Bulletin, September 13

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on three sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

BulletinSunSept13

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN… 

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Bulletin, September 6

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on three sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin, Sunday Sept 6

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Bulletin, August 30

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on three sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin Sunday August 30

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN… 

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Sermon, August 23

Read this Sunday’s lessons from Exodus and Romans here. 

This text from the beginning of the book of Exodus is full of women quietly working to resist and subvert a cruel and abusive status quo. Let’s see – can we list them all? …. 

– The midwives (more about them in a moment)

– Miriam, Moses’ big sister. Text suggests that her keeping an eye on Moses in the basket – & then approaching the Egyptian princess – is her own initiative. (And we see her boldness later in the story when she’s a grown woman.) 

– Moses’ mother, named Jochebed by tradition – hiding her baby & then finding a way to give him a chance at life while also being able to say truthfully, “Yes, yes, we put him in the Nile”

– Pharaoh’s daughter – her motivations are a little inscrutable. But she certainly knows of her father’s decree of death for the Hebrew babies, and she chooses to ignore it. I wonder if she guessed the baby’s Hebrew nurse was actually his mother. 

I’m not here to idealize women as somehow universally more moral or more righteous – or more sneaky. But there is something we recognize here: something about an overwhelmingly male-dominated system, in which some women find quiet ways to resist, and do what needs doing. 

Now let’s hone in on the midwives – Sifra and Puah. The text calls Shifrah and Puah, the “Hebrew midwives.” That is the simplest translation, but it loses the ambiguity of the Hebrew. It might be better to say “the midwives of the Hebrews,” because it’s not fully clear whether these women were Hebrew or Egyptian. 

They might easily have been Egyptian midwives whose job it was to attend to births among the Hebrew population. Nothing strange about that; we have plenty of white ladies in various helper roles with communities of color in America today. 

There’s been lots of wondering about the midwives over the centuries. I learned, in preparing this sermon, that Jewish commentators have held both views for at least two thousand years. 

I’ve believed for a long time that the midwives are Egyptian. I just think that’s what makes narrative sense. Let me explain why, briefly. 

First, Pharaoh asks them to kill the Hebrew babies. Would Pharaoh be so clueless as to ask that if they were themselves Hebrew? A 16th century rabbi, Don Isaac Abarbanel, wrote, “How could Pharaoh’s mind be confident that Hebrew women would murder their own people’s babies?” It makes much more sense if the midwives were Egyptian, and Pharaoh assumed they would share his point of view – that the Hebrews were threatening outsiders whose lives don’t really matter. 

Second – when Pharaoh calls in the midwives to ask why they’re letting the babies live, both Pharaoh and the midwives speak about the Hebrews – the Israelites – as others, as a “them.” “They give birth before the midwife even arrives!”  And notice how the midwives deflect suspicion by playing into demeaning stereotypes, saying “the Hebrew women are hardy.” “Hardy” doesn’t sound so bad until you think about the contrast with the delicate, refined Egyptian women. And the Hebrew word translated as “hardy,” when used as a noun, means “animals.” Those people – their women are like beasts, they just push out a baby before we can even get there…! What can we do? 

Finally, I think the very fact that this story is HERE indicates that the midwives were Egyptian. “Dog bites man” doesn’t make a headline. Hebrew women helping other Hebrew women, likewise. But “Man bites dog” – Egyptian women helping Hebrew women defy the Egyptian king – THAT’s a story. And it’s a kind of story the Hebrew Bible likes to tell – stories of people outside the covenant, people outside of God’s chosen lineage, who nonetheless honor Israel’s God and act righteously. In one 1000-year-old text, Shifra and Puah are named as Righteous Gentiles. 

(That brings them alongside people like Ida Cook, who worked tirelessly to help Jewish children escape Europe just before the Second World War; I shared her story back in February. Another tale of secret plots to preserve life that rest on the tendency of men in power to underestimate and ignore women.) 

I believe Shifra and Puah were Egyptians, who didn’t go along with their leader and their culture, but saw and did what was right. They weren’t conformed to the world but they were transformed by the renewing of their minds, discerning the will of God. 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

In our somewhat abbreviated Sunday gatherings, we’ve skipped a lot of the texts from Romans this summer summer. Paul’s letter to the Romans is frankly ill-suited to the Sunday lectionary. He’s building long, complex arcs of argumentation that don’t break into pieces well. But from chapter 12 onward, Paul is offering advice about living as people of faith in community, and it gets a little easier to receive and understand a piece at a time. 

