Meditations on the Resurrection

Preached at Silverton Friends Church, Jan. 12, 2025

I've been preaching on what scripture says the crucifixion of Jesus means to us, and today I want to talk about the resurrection.  Let me just say that without the resurrection and the loosing of God's Holy Spirit on those waiting for it, the crucifixion is just another death of a good man. One meaning of the resurrection is that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and he is a reliable witness to the character and purposes of God. Now on to the rest of the sermon.

I have a friend I’ll call Dorothy whom I met at the Pacific Northwest Quaker Theological Conference. This was a biennial meeting of women from North Pacific Yearly Meeting, what at the time I called liberal Quakers.

Dorothy stood up in our closing unprogrammed worship and said the following: “Some of you know that i occasionally see Jesus.” I was not expecting this.  She went on, “I first saw him while I was in heavy traffic in Seattle, and other drivers were getting on my nerves. I looked over at the passenger seat and there he was. He said, "Dorothy, do you have to use such language?” This was not all of the conversation, but I remember only this. I was both impressed and a little envious. I’d love to see Jesus in his glorified and yet identifiable physical self.

Some years later, Dorothy stood and said that Jesus had shown up  (while she was exercising, if I remember correctly) and told her he would be her personal trainer for the following year. She was looking forward to this. As it turned out, her personal training took her through breast cancer. She survived both the cancer and the treatment, and she learned about accepting help rather than being the one giving help.  

For many, the thought of seeing Jesus, or for that matter, his mother Mary, fills them with skepticism. People who see what they call apparitions are particularly credulous or vulnerable in some way, and their experiences can be dismissed as delusions.

But not dismissed by me. Dorothy is a grounded, sensible, scientific type person, and she occasionally sees Jesus. And she isn’t the only one. 

I’m not sure whether it was Jesus or a messenger from God that I met one despairing day.  I was sitting in church, weeping quietly over my pain over memories of my childhood, and I couldn’t bear it. So I got up and drove toward Champoeg Park. I came to a place in the road where the pavement had been removed and there were barriers with “No Through Traffic”; as I sat there stuck about what to do next, a big green boat of an American car came from the other direction.  The driver, whom I did not see clearly, leaned out of the window and said, “You can make it through.” I received this as the word of Jesus to me, and it comforted me.

You may have your own stories about hearing or seeing Jesus.

Robert Willis, the Dean Emeritus of Canterbury Cathedral, put morning prayers on youTube during the pandemic. He helped me through the pandemic and to this day. Dean Robert said the best evidence for the resurrection (for those who have not seen Jesus personally) is in the book of Acts. This chronicles how people behaved who had seen the risen Jesus, and there is no other good explanation for their behavior and their attitudes. (YouTube "How We Know the Resurrection Was Real, start around 11:28)

In the culture of a religious power base, the one that manipulated the Romans into killing Jesus: 

they are unafraid 

they speak their truth 

their confidence knows no limits

they hold authorities accountable for wrong-doing

they urge everyone to repent (which means to change one’s mind)

they promise hope

they forgive

Here are some of the things those first Christians said:

After healing a well-known beggar on the steps of the temple, Peter and John were hauled in before the priests, the temple guard, and the Sadducees, the religious power base and their muscle. These folks told them to shut up and lie low.  Here’s what they replied: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19)

Not long after, the apostles were imprisoned for preaching, and an angel let them out.  They were again brought before this group of powers that be, who said, “We commanded you not to teach in this name, and instead you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to blame us for this man’s death.”

But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered, raised him up to his right hand to be prince and savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, and we are his witnesses to these things and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” When the leaders heard this, they were furious and plotted to kill the apostles.… They beat the apostles and again commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Jesus’ sake. (Acts 5:29, 60)

Ignoring these orders, Stephen, a man full of faith and grace, preached and did miracles. A conspiracy arose to accuse him of blaspheming Moses and God, so he was brought before the council.  He took the opportunity to review the history of the Jewish nation at length and God’s call on them, ending like this: “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! you always resist the Holy Spirit as did your fathers before you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers.” They ground their teeth in rage. Then Stephen said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56)

They hauled him outside the city and stoned him to death, leaving their coats with a young Pharisee named Saul.

