Susan C. Lehman, Chaplain

I am including in this anthology several meditations that have come out of a two-year reading of the Bible that we have done in the context of a weekly service of Holy Communion. In September of 1995 we began a leisurely read of scripture with the first creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:4a.) asking ourselves a series of questions about women.

• Who are the women in scripture?
  
  
• What does the Bible tell us about the role and status of women?
  
  
• How do women function in the economy of salvation?

As of May, 1997 we have read as far as the Bathsheba stories in 11 Samuel. The Central idea that has guided my reading is: I think that the promise of God, first spoken to Abram is Genesis 12: "you shall have land and sons" drives the whole Hebrew Bible. In this promise, women are essential for the bearing of sons. Therefore we will find many, many accounts of women as wives, mothers, handmaids, sisters, daughters. When we move into the portion of Hebrew Bible that includes the former prophets (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel and Kings) it is my reading that the promise of God -- "land and sons" is collapsed into the promise of king and kingdom: that is, secure borders for the flourishing of the sons. In this portion of the text we will find fewer women, and for the most part women will be identified by their relationship to the emergence of a king.

On a personal note, I have loved the opportunity to read the think about scripture from the point of view of women. I have loved it because I am a woman and I am struck by the fact that the very first thing scripture has to say about human beings is that... "we are in the image of God, male and female". In scripture, gender matters. In addition, the fact that we are a women's college offers us the opportunity to read, think about, muse, delight in, question, challenge, reject and embrace this wonderful collection of sacred writings. I hope the meditations that follow will give you a taste of what it is to read Bible, prayerfully and playfully.

This morning we hear from the legendary material the story of Lot, his unnamed daughters, and his unnamed wife. For those of us who are daughters, it is a story of Horror. It has been treated, for the mmost part, as a way to describe the evil of the city of Sodom. It has been cited as a proof text of these daughters. As for Lot's wife, all that we know of her from the text is one sentence: "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." Implied: She got her just reward. The gospel of Luke repeats this judgement; Jesus issues the warning: "Remember Lot's wife"... in a charge to forward. In our narrating of the role, the place of women in the biblical narrative of salvation, it is time to pause and think hard on a text that has been used to legitimate certain claims of God.

This man Lot -- not a her of scripture -- when his life, his male guests, his commitment to the deeply held value of "Hospitality" is challenged by the unruly crowd... will not place in jeopardy his life or the life and well-being of his male guests; He will not refuse hospitality to a crowd whose behavior becomes synonymous with evil... He will use his daughters, they are his possession after all.... In words that underscore the helplessness women, the perception that their only function in the economy of salvation is to bear children from pure, virginal bodies... We hear Lot saying: "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man, let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please, only do nothing to these men, for they have come under my roof...."

Again, if these daughters were the only ones in the history of the world to be offered as sport in order to protect the interests of their fathers... perhaps we would have remembered their names... they are unnamed, and so they should be... for they represent generations of young women even unto our own day who have been used and abused by men who claimed them as dispensable property, sometimes fathers, husbands, boyfriends... Surely, even at this early hour of the morning, our rage should be tapped. It is important that we recall all the unnamed women who have been so used... And of Lots wife, I say: Thank God, she looked back. Thank God she defied the Lord's command not to look back... Thank God she became a pillar of Salt,... After her night of terror, a mother whose presence behind those closed doors can only be felt for... the narrative gives us no information of what she did as her husband offered her daughters, flesh of her flesh, for the sport of evil men... To have fled, and not paused to look back would have been indecent... Thank God she paused and stared into the face of evil... And thank God this Lord of legend and folklore transformed her into a pillar of salt... For what we have, for the most part, read as the punishment of God, I would offer instead is the way to honor and commemorate the terror of a mother... Salt after all is essential to life, as a chemical compound we cannot survive without it... salt is more than essential, it is released by our own body in sweat, when we labor, when we panic... it is fitting this unnamed mother, standing for all mothers who have been silent when their children were abused should be represented by salt... and finally she who stands forever as a pillar of salt, bears in that image, the salt of tears shed. It is one of the great blessings of our creation that our won bodies make tears, salty tears as a release and healing balm for souls that are in pain.

These biblical legends we are reading each Wednesday are hard and tough. They confront us with narratives that from the side of women beckon us to llok at the fact of human suffering... They have been read for centuries as the wild and wonderful accounts of the patriarch Abraham, Lot, Issac, and Jacob, but the stories of Abraham and his nephew Lot are told in terms of women. I think it is important for us to hear them, not to diminish the power of scripture as we discount the terrible things that happened to women by saying... "Oh, this is folklore," or "Oh, it was before the time of Jesus" or "It doesn't apply to our time, our enlightened age... ". No, we need to hear these legendary accounts, for they represent the on-going experience of some of our sisters... and because in their very horror they stand at the edge of our sensibility and invite us to look suffering in the eye and know that we are not alone... We are indeed surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, unnamed women who have known horror and in the case of Lot's wife, have given us a way to express that reality through sweat and tears. As you leave this morning, put a taste of salt on your tongue in thanksgiving for this mother.

