Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Einstein
Practicing lent
sounds slick. My gift,
heart-full-of-pride. My rituals,
my restriction, my sacrifice.
Then I throw out my arms, open-handed.
Looking up,
giving up.
Let go, let up.
Incarnate,
the One who comes
have me. I let go,
practicing lent.
The end of the Story is the Beginning, when things start. Life in abundance received.
Without the Sacrifice I am nothing. Left to myself I am wholly a mess. Trust broken, hearts wrought. Fists clenched. Empty all. Naked, ashamed. Afraid to be known.
The beginning of the story was precision, perfect peace. Equal before God and one another.
Then humanity violated itself. Craving to rule, clutching power. We became a destruction, heart violation, betrayal. Damage done. Then world-weary. Worn out, simply used to being broken hearted. We forgot.
The end of the Story is the Beginning.
We know the end of the story,
But we live in our alienation, self-interest and suspicion. We live broken.
And God’s saying to us, trust me. I alone make promises. I alone will provide. The end of the story is your launch.
Into new life.
Yahweh Yireh.
The LORD will provide.
For Christians, the 40 days (plus Sundays) of Lent — the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday — is a time for reflection, renewal, and rededication.
But Lent has been a part of the Church life from the 2d Century on, and it’s a discipline and a season worthy of the entire Church. What is Lent? Essentially it is a time of preparation. As during Advent we prepare to celebrate the Advent of our Lord, so during Lent we prepare to enter in and participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is a time for us to recollect our minds and hearts toward the saving events of our faith. The Church Calendar is designed to keep our lives connected week by week to the life of Jesus. — Scot McKnight
I’ve written about Lent before and have some links below. Many Christians don’t participate in Lent or take it lightly; perhaps giving up chocolate or caffeine as way of depriving ourselves. But Julie Clawson author of Everyday Justice and blogger at One Hand Clapping says about this most misunderstood event: “Lent isn’t about denial, it is about transformation. It is the season in which we prepare to encounter Christ’s sacrifice by endeavoring to become more Christ like ourselves. ” (Emphasis mine.) I could not agree more.
I’m seriously considering letting go of Facebook for Lent. It often makes me anxious and confused and I wonder about its power over my mind and heart. Could I just let it fly away into the abyss of cyberspace for forty days and see what other more meaningful things I can fill it up with? I don’t know yet.
A Pastoral Word from Dr. Mark D. Roberts:
Let me note, at this point, that if you think of Lent as a season to earn God’s favor by your good intentions or good works, then you’ve got a theological problem. God’s grace has been fully given to us in Christ. We can’t earn more of it by doing extra things or by giving up certain other things in fasting. If you see Lent as a time to make yourself more worthy for celebrating Good Friday and Easter, then perhaps you shouldn’t keep the season until you’ve grown in your understanding of grace. If, on the contrary, you see Lent as a time to grow more deeply in God’s grace, then you’re approaching Lent from a proper perspective.
MH
A clear and powerful description of Lent by Dr. Mark D. Roberts , Senior Adviser and Theologian in Residence of Foundations for Laity Renewal, in the Hill Country of Texas outside of San Antonio.
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Other things I’ve written on Lent:
Lenton Series: Winter Slowly Receeds
Lenton Series: If you Were Homeless
Mine is an ordinary life
and it has taken me all my life to accept that idea.
I thought, dreamily
I was made for Big Things. Contrary, it seems.
I live ordinary days and ordinary nights.
I’m a simple person really, but something inside me
is constantly seeking more.
That means, I am never satisfied.
That means, I am always questioning.
That means, I am rarely happy.
Mine is an ordinary life, and I am new to accepting ordinary time. I crave
comfort, satisfaction, answers and joy. I long for
peace. I know ultimately that I am an ordinary person,
set on this glorious planet Earth.
I live ordinary days and ordinary nights.
Jesus came that we might have life, abundantly.
How should that change me? It changes everything.
He is a big God, I am a small, ordinary soul.
Get that straight — yes, therein lies joy.
So much to read, so little time. I know that. If you read nothing else from me in a long while, I hope you’ll read this post. It will not be long. (500+ words, a record.)
