer us or even seem to hear us. We pass the mantle of prayer down from generation to generation hoping that if God does not answer our prayer, she will hear and answer the prayer of our children or our children’s children. Sometimes waiting on God is an intergenerational affair. But sometimes God is waiting on us.

Naomi got tired of waiting and she decided to take matters into her own hands. Her husband had died and left her with two sons and they went into Moab to kidnap women to be their wives. That Ruth and Orpah were kidnapped is clear in the text in Hebrew but not always translated correctly. There is a long tradition of protecting the reputations of certain characters in older translations of scripture; which is ironic because so many characters in scripture already have bad reputations and the text loves to show that God can and will work with and through anyone and sometimes anything, whether it’s a talking donkey or dirty David. That’s why we biblical scholars continue to translate the scriptures and publish new Bibles and new works of translation.

And just as Sarah’s and Abraham’s scheme to provide the heir God had promised them on their own by forcing the young woman they enslaved to become pregnant and carry a child she did not choose to conceive failed, leading to perpetual conflict between Ishmael and Israel, Naomi’s plan failed and her sons died without providing her grandchildren. She had no male heir or protector to claim the family land and provide her with security in her senior years or even at the present moment. All she had was her two daughters-in-law who had every reason to abandon her to her own fate because she and her sons had essentially trafficked them, forcing them into marriage and intimacy they did not choose.

One of her daughters-in-law, Orpah, seized the freedom Naomi offered and returned to her native land; perhaps this was an answer to her prayers which go unrecorded in scripture. The other daughter-in-law stayed with Naomi, their lives and fates intertwined and interwoven throughout the rest of their stories. It would be through this woman, Ruth, that Naomi’s prayers would be answered; it would be through Ruth’s body that Naomi got her security. But we know nothing of Ruth’s prayers. Ruth and Naomi may not have been praying the same prayers.

Sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers and sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone else. And sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone who has done us wrong, done harm to others, or done great harm to this world. Sometimes the answer to “how long” is how long will it take for us to respond to the needs around us and let God use us as the answer to someone else’s prayer. But be clear, letting God use us is not the same as letting other people use or abuse us. And when God takes the tattered threads of our lives after we have been ravaged by someone else, and weaves a new story for us out of answered prayer, that does not ever justify harm or abuse at the hands of someone else.

The small line in our epistle reading from 1 Thessalonians shows us how we might just be the answer to someone else’s prayer, always seek to do good to one another and to all. Always keep your eyes open for opportunities to serve and to bless someone else. Some of us learned from Mr. Rogers that in moments of terrible catastrophe when we feel overwhelmed, like the wildfire on Maui a year ago, that we should look for the helpers, those who are doing whatever little bit it is they can because the work of helpers multiplies with each set of hands set to the task, each inventive problem-solving mind brought to bear and each coin given to the cause. Look for the helpers and become the helpers yourselves. I know this hale pule, this church, is full of helpers because that is aloha, ka uhane o Hawaii, the spirit of Hawaii.

That was the spirit of the wahine kane make hune in the Gospel, the poor widow woman, who gave all she had. When Jesus taught us that her two copper coins were more than the silver and gold of the others making their offerings, he offered us away to think beyond overly simplistic understandings of equality and equity. Some might say that if everyone gives five coins, that’s fair and balanced because the same standard applies to everyone. But everyone doesn’t have the same resources so for one person five coins might be sofa change and for another it might be their livelihood for the entire month. Jesus told us that she gave less and that in giving less she gave more. The widow, a woman whose poverty existed solely because of the structures and conditions placed on her by society, by her fellow human beings, by her own religious community, had nothing left, nothing left to buy bread for tomorrow. In our giving, we are called to give like this widow, gifts that are meaningful because they cost us something and not gifts from our excess that we won’t miss.

The epistle praises and encourages those who do the work to support the weak. But there are some folk today who would say that a program benefiting widows is inherently unfair because it excludes men. Even though men who lost their wives in the world of the text did not suffer the same disadvantages as women who lost their husbands, there are folk who would sue to get the church’s widow relief program shut down or expanded to include men who didn’t need the help. There are people today who spend their time looking for opportunities to keep those with only the equivalent of a handful of copper coins or even less from receiving what they need using false notions of equity and equality. Yet Jesus taught us that less is more, last is first and the values of the Majesty of God are upside down to this world.

But it is the values of this world and not the values of the Majesty of God that hold sway and keep women and children in poverty. How long O Lord will we watch the widow give her copper coins, praise her for her gift and do nothing to address her poverty? How long O Lord will we who benefit from the widow’s poverty be content to continue to accumulate and count our coins? How long O Lord will we continue to create a world in which women and girls are treated like second-class citizens and even in the wealthiest nation on earth can only ever hope to earn a portion of what a man makes for the same work? How long O Lord will we let the patriarchy in the church go unchallenged and uncorrected? How long O Lord will we be forced to live with the lie that this world ain’t no place for a girl child? How long O Lord will we accept the evils of this world like human trafficking and legislated legalized forced pregnancies? How long O Lord will we tell immigrants like Ruth and Naomi fleeing poverty and famine that they must stay on the other side of the border and we will not share our bread with them? How long O Lord will we simply accept the inequities of this world, shrug our shoulders and keep on perpetuating them? How long O Lord will folk cry to heaven like the psalmist because of the oppression we permit and perpetuate? How long O Lord?! How long?

