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Sermons
But Why Was
Only Miriam Punished?
Numbers
12:1-16
Rev. Kenneth M. Locke
The Downtown Presbyterian Church
One of the things that has long concerned
me about Christianity is that our Scriptures are overwhelmingly
patriarchal. God is spoken of in the
masculine way more often than in the feminine.
In most of the Bible women are clearly important but are also clearly
less important than men.
How then can we claim the Scriptures for
women and for everyone who works more but is paid less, owns less, has less
access to healthcare and other services, has less power to make the government
work for them, and generally suffers more than others? How can Christianity rise above its
patriarchal base and truly address the needs of everyone?
One way is to remember that as Christians
we ultimately interpret the Bible through the lens of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. And when
we look closely at the Gospels we find Jesus treated women as equal to anyone
else. Indeed, we’ll see next week
how women were vital to Jesus’ ministry and how it was women who first
encountered the empty tomb and the risen Lord.
Another thing we can do is hold up and protest the
texts which treat women as inferiors, texts where women are treated less
favorably than men. One of those many
texts is our passage for this morning.
Scholars have long speculated about why
only Miriam is punished. Remember now,
Miriam is a prophet in her own right.
She leads the women in song and dance after Pharaoh’s forces are
destroyed by the sea. Miriam is Aaron
and Moses’ sister and by tradition the older sister who watched after
Moses when he was an infant, floating in a basket on the
So why is only Miriam punished? Perhaps
when the story originally circulated only Miriam protested against
Moses, and Aaron’s involvement was added later. Or perhaps the final editors, who were of the
Priestly caste, could not abide the thought of Aaron, the great high priest,
having a disease that would have made him unclean, so they edited that part
out.
But clearly, the story we have is what the
final editors wanted us to have and is ultimately the text we have to work with.
Miriam and Aaron protest against Moses;
ostensibly because he has married a foreigner but really because they are
jealous. The writer lets us know that by
saying Moses is “meek,” which means he is devoted to God. Moses is more devoted to God than any other
person, and Miriam and Aaron are jealous of Moses’ special relationship
with God.
God speaks to the three of them, scolding
Miriam and Aaron, and when the cloud of God’s glory is gone, Miriam has
leprosy. That is, she has a skin disease
that makes her ritually unclean. In
horror, Aaron appeals to Moses to help them.
Notice the irony here. Aaron is
riled up against Moses. But the moment
trouble comes Aaron turns to Moses for help.
But notice also that Aaron pleads for “us.” Do not punish “us.” Did you catch that? Aaron is so tight with Miriam that her
punishment is his. He feels as if he too
has leprosy.
Miriam is shut out of the camp for seven
days as punishment in order to shame her for her bad behavior. But notice the people do not abandon
her. Miriam is a prophetess, and a
leader, and the people wait for her. She
is clearly one of them, and she is important to them.
But the question remains, why was only
Miriam punished? Why didn’t Aaron
receive the leprosy? Why wasn’t he
placed outside the camp for 7 days as well?
Frankly, I don’t know the
answer. I don’t know that there is
any logical reason for what happens here.
All I can say is that I do not see Jesus treating Miriam and Aaron with
this kind of disparity. And I protest
that. I hold it up as unworthy of the
Gospel and flagrantly wrong. And I
repent that women, and the oppressed in general, are punished more than men and
other persons in positions of power.
And I protest that Aaron did not demand
that he receive leprosy as well. I
protest that Aaron did not sit outside the camp with his sister. I protest that Aaron did not do all he could
to share in equal punishment with his sister for the sin they had both
committed.
Christianity, our faith that we cling to so
closely, is built on the understanding that we are all equal before God and
that
the
only one who could bear our sins for us was Jesus Christ. The hard reality though is that our
Scriptures necessarily reflect the attitudes and conventions of those who
recorded God’s self-revelation to us.
And if we are going to take our Scriptures seriously, and use them to
reach all God’s people, we must point out and protest the times when our
Scriptures do not reflect the love of God that we find in Jesus Christ.
Certainly Aaron identifies with Miriam and
we celebrate that. Aaron is challenging
the rest of us. When the homeless are
mistreated, when Iraqi prisoners of war are abused, when women are raped, when
children are mistreated - do we stand with them? Do we say they are us? When others receive better treatment at the
hands of the authorities than we do, do we demand to be treated that way as
well?
Our challenge as Christians is to both
celebrate Aaron for identifying with Miriam and pleading for her and to
admonish him for not stepping up and protesting and demanding to share her
punishment and to sit outside the camp with her.
Our challenge as Christians is to look
around us and ask who the Miriams are in our society today. Who is being punished more heavily than
others? Who is being shamed when others
are not? These are hard questions and
it’s hard for us to see the answers because we live so closely with them. Sort of like fish being the last to discover
water.
But we can begin by asking why women still
generally earn less money than men for the same work. We can ask why a higher percentage of
African-American males are in prison than white or other males. We can ask why some people have more access
to health care and health insurance than others. I was listening to a commentator on NPR this
week who said that the top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90%
combined. Why is that?
I am not saying that all systemic flaws
and inequities in society stem from the patriarchal point of view of our
Bible. But I do believe very strongly
that the patriarchal view of the Bible and its tendency to treat some people
worse than others contributes to these inequities in our society.
This past week the president of
I don’t want to suggest that such
bias as Mr. Summers has shown is entirely due to the patriarchal bias of our
Scriptures, and certainly not entirely due to this one story about Miriam. But I do suggest that not critiquing this
story leaves the door open for Mr. Summers and his kind to say and do much
worse.
Please understand that I am not engaging
in general male-bashing, or white-bashing or rich-bashing. We can’t help our gender or our race or
where our parents chose to send us to school.
But I am saying that those in the power
positions in society, and generally that means men with the same skin color I
have, we need to be aware how pervasive inequality is and we need to be aware
that our sacred scriptures contribute to that inequality.
Again, I don’t know why Miriam was
the only one who was punished. I
don’t know why Aaron didn’t sit with her outside the camp for 7
days.
But I do know that in Jesus Christ we have
the power to overcome these inequalities for in Jesus Christ there is neither
East nor West, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In Jesus Christ we are all Miriam, we are all
Aaron, we are all forgiven. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
Do
you agree that our Scriptures are patriarchal in tone?
How
could that patriarchal tone contribute to inequalities in the world today?
Can/should
men in general (and white women for that matter) apologize for their Scriptures
and how Christianity has treated women and minorities through the ages? How could we go about doing that?
Who
are the Miriams in our society today?
Are
any of us like Aaron?
If
Aaron and Miriam had come up to Jesus and complained that Peter was not the
only prophet but that Jesus had spoken through them as well, how would Jesus
have handled it?
If
a young Christian or person not in a position of authority asked you about this
text, what would you tell them?
In
our everyday lives how can you and I protest the patriarchy of the Bible and
celebrate it’s inclusiveness and unity?
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