In the Book of Common Prayer, Eucharistic Prayer C contains a point in the eucharist where the priest addresses God as “Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”1Â In order to be inclusive, many priests — including my wife — will add the line, “Lord God of our Mothers: God of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael, and Leah.”
While I am all in favor of this, we are leaving out some people. Obviously, we cannot name everyone. Some have argued for Hagar, but Ishmael is not heir to the promise in the same way that Isaac is (Hagar gets a different promise). We could include Keturah, Abraham’s second wife by whom he had six children, but none of those sons are included in the promise either. But there are people who are parallel to Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael, and Leah who I feel should be included.
Sarah, of course, is the mother of Isaac, a son in the line of the promise. Rebecca bears Jacob, the next son of the promise. Rachael and Leah, of course, bear Jacob’s children who become the twelve tribes.
But it should be noted that Rachael and Leah only bore eight of the tribes. The other four were carried by Bilhah and Zilpah, the maids of Rachael and Leah (Genesis 30). While these two women had no say in the matter, they did become the ancestresses of one-third of the tribes of Israel.
Shouldn’t we include them in the list of the women whom God used to bring forth the promise? Doesn’t their marginal status make an even bigger case for us remembering their contribution?
I have to admit that while I like the theology of this idea, I also get a chuckle out of the thought of having a priest mention these two women in the liturgy and hearing most of the congregation go, “Huh?”
- Book of Common Prayer, 372. [back]
On March 25th, 2007 at 2:52 am
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