As I said, my name is Tom Robinson. I'm really
grateful for the invitation to speak here
at ACU and at the summit. I'm the minister of
the Manhattan Church of Christ in New York
City, but I went to high school growing up just
a few blocks over here on East North
15th Street. Small world kind of thing, you
know? And went to Abilene High School and
so forth. Did a BA and an MA here at ACC, is
the way it was then. I bring you greetings
from the Manhattan Church of Christ. And also I
just, it's hard, I just really want to apologize
though for the Giants beating the Cowboys last
night. I know it was supposed to be the
big party in the news stadium and everything,
and it was very impolite for the Giants to
beat the Cowboys, but what can you do? I mean,
what can you do? I hope that we will have
a good journey together. This is a three-part
class. Obviously I'd love it if you were here
for all parts of it, but I know how those
things go. Today we are, the topic is a community
without barriers, and the focus of the
community without barriers is that of the role
of women
in the worship, leadership of the church, and
all of those kinds of things. This issue
that has been discussed so many times and
talked about and so forth. We are on a three-step
journey in this class. The first is dealing
with the relationship of Jesus to women. Women
meet Jesus. I did not know when I gave that
title to it that there was going to be another
session that you probably should be going to
this afternoon dealing with the very same
thing. Tomorrow at 9:30 rather than at 10,
we'll talk about women in Paul's letters and
then on Wednesday we'll talk about the early
church and today. Anybody that has ever engaged
in discussions around this issue knows that
it's fought with all kinds of things there.
It is complex in itself. It is emotional. As
one thinks about the roles of women in
leadership of the church, we have a long
history. There's both a long history of Christianity
and a long history in our own fellowship that
one has to deal with. There are traditions.
There are senses of traditions. There's a sense
of where we are in relationship to the
society around us. There are all those
arguments from scripture, differing ways of approaching
scripture and so forth that get to be applied.
There are concerns about justice. There are
concerns about whether those are appropriate
categories to apply and so forth. I can't
deal with all of those things, obviously.
Nobody can. It's a vast discussion and it
touches on all kinds of things within our faith
and our relationship to the scriptures.
What I can do, because this comes out of my own
background and my own expertise, is to
talk about the New Testament scriptures in
relation to this issue, but also to reflect
on them in relationship to experience to some
extent. You ultimately end up touching just
about everything, though, when you get into
this. We will see how different things are
connected together, and in fact I want to
affirm that very much. Because the process
of reading, of understanding, of applying the
New Testament to our lives as Christians
and in the church, well, first of all, one
needs to say it's just an amazing joy. It's
a wonder that we have this text that we get to
look at and to apply to our lives. It is
an ongoing joy. But at the same time, it's also
a challenge and it's also sometimes excruciatingly
difficult to know exactly how to do it. It's a
process that's always been important for
our movement, for the Stone Campbell movement,
because we've been focused on scripture interpretation
all along. We are at the 200th anniversary of
the writing of the Declaration and Address
by Thomas Campbell back in 1809, and the focus
that it gave on the role of the authority
of scripture. For us in New York City, the
Manhattan Church of Christ, we are at the
199th anniversary of the beginning of the
Church of Christ at New York, as it originally
called itself, back in 1810. And so we are
talking about that and celebrating that. And
that was a restorationist, an intent to find in
the scriptures a way of being, a way of
doing things that would be pleasing to God,
that would be uniting to people, and so forth.
And so when we take on an issue that has such a
broad and massive impact, and I do want
to emphasize the massive impact of half of the
human race and more than half of the typical
church attendance. Well, all are affected by it.
Everybody is affected by it. And with
such a long history that's been so vexed in so
many ways, it's important that one not
approach it as a sort of a stand-alone thing,
as a stand-alone issue, but rather it is part
of an overall approach to the scriptures, to
the Bible, to God, for that matter, of
how we engage with the scriptures, how we
engage with the authority of the scriptures,
the application of them, how we engage with the
God who is there. Because every time you
come to an interpretation of the scriptures
that you apply to life, you're saying something
about the God that you worship. You're saying
something about who that God is, what that
God is concerned about, what God values, what
God empowers, and so forth. And so the engagement
with God is very, very important. And it might
be prudent as one is going into a series of
classes like this if I said that, well, we're
just going to go back and we're just going
to read the scriptures, we're just going to
open it up and pretend that we're reading
them all for the very first time, and we'll
just see where it goes. But I'd have to say
that would be false, at least in this case.
