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.

God Calls; We Obey

George Fox University Chapel Oct 19 2011

As I was thinking and praying about chapel today, I heard that there are students who are so opposed to a woman speaking from this podium that they will not attend, and that on occasion, students will walk out if someone says they believe God calls women to do just what I’m doing today—preaching. I wanted to be able to construct the chapel address that would convince everyone once and for all that this belief limits God’s sovereignty and hurts the church. Then I realized that these folks are probably not even here today, and even if they are, one chapel address by a woman will not be convincing.

This realization clarified my understanding of God’s purpose for me today. I want to speak to those who have a sense that God may be calling them to publicly witness to who Jesus Christ is, and what he came to do for human beings and the entire planet. I want to speak to the group that is unsure of how to answer God’s call. You may be unsure because you are shy, because you are into math, because you don’t feel particularly charismatic, because you’re afraid, or because you’re a woman. I also want to speak to the group that feels so sure of a call that the possibility you will not be allowed to fulfill it is a slow poison in your relationship with God and the church.

The good news, the Gospel, is this: we are all called to share what we have witnessed about who Jesus is and what Jesus came to do, and the sure sign we are set free to share in public is that the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit lives in us and we live, as Jesus did, in obedience to God every day.

Humans are in love with status. We cannot get over wanting to be singled out to have a higher status than other people. It is hard for us to disentangle our need to be obedient to the Holy Spirit’s call from a desire to be recognized by other human beings as called. We want some calls to be more special than the ordinary person’s call. And if there’s an in-group, we want to be in it and wear its sign of specialness.

In our story for today, this special sign was male circumcision, the sign God gave the patriarchs. The question being debated was this: Would it be necessary for Gentile men to cut themselves and obey the Jewish law in order to be completely “in”? The answer the Jerusalem church came up with, after a long time of talking and listening and being silent was this: NO.

Peter says, we Jews ourselves have been unable to keep the Law. Besides this, God showed me in a special vision that Gentiles are no longer unclean, and then God gave the signs of the Holy Spirit to Gentiles without any such induction into Judaism. So it is pretty clear that we will anger God if we set up extra barriers before we acknowledge that Gentiles are equally acceptable to God.


James, the brother of Jesus, agreed with Peter: the Jewish did not apply to Gentile believers, so he and the Jerusalem church asked instead that Gentiles refrain from the behaviors that would most sicken and alienate Jewish Christians: eating blood, and scandalous sexual misconduct, and being involved with worship of idols, including the sexual rituals. Avoid these things.

Today the rule about eating blood has disappeared from Christian worries, as we eat gravy, rare steaks, and, in some parts of the Christian world, blood pudding and blood sausage. We still are trying to conduct our sexuality in obedience to God and to avoid scandal, and we don’t pay enough attention to how idolatry pervades the surrounding culture and infiltrates our own lives.


But back to the story; I want to direct your attention to one verse that describes how important this was to the Gentiles. Verse 31: When the Gentiles read this and heard the message, they were consoled.

What this means is that the debate had hurt them, had made them question the universal love of God for humanity, had made them feel like second-class Christians. They didn’t become Christians in order to become Jews but because of their convincement that Jesus made a way for all human beings to know God directly and hear from God directly. By becoming Christians, they had already signaled their intention of obeying the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus did. They were humble enough to wait for the older part of the church to come to a decision, but their hearts were sore as they waited.

Women’s hearts are sometimes sore. On the one hand, we read that we are God’s children, just like our brothers, and that the Holy Spirit dwells in us, just like our brothers, and our hearts rise to the challenge and joy of bearing public witness to the love of God, and then we find that we are not allowed by the traditions of the church. We suffer in between the “yes” of God and the “no” of our religious culture.

Women have coped with this for centuries, following God’s call as they can within the culture. Some have entered convents, some have written books, some have written hymns, some have become teachers, some have gone to other countries as missionaries, some have taught children’s Sunday School or Women’s Bible Study. Some have been stealth leaders, governing the church from behind the scenes. Some have been so hurt they have left the church., even though they still love Jesus.

When we look at the life of Jesus, we do not find anywhere that he limited women’s role. Women were among his followers and the Gospels tell us some of their names. Jesus commissioned women to carry the gospel to others. He affirmed women’s faith, and he held them accountable for their actions.

We believers customarily take the words of Jesus as applying to all of us. If one wants to argue that Jesus said these things only to his first named male disciples, all of us are outside. Probably the most important thing he said that turns upside down his own religious culture and ours is this: Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:31).

As I read you what Jesus said, I will ask you, “Is Jesus talking to you?” If you are comfortable participating, say this: “Jesus is talking to me.”

Hear the words of Jesus. No one can come to me unless the Father permits it. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness because I am the light of the world.

Is Jesus talking to you?

