Welcome to Wading in the Waters of the Word™ with A Women’s Lectionary
Gentle Readers, Followers, Preachers, Pray-ers, Thinkers and Visitors, Welcome!
Welcome to this space where you can share your worship – liturgy and preaching – preparations – using A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. We begin in Advent 2021 with Year W, a single, standalone Lectionary volume that includes readings from all four Gospels. (We will continue with Year A in Advent 2022 to align with the broader Church.) In advance of each week, I will start the conversation and set the space for you all. I will come through time to time, but this is your space. Welcome!
Media Resources
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 1, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 1 | Translating Women Back Into Scripture for A #WomensLectionary
This session introduces participants to frequently unexamined aspects of biblical translation in commonly available bibles and the intentional choices made in “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.”
A Women’s Lectionary For The Whole Church
Session 2, October 16, 2021
Rev. Wil Gafney, PhD at Myers Park Baptist Church
Plenary 2 | Reading Women in Scripture for Preaching, Study, and Devotion
This session provides an overview of “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” its genesis, production, and content. There is also an in-depth exploration of specific passages appointed for specific days including time for public and private reading and discussion.
Lectionary Lectio
Click the Comment links to add to the conversation
Pentecost 9
In these lessons monarchy represents absolute power, whether it is the power of God over all or, the power of some man over a place and a people until someone, likely another man, takes his place. Literarily, Saul is a negative foil for David. That leaves him as doomed to fail and unforgiven when repentant. One must question if David’s legend required a tarnished Saul to distract from his own corruption. It is easy to read with and as David, as the favorite of God, no matter how we transgress as long as we say words of repentance. But that is not the most common human experience. Many of us feel like Saul, trying to live up to and into the expectations for us and falling and failing and fearing abandonment and rejection.
The psalm and the epistle reiterate that power belongs to God. Yet the gospel demonstrates that there are those, whether royal or not like Herod and Herodias (the mother), who hold and hoard the power they claim and to which they feel entitled. Reading between the lines, it is easy to see that power held or power sought often leads to the creation of a god in one’s own image. Thus I understand the call to the eradication of Amalek and other calls for genocide; that is not simply the God I know.
To those grasping for power, those grappling to hold onto power, those ground down by the powerful, the epistle offers another word, a word of redemption and liberation: Jesus who loves us and freed us from our sins. The majesty of God is securely enthroned, held secure by the power of God’s love and, will never fall or pass to someone unworthy.
Pentecost 8
The story behind this week’s first lesson is that God seems to have allowed herself to have reluctantly permitted Israel a king in spite of her own good judgment and, the objections of her prophet Samuel. It is one of the ironies of scripture and its interpretation that Samuel, person and the books that bear his name, is firmly anti-monarchal but also, the primary source of the account of the rules of Saul and, David in his early years. One way to look at it is that God permits us to make terrible choices with consequences that span generations if we insist on doing so but, provides a word of warning should we choose to heed it.
What terrible choices are we making today? What choices rooted in authoritarianism that like monarchy will shape the lives of generations to come for bad and for worse? The love of and lust for power and inability to imagine another way to relate to each other and care for the common good never get resolved in Israel’s story nor apparently, in our own. Paul is critical of those who would crown him, seeing in their adulation a trap. Jesus critiques the inequity of monarchy and its after effects using a parable about the enslaved that does not critique the social hierarchy and human trafficking of his time. But the Psalmist offers a vision of true majesty. The God of heaven and earth and all their creatures, human and divine, is the majesty of majesties and no power-hungry human can compare.