I've been engaged with this issue for 45 years
since I first started preaching in little towns
not far from here. And I'm sure most
of you are not looking at these texts for the
first time either. You probably know the
texts that I'm talking about. You may have them
memorized and so forth. You probably
have argued about them and talked about them
with others. And my ministry is within a congregation
that has studied these things diligently, that
spends a lot of time studying the scriptures
on this and other issues, and that does employ,
use women basically in the same ways as men
in our worship services. And so I don't want to
be coy or mysterious about it. I want to
give my conclusions first. And so then you can,
you know, everybody can scatter after
that. I believe that the scriptures give us
powerful guidance on this whole topic. With
all my heart, I believe that the scriptures
tell us and they show us that God has privileged
every Christian, man, woman, boy or girl. Every
Christian has been granted the privilege
by God to use every spiritual gift that God has
given to them, in any setting, public
or private, so long as they are genuinely
advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
good news of Him, and acting in a way that
manifests real love to others. And in this,
I believe that God is deeply involved because
He is the one through the Holy Spirit who
gives us those spiritual gifts and that He
wants to see us use them. God intends His
people to be a community without barriers.
That's the title of this series. One in Christ,
all using the very gifts that the Spirit of God
has given them to the fullest possible
extent so that we grow together to the whole
measure of the fullness of Christ, as Paul
said in Ephesians 4:13. I believe that the
limitations that are placed
on women in two congregations in the New
Testament, in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 14:34 and
35, and
in Ephesus, 1 Timothy 2:11 and 12, are imposed
for cause. They are not universal and arbitrary
restrictions placed on women simply for being
born women rather than men. Though they do
respond to a society and a culture in which any
open participation by a woman in public
assembly was certainly potentially and often in
reality scandalous and offensive, in these
cases that cultural context was combined with
particular problems or offenses that brought
the specific limitations spelled out in the letters.
And last of all, just for this particular part,
I believe that this view is a genuine restoration
of New Testament Christianity and is true to
the powerful heart of our movement, that
revolutionary heart of our movement that always
sends us back to the Bible wherever we have
been to look again and to restore what is there
in the Scriptures.
So we are going to talk more about the ideas of
restoration and law and all those kinds
of things next time and on our third time
together. But I want to start just a little
bit by thinking about the nature of the New
Testament Scriptures. We affirm the Scriptures
and the New Testament, we affirm the whole
Bible as inspired by God, as authoritative
for us. And that can mean a lot of different
things for different people and I am not going
to go into a full exposition of the inspiration
of the Scriptures by any means, but at least
one thing, certainly something that it means
for me and I think probably it means for you
is that the Scriptures are as God wants them to
be. God is involved in them. They are a
revelation of God, they are the Word of God.
And therefore the shape that they have, what
they emphasize gives us guidance as to what God
emphasizes, what he wants, what he is
all about.
And so it is striking to me that when we look
at the New Testament that God has given to
us and we think about it from that point of
view. What has God given us here? And this
shapes somewhat the way that these talks are
structured. What do you see? What is it that
God is trying to do in this? First of all you
see the story of Jesus, you see the narrative
of Jesus, and you see the narrative of Jesus
again. And you see the narrative of Jesus
again. And you see the proclamation of Jesus
again. Four times over, different ways of
doing it, different points of view, variations
all across, but a united front and united
understanding of Jesus. We are drawn into the
life, the story, the journeys, the teaching,
the whole experience of being a disciple to
Jesus through the narratives. So that they
proclaim to us what is most important. Four
times over, at the beginning, we are to immerse
ourselves in Jesus.
Then what comes next? Book of Acts, right?
Everybody knows their books to the Bible.