And as Stephen was dying, he said, “Lord, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin,” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Just a side note, Jesus also viewed death as sleep, which we can understand better since the news of the resurrection.)

And then there is the meeting Saul the persecutor had with Jesus: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4) It’s worth nothing that no one else saw or heard anything. Saul’s spiritual blindness manifested in physical blindness, and he had to be led to Damascus. His personal encounter with the risen Jesus resulted in a life dedicated to making the good news known, often at great personal cost; it eventually cost him his life, as tradition has it.

Paul writes many times about how important it is that Jesus died and rose from death to glorified life. It’s too much to read all the passages, but here’s a sampling:

Romans 4 ending

Just as Abraham’s faith counted for him as righteousness, when we believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, our faith counts for us as righteousness, our faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus whose surrender to death contains our side-slips, our falling, our failing, and whose resurrection from death contains the pronouncement from God that our guilt is removed and we are just what we ought to be, innocent and righteous..

Indeed, Paul rises to exhilarating heights in Romans 8 as he lists out what the resurrection means to us: 

We are not condemned;

We walk according to God’s spirit in us; 

We are God’s children.

“If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

Paul doesn’t gloss over the fact that life here will be difficult for any number of reasons calling them “these present sufferings”: Both the creation and we ourselves groan, eagerly waiting for the redemption of the body, and the earth, For we were saved in this hope, which we do not yet see.

His hope gives him the courage to say this: These present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us…For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:18, 38-9)

This is what the resurrection means for people of faith in the God who raised Jesus from death. 

Jesus himself said that he listened to what his Father told him and did what he was told; and that he was doing only what he saw his Father doing. He told his disciples that he was going away and that the Father would send them the Spirit of truth who would guide them into all truth.

The early Quakers affirmed the idea that Jesus is present to teach His people himself. We can see that they were fearless in preaching this insight; they were confident when facing authorities; they listened and obeyed.

The Spirit that descended on Jesus and filled Him, that galvanized the first generation of Christ-followers and their descendants the early Quakers, (and other renewals too numerous to mention) is the same Spirit the resurrection lets loose all who believe, including us. How do we live according to the Spirit?

 As James wrote, “If anyone lack wisdom, let that person ask of God, who gives to all liberally and doesn’t scold.” (James 1:5)  Let us, full of the hope given us by Jesus rising from death, ask, listen, and obey.

Shalom and Division

Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church
January 5, 2020

Picture it: England 1650. King Charles 1 has recently been beheaded by the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, bringing the divine right of kings to govern to an abrupt end. A war is raging between Protestants and  Catholics over who will rule England. Bear-baiting is a sport, and hangings are a family outing. The Church seemed to be splintering a hundred ways as Ranters say God permits them to do whatever they want in their wild parties, Adamites say God wants them to return to Eden and walk around naked, and Quakers…Quakers stand up and argue with Anglican priests during church, keep their hats on in the presence of the upper class, and refuse to swear loyalty oaths—to pledge allegiance—to the government. The mid-1600s, when young George Fox began preaching and the Quaker movement began, were a wild, violent, chaotic time. And out of that context came the  Quaker “peace testimony.” Several who had served the Parliamentary Army under Oliver Cromwell, fighting for English Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, followed their experience of personal revelation of God out of the army and into preaching. Their testimony was not so much against the military as for their experience of being restored to the innocence of the garden of Eden by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ, and that innocence took away all cause for war.

This testimony also derived from the Quaker commitment to equality of all persons and the determination to swear not at all. This refusal to take the oath of loyalty was frequently used by hostile persons to put Quakers in jail because they refused to swear allegiance to the government and its head. They committed their bodies and souls to be loyal to no political regime, but only to Jesus Christ, despite their natural preference for the Protestant side of the English Civil War. Thus, when the nation returned to King Charles II, they attempted to use their refusal to swear allegiance to Oliver Cromwell to prove to King Charles II that they were called to a different kind of kingdom and were no more or less loyal to King Charles than they had been to Oliver Cromwell. They still went to jail, because political systems demand body and soul loyalty.