I have been writing (and living) out of a place of brokenness for so long that my story has become cliché and not honest – not dishonest exactly, but lacking the truth of my healing …. A fractured painful childhood, a tenuous if bullheaded short-lived career, accidental stay-at-home motherhood, and loss, depression and loneliness, even alcoholism. (And the biggest monster under my bed: being a feminist woman in the evangelical church.)
And now, this season that I cannot label because I am still living it.
Perhaps a place of abundance and healing, if only I would open my eyes and see.
When you are in pain, you tie experiences together to find truth and your story all too easily becomes stuck. I know this. Today. Living the life of Jesus is one of constant transformation. Renewal. Healing.
It is time to live into that healing.
Be the truth that I have experienced. Stop being “the abused child.” Stop being the frantic workaholic archetype striving for meaning in my work and looking for personal value in everything others do and say about me.
Stop living so empty.
Allow the One who fills, to fill me up overflowing.
Will I continue to talk about injustice? You’re damn straight! But I want to do it differently, do it with hope, and grace and peace.
With every part of me, I have wanted to be useful and in my cavernous need to be important I have invalidated myself. My story. For that I seek forgiveness and will endeavor to live out of Jesus’ fullness!
Mine is a story of healing and of transformation. Not because of anything I have done but out of the grace of God and by receiving love from my husband , my children, and from my community of believers.
But by holding on…
to my anger about my upbringing,
to my disappointment with being born woman into a man’s world,
and to my fear that if “allowed to fly” I will flounder, fall, and I will fail. Well,
I have allowed fear to rule and this is the day that it stops.
I want to live like I believe that the One who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it!
I am going to step toward trust.
Trust the words that I wrote today in the poem Nothing and Everything.
The Holy One accepts you for everything you are today and sees who you are becoming. For this Creator God made you, even chose you and is the architect of your life. The Holy One heals, because we sure need a healing. Especially when confronted by the hideous ogre of our envy and pride. The Holy One guides and has a plan.“Even for me?” I cry, in the shadowy, nocturnal hours of fear, anger, twisted truths, ignorance, self-delusion and distrust?“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.
I am going to step toward a life of abundance. Even for me, my soul quakes? Yes, even you.
MELODY
P.S. I am so grateful for my husband. And for the community of believers that I am a part of – it is a community of grace and abundance. And I am grateful for my online community which is becoming a rich source of love and support.
Some Days.
Some days are clues that no matter how far you’ve come,
you are nothing.
(And you are everything.)
Nothing and everything to the Divine and Holy One who loves – accepts – heals – guides – knows.
The Holy One loves you no matter how often you stumble.
The Holy One accepts you for everything you are today and sees who you are becoming.
For this Creator God made you, even chose you and is the architect of your life.
The Holy One heals, because we sure need a healing. Especially when confronted by the hideous ogre of our envy and pride.
The Holy One guides and has a plan.
“Even for me?” I cry, in the shadowy, nocturnal hours of fear, anger, twisted truths, ignorance, self-delusion and distrust?
“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.
The Holy One knows me better than I know myself,
leads me through the dark sheol of my own creating.
Patiently, kindly pulling me back when my motives, impure and self-seeking, make a collision course with life.
The Holy One is the perfect parent, understanding what I need, who I am and who I will become.
This Holy One believes when I cannot believe in myself.
For I know I am so frequently frail,
Failing,
falling,
far,
from the Holy One
who knows all, knows me, knows the future.
Even these days
when through my streaming hot tears of shame and regret, I can only look up.
“YES, even you” whispers The Holy One.
Some days.
Some days are cues to humble you. To learn that no matter
if you are nothing, you are everything
to the Holy One.
I never knew that there was a right or wrong way of reading the Bible.
I have always thought, naively I will now acknowledge, that all that mattered was how one responded to what they read in the Bible. Nope, I’ve been all wrong. I don’t know where I learned this idea either. I’ve absorbed a way of looking at the Scriptures that I never questioned.
“It’s how I was raised.”
