Given the current assault on women and their denigration to a status of less than a person (which has been the condition of women for much of recorded human history in all together too many societies), I was struck by the voice given to Gomer by the womanist Episcopal priest and academician Wil Gafney. She was able to help me redeem Hosea by lifting Gomer to her rightful place as a child of God and one favored by God. Thank you, Rev., Gafney!!
7Pentectost, Proper 12
24 July 2022
Let’s talk about women. More specifically women in the Bible. I had told Sara I was avoiding Hosea, but I didn’t say anything about Gomer. I was trying to avoid her, Gomer not Sara, but she called to me from the tumult. She seemed to be saying she was tired of being labeled a whore, a prostitute, and a slut. You notice the conversation is between God and Hosea; Gomer is being triangulated, to use a term from family systems. She is being bandied about like a ping pong ball. I thought she should have her own voice, especially in a time like this when women in this country are losing their voices and being treated as non-persons in the legal system. The history of Christianity is littered with the corpses of women, seen as servants to men, temptresses, witches, and less than fully human. Women have often had no voice other than the one given to them by men. The same could be said about other non-privileged groups, including the non-gender conforming, those not deemed white enough, those from the wrong social strata.
But I digress. The Bible, and perhaps Hebrew scripture in particular, is inculcated with the specter of whores, a term used to describe any woman whose actions you cannot control. We do this all the time! We create neat little categories where we can place anyone who challenges what we would like as the status quo. Each of us has done this to someone, probably many times. I am as guilty of that sin as any of you. However, the sin of misogyny is one of the most odious of all and the Bible and Christian history reek of it. God does not.
Wil Gafney, womanist Episcopal priest and scholar, has an answer:
You have seen it written, “You have the forehead of a whore.” Instead I say unto you: You have the forehead of the kind of woman some men, especially religious men like Hosea and Jeremiah, will call a whore. You have the forehead of a woman who will make her own decisions about her body and sexuality. You have the forehead of a woman who will decide for herself whether or when to have children. You have the forehead of a woman who will not submit to male domination in or out of the church, or in or out of the sacred texts. You have the forehead of a woman who will resist theology and biblical interpretation that does not affirm who you are, who God created you to be. You have the forehead of a woman whom men will call a whore to put you in your place. You have the forehead of a woman who is unbought and unbosssed. You have the forehead of a woman who has survived rape and sexual assault and domestic violence. You have the forehead of a woman who has been blamed for the violence others visited upon your person and you brazenly rejected it. You are brazen in your womanishness. (Gafny, 2018)
From the mouths of a patriarchal, misogynist society, where the worst thing you could be was a woman. Do you believe that the nature of God is to relegate half of humankind to the dungheap? Sorry, I don’t buy that God is as Hosea portrays God. And here is Gomer, named as Gomer daughter of Diblaim. She was somebody’s daughter; she was not an anonymous pawn in a Biblical story.
And, as they say, words matter. Perhaps a better translation of the Hebrew word in Hosea is to call her promiscuous. Hosea is charged to marry a promiscuous woman. He knew where to look, didn’t he? What does that say about him?
After their marriage, Gomer gives birth to three children, the middle child, her daughter, is given a name that means devoid of mother love, yet the child is nursed by Gomer until she is a toddler. Gomer loves the unlovable, just as God does. God loves all of us. God’s love is the kind that loved a young woman named Mary, really yet a girl, who was likely called every evil and vile name a woman could be called yet gave birth to the Son of God. And that Son of God kept company with women of all sorts, women who would not be welcome on the company of Jeremiah or Hosea, (or for that matter many of those who shaped the course of Christianity) women who anointed Jesus, who were at the cross, who were the first to announce the resurrection. These women preached the Gospel and one, Mary Magdalene, was the apostle to the apostles. Mary was pushed to the margins by a church who couldn’t deal with the Gospel. The story of Mary as a redeemed prostitute started with a pope in the 600’s CE!! Women with chutzpah just had to be banished, whether thorough rewriting history or literally in some horrific fashion.
Here’s the big question: do we really accept that there is Good News to preach? Do we believe that the love of God passes all understanding and extends to all living things? If we do, Hosea needs to be seen through the eyes of Gomer, for is it not Gomer who shows more love and devotion in this reading than Hosea? I see God when I see Gomer, the woman who persists in loving the child called unloved.
Women have always faced perilous times. It has been a rare society and a rare time in recorded history when women were considered as the equals of men. But with God it has always been so; it is our own misinterpretation of scripture and often the self interest of those in power to place women in positions of subordinations and otherness.
I believe God has always intended otherwise. It is only by falling in love with God and entering the dance of the Trinity that we come to see that in God, and in Christ and the Holy Spirit, that the boundaries as we know them are broken and we enter a world where only love exists.
At times you have to get between and behind the readings of scripture, for in seeing those people at the margins, or outside the margins, is where you will find God. If we want to realize fully the reign of God, then all voices must be heard and all humans must be treated as full children of God.
And as Wil Gafny said, They called her a whore but nevertheless Gomer persisted in loving a child called Loveless and her love we see God’s love. Amen.
Gafny, W. (2018, September 24). When Gomer Looks More Like God. Retrieved from Womanists Wading in the Word: https://www.wilgafney.com/2018/09/24/when-gomer-looks-more-like-god/
Comentarios