What I’d Give: Assets and Allies

Since mid-December I’ve been deeply involved in helping launch a redistricting reform coalition, Fair Districts PA. I spent the first days of the year structuring a website (FairDistrictsPA.com) and have been working with others to assemble assets and allies for the challenge of promoting constitutional change in the way Pennsylvania creates electoral districts.

Much of the work involves seeing what’s needed (petition site? Html experience?) and finding someone who can offer it. But an interesting surprise has been dealing with unsolicited offers, unexpected allies, support from unexpected angles.

I’ve been posting this Epiphany about what I’d give others if I could: essential gifts that aren’t mine to give. Awareness and experience of God’s abiding love, foundational faith, resolute hope, wonder, awe, wisdom.

Assets and allies are also on that list: resources for the life we’ve been called to, companions in the challenge of living as agents of God’s kingdom here on earth.

I’ve been struck lately by the apparent irrelevant add-ons at the ends of many of Paul’s epistles: Tychichus will tell you everything; (Galatians 6:21); I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent (Ephesians 4:18); our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings (Colossians 4:14); Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. (2 Timothy 4:19).

In an unexpected way, those bits of personal detail at the ends of Paul's letters remind me of coalition building: L. will help with the proofreading on that. K.’s mom is sick; she’ll check back in later. The folks at RDP will be in touch.  S. says thanks and is looking into funding.

Paul was on a mission, was building a coalition, and was using the tools at hand to manage the resources and relationships he’d been given.

I pause on that word: given. Some might say he went out and found them, built them, earned them.

I’d say given.

In my own experience, there have been times when I’ve been called into challenging tasks, doubted my own ability, felt overwhelmed by the heavy lift, and seen God supply in amazing ways.

China Inland Mission founder Hudson Taylor has been often quoted: “God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack God’s supplies.”

 

That supply is rarely a check in the mail, although there are some great stories of exact amounts arriving at exactly the right moment.

More often the supply is not quite what we expected, from avenues we might have overlooked.

And sadly, all too often, the supply is missed: because we’re too proud to ask or receive it, because we don’t like the one who offers, because we’ve framed things so neatly in our own five-year plans we can’t adjust timing or see what’s being given.

I’ve done that: run right past people offering help that didn’t quite fit my idea. Stepped on and squashed resources that didn’t line up with the vision in my head.

I’ve learned the hard way: I run myself right into a wall trying to do it myself.

Or I can stop, sit, listen, wait, and see what God has in mind.

The first summer I led a youth mission trip in Kensington I came very close to crashing: the structure was unsustainable, the plan exhausting beyond belief. I picked up a terrible case of poison ivy midweek. My one thought, through much of the week, was “never again. Never never again.”

I’d been warned the mission model wasn’t workable. I’d inherited it from a predecessor, with the hazy suggestion I live through one week then find a way to shut the project down.

But mid-week, strung out on steroids for the poison ivy, struggling to get by on an hour or two of sleep each night, I started praying to see what God had in mind. Asked the team to join me in that prayer. And began to see something totally different: a model that would work with the tools and context we’d been given.

Good fruit came from that difficult week, not least a much deeper understanding that God’s work done in our own pre-patterned way is often doomed to failure.

In the decade of summers that followed, I’d often start the week of mission with the story of King Jehoshaphat, from 2 Chronicles 20: a vast army assembles against God’s people. Jehoshaphat calls the people to prayer and sets the problem before God: 

Lord, the God of our ancestors, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you. . . .[W]e have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. . . .” Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jahaziel son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite and descendant of Asaph, as he stood in the assembly. 

That’s the part I always paused on: Jahaziel was nobody. He wasn’t the leader, the high priest, the appointed spokesman. Just a guy in the crowd. But God chose to speak through him, and because King Jehoshaphat was willing to wait, and listen, because Jahaziel was courageous enough to offer what he was given to say, the enemy was defeated.

My challenge to our team: we have all the wisdom and ability we need. But we’ll need to wait and listen, and be brave enough to say what we see, or do what we’re asked. Even if it feels a little scary.

I love 2 Corinthians 9:6-8: 

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.  7. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 

We hear maybe too much about verse 7 – cheerful givers – and not enough about verse 8: God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

Most of the time most of the church doesn’t exactly live that way.

We haggle over who gets what, guard our turf, worry about the shortfall.

We ignore gifts that don’t meet our guidelines, reject unexpected assets that don't fit overly-corporate spreadsheets.

I say “we.” That’s not exactly accurate. I’ve been on the other side of that equation more often than not: told the gifts I’m offering don’t exist, because “God doesn’t give those gifts to women.” Gently ushered out the door because I don’t match the ministry model the leaders had in mind.

And I’ve watched with great sadness when wonderful offerings from others are discounted: because the offerers are too young, too old, too “odd.” Their accents aren’t quite right. Their ideas are a little different.