What do I mean? Fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals (and I was taught to believe this but no longer) have a view of the Bible that it’s perfect, as in ” inerrant and infallible” by which they mean, it’s a divine product and its authority comes in “that God literally wrote it” by whispering his intents to people who then wrote it down (like God’s holy scribes). And unless it clearly was metaphor, most every word was literally the truth, word for word from God. These people also believe that the Bible is basically all God wants us to know in communicating his will to us, which precludes the work of the Holy Spirit and prayer, among other things. They believe the Bible has everything we need and is totally relevant to the Christian life today. That it is simple and plain, obvious; meaning if you just read it you’ll “just get it.” There’s a morsel of goodness in that idea that anyone can read the Bible. Unfortunately, even though anyone can read it isn’t simple! What about the fact that it was written in languages we do not read or speak (most of us) and in a culture and time that we know nothing about. And the last, most heinous thing that simplistic reading of the Bible brings is the idea that one can pick and pull verses out of the context, not believing context is that important. They read the Bible seeking blessings and affirmations for life.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
I do believe, and it is important to affirm, as Temper Longman says in How to Read Genesis, that the Bible is:
“… grounded in the ultimate divine authorship of the whole. Thus in spite of a variety of styles, genres, themes and motifs, it is important to ask how the parts fit into the whole.”
And that is what I have known. I guess one can make the Bible say pretty much whatever you want it to if you work at it. People do it all the time! I’m forty-five years old, been reading the Bible for myself since high school, and in many ways this is how I have always understood things.
That is what makes thinking about it in a new way so frightening.
I have to admit that I’m learning.
That fact should not be embarrassing, but it is. People don’t like to admit very often that they don’t know something. We all like to come off as experts, if not experts than knowledgeable, if not knowledgeable then at least well-informed. (
(Sigh)). It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong, uninformed, even lacking knowledge. It is hard to admit but I believe if I’m willing to do that then perhaps others will become open to considering the same.
Do I dare even talk about this topic of reading the Bible? I am by no means an expert but I’ve read some things recently. I am armed and dangerous but I’ll list my sources so that you can do your own homework. (And you always should.)
Here’s what I’ve learned.
The Bible is a piece of literature.
It is a book made up of books. It is a big story of God and the world. It is made up of stories and poems that tell us about God. It is also a series of smaller stories. It is, like any other book you read, written within a genre and knowing the type of genre you are reading helps you know how you are supposed to read it; whether it is poetry, myths, parables, history, legends or a combination. And like other literature you study you should know a little of the customs and culture of the time it was written.
“The truth of the matter is that the proper interpretation of any piece of literature, and in particular a text as ancient and important as the Bible, deserves our careful reflection.” — T. Longman.
Hermeneutics is just a technical name for interpretation or “how you read.”
There is a way to read the Bible for what it is not just for what we’d like it to say. And as we learn to interpret the Bible — as literature, within a genre, written in a time and place, a culture, with a certain purpose, we are less likely to be “Biblical Literalists.” Just because you find verses that supports your view doesn’t mean you’ve probed fully the biblical view.
How we read the Bible has become very divisive among Christians and has been a contributing factor in the “culture wars.” Biblical literalists fear the “culture slide or culture creep” and tightly hold a grip on the Church and on their ideas; that a few texts yanked out of any context or culture, are prescriptive of how to “do church” for all time. This keeps churches from changing, in ways that may seem obvious to those of us (women and men) being raised with a different way of looking at Scriptures – raised to think, study and apply scripture for ourselves.
I do believe that the Bible guides us and has everything to say to us in the twenty-first century, it can and should guide us, it changes our ideas about our moral and intellectual life, it forms how we think and behave, how we treat others, and transforms us and shapes who we are becoming …
But …
It’s all about how you read and interpret the Bible.
I think there may be many people in the Church today who were raised to be biblical literalists. I was. I no longer believe this is correct in fact I know now that it is wrong. But I don’t exactly know what I do think, yet. That’s why I’m “developing my biblical hermeneutic.”
I’m learning that there are some that believe there are lots of parts of the bible that you cannot take literally, either as historical fact or direct will of God.
I agree with Tom Wright when he says that the authority of God is embodied in Jesus himself, not in the literal words of the Bible. (Loosely quoted.)