Repent, and believe the good news. I forgive your sins. I choose to make you clean. Do not fear, only believe. Be reborn in the Spirit. You do not know where the wind comes from, nor where it goes; it blows where it chooses; so it is with those born of the Spirit.

Is Jesus talking to you?

Take up your cross and follow me. Give everything you have to God. It’s not enough to avoid actively harming others, you must take steps to do active good to others also. Go tell your friends how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you. I give more to those who share the good news, but those who hoard the good news will lose it. Go into the world and proclaim the good news to the whole world. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

Is Jesus talking to you?

Do not be afraid; take heart. Set your mind on divine things, not human things. All things can be done for the one who believes. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all. Whoever wishes to be great must be the servant of all. Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Let the children come to me—in fact you yourselves must receive God’s kingdom as a little child. When you pray, do not doubt God.

Is Jesus talking to you?

God loved the world and gave his only son to make it possible for those who believe to have eternal life. God sent his son not to condemn, but to save the world. The greatest command is to love God wholly, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Also, when you pray, forgive whatever you have against anyone else. Whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Let God do the refining work and be at peace with each other. Trust what I say; it is eternal. I am giving my body and my blood to seal this new covenant with you. Stay awake and watch for me.

Is Jesus talking to you?

The Father seeks people who will worship in spirit and truth. If you continue to obey me, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.

Is Jesus talking to you?

I will ask my Father and he will give you the Spirit of truth, who will abide with you and be in you. The Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.

Is Jesus talking to you?

Jesus left warnings, too.
Don’t be led astray by people who play on your fears. Don’t let politics distract you from God. Don’t waste your time with people who refuse to hear you. Don’t copy those who like lots of attention for being religious. Remember that your enemies may be family. If you entice another to sin or make it hard for someone to trust me, you would be better off drowned. If you have parts of yourself that cause you to sin or mistrust me, cut them off, hand, foot, eye or whatever. Nothing you eat defiles you, but the evil you think and do defiles you. How can you tell what is right and wrong when you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? Whoever attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil is a blasphemer. God chooses the stone that the builders rejected to be the cornerstone. Do not reject the commandment of God in order to preserve tradition.

Is Jesus talking to you?

Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:31).

Peter, who stood up for the Gentiles in this meeting, also stood up for women at Pentecost. When God’s Holy Spirit rushed over believers and entered their hearts, they were moved and empowered to speak in the languages of those around them. These believers included both men and women.

Peter said, this is exactly what the prophet Joel foresaw: a day when men and women would be filled with God’s spirit and prophesy: I will pour out my spirit even upon slaves, both men and women, in those days; and they shall prophesy (Acts 2: 17-18). (In the Old Testament, women were prophets: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Isaiah’s wife.) The word prophesy means to speak what God inspires; to declare something which God has revealed; to speak praise of God; to teach, refute, reprove, admonish, comfort others (Strong’s Concordance).

Women have been carrying the Gospel, the good news, to others since Anna prophesied over the baby Jesus. Paul himself identified women as co-builders of the church.
[SLIDE] So when we read what Paul wrote restricting women’s actions in some 1st century congregations, we have to ask— are these words equivalent to the prohibition against “eating blood”; are these words to help prevent us from scandalous sexual behavior? Or are they to help us avoid idolatry in our times? Are we substituting law for the grace of God, for justification by faith, for the presence of the guiding Holy Spirit in the hearts of committed believers?

Today, if you accept that God sent Jesus to save the world, that the price was Jesus’s death and the seal of victory his resurrection, and you have given your whole self to following Jesus, Jesus promises to give you the Spirit of truth, the Spirit that guides you into truth. Trust the massively inclusive love of God. Obey what the Spirit tells you in everyday things and in life-changing things. Be Jesus’s brother or sister.

Lord, speak to me that I may speak In living echoes of Thy tone;
As Thou hast sought, so let me seek Thy erring children lost and lone.
O lead me, Lord, that I may lead The wandering and the wavering feet;
O feed me, Lord, that I may feed The hungering ones with manna sweet.
O teach me, Lord, that I may teach The precious things Thou dost impart;
And wing my words that they may reach The hidden depths of many a heart.
O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord, Until my very heart o'erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word, Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.
O use me, Lord, use even me, Just as Thou wilt, and when, and where,
Until Thy blessed face I see--Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.

Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-1879.

Three Phoenician Women

Three Phoenician Women in the Story of Faith

I want to think for a bit about two women from outside Israel who show up in the same place in the book of 1 Kings: one is a queen and the other a poverty-stricken widow. Neither is part of Israel, and their inclusion in the Bible shows again that the big story of God’s involvement with human beings includes all peoples.

The Queen
King Ahab and Queen Jezebel take up a lot of space in the book of 1 Kings—six chapters or so. When Ahab married this foreign Phoenician princess, she brought her religion with her, and Ahab became a big promoter of the fertility cult of Baal. Although Ahab may have married other women (he has 70 sons or grandsons), Jezebel had a lot of power. Together, they were evil rulers over Israel.

