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Text of the page (random words):
s to all generations for ever and ever amen all scripture is from the new revised standard version good friday sermon the only begotten daughter april 7 2023 june 15 2023 picture jephthah s daughter at the art institute of chicago judges 11 29 40 psalm 22 hebrews 12 1 4 luke 22 14 23 56 readings from a woman s commentary for the whole church year a good friday for god so loved the world that god gave god s only son john 3 16 common english bible ceb god said take your son your only son whom you love gen 22 2 ceb only she an only child judges 11 35 a woman s commentary for the whole church year a good friday unless other noted all scripture quotations are from a woman s commentary many of us know about the only sons isaac and jesus but how many of us know about the only daughter in judges 11 i suspect not many the revised common lectionary skips her story so does the daily lectionary in the book of common prayer churches that use lectionaries have been trained to skip her story after all who wants to hear about a human sacrifice on sunday morning the eucharistic prayer notwithstanding but tonight we hear the only daughter s story unfortunately we cannot call her by name because the men who compiled the book of judges didn t think her name was important just her father s name is recorded the god of jephthah the story of the only daughter and her father is one straight out of a soap opera or telenovela jephthah the father is himself an abused son his mother was a sex worker his father took him from his mother and his half brothers and his stepmother heaped abuse on him they ran him out of the country and he became a mercenary by now the area where he grew up gilead is being attacked by another country ammon now the people of gilead want jephthah and his mercenary army to come and defend them jephthah only agrees to do this when the elders say they will make him the head of the region if he drives off the ammonites that s where our reading begins for years jephthah has been a wheeling and dealing manipulator he knows what to say and what to do to get what he wants so when the spirit of the holy one comes upon him he does not take it at face value this is a man who does not take anything at face value even god the spirit of god isn t enough so the manipulator begins to wheel and deal because he wants to lead the people who drove him off this is the deal if god gives victory to jephthah he will offer the one who comes out whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when i return to god as a burnt offering who jephthah thought might be the first out of the door when he returned home after his victory is unclear the only daughter following the tradition of miriam and deborah greets her father with drums songs and dance and now jephthah s foolish and rash vow comes back on him in his attempt to manipulate god because god s spirit was not good enough for him he stands to lose his only begotten daughter let s be clear on one point from here on out jephthah could have repented of his foolish and rash vow he could have admitted he was trying to manipulate god with his grandiose vow humbled himself before god and admitted his sin of unbelief in the power of god s spirit but he didn t even when the first person to greet him was his daughter his only child instead of admitting his own sin he blames her telling her you have become my trouble the god jephthah made his vow to will not let jephthah out of his vow this petty tyrant is not the holy one who freely gave her spirit to jephthah to begin with the god of jephthah is a rigid and unbending god who cannot forgive a foolish oath the god jephthah vowed his vow to makes him keep it even if keeping it means human sacrifice which is forbidden by the torah jephthah does not question his own theology and neither does he bargain with god as abraham did for lot s life jephthah s god does not forgive or relent what is vowed must be done even if it violates the torah that was given at mount sinai the only daughter s response is as troubling as jephthah s vow and proclamation my father you have opened your mouth to the holy one do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth the only daughter not only accepts her fate she binds jephthah to his unfaithful words both father and daughter trap themselves in a vow that could have and should have been broken and repented of but the daughter does set a condition on her obedience release me for two months and i will go and go down among the hills and weep for my virginity i and my women friends the only daughter might submit to her manipulative father s foolish vow but she will not spend the last months of her life with him she chooses to spend that time with her women friends and those women remember her and they teach their daughters about her the daughters remember her and the only daughter becomes an observance in israel year by year the daughters of israel would go out to tell the story of the daughter of jephthah the gileadite for four days the only daughter weeps for her virginity for she will not have children who remember her but the faithful women in her life make sure she is not forgotten after her death in an interview with christian century the author of a woman s lectionary for the whole church dr wilda gafney said she intentionally chose each psalm to be the woman s or women s response in the reading from the hebrew scriptures so now we turn to psalm 22 and hear the only daughter cry out my god my god why have you forsaken me why are you so far from my deliverance from the words of my groaning my god i cry by day and you do not answer and by night and there i find no rest the god of psalm 22 when we think of these words being cried out we hear them cried out by jesus on the cross in dr phyllis trible s groundbreaking book texts of terror dr trible applies these words to the daughter my god my god why hast thou forsaken her but i have never thought about making these words the only daughter s prayer as she wept and mourned with her friends just as god s only son felt abandoned on the cross so jephthah s only daughter feels abandoned as well jesus prayed in gethsemane the night before abba if you are willing take this cup away from me yet not my will but yours be done the cup was not taken away for either only child as we read psalm 22 the god of the psalmist is entire universes away from the god of jephthah yet it was you who drew me from the womb keeping me safe on my mother s breast on you was i cast from birth and since my mother s womb you have been my god the god of psalm 22 is a nurse and midwife who brings life into the world and helps that life to flourish this god is loving caring and trustworthy and this is the god jesus and the only daughter call out to in their time of despair who do we say god is dr gafney comments that each of these texts requires us to ask who do we think god is are we talking about the vengeful tyrant of judges 11 or the midwife and nurse of psalm 22 this question matters because this is the god we bring to tonight s passion reading are we looking through jephthah s eyes seeing a petty and vengeful god who sends the only son to be tortured and slaughtered for our sins so that god s wrath can be spent on jesus just so that same god can forgive us or do we bring the loving midwife and nurse of psalm 22 to our reading of luke s passion is god the holy midwife who is always bringing new life into this world