There aren’t a lot of verses in the Bible that stand well on their own. Generally you need context to know what’s being said. But if you want to memorize this single verse and carry it around inside of you… you could do a lot worse. 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

It’s a good verse for the Egyptian midwives. Other Egyptians, and their King, were saying: Look, these Hebrew workers – there are too many of them, and they’re having too many babies. We need their labor, but they’re a threat to our culture and way of life. Let’s make life harder and harder for them; let’s make them struggle, let’s make them afraid, to make sure they don’t overrun us. 

Shifra and Puah didn’t conform to that point of view. They exercised their own judgment, followed their own values.  

One thing I respect about Shifra and Puah is that they knew the difference between what’s legal and what’s right. If you, like me, have been raised in a society where the laws and the rules mostly protect and privilege people like me, it’s easy to be fuzzy on the difference – but it’s pretty important to be prepared to ask ourselves, Is what’s legal, right? And is what’s right, legal? 

Slavery was legal; so was Jim Crow segregation. The Holocaust was legal. Jesus’ execution was legal. Separating infants and toddlers from their parents, indefinitely, at the U.S. border has been legal in the very recent past. Meanwhile, in parts of our nation, people have been prosecuted for feeding the homeless; and for leaving water caches in the desert to help desperate migrants survive.

Legal is not always the same as moral. Legal is not always the same as right. Laws are made by human governments, and human governments get things wrong. 

The text says that Shifrah and Puah went rogue because they feared God. That makes sense for the Biblical text, which is very interested in non-Israelites honoring Israel’s God. But I’m not sure I believe it. 

Egyptians had their own gods, including gods associated with pregnancy and birth. Shifrah and Puah were probably devotees of Taweret, the pregnant hippopotamus-goddess who watched over births, or Meshkenet, who gave strength to women in labor. 

Deaths of mother, baby, or both in childbirth would have been common, as they have been throughout most of human history. To wrest a living baby from the womb was to win a wrestling match with death. 

Midwives are people who deeply respect the birth process and, based on the ones I’ve met, really love babies. To be a midwife is to be on the side of life, in a fundamental way. To be willing to get soaked with blood and amniotic fluid and less mentionable substances, for the sake of bringing forth and preserving life. 

I don’t think Shifrah and Puah broke Pharaoh’s command because they thought the Hebrews had a better God. I think they went rogue for the sake of life. 

And that just happened to align them with God’s purposes – because our God, the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a god of life. 

Where would you be prepared to go rogue for the sake of life? 

The ways our governments, economies and societies deal death are, mostly, more subtle and indirect these days. In Lebanon: Government officials ignored warnings about a stockpile of explosive material in a warehouse for … six years. In our nation: A sluggish and incoherent response to a global pandemic has undoubtedly led to many more deaths than might otherwise have been. In Wisconsin, just this summer, a government committee rejected changes to state rules that would have prohibited the use of conversion therapy by licensed therapists and others.  “Conversion therapy” involves trying to change somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and it’s associated with psychological harm, substance abuse, and worse. 

You probably have your own item you’d put on the list of ways our status quo compromises and damages life – and not only human life, but also creatures and ecosystems. And that brings me to another thing I respect about the midwives: their crystal-clear focus. 

Shifra and Puah had their work, their mission, their cause: Save babies. And when the interests and fears of those in power put pressure on their work, they found ways to keep saving babies.

It’s pretty normal to be overwhelmed, right now. For many of us, even an egregious news story gets kind of a “Huh” reaction at this point. There’s just too much. 

I wonder if there’s something, some hope, some value, some cause, some work, that is as bedrock-solid for you as saving babies was for Shifrah and Puah. I wonder whether God has given you a heart for that hope or value or cause or work … for a reason. 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Where are you prepared to go rogue for the sake of life? 

 

 

A really detailed, interesting investigation of Jewish commentary and translation issues related to the identity of the midwives: 

https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-midwives

Bulletin, August 23

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on three sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin August 23

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Sermon, Aug. 16

Read the Gospel here: Mt 15:1, 7, 10-11, 16-28 

I know this is a Gospel story – especially that second part – that some have strong feelings about. 

Jesus is being pretty snippy, frankly, for somebody who’s up on his high horse about what comes out of your mouth. 

Maybe we should just take it as a given that he is exhausted and overwhelmed. If we read what comes before this passage, we find that Jesus keeps trying to get away by himself to rest and pray, and he keeps being found – by crowds of desperate people seeking healing, or by antagonists who want to argue with him. 