Of course how you read and interpret is subject to the wisdom and biases of humans.
Everyone comes at the Bible with a “world view.” We are all guilty of cherry picking verses to be factual and literal truth or determining that something is cultural. Everyone does it.
Take 1 Timothy for instance.
“Women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with hair braided, or with gold, pearl, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”
If you read it literally, women are not permitted to teach or have authority over men but also they are not to braid their hair or wear pearls or gold or expensive clothes. Also women are responsible for the origin of sin in the world. The “good news” is that we can be saved by bearing children. If you interpret it literally these are God’s instructions/restrictions for behavior and roles of women. Some churches choose to prohibit women’s leadership in churches because they use this verse to “prove” that God doesn’t approve. But they happily ignore the rest of the verses as cultural.
That’s cherry-picking.
But if you look as the Bible as being written by a person in a particular time and culture, if you know the historical cultural setting they were writing in then you see that this is how one man in the early Christian church saw things.
When you read it with context, looking at the contrast between this and other texts in the New Testament, if we recognize or listen to more than one voice speaking about the role of women we can seek to discern which voice to honor. In the New Testament there are examples of women apostles and teachers, women financing the ministry, women sitting at Jesus’ feet learning from him with the other disciples, a woman being the first to speak to Jesus after his Resurrection. These stories all empower of women in the early church. You can see this if you don’t restrict your reading to Timothy’s set of verses, which are very restrictive.
Listen to more than one voice.
Look for themes and overarching ideas. I believe one must recognize more than just one voice in trying to figure out anything in the Bible. And it takes discernment and wisdom and doing your homework in trying to figure out which voices to honor. I look at how Jesus treated women when it comes to this topic. I do not look at the verses about early church as prescriptive of how we should run our churches today. But that’s just me. But as you can see, a lot is at stake in how we read and understand the Bible.
Everyone wants to read the bible for today – for guidance and wisdom for today’s problems, for today’s trials, for this moment. The problem inherent in that is that without doing the hard work of asking the questions of the context and placement in history, we endanger our ability to hear God. I am greatly encouraged with the knowledge that there are essential ideas from God that are clear and reinforced many places in scripture. Those broad strokes from God are the things that guide us — point us to God and deepen our relationship with the trinity.
Those are my thoughts offered humbly because like I said, I am no expert and I am likely much too opinionated.
On the topic of unlearning and learning How to Read the Bible Again:
And to add to my list of commentary suggestions (from why I’m Afraid to Read the Bible):
Melody
I have never read the entire Bible, whole. I have studied various books at length, sometimes on my own but more often with a group of others. But I have never opened the whole of the great book of God’s WORD, Old and New Testaments, and soaked it in as a grand story. Of course, any “sheep” knows, don’t they, that the Bible wasn’t written to us but for us. The Bible is not a handbook of do’s and don’ts, but rather a beautiful story which we can carefully apply to our lives. And if we fear what it says, if we are unwilling to challenge and question it, we deserve to be ignorant fools (like I have been.)
I have never put my full attention, put my full brain, toward the Bible. I have been afraid of reading the entire thing and these are my reasons.
I am afraid of my own ignorance. I don’t know what I don’t know. If I don’t know then I can continue stumbling in the darkness. At least it is a familiar place, my ignorance. Sounds dumb when you actually write it down. But how many of us do this in the Church? Far too many.
I am afraid of what the Bible actually says. For too long I have simply listened to others and accepted what the “experts” say about spiritual things without really challenging any of it.
I am a frequently boiling pot, kept simmering by the cool head of Tom, my husband.1 He often keeps me from boiling over. It seems that he will be doing this a lot as we began reading the entire Bible in one year – a challenge from our church they are calling: Eat This Book.
So I would add another point to my list of reasons that I have never the read the Bible in its entirety.
I am afraid of how I will respond to the Bible as a woman. We all have a worldviews and as such, we read the Bible differently. I respond as a woman. How can I not? And that is different from my pastors (both male) and my husband, and most of the commentary I am reading. As a woman I have different questions. I am afraid of what to do with those. How do I sort out how much of my response needs to be talked about, questioned, and challenged?