What's the Book of Acts about? It's a lot of
things. I mean there are all kinds of narratives,
but the fundamental thread I would argue is the
way the Holy Spirit takes those disciples
that are, when we last see them in the Gospel,
are still struggling along and leads them
out across all kinds of difficulties and
barriers to take that message of Jesus, to take what
Jesus had started, to take the reality of what
he had done in his life, the announcement
of what had happened in Jesus, and take it out
into the world. And they overcome this
barrier and that barrier against Gentiles and
crossing over to Samaritans and speaking
to Ethiopians and going into Europe and all the
way to Rome and imprisonment and stoning
and everything in order to do that. Driven,
pushed, sometimes kicking and screaming, like
Peter going to Cornelius, to cross these
barriers so that they take the Gospel. God will not
allow it to stop until it, as the narrative
goes, symbolically goes from Jerusalem to
the end of the earth, symbolized by Rome, which
in its own terms was of course the center
of the earth. Then you have what next? You have
letters. Well letters are very distinctive.
We're going to talk a lot more about them
tomorrow, but letters are distinctive. They
take you into the living life of a community,
because you're reading the mail. They have
problems with them because you're only reading
one side of what is almost always a dialogue,
so there are difficulties about it, but you go
in and you see how living communities dealt
with this reality that had exploded among them.
And they go forth to deal with it. And
of course a lot of the letters are written into
situations where there are real problems,
a lot of different kinds of problems across the
board as one reads these texts. They show
us how Peter, and especially of course Paul,
helped people to understand what the implications
of the Gospel were and to draw them into the
reality of what Jesus was doing. And then
of course finally, we won't talk too much about
this, is the Revelation, the Apocalypse
at the end. The church by the end of the 1st
century was still infinitesimally small and
the vast Roman Empire, one of the most powerful
empires that there had ever been. And yet
as they were persecuted and becoming more and
more persecuted, here was the vision that
said that this is God's work in the world. This
is the story, the story that is going
to triumph. This is the one that's going to be
there at the end. And ultimately it will
be brought into that amazing city where the
river of the water of life flows down the
center from the throne of God. And the healing
of the nations takes place there, all of the
healing of human life. And so as you look at
that, you see a way of doing things that
is quite different from the way in which God
worked in the Old Testament. It is a way of
focusing on Jesus, of seeing the way the Spirit
works, of going into the lives of people to
see the struggles and the difficulties they
have and of seeing that God is bringing this
all through. And it helps us if we follow that,
if we really strive to restore New Testament
Christianity, to allow it to show us what's
really important and to avoid imposing an
external grid on God's choices. And so we are
going to start today talking about Jesus.
Even though the controversial passages, as
everybody knows, are over there in the Epistles,
we want to talk about Jesus because we are
disciples to Jesus. He is Lord. And the narrative
of the Gospel takes us into His ministry so
that we can watch it. We can share in what
those early disciples went through. John and
Mark and Matthew take us along and they lead
us through and they point out what's important
and they help us to understand this and they
help us to see how somebody failed in their
understanding so that we can grasp it and
we move along and ultimately, as John said at
the end of it, it's all written so that
you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, and by believing you may have
life in His name. Jesus had a very distinctive
profile in relationship to His times. When
we read Paul and we read Peter, they are not
innovators. They are not setting a new standard.
They are, use an image that I think I stole
from N.T. Wright somewhere in his many writings,
they are playing the symphony that Jesus wrote.
They are not doing the same thing but they
are carrying through what Jesus had begun.
Jesus is the one who takes the whole tradition
that had gone before, the whole Torah, and He
fulfills that Torah but also shows how
it should be fulfilled. When the Pharisees, you
can do it on a lot of different fronts
and people at Jesus, but let's just take the
Pharisees for one. The Pharisees, they saw
the commandment to keep the Sabbath, for
example, and the instinct was, well, let's make sure
we keep the Sabbath. And we make a fence around
the law and we specify exactly the regulations
by which one keeps the Sabbath and we have all
of them. Jesus just makes the point of
not doing that. He makes the point of asking,
what is it, what's the Sabbath about? That
it is God sanctifying and hallowing a day. How
do you hallow a day? Do you hallow a day
by healing somebody on the Sabbath? Yes, you do.
And I don't care how many Pharisees
say that you can't lift up your palate on the
Sabbath day, I'm still going to heal people.
I'm still going to have them stretch out their
arms. I'm going to do it because that's who
the God is that I serve. Or think about maybe a
more directly relevant passage, the passage
about, well, you have a number of passages
about divorce from Mark 10 and Matthew 19.
