What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School

Challenging Traditional Gender Roles in Christianity: My Journey as a Woman Theologian

Multi-ethnic multi-generation group of people from young children to 95 years old.

Photo credit: Diverse Generations by adispo.ch

In 2006 when I started this blog, I had just married and I was still part of the Evangelical Movement. I was an ordained minister, theologian, and writer. I was convinced I could show the world that women were made in the image of God and God called us to the same lives she called men: pastors, teachers, theologians, etc. There are only eight verses in the Bible that limit women’s roles in the life of their specific churches. These eight verses stand in contrast to all of the stories of women leaders we have in the Bible: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, Junia, and many other women. I even wrote a book about how these eight verses should not be used to strip women of the callings God placed on their lives: What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down. Just two years later, I realized I was going to be fighting the same the battle my entire life if I stayed in the Evangelical Movement. My previous denomination also viewed my LGBTQIA+ friends to be committing sin, and I could no longer tow that party line. In 2008 I resigned my credentials and started attending an Episcopal Church. I was confirmed later that year.

In the Episcopal Church I did not pursue ordination. My call is to preach and to teach, and the church had lay preacher certifications. Since then I have been a happy and content Episcopalian who preaches and teaches in her home church. I also discovered other Christian women who decided that motherhood was not for them. I went from being the only woman in a church who didn’t want children to one of the many. After the shock wore off, I was so happy to be part of a church where women were not defined by our wombs. It didn’t matter we weren’t mothers: we were still treated like adults, and no one questioned our decisions. That was between us, our spouses, and God.

Just Sit Down and Be a Good Little Girl

I have spent my entire life fighting against what society and church tells me a woman should be. “Boys don’t like smart girls.” “No man is going to marry you if you’re smarter than him.” “Stop being so aggressive: it’s not ladylike” (I grew up in the South). “You’re a girl/woman: you’re not suppose to be talking. Paul said so.” “Stop being so ambitious: no man wants an ambitious wife.” “God doesn’t call women to preach.” “God talked through an ass, so I guess he could use a woman too.” “A woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother.” “No one is going to marry a women that doesn’t want children.” Ad nasuem. For the record I did find a man who was fine with all of this and all of me. I never fit the cookie cutter mold society and the church thought I should be in. And more importantly: I did not want to. (Everything in quotes are things people said to me or was preached from the pulpit of the church I grew up in.)

Now I’m a little more jaded and cynical than I was 18 years ago because I keep seeing the same cycles go around in society. Once again women are being told we shouldn’t want to pursue education or careers because we’re just going to get married and stay home with our children. We’re told women who are child-free or childless are the enemy, and that we’re all sad, angry women who want to take out our anger on society as a whole. No one bothers to ask us why we chose not to have children. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be any empathy for women who tried for years to have children, but could not. Having no children is not always a choice.

Biblical Family?

Once again I also see the definition of family being made smaller and smaller. Once upon a time step-children and adopted children were included in family, but now one vice presidential candidate has made it clear he does not consider those kinds of family to “real” families, just as my husband and I are not considered a “real” family because we did not have children. The American nuclear family is touted as “biblical marriage” and “biblical family,” when the Bible does not even recognize such a small definition of family. Biblical families were multi-generational clans. The reason Jacob had to sneak off with his two wives, two concubines and 12+ kids is because he was not the head of his family. His nuclear family was part of Laban’s clan, and Laban was the head (see Genesis 31).

When we get to the New Testament, we discover that Jesus doesn’t seem to think much of biological family: nuclear, clan, or otherwise:

[Jesus’] mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him. They said, “Look, your mother and brothers and sisters are outside looking for you.”

He answered, “Who are my mother, sisters, and brothers?” Looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Look, my mother and sisters and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my sister, brother and mother.” (Mark 4: 31-35, New Testament: The Divine Feminine Version [DFV]

Biblical literalists conveniently ignore these verses just as they do The Beatitudes and Jesus’ command to love our enemies. Jesus didn’t mean all of this, literally, right?

My response always is: What if he did? It has been close to three decades since I lived close to my own nuclear family. These verses have always given me great comfort because I know that wherever I move to, I will find family there in the church God leads me to. I have never been alone: even when I was single and lived alone. God has always led me to family in every city I’ve lived, and Lincoln has been no exception. Yes, my husband’s family lives here, but I have my church family too. One of my favorite psalms says that God places the solitary in families. She has placed me in families over and over again, and they are families I am not biologically related to.

