“Nope, We’re Not Doing That” based on Jeremiah 44:11-19

August 13, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

After she retired, my friend the Rev. Dr. Barbara Thorington Green spent a year away from organized religion so that she could open herself to thinking about the Sacred in new and different ways. Her year off resulted in poetry that became the book “Calling God She? Reflections and insights of a great-grandmother, retired clergywoman, and doctor of theology.” This is one of my favorite poems in it:

Perhaps God is a quilter,

The quilter creates something warm and beautiful

out of bits and pieces of fabric,

using a variety of colors and designs.

The quilter takes things apart and puts them together again

creating something new, unpredictable, unique,

and perhaps never envisioned.

The quilter uses what is at hand

to create a blessing, sometimes planned,

sometimes created in the process.

You can see yourself as a piece of fabric

being used as part of the whole,

or you can envision the various times of life

as the fabrics and yourself as the end product.

Of course more will be added tomorrow

and the next day.

The quilt of our lives is ever changing.

Fabrics we would never chose

often add interest and character.

There can be many shapes and designs

as well as many fabrics in a quilt.

Each quilter has her own style

and way of being and doing.

The marks of the quilter

are everywhere on the quilt.

Hours of labor are required.

The results are always different,

yet in the end there is warmth and comfort.

When God is the quilter,

working internally and externally

Her marks are everywhere

creating beauty, warmth, and comfort.¹

For me, Barb’s work offers freedom and respite. The ways it offers to conceive of God make space for a broader and fuller picture. I’ve spent years thinking about Barb’s assumption that she couldn’t make space for the feminine aspects of God while being connected to the institutional church – because the church’s God is too masculine. I’ve always wanted to be able to argue back at that point, but I’ve yet to find a truly valid point to use 😉

Institutional religion promoting a masculinized version of God is not new. Unfortunately, it may be a particular facet of OUR faith tradition, to start with. The ancient near eastern neighbors of the ancient Jews liked to keep their deities in gender balanced pairs. Judaism’s monotheism was particularly odd because it proposed a stand-alone MALE deity. (We may want to acknowledge that God isn’t gendered, but that’s not the same as saying that the way the ancients saw God lacked gender.) Jeremiah seems to be speaking of a masculine deity in 585 BCE, in today’s passage. He is speaking to Judean refugees, people who escaped Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege in 587-586 BCE and are residing in Egypt. These are traumatized people, as is the prophet, who have all seen the destruction of their homeland and way of life.

Jeremiah is sometimes called the prophet of the Exile. He is believed to have lived and prophesied before, during, and right after the Babylonian siege that started the exile. His early work was an attempt to convince people to change their behavior something terrible happened. In Bible Study we wondered if he got stuck in that message and forgot to update it after the terrible things all happened.

I cut most of his diatribe from our reading this morning, it is particularly miserable to listen to. His speech makes God sound like an abusive spouse. Jeremiah is angry that the Egyptian refugees are worshiping a Goddess. Now, seemingly every commentator in every Bible commentary in existence takes Jeremiah’s side in this argument, supporting the idea that worshiping a Goddess is idolatry and God had a right to act like a jealous (raving lunatic) spouse.

So, I’m going take on all of them! (Although not just for fun. I think they’re all wrong.) The women respond to Jeremiah’s furious accusations in a quite unexpected way. They respond, “Nope, we’re not doing that.” Actually, their words are even better than my summary. They respond, “‘As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.” GIGGLE. I love the contrast between Jeremiah ranting and raving and expressing fury (I imagine him spitting a little bit at the sides of his mouth while he speaks) and the women calmly denying his authority over their lives.

The women go on to say that they’d worshiped the Goddess for generations, and that she’d always taken good care of them. The women say that things were going fine for them until they stopped worshiping the Goddess, and that everything went to hell when they stopped. Thus, they say, they’re going back to what worked.

Now, early in Jeremiah’s ministry, he got the young King Josiah to listen to him and they instituted serious reforms. The reforms including monotheism, which most scholars think is the first time it was practiced in the history of ancient Judaism. (I could proof text this for you, but I’m not going to. Let me know if you want references later!) Monotheism mean that only YHWH was to be worshiped, and that meant that the long term worship of the Goddess was suppressed. (More on this theory of the long-term worship of a Hebrew Goddess to come.)

Now, I think the theology of both Jeremiah AND the women is flawed. Judea sat on land that was the cross-roads of the ancient world and every empire that existed wanted to control it. Both groups assume a Deity who micromanages and who punishes the people for lack of faith by destroying their nation. I don’t believe in such a Deity, rather I think it stunk for the Jewish people that the “Promised Land” was such a highly prized crossroads. But, to be fair, I think that both Jeremiah and the women’s arguments are EQUALLY problematic.