Everybody knew Deuteronomy 24, the regulations
about divorce. They come and ask Jesus about
it. They know that the question, and we can't
go into the details right now, but the question
is how do you approach those regulations that
are given in Deuteronomy 24? Do you take them
to try to use them legally to establish as much
power for men as you possibly can? Which
is sort of the way it had been done, that a man
can divorce his wife for any cause basically.
If you have in there, it's for any indecency or
that he simply doesn't like her. He divorces
his wife in Deuteronomy 24. And do you just
carry that through and enthusiastically enforce
the law? Or do you recognize it as Jesus does
with regret and say that it's for the hardness
of your heart and it's not God's original
intent? And you go back and look at what God
originally intended and say it was not what God
was doing to set up a structure where
men could just simply throw away their wives.
Rather, God wanted a man to leave his father
and mother and cleave through his wife and the
two become one. And what God joins together
should not be put asunder. How do you read it?
What's it about? Jesus gives that distinct
profile. In contrast to the Pharisees, in
contrast to the Zealots, the Romans, the Essenes,
the Sadducees, even John the Baptist for that
matter, he does it in all of these situations.
So what we want to do is to see the distinctive
profile of our Lord. And we've got to go quickly,
my goodness. Time passes quickly. Let's start
with, we just have to do some vignettes, very
quick vignettes. Think about the woman at the
well. John 4. What do you see?
Well, Jesus has just talked to Nicodemus, this
leader of the Jews, in John 3,
talking to him seriously about being born again.
He comes to Samaria, to this little
town of Sychar at the well. It's the middle of
the day. A woman's there. He asks for a
drink. She's astonished. His disciples have
gone into town. You remember the story. I
can't go into all of it. But as one looks at
that, and we've just read about Nicodemus,
you see that Jesus, as he encounters this
woman, the signs of all the situation are
that she's basically an outcast woman. As we
know, Jesus can tell that she's been married
five times. The guy that she's living with now,
she's evidently functioning as a concubine
to somebody, so that means she has no rights in
relationship to that whole relationship.
He knows all of that. And yet he speaks to her
in exactly the same way that he spoke
to Nicodemus. There's not the least hint of any
condescension, or any thought that this
woman is not worth his time. Jesus understood
her situation, and even when he brings it
up, it is not in order to embarrass her, but in
order to highlight her honesty. As she
had said, I have no husband, and Jesus said,
you're right in saying I have no husband.
Yes you said truly. The woman is maybe a little
uncomfortable, as people often say, at least
the commentaries often say, you know, once you
switch the subject, I see you're a prophet,
what about our worship thing? Jesus just simply
follows her right along into that. He doesn't
try to embarrass her, but he leads her, goes
right with her in that conversation. And as
one watches this remarkable interaction, it
opens up that Jesus just takes this opportunity
to bring out a whole series of revelations
about himself, and about God, and so forth.
He starts off with talking about living water,
and just as he had talked about the spirit
and wind with Nicodemus, and being born again,
and had helped Nicodemus to move from a literalistic
understanding to a more spiritual
understanding, so with this woman he does
exactly the same
thing, talking about the water. And revealing
this water and talking about it as we gradually
learn is revealing the spirit, because the
spirit is going to be given as a river of
living water flowing out of the heart of
believers as we learn John 7. And so it's to
this Samaritan
woman that Jesus chose to begin to reveal the
identity, the reality of the spirit. And
that reality is important because it's
connected to God who is the spirit, as he tells her.
And so this leads to him revealing to her, with
her, the coming new forms of worship
that are not centered on any particular
location or any particular group. Rather Jesus says
that in any place people may worship the Father
in spirit and in truth, because God is spirit.
He's that living water, the God that flows into
any place and sanctifies at any heart
and sanctifies it. And he's seeking just such
people to worship him, breaking down
the barriers of race and ethnicity and gender
and all of those things. And so as one looks
at it by conventional norms, as everyone always
recognizes, there are at least three big barriers
between Jesus and this woman that should not
have been, should have kept the conversation
from ever happening. First of all, she's a
Samaritan. Second, she's a woman or vice versa
maybe. Third, she doesn't worship God correctly.
Jesus ought not to be having this conversation.
