Women, Men, and the Church

This is what I have written for the next edition of our church newsletter:

As I write, a debate is raging in England over the role of women in the church. After more than a decade of discussion and debate, the General Synod has agreed that women are eligible to be ordained as bishops.

This has been a reality on this continent for many years. But in England the press are reporting that as many as 1300 clergy are threatening to leave the Anglican Church over the issue. Of course there is nothing the media like better than a good fight, and the numbers may prove to be much smaller than that. Nevertheless the issue has resulted in serious acrimony, and we need to pray for healing and a softening of positions on both sides.

Earlier this year Messiah’s vestry also spent a good deal of time discussing this same issue. Not that anyone was about to consecrate a bishop! The issue for us was whether to list ourselves as an “egalitarian church”: that is, a church where “spiritual gifts of women and men are to be recognized, developed and used in serving and teaching ministries at all levels of involvement”, where “public recognition is to be given to both women and men who exercise ministries of service and leadership” and which “will dissociate itself from worldly or pagan devices designed to make women feel inferior for being female”.

Our concern was to reflect, in a formal manner as a parish, a truly biblical and God-honoring approach to this important subject. Certainly a single newsletter article cannot give anything like adequate coverage to the vestry discussions—and even less so to what the Bible has to say on the matter.

While much attention is given to the passages of Scripture that appear to give women an inferior role, we do well to begin by looking at its central themes and overall direction, and only after that to examine specific cases.

Reading the Old Testament more than three hundred years ago, for example, Matthew Henry saw in the story of the creation of Eve, “that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal to him…” And of course from there follow the accounts of remarkable women such as Sarah, Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, and Esther, to name but a few, whose pivotal place in the unfolding of salvation history is undisputed.

When we come to the gospels, we see Jesus treating women with a respect that was uncommon, if not altogether non-existent, in the ancient world. Just think of his conversations with woman at the well, the Canaanite woman who pleaded on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter, Mary and Martha, and even the woman caught in adultery. Think of his parables, where women are invariably depicted as positive examples (not so with men!). And think of the fact that the first people to bear the good news of Jesus’ resurrection were women.

In the epistles, we are introduced to a community where “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. And, while there are verses that adjure women to be silent and not to teach, I would argue that these are not programmatic, but are intended to address specific situations that had arisen in Ephesus and Corinth. Overall, in the nascent church we find women taking their place next to men as equal partners, possibly even to the rank of apostle (see Romans 16:7).

I recognize that Christians have legitimate differences over this matter, and that my interpretation of Scripture is not the only one. Yet I do believe that our identifying ourselves as a church where women and men are equal partners in the gospel of transformation through Christ can only strengthen our witness to it.

Suddenly … the blowing of a violent wind

These words were written almost exactly a century ago by G.K. Chesterton, yet they still have an uncanny contemporaneity.

I remember a little boy of my acquaintance who was once walking in Battersea Park under … torn skies and tossing trees. He did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too much; it made him shut his eyes; and it blew off his hat, of which he was very proud. He was, as far as I remember, about four. After complaining repeatedly of the atmospheric unrest, he said at last to his mother, “Well, why don’t you take away the trees, and then it wouldn’t wind.”

Nothing could be more intelligent or natural than this mistake. Any one looking for the first time at the trees might fancy that they were indeed vast and titanic fans, which by their mere waving agitated the air around them for miles. Nothing, I say, could be more human and excusable than the belief that it is the trees which make the wind. Indeed, the belief is so human and excusable that it is, as a matter of fact, the belief of about ninety-nine out of a hundred of the philosophers, reformers, sociologists, and politicians of the great age in which we live. My small friend was, in fact, very like the principal modern thinkers; only much nicer.

In the little apologue or parable which he has thus the honour of inventing, the trees stand for all visible things and the wind for the invisible. The wind is the spirit which bloweth where it listeth; the trees are the material things of the world which are blown where the spirit lists…

The great human dogma, then, is that the wind moves the trees. The great human heresy is that the trees move the wind. When people begin to say that the material circumstances have alone created the moral circumstances, then they have prevented all possibility of serious change.

From Tremendous Trifles, chapter 12

A Deeper Relevance

This article appeared in the May issue of Christianity Today. It is the second article on liturgical churches and their worship this year. What is happening in the evangelical world?