All those Biblical commentators who take Jeremiah’s side claim that the real issue here was the people’s idolatry and that the response of the women shows the hard-heartedness of the people. They claim that the Jewish women were worshiping some sort of Canaanite or Babylonian Goddess, or perhaps a hybrid of the two. The Biblical commentators seem to think that God is justified in the abusive, violent language of a jealous spouse.

Ironically, they seem to miss that the presentation of God made by Jeremiah is HYPER masculine. To be fair, the origins of YHWH are in a warrior God, so there has always been a hyper masculine tone there. But Jeremiah claiming that this masculine warrior is angry and ready to kill and shame is really the very worst stereotype of masculinity imaginable, right? That’s toxic masculinity. Masculinity can be so much more and so much better than that, and it almost always is! But Jeremiah is speaking of God who is violent, jealous, and murderous, as a warrior – he is presenting God in the very worst of masculine ways.

The women are claiming that there is more to life, and more to the Divine than that. So, I’m on their side. In 1967 Raphael Patai wrote seminal book entitled The Hebrew Goddess². It has been summarized this way, “Raphael Patai argues that the Israelites experienced the same Goddess-hunger that can be found in peoples and cultures all around the world in every age – and Patai insists, too, that the worship of a female deity by the Israelites was not an act of apostasy but rather an integral part of the religion of the Hebrews.‘”³ Patai,and those who have followed in his footsteps in looking for clues about folk religion, think that many ancient Hebrews worshiped a female Goddess they saw as YHWH’s spouse and counterpart. I think this is pretty reasonable. If you conceive of God purely in the masculine, the human need for balance well find a way to also understand God in the feminine.

The Women’s Bible Commentary thinks so too, and take it a step further. They say, “It seems certain that the Israelite women worshiped the queen of heaven. Women were excluded from full participation in temple worship, and the predominate Israelite conception of God was masculine. The queen provided them with a female deity who offered them protection and prosperity.”⁴I think this passage is the most overt place we can see the women’s faith. There are other places that traces of it can be found (and Patai’s book explains them all), but this is the one where it is in plain sight.

The women admit to worshiping a Goddess, and they think it is not only good, it is imperative. They reject the prophet who claims that only the male version of God can be worshiped. They just won’t! In fact, Patai mentions a letter from 419 BCE written by a military man about the Judean colony in Egypt. The collections given to the Jewish priest are enumerated. 123 people donated in the name of YHWY, 120 donated to the Queen of Heaven.⁵ Jeremiah appears to have lost this argument.

Now, as a 21^st century Christian, I don’t think God is male, nor female. I prefer to think of God as existing beyond gender, but I also recognize that our minds are limited and metaphors are often more powerful with more specificity. Sometimes I need to imagine God as a Latina grandmother, in order to remember God’s fierce protection and love. Sometimes I need to remember my own paternal grandfather and use his unfaltering affection as a way to access God’s acceptance. I suspect most of us need metaphors for God that have gender, but that whenever we limit God by holding one image alone (particularly an image that reflects only one gender expression or only one ethnic identity), we end up missing much of God’s nature. The institutional church has often done this, and as a result, splinter groups have left in order to see God more fully. Particularly, when the conception of God that institutional religion propagates fits in with the authority figures of society (ahem, white supremacy and the patriarchy) we know that religion is NOT reflecting God, but rather its own values.

I do, vehemently, support thinking about Goddess imagery sometimes. (And thinking about God as genderqueer sometimes too.) I think those women in Egypt were right to refuse Jeremiah’s decree and to trust their own experience. I’m so thankful that their voices refuse to associate violence and abuse with the Divine! It really matters that they saw more to Holiness than what Jeremiah was claiming! It also matters that they worked together and trusted themselves more than an external authority figure! Finally, I think it matters that they choose to worship the Sacred they know to call them to life and wholeness, not the one who punished and threatened. Those women knew a lot. May we be wise enough to listen to their wisdom. Amen

1 Barbara Thorington Green, Calling God She (Middleton, DE self-published), 84-85. Used with permission.

2 Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967 first edition, 1990, 3^rd edition)

3 Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997) p. 224.

4 Katheleen M. O’Connor, “Jeremiah” in Women’s Bible Commenatry edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992, 1998) p. 182

5 Patai, location 1149 in Kindle version (end of chapter 2).

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

August 13, 2017

Sermons

“A Powerful No” based on Esther 1:1-20

November 13, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In 1802 a heterosexual, white, protestant couple got married – and the church freaked out. You want to know why, I promise. They freaked out because she…wore….a red coat! The couple was Abigail and Daniel Harkness, and Daniel was a part of the Society of Friends. They officially censured him for marrying her, both because she wasn’t a part of the Society of Friends and because of her coat (which they said made her a “worldly woman”). She refused to give up her coat. He refused to apologize for her coat. So they became Methodists.