Ahab’s reign included both Elijah and Elisha, famed prophets of Israel who spoke against the worship of Baal and the abuse of kingly and queenly power embodied in Ahab and Jezebel. Elijah confronted Ahab and announced a three-year drought because of the idolatry. Worship a fertility god, Elijah said, and the true God will dry up your land. Then Elijah ran for his life. He hid for a while by a river, where ravens brought him bread and meat, and then, when the river dried up, God sent him to Zarephath in Sidon, the homeland of Queen Jezebel.

Two women, then, neither belonging to Israel, side by side in the Bible. The contrast between the queen and the widow and the way God deals with each fits right in with the large theme of the Bible that God is on the side of the weak and humble and fights against the powerful and proud.

Sidon was in the part of the Middle East we now call Lebanon. It was a Phoenician city-state. Ahab likely married Jezebel as part of a political alliance. She had two passions—her religion and her husband’s status. The first passion is evident after Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18): Baal sends no fire for the offering but Israel’s God sends fire that burns up even the altar stones and the water in the trench around it. Then the rains come back after a three-year drought. Jezebel immediately sends a message to Elijah: “May the gods kill me if you aren’t dead by tomorrow.” So Elijah runs for his life again.

The second passion shows up in the story of Naboth’s vineyard. Ahab wants to buy Naboth’s vineyard, and Naboth refuses to sell. When Ahab sulks, Jezebel says, essentially, “Who is the king in Israel, anyway? I’ll get you the vineyard.” Jezebel covertly arranges to have Naboth accused of blasphemy and treason and executed. No one is going to tell her husband no.

Elijah confronts Ahab at the vineyard. “Where the dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, they will lick up yours,” Elijah tells him, “and the dogs will eat Jezebel’s remains, too.” After Ahab dies in battle, Jezebel lives long enough to hear about the assassination of her grandson. She meets her doom with fresh eyeliner and mascara and perfect hair. Her servants throw her out of a window, and the dogs leave nothing but her skull, hands, and feet (2 Kings 9).

Jezebel’s life was defined by status, privilege, and power, all of which she misused. Her inclusion in the Bible demonstrates that women are not given a bye. The prophets require all to lay aside such idolatries, which are more pernicious to the soul than is worship of a pole or bull or fish.

The Widow
The other Phoenician woman in this story is a widow. She lived south of Sidon in a town called Zarephath. When Elijah meets her, she is gathering sticks to cook a last meal for her son and herself. He asks her for a little water and bread, and she responds out of deep despair and need. “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing…just enough for one last meal.” The drought has reduced her to near starvation, and with her, many others.

Intriguingly, she acknowledges herself to be outside of the faith of Israel (your God) and at the same time swears by “your God” that she is telling the truth. Elijah challenges her to have faith in his God. “If you feed me a little cake first, the God of Israel will make sure you have food clear through this famine. Don’t be afraid.” She has little to lose and everything to gain, and she takes the challenge and feeds the prophet. After that, she never runs out of meal or oil until rain falls again.

But what she fears most (don’t be afraid) happens anyway. Her son sickens and dies. She comes to Elijah and accuses him of causing the death of her son because of her sin. “But he said to her, ‘Give me your son.’ He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him out upon his own bed. He cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying? … O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again’” (1 Kings 17:20-22, NRSV).

The Lord sends life back into the child, resurrects him, and Elijah takes him downstairs to his mother. “Now I know for sure that you belong to God and that you speak God’s truth,” she says.

The stories of these two women are so opposite. This Phoenician widow, probably a Baal worshipper, down to her last oil and meal, acts in hospitality to a stranger. And not only a stranger but one with a rival God. God honors her faith and generosity with God’s own faithfulness and generosity. When tragedy strikes, she goes right to the prophet with her sorrow, and when her son is resurrected, she responds with a statement of belief.

Her life is defined by loss, fear, and poverty. Nonetheless, she uses what she has to bless another person. Her inclusion in the Bible affirms that outsiders who live up to the best light they have are able to act faithfully and recognize God’s truth. Jesus refers to her as a rebuke to his hometown: “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow in Zarephath in Sidon” (Luke 4:24-26). Don’t miss this, he says, because God will send the truth to those who will hear it. Your ancestry and your proximity count for nothing. Jesus’s neighbors wanted to kill him because of these words.

If this story included only Jezebel, the Bible would confirm our prejudices against outsiders to faith: she was killed in a coup and the dogs ate her just as predicted. However, we might miss the fact that though she was arrogant, passionate, cruel, and true to her origins, she lived a long, unrepentant, influential life. Why did judgment wait so long? In Israel’s story, Jezebel is a villain, but in her own story, a person whom God loves. Her stubbornness ensures the fulfillment of Elijah’s prophecy, while Ahab’s repentance earned him a reprieve (1 Kings 21:27).

