“WOMEN’S HISTORY - FINDING A DIFFERENT PATH IN LENT”
The season of Lent is ancient, though it cannot be traced back to the Bible. It actually comes from an old English word for “lengthen,” indicating that the season usually encompasses the Western world’s experience of the stretching out of the daylight as spring begins to arrive. I grew up with Lent being a time of denial and fasting, with an emphasis on long faces and sadness. A few years ago, I was in the post office in Lent, whistling a tune of praise written by St. Francis of Assisi. A woman admonished me that I should not be whistling a tune of praise because it was Lent. My immediate reaction was that I was impressed that she even knew that it was Lent and that she cared enough about it to engage me on it. I didn’t yield, however, telling her that in every season we are supposed to praise God. I was also reminded of this struggle in a FaceBook post on Saturday by our friend Deb Miller and her Mennonite roots. It was from the DailyBonnet, and it indicated that some Mennonites were having trouble finding their path in Lent, because everything fun was already forbidden anyway!
The meaning of Lent is that it is a journey to the Cross with Jesus. The purpose of the season is not to beat ourselves up but rather to take time to remember that we are still crucifying Jesus, to seek to discern the current captivities that make us nail Jesus to the Cross. The season of Lent usually overlaps with most of Black History Month. In American culture that seems to be a natural overlap, because racism is the original American sin that is ongoing and powerful. But, this year Easter comes somewhat late (April 12), and although Lent began in Black History Month (February 26), this year it overlaps with Women’s History Month. While racism is the original American sin, sexism and patriarchy are the original human sins, in every culture and in every time: there is always the belief that males are superior, and that females are inferior – the purpose of women is to belong to and to serve men. So, during this month, I’ll be looking at the liberating counter narrative to that captivity. We’ll be exploring Women’s History Month and some of its meaning in our lives.
This year is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave white women the right to vote in elections in America. Though women of color, especially black women, were not specifically ruled out of the Amendment, the prevalent feeling was that it was meant primarily for women who were classified as “white.” It would be 45 more years before black women were given the vote in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That act would join the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end neo-slavery in the South but also act as the beginning of the Counter-Revolution, winding through Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Trump, where we are in a pitched battle to see if these changes in the American fabric will hold or not. The revival of the Equal Rights Amendment, thanks to Illinois and Nevada and Virginia, is part of this struggle.
The power of Women’s History Month is that it reminds us of the fundamental fact that women are human beings who are created with equal dignity in the eyes of God, by whatever name one calls the Supreme Being. It also reminds us of the deep and almost primal captivity that all of us have to patriarchy, to the idea that men are superior to women. Whatever our gender status – female, male, trans – we are all captured by this idea and have internalized it. And, third, Women’s History Month reminds us that there have always been witnesses to a different road, the road that proclaims justice and equity for all people, but most especially those captured by patriarchy.
The gift of equality, the captivity of inequality, the witnesses to a path of liberation – I’ll be looking at those this month. Though the struggle began long before the church, we can see it clearly in the Biblical witness about Jesus. Women seem to be coming from everywhere to follow the liberating message of Jesus – the Gospels record no women who reject the message of Jesus. They are being witnesses, starting churches, preaching – fired up on the message of liberation, a message that tells them that their primary definition is daughter of God, not property of men. Yet, Paul (and those who write in his name) wrestles with this idea of women’s liberation and women’s leadership. Can the church survive the liberation of women? Sadly, the leaders decide that it can’t, and still the largest Christian body in the world deny leadership to women. Yet, still the witnesses come, still the liberation continues to be born. Let us walk that path in Lent – the first step is recognizing International Women’s Day on March 8.
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