The actual lives of Quakers in the beginnings were fraught with persecution from the established Church of England, hostilities from other sects like the early Baptists, and conflicts among the faithful themselves. And those latter conflicts, while they may make us skeptical of their entire restoration to innocence, often came directly from what made their contribution to the whole of Christianity important and worthwhile, namely, their insistence on personal experience of the Spirit of God and personal accountability to obey what the Spirit of God told them to do. This practical mysticism derived from their belief that within every person is a seed of Truth that God’s Spirit speaks to and causes to grow. And though they went on to be separatist and self-preserving, the truth that inspired the first generation ran like an undercurrent into the mainstreams of Christianity and changed how we understand God and our relationship to God through Christ. A soul at peace, in shalom, with God is a soul nothing can ultimately trouble.

At the time just before Jesus was born, the nation of Israel was occupied by a foreign power, Rome, and ruled locally by hereditary enemies represented in the various Herods. The Jews were split internally among collaborators with Rome and religious purists and purifiers, and zealots dedicated to overthrowing Rome. The temple system exploited worshipers for money, particularly the poor or foreign-born. But there were still faithful Jews hoping for the coming of Messiah who would bring Shalom.

Luke 1 tells about the birth of John who became known as the Baptizer. His birth was foretold to his father Zechariah, who just mentioned to God’s messenger that he and his wife were old and she was past child-bearing age and could he please have a sign so that his wife would believe him, and the sign was that he could not talk for the duration of the pregnancy. When John was born, Zechariah’s speech came back, and he prophesied:

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, because God has looked on God’s people and ransomed them, and raised a mighty helper for us in the house of David…God will deliver us safely out of the hands of our enemies and of all who hate us, will perform the mercy shown to our fathers and will remember God’s holy covenant, the oath God swore to Abraham our father, to grant that we, having been rescued from our enemies, might worship and serve God without fear, in holiness and right living before God’s presence for all our days. And now you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you go forth before the face of the Master to prepare his ways, to give to his people a knowledge of salvation in release from the bondage of their sins, through our God’s inmost mercy, whereby a dawn from above will visit us, to shine upon those sitting in darkness and death’s shadow, in order to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:67-79)

So let’s see what Zechariah thought would lead to peace, to shalom.

Liberation from oppression

Salvation from enemies

Restoration of the covenant with God through God’s mercy

Freedom to worship without fear, in holiness and justice before his presence, which was understood to be in the Temple

John was to be the prophetic voice that taught Israel to understand their sinfulness, their need for forgiveness, so that their lives would not be characterized by darkness and the fear of death but by light and peace.

And that is what John set out to do. He lived a life of abstinence and purity, spent time in the desert with only God, and then returned to preach. His message was about being washed in living water in the Jordan River to show repentance, the commitment to changing mind and behavior, and to confer release and forgiveness from sins. He told the crowds to share their clothing and food with the impoverished; he told tax-collectors to collect no more than was due; he told men in the army not to extort or falsely accuse anyone and to be content with their wages. His message was right in line with all the prophets before him: be generous, have integrity, tell the truth, be content.

But most importantly, he told them that his baptism was water, but that one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who carried a threshing flail to beat the chaff away from the grain, saving the grain into a storehouse and burning away the chaff “with inextinguishable fire.”

So there’s that to look forward to in an encounter with the Chosen and Sent One of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

I was asked to talk about Shalom. Because Shalom is a Hebrew word, it is found only in the Old Testament in that form. However, it is very likely that when the New Testament portrays Jesus speaking the Greek word for peace that what he actually said was some version of Shalom. For example, when Jesus said, “Peace be unto you,” he was using a familiar greeting that included the word Shalom. When Jesus talks about peace, the Old Testament Shalom inhabits and fills up the meaning of the word in the New Testament.