Family is so much richer and more expansive than the anemic mom, dad, and 2.5 kids of the the so-called American dream. Family is biological, married into, adopted, and found. There is always room for more family, more mothers (and fathers), more sisters, more brothers, more aunts and uncles, more nieces and nephews and more love and acceptance.

The God of All Families

In the end that’s what bothers me the most about these limiting views of both women and family. It’s all about bringing the fences in, making homes smaller, and limiting our view of how God works in the world and WHO God works through. The older I get the less I limit God. I’m on the other side of 50, and I know how very little I actually control. I know how very little I know. I only see a very tiny slice of what is going on in this world and universe. And I am not going to reduce the God who made the heavens and the earth, the God of the universe to a small, sectarian vision.

God works through women and men and all of the genders between those two poles. God works through all sorts of people and families. God works through the multi-generational households, the tribal clans, the nuclear families, and those families (like mine) that aren’t “traditional” according the the middle class American definition. I want a bigger God than that. I believe in a bigger God than that. I obey a bigger God than that.

This blog has been on life support for quite a few years, but as we come into another cycle of circling wagons and once again decrying everything we don’t agree with as un-American and not “real” Christianity, it seems like a good time to start writing again. After all, I’ve done this once before almost 20 years ago when I started insisting that women were also made in the image of God and my family WAS a family, even without children. It might even be fun to revisit what I’ve written across the years. I’m sure there will a whole lot of updating. There will new writing too because there will new research, new stories, new ways of looking at the Bible and society, and most important of all: I am not the same person I was 18 years ago. The way I look at the world, read the Bible, and see and interpret society have all changed. What are the words and vision we need to hear now? What are the words and vision I need to write about now? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Published by Shawna on September 3, 2024 | Permalink

Want to Know More About Your Spiritual Foremothers? DO NOT watch Lifetime's Women of the Bible

Epiphany by Janet McKenzie.

I recorded Lifetime’s Women of the Bible last night. I thought it would make a fun blog post to correct everything they got wrong about the women in the Bible. I was wrong. It would take a freaking book to correct what was wrong in this two hour special, and it was not fun to watch. Thankfully my Facebook friends were there to help me keep my sanity as I watched this train wreck of a special on some of my favorite women in the Bible. As it would be a Herculean effort to correct the absolute wrongness and inaccuracy of this special I will leave you with my Facebook posts as I live blogged watching the two hour melodramatic claptrap about the women of the Bible. Grab a bottle of wine (you’ll need it) and enjoy.

Recorded Lifetime’s Women of the Bible last night and watching it now. Roma Downey likes her melodrama. And her definition of Biblical “scholars” and mine are drastically different. Oy vey.

Who does Roma Downey think the most pivotal women in Judges are Samson’s mother and Delilah, not Deborah and Jael. Of course Deborah and Jael weren’t immediately connected to a man, so naaahhh they couldn’t be THAT important, now could they? Not sure I can sit through another 1.5 hours of this schlock. Ugg.

Oh and did I mention that Victoria Osteen is one of the so-called “biblical scholars” on the show. *face palm*

Lainie, I think I need to put Lifetime’s Women of the Bible on hold until you can come watch it with me with lots of Josefina Pink Syrah, and we can make fun and tear apart this melodramatic claptrap that Roma Downey has invented about our foremothers of the faith. The woman thinks Samson’s mother and Delilah are the two most important women in Judges! Aaacccchhhh!

And we skipped from Delilah to Mary. I’m terrified to see what Lifetime’s Women of the Bible does to Mother Mary.

Oh. My. God. Gabriel is dressed like a Roman soldier in the Annunciation scene. Need. Booze. Now.

And we have broken out the Josefina Syrah over one of the “biblical scholars” claiming that Mary was the first women to have the responsibility of carrying the Word of God. Of course it has to be the literal Word of God. I guess they’ve never heard of Miriam or Huldah or the Jewish tradition that Huldah was a scribe that first started compiling the Hebrew Scriptures. And they are taking this far too literally. I am becoming absolutely terrified of what they are going to do with Mary of Magdala. I might be drunk by the time this is over.

And the Wise Men just showed up at the stable. Yep that’s some biblical scholarship.

Now Roma Downey has cast herself as Mother Mary for the Crucifixion. I should just bring the bottle of wine into the living room.