The inclusion of her humble countrywoman as an example of faith requires us to realize that God’s love includes the outsiders, that God may even single out an outsider for particular blessing when there are plenty of worthy insiders. This inclusive love of God infuriates the chosen people. It’s better not to mention that God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust, that God has sheep from other pastures. The prophet Amos must have shocked his audiences when, in the middle of prophecies of judgment for the surrounding nations as well as Israel, he said, “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). These were the enemies of Israel, and God cares for them. Do we think God cares only for one group of people? God’s care is over the whole of humanity, and God’s redemptive purpose includes us all.

The Mother

When Jesus travels in this very region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28), a woman from that region, a Gentile, finds him and begs him to cast the unclean spirit out of her daughter. He says to her, so mysteriously distant, “The children must eat first; it isn’t fair to take their food and give it to the dogs.” (This is the same Jesus who reminded his neighbors that God favored a Phoenician woman over the widows of Israel during Elijah’s time.) She does not give up: “Lord, even the dogs are allowed the children’s crumbs.” Jesus praises her desperate faith (Matthew 15:28) and perhaps admires her quick wit and sends her home to a healed daughter.

I see this as an acted parable. Jesus begins by taking on the role his disciples expect—the Messiah for Israel. He says what they are thinking. But he leads them to the place where he says to this outsider, “Great is your faith!” Like Elijah’s widow, the mother has enough desperation to give her confidence to ask for help. And she sees enough of God’s love in Jesus to insist that the leftovers of that love will heal her daughter. There are enough leftovers of God’s love to satisfy every human being; when everyone gets enough, there will still be love left over.

God holds insiders and outsiders, men and women accountable for the ways they use what they have, whether it is great power, a little food, or a nimble mind. When they live up to the light they have, it counts, and God includes them in the community of faith. And even when they persist unrepentant and arrogant to the end of life, God still loves them.

The Hero and the Villain

Rahab and Delilah (Joshua 2, 6; Judges 16)

I want to compare two women from “the enemies” of the Israelites: Rahab and Delilah. Rahab betrayed her city and Delilah protected her city; Rahab became an ancestor of Jesus and a hero of faith, and Delilah became a cultural byword for deceit and faithlessness. Hmmm.

Rahab is a Canaanite woman in the city of Jericho. As the story goes, the Israelites are camping on the doorstep of Canaan, after being led out of Egypt and through the wilderness for forty years. Joshua, the leader, sends spies into Jericho, a walled city. They spend the night at Rahab’s house. Rahab is a prostitute; do they enter her house because so many people go in and out that no one will notice them? Or do they choose her house because she is a prostitute whose services they intend to employ? Or is her occupation innkeeper between seasonal sexual rituals? Whatever the case, she gives house room to Israelite spies.

When the king of Jericho sends to her to ask her to give up the spies, she hides them instead and lies to the king’s representatives. “They left before the gates closed,” she says. “If you hurry, you can catch them.” Then she says to the Israelites, “I know that your God has given you this land. It is clear that your God is more powerful than ours because your God dried up the Red Sea so you could cross and then destroyed the most powerful kings in the area. In this town, our courage has melted away because of your God, who is indeed God of heaven above and earth below.”

Rahab shows spiritual insight beyond the other citizens of Jericho, and she puts her own livelihood and life at risk to save the true God’s representatives. She also covenants with them for her life and the lives of her family when, as she sees it, their irresistible invasion will destroy Jericho. They agree she will be safe/saved if she hangs a crimson cord in the window of her house.

Some time later, after the Israelites have crossed the Jordan on dry land, have brought their circumcisions up to date (a ritual that clearly separated all the Israelite men from the Canaanite men), and have celebrated the Passover, Joshua and his priests and warriors circle Jericho silently once a day for six days and on the seventh march around it seven times, blowing their trumpets and shouting at the end of the seventh lap. The fall of the walls cements God’s reputation in Canaan, showing that the God worshiped by Israel is more powerful than the local warrior and fertility pantheon. Every time around the wall, the Israelites can see the crimson cord hanging from Rahab’s window. When the walls come down, Joshua spares her family’s lives, brings them out of Jericho, and settles them on the outside of the camp.

It is worth thinking about how this story introduces some ambiguity into the story of Israel. In Exodus 34:11-16, God told Moses that Israel is to make no covenants with the Canaanites; instead they are to destroy the Canaanites and wipe out their religious practices, including ritual prostitution. However, here in practice, Israelites make a covenant with a Canaanite prostitute. She lives outside the camp at the start because she and all her household are ritually unclean. However, at some point she is fully adopted into the Israelites: she marries Salmon, gives birth to Boaz (who marries Ruth) and becomes the great-great-grandmother of King David. And in the long run, she is one of four women named as an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

It is worth noting that Rahab did not so much reject her previous gods as embrace a better one. Because God validated the covenant with Rahab and included her in Israel despite quite clear prohibitions in the Law, we too need to acknowledge the ambiguity introduced into dogma by narrative. Rahab’s inclusion in the line of the Messiah requires all Bible-believing Christians to be more careful in how we apply the Old Testament.