The history of how the word is used in the Old Testament is more complex than a notion of peace as tranquility or even the absence of conflict. The root of the word is a verb and these are some of the ways to translate it:

restore, recompense, reward, repay, requite, make restitution, make amends, complete, finish

be at peace, make peace with, make safe, make whole, make good

You can see that inherent in these words is an idea of justice. It is unsurprising that the word Shalom in various forms permeates the books of the Law—Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Shalom is about making things right, about fairness, about justice, about adjudicating who owes whom what and defining how to pay it. The word is used to describe the offering of an animal to God to acknowledge sin and make peace with God. The prophets weigh in against deceptive weights and measures because Shalom relates to providing full value, and they assert that God hates it when people cheat each other in business transactions, noting that they most often cheat the poor.

In other words, the concept of Shalom presupposes that things have gone wrong, and acknowledges our deep desire that things go right, that our lives be characterized by completeness, soundness, safety, health, prosperity, quiet, contentment, friendship.

Even the Greek word for peace, eirene, has a probable root that means “to join”, suggesting the prerequisite of something divided prior to the coming of peace.

So Zechariah’s prophecy is a prayer for Shalom.

I want to suggest to you two things. Zechariah’s prophecy as he understood it was too small. When he referred to God’s people, he understood it entirely as referring to the nation of Israel. But we know from the rest of the story of Jesus that the circle widened to include those outside almost immediately, both while Jesus ministered and after the Holy Spirit took over the disciples’ lives and moved them outside Jerusalem, Judea, and to the farthest reaches of the world they knew.

And the process of understanding that all peoples are God’s people has been fraught with division and pain, from the actual Messiah, Jesus, on down to today. In other words, Shalom is not simple, and the enemies of peace are within ourselves and the systems like families, religions, and politics that shape our fears, our shames, and our areas of ignorance. Further, being moved by God’s Spirit from a life of fear and shame and unknowing to a life of faith and acceptance and increasing understanding is painful and requires quite often a kind of divine surgery.

That is why John warns his hearers that the Messiah will come as a reaper, not grim, but determined. The one God sends to save God’s people will not necessarily be experienced as a gentle restorer of balance. In point of fact, Jesus himself makes this point by word and deed.

In Luke 12 and Matthew 10 Jesus describes his mission:

 “I came to set a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled….Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there will be five in one house divided three against two…; father against son, son against father, mother and daughter divided against each other…Why do you not judge what is right even for yourselves? For as you are going out with your adversary to a judge, make an effort to settle your debt with your adversary on the spot, so that he does not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you most surely will not come out from there until you pay the very last cent.” (Luke 12:49 ff)

I have to say that I was startled to find my thoughts directed (I hope by the Spirit of Truth) toward these passages when I signed on to speak about Shalom. Yet I think we can see our understanding of Shalom informs this passage. If Shalom is about making things right, about making things whole that have been broken, the first great brokenness of humanity is the willingness to be parted from God. This willingness shows up in every action that goes against what God’s Spirit has told us is right and good to do, in every evasion in our own spirits against absolutely trusting in the goodness and love and faithfulness of God and the claims that God has on us because of them. We owe God everything, starting with the breath of life itself, and we will be imprisoned within ourselves by law and justice until we admit what we owe to God, and admit our own inability to pay, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court where Jesus is our advocate as well as our judge. And then we have to stand naked and unashamed in God’s presence, hiding nothing, allowing God to bring what has been hidden out of the corners where we buried it, running toward God rather than away when we realize we’re not ready to meet God’s eyes. The Old Testament writers called this open stance toward God “a perfect heart”—“perfect” being derived from Shalom, meaning at peace with God, in friendship with God, rather than a heart without flaws. See the relationship between David and God if you want to understand the term.

And this version: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I came to bring not peace but a sword. For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. Whoever cherishes father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever cherishes son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever gains their soul will lose it, and whoever loses their soul for my sake will gain it. Whoever accepts you accepts me, and whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me.” (Matthew 10:34 ff)

This speech occurs in a context of sending disciples out to preach in Judea to Jews. In commissioning them, Jesus warns them of resistance, rejection, and violence in response to the message to repent because God’s kingdom is here. This message of God’s kingdom exposes inmost allegiances, which remain to family, race, religion, not to God.  As long as this is true, God is their adversary, who is contending with them for what they, what we, owe to God—our undivided loyalty, our faith, our faithfulness.

