For those of you who were not here last week, during this Lenten season we will be looking at the prophets. Last week I shared with you that there are 3 major books named after prophets and 12 minor books in the bible named after prophets. I shared also that they generally have two major messages: do not worship idols and do whatever you can to bring justice (care for those suffering) for the people. What I did not point out, but what I think is so very important is that these are the same two mandates Jesus gives us. He says that all the law and the prophets can be summed up into two commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart strength and mind (ie, no idols: put nothing before God), and love your neighbor as yourself (ie make sure that all people are treated with kindness and justice and that all have enough).
Today is going to be a little different in that we will be hearing about and “from” prophets that do not have books written in their name. Listen now to the voices of our women prophets:
“Who
are you?” you ask. And well you
should! I am a prophet. I am more than a prophet. I am many prophets, recognized thinly by
scripture. I am given the respect by my
people afforded to prophets, I am recognized as one of those called. And yet the question remains, “Who are you?” -because
the recordings of me are scant. My name,
a few phrases from my histories, my title of prophetess are all mentioned in
scripture. But little beyond that is
named. Little beyond that is said. The scriptures focus on the men. The scriptures focus on the male prophets,
their words, their deeds, their callings from God. What is known of me is little. What is remembered of me is slight. Even when the parts I play are important to
the life and history of God’s people, my name is rarely known and the parts I
played are given little credit. Still,
today I am here to give you a glimpse, a vision, a picture into the many
unnamed prophetesses who have been a part of creating the history that has made
you who you are, as people of faith, as God’s people.
I am
Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses. I
have led the Israelite women, God’s women, in dancing and praise singing, “Sing
to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously: horse and rider he has thrown
into the sea.” (Exodus 15:20-21) I am a
prophet, yet still I am human. Aaron and
I made a mistake, chastising Moses for marrying outside of our community,
marrying a Cushite. As a result of this
error I became leprous for a time. Aaron
remained unpunished, but I took on this punishment for the both of us. Still, my people stayed by me. They still valued my prophesy and I was
healed and reunited with my people. I
heard God’s voice of correction and I changed.
I made mistakes, but I was not stubborn in them. I heard God, spoke God’s words, and changed
my behavior. (Numbers 12:1-15). I
died in the wilderness of Zin.(Numbers
20:1) And this is all there is in
the Bible about me. Still, there is much
to be heard, much to be learned, even in these few short verses of scripture. Listen below the words, hear my story and
learn.
I am
Deborah. I was not only a prophet but also a judge of Israel before there were
kings to rule God’s people. I announced
to Barak that he was to take on the army of Jabin with Sisera in the lead. But Barak knew he could not do this without
me. And so I arose as a mother of Israel
and led the people of Israel in this battle, knowing that another woman, Jael,
would be the one to ultimately defeat Sisera for the people of God. Jael and I, together, were the strength of the
people Israel on this day and we led the Israelite army to defeat those who
were oppressing God’s people. We were
its leaders and we did what no man did.
Then together I sang with Barak, “Hear O kings; give ear, O princes; to
the Lord I will sing, I will make melody to the Lord, the God of Israel.” I sang, “perish all your enemies, O
Lord! But may your friends be like the
sun as it rises in its might.” I sang of
Jael, I sang of the people of Israel, God’s people. I sang, and while I also led and defeated
enemies of God’s people, this, too is all that you will hear of me. This is all that is known of my prophesy and
my care for the people of Israel – for God’s people. (Judges 4-5)
I am
Anna, the widowed, who lived in the temple and spent all of my time speaking to
God, fasting and praying constantly on behalf of God’s people. I was in the temple when Jesus was brought in
as a baby. And I knew him instantly. I was blessed to meet the infant Christ, and
to proclaim him to be such to all who came near.
I am all
the unnamed women prophets, or the ones whose names are mentioned with no
details. I am the women throughout
history who have had a piece in the story but have been nameless, or faceless –
their histories seen as trivial and unimportant, their contributions minimized
or denied. I am your mothers, your
sisters, your daughters, your wives – not written into the history because it
has been “his story” written by and
about the men of faith. Yet even so, my
stories cannot be completely ignored. I
sneak into you’re his-stories, I
sneak into your leadership because without me there is no you. My part is minimized, yet here I remain,
prophets, judges, leaders, - and while my story is not often told, it continues
to shape you and it continues to determine the journey of God’s people.
Still,
it is okay with me to receive such little notice. It is okay because I did not prophesy for the
sake of fame. I did not prophesy for the
sake of recognition and remembrance. I
came, I spoke, I prophesied because God called me to do this.
You, too
are called. Whether male or female, your
part in the history of God’s people is important. Listen to your call. Answer God with a “yes” and go – speak God’s
words of justice, of truth, of love.