I’m not going to tell you how I think YOU should read this text – but I am going to suggest how I think MATTHEW, the author of this Gospel, understands what happens here. 

Matthew gets this passage from Mark, the earliest of the Gospels. While Matthew and Mark don’t always tell things in the same order, these two pieces are together in both texts – Jesus’ little diatribe about what really makes someone unclean, and then this reluctant healing. But Matthew does tell things a little bit differently. (I encourage you to set them side by side & compare – that’s often pretty interesting! The Mark version is in chapter 7.)  

This month we are giving some attention to the ways we read, reflect on, and seek meaning in the Bible. Reading a passage out loud in different ways is a great tool; so is looking at a text side by side with a related passage from elsewhere in the Bible. Sometimes just reading a text closely and slowly makes you notice new things, too, even in a familiar story. We’ve found that with our Scripture reflections at Compline. And with some help from Bible scholar Richard Swanson, it happened for me with this Gospel – with the word Canaanite. 

Canaanite. When Mark tells this story, he says the woman is a Gentile – a non-Jew – and a Syro-Phoenecian. A descendant of one of the great empires that marched through Judea in ages past. But Matthew says this woman is a Canaanite.

Canaanite is a very old-fashioned word. The Canaanites were Israel’s great enemies in the time of Joshua and Judges over a thousand years ago. I had never paused on the word before because it’s a Biblical word; it’s familiar. But this is the only time this word is used in the New Testament… and for that matter, the last 2/3 of the Old Testament. The Canaanites mostly aren’t mentioned after the book of Judges – except when people are re-telling Israel’s early history, remembering how God brought them to the land of Canaan and said, This is for you; kill everyone who lives here and then move in and settle down. 

Calling this woman a Canaanite is like saying she’s a Redcoat. It’s recognizable as a term for an enemy we used to have – but it’s been a while since those were the bad guys. 

Why call this woman a Canaanite? The Canaanites were the peoples who lived in the land where the Israelites wanted to live. (Or – as archaeologists and Biblical scholars increasingly believe – they were the ancestors of the Israelites, whom the Israelites wanted to separate themselves from as they developed a new faith and way of life.) So this woman is a non-Jew who lives in a neighboring territory. Sure, call her a Canaanite. It’s not necessarily wrong; it’s just odd.  

Matthew isn’t making a mistake. He means something by using this archaic term. But what? 

Matthew is sometimes described as the most Jewish of the Gospels – the most grounded in the history and heritage of Judaism. Matthew believes, with the apostle Paul (Romans 11), that non-Jewish Christians should hold their faith with humility, knowing that they have been grafted onto a vine that was planted long ago;  that our life and vitality come from the deep roots and resilient growth of that vine. 

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy that doubles as a capsule history of Israel. He frequently shapes his narrative to present Jesus as a second Moses. In that light, Matthew’s use of the word “Canaanite” means to throw us back into the history of the Jewish people. He wants to evoke the time of Joshua and Judges, when the Canaanites were Israel’s despised neighbors, a constant cultural, religious, and military threat, to be resisted and, when possible, exterminated. 

Matthew’s deep commitment to Judaism may seem like it’s in tension with Jesus’ hostility towards the scribes and the Pharisees, Jewish religious scholars, in today’s Gospel. 

I’m sure Matthew is re-telling Jesus’ words here – potty humor and all. Jesus clearly had kind of a “frenemy” relationship with the Pharisees during his life. 

Matthew’s Gospel may lean into that antagonism because those tensions had become stronger in the decades after Jesus. 

Matthew is writing his Gospel, based on Mark and some other texts and memories and stories he’s gathered, around the year 75, give or take. 

It’s not long after the destruction of Jerusalem following a failed revolt against Roman colonial rule. 

Different Jewish groups are all trying to work out what faithful living looks like in this new time, after all that struggle and loss. The Pharisees are seeking the survival of their way of faith by calling people to daily observance of the ancient ways of Judaism. 

In contrast, Christians (at this point still a weird movement within Judaism) are seeking survival of their way of faith by cutting back on required practices, emphasizing heart and soul instead, and becoming a faith that actively evangelizes non-Jews. 

So these kinds of questions about what kind of life puts you right with God, and who Jesus’ mission and ministry were for, may have felt even more pressing and weighty as Matthew wrote down his Gospel than they did during Jesus’ life. 

I want us to notice that there’s a penny waiting to drop, between the end of Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees and the moment of his softening towards the Canaanite woman. 

