Reading the Lectionary with African American Women Interpreters

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Weekly Lectionary Spotlight: Acts 16:16-34 with Maria Stewart

“My friends, I have been brought to consider that it is because the Lord he is God, that I have not been consumed… And I cannot help but exclaim, glory to God that I am yet a prisoner of hope. I rejoice that I have been formed a rational and accountable creature, and that ever I was born to be born again.

– Maria Stewart (The Collected Meditations of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart)

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Bio: Born free in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was orphaned at five and bound to a minister’s household, where she stole literacy from borrowed books. By 1832, widowed and stripped of her husband’s estate by white executors, she stood in Boston’s Franklin Hall—a Black woman demanding abolition, education, and dignity, her voice sharp as a blade in a world that called her “impertinent” for speaking at all. For one defiant year, she lectured in churches and Masonic halls, weaving Psalm 97’s sovereignty with Revelation’s promises, until backlash—for chastising Black men’s complacency and white supremacy alike—drove her from the podium. Decades later, after teaching in segregated schools and nursing freedmen, she died in 1879 Washington, D.C., her name absent from the wealth she’d fought for, her pockets as empty as the justice she’d sought. Stewart’s legacy? Proof that chains—of racism, sexism, stolen inheritance—could not silence a pen or a voice that dared to preach hope in the belly of despair.

Maria Stewart

(1797-1883)

Bible Passage (NRSVue): “After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.24 Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. 25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.” (Acts 16:23-26)

Her Interpretation: Maria Stewart’s bold claim of being a “prisoner of hope” flips the script on Acts 16’s dungeon into a cathedral of defiant trust. Where Paul and Silas sit bloodied in a Philippian cell, Stewart—a Black woman writing in a nation that denied her body freedom and her voice authority—seizes the language of confinement and baptizes it in hope’s fire. The biblical jailer’s keys clang with temporal authority, but Stewart’s chains clink with eternal promise. She does not dismiss the reality of oppression; she subverts it. For her, hope is not passive waiting but active defiance—a spiritual revolt against despair. While Paul’s midnight hymns precede divine intervention (vv. 25-26), Stewart’s hope is the intervention. Through her meditation, hope is a daily resurrection in a world intent on burying human dignity, whether Black, brown, indigenous, or any body rewriting the politics of identity. Stewart’s “prison” becomes a pulpit, her confinement a crucible for prophetic vision. Preachers might linger here: What if hope, as Stewart insists, is not the absence of suffering but the audacity to sing within it? What if our darkest prisons are where God writes our most radiant psalms?

Dr. Shively’s Reflection: Maria Stewart’s 'prisoner of hope' (Acts 16) emerges in the third meditation of The Collected Meditations of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart as a defiant anthem woven from the lectionary’s tapestry. She anchors herself in Psalm 97’s declaration of divine reign—"the Lord God omnipotent reigneth”—while holding onto Revelation 22’s promise: endurance wins the crown, the tree of life. Like Christ’s prayer in John 17 for unity amid fragmentation, Stewart’s hope is communal. Her “choose ye this day” becomes a rallying cry that not only forges personal faith but transforms it into collective resistance. Her chains, not of iron, but the suffocating weight of racism, sexism, and sin, do not define her. They become the raw material God uses, the One who “searches hearts” (Psalm 97), to turn prisons into spaces of worship. In this liminal stretch between Easter and Pentecost, her words trace a path: hope is not a fleeting emotion but gritty determination—a daily choice to march with resurrection’s rhythm even when the world shouts defeat. What if the very chains that chafe us—fear, division, despair—are where God bids us raise the banner of unyielding hope?

Points for Preaching, Teaching, and Prayer

Chains as Communion Wafers: You Are Not Trapped

Stewart’s “prisoner of hope” reimagines chains not as shackles but as sacraments—thin places where God’s presence burns brightest. Just as communion wafers, fragile and broken, become vessels of grace, Stewart teaches us to see the weights we carry (addiction, grief, injustice) as raw materials for divine encounter. Paul and Silas’ prison cell shook with freedom because they sang into their chains, not out of them. For preachers: How might the struggles your people call “traps” become tables where they feast on God’s nearness? Stewart insists that the God who “searches hearts” (Psalm 97) meets us in the confinement, not after escaping it. The jailer’s keys (Acts 16) cannot unlock what God has already redeemed: our chains, blessed and broken, become the bread of liberation.
Hope as a Choir, Not a Solo

Stewart’s hope is communal—a defiant “choose ye this day” that echoes Christ’s prayer for unity (John 17). She stitches Psalm 97’s sovereignty (“the Lord reigns”) to Revelation 22’s promise of the tree of life, creating a tapestry of collective resistance. For teachers: How do we move from individual faith to shared rebellion against despair? Stewart’s chains—racism, sexism, sin—were not hers alone; they became a banner for all bodies fighting to breathe.
Singing Defiance into Daily Bread

Paul’s midnight hymns triggered an earthquake (Acts 16:26), but Stewart’s hope is the earthquake—a daily choice to “march with resurrection’s rhythm.” For devotion: Hope isn’t a feeling; it’s the grit to plant seeds in concrete. The jailer’s keys (Acts 16) clang with the world’s power, but Stewart’s chains clink with eternal promise. What dead places in your life—or your community—might God be asking you to water with stubborn songs?

Greetings!

Welcome to Dr. Shively Smith's Digital Gallery of Interpretation for the 2025 Easter and Pentecost Lectionary season. This gallery celebrates the unique and rich legacy of 19th-century African American women writers (circa 1789–1899). It explores how their distinct perspectives can inform our application of the Bible in 2025. Each of these women was a pioneering interpreter of Scripture, utilizing the prevalent translation of their time, the King James Version (KJV).

For more information, listen to Dr. Shively Smith explain her digital Lectionary.

This digital interpretation gallery, designed for the Easter and Pentecost seasons in 2025, is a valuable resource for enhancing sermon preparation and personal Bible study. It is suitable for preachers, teachers, students, and laypeople alike. Sponsored by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Dr. Shively’s gallery invites you to actively explore the contributions of African American women from the 1800s as guides for biblical interpretation.

The guiding question(s) below will help you compare the quotations of 19th-century African American women writers with the specific Bible passages used each Sunday.

Easter Questions to Ponder:

What if hope, as Stewart shows us, isn’t a destination but the courage to breathe grace into the dust?
What “prisons” in your context could become birthing rooms for Pentecostal hope?
As we journey from Easter to Pentecost, Stewart’s vision bridges the resurrection’s shockwave and the Spirit’s wildfire.