His disciples themselves are surprised that
he's talking to her. And yet Jesus simply
refused to be put off by these known
hostilities and theological and cultural differences.
He refused to respect the barrier that said
that he was not to speak to, much less to
teach a woman. He broke down the barriers
because he knew the character of the God that
he was revealing to the world. That God is
spirit and one worships him in spirit and
by truth and genuine worship and it is for
anyone, Samaritans, Jews, men, women, all
approach God equally. And third, it was to this
woman that Jesus first articulates the
fact that he is the Messiah, at least as far as
we know in the Gospel of John. Others had
hinted at it and pointed to it, but this is the
time when he specifically says, I who
speak to you am he. And she in her turn then
responds to all of that by leading her townspeople
to Jesus. So it is a remarkable narrative.
That's the reason John gives so much space
to it because it is so important in the flow of
everything. Take another example, well
known example that you can, you've no doubt
studied and thought about in Luke 7. That
woman of the city who comes to Jesus, it's just
one of the most amazing situations that
you can imagine. Jesus is there at dinner with
a Pharisee, prominent man, teacher who's
accepting of Jesus, welcomes him into his home
and so forth. Has it reclining at the
meal and so forth, this banquet that he has set
for Jesus. So it's a very positive situation
and except of course as it unfolds we recognize
that the Pharisee is really checking Jesus
to see whether he really is a prophet. He's
trying to figure that out. And into this situation
somehow in the courtyard or whatever it is of
this Pharisee's house there comes this
woman who's recognized probably by her dress
and maybe by the fact that people have seen
her as a sinner, a woman of the city as she's
described. And it unfolds that Jesus is reclining,
that means his legs are sort of out away from
the table and there on the floor and she gets
down, his feet are still dirty as we find out,
because he's come in off the streets
and his feet haven't been washed. And this
woman wants to anoint his feet with this perfume
that she's got, alabaster box of perfume. And
his feet are dirty and she starts weeping
and she weeps and weeps, her ears screaming
down, enough to wet his feet and she starts
drying them with her hair and then anoint, I
mean, it is just beyond imagining. How embarrassing
is it? And of course the Pharisee looks at
Jesus and he says, this, this, Jesus doesn't
recognize what this is. He can't be a prophet.
But of course as you know the story is exactly
the opposite. Jesus looks at Simon and says,
did you see this woman? Well of course since
she came in nobody had taken her eyes off of
her. Everybody had seen her. But Jesus
seemed to be the only person in the room that
was not embarrassed by what had happened.
He understood exactly what was going on. He was
not indignant at what the woman was doing
or expressing by her action. She knows who she
is. She knows the barriers. She knows
that there is never a time when it's going to
be proper for her to talk to a Jewish Rabbi.
That possibility in her life is not there. But
somehow she feels confident enough to
come up behind Jesus to cry over His feet, to
dry them with her hair, to anoint them
with her precious gift. And Jesus exactly
understands. She does not say a word but Jesus
gives words to her. And this confidence to risk
shame and rebuke and to pour out her
emotions at His feet marks the character of
Jesus and how He was perceived and how He
was in reality in relationship to so many
people as He gave voice to her. And then of
course the interaction between Him and Simon.
Simon is judgmental. He looks at her as Jesus
but they see dramatically different things. He
saw the woman's low estate. He saw her
impurity, her immorality. Jesus looked at her
and saw a real person full of love and
gratitude and faith that made this woman far
closer to the kingdom than Simon was. And
Jesus drove his point home, you remember, with
a parable of the two debtors. Just an
astonishing story. An amazing story. We take it
for granted because we've read it so many
times and we've heard it read and so forth. But
put yourself in that situation. What is
said by the way that Jesus acts there is just
amazing. Similarly, again we don't have much
time to talk about these things, the woman
taken in adultery. Another person that is
never named. She speaks only a couple of words
in the story. But Jesus is sort of on trial
through her by the Pharisees. She's been taken
in the very act of adultery. What's Jesus
going to do? He's in the temple there.
Everybody's around. Everybody's watching.