We are so often prone to put loyalty to God in storage while we sign on to our family heritage, our religious tradition, our political party, our national identity. We need, like early Quakers saw, to be restored to the innocence of personal relationship with God Almighty, to walk daily with God, to hide nothing from God. We need to make all other loyalties secondary to this primary one. If we are participating in any system that splits the world into us vs. them, we have been drawn away from our loyalty to God, who has no favorites in the world, who even told the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Jesus, “are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). In other words, all the peoples are God’s. God’s care is for all the peoples of the world. And don’t forget the story of Jonah, whom God sent to preach to the political and national enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, and Jonah’s complaint to God when God forgives and does not rain judgment on the Assyrians: “Isn’t this just what I predicted?   I knew that You are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that You will choose not to inflict misery.” To which God (eventually) responds: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than 120,000 persons that cannot tell their right hand from their left hand; and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:2,11). Jesus tweaks the religious leaders of his day by referencing this specific story and saying it will be easier for Nineveh in the day of judgment than for Israel because the Assyrians repented when the prophet preached (Matthew 12:41).

Both of these challenging passages are preceded by the following encouragement given by Jesus himself, and I can think of no better way for us to prepare within ourselves the way of the Lord as best we can:

“Guard yourselves from the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending to be good. There is nothing thoroughly veiled that will not be unveiled, or hidden that will not be known. Thus the things you said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you whisper in private rooms will be proclaimed on the rooftops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those killing the body and thereafter having nothing more that they can do…Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. Rather, even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:1-7). “What I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…Are not two sparrows sold for the smallest pittance? And not one of them will fall to earth without your Father. But even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. So do not be afraid; you are of greater worth than a great many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:27-31)

Jesus says that when we say by word and deed, “I’m with God. I have pledged my loyalty to God” that he, Jesus, will say in front of God’s angels, “I’m with that person; I have pledged loyalty to her, to him, to them.” And nothing can separate us from God’s faithful love. God’s love is committed to our Shalom, to our well-being, to our wholeness, which we cannot have without relationship, friendship—Shalom—with God.  And God will work to burn away the chaff or the nonsense in how we understand ourselves and our relationships in order to leave behind the true grain of our personhood which God will never let go to waste.

 The following helped me write this sermon:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/

The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Mark Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)

The New Testament, trans. David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale UP, 2017)

George MacDonald's writings in general

God's Will for Women: Deborah and Phebe (and Margaret Fell, Elizabeth Hooten, Mary Fisher, etc.)

Some days, it seems to me that the Kingdom of God is among us.  When I see wheelchair access to sidewalks, for instance, I remember the teaching in the Jewish laws and prophets to remove barriers from before the blind and lame.  When I remember that I am a mandatory reporter for abuse, I recognize the implicit Gospel, the good news that God cares for the child, the weak. When I hear about mediation training and teaching conflict resolution in schools, I hear behind that the Sermon on the Mount and how deadly anger can be.  When I stand up to share what God has given me, I recognize that God’s Holy Spirit comes to sons and daughters and enables them to worship in spirit and in truth. 

And then some days, I hear of Christians who have a real concern that the evils of our society are permeating the community of believers in Jesus, and they/we want to be counter-cultural.  And suddenly, some of the very ways the Kingdom has changed our world for the better come under condemnation as anti-Biblical.  And then it feels like we have to start over. 

