Justice is what love looks like in public.                                                                                                                            ~~Cornel West

This is a story about justice and the last taboo. How dare I suggest that God imaged as a man and addressed with male language is unjust? How dare I long to hear my name spoken in liturgies and raised up in Bible studies? How dare I proclaim the abuse of women in Biblical stories?

The way women and girls are represented and spoken about by the world’s religions has a profound impact on women’s and girls’ sense of their bodies/themselves. Because Western society has been permeated by a patriarchal and male-centered Jewish and Christian ethic, Biblical images of women are ingrained into the collective unconscious in ways often destructive to women’s sense of themselves. In addition, with rare exceptions, Christian and Jewish teaching, preaching, liturgies and theologies continue to image God as male. As a result, women in Western cultures are faced with the ultimate stained-glass ceiling: God is pictured and referred to as a man. The implicit message is that women’s bodies and beings are less acceptable than men’s. The impact of the Godhead depicted as a man has distorted women’s images of themselves, body, mind and spirit. The reverse is also true. Men have a distorted view of their superiority, often burdened by not measuring up to this God-standard. However, women can never achieve

Christian, Jewish and Muslim teachings and doctrine that devalue, degrade and dismiss women have resulted in spiritual as well as psychological stress and trauma for millennium. To challenge the pervasiveness of this connection, it is as vital to raise up empowering and life-giving Biblical images of women as it is to proclaim disempowering and traumatizing aspects of the Biblical stories of women. Naming narratives which have oppressed women can release blocked energy. Re-imagining narratives which have the power to liberate women can become the creative and redemptive use of that freed energy. We begin by recognizing women in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures who have been portrayed in either destructive ways or constructive, but forgotten, ways.

Through the millennia, our female progenitor Eve has been constructed by the traditions as having come from, and, therefore, subordinate to and dependent upon, the man Adam. Here we already have a problem: the word Adam has been incorrectly translated as ‘man’, not as in the original Hebrew, ‘humankind’. Similarly, until the 1989 New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Eve’s role has been translated as ‘helper’ rather than the more accurate translation of ‘partner’—even though she is also described as having been equally created in the image of God: “So God created humankind in God’s image…Male and female God created them.” (Genesis 1:27).

            In the definitive story of Genesis, the influential role of women has been dismissed and even forgotten. This is particularly true of the twice-told story (Genesis 16:1-14 and 21:8-21) of Sarah, married to Abraham, and Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave, who are set over against each other on the basis of gender, race, age, class, marital, and childbearing status. The younger Hagar is forced to conceive a child by Abraham because Sarah has not been able to conceive and bear a son for him. Both women’s worth as human beings is based on their bodies’ ability to conceive and bear, not just a child, but a male child. This patriarchal valuing of women and girls leads to Sarah’s decision to give Hagar to her husband. The resulting horizontal violence of one woman against another is repeated when Sarah becomes envious of Hagar’s having borne Ishmael, even though under Hebrew law Ishmael is no long Hagar’s son but Sarah’s as well as Abraham’s. Eventually, out of fear that as the eldest, Ishmael may supersede Sarah’s later born son, Isaac, she prevails upon Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert where they are certain to die. Abraham’s willingness to deny his own child is echoed by centuries of men willing to deny their progeny when it is more convenient for them to do so. However, suddenly the story changes in an unexpected way. In the desert, just as she is facing death for her and her child, God appears to Hagar and promises that her son will also be the progenitor of a whole race of people. This direct appearance of the Holy to Hagar, a woman, an outsider, a slave, is the first epiphany of God to a human being recorded in the Scriptures.

We are beginning to discover that even in stories which seem unrelentingly abusive to women, there can be a redemptive surprise when we read with open eyes and listen with suspicious ears. The discovery that there are complex stories and a complex God hidden within patriarchal and male-centered narratives encourages us to wonder what else we have not been told.

Mining the scriptures ourselves, seeking new ways of sharing and seeing ancient narratives, we discover the stories of Lot’s daughters in Genesis 19:30-38, of Tamar and her brother Ammon in Second Samuel chapter 13, and of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges chapter 11, and are horrified by these stories of rape, incest, and unjust death. We hear the echoes of how our bodies are imaged, distorted, and defiled today and wonder why we have never before heard these stories of violence and violation against our bodies, psyches and spirits. Has the patriarchy directed our energy away from the misogyny by speaking only of the men, or by ignoring the women’s stories completely, fearing our rage?

Turning to the Book of Ruth, women are beginning to shift their attention from the well-known words read out-of-context at weddings (Ruth 1:16-17) to the extraordinary relationship between Naomi and Ruth. We are amazed to recognize the power of the elder Naomi’s crone wisdom when it is joined with the adventurous and risk-taking spiritedness of the young foreigner Ruth. Together they use their energies and resources to devise a plan for survival in a culture which does not look kindly on women without male protectors. By the end, they not only have survived but are thriving as the women of their chosen community are the ones who name the child resulting from the union of Ruth with Naomi’s relative Boaz (Ruth 4:17).