Remember Miriam, Deborah, Anna and all the unnamed prophets who have led
and pushed and challenged and taught.
Remember our courage. And go and
do likewise.
---
Today is “Celebrating the Gifts of Women” Sunday in the Presbyterian Church, USA. Many of us, understandably, probably wonder why we still have this Sunday. After all, when we look at the PCUSA as a whole, 66% of our members are women. Our percentage of ruling elders (session members) is currently 52% women. And our percentages of women pastors, while not equal yet to men is about one third female pastors to 2/3 male pastors. Our seminary students are predominantly women at this point. Women’s voices in the church are on the rise, so why do we need a day to focus solely on women in the church? In this congregation especially, where you have a history of female pastors and elders and all but one of your deacons is female. Not that we don’t have male leadership – Currently 2/3 of the session and of the trustees are male. But do we really need a day to focus on the gifts of women in the church? And if so, why?
One of the reasons why this day continues to be important was shared with us by our Women Prophet representatives today. It is important that we make sure to spend some time recognizing women of faith, recognizing women’s contributions to the church and to our faith lives because women are so under-represented in scripture. We know that they were an important part of the faith stories and faith lives because their names do make it in to the stories occasionally even though women were not the writers, readers, or interpreters of these biblical passages. Women were not valued in the same way that they are today, they were not given the same opportunities that men had, and they were not really seen as fully human. Still, many of their stories, while abbreviated, do make it into scripture and that fact in itself is a strong testimonial to the importance of women to our faith story and more importantly, to God.
While specifically on this day, then, we are called to take seriously the female contribution to our relationships with God and our understanding of God, at the same time I think there is a deeper message here for us to hear and understand. We are called to look around us and see where God is, to see God’s face, to see God’s presence when it comes to us. This is not always an easy thing to do, but it is made much harder by our preconceived ideas about where God is not to be found. If we think that God is not found in the homeless, or in those we don’t like, or, as in the case of some of the biblical writers, in women, then we limit how God can speak to us, where God speaks to us and when. We limit our connection and our relationships with God if we fail to look in the places where we might otherwise least expect to see God.
I have shared with you before scenes from the TV series Joan of Arcadia. At the very beginning of the series when the teenage girl Joan first has an encounter with God, Joan is not happy about it. Joan argues with God, first denying that the person in front of her is God, but then finally coming to terms with it. “I don’t look like this. I don’t look like anything you’d recognize. You can’t see me. I don’t sound like anything you’d recognize. I am beyond your experience.”
Joan, who is still really not understanding responds with, “So, do you just go around appearing to people?”
To which the God-character responds, “Minor Correction: I am not appearing to you. You are perceiving me.” I think there is great wisdom in that. God is all around us. But our sacred moments, our moments when we are touched by the Divine happen when we have the vision to perceive God. Again, we see the miracles, we hear God’s voice, we see God’s presence only when we are open to perceiving it.
I think we have a hard time perceiving pretty much anything. We are mostly made of space, our atoms are mostly space, but that’s not what we see when we look at one another. White light is light made of all the colors, but we don’t see all the colors. Frankly, we see very little. The visible light spectrum is the segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can see. Our eyes can detect wavelengths from 380 to 700 nanometers. But that means that in fact we just perceive a very small portion of the wavelengths that are out there. Even within this spectrum, our sight is limited. For example, we see three primary colors. This has to do with our cones and what our eyes can detect. The Mantis Shrimp, in contrast, has 16 primary colors and all of its variations.
Then when we are asked to perceive where God is, well, perhaps given how hard it is to see what is right in front of our eyes, seeing the origin of things and God’s presence in what happens around us can become even harder. Seeing beneath what is in front of our eyes is a different kind of challenge. Seeing and hearing God can be extremely challenging. But God is always there.
Dwight Nelson told a story that he said was true about the pastor of his church. He had a kitten that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down. The pastor coaxed, offered warm milk, etc.
The kitty would not come down. The tree was not sturdy enough to climb, so the pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and pulled it until the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitten.
That's what he did, all the while checking his progress in the car. He then figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But as he moved the car a little further forward, the rope broke.
The tree went 'boing!' and the kitten instantly sailed through the air - out of sight.
The pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they'd seen a little kitten. No. Nobody had seen a stray kitten.
So he prayed, 'Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping,' and went on about his business.
A few days later he was at the grocery store, and met one of his church members. He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food.
This woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, 'Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?' She replied, 'You won't believe this,' and then told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing.
Then a few days before, the child had begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, 'Well, if God gives you a cat, I'll let you keep it.'
She told the pastor, 'I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat. And really, Pastor, you won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of her.'
God moments.
