Our readings this week are: Isaiah 35.1–10 and Matthew 11.2–11.

Our Advent focus this week is the prophets: those who through the ages have heard God speaking, and been called by him to declare his messages to his people. It’s why we have such a gorgeous chunk of Isaiah in front of us – demonstrating what a blessing and encouragement such a ministry can be; and it’s why we have John the Baptist put in front of us through the gospel reading.

John isn’t standing in his own right this week – he gets a week all to himself next week – rather, he is standing as the continuance of the prophetic ministry from the Old Testament. He himself, as Matthew tells the story, is the fulfilment of an older prophecy (Malachi 3:1 seems to be what Matthew is quoting) – and very much continues in the vein of the prophets – speaking out, often uncomfortable truths, that tell of God’s love and intentions for his people.

Isaiah and John stand in good company. I wonder if I asked you to name some biblical prophets how many you would manage? My trick is to think through the books from that particular section of the Bible – each named for the particular individual (or school) whose prophecies they contain. It means you remember some of the more obscure ones – Habakkuk, say, or Obadiah; and remember to distinguish between Zephaniah and Zechariah. But it comes with a risk – some of the “big hitters” – Elijah, Elisha, Moses – don’t have books named after them, so can get left out – though generally they are names most people have heard of.

There is a smaller set, though, that often get completely overlooked: Deborah, Miriam, Huldah, Anna. The only four named female prophets in Scripture. (Unless you also count Jezebel and Noadiah, recorded as false prophets!)

I went looking for them after being startled by a fact I learned earlier this week (at our Monday night Advent Group in fact – well worth joining us for!). In the whole of Scripture, there are only six verses that pass the Bechdel Test. The Test is a measure of women’s representation in a film or creative work – for it to be passed, two named women must have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Only six verses. As a man, that’s something which, to my shame, I’d never noticed about my Scriptures. The article from which that fact was gleaned can be found just here, and is perhaps worth a moment of your time.

But it got me thinking about unheard voices; all the conversations that must have happened throughout the Bible that never made it in – between the mothers of the Egyptian children slaughtered by the angel of death; around the well at which we meet the women, whilst it is bustling and busy; the groups of friends reflecting on what the prophets, or Jesus, had been teaching and saying…

On a week when we are specifically thinking about the voices that were loud enough, respected enough, and influential enough to be recorded – maybe it is worth pausing to think about the voices that have faded to unheard whispers of history, and have now been lost forever.

And from that quiet moment of reflection, maybe it is worth drawing ourselves back to the present – to a week in which Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute have closed their membership to trans women – and ask ourselves which are the voices being silenced in our own age? Who are the people historians will look back upon in centuries to come and say, “I wish I knew what they had been saying”? Maybe we could then ask ourselves what the prophets who were lucky enough to be remembered would say to us about valuing the least and the lost; and maybe we could begin to use whatever privilege, power, and influence we might possess not to silence others, but to help them sing; not to hide them or deny them, but to help them soar.