… Many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I’d like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. “The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world,” writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to “make Christianity understandable to this mythical ‘modern’ man on the street”, we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they’ve come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day…

Worshiping in the liturgical tradition is no panacea. When not approached wisely, it can be misused and abused; it can tempt participants to substitute mere religious ritual for a vital, personal faith in Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, this tradition does have much to offer contemporary evangelicalism. Take our fascination with relevance: the first thing this liturgy asks us to rethink is what we mean by “relevant” worship…

This is one reason I thank God for the liturgy. The liturgy does not target any age or cultural subgroup. It does not even target this century. (It does not imagine, as we moderns and postmoderns are tempted to do, that this is the best of all possible ages, the most significant era of history.) Instead, the liturgy draws us into worship that transcends our time and place. Its earliest forms took shape in ancient Israel, and its subsequent development occurred in a variety of cultures and subcultures—Greco-Roman, North African, German, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, and so on. It has been prayed meaningfully by bakers, housewives, tailors, teachers, philosophers, priests, monks, kings, and slaves. As such, it has not been shaped to meet a particular group’s needs. It seeks only to enable people—people in general—to see God…

The liturgy, from beginning to end, is not about meeting our needs. The liturgy is about God. It’s not even about God-as-the-fulfiller-of-our-need-for-spiritual-meaning. It’s about God as he is himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not about our blessedness but his. The liturgy immediately signals that our needs are not nearly as relevant as we imagine. There is something infinitely more worthy of our attention—something, someone, who lies outside the self.

With talk of “God” and “kingdom”, it announces another order of reality we are being called into. We are in the habit of thinking that our culture—the reality we strive to be relevant to—is the measure of meaning. That’s why we’re tempted to shape our churches to look like that culture, because that is what people in this culture will find meaningful. It is logical on one level, and there is no question that we have to be culturally sensitive in our outreach. But the liturgy wants to show us a deeper logic and relevance.

The liturgy begins by saying that our culture needs not so much to have its “presenting needs” met as to be gently and calmly invited into a wiser culture—the culture of a Trinitarian God and his kingdom. This is what is blessed, now and forever. Our culture is the transitory thing, an apparition that will someday have to pass away, just as childhood has to pass away. The liturgy says to us as we enter, “You’re in the culture of God and his kingdom now. Things will be different from now on.” …

In what’s now an old essay, F. H. Brabant put it this way: “All liturgical acts … have a double function: one directed Godwards, expressing in outward form the thoughts and feelings of the worshippers, the other directed manwards, teaching worshippers how they ought to think and feel by setting before them the Church’s standard of worship.”

We have to pay attention to cultural context, no question. The history of liturgy has been in part about finding words and ritual that help people in a given culture express their thoughts and feelings to God in ways that make cultural sense. The liturgy has always had freedom and variety within its basic structure.

But it has steadfastly refused to let the culture determine its shape or meaning. Liturgical churches know that as profound a reality as is the surrounding culture, there is an even more profound reality waiting to be discovered. The liturgy gently and calmly gets us to open our eyes to the new reality, showing us the “necessary separation” from the old. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, we find our gaze directed away from ourselves and toward God and his kingdom. When we return to our homes, we are never the same.

You can read it all here.

Ascension Day

Here is an excerpt from a sermon on Christ’s ascension, by Leo the Great (c.395-461):

Accordingly, dearly-beloved, throughout this time which elapsed between the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, God’s providence had this in view, to teach and impress upon both the eyes and hearts of his own people that the Lord Jesus Christ might be acknowledged to have as truly risen, as he was truly born, suffered, and died. And hence the most blessed apostles and all the disciples, who had been both bewildered at his death on the cross and backward in believing his resurrection, were so strengthened by the clearness of the truth that when the Lord entered the heights of heaven, not only were they affected with no sadness, but were even filled with great joy.

And truly great and unspeakable was their cause for joy, when in the sight of the holy multitude, above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, the nature of humankind went up, to pass above the angels’ ranks and to rise beyond the archangels’ heights, and to have its uplifting limited by no elevation until, received to sit with the eternal Father, it should be associated on the throne with his glory, to whose nature it was united in the Son.

Since then Christ’s ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the Body is raised, whither the glory of the Head has gone before, let us exult, dearly-beloved, with worthy joy and delight in the loyal paying of thanks. For today not only are we confirmed as possessors of paradise, but have also in Christ penetrated the heights of heaven, and have gained still greater things through Christ’s unspeakable grace than we had lost through the devil’s malice. For us, whom our virulent enemy had driven out from the bliss of our first abode, the Son of God has made members of himself and placed at the right hand of the Father, with whom he lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

You can find the whole sermon here.

Rogation Days

The Rogation Days are the three days preceding Ascension Day. They seem to have fallen off the church’s calendar a generation or so ago. The word “rogation” is from the Latin verb, rogo, “I ask.” They come at this point in the year because they are a time of special prayer that God may bless us in this season of planting. I suspect they were dropped from the calendar because they have an antiquated air to them, hearkening back to the days when society was more agrarian. Yet in these days of mass starvation in many parts of the world I believe they have a peculiarly contemporary ring. Here is an excerpt from the Exhortation following the Homily for the Rogation Days, written more than four hundred years ago. For ease of reading I have taken the liberty of modernizing some spellings and updating a few words.

