Rigby: Presbyterian Women
need to learn to talk back
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, July 20, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Cynthia Rigby, a faculty member at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, spoke July 14 at the Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville, Ky.
Rigby, whose interest lies in setting Reformed theologies in conversation with theologies of liberation, particularly feminist, womanist and mujerista theologies, titled her sermon “Back talk.” It was based on Numbers 12:1-16 and Matthew 15:21-28.
Rigby asked: “Remember when we were little and we weren’t allowed to talk back?” She said her father was “very big” on not talking back to her mother.
As she grew older, she learned not to talk back to teachers, doctors, ministers and even “old Uncle Bobs.”
“When we appear to agree with those in positions of authority, they like us,” Rigby said. “They may even advance us. When we resist the urge to talk back, we can even hang with the talkers.”
But, she asked, “What happens to those people who actually say the emperor has no clothes?”
In real life, talking back “infuriates those who rule over us, and even those who love us,” said Rigby.
There are good reasons not to talk back, but the problem comes when “we become so good at not talking back that we don’t know how to [talk back] when we are called to do so,” she said.
“We could stand to aggravate those around us,” Rigby said. “When we are trained for years and decades to keep our mouths shut, it is tough, even when we want to open them wide and say what we are called to say.”
“It is time,” she said, “to claim our full status as heirs to the promise. To do this will take a little ‘back talk.’”
Rigby said that Presbyterian Women need to “take on responsibility we have not had before – not only to describe the world, but to transform it and to transform from it takes a little sass.”
She spoke of Miriam in the Numbers passage. “Like us, she didn’t know how to be sassy. She fell into the hole of gossiping, instead of acting bodaciously, being in front and acting sassy.” Rigby said that Miriam did not talk back, but talked behind Moses’ back.
“Do you notice how much power Miriam has in this story?,” she asked. “God could have shoved her aside and done His thing with Moses.” Rigby said God wanted her back, her brothers spoke up for her and the people waited on her for seven days.
Rigby then turned to the story of the Canaanite women “one of Presbyterian Women’s favorite sisters, who was poised and ready to talk back audaciously” in order to have her daughter healed.
“First Jesus ignores her, then challenges her,” said Rigby. “If Jesus ignores a back talker and Jesus challenges a back talker to know her place, then we should be surprised when our back talking is ignored or corrected?”
“I’ve also been scolded for no good reason, because my words will threaten the status quo,” Rigby said. “We need to develop resources to speak up – to talk back – and endure the rocky engagement that is spawned from our back talk.”
She calls the Canaanite woman a hero. “The Canaanite woman has made a beautiful argument and Jesus compliments her faith,” Rigby said. “The woman is not aiming to beat Jesus out in an argument. She is not trying to be witty. She is responding with what she believes in her whole heart – that God can work wonders.”
“Where – and when – do we talk back? Do we do it in prayer? Do we do it in conversation with the powers that be?” she asked.
“When we leave this place, when we find ourselves positioned some time again as dogs under the table,” she said, “may we continue to exercise our great faith. May God grant us the courage to talk back.”
The Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women, which concluded on July 15, had approximately 2,500 participants according to estimates on the PCUSA Web site.