Let It Go Girl: Of Camels and Hearts

Proper 10 AWL (A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church), Year B:

Esther 1:1–11; Psalm 49:5–15; James 5:1–6; Mark 10:17–31

Sermon starts around 28:40. 

Aloha kakahiaka! Good morning.

Let us pray:

May God who is Majesty, Mercy, and Mystery speak words of life, love, and liberation through these words. Amen.

We are continuing in the Gospel of Mark with A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church which presents us with challenging readings often too close to current events for our comfort, as they did last week. That is the defining essence of scripture, it is timeless; speaking to us in our world and in our circumstances – social, relational, political and today, financial – even when discussing events and stories that are thousands of years old. And we don’t always want to hear a word that gets under our skin and makes us feel uncomfortable. The preaching of Jesus like the scripture that preceded and surrounded him often pushes us and stretches us to grow through discomfort like theological growing pains.

Let me be honest, when I sat down to read today’s Gospel I came to this passage with baggage. Frustration that it’s a text that makes people uncomfortable and knowing it has been preached very badly. Understanding that some people feel targeted by sermons on this passage, no matter how well or prayerfully they are preached. Wondering if there is anything I can say that will keep a congregation from throwing rotten mangoes at me or sending one of the wardens around for a little chat.  

Then I read it again. And again. I read it out loud. And I invite and encourage you all and to join in that practice when you read scripture; read it more than once, in more than one version and read it out loud. Then I began to hear the text, to hear Jesus. To see this person that Jesus tells to sell all that they have and give it to the poor. That instruction has been so very often taken out of context and used to bludgeon and humiliate people with wealth.

Throughout the scriptures there is suspicion of and hostility towards people with wealth, the scriptures being written from the perspective of the poor or of those who are or are supposed to be their protectors and defenders from the rich who exploit them, even as there are other passages that portray wealth and riches as rewards from God.

The Israelites and the nation and monarchy they grew into had been enslaved, conquered, dispossessed, sent into exile and oppressed by wealthier nations who could afford to muster armies big enough to capture kingdoms because they were rich enough to do so. Simply put, wealth meant power.

Their society, like ours, was plagued by persons who profited unjustly at the expense of others, created the circumstances that led to poverty in some cases and in others kept people in poverty. Every day they saw how the privilege of wealth could be used violently against them. This is the voice we hear crying out in the psalm. That is the lens through which the Israelites saw the world and through which the scriptures were breathed into the world.

It is with this background that Jesus looked at the person who kneeled before him, looked at them and really saw them. Jesus looked at them and knew all about them: mistakes and wrong decisions, bad choices and hurtful words, anger and betrayal, dishonesty and disrespect, lust, greed and, bigotry. Whatever it was that was inside them, Jesus saw it all and loved them anyway. Jesus saw that person, who they were and knowing all of their hurts and hopes, dreams and schemes, Jesus loved them as Jesus loves us. That is the gospel that has so often been neglected in this passage. Jesus sees us, knows us, and loves us.

Jesus speaks to the person kneeling before him, who is saying all the right things – What must I do to inherit eternal life – and doing all the right things – keeping the commandments from their childhood, living a good religious, moral and ethical life. Isn’t that enough?

When Jesus speaks to the person kneeling before him, Jesus is also speaking to everyone around them in the street and, to us. They are not far from the marketplace where mamas brought Jesus their babies and the disciples tried to stop them. Jesus was surrounded and followed by a crowd breathlessly waiting to see what he would say or do next. And seeing his audience was on the edge of their seats, he seized the mic and seized the moment to preach a word about the seductive danger of wealth.

The word that Jesus, street corner preacher, poet, prophet and public theologian, proclaimed to disturb, unsettle and provoke those who would hear him then and read him now: …sell what you have, and give to the poor… How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the majesty of God!…It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the majesty of God. And then he dropped the mic.

As a preacher and teacher Jesus painted with words. Sometimes they were warm and comfortable – fear not little flock. Sometimes they were loud and harsh – you are children of your father the devil. Sometimes they were bright and illuminating – the Majesty of God is among and within you all. Sometimes they were bloody red words – The Son of Woman is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him. Sometimes they were shocking, provocative and disconcerting words like today’s lesson.