If now therefore you will have your prayers heard before Almighty God, for the increase of your corn and cattle, and for the defense thereof from unseasonable mists and blasts, from hail and other such tempests, [pursue] love, equity, and righteousness, mercy and charity, which God most requires at our hands. Which Almighty God respecting chiefly, in making his civil laws for his people the Israelites, in charging the owners not to gather up their corn too nigh at harvest season, nor the grapes and olives in gathering time, but to leave behind some ears of corn for the poor gleaners (Leviticus 19.9-10, Deuteronomy 24.19-21). By this he meant to induce them to pity the poor, to relieve the needy, to show mercy and kindness. It cannot be lost, which for his sake is distributed to the poor (1 Corinthians 9.9-10). For he who ministers seed to the sower, and bread to the hungry, who sends down the early and latter rain upon your fields, so to fill up the barns with corn, and the wine presses with wine and oil (Joel 2.23-24), he, I say, who recompenses all kinds of benefits in the resurrection of the just, he will assuredly recompense all merciful deeds shown to the needy, however unable the poor is, upon whom it is bestowed. “O,” says Solomon, “let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them about your neck,” says he, “and write them on the tablet of your heart, so shall you find favor at God’s hand” (Proverbs 3.3-4).

Thus honor thou the Lord with your riches, and with the first fruits of your increase: So shall your barns be filled with abundance, and your presses in all burst with new wine. Nay, God has promised to open the windows of heaven, upon the generous righteous man, that he shall want nothing. He will repress the devouring caterpillar, which should devour your fruits. He will give you peace and quiet to gather in your provision, that you may sit every man under his own vine quietly, without fear of foreign enemies to invade you. He will give you not only food to feed on, but stomachs and good appetites to take comfort of your fruits, whereby in all things you may have sufficiency. Finally, he will bless you with all manner [of] abundance in this transitory life,and endue you with all manner of benediction in the next world, in the kingdom of heaven, through the merits of our Lord and Savior, to whom with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all honor everlasting. Amen.

The full text of the homily may be found here.

The Case for Civility

Christian author and social critic Os Guinness spoke earlier today at the Town Hall Forum at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. You can hear his 25-minute lecture, and the half-hour question period that followed it, by clicking here.

Resurrection

I am looking down from the airplane window on a beautiful (but still snowy) day in Minnesota. Karen and I are on our way to Vancouver, still exulting in yesterday morning’s glorious Easter celebration. We were still humming choruses of “I will ra-aise them up, I will ra-aise them up, I will ra-aise them up, on the la-ast day,” as we slowly advanced towards the security check in the airport.

The words, of course, are those of Jesus, spoken after he had fed a large crowd of more than five thousand people with a young lad’s lunch of a few fish and some small loaves of bread. “Do not toil for food that decays,” he said to them, “but for food that lasts to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Then he pointed to himself as that food, the one who gives eternal life.

What Jesus was talking about was not some form of ongoing existence as a disembodied spirit. He promised to those who relied on him for life that he would raise them up at the last day. This may not have been as difficult a concept to grasp for his first hearers as it is for us today. They would have been exposed to the teachings of the Pharisees, who, consistent with broad sweep of biblical teaching, held to a firm faith in the resurrection of the dead.

It is a term we repeat week by week in our affirmation of the creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” What do we mean by this? Certainly not some crude reconstruction of our current bodies (for which many of us may be relieved!). It is something considerably more complex than that. The apostle Paul spoke of it as a “mystery”, by which “… we will all be changed …”

He used the metaphor of a seed being sown into the ground. As the plant that arises from it differs in so many ways from the seed, so the resurrection life will be distinct from all that we experience in the here and now. In many ways it is difficult even to compare the two. Yet at the same time there are correspondences. We can recognize, for example, the plant that comes from a kernel of corn, or an acorn, or a nasturtium seed.

We see this in the resurrection of Jesus in the gospels. At times the disciples found it difficult to recognize him. He was able to walk through a locked door as it were only a shadow. He could apparently be in Jerusalem at one moment and in Galilee the next. The limitations of time and space seemed to mean nothing to him. Yet he was the same Jesus they had known before the crucifixion, right down to the nail marks in his hands.

Much to our frustration, the Bible does not offer a detailed description of what the resurrection of the dead will be like. The one thing we can be sure of, though, is that it will be glorious. Glorious enough that all the sorrows, all the pain, all the tragedies and injustices of this life, will pale by comparison. Yet somehow I cannot but believe that even they will have significance—though, like everything else, unimaginably transformed.

As I complete these remarks, we are now in Vancouver, with our daughter and son-in-law and our new granddaughter, Maddie. Although there are still remnants of snow on mountain peaks, the forsythia and the cherry trees are in full blossom—all a marvelous annual foretaste of the true and final resurrection that is yet to come.