This morning we complete the Abraham, Sarah, Hagar story. The promise of God to Abraham of land and sons has been partially fulfilled, for Abraham is now the father of two sons, the first born, Ishmael, through the body of the Egyptian slave woman, Hagar, and the child called "laughter" through the body of Sarah his wife, in their old age. Abraham is blessed; Sarah is blessed; Hagar... Hagar is not blessed. Hagar, the one Sarah calls "my maid", when she instructs her husband to "go into my maid that she might conceive a child and I might be built up through her"... this "her", Hagar in the reading for this morning is... a victim of Sarah's once again. The text reads: "But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian whom she had borne to Abraham playing with her son Issac. So she said to Abraham: 'Cast out this slave woman with he son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Issac.' Hagar is a victim in a most brutal way... Sarah's demand is not "send her away' but cast out, discard, "exile" is the word Phyllis Trible uses... cast out this slave woman... no name, no claim, no longer is Hagar Sarah "my maid. my possession"... Sarah distances herself by... "this slave woman".

What can we say of this? Only this: For shame... Sarah... Sarah, why were you so brutal to one so vulnerable.... Why is it that you could not recognize in Hagar a sister, a woman like yourself caught in a destiny not of your own choosing... Why, when children are at issue were you unable to embrace one whose status, nationality, race, condition of servitude was dependent upon you? Why, instead of insisting that God rethink his promise to include you and Hagar and all women and their children, or demanding of Abraham a just settlement of the abundance of his blessings... Why did you turn your impotency upon one less positioned than yourself? The text teads: "Sarah's demand that she slave woman and her child be cast out was very displeasing to Abraham" not on account of Hagar, but on account of his son. But the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob intervenes and instructs Abraham to do as Sarah commanded.

With bread and water and her child on her back, Hagar is cast out... and when the water was gone she placed her child under a bush and went off a good way... saying, "Let me not see the death of my child"... And she wept, and the child wept... and the text reads: "The Lord heard not Hagar's tears, but the young boy's"... And God instructs her to take the child by the hand, that he too will become a nation... For Ishmael there is a future... For Hagar her only task is to secure a wife for ther son... that there may be mroe sons.... She is indeed a functionary in the design of salvation. What I find so arresting about this legendary material is the brutality visited upon Hagar, not by Abraham, nor by God, but by Sarah. It is I believe, imperative that we women, in this women's college hear the story... And call Sarah, and each other to account.... The why questions I ask of Sarah, I must ask of myself, each and every time I turn to one less fortunate, and wreak my vengeance, my diseases discomfort, uncertainty upon those younger, those less privileged.

Hagar, she is the victim in all of us, we must carry her with us... we dare not construct a recitation of the founding mothers... Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel and exclude the Hagars.... In our own moments of abandonment, when we have been used, abused, and the best of us, what we make and give to the world is feared and rejected... and we are cast aside... then we will meet Hagar. She was there first. And my trust is, she will be there, waiting for us... to hold and embrace us. Amen.

