wgafney's blog

          Saint Perpetua left us one of the earliest pieces of literature written by a Christian woman. She kept a journal of her conversion and imprisonment up to the moment of her death. One of her companions added the details of her death on 7 March 203 before his own death.

The following clip is the view from one of the mountains traditionally (but not certainly) identified as Sinai.

He isn't really Joseph's son is he? He doesn't sound like a carpenter's or masonry apprentice. He sounds like a Torah-teacher. But who taught him? Who is his Doktorvater, his doctor-father? (That's what we academics call our dissertation advisor. I have a doctor-mother, a Doktormutter.) At what Rabbi's feet did he sit? Who is his rabbinic teacher, master, father? Whose son is he?

In the beginning was the word, the logos, in the Gospel. In the beginning was the Aramaic Memra in the mystical tradition of Judaism on which Yochannan whom you know as John is drawing. In the beginning was the d'var, the Hebrew word for word. In the beginning was the word, the divine word, the holy word, the spoken but not yet written word, perhaps a word whispered in a still small voice.

Installation sermon for Pr. Becky Resch of Abiding Presence Lutheran Church, Ewing NJ: "She is a shepherd." "The women who proclaim the good news are a great force." "Raise your woman's voice with power - proclaiming good news." Are these words really in the bible? They are, although sometimes they are hard to find, especially for those who don't read Hebrew or Greek, for those who read translations by men and for those who don't have access to what my students and I call the RGT, the Revised Gafney Translation of the scriptures... Click for full text.

From my Feast of All Saints (2009) sermon at St. Simon Cyrenian in South Philadelphia: All of those dead and rotting things that hide our true nature as the saints of God are stripped from us as were the grave clothes of Lazarus in the gospel. Jesus' command, "Release him and let him go!" is directed to the community.There are some in our community, like Lazarus, who are no longer recognizable as one of God's saints. It may be because of something that they have done or because of something that was done to them. We may never know which. (read more)

A Women's Day sermon for the New Life United Methodist Church in Upper Darby, PA: Sheerah built her own city in the Promised Land. She is the only woman in the scriptures who is described as building even one city. She actually built three: Lower Beth-horon, Upper Beth-horon and Uzzen-sheerah. She even named the last on eafter herself. Uzzen-sheerah means "listen to Sheerah"; Sheerah's city was her voice, and her voice is still speaking through the pages of scripture...

From my afternoon discussion at Germantown Jewish Centre: So then, one response to the question of the place of the Ten Commandments in contemporary Christian piety and practice is the still-proclaimed Gospel of Rabbi Jesus that they are secondary to the Sh'ma and (and/or tertiary to) a modified Ahavta. That is if Christians are followers of Jesus revealed in the gospels, in this case, in the gospel attributed to Mark. You should know that all of the subsequent canonical gospels remove the Sh'ma from the encounter (Matthew and Luke) or drop the story altogether (John). Jesus modifies the Ahavta, the "you-shall-love," by adding a category for loving God with one's mind, understanding or intellect.