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

Advent 4 Year W

In Advent we await the birth of a Savior, a Redeemer, who is but a babe. This week the Holy Child receives literary company in the little boy Samuel at his mother’s breast. These two women, Mary and Hannah, encounter God in extraordinary ways, unmediated by the men around them and as a result bear promised children. Blood and death, war, conquest and occupation will shadow the lives of both boys and only one will live to a ripe old age. Miraculous motherhood is always a challenging trope in the scriptures. Not all will mother. Not all will be mothered well. Broken hearts, empty arms and wombs endure. Yet the metaphor is not quite bankrupt. In the epistle we are reminded that though not all give birth all have been birthed and may be rebirthed through the Spirit and the waters of baptism. In the waters of baptism and on this side of the fount, God is with us. God is with us!

Advent 3 Year W

Another week in Advent, another annunciation. This time the woman is not named, her son will be, Samson the strong. Like Yocheved (Jochebed) the mother of Moses, she will be the mother of Israel’s deliver. Yet this woman named many times over by the rabbis is more than a womb pressed into service. She is a conversation partner of the Divine, the preferential partner, her husband having been passed over. She is more than her womb and more than her motherhood, an important reminder in these stories that focus so much on the promise of children and one Holy Child. The psalm places the blessing of God on those who trust and revere her. It doesn’t matter what kind of bodies they have and what functions they perform or are incapable of performing. In the epistle we all become the longed for children, we are the beloved children of God. In the gospel, two extraordinary women celebrate and surely commiserate over two even more extraordinary pregnancies. Mary, drawing on the spirit of the prophet for whom she was named sings as Miriam sang, the hymn of Hannah recontextualized for her context, a lesson in exegesis.