While thinking about Rahab, who betrayed her own people in order to be saved by the God of Israel, I began also thinking of Delilah. She is far more famous outside the Bible than is Rahab, partly because of John Milton, partly because she is evidence to justify misogyny. Here is her story.

Sometime between Rahab and King David, Israel was a collection of tribes. The pattern set out in the book of Judges is that Israel would settle into Canaanite culture; then, to discipline and recover them, God would send other peoples to raid and rule them; the Israelites would then moan to God and repent, and God would send them a “judge” to free them from oppression and help them find their way back to worship of the true God. Some of these judges show up in Hebrews 11 as heroes of faith, including the judge Samson, who loved Delilah.

In the story, God raised Samson from a child to be the champion of Israel against the Philistines. However (and surprisingly), Samson’s first marriage was to an unnamed Philistine woman who wheedled the answer to a riddle out of him and betrayed it to her relatives, causing Samson to lose a bet for which he killed 30 Philistine men. He left her for betraying him, so her father gave her to Samson’s best man as a wife. So Samson took revenge on the whole village by burning their crops. Then the Philistines themselves tried to pacify Samson by burning the woman and her father. Samson slaughtered a great number of them in reprisal. I will skip his visit to the Philistine prostitute in Gaza, and will come to the meat of the story.

Samson fell in love with Delilah. When the Philistine lords knew of this, they offered her an enormous amount of money to find out the secret of his strength. It’s a well-told story of how she asked three times and he gave her bogus answers, and then each time she tested him, he broke all the ropes. Finally, she wore him down: “How can you say you love me if you won’t tell me your secret?” He was fatigued to death by her constant pressure, and he told her the truth. The story says that when he fell asleep in her lap, she called a man to shave him bald, and, sure enough, he was no stronger than a natural man. The Philistine lords paid Delilah off, gouged out Samson’s eyes, and made him a slave turning a millstone.

I always thought Delilah the lowest of the low, betraying a man who loved her; this shows I didn’t read the whole story very carefully. Then I read Samson Agonistes by John Milton. Milton makes her Samson’s wife, and, since this is a play, she gets some lines. After Samson repulses her offer to take him home and care for him, she asserts that she was led to betray him by powerful people who convinced her that public good is more important than private relationships; she further asserts that she is a hero to other Philistines for saving them from Samson.

Though he allows her to justify her actions, Milton is no friend to Delilah. The chorus generalizes from her to the flaws of women in general. God gave them beauty but no judgment of what is right and wrong; they have too much self-love and too little persistence in love. They seem at first malleable but when married turn out to be “a thorn intestine…a cleaving mischief” that prevents men from virtue and leads them into shame. “Therefore God’s universal law/Gave to the man despotic power over his female.” If he does not maintain the upper hand, she will usurp his power and he will live a life of dismay. And Milton is not the only Christian man to move from Delilah to a general condemnation of women.

What is wrong with this picture? It seems clear enough that Delilah was a Philistine hero, and as such of course an enemy to Israelites. But the Bible says almost nothing judgmental about her, draws no conclusions about women from her behavior. Why has she been used across centuries of Christianity as a reason to oppress and suppress women in general?

Suppose Milton had also written a play called Joshua Victorious. In this play, his chorus might generalize that God gives women insight into right and wrong; they risk their lives for truth, and they keep their promises. Women’s courage inspires men to live up to their best selves. Therefore, God gives both man and woman the responsibility in marriage to submit to the other. A believing wife is a means of grace for an unbelieving husband. Milton could have learned from Rahab to respect and value women in general.

Misuse of the Bible to diminish women has poisoned the well for all Christians. We need to come to Jesus and receive the living water he offered first to a woman who was additionally an ethnic and social outsider. “The water that I will give will become in you a spring of water gushing up into eternal life” (John 4:14). Rahab's inclusion in Jesus’s genealogy is a witness to the power of God to recruit from among the ranks of the ritually unclean, the dangerous outsiders, and redeem them. It reminds me that God meant for Israel to be a light to the nations, teaching them the way to the true God. What makes Rahab a hero of faith is that she believed that Israel’s God was the only God who matters, and she staked her life on that faith. She reminds me of the heroism of converts throughout history, women and men, who were and are willing to risk everything to be on God’s side because of God’s living water in them, gushing up into eternal life.

The Bible, Inclusion, and Sarah and Hagar

Because the Bible came out of patriarchal culture, whenever women's stories are told it is unexpected. In fact, I've come to see these women as signs of inclusion at many points in the Bible. Inclusion often involves some sort of conflict or trouble, which may cause people to consider women as causes of trouble rather than signs that trouble is implicit in the cultural norms.

