The Concubine’s Name

The Concubine’s Name March 28, 2017

**Trigger warning: sexual violence**


 

In between book edits, caring for elderly parents, and the online summit I’m hosting this week, between doses of pseudoephedrine for the sinus infection I have, I grabbed glimpses of Glennon Doyle-Melton’s book, Love Warrior, and something that has been swirling in my head and my heart of late settled on the horizon of my mind, came into focus like when you wipe dew off a window.

 

That doesn’t make it easy to explain, though Lord knows I’ll try.

 

It’s no secret that I’m feeling a little disenfranchised from Capital-E Evangelicalism (heretofore to be known as The Big E). As a progressive Christian, I’ve always felt a little like a triangle trying to force herself into a nice, softly-rounded circle anyway — all my sharp, pointy edges poking at the sides of propriety, bursting bubbles, crossing boundaries, eliciting behind-my-back eye rolls (yeah, I saw you).

 

I’ve finally acknowledged that I hold a deep, painful hurt in my soul, and it is borne of my womanhood. It started with a small story in Judges 19. There, in those lines, a group of men come to a house and want to have sex with a male guest. The host, horrified by all that homosexuality, instead offered his own daughter and the concubine of the guest he was protecting. (For the record, I hate the word “concubine”. She was a person.) Eventually, they push the concubine outside and slam the door, leaving her defenseless against the gang of hell raisers.

 

They raped her to death.

 


For days after I read that tiny little scripture — one that, understandably, is not often preached from a pulpit — I couldn’t get that unnamed woman out of my head. She haunted me. She haunts me still. According to the scripture, the men raped her all night long, letting her go just before dawn. She went back to the house, collapsing on the threshold. Judges 19:27 says, “It was morning. Her master got up and opened the door to continue his journey. There she was, his concubine, crumpled in a heap at the door, her hands on the threshold.”

 

The image of her hands reaching for a door that remained closed to her is one that haunts me still. In a sick and twisted sense of false righteousness — and my guess is it had more to do with destruction of property than with actual humanitarian compassion or even a fear of God — the man chops her up into a bunch of tiny pieces and sends them to all the tribes of Israel, to demonstrate their wretchedness. In a striking sense of irony that scarily resembles today’s infuriating headlines, this guy has the nerve to act offended. Classic.

 

But all I can see is her hands, reaching for a door that’s been shut to her. In many ways, this unnamed woman represents women in Big E Christianity everywhere — those of us who have been pushed out, kept out, shut out of the safe spaces, the places where we can be fully human, and something other than someone else’s belonging.

 

Don’t be confused. I don’t blame God for this disgusting betrayal. I blame patriarchy.  And regardless of what many complementarians may say, patriarchy is a wholly human construct.

 

It’s been going on, in one form or another, for ages. Our stories are barely told in the Bible, because someone considered them unimportant. We often go unnamed. When we are named, and bold enough to make an impact, our names have been changed to the masculine form, or a translation has altered the original meaning to make our impact less important. Take Junia, a woman called out as a noted apostle by Paul, whose name was changed to make it seem as if she was a man. It’s important to note that this was only corrected in the NIV as recently as 2011.

 

We are still fighting this battle.

 

Recently, I had the incredible pleasure of meeting Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist, and hearing her speak. She said that men (and some women) will still walk out when she speaks in church. They see this, I assume, as some sort of strange obedience to some patriarchal doctrine of supremacy. I see it as Pharisaical pride.

 

My friend Jory Micah, whose mission is “Breaking The Glass Steeple”, fights for the right as a woman to teach and preach the Gospel, and the absolutely hateful and vile things that so-called Christians heap upon her are so incredibly offensive, I don’t know how she stands it. She is a strong woman. Truly a woman of valor. Eshet Chayil!

 

Women are still blamed for their own rapes, and the Big-E was complicit in helping get a sexual abuser in the White House.  In churches, women clearly doing pastoral work are called “directors” — because of ill-applied scriptural interpretation. In a blatant display of othering, 52 percent of men in a recent study claimed that they don’t benefit from women having access to birth control.

 

Because it’s all about the guys. It’s always all about the guys.

