Isaiah tells us of the distance between “the Lord” and the people. Those who are obedient should “call on the Lord while he is near.” To those who are disobedient and thus far from the Lord, he says, “Turn to the Lord for mercy… as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
Our relationships reveal degrees of proximity; ranging from intimate to personal, beyond to social, and still further to more distant public relationships. Religiously speaking, as the Old Testament reading above indicates, people are forced and/or coerced to relate with a heavenly supremacist Lord who, upon our obedience, we’re made to feel closer to, in an intimate relationship. Society, as presently constructed, forces and/or coerces us to relate in a similar manner with earthly supremacist Lords – presidents, CEOs, and Popes/preachers who, upon our obedience, we’re made to feel closer to, having not a distant public relationship but a closer personal one. It’s a hierarchical construct, specifically patriarchal. It sometimes extends to celebrities, who don’t necessarily get our obedience but certainly get our attention and maybe our worship. Granting the idolatry of the supremacist relationship model, at the heart of tributes to Dolly Parton has been her very public life that she lived in very personal and even intimate expressions. She neither forced nor coerced people to have a personal nor intimate relationship in return. She knew her gifts and she shared them. It’s a rare quality for us to be who we are, deeply immersed or rooted in our own gifts, in our identity and conscience, in a culture that grooms us, men especially, to be Lord-like, or, women especially, to esteem and even glorify Lord-like figures. Rather than intimate immersion, the Lord culture distances us. We’re groomed in constructed identities in which we substitute ‘me’ with ‘him’ and substitute conscience with conformity. We all struggle to live truly and conscientiously under the distancing Lord culture, that increasingly wants our public and personal obedience. Women’s struggle tends to be labeled feminism and described in Waves. The First Wave was suffragists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anna Julia Cooper who sought women’s human rights and men’s accountability for changing the Lord culture denying them. The Second Wave was wealthy white women like Bella Abzug, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Gloria Steinem who had proximity to patriarchy and sought immersion inside it, and thus often mimicked patriarchy as it fought for civil rights. The Third Wave was the gender justice inclusivity of Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality and Anita Hill, as well as the riot grrrl feminist punk subculture that was publicly disobedient and distant to patriarchy’s Lord culture but sometimes mimicked its anger. The Fourth Wave was marked by the rise of the internet and women’s personal and public leadership that exposed patriarchy’s personal and public harm like Tarana Burke’s Me-Too Movement and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai’s girls’ education fund. Of late, news sources are suggesting a Fifth Wave focused on “decentering men.” Women are immersing themselves in their own lives, not ‘his,’ and are true to conscience, not conformity. Women are also immersed in an ‘us’ relationship. Women can invite men to join them in the communion model and leave the Lord model. Lords require Militarism’s masculine and feminine stereotypes that always confuse relationships, from intimate to public. All relating is made distant, as evident in the Lord’s Trump/MAGA version wanting to force and/or coerce obedience upon us all. We can hold cult members accountable – personal and public apologies for the suffering caused, personal and public restitution of the harm they did, and personal and public work to dismantle their Lord culture and restore a healing community – as we all learn to relate together in communion.
“Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. … I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities who am ageless and half-grown and still seeking my sisters… I have been woman for a long time… with old magic and the noon’s new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white.” (A Woman Speaks – Audre Lorde)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, deepen us in human intimacy.
Question: With whom am I distant and can draw closer?
September 20, 2026 Gospel Matthew 20:1-16 Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Leave a Reply