Hannah. Her story begins:
There was a certain man
of the hill country of Ephriam
His name was Elkanah
He has a lineage father, grandfather
an inheritance of his own.
Like the story-lives of most women
Hannah's story begins "There was a certain man."
Elkanah had two wives
Hannah and Penniah.
It happens.
Other times, a different place
perhaps one wife and a lady on the side.
More likely, in our time
a wife and a work
a life's work they love and are devoted to...
sometimes a wife and a life on the side-
a sport they are in love with
maybe a wife and a crutch,
something to lean on
as a man might lean upon a woman,
a crutch, an addiction, alcohol maybe.
Hannah is wife to divided loyalties.
She is born with a destiny
To bear children, be fertile and productive
that is her reason for being.
Hannah is intended to be the means
the instrumentality that permits her husband to know he is blessed.
For from the beginning God blessed them
saying be fruitful and multiply
and in Abraham, God initiated a special relationship
conferred upon Abraham the promise:
You shall have land and sons.
A man must take a wife to fulfill the promise.
Hannah is not full or fertile.
Hannah is barren.
She is sister to all of us
who are sterile and unproductive;
if not of the womb,
then of the work of our hands
our minds, our imaginations.
Barren and unproductive Hannah is tormented by Penniah.
Penniah is her rival
a partner in the conspiracy
that has women abusing each other.
Hannah is sister to all of us
who allow ourselves to be seduced into
competing with each other for his favors.
Year after year, Elkanah packs up his household
and makes the journey to the place where he gives thanks for his many blessings.
Year after year, she who is barren and unproductive goes along
a charade of thanksgiving with growing bitterness.
And how does she endure this humiliation?
She weeps and she refuses to eat.
Hannah, our foremother
some three thousand years ago
punishes herself
as women, ever since
even now continue to punish themselves
When, for whatever reason we do not live up
to the expectations
they have
we have
Women, disappointed and in pain first
turn on themselves...
refuse to eat,
eat too much,
drink too much.
Hannah, off to the side
watching the spectacle of thanksgiving
she will not participate in
weeps and will not eat.
And Elkanah, the one who loves her most
inquires
Why are you crying... Why won't you eat... Why are you sad, am I not more
to you than ten sons...
Hannah, mother to all of us whose pain and disappointment has been misunderstood
trivialized, diminished by those who love us the most.
Through all of this, our sister/mother Hannah is the silent,
She is passive, a victim, the girl child.
And then it happens.
She feels her own pain...
in deep distress,
weeping bitterly
she gets herself up,
makes the move,
leaves behind a gloating Penniah
a bewildered Elkanah
She pours out her heart
and for the first time we hear her voice
of pleading and beseeching...
She cries to the Lord her God...
if
if only you will look on my affliction
if only you will not forget me.
Hannah's first word is the sound of her beseeching...
when she begins to plead
truthfully
on her own behalf.
And in the language of her pleading
we hear the bargain she is willing to make.
Hannah strikes her bargain:
"Give me a son and I will give him back.
Let me be productive and I will give it all away."
The tough insisting voice is heard in Hannah
this is what I want...
this is what I'll pay.
But the insisting is not enough.
Eli hovers at the door,
The guardian of the forces that would
prevent Hannah from coming into her own.
Eli, the blind observer who fails to see the truth in her.
A priest at Shiloh
the hometown minister
parents
the college dean, the cultural expectation that blinds us to our destiny,
the hidden fears and apprehensions we carry within us
that would keep us silent
allow us to wallow in our misery
sterile and unproductive.
Hannah is pouring out her heart
speaking the truth from the depth of her own soul...
Eli sees blindly
accuses falsely.. How long will you be drunken...
"She is not herself, she isout of her mind,
crazy, misbehaving... Eli, the voice that would silence us
seeks to shame her.
Shame, my sister, is the curse of women.
And Hannah...
Hannah turns to that voice that would shame her
and says NO...
No. I will not be shamed. I am not what you think I am.
I am a woman sorely troubled.
Hannah's No to being shamed
permits her to say yes to her seeking.
Her no silences Eli
when she refuses to be a victim of the curse
she becomes the recipient of the blessings...
Go in peace he says.
And so she is... at peace
Her shame is gone
she has found her voice
she has struck her bargain with life...
No longer is she punishing herself...
she eats, and is no longer sad.
Having said no...
she can now say yes...
No. I am not barren. Yes, I am a source of life, fertile and productive.
And in due time, she conceives and bears a son,
and calls his name Samu-el.
It is the bargain she made for her life.
And Elkanah, the helpful accountant says to her
Now, honey, don't forget... you made a bargain...
you have dues to pay...
Hannah, hears him out...
It is the bargain she made for her life,
and calmly she says, No, Not yet.
This child I bargained for, I am not ready to give him up,
maybe next year.
Hannah's calm subdues Elkanah.
She does not forget her bargain.
When the time is right she takes the child and all the things required...
Hannah is not irresponsible... She is fully accountable to the world she lives in
and she returns to the place where she made her bargain...
no longer pleading
she does not beseech...
she carries her obligations with her
and walks up to old Eli
and looks him in the eye
and says: Remember me?
I'm the one who made the bargain
"give me the child and I will give him back,
give me productivity and fruitfulness and I will give it away..."
Well here I am and here is the fruit of my womb and I am here to
reconstrue the bargain...
I am here to loan, not give,
loan, as in share the child, the product of my creativity.
Willingly, gracefully, powerfully,
Hannah reveals to us
that our life is a gift
given to us, and worthy of our possession;
and what is required of us is to share
as a loan, the productivity of our minds and bodies.
Not even the God who made us
with whom Hannah strikes her bargain
demands more than that.
And in the fullness of her self possession Hannah prays
to the Lord...
My heart exalts
my mouth derides
let the arrogant be silent...
The prayer/song of Hannah discloses the radical vision of God
She sings of a world where the bows of the mighty are broken
feeble made strong
the fat become lean
the hungry are filled...
Her confidence speaks boldy as she sings
It is the intention of God that the poor shall be raised from the dust
and the needy will inherit seats of honor.
Hannah, foremother 5000 years to a
Galilea virigin, Mary by her name
who, on the day of the visitation from the Angel Gabriel announcing the conception
stands and sings this song of Hannah...
Hannah, mother, sister, compainion to all of us
the silent child,
the passive victim we who are
learning to speak, pleading, the insisting,
making bargains,
discovering our power to say No,
and our capacity to be yes, in an and for the world...
Hannah is the pearl of great price...
take her with you...
Mother/sister/companion...
She reveals to us... what it means to be a faithful Daughter of God.