Thank goodness they did. I sometimes have some feelings of envy for the peace-loving Quakers, but that one action they did all those years ago was really good for Methodists. Abigail and Daniel’s great-granddaughter was fond of telling that story, and made it a part of her story of formation. Their great-granddaughter was Georgia Harkness, the first woman to be a full professor at a theological school in the United States of America, a feat she accomplished as an active Methodist theologian. She was, truth be told, the first RECOGNIZED female theologian, and she was a member of the Troy Annual Conference. She had local ordination, but fought for women’s full ordination rights in the Methodist Church.

I do not have enough time to tell you Georgia Harkness’s full story today (I’m still learning it), but there are a few other details you need to know. She graduated from Cornell in 1912, after which she taught high school in Schyllerville and Scotia for 6 years (yes, OUR Scotia), but she got restless. After reading an advertisement in The Christian Advocate she went to Boston University (also a Methodist school) for her masters degree and then a PhD in the philosophy of religion. She then taught at Elmira College for 15 years. In 1939 she was hired by Garrett, breaking the stained glass ceiling. She was part of the movement toward full ordination rights for women in the Methodist Church, the social gospel, the creation of the World Council of Churches, and was eventually a General Conference delegate from the Troy Annual Conference (although Junice tells me this happened while she was a professor at Pacific School of Religion in CA and not everyone was thrilled about it.)

While she was teaching in Scotia, she was very active in her “local church” teaching Sunday School and working with youth groups. We haven’t yet verified which church was that was. Most likely, Scotia UMC, right? Given our history though, maybe it was us. (We’re looking!) In any case, a Methodist Church in the Albany District and Schenectady County sent Georgia Harkness off to her graduate education and to change the face of Methodism, academia, and the world.

Dr. Georgia Harkness attributed her courage to her great-grandmother, Abigail. When women graduate from Garrett-Evangelical Theological school, a United Methodist Seminary north of Chicago, they wear red shoes. They do it to remind themselves of their place in the world as courageous, outrageous women and to celebrate the rich tradition of female scholarship at Garrett-Evangelical.”¹ They do it because of Abigail Harkness.

Abigail Harkness refused to do what was asked of her, and in doing so she inspired great change. Her courage laid the foundation for Georgia’s. I think Abigail Harkness was to Georgia Harkness what Vashti was to Esther. Now, let me be clear. The book of Esther is a work of fiction. It was written down (no oral tradition) as a work of fiction, for the purpose of encouraging Jews living in the Persian empire to have hope and stay faithful. This story did not happen. History knows too much about the era. This is intentional historical fiction! As Sidnie White Crawford (professor of Classics and Religious Studies at University of Nebraka Lincoln) puts it in The New Interpreter’s Bible, “This is also a hopeful message to Jews living in diaspora; the status quo is never such and things can always change.”²

John Dominic Crossan likes to help people understand the Bible by saying, “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens,” by which he means that he doesn’t think that there was an actual embodied living Christ who walked with the disciples to Emmaus and explained the Jesus movement to them and then disappeared as he became known in the breaking of the bread at dinner. Rather, he believes that it is in reflecting on history that we come to understand our present, and it is in the communion table that Christ is known. The literal pales beside the metaphorical. Similarly, the book of Esther didn’t happen, and yet Esther tells truths of humanity that keep happening.

White Crawford says, “The book, which was written for Jews living in exile, consistently lampoons their Gentile overlords. Ahasuerus is less an awe-inspiring ruler than an easily manipulated buffoon.”³ Obviously the Jews living in ancient Persia were the only people in the history of the world who need to make fun of their ruler to feel safe in the world, so we can’t understand it, but we can try ;).

The story starts out describing the excessive opulence of the King’s palace and grounds and his outrageous 6-month party for all of his officials. Granted, travel was harder in those days and he was king over a really big empire so you might want to take advantage of opportunites to be together, but who can really afford to both stop their government for 6 months AND have a ridiculous party at the same time? Clearly, he could! And he thought it was worth it. He was clearly very excited to show off his power and wealth.

Now, the author is very wise and quite intentional. The attention to detail wasn’t an accident. White Crawford says, “Through the description we get a glimpse of the Persian character: ostentatious, showy, unbridled. This is in direct contrast to the usual Jewish values of modesty and self-restraint (see Prov 11:2-4). Although disapproval is never directly voiced, the message is clear: Such opulence, while immediately awe-inspiring, hides an empty and probably corrupt core.”⁴ So, after this showy 6 month party, the King decides that he needs a new audience to show off to, and he invites everyone in the city to come to a 7 day party.