Since the mid-1600s when the Quaker movement began, the principle that God calls and gifts humans and humans in response recognize and record God’s gifts has made it possible for the callings and giftings of women to be used, recognized, and affirmed by recording them.  When early Quakers took this stand, they were astonishingly counter-cultural.  George Fox’s Journal records his response to someone who asked if women even had souls.  He prooftexted Mary’s song, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” and said obviously they do have souls. The fact this was being debated helps us understand the culture of the time. The second evangelist in the Quaker movement was Elizabeth Hooten.  She became an itinerant preacher and suffered persecution in both England and the Colonies for it. Along with ten other women, she was one of the group of evangelists called the Valiant Sixty.  Mary Fisher traveled to Turkey to preach to the Sultan.  She was imprisoned and flogged for her ministry by the Christians in England, but was received respectfully by the Sultan of Turkey.  Margaret Fell, also jailed, wrote a pamphlet on “Women’s Speaking Justified,” basing the legitimacy of women preaching on the Biblical witness. She spoke before King Charles II on behalf of freedom of conscience in religious matters. One of the martyrs for freedom of religion in the colonies was Mary Dyer, who persisted in witnessing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony despite being banned.  She was hanged on Boston Commons. 

Margaret Fell’s pamphlet contrasts the stories of how God used women with pronouncements often cited to exclude women from certain activities and functions in the church.  She uses the creation of humans in God’s image as male and female to conclude that God puts no distinction between them.  She includes the fact that the church is referred to as feminine in relation to Christ, and the church is also charged with spreading the good news of Christ.  She tells the stories of Jesus sharing the good news of the Kingdom with women and never despising them.  She remembers the loyalty of women to Jesus as followers even to his death.  And she honors the women who visited the grave as the first bearers of the news of the resurrection.  “Go tell,” said Jesus.  She points to the reiterated message that God uses the weak to meet the objection that women are weak. She cites the willingness of Apollos to learn from Priscilla as well as Aquila.  She notes that Paul referred to women praying and prophesying, that he advises women to set aside preoccupation with appearance and learn without disputation. 

She attributes the prohibitions from Paul against women speaking out in the services to their unlearned and unruly manner of doing so, just as Paul asked all to have orderly worship and not speak all at once.

To paraphrase a small part of her pamphlet: “And what about those who have had the power and Spirit of the Lord Jesus poured out on them and the message of the Lord Jesus given to them?  Must they keep silent because of these irreverent and indecent women of the past?  Must words spoken to tattlers and busybodies be taken as silencing all women for all time? What has blinded men to take these scriptures and stop the message and the word of the Lord in women? Can’t they see that Paul talked of women who labored with him in the Gospel?  Can’t they see that the apostles joined with women and others in prayer, and that the unity of the early church included women?

“In the Old Testament, God gave the Spirit to whomever God pleased, including Deborah, Huldah, Sarah, and to Anna who witnessed to the Messiah in Jesus when he was just a baby.  The Lord Jesus showed himself and his power to men and to women without respect of persons; He poured his infinite power and spirit on all flesh. Women and men led by the Spirit are not under the Law. Christ in the male and the female is the same Christ; his wife is the church, where God said that the daughters would prophesy as well as the sons.  And where God pours out the Spirit, those men or women must prophesy.”

Thank you, Mistress Fell.  Yet today in 2013, this must be addressed again and not to people of evil intent, but to people endeavoring to read the Bible carefully and keep its teachings faithfully.  What can be said to help them see that the Bible itself contains the seeds of the destruction of gender-restricted roles in the church, seeds of hope that all are called into freedom to love and obey God’s call without barrier?

We can start with the Old Testament to see these seeds of destruction and hope. When Moses was overworked with hearing and mediating disputes and judging between Israelite and Israelite, his father-in-law suggested the following:

Exodus 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens: and let them judge the people (KJV).  The Hebrew word translated here as “men” is usually masculine, though sometimes it is translated as persons; the word for rulers is masculine. 

It seems probable that there were no women chosen to be part of this group of early judges.  In fact, any subsequent group that read this literally would never put a woman in as a ruler in this system. 

It is not that different a statement from the one in 1 Timothy 3: If a man desire the office of bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, able to teach, not a drunk, not abusive, not money-hungry, not a brawler, not a coveter. He should be patient, rule his own house well and soberly, and have obedient children.  And the same is true for deacons—they must be serious, straightforward, honest, not drunks, not greedy, respectful of the mystery of the faith with clear consciences, with wives of sober, faithful character, not slanderers. Deacons also should have one wife, and their households and children should be above reproach (mostly KJV; worth noting is that “if a man” really means “whoever” as in “If a man has ears, let him hear.”)

