Catholic Women Preach has been a lifeline for me, a lifeline to the scriptures and a lifeline to Church. I was thrilled to be invited to participate… until I saw the readings for today. Then I thought, “What have I gotten myself into? Why these readings, why all of them together at one time being proclaimed from pulpits all over the world?” As our friends and colleagues at Future Church steadfastly remind us, the lectionary is a choice.  And the choices made by people who control the lectionary have, on the one hand put women front and center today while paradoxically relegating them to the recesses of life in the world and in the Church. And those who set the lectionary also allow the possibility of leaving out all-together the children who appear in today’s gospel.

We heard one of the creation stories in Genesis in which the creation of a woman seems to be for the benefit, the help, and the fulfillment of a man. The creature is given dominion and the privilege of naming everything and everyone. A story that unfolds with so much promise and possibility for all of creation has instead been used by preachers and teachers to foreclose possibility and reinforce a narrow vision of who we are and who we might be called to be. The psalmist claims women’s productivity and reproductivity and the presence of children to be signs of the favor that men enjoy in God’s eyes. Women are behind the scenes, making things happen. Their work, their servitude is reward for the powerful. Recesses, hidden spaces, whether in our homes, our churches, or in other places, make exploitation and abuse possible and even likely. And the gospel, well, Jesus lets me down too in this discussion of divorce which to my ear, and in light of the previous readings, sounds like a rebuke of women who even dare to dream that they might be worthy of a better life, and healthier relationships.

I wanted to do some spiritual gymnastics and find a way not to hear what I heard and find a way to preach about something else, some other thread in the readings. And I couldn’t do it.  So, I join you today having spent time being disappointed and angry about the ways the church continues to speak about women. In that place of anger and the temptation to isolate from the people of God, I called to mind the many women and children the world over who suffer abuse and deprivation in the shadows; those whose hidden labor is making my life possible and comfortable; those who long to find a way out of destructive relationships and into relationships that sustain them and that are supported by church and society. I brought to mind my students, and even the children in my own family, who are often buckling under the weight of so many expectations and the fear of disappointing or reflecting badly on parents and mentors. I brought to mind the amount of courage it has taken for friends and family, colleagues and students, to utter and claim names and identities that are whispered in the recesses of their hearts. Names and identities that are at once chosen and given by the Spirit, as grace for all of us.

Perhaps you too have found yourself in the recesses, in the shadows. Perhaps you too have found yourself asking, “why am I listening to these readings?” and pretending that it is all good news. Perhaps you too are trying to hold a place for the scriptures, for the lectionary, for the Church even as you face squarely the harms that they have perpetuated and given theological significance. I hope that we as Church can honor the reality of these experiences and all of the emotions that come with them, without looking away or glossing it all over. I hope we can allow ourselves to transform these recesses and shadows into spaces of resistance and solidarity from which we might emerge sure of our dignity, sure of the Spirit moving through us, and sure of God’s love.