It is very clearly stated that at this party people were allowed to drink how they wanted, because usually the expectation was that everyone drank when the king drank. “The author is letting the reader now that everything in this court, including drinking, proceeds according to the whim of the king,” including allowing people to drink as much (or as little) as they wished!⁵

So, 187 days in to a drunken stupor, the king calls for his wife who is throwing a party of her own with the women. This isn’t particularly historical, but it does work for historical fiction! We’re told that, “Historically Persian women and men could eat together, but the women left when the drinking began. It suits the purposes of the author to have the men and women separate when the story begins.”⁶ It fits the story, because then the king can call for Vashti.

She is told to show up in her crown. She isn’t told what else to wear. Assumptions have long been that she’s not supposed to wear anything but her crown. So, the story sets it up: the king has has been having a six month long drinking party to show off all his wealth, his wife is with her female companions, and he beckons her to come out naked to be shown off before all of the officials of the land and every man in her city.

Now, we don’t know a darn thing about Vashti (mostly because she never existed) but I want to play with this idea a little bit. I have, at times in my life, been in the exclusive company of women. During those times, if a particularly inappropriate “request” were to come to one of those women from a man, a certain amount of shared indignation would erupt. The woman who received the “request,” who might have simply hung her head in shame and complied if she were alone, would be motivated to respond differently in the presence of other women. The atrocity of the “request” would be named. Other options would be raised. An assessment of the risk involved in refusing vs. the risk involved in responding would be done. Perhaps, if there were some, particularly powerful women in the group might offer their own resources as protection.

That is to say, that when oppressors make horrible demands of members of oppressed groups, they’re less likely to have their dictates followed when the demand comes to the individual while the individual is supported by other members of the oppressed group. Um. Duh. But, the king is presented as an idiot. So, he doesn’t know that. And I’m not trying to be subtle here. I’m encouraging all of us to act like the women that Vashti was with – naming injustice when we see it, assessing damage, coming up with alternative plans, using our resources for the vulnerable, and supporting whoever needs the support. I’m reminding us all that there is power in being together, and not in allowing anyone to be isolated. I’m particularly encouraging stand together in the face of unreasonable decrees by unjust rulers.

Vashti says “no.” The story doesn’t REALLY tell us what happens to her. She’s said to be banished. For most of history that’s thought to include being killed. However, I’ve had a hard week and I’m going to claim that some of those women she was with in her banquet took her in and she lived a lovely life of freedom and access to great books in her exile. It IS a work of fiction after all, and this is my fan-fiction addition for the sake of having some darn hope. 😉

However, before she gets banished a few things happen. First of all, her husband who just spent 187 days showing off his power and wealth can’t figure out how to respond her “no” and convenes a war council to try to figure out how to respond. The king’s councilors are also freaked out and horrified that once the story gets out (which it WILL when all the women were present to hear her “no” and all the men were present to see her not show up) all the other women in the empire won’t obey their husbands either. (May. It. Be. So.) The scholar reminds us, “the character’s reactions to events lead the reader to laugh. For example, Vashti’s refusal to obey one order is thought to threaten the stability of the empire and leads to a decree declaring, of all things, that husbands should rule in their own houses and speak their own languages.”⁷ Which happens. The greatest mail service ever known on the face of the earth to that time was put to the task of telling men to be the masters of their houses – in a society that was already a patriarchy – because the men were so freaked out that one woman would say “no.”

That’s a powerful no.

It also set up Esther to replace Vashti as queen and save her people from genocide. Vashti and Esther didn’t know each other, but we can guess that Esther knew Vashti’s story, and learned from it. She did her subversiveness in different ways, but she learned from the one who came before her. Vashti set up Esther to succeed. Abigail Harkness set up Georgia to succeed. Even the failures of one woman who seeks power can inspire the next woman to succeed.

And, beloved people of God, like Vashti and Abigail, we are not powerless. We have the power to say “no” to things that are wrong, and “yes” to opportunities for justice. Furthermore, we can act like the women at the banquet in counseling each other toward courageous acts and outrageous refusals of unjust demands. We are powerful. God is powerful. We can, and we will continue to move the world toward good. NOTHING and NO ONE, not even a narcissistic power-hungry “king” can stop us. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Red Shoes” by “preacher mom” http://preacherparents.blogspot.com/2010/05/red-shoes.html, accessed 11/10/2016

2Sidnie White Crawford “The Book of Esther,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999): p. 858.

3Ibid, 858

4Ibid, 880.

5Ibid, 879.

6Ibid, 880.

7Ibid, 858.

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