It certainly appears from this that the activities and position of bishop (sometimes called elder) and deacon (also called minister) must be filled by men.  And good Christians trying to obey God read the Bible and believe this.

But look at the history of how God behaves, even in a world where these are the norms.  In Judges 4, God chooses and gifts a woman to fill the role set up by Moses for men, namely Deborah. 

The world the Israelites lived in was decentralized into tribal lands.  All the people who had witnessed the miracles God did for them in their journey to Canaan died off.  The Israelites began worshiping Canaanite gods, and God was angry and allowed them to be raided and oppressed.  Periodically, God raised up a hero who delivered them.  One of those heroes was Deborah.  She was a prophetess, married to Lapidoth, and she was Israel’s judge.  People came to her from all over for judgment. 

The word for judge here is shaphat. It means to judge, govern, vindicate, punish; to act as law-giver or judge or governor; to rule, govern, judge; to decide controversy; to execute judgment (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H8199&t=KJV). It is an action performed by God, by Moses, by David, and by the coming Messiah  (Isaiah 2:4, Isaiah 11:4, Micah 4:3). (May the Lord judge between us; the judge of all the earth; God judge betwixt us; the Lord judge you.) Judges are included in lists with priests, Levites, elders, heads, officers. The children of Israel came up to Deborah for judgment (mishpat), a word used of actions of David, of kings, of God, of Moses. 

The point here is that God chose, God raised up, God gifted, and Deborah cooperated.  She was recognized by her people as possessing the Spirit and gifts of God that suited her for this authoritative role representing God to her people.

Therefore, it seems wise to allow God the last word in the church as well.  Rather than take a socially normative statement as a commandment for us to follow, let us likewise recognize that God has chosen, raised up, and gifted women in our congregations to act on God’s behalf and to pray, prophesy, sing, and teach in obedience to God. This is still counter-cultural. Our culture is not friendly to the witness that Jesus is present through the resurrection to teach us in our own hearts and through each other, and we are responsible to obey, to be deacons in the household of God.

Recall with me that Paul himself speaks lovingly and approvingly of Phebe, a diakonos, a deacon, a minister, a servant of the church at Cenchrea.  Paul tells the Romans to receive Phebe in the Lord, to assist her however she needs because she has been a woman set over many to care for them, a guardian.  The word for “succor” (KJV) is prostatis. It comes from proistemi, which means to be over, to superintend, to preside over, to protect, to guard, to care for, to attend to.  In the root of that second word is the idea of establish, keep intact, sustain, stand firm. 

What we can learn from Phebe is two-fold.  First, diakonos is translated three ways (KJV): minister (20 times), servant, (8) and deacon (3). We can find that Jesus advised his followers, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” Jesus promised that his servants would be with him where he was going.  Servanthood, doing what another tells you to do, is at the heart of diakonos. 

We can also learn that Phebe got the very least powerful translation of the term, despite evidence in the next verse of her authority in the church at Cenchrea.  This helps us remember that translations do not take place in a social vacuum, that the King James Version, for example, comes from the same century that saw the rise of Quakers and the imprisonment, beating, and hanging of women who witnessed publicly to the presence and power of the resurrected Jesus and their own sense of obligation to do what Jesus laid on them to do.   

The witness to equality in ministry is not “Women’s Lib”; the witness to equality makes space for women to be equally obedient to God as men can be.  If anything, the increasing freedoms given to women in England and the Colonies derives from the Gospel and is a sign that the Kingdom of God is here. (The fact that women are no more perfect than men in their exercise of freedom is another sign of equality.)  Let us once again return to acknowledging that God has the right to call, gift, empower and inspirit anyone God chooses and that we humbly listen to God’s word through God’s messenger, put our faith in the God who inhabits each of us, and do what God tells us to do.