Guest Outlook blog by Katy Shevel
Each Wednesday morning, I make a piping mug of tea, click a Zoom link and am soon heartened by the panel of sleepy, smiling female faces checkered across my computer screen. Our women’s Bible study has gathered early and faithfully throughout the pandemic. They graciously invited me to lead them on a journey through the Old Testament, specifically, to examine stories of biblical women. We started in Genesis, continued sequentially, and recently concluded with the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. Together, we encountered the tragic pain, tender love and resilient faith of the brave women of the Bible.
We laughed with Sarah. We encountered God in the desert with Hagar. The collective courage of the daughters of Zelophehad empowered us. The appalling fate of the Levite’s concubine horrified us. The swift courage of Jael and her silent tent peg shocked us. We mourned and kept watch in the darkness with Rizpah. We discovered a model of resistance in Vashti and an advocate for justice in Esther.
The female saints of the Bible give voice to the failings of its many patriarchs, not to mention the pervasive brokenness of the whole community of faith. In Scripture, God’s people repeatedly exploit the powerless and distort God’s teachings. Women and children are too often oppressed and violated. As our Bible study wrestled with these texts together, we never lost sight of the truth that these stories – however ugly or tragic – are all a part of our story.
Over and against harmful supercessionist interpretations of Scripture, the Reformed tradition emphasizes our common kinship with the community of faith in the Old Testament. Amy Plantinga Pauw writes, “The church hears the judgments and promises of the Old Testament as God’s Word to them. The idolatries of Israel are snapshots from the church’s family album. Both Israel and the church struggle to be obedient and faithful; both often fail.” Our journey through the Old Testament this year reminded us how broken the church has been from its beginnings — and how much we utterly depend upon God’s grace to sustain us.
A global pandemic has taught us all a thing or two about the imperfections of our earthly community of God. Our collective experience has dealt us each a sobering reminder of human mortality — and made the institutional church acutely aware of its own fragility. Dispersed and scattered from our buildings last year, we worried how our congregations would survive. Now as we reopen our physical spaces for Sunday worship, church leaders wonder who will return — and what the future holds.
My suspicion is that we, the church, will probably fail in many ways to meet this watershed moment: that once back in our buildings, many congregations will hastily revert to the old patterns of “business as usual.” I think we need to accept now that the church will not be radically different than it was before the pandemic, at least not overnight. Yet whatever happens next, God’s promise to the Israelites and to us remains the same: I am with you. When the Israelites were in exile, God promised them: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you know perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” God promised new possibilities for God’s people. These new possibilities were not contingent upon a perfect record of faithful obedience going forward. God’s people had already established a long track record of screwing things up. God hadn’t forgotten that — and yet God promised them a future with hope anyway!
God made a way for the Israelites through the wilderness and will make a way for us, too. What “way” will God show us forward? That has yet to be seen. The church has overcome many trials and taken on so many forms over the course of history. Our Reformed tradition relativizes all singular forms of church worship or procedure. The Scots Confession states that no “policy or order of ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places.” The architects of our early Reformed theology recognized that all earthly church forms are fragile and finite. As we discovered, our pandemic season ushered forth rapid innovation. The church had to quickly adapt to fit the current context and to become an exclusively virtual community during a time of physical quarantine. What a pivotal moment in our church’s story! Together, we have demonstrated that God’s community on earth is truly capable of faithfully stepping out in hope to meet our future.
Friends, we must not lose sight of our church’s story: that in all times and places, the community of faith has been utterly dependent upon the grace of God. So why shouldn’t we boldly step out in hope for new possibilities now? We can learn much from the brave biblical women who relied on God’s grace to sustain them in troubled times. Now more than ever: Let’s welcome the stranger, become fierce advocates for justice and bear witness to this amazing story of God’s enduring grace from Zion to Zoom.
KATY SHEVEL is the associate pastor for congregational life at Wayne Presbyterian Church in the Philadelphia area. She enjoys a good cup of tea, nerding out about theology and history, paddleboarding, and pretending to have a green thumb.
