This year during Lent we’re hearing from five different women.  Women who remain largely invisible to us until we catch a glimpse of them as they step out from the shadows and into the light that surrounds Jesus.

Imagining their stories requires that we read between the lines of Scripture.  In her book, The Women Around Jesus, Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendell speaks of the importance of using our imaginations in approaching the Biblical tradition:

“If we are to regain the access we have lost, the spontaneity of which we have been deprived, we must learn once again to think, feel, live and act in in terms of a total sense of living.  To do this, we shall have to rediscover a forgotten art of using our imagination in our theology…such imagination is the power of the Holy Spirit to bring new life to whatever has become fossilized.”

Some of the women we’ll encounter are wealthy.  Some are poor.  Some are Jewish.  Some are Gentile.  In every case, the gospel writer provides scant details about these women whose lives intersect with Jesus and so its left to us to imagine their backstories and how their encounter with him might have left them changed.  Look to this post for an updated recordings each week as we move through each of the five portrayals:

• Peter’s mother-in-law
• The mother of James and John
• The Syrophoenician woman
• The woman who anoints Jesus
• The wife of Pontius Pilate

Happy Listening!

Pastor Erik

Peace Wednesday 1, Peter’s motherinlaw

Peace Wednesday 2, Mother of James and John

Peace Wednesday 3, Syrophoenician Woman