There has Always been a Hive: Women’s Stories in Scripture
This year, our readings in worship will invite us to listen again to the stories of women throughout Scripture—women whose faith, courage, questions, wisdom, grief, leadership, and relationships helped shape the story of God’s people. Using the imagery of bees and the hive, we’ll explore what happens when voices that have too often been overlooked are gathered into the center of our shared story.
The honeycomb offers us another image for the communities we are called to build. Its hexagonal structure is remarkably strong and efficient—not because each cell stands alone, but because the cells are joined together. In the same way, our faith communities become stronger when we recognize our interdependence and make room for the gifts, experiences, and voices of one another.
This is not simply a series about women. It is an invitation to hear Scripture as a story of relationship: God with humanity, people with one another, and communities learning what justice, mercy, belonging, and faithfulness look like. Gathered by God. Rooted in story. Every voice belongs.
Gathered in the Hive: A theological grounding
The Bible is filled with voices—some loud and powerful, others quiet, interrupted, or easily passed over. Yet when we listen carefully, the stories of women are woven deeply into the biblical narrative: women who act with courage, ask difficult questions, protect life, speak truth, make decisions, extend hospitality, challenge injustice, nurture communities, and encounter God. Their stories remind us that God's work has never depended upon only the people who held the most visible positions of power. Scripture's story is, from beginning to end, a story of God working through people in relationship with one another.
Our image for this year is the hive, and within it, the honeycomb. A honeycomb is one of nature's remarkable structures: strong, efficient, beautiful, and built from countless individual cells joined together. No single cell is the honeycomb, and yet every cell contributes to its strength and purpose. It is a compelling image for Christian community. We are not called simply to exist alongside one another, but to become a people whose lives are connected—sharing burdens, gifts, stories, wisdom, and work. A strong community is not one in which everyone is the same; it is one in which our differences are held together in a structure strong enough to support the life of the whole.
That image also helps us understand why listening matters. When voices are silenced, overlooked, or treated as peripheral, something is missing from the structure of the community. When those voices are welcomed and heard, the whole community becomes stronger, and our understanding becomes fuller. The stories of women throughout Scripture are therefore not an appendix to the biblical story. They are part of its architecture.
As an ELCA congregation, we understand Scripture through the ongoing work of listening, questioning, interpretation, and discernment within the community of faith. This year, we will listen especially closely to the women whose stories have sometimes been treated as peripheral, asking what happens when they move from the margins toward the center of our attention. Their stories do more than broaden our understanding of biblical women. They reveal something about God: a God who sees, hears, calls, accompanies, disrupts injustice, and gathers scattered people into community. Like the cells of a honeycomb, our individual stories become part of something larger—not by losing who we are, but by being joined together in a community where each life contributes to the strength, beauty, and flourishing of the whole.
This year, our readings in worship will invite us to listen again to the stories of women throughout Scripture—women whose faith, courage, questions, wisdom, grief, leadership, and relationships helped shape the story of God’s people. Using the imagery of bees and the hive, we’ll explore what happens when voices that have too often been overlooked are gathered into the center of our shared story.
The honeycomb offers us another image for the communities we are called to build. Its hexagonal structure is remarkably strong and efficient—not because each cell stands alone, but because the cells are joined together. In the same way, our faith communities become stronger when we recognize our interdependence and make room for the gifts, experiences, and voices of one another.
This is not simply a series about women. It is an invitation to hear Scripture as a story of relationship: God with humanity, people with one another, and communities learning what justice, mercy, belonging, and faithfulness look like. Gathered by God. Rooted in story. Every voice belongs.
Gathered in the Hive: A theological grounding
The Bible is filled with voices—some loud and powerful, others quiet, interrupted, or easily passed over. Yet when we listen carefully, the stories of women are woven deeply into the biblical narrative: women who act with courage, ask difficult questions, protect life, speak truth, make decisions, extend hospitality, challenge injustice, nurture communities, and encounter God. Their stories remind us that God's work has never depended upon only the people who held the most visible positions of power. Scripture's story is, from beginning to end, a story of God working through people in relationship with one another.
Our image for this year is the hive, and within it, the honeycomb. A honeycomb is one of nature's remarkable structures: strong, efficient, beautiful, and built from countless individual cells joined together. No single cell is the honeycomb, and yet every cell contributes to its strength and purpose. It is a compelling image for Christian community. We are not called simply to exist alongside one another, but to become a people whose lives are connected—sharing burdens, gifts, stories, wisdom, and work. A strong community is not one in which everyone is the same; it is one in which our differences are held together in a structure strong enough to support the life of the whole.
That image also helps us understand why listening matters. When voices are silenced, overlooked, or treated as peripheral, something is missing from the structure of the community. When those voices are welcomed and heard, the whole community becomes stronger, and our understanding becomes fuller. The stories of women throughout Scripture are therefore not an appendix to the biblical story. They are part of its architecture.