Praying and puzzling over this I came across a post by Reverend Dr. Eric Foley, cofounder of Voice of the Martyrs Korea:  

I suspect one of the grave ways we impoverish ourselves as missionaries and nonprofit ministry organizations is that our engines run only on cash; every other kind of gift (and here I’m not talking only about gifts-in-kind but people, especially the various and sundry kind, offering themselves as if they were treasure–the audacity!) just seems to choke the motor. Taylor’s promise was not that God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack for our supply. Rather, his contention was that God would supply as a good Father giving good gifts to His children. Kids always want cash, but sometimes parents know that other gifts are far more needed by their children.    

I have seen audacious gifts offered and rejected. 

But I’ve also, by God’s grace, seen audacious gifts put to good use, seen God’s kingdom made visible through unexpected means.

I’ve had the blessing of seeing God work through unorthodox teams, creative coalitions, accomplishing far more than I could have asked or imagined, stretching scant dollars to supply surprising outcomes

Assets and allies are not mine to give, although I’m happy to offer what resources I have, and give my support in whatever ways I can.

From The Life of Christ, James Reed, 1930

In truth, assets and allies have already been given, all around us, more than we could ever need, more than we will ever know.

What I’d give if I could is the willingness to see them. The openness to embrace unexpected allies, unusual assets.

The willingness to offer what we have, even after we’ve been shut down, shut out. Again, and again.

The willingness to offer our bread and fish, our untamed donkeys, our strange ideas, our seemingly slim assets.

What I’d give is the ability to hold our own plans lightly, to wait and give with open hands.

To lean in close to the one who 

is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. . . . Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.  You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

During this Epiphany season (from the beginning of January until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, February 10) I’ve been blogging about those things I would give if I could. This is the last in that series. 

January 3: What I'd Give You

January 10: What I’d Give: Living into Love 

January 17: What I’d Give: Foundational Faith  

January 24: What I’d Give: Resolute Hope 

January 31: What I’d Give: Wonder, Awe, Wisdom

Life Lesson from Lydia

Father’s Day has come and gone, and I find myself thinking about the messages loving fathers give their daughters:

Be yourself.

Find your voice.

Use your gifts wisely.

I grew up without a father, and the messages I heard sounded a little different:

Be quiet.

Don’t ask questions.

Understand your place, and make sure you stay in it.

Those were supposedly messages from my loving heavenly father, carefully, consistently communicated by my church community.

This month’s Synchroblog topic is “What do you wish you knew 10 or 20 years ago? If you could go back 10 or 20 years and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?”

Voula Kalapoda of BiblicalTours.Gr in Philippi

What I wish I knew is that a loving parent celebrates each child’s uniqueness.

Longs to help gifts develop fully.

Looks for ways to see potential put to use.

In March my husband Whitney and I traveled in Northern Greece with our new friend and wonderful Biblical Tours guide, Voula Kalapoda. We spent time in Philippi, walked along the river where Lydia encountered the Apostle Paul, stood on the tile floor where historians believe the first house church met, traced the expansion of that house into an octagonal meeting place, then into a larger structure.

Somehow, I had not realized that Lydia was the first European convert, that the church in her home was the first Christian church in Europe. 

On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us. (Acts:16:13-15)

Voula put that short passage into context for us, explaining that the Jews built their synagogues near water, but that no synagogue could be built if there weren’t at least ten men. So the fact that the women were gathered to pray by the river suggests there was no synagogue, no strong Jewish community.

Instead, there was a non-Jewish woman from Thyratira, in nearby Turkey, a woman active in trade, head of her own household.

Reading Luke’s simple account of the interaction, picturing the quiet scene by the rapid, narrow river, I think of how differently it might have gone:

Paul, seeing no men to interact with, could have walked off in search of a more fitting audience.

Krenides River outside the walls of Philippi

Or, after talking with the women, he might have insisted they go bring their husbands or male representatives to find out more.

He could have refused Lydia’s hospitality.

Moved on to the next city.

Note the hint of hesitation when Lydia invites them to her house: 

When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

The word translated in the New International Version as “invited”, “parekalesenis,” in other places is rendered “begged”, "besought," "urged." Literally, it means, “exhorted," or "constrained,” far more assertive than a simple invitation.

And the word translated “persuaded,” the Greek “parebiasato,” means “to force contrary to (nature), i.e. compel (by entreaty) -- constrain.”

Luke’s account suggests that Paul’s first inclination would have been to say no to the idea of basing his ministry in Lydia’s home, but he heard and was moved by her energetic appeal.

The text says “we stayed several days” in Philippi. That stay included an overnight in prison, then a brief visit back to Lydia’s house: 

After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. Then they left. (Acts 16:40)

Apparently that young church was growing fast, if there were already brothers and sisters to encourage.