I look forward to diving in. Already Genesis has perplexed me, made me extremely angry, and left me with more questions than answers when I look at it story by story. I want to be able to see the big picture — to soar over the parts that jump out to me as problematic and see God and hear God, asking him what he wants me to focus on. I look forward to how this Grand Story changes my life.
Just last week, my pastor was preaching on Gen 1-3. He was explaining a very important idea about how we look at scripture overall, which I mentioned already, that the Bible is not written to us but for us and that much of it is metaphor and poetry.
But then he highlighted the verses about man and woman becoming one. Now I’ll acknowledge that it is beautiful, the whole picture of marriage. But I actually thought it would have been more important (coming from my worldview, as a woman) or at least more valuable to women, if he had taught about how we are both, male and female created in God’s image. To emphasize and thus explain what the Hebrew word ezer (helper) actually means. These verses being misunderstood have diminished and hurt women. He thought the other verses were more important. We disagreed nicely by email.
I have to admit that how we interacted mattered a great deal to me and I’m learning that this is more important to me than me being right. I shared my thoughts with him and he heard me. I felt heard. And this is a form of giving someone respect.
And so I would add another point to my list of reasons why I haven’t read the Bible it it’s entirely.
I am afraid of the disagreements among Christians. I hate the way that Christians wrangle with one another over the baggage that goes into “being theological.” Are you on the Left or are you on the Right? Are you conservative or liberal? Are you a feminist? Egalitarian or a Complementaran? A new Creationist or …. ? I don’t even know all the camps of disagreement and I don’t want to.
If you haven’t yet, I’d encourage you to read The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight, which will help you rethink how you read the Bible. Other resources I am finding helpful are the NIV Compact Bible Commentary and the Women’s Bible Commentary.
The important truth is that I cannot allow my fear of my own ignorance, my fear of this faith tradition that I have followed my whole life, or my fear of disagreement keep me from the next step in my faith journey.
Being that I can be hot-headed, I just might say or do something stupid along the way. And I would hate that but I cannot allow it to keep me silent.
A friend said to me this week: “I am praying that Jesus would guide you as you study His word. May we always be in search for bringing glory to Him!” Amen! I suspect that I will be sharing more of this as I go along.
I wonder, have you read the entire Bible and if not, ask yourself what are you afraid of? If we seek to follow Christ we are to live in the Bible today and every day. The question is how? Let us join together in our KNOWLEDGE not our ignorance. Let us be SEEKERS together.
“Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant me so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that I may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reign with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen” But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
Jesus, according to John 16:13
Melody
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1 Tom and I have an egalitarian or mutually submissive marriage. And I was challenged by Rachel Held Evans (she does this a lot) this week . She asked the question of whether more people need to talk about the ways of egalitarian marriages, to give others an idea of what it’s like. I never talk about mine. It’s precious to me and I’d not want to ugly it by my bumbling attempts to describe it. But I’ll be thinking about that and try to weave things into my blog as appropriate.
2 Blackhawk’s pastors have given us a challenge. “By reading the Bible every day, our hope is that we’ll become a people who are shaped by the Scriptures – people who are marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” And they are taking it a step further by providing mini videos and teaching tools. It’s quite good. I am grateful to attend a church that doesn’t spoon feed, that helps the “sheep” figure some of these things out for ourselves, but also provide solid ways to learn.
The things to look for in reading Genesis are:
3 “Helper”- ezer. Gen 2:18 According to R. David Freedman, the Hebrew word used to describe woman’s help (ezer) arises from two Hebrew roots that mean “to rescue, to save,” and “to be strong” (Archaeology Review (9 [1983]: 56–58). Ezer is found twenty-one times in the Old Testament. Of these references, fourteen are used for God and four for military rescue. Psalm 121:1–2 is an example of ezer used for God’s rescue of Israel: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Trying to write my story
is sometimes like cutting back flesh, recently pink and scarred
to find the plain cold truth.
I want to heal and so I wonder if this is wise. This rending,
backward into ancient despair
to find the open rot inside. It is a kind of hell.
But I go there.
I climb into that putrid place with
the fresh hope of Jesus.