As an ELCA congregation, we understand Scripture through the ongoing work of listening, questioning, interpretation, and discernment within the community of faith. This year, we will listen especially closely to the women whose stories have sometimes been treated as peripheral, asking what happens when they move from the margins toward the center of our attention. Their stories do more than broaden our understanding of biblical women. They reveal something about God: a God who sees, hears, calls, accompanies, disrupts injustice, and gathers scattered people into community. Like the cells of a honeycomb, our individual stories become part of something larger—not by losing who we are, but by being joined together in a community where each life contributes to the strength, beauty, and flourishing of the whole.
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September 27, 2026
Esther When word spreads of Haman's plot to destroy the Jews, Mordecai mourns publicly in sackcloth and ashes and sends Esther an urgent charge to intercede with the king, warning her that silence won't spare her and that she may have "come to the kingdom for such a time as this."
October 4, 2026
Deborah Deborah, a prophet and judge leading Israel, summons the military commander Barak and relays God's command to face the Canaanite army — but when Barak insists he'll only go if she comes with him, she agrees, telling him the honor of the victory will instead go to a woman. Israel wins the battle decisively, with Deborah's leadership and presence proving central to the deliverance she had promised.
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Ancestors: Written In
All four women appear in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus — Matthew 1:3-6 — named explicitly and deliberately in a list that didn't have to include them at all. They are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba — and every single one of them is an outsider, a survivor, a woman whose story involved risk, transgression, loss, or exploitation, and who ends up woven into the line that leads to Christ. Matthew is making a theological argument with his genealogy before he writes a single word of narrative: the grace of God has always worked through the people you least expected, by means you would never have chosen, to accomplish what only God could see coming. |
October 11, 2026
Tamar The One Who Demanded Justice October 18, 2026
Rahab The One Who Chose a Different Loyalty October 25, 2026
Ruth The One Who Chose to Belong Reformation Sunday November 1, 2026
Bathsheba The One Who Survived the Story |
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November 8-22, 2026
Rebekah A Woman Who Shaped the Promise She ran to the well before anyone asked, spoke directly to God when no one else did, and risked everything to ensure the right son carried the covenant forward — so what does it look like when an ordinary woman's courage becomes the hinge of sacred history? Over five weeks, we'll follow Rebekah from her bold youth through her role as prophet, mother, and architect of God's unfolding promise. Her story invites us into the same posture: generous before we know the return, faithful before we see the outcome.
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Advent and Christmas
We will hold some tension this Advent — we wait for Christmas while sitting inside a story about waiting for deliverance. The women who held the line between death and life become the bridge to the one who is born to conquer death entirely. We'll center voices that are rarely heard during Advent, looking for something new it will teach us about God alongside the unchanging call to liberation and justice.
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November 29, 2026
Shiphrah & Puah Midwives of Hope: Defying the Powers of Death December 6, 2026
Jochebed Midwives of Hope: Releasing What You Love into God's Hands December 13, 2026
Pharaoh's Daughter Midwives of Hope: The God Who Crosses Over to Us December 20, 2026
Miriam Midwives of Hope: The Song that Breaks Out When the Savior Comes December 24, 2026
Christmas Eve Worship - 5:30 pm Musical Prelude Begins at 5 pm Midwives of Hope December 25, 2026
Mary Pondered December 27, 2026
The Mothers of Bethlehem Weep January 3, 2027
The Magi Bring Gifts January 10, 2027
Anna The Baptism of Jesus |
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January 17, 2027
God as Mother in Labor January 24, 2027
God as Nursing Mother January 31, 2027
God as a Woman Searching for What is Lost February 7, 2027
God as a Mother Bird Hovering and Sheltering |
Lent and Easter
Each of these five women is defined by a single defining moment or posture — and in each case that moment reveals something about being human that is immediately relatable. Lot's wife looks back. The wise woman constructs a story to speak truth to power. The servant girl speaks up from the lowest possible position. The mother of James and John asks for the wrong thing in the right spirit. The persistent widow refuses to stop asking.
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February 10, 2027
Ash Wednesday Worship 7 pm Hannah Honest lament, whole body prayer February 14, 2027
Lot's Wife The tension between what holds us and where we are being called. February 21, 2027
The Wise Woman of Tekoa When you do find the courage to move — how do you speak truth in situations where the direct approach has already been foreclosed? Wisdom is not just knowing what is true. It is knowing how to carry the truth into places it is not welcome. February 28, 2027
The Servant Girl Grace travels through unexpected channels to unexpected people. And it traveled here through a child with no power and no name who simply said what she knew to be true. March 7, 2027
The Mother of James and John She loves her sons. Her instinct — that they should be close to Jesus, that they should matter in the kingdom — is not wrong. Her vision of what that closeness looks like is the thing that needs reorienting. She is a portrait of sincere faith aimed at a mistaken target. March 14, 2027
The Persistent Widow She is every person who has been praying the same prayer for years and has not yet received an answer. Every person who has been wronged and is still waiting for justice. Every person who has considered stopping — who has stood at the threshold of giving up on prayer altogether because the silence has gone on too long. March 21, 2027
Palm Sunday March 25, 2027
Maundy Thursday March 26, 2027
Good Friday March 28, 2027
Easter Sunday |