Magnificat: A God Who Never Stopped Considering Women

By Debbie Blue

WOMEN THAT BREAK THE RULE RULES AND MAKE THEMSELVES VISIBLE.
THOUGHT AND ACTION PROVOKING. INTIMATE, FURIOUS AND LOVING, DEBBIE BLUE GIVES VOICE TO THE WOMEN OF THE BIBLE AS TOGETHER THEY TURN THE TABLE OF PATRIARCHY.
"The sayings of the wise are like goads," warned a preacher of old: words that are not as restful as one might expect. The wise speak and are goaded into action. Or perhaps the community works and the wise merely capture its hidden wisdom –words and deeds that can be more disruptive at times than polite. Debbie Blue attempts to tap into this spirit as she develops her preaching ministry as a founding pastor of House of Mercy, in St Paul, Minnesota.
Debbie took a step further along the line of the preacher of old. She collected her sermons, and as a result you have this book in your hand. Its contents are piercing as nails sometimes:
Goads that are unsettling more than complacent when it comes to questioning patriarchy. This is a collection of fifteen sermons that revolve around women. "The women in the Bible break a lot of rules, resist empire, disobey the cultural norms, cause good trouble (and sometimes not such good trouble). They are fully human. They help us glimpse the possibility of transformation (not always, but often). I think we are at a time and place in the life of the world where we need to hear their stories."
THERE IS A STORY BEHIND THE REIGNING, PATRIARCHAL CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE. IT IS THE STORY OF WOMEN, THEIR GOD, THEIR RESISTANCE
True to her style, pastor, preacher and author Debbie Blue, in Magnificat: A God Who Never Stopped Considering Women, spurs us on to that "possibility of transformation". She and the women in the stories with their resourcefulness, dancing, joie de vivre, irreverence, solidarity, pain, laughter and anger, constantly reminds us that  God loves us and means to set us free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JUANUNO1 Books
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637531051

Debbie Blue

Debbie Blue (MA, Yale Divinity School) is one of the founding pastors of House of Mercy, a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, that was once named the Best Church for Non-Church Goers . The church is regularly featured on Minnesota Public Radio and is known nation-wide as one of the first and most enduring emergent congregations. Rev. Blue's sermon podcasts are listened to by subscribers around the world, and her essays, sermons, and reflections on the scripture have appeared in a wide variety of publications including Life in Body, Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, Geez, The Image Journal, and The Christian Century, where she also frequents as a guest blogger.

Book preview

Introduction

Some days I stare at the Bible passage I have to preach on for hours, paralyzed. I’ve probably read it a million times in the twenty-five years I’ve been a pastor. As much as I want to believe in the life-giving love of Jesus, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m looking at a dead fish. I stare some more. I call a friend, I have lost my faith, I say, I suppose I should quit the ministry. This happens, maybe, once a month. You‘d think I would learn the condition is cyclical. I will move through it, find some faith (or the spirit will find me) and I will manage to give a sermon once Sunday comes. But if you asked Jim, my husband, he could tell you how many times I’ve insisted, against his reassurance, Yes. I know it passed last time, but I’m afraid this time there will be no revival. I’m grateful that (so far) he finds my ritual histrionics amusing.

There are weeks when it is not like this at all, when I start off running, with passion (if not always perfect faith). This is almost inevitably the case when the text before me includes a woman. Every text that comes up in the Revised Common Lectionary involves a man (as an author or character or voice). Jesus is a man, obviously, and though YHWH is not, God often comes across that way: male pronouns and titles abound (He/Him/His, The Father, King, Prince, etc.) So, it is thoroughly refreshing to encounter a woman or an image of God that is not male in the Bible. I don’t think patriarchy has been good for the world or the church (not women or men or non-binary folks, not children or marginalized people, not the colonized, not the water or the earth). So I am eager to find the cracks in the patriarchal narrative and pull, dig, plant dynamite if necessary to open space for the alternative narratives that are not always recognized, or that lie under the surface.

This is a book of sermons on texts in the Bible that include women. Many of them are drawn from the year our church, House of Mercy, decided to forgo the Revised Common Lectionary in favor of a lectionary we created that featured stories of women every Sunday. It was a fruitful year. I can imagine spending the rest of my years in ministry preaching on the passages in the Bible that include women, but I recognize this might not work quite so well for everyone else in our church (and I suppose there are quite a few crucial moments in the scripture we would miss). The folks who write the curriculum for our children had difficulty handling some of the stories in a way that felt child appropriate. My male colleague was totally on board but in practice, found it challenging.

The women in the Bible break a lot of rules, resist empire, disobey the cultural norms, cause good trouble (and sometime not such good trouble). They are fully human. They help us glimpse the possibility of transformation (not always, but often). I think we are at a time and place in the life of the world where we need to hear their stories.

I am fascinated by the history of interpretation. Though I am often frustrated by it as well. Shocked, some times. This has happened over and over again through the years I have been a preacher especially (though not exclusively) when I am researching passages that include women. Luther was a tremendous theologian to whom I am grateful for many things, but when he accuses Hagar of kidnapping Abraham’s son and claims she is the cause of all the sins of the family, I am not persuaded by his exegesis. Tertullian is adamant that God became fully human in Jesus. As someone who values incarnational theology, I am thankful for this. But when he goes on about how much the implications of that humanness disgusts him, the filth within the womb of the bodily fluid and blood, the loathsome curdled lump of flesh which has to be fed for nine months of this same muck, I feel smoke start coming out of my nostrils. Misogynist interpretations have laced the Judeo-Christian faith with toxic and habitual tendencies to dehumanize women (and black, indigenous, gay and queer folks, anyone who is not white-ish, straight and male). Though women have been allowed to read the text and even lead the church for some years now, clearly this privilege is not yet universally extended nor have we defeated sexism (or white supremacy or colonialism) by any stretch of the imagination.