Jesus is preaching to this man about his wealth, his very many possessions, and Jesus is also preaching to his audience, the poor, the outcast, those who have nothing, nothing left and nothing to lose. He’s preaching to them from their corner while he talks to this person about what they need to do to save their soul. And that is let go of what they are holding on to. Let it go! Some of you are hearing Elsa from Frozen right now and some of you are hearing Beyoncé from Church Girl. Let it go. Let it go girl.

Yet, Jesus did not call everyone to give up their all  their possessions or wealth. He, himself, was supported by a circle of wealthy women who were among his disciples. Some of them may have even been there on this day. Jesus did not condemn everyone who had wealth. But he did say that this one person needed to let go of what they had and were holding on to. And, to give it away, give it to the poor. Here is also gospel: not to hold onto anything that we have so tightly that we are unwilling to give to those who have a need. Because we might find ourselves walking away from Jesus rather than letting it go and following him. This passage calls all of us to look at what we hold most dear.

Now, about that camel: Imagine imagine a camel loaded down with saddlebags and boxes and crates tied and roped together, so burdened down then it cannot even make it through the gate to the other side, to complete its journey.

Is there anything we cling to so tightly, tied to the camels of our hearts, burdening us down so much that we could not enter the gate that leads to salvation? Think about all of those movies in which people running from a monster or zombie or villain stop to grab their stuff which leads to them being caught and coming to a bad end. More seriously, think about the warnings we receive on airplanes not to grab all of our belongings in the case of an emergency because it would slow us down and might cost us or someone else their lives. Let it go. Let it go girl.

The other lessons show what happens when people hold onto wealth and possessions so tightly they have no boundaries or limitations. Some even come to believe they own other people – though treating women as possessions is not limited to men with wealth; the dehumanization and objectification of women that so often leads to violence against them has no financial limits.

In the first lesson the Persian king essentially screams look at me and my very many possessions for 180 days and that was not enough. He throws a party that lasts seven days and seven nights, not to share his generosity and hospitality, not to talk story with family and friends, neighbors and kin. Not to feed the poor, the hungry, the struggling, or those who just needed a break. But he threw this party because 180 days of celebrating and showing off his very many possessions was not enough. King Ahasuerus, like so many in this world in our time, thought of women as things to own, possess, manipulate and exploit. And being 180 days drunk, he decided to show off the woman he thought was one of his very many possessions.

One thing we know about alcohol is that it does not make a person do something, it simply makes it easier for the person to do or say something they already wanted to do or say. And

Some say he wanted Queen Vashti to show off her beauty wearing nothing but her crown; that is not in the scripture. But even fully dressed, he was making a humiliating spectacle of her and no part of her would be safe from prying eyes or drunken comments or the calculated envy and lust in their hearts and minds. The power and privilege the king’s wealth bought him made it easy for him to disregard and demean the humanity, the God created-ness of the woman who was queen and that is the seductive power of wealth. We can begin to see ourselves as virtual gods, entitled to our wealth, status and privilege and, see others as less than human, available for our pleasure as our possession. Rather than run the risk of a temptation too powerful to resist, it is better to give our wealth away as Jesus said, than to become the kind of person who uses it to exploit others.

Our final lesson comes from the Epistle which provides an extreme example of the abusive power of wealth where the people who are treated as less than human are the working poor and the wealthy, the rich people James, the brother of Jesus, condemns in such harsh language, are the employers who exploit them. He does not indict every person with wealth, power or privilege. He channels the wrath of God towards those who economically exploit those who are just trying to work for a living by underpaying them and by creating schemes to take back their wages. Today we call it wage theft and under employment. Earlier in the book James talked about how the wealthy leveraged the legal and judicial systems against the poor and the working poor. At the end of our lesson he accuses them of murdering the righteous poor through all of their financial and legal manipulations and machinations. Though they have not raised their hand to them the wealthy are as responsible for the death of the poor who died in their manufactured, poverty as though they had killed them with their own hands. James calls it murder.

Poverty is lethal and poverty is not naturally occurring. It is man-made and manufactured. James holds the wealthy accountable for the poverty they create and for the fates of those who suffer and die under it in some of the harshest language in the scriptures. The message through his words is, don’t be that person. Don’t be that person who perpetuates the cycle of poverty when you have it within your means to make a difference in the life of at least one person. Open your hand, heart and wallet and, let it go and give it away. Don’t be the person who comes so close to salvation that they kneel at the feet of Jesus but when hearing the cost of your soul’s salvation turn and walk away going back to whatever you value more. Let it go girl. Let it go.

So what do these lessons have to say to those of us whom no one would consider wealthy? Each and every one of us holds something or someone so close to our hearts that if we met Jesus at a crossroads and he asked us to let it go we too might hesitate or even walk away. Wealth and treasure are not always measured in dollar signs, gold, silver or jewels. Today’s gospel calls us to examine ourselves to see if there is anything that comes between us and Jesus, and reminds us that we have what we need to alleviate poverty. Let it go girl. Let it go. Amen.