Although for Jewish women the Christian scriptures may not seem relevant, the power of the two predominant images of women perpetuated by patriarchal Christian traditions continues to oppress and bind women of all faiths within our society. These traditions have reduced women to either Virgin (Mary, the mother of Jesus) or Whore (Mary Magdalene). This reductive interpretation depersonalizes the two Marys by concretizing them as one-dimensional polar opposites, and also ignores the rich variety and vibrant characters of other Gospel women. The tradition defines their value by their bodily/sexual attributes. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is deified as perfect and pure, i.e., out of reach for human women as model or mentor. Patriarchal tradition ignores Mary’s depth of character. The Gospels actually portray her as a feisty woman who challenges her son at the wedding at Cana, suffers with him at the cross and follows the Way of the risen Christ after the resurrection.

Mary Magdalene is branded and despised as a prostitute although she is never described as a prostitute in the Gospels. Imaged as the whore, she becomes the only alternative to whom women can relate. The patriarchy has erased the courageous Mary Magdalene who was a faithful flower of the rabbi Jesus, a witness at the cross and to Jesus’ resurrection. A fully-embodied Mary Magdalene preaches the first Easter sermon, proclaiming that Jesus has appeared to her, spoken with her and bade her to go and tell the good news to all who will listen (Matthew 28:10; Mark 16:9-11; Luke 24:10-11; John 20:1-18). Today women are proclaiming the fullness of these two Marys as the role models and mentors they must have been to the early church, and are becoming again for women seeking balanced examples of what it means to be a woman on a journey of faith.

However, to focus solely on these two women perpetuates the patriarchy’s erasure of the richness of other Christian Testament women of profound wisdom and daring faith. The tradition has used these other women as foils for the glorification of Jesus; this male-centered approach has made invisible the full impact of their relational encounters with Jesus. When our attention turns to an exploration of the characteristics and actions of the women as they encounter Jesus, similar characteristics of strength can be discovered: courage, wit, intelligence, determination, faith, willingness to take tremendous risks, and the ability to break taboos. In addition, each has characteristics which define her as a unique and significant embodied human being.

The Syrophoenician/Canaanite woman’s great love for her daughter has en-couraged her to bend all her energies toward finding a cure for her illness (Matthew 15:21-28). The woman with the hemorrhage is willing to break the sacred taboo against bleeding women touching others (Matthew 5:24b-43). She trusts that this teacher’s power, together with her concentration of energy, will heal her. The healing of her body and, therefore of her spirit and mind, is more valuable than a religious rule.

Sermons, teachings and commentaries on the story of the Samaritan woman almost invariably condemn her for having had five husbands and now living with a man who is not her husband (John 4:4-42). Reading with suspicion, women have recognized that Jesus is not condemning her. Rather, because of her honesty, he reveals himself to her as the Messiah. She immediately becomes a female disciple, going into the town as a public witness to the relationship she has just shared with him, thereby breaking a taboo against women being actively and publicly involved in religious matters.

For centuries, Martha has been played off against her sister Mary because Martha uses her creative energies to make a meal instead of sitting at Jesus’ feet (Luke 10:38-42). Forgotten is her dramatic role in the Gospel of John where she is an empowered woman who, at the pivotal moment midpoint in this Gospel, makes her confession of Jesus as ‘the Messiah, the one who is coming into the world (John 11:27). For 20 centuries the spotlight has been on Peter’s confession, which in the Gospel of John is only a partial confession. As women become aware of Martha’s confession, they are authorized by her essential role in this Gospel.

Then immediately in John 12:1-8, Martha’s sister, Mary, shares the spotlight as her compassionate anointing of Jesus’ feet introduces the story of the Passion. Her action prefigures Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet and juxtaposes her faithfulness and insight to Judas’ greed and betrayal. The sisters are no longer set against one another (as the women Sarah and Hagar also were); their complementary and decisive roles have become crucial to the Christian narrative.

As women have released energy repressed and blocked by abused, oppressed, and ignored Biblical women, they have learned to allow enough space for narratives and images to evolve. Their discoveries have not become a new reification, but an invitation to other women and men to play along with them in re-imagining their own faith images, narrative and journeys. Within this space, created by an attitude of rage and outrage held in tension with delight and celebration, the ancient figure of Divine Wisdom has arisen. In Hebrew and Christian testaments she is Divine Wisdom, Sophia in Greek. She who was present in creation calls us to revel in Creation. She calls all who will listen to come to her and eat at her groaning table filled with food for body, mind and spirit. She is ready to impart her wisdom to those who yearn to exchange their heavy and unbearable burdens for a yoke which is substantial and meaning-full, yet paradoxically easy and light. In this image of One who was present with God in creation, we return full circle to the image of God in which we, women and men, were created: male and female God created them. Through this ongoing work, women continue to reclaim their authority both to interpret the scriptures and to name the Holy and themselves, moving from self-hatred of their bodies, minds and spirits toward self-love, self-acceptance, and fullness of life.                    Recommended authors: Cynthia Bourgeault; Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza; Kwok Pui-Lan.

© Joy Anna Marie Mills, 1985