Preaching Women

Liz Shercliff

Description

Filling a glaring gap in the literature around homiletics, Preaching Women considers reasons why women preachers should preach from their experiences as women, what women bring to preaching that is missing without us, and how women preachers can go about the task of biblical preaching.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Preaching
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334058403
• Langue: English

Extrait

Preaching Women
Gender, Power and the Pulpit
Liz Shercliff





© Liz Shercliff 2019
Published in 2019 by SCM Press
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The Author has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
978-0-334-05838-0
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd



Contents
Foreword
Introduction

1 . What is Preaching?
2. Finding My Voice
3. Silencing Women: A Silencing Culture
4. Hearing Women’s Faith
5. Hearing Bible Women
6. Sermons for Women
7. Preaching as a Woman
8. Preaching Women

Bibliography






For all those who have challenged, championed and chosen to journey with me, particularly David Shercliff, Dan Shercliff and Ruth Curry.

Thanks go particularly to Elizabeth Stokes, who devoted much time to reading the first draft.



Foreword: Women’s Voices are God’s Voice
In 2015, as Bishop of Stockport, I learned of plans for a new conference. Its aim was to encourage and equip women preachers. I admired and encouraged both the concept and the content, and the first ‘Women’s Voices’ conference was held in June 2015. It followed the publication in The Preacher magazine of an article by Liz Shercliff: ‘Do Women Preach with a Different “Voice”?’ In exploring women’s preaching, the conference considered in particular why and how women preachers might help speak the faith and life experiences of women, and women Christians in particular. The most common comments on that first event were: ‘I thought it was only me’ and ‘Please could we have another conference?’
Since then Women’s Voices has become an annual event in the Diocese of Chester, and is usually fully booked months in advance. It seeks to pioneer the development of women’s preaching by combining practical homiletics with academic rigour. Important and transforming questions have been addressed: Why do we need to hear women’s voices? How can we make safe spaces in Bible study and liturgy for all, including women? Can we read the Bible as women? What difference does it make if we do?
So I was delighted to be asked to introduce the fourth annual conference in 2018. The invitation prompted me to reflect on the importance of women’s voices. Their importance in Scripture, the Church and the world. Their importance for women and men. Their importance in recognizing which voices are heard and which silenced; which voices used and which denied.
In my address at the conference, I shared a comment I have sometimes made: it was a surprise to me to discover, when I was announced as the next Bishop of Stockport in 2014, and the first ‘woman bishop’ in the Church of England, that I was a woman! Not that I have ever doubted that fact, or desired to be anything other than a woman.
Being ordained priest in 1994, I’ve had decades of my gender being commented on and reacted to (positively as well as negatively) in my exercise of ministry – but I really didn’t think of myself as a ‘woman’ anything. I’m just me. Who happens to be a woman.
I’ve been and done many things in my life, and I’ve been blessed by sharing and living them alongside men as well as women. I’ve been child, sibling, friend, scholar, spouse, ordinand, deacon, parent, priest. I’ve spent time as curate, chaplain, trainer, team vicar, Director of Ordinands, incumbent, Dean for Women in Ministry, participant observer, and now bishop. Being the first woman to be named bishop meant it was my being a woman that attracted attention, so I’ve had to give my own attention to what that means for me as well as for others.
I have learned to recognize and give greater voice to the women in the Church who nurtured and influenced me: Janet and others, whose love and hospitality was a sacrament of God’s love and helped bring me to faith; Liz Shercliff herself, who as one of my youth group leaders encouraged my gifts and gave me a safe space to test them; Mrs Marshall (even as an adult I can’t quite bring myself to call her by her first name), whose own love of theology engendered that love in me; Helen, whose pioneering example, entirely unknown to her, inspired me to take seriously my vocation to ordination; Margaret, whose faith and nurture brought me to acceptance for ordination training; Sarah and Jan and others, who have accompanied me in striving for faithful obedience to that calling … the list goes on and on.
I have learned to honour and name, even where their names are not recorded, the women in Scripture whose part in God’s salvation history, though vital, is often untold or diminished. I have learned that in their story, God’s story becomes my story, not just because I’m a woman but because we all need to listen to the whole story. I’ve learned to be more confident in refusing to collude with the false image of God as male because that not only diminishes me and all women, but much more importantly diminishes God. I am passionate about finding and listening to women in the Bible. If we don’t, we risk closing our ears and hardening our hearts to the voice of God.
And I’ve learned that it matters to people, men and women, boys as well as girls, that a woman holds this space. That it gives hope, that it is good news, that it points to the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of freedom and forgiveness, of justice and peace, of holiness and grace. Not that I embody those things but that if even I can hold this place it means God offers those things. I’m learning to cherish this honour as a gift not for my sake but as a signpost to God’s love for all. As others have been examples and inspirations for me, so I need to take seriously that I am that for countless others, outside as well as within the Church, of all faiths and none. I’ve discovered that I’m a named part of the national curriculum! – just one indicator of the considerable influence I hold, and for Christ’s sake, I must not waste or discard it.
I remain convinced that it is vital for all of us, women and men, young and old, from our diverse heritages and circumstances, to ‘find our own voice’. There is value in recognizing and valuing women’s spirituality, and discerning where it overlaps and complements, supplements and enhances, confronts and challenges that of our brothers – so we all can be drawn closer to the Living God who is at work in us.
Following the 2018 Women’s Voices I was asked to write an article for The Preacher 1 magazine, articulating some of what lay behind my short contribution to the conference – a lovely reflection of the journey that inspired Liz Shercliff to initiate Women’s Voices in the first place. I wrote along these lines:
‘Thus says the Lord … Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So you shall be my people, and I will be your God’ (Jer. 11.3–4).
God’s own voice is neither male nor female. But as we all, both male and female, are made in God’s image, all our voices echo something of the voice of God. When women’s voices are not heard, we are deaf, at least in part, to the word of God. And muting, at least in part, the voice of God.
We must therefore be attentive to the voices of women in Scripture. For example, as we read of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, we must also listen out for the voice of the God of Sarah, Hagar and Keturah, the God of Rebecca, the God of Leah and Rachel, and Bilhah and Zilpah. Salvation history is told through the stories of women as well as men. We have to listen harder to hear God through such women’s voices; they have so often been muted. We have to listen even harder for those women who are unnamed and passed by, because so often what God is saying in and through them is drowned out by the louder noise of the men around them.
This work of hearing women’s voices matters. When we do not listen to women, we are being deaf to the voice of God.
It is not only the narratives of Scripture that specifically include women that might help us listen to God more carefully and completely. God speaks, reaches out, loves, through every word of Scripture, and God does not speak with a male voice .
As I age, like most people, I am finding that my hearing diminishes. It is not only volume that makes a difference, there are pitches I find more difficult to hear. That means it takes more attention to follow some conversations; it is less likely that I can pick out particular sounds from cacophony; some music is harder to appreciate. If we only listen to particular or limited pitches of God’s voice in Scripture, we are missing out – certainly, we are missing out on the fullness of all that God offers, and perhaps missing something significant and vital.
Both men and women need to listen out for