Recently I looked into various marriages in the Bible, starting with Abraham and Sarah, because St. Peter refers to Sarah as a model for all wives in her submission to her husband, calling him, “Lord.” So I went to read the story. There are two places where Sarah joins Abraham in lying about their relationship, acquiescing to being known as his sister (which is apparently half-true, showing again that this culture is not the same as ours). First, before they are known as Abraham and Sarah—before God renames them—they take refuge from famine in Egypt. Sarai is barren, so it is easy for them to mislead the Egyptians. Because Sarai is beautiful, Pharaoh takes her into his house and gives Abram gifts, perhaps even the slave-girl Hagar. God sends plagues, Pharaoh wises up, sends Sarai back to Abram, and complains about being deceived. Much later, Abraham asks Sarah again to join him in his half-truth in the land of King Abimelech; again, the king takes Sarah; this time, God warns him in a dream that Sarah is married. (As an aside, this shows God speaking directly to a Canaanite king and the king’s immediate obedience.) So two times, Sarah follows Abraham’s lead in misrepresenting their relationship.

In the rest of the story, her submission is less obvious. When she can’t conceive, she decides to help God fulfill God’s promise by offering Abram her Egyptian slave, Hagar, as a surrogate; Abram listens to Sarai and has sex with Hagar, who becomes pregnant. Sarai accuses Hagar of having contempt for Sarai and treats her so harshly Hagar runs away.

God meets the pregnant girl in the wilderness and speaks directly to her. Think about this: not only does God reveal God’s self to the chosen man Abram, he also speaks to a Canaanite king and to an Egyptian slave-girl. God tells her to go back to Sarai and be respectful, and God promises that her son will be the father of multitudes too numerous to count. She names her son Ishmael—“God hears”—and names God as “the God of seeing,” marveling that she really saw God and remained alive. Remember this—a runaway Egyptian slave-girl saw God, received a command which she obeyed, received a promise like the one given to Abram, and lived to tell about it.

In the past, some may have read this passage as defining the duty of slaves to be submissive and respectful to their owners. We wouldn’t do that nowadays, now that we know slavery is wrong. But we don’t hear the rest of the amazing truth in this passage. God meets Hagar face to face and reminds her that he is taking care of her and her unborn son. (I want to write it this way: God. Meets. Hagar. Face. To. Face.) He also confronts her with her contempt for Sarai. Hagar affirms her human dignity by choosing to obey God.

Fourteen years later, Isaac was born to Sarah. When Sarah saw Ishmael and Isaac together, she said to Abraham, “Cast out the slave woman and her son.” Really Sarah is saying, “Cast out your son who is not my son.” Abraham loves Ishmael; he doesn’t want to send him away. God says, “Don’t worry about Ishmael and Hagar; I will make a nation of his descendants also. Do whatever Sarah says because Isaac is the one I promised you and intend to work through.” God can say this because God is the one taking care of Hagar and Ishmael. So in the morning, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael off into the wilderness with a canteen of water and some bread.

When they run out of water, she places Ishmael under a bush and goes far enough away that she cannot see him. She does not want to watch him die, and she weeps aloud. God hears Ishmael, who must also be moaning, and God’s messenger says to Hagar, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard Ishmael’s moans. Go raise him up and hold his hand. Remember that I will make a great nation of him.” Then God shows her a well of water. They live in the wilderness, Ishmael learns to hunt, and eventually his Egyptian mother finds him a wife from Egypt.

Notice this: God again communicates supernaturally with Hagar. God cares for her again in the wilderness. God makes sure she and her son (and Abraham’s son) do not die. God does not berate her for forgetting his promise. God treats her tenderly and rescues them. God includes the father of the Arabs in his care, knowing full well that there will be enmity and war between the descendents of Abraham, just as there has been enmity between the mothers.

The lessons from this are so challenging: God is the God of Hebrew and Arab. Indeed, with all the attention paid to the supernatural nature of Isaac’s birth, it is easy to overlook the supernatural care given to Hagar and Ishmael. God includes them. This ought to challenge Christians who see Zionism as the will of God, and it ought to challenge Christians who see patriarchy and sexism as the will of God as well.

It has to be noted that Hagar’s worst enemy is not Abraham but Sarah; yet the grounds of their animosity is in the patriarchal system that values women because they give birth. Barrenness is shameful to a woman for the same reason a woman must have a child on behalf of a dead husband; the important achievement is to provide the man with immortality through descendants. Sarah wants a child for Abraham for reasons Tamar will understand. In a patriarchal system, women compete with women to be valuable to men. If what men want is a son to carry on the patrimony, women will value themselves as they are able to produce that son.

