Sisters in a man's world
Link to video: https://www.facebook.com/stlukesferndale.org/videos/1553793628125099
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
July 26, 2020—Proper 12A
Gen 29:15-28; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
“When I look in your eyes; when I see your face; I see the face of God.” I was moved to place that song after our reading from Genesis today, because I wanted a sacred word to counterbalance that story. I needed to restore dignity and worth to Leah and Rachel (not to mention Zilpah and Bilhah), because the story unquestioningly describes every last one of them as property.
All of them. Not just Zilpah and Bilhah, the maidservants who are given to Jacob to bear him more children; but Leah and Rachel too are cast as property that Jacob has earned, and their father Laban has bestowed. And yet, if we are scandalized by this story, it’s more likely to be by the trickery that occurs, or perhaps the polygamy aspect. Why is that? Could it be that it hasn’t really been that long since our own culture stopped thinking of women the same way: as the possession of first their fathers and then their husbands?
People as possessions: wives, handmaids, slaves. They are scattered across the biblical narrative. But that does not mean that such things belong in God’s Kingdom, does not mean they reflect God’s dream for the world. Many things in the biblical narrative simply express the world into which God’s revelation comes. They are, to borrow the image from one of Jesus’ parables, the flour in which the leaven of the kingdom might do its surprising, transformative, creative work.
Later, during our prayer time, I want to sink into the leaven of liberation that threads throughout the bible to counteract such models of domination and possession. For now, I simply want to re-center the story: shifting our gaze from Jacob (who tricked his brother and father, stealing both a blessing and a birthright, and who is now facing some of his comeuppance), and let’s look to the women, and the part they play in our understanding of redemption.
Let’s begin with the forgotten ones: with the handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah. They, who bore several of Jacob’s many children. They, in doing so, bore witness to the brutal reality that forced sex has almost always been part of slavery for women. In the biblical narrative, Zilpah and Bilhah are a secret and desolate cry for liberation, and a reminder to us to keep our eyes and ears open for such cries in our own world.
We are given more insight into the story of Leah, whose name means “cow” and whose eyes are either beautiful or weak, depending on your translation. The “older, plainer sister,” perhaps destined to become an old maid, if not for her father’s tricks. Imagine her trepidation, knowing the look of disappointment that awaited the lifting of her veil! Leah’s story catches the thread of all our self-doubt, and reminds us that getting what we think we deserve can sometimes be the bitterest reward of all.
And then there is Rachel: beautiful and beloved, and yet denied her husband by laws of precedence and her father’s greed. Then, once this seemingly favored child gets what has been promised her, she finds herself without the thing that will truly bring her security and her husband’s devotion: she cannot bear him any children!
The wheel of blessing and curse keeps turning for these sisters: one remembered as loved but barren, the other as the unloved but fertile mother of six sons. At each turn, we are invited to envy or pity; at each turn, we are encouraged to see them as winner or loser in an endless competition for the great prizes available to women: beauty, love, husbands, and sons.
We might, in fact, find ourselves in these stories. We have known competition, we have sought love, we have hoped for security of some kind. And we’ve all probably won some, and lost some, along the way.
But (if we are old enough) we know, too, that this is only ever part of the story. We know that these sisters lived together for years before Jacob came along, and for decades after they were both married to him. They paid a price, for sure, to be the agents of Jacob’s comeuppance … but there is every reason to hope that they lived lives that transcended their father’s greed, their husband’s journey of atonement, and their own sibling rivalries.
After all, they each knew what it was to fear oneself unloved and unworthy. They knew what it was to be offered as wages. They knew what it was to bear embarrassment, to fear loss, to know oneself to be insufficient and out of control of one’s life, and yet not break. Who else, really, were they likely to turn to for support in such a situation? Who could possibly know their heart so well?
We hear of their competition. We see so many signs of their grief. But we can only begin to imagine what else must have dwelt within and between these mothers of a nation (and, again, let us stop to imagine the cry of Zilpah and Bilhah, also mothers, but not by choice). What deep-rooted love … what understanding and compassion … what support and strength as they walked with their (oh-so-flawed) husband on his journey back to God’s promise.
What a family! Generation after generation, living out this very recognizable human drama. We bicker and resent each other; we compete for favor and blessing and reward; we fight and we storm and we walk away; and finally, we just might manage to come back together.
And this, somehow, is sacred story. This is God’s plan working itself out. As Jesus points out in today’s gospel: it happens in the strangest ways in the most surprising places. Like a big old mustard weed, growing in the middle of your field: which sure doesn’t sound like good news for the farmer (though it might be for the birds)! Or a bunch of leaven stashed away in the middle of the flour: which could be disastrous if you were hoping to use that flour for something else, but might be great if you’re that colony of yeast eating away at all that food!
It’s unexpected, and from some angles, apparently, the kingdom of God will seem unpleasant or unwelcome. It might turn our own sense of value or respectability upside down. It might cost us something, like acknowledging the ways in which we have ignored the cries of the suffering, glancing over them like the names of Zilpah and Bilhah. Living the life to which Jesus calls us will likely challenge us to bear something, to live with complication or loss, and be willing to trust that God’s kingdom will break through.
It WILL break through. That’s the promise. It will sneak past our defenses and our expectations, and we will be overcome by its vitality, by its beauty, by its preciousness.
May we live in this world; may we live long enough in this messy, complicated world to welcome the coming of God’s kingdom. Amen.