 |
|
    |
 |
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There is third way in which gender shapes the proclamation of our sacred story. If this story itself already under-represents women, and if the lectionary exacerbates this under-representation, the translations in which we hear our Scriptures add their own peculiarly gendered inflections. The way in which Junia, whom Paul describes as "prominent among the apostles" (Romans 16:7), was transgendered into a male "Junias"—against all evidence that there never was such a male name—is a case in point. And a fourth way in which gender shapes the proclamation of our sacred story has to do with the gender of the one who expounds the Scriptures in the homily; the fact that the authority to preach has been linked to the priestly office, and thereby to maleness, is obvious. Subtler, but no less incisive, are the ways in which such gendered particularity shapes actual homiletic material and performance. It will be clear by now that problems become visible in our proclamation of the Scriptures as soon as gender is made a category of liturgical analysis. The liturgical proclamation of the Scriptures comes to be seen as participating in the gendered asymmetries of the Christian tradition as a whole, asymmetries that also pervade the wider culture. With this acknowledgement we seem to have come full circle: gender marks all cultural formations. There is no gender-free vacuum in which to hide—certainly not in liturgical life. ConclusionI have highlighted a number of ways in which the real presence of women has been distanced from the real presence of the Holy One: in the Scriptures, in our liturgical readings, in our history, and in our theorizing of what and how liturgy "means." What might constitute good news? I want to point to one resource that is often overlooked. Our tradition is rich in ways of undoing these strategies of distancing women from the Holy: from the early Christian image of the Eucharist as God's breast milk,14 to medieval images of Jesus as mother, and as a woman in labor who births new life on the cross,15 to the profound connection between women mystics and eucharistic devotion in the thirteenth century and beyond.16 Robert d'Arbrissel thus embodied a resistance to the distancing of women from the Holy that also has and is a rich tradition. What I find peculiarly appealing about Robert d'Arbrissel is the link he makes between his forceful presencing of women in the little church of Menat and the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. Are there other signifiers in the tradition that might help in imagining this? I want to leave you with an image that I have found suggestive: the so-called shrine or tabernacle madonnas.17 These tabernacle madonnas, which represent Mary as a eucharistic vessel, capture a truth hidden deep within: the first tabernacle, the first vessel to hold the body of Christ, was not a golden receptacle, but a woman's body, a womb.18 By "hosting" God, Mary essentially says that "there is no real presence of God without the real presence of women." But I dare to go one step further: the deepest bond between the body of woman and the body of God might not even be that a woman was the first to give us the body of Christ—although Mary certainly did that. Rather, the deepest bond is that Mary was the one who gave her own body so that God within her might live. This, then, is what the tabernacle madonna invites us to see: a woman saying to God,"Here is my body, for you. Your presence cannot be real without mine." |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
Academics | Admissions | Alumni | Works | Listen | Look | Contact | Index | Home | Yale University
|