What's He going
to do? Jesus simply refuses to be a law
enforcer. He will not do it. They come to Him
with an
open and shut case and yet He knows more about
the human heart and what's going on and refuses
to allow that open and shut case to determine
anything. And He not only has compassion on
the woman but also on her accusers. And He says
something to them that lets them know
that He knows their, whatever it was, their
conspiracy to set this thing up or whatever
it was. And points it to them and it takes. And
He not only saves that woman from stoning
but He at least potentially begins the process
of saving her accuser. He takes her sin seriously.
It's not that that goes away. He sends her away
and tells her not sin anymore. But He
gives hope to her. And so we can understand why
such actions by Jesus would create a distinct
reputation. Women who felt the sting of
ostracism and condemnation from the society
around them
felt confident to approach Jesus, sure that He
would not scorn or reject them. And you
know the other stories, the woman with the
bleeding and so forth, many stories, the Syrophoenician
woman and so forth that come to Jesus. Let's go
to another famous story though, the story
of Mary and Martha. And just think about the
process of women being disciples of Jesus.
Luke 10 is sort of where the story starts, Luke
10:38-42. Jesus goes to the house
of these two sisters. It's a famous story.
You've no doubt heard sermons on it. And you
remember Martha's all busy caring for things,
serving and everything. And Mary does the
surprising thing, namely that she acts as
though she were one of Jesus' male disciples
and sits down and listens to Him teach. Martha
comes in and objects, tries to get Jesus to
tell Mary to come on, get busy and help me with
this. And Jesus interacts with Martha.
And as you listen to it, you'll notice that
Jesus, again, in no way condemns Martha for
her concern. He doesn't denigrate her work in
any way. She made a choice for what she
believed was proper for her to do. But when she
started to impose that choice on her sister,
Jesus refused to help her. But more than that,
Jesus takes it a step further. He sees where
she is, just like He would do with James or
John. He sees where she is and sees that yes,
her choice has been freely made and He can
understand the choice, but at the same time
it carries with it a certain direction of mind
that she's worried and concerned about
many things. And He points to Mary. Mary has
chosen the good part and it will not be taken
away from her. She has taken the role of
disciple, of learner, sitting at the feet of Jesus.
And so, we don't know exactly what happens from
that particular point, but the ease with
which Jesus accepts Mary as one of the
disciples there, sitting at His feet, is really quite
remarkable. We're going to see this list out a
whole lot of situations. We'll talk about
it in just a moment. But it goes against so
much the typical pattern of the day. There
is simply no other Jewish rabbi that we know of
from that period of time at all who had
women disciples, anything like the situation
that Jesus did. It was quite distinctive.
In fact, you've probably, if you've ever
studied in this field before, you've no doubt heard
quoted the famous passage from the mission, the
compilation of the Jewish oral law that
was done in approximately 200 A.D., though it
brings together traditions from much earlier
that says, talk not much with womankind. They
said this of a man's own wife, how much more
of his fellow's wife. Hence the sages have
said, he that talks much with Womankind brings
evil upon himself and neglects the study of the
law and at last will inherit hell. Jesus
took the chance. He easily, readily spoke with
women, talked to, accepted them as His
disciples. But the story with Martha is not
over, of course. We follow it in the Gospel
of John as we come to the 11th chapter of the
Gospel of John and Mary and Martha, their
brother Lazarus is dying. They send word to
Jesus. By the time the messenger gets there,
Lazarus is dead. Jesus delays two days to come
back. By the time Jesus comes back, Lazarus
has been in the grave for four days. He comes
to Martha. Martha comes out to him as he's
approaching and she has a certain
disappointment. Lord, if you had been here, my
brother would
not have died. And I know still that God will
give you whatever you ask. And Jesus, like
He does so often in the Gospel of John, makes a
statement that can be taken more than one
way. He says, your brother will rise again. And
she expresses her faith, the faith that
she shared with so many of her compatriots and
devout Jews. I know that he will rise
at the resurrection of the last day. Jesus sees
that this woman is ready, is full of
faith already, of trust in Him, but ready for
even more. And so Jesus gives it. I mean,
it is to Martha of all the people in the world
that Jesus makes that amazing statement, I
am the resurrection and the life. In myself I
embody the consummation of all things. I
am the resurrection and the life. The one who
believes in me, even though he dies, yet
will he live, and whoever lives and believes in
me will never die. And so Martha is drawn
in herself into the circle of disciples of
Jesus. You perhaps are familiar also with
the famous passage in Luke the eighth chapter
of the first three verses that talks about
a whole group of women during Jesus' Galilean
ministry who traveled with Him and who ministered
to Him and who cared for the disciples out of
their own resources. Really, again, a remarkable
situation. You have, of course, Mary Magdalene,
but we will come back to her in a moment.
