Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“[Abram said to his wife, Sarai,] ‘Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.’ When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, September 18, 2020
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Well, he wasn’t entirely lying. Abram and Sarai were half-siblings. Such was the reality of marriage in Genesis. Isaac and Rebekah were first cousins. Jacob, Rachel, and Leah were similarly related. Marriage outside the family was taboo.
Be that as it may, Abram’s ploy to save his own skin led to his wife’s forced adultery at the hands of Pharaoh. And, unaccountably, she went along with it.
Genesis is so packed with stories of women having no power over their bodies, of being used sexually without consent, one wonders how we can hold these stories as sacred scripture.
I like what Wilda Gafney says in her book Womanist Midrash: “the reprehensible ender and sexual mores of the Stone and Iron Ages are still in effect for some of the women, men, boys, and girls living in the Digital Age. Our sacred texts do not proclaim or even envision a world without slavery and the subordination of women, but they lay a foundation for us to transcend them and their limitations…” (p. 84)
May we learn from these stories how to transcend the deep human flaws they expose.
Where do I struggle most with the Bible?
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