and that is the reason god sent the only son into the world jesus died because those in power do not want to hear about the loving god who has no favorites the powerful do not want the lowly to be raised and god mourns and weeps with the women at the foot of the cross as jesus dies just as the only daughter s friends wept and mourned with her as god weeps god is preparing to answer this travesty yes those in power the occupying force of rome did the worse they could do to jesus but that isn t the last word god s last word will come on sunday morning on this holy night we believe that jesus was crucified died and was buried he descended to the dead now i m supposed to stop there but i m not we believe that jesus descended to the dead to sheol the hebrew underworld in many eastern icons when jesus is raised from the dead he brings adam eve and all of god s people from sheol with him he brings the only daughter with him and jesus knows her name the men who compiled the book of judges may have forgotten this precious daughter s name but god did not but it is not sunday yet tonight we mourn we mourn with the other women in our readings we mourn with the only daughter s friends and we mourn with mary magdalene mary the mother of james and joseph salome and the other female disciples at the cross these women do not leave when jesus is taken off of the cross after joseph lays jesus in the tomb luke tells us the women followed the ones who had come with him from galilee and they saw the tomb and how his body was placed matthew tells us mary magdalene and the other mary were there sitting in front of the tomb holding vigil both jesus and the only daughter have cried out my god my god why have you forsaken me why are you so far from my deliverance from the words of my groaning and now there is silence and we hold vigil as we sit in this silence in this holy and liminal space in the darkness of the tomb we must remember jesus emmanuel god is with us god is with us in our lowest and bleakest times god was with the only daughter as she submitted to a father that could not conceive of a god who could forgive a foolish oath god was with jesus as his male disciples fled and the roman government condemned him to death here the promise given at jesus birth is the promise we must hold onto as jesus lies in the tomb in the silence of holy saturday god is with us and just as god called the only daughter by her name just as jesus will call mary magdalene by her name god calls each of us by name as we wait what i m reading nonfiction february 22 2022 may 2 2022 wintering by katherine mays is a memoir written when mays health forced her to take a sabbatical from her job her own personal winter depression happened during an actual winter mays brilliantly interweaves navigating her depression while navigating winter as she explores winter as a time when we do pull away from the world to survive the cold weather she compares it to navigating her own internal winter of depression and the withdrawal and introspection that is called for in both circumstances she also illustrates the paradox of winter s withdrawal with the need to keep close to family and friends as well to survive both the cold months and depression as they rage on i appreciate the fact that mays has no easy answers and it is a wonderful memoir of how navigating depression any time of the year is both a solitary and communal endeavor rating 5 out of 5 what i m reading fiction february 21 2022 may 2 2022 the sentence by louise erdrich is a surreal eerie novel that combines the concreteness of the pandemic and the social unrest of 2020 with a ghost story set in a bookstore in minneapolis erdrich captures 2020 perfectly in her main character tookie who has to navigate both the pandemic and the protests and riots that followed george floyd s murder as a native american woman while dealing with the ghost of a woman who constantly appropriated native american culture while she lived rating 4 out of 5 can everyday creativity change the world january 17 2022 january 18 2022 can baking save the world i ve had two ideas swirling around my head for a couple of years the first patricia mckillip gave me in her book solstice wood the book features a group of women who use their arts and crafts to keep the land of fairy at bay in their woods this led me to think about a group of primarily women who use their arts and crafts to keep evil at bay in the world instead of fighting evil things like demons mages gone bad or their local alderperson sorry i live in chicago with swords guns or magical monsoons they fight with their knitting needles crochet hooks wooden spoons and dutch ovens paints pottery wheels and or sewing machines this idea became extremely personal to me in march 2020 when covid 19 shut down the world when i started thinking about cracking a bottle of wine open and 10 00 am i knew i was going to have to come up with a better way to deal with the stress as i had been maniacally binge watching the great british baking show on netflix and i love to bake that s what i did a couple of months earlier a friend had shared a sourdough starter with me and i was already learning that so i continued to learn and bake my incredible husband found me 50 pounds of flour and a stock of yeast when everyone else jumped on the baking bandwagon and off i went of course i thought that i d bake for a couple of months then life would go back to normal two years later i m still baking to keep my sanity and to make my friends happy in december i baked and gave gift boxes to my friends and saw firsthand how much an everyday craft can bring happiness and joy to our bleak world and winter in chicago is bleak my friends these two ideas keep feeding each other that the everyday arts and crafts we do in our everyday lives not only make our lives better but make our world a better place to live this idea shouldn t be so revolutionary to me after all i m a christian who believes that god is the creator of everything i also believe that this god made all human beings in her image so of course we are all creators we are made in the creator god s image but the connection that god s creative action that changed the void into something else in genesis 1 could be connected to my baking or knitting changing the world into something else has only been an idea that clicked with me in the last couple of years but i m discovering that being made in the image of god means exactly that our creative work no matter how small or ordinary changes the world we live in it makes creation more of the place god intended it to be the crazy thing is i wrote an article about how writing does this in writing the world right years ago i never thought to apply it to baking and knitting this idea is what i m going to be exploring on this blog for the next few months i will be telling my stories and hopefully telling stories from friends and family as well and i want to hear your stories how are using your creative ability your arts and crafts to make yourself your family your home your community and your world a better more beautiful and divine place posts navigation older posts search for recent posts i will be speaking at the magdalene rising summit creative midlife mayhem is out trinity sunday sermon the earth is full of god s glory welcome to creative midlife mayhem challenging traditional gender roles in christianity my journey as a woman theologian recent comments early church leaders prompted 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