Oh and I should mention that the only woman of color to play a Middle Eastern woman in this show about the (Middle Eastern) women of the Bible was Samson’s mother. I think the only reason they did that was so they could cast Samson as an angry black man. Another face palm. Everyone else (except Pharaoh) has been lily pad white, including white boy Jesus–but he does have brown eyes instead of blue….

My favorite woman in the entire Bible has now taken the stage: Mary of Magdala. Get ready for the sarcasm to ratchet up a few more levels.

OK so far so good on the Mary of Magdala front: she was possessed by seven demons (they don’t claim she was a prostitute), and that she was a wealthy woman who supported Jesus’ ministry financially and traveled with Jesus and his entourage (which included more than the 12) (see Luke 8:1-3). They fail significantly when they say she was “essentially” an apostle. She was an apostle. Also the 12 disciples look like a white boy band.

They did cover that Mary was not a prostitute, and that there is no Biblical support for it. But the claim is made that Mary being called a prostitute was a “mistake.” It wasn’t a mistake. It was slander to discredit and minimalize the leadership role she had in the Early Church.

We’re heading for the Crucifixion. Can’t wait to see what heights the melodrama hits now. Why yes, I will have some more wine.

And of course Mother Mary and Mary of Magdala have seats front and center for the slow-mo, over-the-top melodramatic flogging.

And of course Mother Mary is able to run out onto the Via Dolorosa when Jesus fell to comfort him and for Jesus to tell her not to be afraid, this is how it has to be. John cries out: “Let her through. She’s his mother!” [Here’s a theological reflection on the women at the cross to balance out the melodrama of this show: The First Shall Be Last: The women at the cross and tomb.]

Oh. My God. Jesus was being flogged at Golgotha, and as it was happening he crawled to the cross then laid on it. Can we say Predestination taken to the melodramatic nth degree?

Oh the melodramatic substitutionary theory of atonement in all it’s gory detail!

Not just the curtain in the Temple tears in this version of the Crucifixion. Oh no, the entire Temple shakes and things fall over and break! Judaism wrong! Christianity good!

Because Mary of Magdala’s word was not enough, Peter must proclaim that the resurrection happened at the tomb when he entered and suddenly believed without seeing Jesus! That’s right boys and girls in this version of the “gospel” Peter believes without seeing Jesus! Jo, I think you’re right. We need a Bechdel test for women in the Bible.

OK I am quite literally laughing my ass off as a breeze blows Mary of Magdala’s hair off her face while she speaks in tongues in slow motion about the resurrection of Christ. Oh Mary, I’m so sorry for this hokey depiction of your apostleship and leadership in the Early Church. Forgive them for they know not what they do.

In the wrap up one of the biblical “scholars” just said that Jesus “states very clearly for him it’s neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew.” Sigh. That was Paul “biblical scholar” that was Paul.

Thank God it’s over. Thank you Facebook friends for sharing my pain and my horror. I owe all of you a drink of your choice at your favorite watering hole.

Yeah for an NCIS marathon! Leroy Jethro Gibbs save from bad theology and shoddy “biblical scholarship”!

And there you have it dear readers: Women of the Bible live blogged in excruciating detail, so you don’t have to suffer. You’re welcome.

If you would like to get to know your spiritual foremothers as they actually appear in the pages of the Bible, and with far more historical accuracy, buy my book What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up & Sit Down. It makes a great gift! (I am a biblical scholar, and I have the degrees to prove it.)

Published by Shawna on December 8, 2014 | Permalink

Sermon: Not Taking No for an Answer (Part 2)

I preached on the story of Jesus and the Canaanite Woman twice this summer. Once for a conference and the second time at my church. With the two different audiences I needed two different applications. Here is how I took the same Scripture passages and interpretations, but came up with two different applications specific to each audience.

This sermon was preached at my home church, Chicago Grace Episcopal Church on August 17, 2014.

Not Taking No for an Answer

Matthew 15:21-28 (Mark 7:24-30)
Year A, Proper 15 (Year B, Proper 18)

Jesus left that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman came out. “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of Bathsheba and David!” she cried. “My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon!”

But he didn’t say a thing.

His disciples came and begged him. “Send her away,” they said, “because she bothers us.”

He answered, “I wasn’t sent to anyone but the lost sheep of Israel.”

