If We'd Listened: Women, Scripture, and the Church

Matthew sets Pilate’s wife in the shadows, an unnamed figure who never steps onstage yet sends a sharp message: “Have nothing to do with that righteous man.” The text records her dream and her warning, but it withholds any response from Pilate. By contrast, other dreamers in Matthew act decisively. The Magi go home by another route. Joseph flees to Egypt, then returns when told. Pilate’s wife speaks, and nothing changes. Her muted line becomes a piercing question: what if Pilate had listened.

The Holy Spirit threads that question through the church’s own story. The Methodist movement welcomed women as class leaders and, at points, as preachers, yet full ordination took seventy years to arrive in the United Methodist Church. Two of the next four neglected narratives are unnamed women, defined by their relation to a man, which exposes how often the church has received women’s witness secondhand or not at all. The Spirit’s timing is not accidental. A woman will now serve as senior pastor here, and the church marks seventy years of ordaining women. Providence places the question on the table.

The “what if” grows larger than one marriage or one office. The origins of the AME and AME Zion churches show what happens when people are told to take communion upstairs or later. What if the church had listened at the altar rail. What if listening had crossed racial and economic lines from the start. Progress is real, but so is the distance yet to travel.

The recent video of actual comments to women clergy in North Carolina refuses any easy past-tense. These are not museum pieces. This is the air the church still breathes. The text’s unheeded dream becomes a mirror that shows what unbelieved testimonies still cost.

Listening here is not blind agreement or automatic obedience. Listening is patience, compassion, and the hard work of understanding. It is relationship that can transform even when positions do not align. If the church cannot hear one another, it should not expect to hear God. Pilate’s wife therefore calls the church to ask two searching questions. How do those comments land in the gut. And how will a disciple practice real listening across gender, race, and class, and toward the women Scripture often draws in the margins, including Zelophehad’s daughters and Priscilla, while remembering that Paul names Junia an apostle. The text presses the church to repent of silencing, to imagine the “what if,” and to become a people who finally hear.

Key Takeaways

• 1. Pilate’s wife models a neglected warning Her unheeded dream exposes a fault line in how truth is treated when it arrives through a voice the powerful are trained to overlook. Matthew preserves her words so the church cannot pretend the warning never came. The silence that follows is not neutral; it is a decision with consequences. The margin becomes the site of God’s uncomfortable address. [30:14]
• 2. Dreams in Matthew call for action Throughout Matthew, revelatory dreams are not trivia but marching orders. The Magi and Joseph obey, and history bends. Pilate’s wife delivers the same kind of summons, yet the machinery of expedience keeps grinding. Revelation without response leaves righteousness exposed and the hearer compromised. [31:02]
• 3. What if the church had listened Methodist history tells on itself when full ordination for women arrives only after decades, and when communion rails became dividing lines. The “what if” is not nostalgia; it is repentance with imagination, asking how mission, leadership, and holiness might have widened had ears been open. Such questions do not rewrite the past, but they can rewire the future. [34:26]
• 4. Listening seeks understanding, not agreement Respect is not the same as control, and disagreement does not excuse dismissal. Listening is a form of love that makes room for another’s reality without demanding surrender. In that shared space, God often meets the church, not to flatten differences but to refine them into wisdom. [44:09]
• 5. Hearing God begins with each other A community that plugs its ears to neighbors should not expect clarity from heaven. God often trains the church’s hearing through the voices it is least inclined to honor. Attentiveness to one another becomes a school for discernment, so that when God speaks, the church can finally recognize the sound. [46:20]

Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [25:47] - Planning worship and Spirit’s nudge
• [26:21] - Women in Scripture series announced
• [27:19] - Seventy years of women’s ordination
• [27:55] - Wesley and early women leaders
• [28:30] - Starting with Pilate’s unnamed wife
• [29:07] - Her dream and warning delivered
• [30:44] - Dreams in Matthew and action
• [31:47] - What if Pilate had listened
• [32:34] - What if the church listened
• [34:01] - AME origins and the altar rail
• [35:38] - Progress named, work unfinished
• [36:33] - Real comments to women clergy
• [43:40] - Listening is not agreement
• [46:20] - Hearing God begins with each other

1. In Matthew 27:19, Pilate’s wife sends a warning about Jesus. How does her role contrast with other dreamers in Matthew’s Gospel, like the Magi or Joseph?
2. The sermon mentions a video of real comments made to women clergy ([36:33]). What common themes or attitudes do these comments reveal about how women in ministry are perceived?
3. According to the sermon, how does Matthew’s inclusion of Pilate’s wife’s warning challenge the church’s tendency to overlook marginalized voices?

1. Why might Matthew emphasize Pilate’s wife being unnamed and absent from the scene, while still preserving her words? What does this suggest about how truth can arrive through unexpected or undervalued sources?
2. The sermon asks, “What if the church had listened?” in contexts like ordaining women or racial integration ([34:26]). How does this “what if” question function as both repentance and imagination for the church today?
3. How does the distinction between “listening” and “agreement” ([44:09]) reshape our understanding of resolving disagreements or honoring diverse perspectives in Christian community?

1. Reflect on a time you dismissed or undervalued someone’s input because of their identity, role, or background. What practical step could you take to listen more intentionally to such voices in the future?
2. The sermon describes listening as “patience, compassion, and hard work” ([44:09]). Which of these three aspects do you find most challenging in your relationships, and why?
3. How might you actively seek out and amplify stories or perspectives in Scripture (like Zelophehad’s daughters or Priscilla) or in your community that are often “drawn in the margins”?
4. The video of comments to women clergy ([36:33]) includes statements like, “You can never be my pastor because you’re a woman.” How would you respond biblically to someone who holds this view?
5. The sermon calls repentance “imagining what could have been” to “rewire the future” ([34:26]). What specific “what if” question about justice or inclusion could your small group act on together?