He has just pushed back strongly on the idea that worthiness, holiness, rightness-with-God can be earned or kept through particular practices, things you do. 

He’s said, more or less, that his mission is not to restore Judaism as the Pharisees understand it.

But he apparently still thinks his mission is focused on Judaism, on the lost sheep of the house of Israel. On those descendants of Abraham who are hurting, hungry, helpless or hopeless.  

But then. 

I want to take a moment to honor this woman, this fierce mama whose fear for her child makes her fearless. She does something very familiar here – something that women in sexist systems and marginalized folk of all kinds sometimes have to do. She accepts the demeaning terms that are offered her, and makes her case anyway. Jesus says this flat-out racist thing, calls her a dog, and she says, Yes, sir. But you know, the thing about dogs is, when the kids are eating, the dogs are going to end up getting something. 

There are many little hints that make me think Matthew thinks Jesus’ heart changes, in this moment. It’s not just that Jesus is swayed by her feistiness and decides to make an exception, just this once. It’s that penny finally drops and the fully-human part of Jesus gets a little bit closer to understanding what the fully-God part of Jesus is up to. 

But right now I just want to circle back to that word, Canaanite. Remember that the Canaanites were Israel’s ancient enemy, to avoid and/or destroy. That a touchstone of their history is the story about God bringing them the land of Canaan, and telling them: This is for you; now, kill everyone who already lives here. 

Because Matthew calls this woman a Canaanite, suddenly this Gospel story is in conversation with Joshua and Judges. It’s not just that Jesus suddenly sees that his mission is to and for the Gentiles too. It’s that Jesus’ work and teaching, life and death and rising, are meant to mend and redeem a history of hatred, suspicion, and violence. 

By the way: Joshua – the great general of the campaign against Canaan –  and Jesus are the same name in Hebrew: Yeshua. Matthew knows this.

Richard Swanson writes,”The storyteller is staging a remembrance of the slaughter carried out by Joshua when [the Israelites] invaded the land [of Canaan].  This is not idly done. This remembrance makes this [Gospel story] a scene of historic repentance: the Canaanites are shown to be capable of real faithfulness… The argument for [the] slaughter [of the Canaanites] – that they will lead you away from true faithfulness – is revealed to be false.” 

This is a pivot point in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s in chapter 15, close to the halfway point of Matthew’s 28 chapters. In chapter 16, Jesus starts warning his disciples about what’s going to happen to him.* And chapter 17 contains the Transfiguration, the literal mountaintop moment that turns the Gospel story towards the cross. 

I think Matthew sees this moment as the fulcrum – the point on which the story pivots. On which Jesus’ understanding of his mission pivots. From seeking and saving the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to breaking down the walls that divide us, making whole what has long been broken. and embracing all those of any nation who seek God’s healing, redemption, and grace. 

Thanks be to God. 

Bulletin August 16

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on three sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin, Sunday, August 16

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Online Vacation Bible School 2020: The Story of Joseph!

Our annual August intergenerational Vacation Bible School is online! We’ll do it “live” over Zoom on Sunday, August 9, though Thursday,  August 13, from 6 – 7PM every evening. (Feel free to join over dinner!) To get the Zoom link, email Rev. Miranda at or join our Facebook group.

Kids, youth and adults are all welcome! We can’t break up by age group online the same way we usually do in person, but we’ll do our best to listen, wonder, and learn together across age groups.

We’ll also make the videos & reflection materials available online for those who’d like to participate at their own pace, or have to miss a day. The materials for each day  will be added as new links below.

The Story of Joseph, Day 1: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 1 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 2: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 2 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 3: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 3 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 4: Video on Vimeo

The Story of Joseph Day 4 At-Home Reflection Materials

The Story of Joseph, Day 5: Video on Vimeo 

The Story of Joseph Day 5 At-Home Reflection Materials 

Bulletin August 9

Here is the bulletin for this Sunday’s online gatherings for the people of St. Dunstan’s. It is the same for the 9am gathering and the 6:30pm gathering.   It will print on two sheets of paper, front and back. NOTE: We use slides during worship  that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Bulletin August 9

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…

  1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

A Prayer for Spiritual Communion

A Prayer for Spiritual Communion
In union, O Lord, with the faithful at every altar of your Church where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer you praise and thanksgiving. I present to you my soul and body with the earnest wish that I may always be united to you, and, since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, I beseech you to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself with you, and embrace you with all the love of my soul. Let nothing ever separate you from me. May I live in you, and may you live in me, both in this life and in the life to come. Amen.

6205 University Ave., Madison WI

St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church