However, Sarah, who somewhere in her life called her brother/husband “Lord,” has intrinsic value before God. It isn’t enough that Ishmael was born on her knees, symbolically her child. She wants her own child. She cannot reconcile herself to the legal fiction that makes Ishmael her child. Sarah also wants to birth a child for her own sake, and her jealousy of Hagar has to do with Sarah’s own hunger for immortality. When she went through menopause, she must have despaired. No wonder she laughs bitterly when she overhears God’s messengers repeating the promise to Abraham that Sarah herself will bear a child. No wonder she laughs with joy when Isaac is born. The gift of Isaac, the gift of laughter, the gift of immortality comes courtesy of God only, not from the legal fictions of human beings. No wonder the child of Hagar is an intolerable intruder on this gift as Sarah sees it. Sarah behaves cruelly to Hagar; God does not punish this cruelty, perhaps because God knows that patriarchy has crippled Sarah’s understanding of what gives a woman value.

A few generations later, Jacob’s two wives, Leah and Rachel, compete to give Jacob sons. Leah is far more fertile, producing three sons; so to compete, Rachel gives Jacob her servant girl Bilhah as a surrogate; those two sons count for Rachel. When Leah quits having children, she gives Jacob another servant girl Zilpah as surrogate; those two sons count for Leah, who leads five to two. When Leah’s son brings her mandrakes, which supposedly help make women fertile, Rachel begs for the mandrakes. In exchange, she sends Jacob in to sleep with Leah. Leah had two more sons and a daughter.

When God opens Rachel’s womb, as the Bible puts it, she has a son. Significantly, she rejoices by saying, “God has taken away my reproach.” What is reproachful about being barren? In this culture, the wife has failed in her main duty to her husband—the duty to make sure his line does not die out. Much later, Rachel dies birthing her second son, whom she names “son of my sorrow.” Her sorrow is not just the hard labor, but the sorrow of being unable to measure up to others. Despite being genuinely loved by her husband, she values herself for her fertility, and Jacob’s willingness to go elsewhere sexually in order to have children shows that he too believes a wife’s barrenness requires the remedy of more sexual partners to ensure descendants.

Women are primarily property in these times. Adultery is a property crime in a culture that permits polygamy. It isn’t having sex with more than one woman that is a crime; it is having sex with someone else’s wife. If a wife has more than one sexual partner, who knows which man’s descendant the child is—who has gained immortality thereby? So the response, as seen in the story of Tamar (which will be for another day), is to kill the woman. This ostensibly will reinforce the faithfulness of women so that husbands can be sure the children are theirs. Comically, it is after her sojourn in the house of King Abimelech that Sarah gives birth to Isaac. This seems to me to be a small divine joke at the expense of patriarchal anxieties.

It makes me sad that because of the mistaken use of the Bible to perpetuate patriarchy, people who know in their hearts that God doesn't favor men over women and patriarchy is wrong have felt that they must stop respecting the Bible as an authority for faith and practice. They dismiss and devalue a text that is an enormous resource for understanding the relationship between God and humanity—that tells us over and over that even at our worst, God loves us and is committed to making us whole and holy. They don’t get to know the historical Jesus with his tender heart and tough mind, his focused obedience to his Father, his full humanity in such unimaginable tension with divinity. How sad to know little to nothing of how God has touched the lives of humans in one small tribal group, how God has insisted that other tribal groups matter to God also, how God has entered the circle God drew, as William Blake challenged him (William Blake: "To God/ If you have formed a Circle to go into/Go into it yourself & see how you would do."), and how God has made available to all a new way of living in this world and a hope for joy after death.

Little Girl, Wake Up

From July 2009 until November 2010, my granddaughter and her parents have been living with us. Abby sometimes likes me to tell her stories about Jesus. She turned four in October, so I keep them simple and steer away from the complex confrontations with the Pharisees. What Jesus did when he was on earth makes for good stories.

One evening, Abby, her mother, and I were all piled on my bed, and she asked, “Nana, will you tell me a story about Jesus?” So I told her this one, and it turned out to be the one I needed to hear.

This story tells how Jesus feels about little girls.

Jesus was walking down the road when a man named Jairus came running up to him and said, “My daughter is very sick. Can you come see her and heal her?” Jesus told a couple of his friends to come with him, and he hurried toward her house. As he was approaching, a servant came out and told Jairus, “Don’t bother Jesus anymore. Your daughter has died.” Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; she’s just sleeping.” Jesus entered the house, and the people who were there made fun of him. He went into the room where the little girl lay on her bed.

Jesus bent over the little girl, and he said to her, “Little girl, wake up.” She opened her eyes and sat up.

It turns out that Jesus likes girls, and he wants them to wake up. He doesn’t want to hear that they are dying, he doesn’t want to see them dead; he wants them to wake up, get out of bed, and thrive.