 

We won’t even get into the fact that maybe you don’t have some kids you didn’t want because a woman in your life had access to birth control. We’ll just focus on the fact that the insane question was even included in a survey. Because women’s health care — and this may shock you — is actually about women.  Which may be why so many of us women are in such a tizzy over the fact that none of us were invited to the party where the bros decided how our healthcare will be managed here in this great democracy-of-the-penis we’ve got here.

 

This meme has been going around social media lately.
This meme has been going around social media lately.

 


 

 

Anyway.

 

Despite the obvious attempts to wipe us out of the story as if we were just marker on a white board, we’re still in there — right there, from the very beginning, starting with God. We are in God. God says, Let us make humans in our image — male and female. We are the unnamed concubines and the Deborahs and the Esthers, the Eves and the Ruths, the Junias and the Phoebes. We are there, doing God’s work, living out imperfect stories, chasing down our perfect God. We are the many Marys, who hear God call our name, and respond.

 

Which brings me to Glennon.

 

When I was a newbie in Christian world, I towed the Big E line that Catholics were practically heathens, but we should love them anyway. I was judgmental and felt very superior to all their worshipping of idols and deification of Mary. I was so smart. And such a jerk. Because the thing is, Marys make wonderful introductions to God. Marys make wonderful prophets. Marys tell the truth about God’s love, because they have been among the first to respond to God’s love for them. Glennon found God through Mary, and so did I. I just forgot.

 

In Love Warrior, Glennon talks about her turning point: she walked into a church a hot mess, and found, under a statue’s stare, only peace and acceptance. That statue of Mary holding her baby spoke to Glennon in a way no authoritative patriarch could. And Mary paved the way for Glennon to live a different kind of life. In a way, on that day, Mary told Glennon, God knows your name. We’re all waiting for you. And Glennon said yes.

 

I was young — in my early teens, long before Jesus and I would have our moment. I was in Ireland, standing in a field in the rain with a bunch of Irish Catholics praying the rosary. I was brought up Methodist, so I had no idea what we were doing. I tried to cross myself at appropriate times, just to fit. (See? I’ve always had pointy edges that don’t fit the circles I’m given.)

 

At that time, in Ballinspittle, there was a statue of the Virgin, and people said it was moving.

 

I was standing in that field in the rain with all those people and back home, my beloved grandmother was dying.  Mary reminded me that while I was there, I might as well pray. And for the first time, I learned what it was to release something I wanted desperately to hold onto into the hands of God, and when I did, God was tender when she took it.

 

The story of my grandmother’s death deserves more than I can fit here, and I will tell it someday. But suffice it to say that Mary ushered me into one of my first relational interactions with God, long before I would fall mad in love with Jesus. Mary was there to tell me, even then, that Jesus was already mad in love with me. Like the Mary at the tomb, when I heard Jesus call my name, I recognized him for who he was, because Mary told me about him in misty Irish field, years before.

 


 

 

I sense the rumblings of hope. Despite all the hate and the trolls, the misogyny and the men in powerful places, there is a deep roar that’s beginning to get louder. I see it in the women who are gathering, who are clearing their throats and starting to speak — many for the first time ever. I see it on the streets of DC and — indeed — streets all over the country and the world. I hear it in the choruses that sing I Can’t Keep Quiet and in the women who are standing up and banging on the doors that have been shut to them for so long.

 

I hear it in quiet lullabies mothers sing to their children, the quietest of subversive acts: She’s got the whole world, in her hands. She’s got the whole wide world, in her hands….

 

And I see it in scripture. I see Jesus all over scripture, subverting the status quo that we humans like to hold on to for dear life, this knowing our places and fighting-to-the-death and this posturing. I see Jesus there, stopping stones from being thrown. I see him speaking to women at wells. I see him telling Mary, “Go! Tell the men. Tell them truth.” I see Jesus when he calls Mary’s name; I see her recognition of God right there beside her.

 

I have no doubt that Jesus knows the concubine’s name, too.

 

I stand at the door with her, my sister, the unnamed concubine. Her hands may hang limp on the threshold, but I’ll be here to bang on the door for her. I’ll bang on that door until it opens for us. For all of us — for Glennon and Sarah and Junia and Esther and all the Marys.  We’ll stay here and tell our stories, we’ll hold up our unnamed friends, and we’ll keep banging.  I know what we’ll happen then.

 

We’ll walk in, and Jesus will be there, and he’ll call each of us by name.

 

Starting with her.  We’ll finally know her name.


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