But she approached and bowed to him. “Lord, help me,” she said.

“It is not right to throw the children’s bread to the dogs,” he answered.

“Yes, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered, “Woman, your trust is great! What you want will be done for you.” Her daughter Was healed that very hour (Matthew 15:21-28, New Testament: Divine Feminine Version).

4.2.7 We read about two women in the Gospels who talked back to Jesus: Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, and the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician Woman in this passage. That these two women stood up to Jesus and talked back to him is usually explained away, if it’s even acknowledged. In one scene, Martha was tired from cooking; in the other, her brother had just died: of course she’s snippy, and Jesus is patient. In this scene, the Gentile woman knows that Jesus is just teasing her, and she plays along. Martha and this woman’s backbones are covered up, their nerve shoved into a corner. Neither of these women thought silence and submission was the way to go.

We have two very different stories about this women in the Gospels. We heard Matthew’s version, now let’s look at Mark’s:

Jesus left that place and went to the region of Tyre. He went into a house and didn’t want anyone to know it, but he couldn’t escape notice. A woman whose little daughter had a corrupting spirit heard about him and immediately came and fell down at his feet. She was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Jesus said to her, “Let the children eat first, because it’s not right to throw the children’s bread to the dogs.”

“Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

He said, “For saying that, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

She went home and found the child lying on the bed. The demon was gone (Mark 7:24-30, NT: DFV).

What is the biggest difference you see between these two accounts? Matthew adds the disciples. They don’t appear in Mark’s account. After seeing the way Jesus comes off in Mark’s account of this story it’s not hard to see why Matthew added the disciples and made them the bad guys. After all when you trying to convince a Gentile audience that Jesus in the Savior of the world, it doesn’t look good for that Savior to ignore a Gentile in such great need.

In Mark’s account Jesus had been healing and teaching. He fed the multitude of 5,000. He had been debating (fighting) with the religious leaders. He came to a totally pagan, Gentile area to get away from everything. He was here for a break. He was not here to teach, to heal, or to fight. No one knew him here. He could sneak in, get some rest, and sneak out again. Or so he thought. Since Jesus was trying to stay incognito, we don’t know how the woman knew he was in the neighborhood. I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else’s business, so my guess is she heard it through the local grapevine. She found out a great healer was in town, and she decided to act. She went to the house where Jesus was keeping a low profile, and there she fell at his feet begging him to heal her daughter, who was demon-possessed.

Based on everything we’ve previously read about Jesus in the Mark, we expect Jesus to act immediately. We expect him to get up and go with this woman to her daughter, like he did with Jairus in the previous chapter. We also know from chapter 5 Jesus had no qualms about healing Gentiles in Gentile territory: he healed the Gentile demoniac in the country of the Gerasenes. His first healing in Mark was healing a man with leprosy by touching him. But what we expect does not happen in this story.

Instead he told the woman, “It’s not right to throw the children’s bread to the dogs.” At this point (if we are honest with ourselves) our jaws drop, and we wonder “What happened to Jesus?”

A dog. Jesus called her a dog, a term of derision for Gentiles. But this woman is quick-witted, and she’s not going to take no for an answer. She let the insult slide over her with this incisive retort: “Yes, but even the dogs get to lick up the crumbs on the floor.”

Because this woman did not take no for an answer, because this woman did not submit–even to the Son of God–because she stood her ground, Jesus changed his mind. He had not come here to heal. He didn’t want to heal this woman’s daughter. But in the end he did heal the daughter. He did because of the woman’s retort. This woman’s daughter was healed because she talked back to Jesus, and didn’t assume her place was one of quiet submission. She didn’t take no for an answer, not even from the Son of God himself.

In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus is passive, but he’s not the only one who is telling her no. The disciples—the representatives of the church are. And thanks to a man I met a few years ago who grew up in the Middle East, we have a different way to interpret this passage where Jesus uses the woman to help teach his disciples, his church, a few lessons.

Reverend Nadim Nassar, an Anglican priest, grew up in Syria and went to school in Lebanon. He now lives in London. There is a very cultural thing he grew up with that explains perfectly what is going on in Matthew if we know Middle Eastern culture. In the Middle East when the eldest son marries, he still lives at home with his parents, and his wife comes to live with the family. This is because as the main heir, the eldest son is expected to take care of his parents in their old age.