You have Joanna, the wife of Cusa, Herod's
steward, and you have Susanna. And as you
expand the group, looking at the other Gospels,
you find that the wife of Zebedee, the mother
of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, was
part of the group. And there was a Mary who
was the mother of James and Joseph that was
part, and a Salome. And Mary who is the wife
of Clopas, maybe the other disciple on the road
to Emmaus with Cleopas, we don't know
for sure. And then there was the sister of
Mary's mother that was probably also part
of the group. A fairly substantial group of
women that in one way or another became part
of Jesus' entourage. Just think about what that
meant. For Joanna, the wife of Cusa,
one of Herod's stewards, to leave behind Cusa
and to go off and travel with Jesus. We get
our minds around Peter and John and James and
Andrew walking away from their fishing
and following Jesus. But these were women that
left behind husbands and followed Jesus.
You can imagine how striking that is. And of
course Jesus did not call them to require
them to come with Him. They chose it. They
chose to come with Him. Jesus had remade their
lives and so they followed Him like His male
disciples leaving behind homes and spouses.
And that brings us to Mary Magdalene. I'm sorry
we're coming toward the end of our
time. We've just got to hurry and I would love
to say a whole lot more about Mary Magdalene.
Mary Magdalene was a woman who was sort of the
archetype of these women whose life had
been transformed. Luke describes it that seven
demons had been cast out of her. So it's sort
of like the garrison demoniac out of whom a
legion of demons had been. Jesus had given
her wife back to her and she gave it to Jesus.
She followed Him from that point on. And is
the only one, though there was a whole group
around her, the only one that is mentioned
in all four Gospels as being the first witness
to the resurrection of Jesus, to the empty
tomb. And three of the Gospels talk about how
Jesus appeared to her. Now the witnesses
of the resurrection were, the official
witnesses were of course the twelve, the twelve apostles.
The reason for that is not hard to find. Women
were not even allowed to testify in court
normally in the ancient world. Their witness
simply would stand for nothing. And so as
witnesses to a hostile world they had to have
witnesses that would be at least partly believable
because they were telling a story that was not
easy to believe. But what does Jesus do?
Jesus controls who He appears to. He makes
choices about that. It doesn't just happen.
And Jesus chooses to appear to Mary Magdalene
and these other women so that they are witnesses
to the witnesses. You get an expression of the
formal sort of to the outside world statement
of this in 1 Corinthians 15. Wonderful,
powerful statement there of the Gospel. Jesus died
for our sins and was buried and was raised on
the third day and appeared and gave the
list of the appearances and so forth. And the
women are not there. This was before any
of the Gospels were written. But as N.T. Wright
in his long discussion of the resurrection
says this is one thing that shows that those
resurrection narratives in the Gospels go
back to the very earliest stage. Because this
idea of the women would never have been invented
by anybody later on. It just wouldn't by
anybody that wanted to proclaim the resurrection.
It is Jesus' own choice at the beginning that
He would have, yes, a well established set
of 12 representatives who re-embodied the 12
tribes of Israel and who would testify
to the world. But that He made sure that there
were witnesses to those witnesses. And the
ones that He chose were Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary and Joanna and so forth. These
women at the cross, Salome and Mary the wife of
Clopas and so on. And they go and of course
even the Gospels themselves recognize the fact
that this was strange. So that when they
come and testify to the disciples as Luke says,
they didn't believe them. Because they
thought it was an idle tale. And it took time
for Jesus to confirm the testimony of the
women. Well there is so much that could be said
about the ending in the Gospel of John
as Mary Magdalene there encounters Jesus but we
will skip over that. I want to conclude
with a few observations of what we learn from
Jesus. Jesus shows that He is no respecter
of persons. There is nothing arbitrary about
Jesus. Society and its values were arbitrary.
