St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, November 13, 2005

Foremothers – Rev. David Mundy

Judges 4:1-7 Matthew 25:14-30

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Quickly – try not to think about it too much – how many books of the bible are named for women? There are only two and both of them are in what we as Christians usually refer to as the Old Testament.

The book of Ruth tells us of a woman from a foreign land who marries one of the people of Israel and remains loyal to her mother-in-law even after her husband dies. It is a book that is near and dear to me because I married a Ruth and a passage from this book was read at our wedding.

Esther is the curious and rather exciting story of a woman who shows great courage in thwarting a plan to persecute Jews during the times of the Persian empire. The curious part is that God is never mentioned once in the book of Esther, although God is always “waiting in the wings” as one scholar has put it. And there is a Jewish festival named Purim which celebrates Esther’s story and the deliverance of God’s people.

Why aren’t there more bible stories about women? In the bible I use the story of Ruth is only four and a half pages long, and Esther is eight pages. It’s really not very much considering that there are sixty-six books in the bible and roughly fifteen hundred pages of text.

How many women from the bible can you name? Mary, the mother of Jesus is obviously going to come to mind, but how well do you do beyond her name? You might be hard-pressed to come up with many but make no mistake, we have foremothers in the faith, as well as forefathers.

I should admit that this title “foremothers” is borrowed from a book of the same name written by Janice Nunnally Cox, who looks at the stories of several dozen women in scripture, although when she lists them they are often the unnamed “daughters of” a male biblical character or “women of” a particular town. They simply don’t have names in the bible. Over and over again these biblical stories are about women who manage to emerge from the long shadows cast by men, whether their fathers or husbands or brothers.

It is the resourcefulness and courage and faithfulness of these women which allows them to be seen and heard, almost in spite of the male-dominated world in which they lived.

This morning we are making a brief stop in the book called Judges in the Hebrew scriptures and we hear very briefly about one of these foremothers. Deborah was one of a series of charismatic leaders or judges of Israel in a turbulent time of the nation’s history. She was not Judge Deborah along the lines of Judge Judy! After Moses died and Joshua died the people of Israel really didn’t know where they were going and their enemies seemed to be everywhere. Deborah’s role was as a prophetic leader for a specific moment in their history. She hears that an enemy army with 900 chariots has amassed near the strategic hill called Mount Tabor which is not far from the Sea of Galilee. The word has gone out to gather the Israelite militia from the tribes of the north, but the general of the Israelites named Barak was convinced that a battle would be one-sided and they would be on the losing side. But Deborah lets Barak know that God has told her that they will prevail: “I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and troops: and I will give him into your hand.”

Unfortunately the passage we heard doesn’t let us in on the best part of the story so I have to tell you what happened! Barak is not impressed. He says that he will go into battle– if she goes. Perhaps Barak figured that this would shut Deborah up in a hurry. Fortunately Deborah didn’t “know her place” and her response is worth remembering. I’m paraphrasing here, but she chides Barak saying “Okay you big sissy, I will go with you, but history will record that the leader of our enemy was defeated by a woman!” And that is what happened.

I don’t know about you but I struggle with the blood and gore of the Old Testament, but this is clearly a story of courage in the face of what seems to be insurmountable odds. And later we are told that there was a whole generation of peace after this enemy was defeated. There is a song which follows this called the Song of Deborah which celebrates her leadership and there is a verse which says:

The peasantry prospered in Israel,

they grew fat in plunder,

because you arose, Deborah,

arose as a mother in Israel.

Deborah was the right person for the right time. She was God’s woman for the right time. She was a foremother.

Is it important to acknowledge the foremothers of our Judeo-Christian tradition? After all people are just people, aren’t they? It doesn’t matter if the heroes of our faith are men or women. Well, I put the question to a number of women this past week and the answer was an emphatic “yes” we do need to recognize the women of faithful courage with their unique gifts and stories. We all need role models of gender and race and faith tradition so that we have the points of identification and inspiration which will encourage our aspirations. And even though there have been great gains for women in the past two generations it is important not to take change for granted. The poet Maya Angelou says it well “How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!"

Recently we heard about the death of one of the great figures of the American civil rights movement, Rosa Parks. Most of us know of her story, the choice she made at the end of a work day not to move to the segregated part of the bus on her trip home. Rosa Parks was not a warrior in any traditional sense of the word but her simple and determined act of civil disobedience motivated the black community, including a Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. to organize a protest which ultimately changed the laws of a nation.

In the years that followed Mrs. Parks was content to be in the background, for the most part, but when she died at the ripe old age of ninety-two she was honoured in ways that few other American women have been. Another famous preacher, the Reverend Jesse Jackson said about Rosa Parks “she sat down so we could rise up.”

Just the same, we also need to hear the voices of those who are not content to accept or support the status quo. Sometimes it is just too easy to assume that the way things have been are the only way. When I was studying for the ministry in the late nineteen seventies at the University of Toronto, I had a classmate, a woman, who was very articulate and willing to speak to virtually every issue from a feminist perspective. I have to admit that my usual response when her hand shot up was “not her again!” although I definitely wouldn’t have said it out loud. A strange thing happened during my third year. I began to realize that a fair amount of what she said that I dismissed in my first year began to ring true.

Our United Church has an important history of recognizing women in leadership. Next year we will celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the ordination of women in our denomination. In keeping with our theme of honouring foremothers I should say that a woman named Lydia Gruchy was ordained to the ministry of word and sacrament and pastoral care in 1936, opening the door for so many who would follow.

As people who want to follow the Christ who invited women out of the shadows. The longest conversation between Jesus and any individual in the gospels is the story of the unnamed Samaritan woman found in John. There were a number of women amongst Jesus’ circle of followers and it was one of them, a woman called Mary who discovered that the tomb was empty on Easter morning. We must certainly count all of them as foremothers in faith.

Perhaps what we can do in addition to learning the stories of these biblical figures is to uphold and honour those women who have shaped us and been our mentors in faith and courage in our own time. A few years ago my wife Ruth hosted a dinner party for a number of women friends. Each one was told in advance that there would be a time around the table when she could mention a notable woman in her life and then every one of these women would be toasted. It turned out to be a very meaningful gathering during which those ordinary women became extraordinary in the telling of their stories. While we might not choose to be that formal all of us can name the faith-full, resource-full women of our lives. We could even take it a step beyond and let those women know.

A best-selling novel in recent years is the dramatic retelling of a story about a biblical woman who is only briefly mentioned in the book of Genesis and her’s is a story of violence. Her name was Dinah and she was the daughter of one of the biblical forefathers, Jacob and his wife Leah. In the prologue Dinah speaks:

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother. On those rare occasions when I was remembered, it was as a victim.

Near the beginning of your holy book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped and continues with the bloody tale of how my honor was avenged. It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah. No one recalled my skill as a midwife, or the songs I sang, or the bread I baked for my insatiable brothers . . . There was far more to tell.

There is a great deal to tell about the mothers and sisters of faith in our lives. It is up to us to listen and celebrate.