For those of you who attended or participated in the concert fundraiser for the victims of the Camp Fire up in Paradise, you heard the pastor share his story of losing everything; his home, his belongings, and just barely escaping, through the flames as he drove, with his life. He shared with us that as he returned to look at the damage, there was only one thing that he found at the house intact. Just one. His daughter had died a few years previously and they had hung on to a nightlight of Jesus holding a lamb. They’d hung on to it because it was a connection to their daughter whom they had lost to death. And when they went back to the house to find everything, everything destroyed after the Camp fire, the one thing that had somehow survived the flames was this plastic Jesus nightlight holding a lamb: their connection to their daughter, and to faith all wrapped in one. A visual sign and reminder that even in the dark, they were held like a lamb held by Jesus.
I’ve shared with you before many of my own times of perceiving God: times when I received comforting or reassuring emails at just the right moment, songs that have come on the radio just when I needed to hear them, strangers making comments at just the right time. These happen for me often. Just this last week, when I went spinning down that path of struggling with trust, a series of songs came on the radio, three in a row that were all songs that connected me deeply to those people I was fearful about, songs that reminded me of the good in them, songs that reconnected me to what is real about the here and now. I heard those for the God messages they were.
What is even more humbling perhaps is those times when we are invited to be God’s face for someone else. I shared with you this story in a newsletter article, but felt it would be appropriate for today as well:
When Aislynn was two, I used to take her to "get used to water" swim lesson at the Hayward Plunge - a lesson she loved so much she would cry when it was time to get out of the pool. I sat on the side lines with a woman I'd been befriending who had twins in Aislynn's class. Unusual to this lesson, there were also two other women sitting in front of us in the "observation" benches: they had brochures in their hands about the classes being offered and seemed to be checking out the adult water aerobics class to see if they wanted to sign up. Half way into the lesson one of the two women in front of me excused herself and left. My new friend also had to leave at that point because her twins needed a trip to the bathroom. As soon as both the other women left, the woman sitting in front of me suddenly burst into tears. She turned towards me and said, "the woman I was sitting with has just made me very sad." I was surprised, but also immediately jumped into "pastoral counselor" mode and put my hand on her back and asked what had happened. She sort of melted into my touch and sobbed out that she had just gotten out of the hospital where she'd had to have two blood transfusions. These transfusions had saved her life and she was doing really well now, though in need of some light exercise. Apparently, though, the women she'd been sitting with had just told her that getting blood transfusions was a really bad thing and that she would probably die from the diseases carried in the new blood. Unbelievable! I told her that there used to be problems, occasionally, with people passing on diseases in this way, but that because of those problems the blood that now gets passed on in transfusions is really very thoroughly tested. Obviously she had needed the transfusions and the very fact that she was doing better should show her that the new blood had not made her ill at all! I said that I believed the other woman to be greatly misinformed and apparently not very helpful either. I then just listened as she poured out more information about her life - the joys and struggles, but at the end she said she was feeling much better. Within a minute of her telling me she was better and after getting herself together, drying her eyes and sitting up with a smile once more, my friend with her twins returned to the bench.
As the lesson ended and we all made our way out of the Plunge, the distressed woman came up and said she really felt I had been a God-send that day - that she usually doesn't dump on total strangers and she just thanked God I had been there when I was. The cynical part of me wondered (to myself) if God could send people hither and yon why She/He hadn't sent the unhelpful, misinformed woman somewhere else this morning. But I did think it was interesting that at just the moment the distressed woman needed some personal care that everyone else in the area left.
My personal belief is that God doesn't take away our free will: God doesn't control everything. At the same time, I think God can and does work through people and situations that are open to God's guidance, wisdom, love and hope. In this case, it seemed to work out - maybe not just for the distressed woman, but for myself as well who was in need of a little reassurance of God's presence, love and care that morning as well.
But, as in the Joan of Arcadia series, the bottom line is the same. Those moments when we are suddenly deeply aware of God sending us messages of love and support and care are not times when God suddenly appears. Those moments when you become aware of God’s messages of love and support are not times when God suddenly appears. Because God is always there. Instead, these are times when we are suddenly graced with the perception of the God who is always with us.
A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.” I think God looks like many things: nature, other people, sunshine, rainbows; moments of presence, moments of peace, moments of connection. The question is will we see God? We are too often guilty of seeing what we know rather than knowing what we see.
But as Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Today we are called to celebrate the gifts of women. But for me, this is a day when we are called to something even deeper. We are called to look at those people whom we might otherwise fail to see as messengers of God’s love. We are called to seek out those moments where God’s message and light come through people and nature and our lives in unexpected ways. We are called to celebrate the gifts of those who are often unseen, minimized or ignored. We are called to open ourselves to seeing God in new ways.
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