When I tell this story from memory out loud, it makes me cry. I want to believe that Jesus cares that much about girls. I want my granddaughters, my daughters, my friends, my mother, and myself to know this kind of love—the love that wants women alive and awake. Jesus loves this little girl in a day in which Jewish men thanked God they were born neither Gentile nor female.

What I have to admit to myself, and to Jesus, is that many women in the church cannot be truly alive, truly awake, truly grateful for being a woman because the church makes it so tough for women to be who God made them to be. I am so angry to think of how the church has wasted the gifts and energy of women. God’s kingdom is smaller and narrower than it should be. Women in the church are sickening and dying for lack of freedom to be their whole selves in the church.

I am part of the Friends (Quaker) denomination. Quakers have a history of equality for men and women in ministry—public, spoken witness to the power and love of God. First generation Quaker women in the 1600s preached in public, journeyed overseas to preach to the unconverted, stood up for their freedom to practice religion as God revealed it to them, and, with many men, died imprisoned or executed for their convictions. This is close to my heart because I am also called to preach and recorded as a minister. And yet, in my yearly meeting, there are only three women who are released full-time to pastor a church. The other 64 churches have either men as pastors or none.

My own home meeting has three full-time paid men as pastors and four paid part-time women and one part-time man as pastors. The full-time men are the lead pastor, the pastor for spiritual health and care, and the pastor for youth ministries; the part-time man is the pastor for worship ministries; the part-time women are the pastor for women’s ministries, the pastor for children and families, the pastor for seniors, and the pastor for administration. I love them all, but there seems to be a hierarchy of significance in who is full-time and who is part-time, even though they are all graced with the name “pastor.” And I know of churches in my yearly meeting that do not allow women to carry the title pastor, even part-time.
What is wrong with the church, with my church? Why is the Quaker testimony on equality of the sexes not borne out in practice?

And why is the entire church not committed to equality? When we visited lovely cathedrals across Europe this spring, my husband would say to me, “You could be preaching from that pulpit.” He meant to be supportive to me, but I knew the impossibility of that ever happening. It made me sad and angry. Think of 2000 years of little girls with gifts given to them for the church that they were never allowed to use. Think of how they were required to die inside in order to live faithfully as defined by the church. Think of how Jesus feels about that.

At least in the story about Jairus’s daughter, the house was filled with mourners because the little girl had died. There are few mourners in the church for all the dying little girls and comatose women whose gifts are refused and whose calls are denied. There is the hope offered by Jesus that these women and girls are just sleeping, and their whole selves can be raised from the dead by the word of God.

Where is the sin and who are the sinners? Who would dare call unclean what God has called clean? Men and women alike have resisted the clear teaching of Jesus and Paul that the kingdom of God needs women who are awakened, called, obedient ministers in private and in public. It is easy to blame men for perpetuating power structures of patriarchy which clearly violate the spirit and letter of the law of love; it is more difficult to understand why women themselves resist and even reject women who are called to public ministry. Are they afraid? And if so, of what? Of the love and calling of God?

Most dismaying is the fact that the “emergent” movement in today’s church, with its missional emphasis and flexible structure, is again resisting the clear teaching of Jesus that both men and women are called to faithful stewardship of their gifts and will be held accountable for how they are used to build God’s kingdom, and that all is called to go into the world and preach the gospel. Women took to the road with Jesus, gave him their money and loyalty, listened to and understood his message, witnessed his resurrection and reported the good news to others, waited for the Holy Spirit and received the Spirit in all ways, hosted churches, preached, prophesied, taught. Paul valued the women who were leaders in the church, including some among the apostles.

Every woman who remains loyal to the church while knowing that her fellow Christians do not encourage her to acknowledge and use her gifts in the church shows that God does indeed give grace to those who suffer. Women do suffer when they feel called and empowered and then rejected. The mission field, education, non-profits all have benefited from women whose gifts have been thrust out of the church, but the church itself has been diminished and is even now being diminished.

The parable of the three stewards is for women, too. When you read it remembering that, it seems that women are damned if they don’t and damned if they do. Even in my own denomination, the sexism of our society has ruined the good news that if God’s Son sets you free, you are free indeed. Instead of noting the clear teaching of this parable that if you do not use your God-given gifts to further the kingdom of God, you will be cast out of it, and thinking of those women with gifts of public ministry, my own denomination has congregations that will not place women on elders, will not call women as pastors, and will not recommend women for recording (analogous to ordination).

While Christians are happy to eat pork and shellfish since God said that pigs in a blanket are clean if God says so, Christians are not happy to say that God has declared women and men to be equal. Yet Paul writes that in Christ there is no male nor female. This is so clear it demands that we ask why it is so rarely visible in the church.

Undoubtedly, someone will blame the Bible for the perpetuation of patriarchal Christianity. I blame Bible readers who refuse to see. The message always comes to those with ears to hear, eyes to read, hearts to follow, not to those looking for confirmation of the status quo and permission to resist change.