When the mother-in-law doesn’t like something the daughter-in-law is doing, or doesn’t think the daughter-in-law is treating her with enough respect, the mother-in-law does not tell the daughter-in-law. She complains about it to a neighbor in the daughter’s-in-law hearing.

“Miriam, do you know how my daughter-in-law treats me? I tell her every night, dry the dishes with a towel, don’t air dry them! But does she listen to me?”

“Abraham, have I told you how my daughter-in-law doesn’t respect me? I told her to water the garden this morning. Bah! Just look at my poor tomatoes withering away in this harsh sunlight!”

You get the idea. Now take this idea and apply it to the story. Jesus is the mother-in-law. The disciples are the daughters-in-law. The Canaanite woman is the neighbor. So what does that mean Jesus is doing in this story? In Mark’s story Jesus is the one who’s being exclusive, showing the members of Mark’s community that even Jesus was corrected when he thought the gospel was just for the Jews. In Matthew, the disciples want Jesus to send the woman away, and he takes a minute to teach the disciples (Matthew’s community) the gospel was not just for the Jews.

Jesus: “Look at my daughters-in-law thinking God is just for them. You called me ‘Son of Bathsheba and David.’ You know I can’t take the kids’ food and feed it to the dogs who come wandering in.”

Woman: “Oh you poor thing. Such disrespect. But you know even the dogs get the crumbs the children leave behind.”

Even in this context I think the woman surprises Jesus with her retort. Jesus: “Woman you have great faith. Go. Your daughter is healed.”

(Exegesis and interpretation is taken from my book What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down, ch. 3.)

I like this interpretation because it uses women’s roles and experiences to interpret Scripture. How often does that happen? Even about women in the Scripture? I always wondered what Matthew’s female listeners felt when they realized their life experiences were being used to proclaim the gospel.

But in the end two things remain constant in these two stories: Exclusivity is the first. Jesus, the disciples, and people in Matthew and Mark’s communities thought that God’s grace was limited, that it wasn’t for everyone. The other constant in this story is this woman telling Jesus, the disciples, and the Christian community NO—grace is always inclusive, and God’s healing power is for everyone. This woman does not take no for an answer when that no marginalizes her and limits God’s grace. In Mark she doesn’t take no for an answer from Jesus. In Matthew she doesn’t take no for an answer from the church. We have a lot to learn from this woman and her spiritual children.

Sometimes those who see where the church is failing in loving inclusively are those who are outside our doors. Those we fail to love. And my challenge to us is this: that we listen to them. That we listen to the children of this brave Canaanite woman who looked the Son of God in the eye then looked at the church standing behind him and said, “No, you will not exclude me and my daughter from God’s love and grace.”

It’s a hard thing to do. To listen to where we are failing our neighbors, confess, repent, and then do what must be done to love our neighbors—all of our neighbors—as ourselves. But Jesus did it. He realized he was wrong. In the end he listened to this woman, and he healed her daughter. This woman taught Jesus that salvation was not for the Jews alone.

I have a hard challenge for us. The next time we hear someone outside of our faith criticize the church, we listen. We don’t jump to defend our beliefs. We don’t start formulating responses while they are still talking. But we listen. And we ask ourselves: is what they are saying true? Are we failing in this area to show God’s inclusive love just at The Canaanite Woman showed Jesus were he was failing to show God’s inclusive love? Is the person complaining her spiritual child calling us to a deeper understanding of God’s mercy and grace? I don’t know how the conversation will go from there, but it can’t help but go in a better direction when we can honestly tell someone you’re right: we’ve screwed up there. How can we do better? Then listen to the answer.

And if you have one of these conversations, please tell the rest of us about it. Bring it back to the church, so that we, as the body of Christ in the South Loop of Chicago, can learn to be more loving, more grace-filled, more merciful, just like our Mother in heaven.

Published by Shawna on August 21, 2014 | Permalink

Sermon: Not Taking No For an Answer (Part 1)

I preached on the story of Jesus and the Canaanite Woman twice this summer. Once for a conference and the second time at my church. With the two different audiences I needed two different applications. Here is how I took the same Scripture passages and interpretations, but came up with two different applications specific to each audience.

This sermon was preached at the Christian Feminism Today’s biannual conference The Gathering 2014 on June 29, 2014.

Not Taking No for an Answer
Matthew 15:21-28 (Mark 7:24-30)
Year A, Proper 15 (Year B, Proper 18)