Tonight, he wiped my spilling tears,
crawled around inside my wounds, and
held my thumping, aching heart
while it was tender and sore.
He took that pain. Jesus was here
inside my story, so full
of sorrow and regret.
Foul, bitter, wretched I know that
I still am. Quietly, he’s saying
let me rewrite the end.
I must apologize in advance for this essay. I could delete it, I almost did. Perhaps I still shall.
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I stopped dreaming. I realized this as I sat in church yesterday.
It’s hard to feel hopeful when you no longer dream. What you conceived for your life is not this, when you look around and hate who you have become.
[It takes me a long time to learn things. I am hard-headed. ]
Perhaps, it is too much to ask? I just wanted to be significant. I imagined that I would do something amazing with my life — all those years of working on Urbana conventions, I felt I was doing something important. Now what?
Is this it? I am a mother and not that good at it, seemingly always failing my children, a wife which I will never write about, a terrible homemaker, yes I mean lazy and bad at it, an infrequent friend and missing sister, ungrateful daughter who just feels forgotten, a hobbyist-at-best photographer and a sometimes I put words together on the page and call myself a writer … Even this blog is simply an exercise in navel gazing. And here I go again.
My fight with my maker is almost daily – my depression or remission, anxiety seems constant, recovery from alcoholism, battling with the isolation, feeling only loneliness.
I know that I am foremost an ingrate. I don’t need reminders. I have so much! Four beautiful children, a home and husband and all I can think is, … I thought I would be something, more. I put these words here for what?
I feel empty. I feel useless. What purpose does my life serve? Yes, I am looking for evidence of good, any good that I do, and hope.
God is faithful to his promises. What are they, his promises? What has God promised?
I’ve already lost whatever I heard in the sermon yesterday.
He said “God’s results will look different than what we dream or imagine, what we prescribe for ourselves. The book of Isaiah is filled with a promise that wasn’t fulfilled for 700 years. God is not predictable but he is faithful. “
I am filled with longing — sick with it. Perhaps this too is the waiting of Advent.
At times, we wait just for hope. We know we are ungrateful. We know we are useless to Him. He doesn’t need us.
We are simply empty and waiting.
“In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.” — Hamlet
I don’t know about you, but when I first read this it shocked and appalled me.
During the times of Jesus, the religious leaders prayed at least three times a day and always thanked God for three specific things:
In the Babylonian Talmud, a Rabbi still says that one is obliged to recite the following three berakhot daily: “Who has made me a Jew”, “who has not made me a woman”, “who has not made me an ignoramus.”
Ouch! I’ll bet a lot of men in seminary today secretly thank God they are not a woman or an ignoramus, that is if they think of women at all.
I love pastor Eugene Cho’s reflection thanking God he is a man (tongue in cheek kind of) saying:
“There’s great privilege and power in simply being a man. This is why I contend that the treatment of women is the oldest injustice in human history. We can talk equality and equity all day long and while we can acknowledge how far we’ve come, we still clearly live – even in 2011 – where there’s great advantage in simply being a man.”
This is why the message of Jesus is so powerful.
The apostle Paul in Galatians 3:28 subverted the dominant worldview by saying in the Kingdom of God, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Powerful, meaningful words to me of the way God intended things and what he promises to restore in us all. And yet, I easily become discouraged about the state of things.
I needed prudence yesterday when within the same hour I read two very different posts.
One was this post by a pastor saying that women should not read scripture in church. Apparently, according to this writer, women are not to read scripture out loud in public. WOW. I post it just to give perspective to some of my more progressive and enlightened friends about why I always seem concerned with women in the church. It’s sexist crap and I found myself wishing a Bible scholar like Scot McKnight, or Sharon Hodde Miller, or Mary Elizabeth Fisher would please take him on. I wrote him asking where he got the idea that only MEN should be the ones to do public reading of scripture. It was is a sincere question as a Christ follower who loves scripture passionately, because I have never seen anything there that prescribes such an action. He promised to write on it soon.
And then I saw this ebook by one of those wonderful people by Scot McKnight, titled Junia is Not Alone. You must pick it up. You must read it. He encourages more women to study, research and speak out on “women in the ancient world, about women in the early church, and women in church history … many whose stories are untold.” Amen!