They set boundaries and barriers. Jesus looked
at every single person and dealt with them
as one whom He Himself had created and
therefore valued immeasurably. At the same time
I also
want to emphasize that all of Jesus
interactions with both women and men were
within particular
historical settings and culture. When Jesus as
the presence of God, the incarnation of
God among us, when that incarnation takes place
it has to take place somewhere and sometime.
So He enters the limitations of a particular
time and place and culture and set of opportunities
and problems and expectations and popular
prejudices and the whole thing. God is unlimited
but when He becomes flesh He is limited. He is
in one place with one language and one
set of ways in which what He does is read. The
Gospel that He brought had to be played
out in that way, in the particular form, in
concrete forms. So it took a particular shape
in the Palestine of Jesus and a different shape
perhaps in Corinth and a different shape
in New York City or in Abilene and so forth.
But as we look at Jesus one of our best ways
is to, we haven't spent much time on this, but
is to try to understand that whole culture
around Him and to see that profile of Jesus in
relationship to all that was around Him.
It is a distinctive profile when He pushes
against the typical prejudices and practices
of its time. As we've noted already Jesus
treated every woman as well as every man for
that matter. He encountered with respect and
without condescension. There are simply none
of the commonplace jokes and derogatory
comments about women that were so widely known
in the
ancient world and in the modern world for that
matter as well until sexual harassment
came along. Jesus treated women and men exactly
alike without making any show of it. He simply
assumed that both women and men were valuable,
intelligent, beloved by God, worthy of His
time and care. Jesus welcomed the presence of
women as friends and compatriots and never
in the least suggested that they should be
confined to women's work or women's roles.
He spoke freely with women and made no attempt
to silence them as if their thoughts were
not as valuable or as trustworthy as men. When
He found women silenced by ostracism
or condemnation by the people around them, He
gave them voice by valuing and praising
their actions and their faith and by calling
them to obedience to God. Third, Jesus was
aware of the prejudices and the barriers set up
against women in the society in which He
lived and He went out of His way to break them
down. He carried on a serious theological
discussion with that ostracized Samaritan woman.
He was wholly unembarrassed by the
love and extravagant gratitude of the sinful
woman in Luke 7 who had experienced forgiveness
from God. He resisted the whole posse of
scribes and Pharisees to spare a woman caught
in adultery
and to give her an opportunity for new life.
Unlike any other Jewish teacher known from
that period, Jesus welcomed women disciples. He
allowed women to travel with His band of
disciples if they wished, even leaving behind
homes and husbands to follow Him. The expectations
and prejudices of the day limited the role that
women could play as the official witnesses
of Jesus' resurrection to the outside world,
but Jesus made women His own first witnesses
by commissioning Mary Magdalene and the other
women to tell the apostles of His resurrection.
Jesus showed how much He valued women by
granting to several of them special insights of revelation
to the Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah,
to Martha that He was the resurrection and
the life. And finally Jesus never gave the
least hint that women were always to be silent
among His disciples when they came to worship
God. Quite the contrary, Jesus told the Samaritan
woman that none of the barriers of place and
practice that were such matters of dispute
at that time really mattered to God. The only
criterion that God was concerned about was
whether a worshipper worships Him in spirit and
in truth. Genuine, spirit-filled worship
that corresponds to the truth that God is
Spirit. And so the distinctive outline of
Jesus' profile stands out clearly and it
challenges disciples then and challenges us disciples
as we strive to follow Him. In later
generations the church almost completely lost
the vision
of Jesus for accepting all people, both women
and men, as fully human beings who are to
serve as disciples, as fully as their spiritual
gifts allow. But the figure of Jesus never
ceases to be relevant to the life of the church
or to challenge it. As long as we claim to
be followers of Jesus Christ, His example sets
the highest and most authoritative standard
for our behavior as a church, the body of
Christ. Jesus was astonishingly bold. He
overcame all sorts of stereotypes. But in our
own day Jesus' example challenges His
followers to do the same. We face far fewer
restrictions against treating all people equally
than Jesus did and yet we often fall into the
same tendency to stereotype people as
Jesus' contemporaries did with barriers of
gender, race, ethnic group, class, economic
status that keep people from being treated
equally in the body of Christ. We have not
yet learned the lesson from our Master. Thank
you very much.