This evening at my Feminist Perspectives class we heard two different exegesis on two very different texts. First the sacrifice/ murder of Jephthah's daughter from Judges, and then the story of Elizabeth.Both of these stories challenged us in different ways about the place of womens voices.
Jephthah's daughter seemed at first look to be the voice of submission, and yet she firmly placed the blame for her father's vow back into his hands and mirrored to him in many ways the injustice of her fate, and yet she chose to return, and gave herself as a sacrifice. Echoes of Abraham and Issac, and yet God it seems is silent. Or is she present in the echoes of lament?
Elizabeth, barren for so many years becomes the pregnant prophet- recognising and pronouncing the blessing upon Mary that the now mute Zechariah is unable to make. Two women bound through relationship, through pregnancy, through angel messengers with outrageous stories. And yet her voice is silenced as soon as Zechariah speaks again. God's presence here is almost tangible- God present in the womb of Mary, by the Spirit speaking through Elizabeth, Mary and Zechariah, God providing the music for the celebration- inviting us to wonder at the first stirrings of the incarnational possibilities he has shown us.
Both stories need telling, it would be easy to tell only stories of celebration, but we would loose so much, we need to be aware of injustices, to hear God's lament along with her celebrations, to know that she enters fully into every part of life bringing opportunities for redemption even when they are not taken. Perhaps the difficult stories are all the more difficult because they reveal ourselves to us in ways we would rather they didn't. No we would not sacrifice our children- but how many times do we squander the gifts of God, how many times do we press on with our own agendas even when we are given an opportunity to change?
We need the difficult stories, we should be disturbed by them, we should allow them to stir us to find our voices, to call for change.....
