The Reverend Catriona Cumming

Sunday 15 April 2018 – 11.30am Matins

The writers of our Scriptures have a lot to answer for.

Or perhaps I should say: the compilers, editors and interpreters of our Scriptures have a lot to answer for.

I doubt many of them could imagine this society, and how different it might be to their own.

Concentrating on telling the story of what God was doing in their midst, could they possibly imagine a woman in holy orders, beginning a sermon with that phrase: they have a lot to answer for?

After all, their context, which framed the stories they told, is so different from our own. Yet their society has in many ways shaped ours, for better and sometimes, for worse.

Two issues stand out to me – their acceptance of slavery as a normal part of life, and the place of women within a deeply patriarchal society.

We may think that we have moved on – and in many ways we have – but this week’s news headlines show how deep the influence of those patriarchal worlds runs.

This past week saw the anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. The work that he did, and that is continued by groups like Black Lives Matter, Poor People’s Campaign, and others, shows that the legacy of slavery is still with us, even before we consider the horrors of modern day slavery.

Earlier this week I was in a conversation about safeguarding, when the second issue was put front and centre. Historically, and even currently, one of the mitigating stories we as a society tell ourselves about sexual misconduct and abuse of power is this: a poor person – generally but not exclusively a man – cannot help themselves, faced with an alluring, perhaps unconsciously seductive person – generally, but not exclusively, female, and so fall into actions which are harmful to that person.

It is a story told throughout history, and its characters are infamous: Jezebel, Salome, and of course Eve.

Eve who begins it all.

Who has, to quote Nicola Slee:

“presented as the temptress and seductress, responsible for sin in a way not true of Adam”(Slee, Nicola. Faith and Feminism: An introduction to Feminist Theology 2003. Darton Longman & Todd, p, 18.)

The problem is that not only has Eve been seen as a femme fatale, seducing Adam into eating what he should not eat – she has passed on those traits, those seductive and frightening qualities to all women – so said many of the Church fathers.

John Chrysostom wrote:

‘What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment*, an evil nature, painted with fair colours?’

*I want to get that printed on a shirt.

For centuries, for a woman to be saved, she needed to be subject to a man, be that her father, husband, or priest.

Women, as uncontrollable, irrational beings, were deemed incapable of performing certain roles. And so, broadly speaking, the world was divided up into male and female spheres. Women had no place in public life, in politics or academia. Men, busy with their own affairs, left the private sphere, the family, to women.

This is a division men and women are still trying to negotiate.

The recent reports from major companies on the gender pay gap, tells us that we still have work to do.

So, why does this matter? Should we not just consign these archaic bits of scripture to history where they belong, and move on with our lives in the 21^st century?

Some think we should do precisely that. I don’t.

The stories in the Old Testament have important things to say, about who God is, and who we are in relation to God.

Looking back on the way these scriptures have been interpreted, shows us the struggles of women and men through the ages, to honour God, and to be faithful.

In critically appraising not only scripture, but the interpretation handed down to us, we can, by the work of the Spirit, not only identify with the struggles of women, and men, in times past, but also allow God to speak into our struggles today.

We can stand in solidarity with those women, and men, who stood out in a patriarchal society, and whose voices and motivations have been lost, or distorted by time, and bias.

We need to do this for all of scripture – not just the bits we find difficult.

This evening is the eve of the feast of the annunciation, when Mary was told that she would become the mother of our Lord.

If Eve has become the archetype of the femme fatale, Mary is the flipside of that archetype.

The pure, chaste, virtuous woman is also a strong narrative weaving its way through the Old Testament, into the Epistles, and Revelation.

Mary, in contrast to Eve, has been elevated, so much that it sometimes seems as if she can never have been human – so perfect is she.

For Christians who honour her, who ask for her help and intercession, she has been, is a lifeline.

But she, like her son, was fully human. Viewed with an awareness of the prevailing norms for women in her age, and for ages afterwards, HER act of obedience, of subservience to God’s will, was profoundly counter-cultural.

She was radically, physically, bodily obedient to God in direct contravention of societal expectations.

Through who she was she turned the world on its head. Through this woman, the world was transformed.

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

The writers of scripture have much to answer for. Thank God.