Amazon says:
It tells the story of Junia, a female apostle honored by Paul in his Letter to the Romans—and then silenced and forgotten for most of church history. But Junia’s tragedy is not hers alone. She’s joined by fellow women in the Bible whose stories of bold leadership have been overlooked. She’s in the company of visionary women of God throughout the centuries whose names we’ve forgotten, whose stories go untold, and whose witness we neglect to celebrate. But Junia is also joined by women today—women who are no longer silent and who are experiencing a re-voicing as they respond to God’s call to lead us into all truth.
Scot says:
Moving toward my second decade of teaching college students, more than half of whom grow up in a church, of this I am certain: churches don’t talk about the women of the Bible. Of Mary mother of Jesus they have heard, and even then not all of what they have heard is accurate. But of the other woman saints of the Bible, including Miriam, the prophetic national music director, or Esther, the dancing queen, or Phoebe, the benefactor of Paul’s missions, or Priscilla, the teacher, they’ve heard almost nothing.
Why the silence?
Why do we consider the mother/wife of Proverbs 31 an ideal female image but shush the language of the romantic Shulammite woman of the Song of Songs? Why are we so obsessed with studying the “subordination” of women to men but not a woman like Deborah, who subordinated men and enemies? Why do we believe that we are called to live out Pentecost’s vision of Spirit-shaped life but ignore what Peter predicted would happen? That “(i)n the last days… your sons and daughters will prophesy…” and that “(e)ven on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.”
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Sometimes God answers your prayers in strange ways.
Not a direct response obviously, but rather this was an encouragement to me. Women are quite literally being silenced in the church by men like Tim Challies and Piper who talks about women’s submission even with in abusive marriages. And movements like Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church and his crazy notions about men and women.
In my article, The Voice of The Feminine I said:
I’ve been thinking about the lack of presence and example of women in the Church. That Sunday* at my church in particular, women were simply spectators, the audience, the bystanders, the recipients and beneficiaries.
And the more I thought I could not remember the last time one of the teaching pastors suggested a book they were reading written by a woman. Women are never quoted in my church. Female theologians or scholars are never referenced or even mentioned, probably because the pastors don’t read them. I can’t remember the last time, if ever, a pastor in my church has suggested or referred to or quoted a female theologian, religious author, or historian. Am I the only one that notices these things?
The entire thing makes me very sad. And so tired. I am tired of the male dominated culture on the platform, as authors, as experts, as theologians, as speakers at conferences and in the Church at large. Considering women are half the church (some would say more) I do not buy the argument that there aren’t capable women to select from, though I’ve been told that very thing. “The women haven’t risen up who have the gift of teaching.”
Risen up? To be honest, one would think in a service-by-gifts based church there must not be any qualified gifted female teachers. I attend an EFCA church of 5,000. You do the math.
*this is not always true!
But there are wonderful people who are articulating a different reality. And I am most grateful to them. Perhaps in the coming weeks I will try to highlight more of them.
Theologian Willard Swartley talks about the degree to which our ideologies warp our reading of Scripture.
“Our willingness to be changed by what we read, to let the Bible function as a “window” through which we see beyond self-interested ideologies, and not a “mirror” which simply reflects back to us what we want it to show. Biblical interpretation, if it is worthy to be so called, will challenge the ideology of the interpreter. It can and will lead to change, because people do not come to the text thinking as God thinks, or even as the people of God thought in serving as agents of divine revelation. Interpreters [must] listen to the text carefully enough not to like it. [When they do so] it powerfully demonstrates that the text’s message has been heard and respected.”
This is challenging because I am full of self-interest when it comes to being a Christian woman. I am a proud woman and this is my tribe which I feel a responsibility to care for, not because I crave authority, but because I long to see every women and girl carrying out every gift from God in their lives, not just in the marketplace, but within the church! I am hopeful that this will happen in my lifetime.
Much of the church is stifling more than half of the church and our “interpretations” are silencing many incredible women. My heart weeps with that thought.
MHH
Other things I have written on the subject:
There is more, just search for WOMEN in the categories.
Logic & Imagination 