As you read this book you will sense that I have a lot of frustration with some of the historical interpretations. I think it’s important as a community entrusted with sacred texts, to confess the failures of our past, not to shove them under the rug or excuse them because times were different then. It is not just a problem of the past. Even now the Bible is used to dehumanize the other. Clearly, it’s something we need to keep working on. I know I do. I am not certain of all that much, but I am certain that God’s word is not meant to provoke us to hate and condemn and scapegoat. And though I may quickly recognize how some readings of scripture are harmful, my own scapegoating tendencies may elude me at times.

The foundational misogyny bothers me and I don’t feel a ton of mercy welling up inside me when I confront it, but I hope my own lack of mercy does not obscure the revelation of the ever-merciful love of God abounding. I mean to point to it, even amidst my failures. Maybe sometime, farther along, when the spirit has had some more time with me, I will be able to lower my gloves, but I’m not there yet. I feel like I’m still digging around. I hope the dirt I throw up won’t get in the way of your glimpsing the love when you read these sermons.

As much as I’m sometimes offended by the history of interpretation, I am also occasionally thrilled and surprised. This often happens when I encounter an interpretation of a familiar story from a Jewish or Islamic perspective. I am grateful we share some foundational stories. It helps to see them from a different angle. I think we can use all the help we can get as stumbling humans longing for God. Sometimes the Christian imagination needs a jolt. I often draw on these interpretations in my sermons.

You will also notice that I frequently comment on how women in the Bible have been depicted in art history. My husband, Jim, is an artist. I have an office above our garage, next to his painting studio. I write sermons in a room full of commentaries next to his studio full of art and art history books. It’s a fruitful if sometimes disconcerting juxtaposition. He is particularly interested in the history of liturgical art and often explores these images in his work. I could hardly avoid them if I tried. Whether or not we are aware of how Rembrandt depicted Potiphar’s wife, art has been a part of creating the culture in which we swim.

Just a few more things to warn you about. I write maybe and seems and I think a lot. Most editors don’t let me get away with this and I imagine by the time you read this some of my tentative language will have been weeded out. But I do hope some of it will remain. I don’t use qualifiers because I never learned one’s writing is stronger without them, but because I feel that where biblical interpretation is concerned, a certain tentativeness is called for. I really don’t know. I don’t want to claim to know. Maybe seems appropriate. I have strong feelings some times. And you will certainly detect this, but I am the farthest thing from convinced that I have discovered the right way to read a text. The word of God is meant to engage us, draw us in, as the people we are—with all our brittle edges, and craggy emotional landscapes—all our differences and fears and prejudice. We might struggle with the Bible. We may not like it at times. I think that’s okay. God longs to embrace us as we are and open us up to more love and more mercy than we are capable of imagining. I hope these sermons occasionally gesture in the right direction.

1

Heartbreaking Stories: Rachel and Leah

Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.  Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful and lovely.  Jacob loved Rachel; and he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel. Laban said, It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.  So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.

Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed. So Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.  But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. (Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her maid.)  And in the morning, behold, it was Leah; and Jacob said to Laban, What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Laban said, It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the first-born. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years. Jacob did so, and completed her week; then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to wife. (Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maid.)  So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years.

When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.

Genesis 29: 16-31 (RSV)

Acknowledging moral ambiguity and embracing uncertainty is not really part of the North American way. I grew up here, not in France or Mumbai or a nomadic tribe, so I don’t know what might have seeped into the structure of my consciousness if my formative years were spent elsewhere. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that different. Perhaps a fear of uncertainty and a discomfort with ambiguity is something deeply embedded in what it is to be human—something almost inescapable in the structure of our consciousness.

But whether it’s North American culture or the human condition, I often feel (in spite of what I actually believe or strive to believe) that there are some very bad people out there and they are different from us. Me and my people, you and I, know something that those people don’t—cling to something precious and important and beautiful that they have no respect for. I feel a certain sense of indignation toward the portion of the population that is seemingly unconcerned with what I know to be essential.

I have felt this tendency to fixate on the offensive behaviors and beliefs of others building toward a fevered pitch recently. It is not just me. Try spending a half hour on Facebook or Twitter. Division animated by certainty is making peace and love and civility seem far off these days.

Recognizing that the algorithms of socially media platforms have kept us in our separate bubbles, I have made an effort to seek out views from people who are not in my tribe. Sometimes it makes my blood pressure rise. I have found that most people think they are on the right side of things—their views are the righteous ones, their people are the good people—and there is a chasm fixed that separates an us from a them. It can seem a bit hopeless. Where do we go from here?

If there’s anything that breaks up that narrative for me—that narrative where there’s good and there’s bad and you can be clear which side of the line you’re on (and this is a tough narrative to break), it’s a close reading of the Bible. This is sort of funny considering the reputation the book has in some circles as a vehicle for clearing all this up. It makes sense to me though, that the Word of God would work like this—pulling us together somehow, rather than drawing lines that separate. Instead of reinforcing the structure of the good people versus the bad people, it’s more: we’re all bad, redeemable, and in this together.

Every time I