But I find myself wondering: how many other entreaties have been ignored, or dismissed, in other places, by leaders less willing to be constrained?

How many churches died before they started, because a woman’s gifts were overlooked, or a woman’s hospitality refused?

As a child, I worshiped in a denomination which allowed women missionaries to plant churches in Africa, but wouldn't let those same missionaries speak from the pulpit in their churches back home.

Possible site of the first church in Philippi; an octagonal church,
then larger temple, built over what may have been Lydia's home

As a young woman, I attended a retreat on the gifts of the spirit, and after faithfully filling out the simple survey I was given, was told I couldn’t possibly have the gifts my survey said I had: Leadership? Teaching? The seminarian summoned to set me straight assured me I had made a mistake.

There have been more times than I can count when I’ve seen women’s gifts offered, and rejected.

When my own gifts were discounted.

When I’ve felt called to step forward, and then told, firmly, to step back.

What’s lost when our energies are spent wrestling with the millennium-old questions:

Why would God give gifts he doesn’t want us to use?

Why would he call us to teach, lead, speak, when those who confidently assert his will are certain we should sit in silence?

Trace back through the history of the church and there are stories of women blazing like the stars of Philippians 2:15.

But how many more women hid their light under a bushel out of deference to the voices that said “go ahead and shine, but not here, not now, not this way, not that.”

How many have stuffed down the anger that grows, uninvited, when offerings are rejected, or second-guessed, when thoughts tentatively expressed are swept aside, or interrupted, when attempts to be obedient to the deepest inner callings are dismissed as misguided, inappropriate, rebellious.

And how many more have run from the church, the faith, from God himself, rather than listen to the endless, fruitless arguments about who is greater, who is less, who gets to lead, who has to follow.

What I’d like to say to my younger self, to my lovely, strong, spirited daughters, granddaughter, nieces, cousins, friends, is this: Be who God made you to be. In freedom. And with joy.

walls and steps of Philippi

But it’s not that easy.

So instead, I say this: learn early to hear and know God’s voice.

Spend time in his word, in prayer, in listening.

Pay attention to the spirit behind the voices you hear.

Learn to recognize pride, control, self-righteousness, envy.

Be led by mercy, grace, and love.

When the first answer is no, don’t be afraid to ask again.

Like Lydia, be ready to “urge, exhort, constrain.”

When someone steps on your toe, forgive and keep on walking.

When someone slams a door in your face, grieve, regroup, and look for another door.

Envision a church making full use of all its gifts, all its members, male and female, young and old, creatively, wisely, freely, with joy.

Don’t let anger, or grief, or fear shut you down, close you out, or cloud your mind.

Hold firm to the knowledge that you are a well-loved daughter, knit together with care for purposes far beyond those imagined by anyone eager to define you by what you’re not allowed to do.

 I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

This is the fifth in a series, Texts in Context, revisting two formative weeks spent in Greece in March 2014. Earlier posts: 

Texts in Context: Yassas!

Mysteries

Proclaim Freedom 

Covering Shaven Heads

It's also part of the June Synchroblog, "If I Could Tell Myself One Thing." Other links are posted below:

• Justin Steckbauer – What Do You Wish You Knew 10 or 20 years ago?
• Michael Donahoe – What I Wish I had Known
• Mary – What I Wish I Would Have Known as a Newlywed
• Heather Wheat – As a Young Mother, I Wish I Had Known…
• Michelle – Ten Years of Wisdom
• Michelle – Twenty Years of Wisdom
• Wesley Rostoll – If I Could Speak to a Younger Version of Me
• Peggy – From Peggy … To Peggy
• Glenn Hager – The Reluctant Time Lord
• Edwin Adrich – A Note to My Younger Self
• Paul Metler – A Note to my 20 Year Ago Self
• Liz Dyer – Dear Me
• Kathy Escobar – Never Say Never
• Jeremy Myers – A Letter to the “Me” of 15 Years Ago
• Kimberly Klein – Be Free, Be You

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.  

Resurrection Women – Happy Mother’s Day

For me, a strong signpost of the resurrection is the record of the first encounters at the empty tomb. According to all four gospels, the women were the first to see evidence that Jesus was risen; three of the gospels record that women were the first to speak with Jesus; all say they were the first to spread the good news of the resurrection.

Women at the Tomb, Jesus Mafa

You can pass this over as just a small detail in a fast-paced story. Or you can count is as one more hallucinatory scene in a mythical retelling that has little to do with actual fact.

Or you can wonder, as so many have: why would anyone trying to gain credibility for a strange new faith trust the story to the mouths of women?

As N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham and leading New Testament scholar, has noted in sermons, lectures, and books, the role of women in the resurrection story is itself part of the great reversal of Easter morning:

"And who is it that carries this stupendous message, this primal announcement of new creation, this heraldic proclamation of the king of kings and his imminent enthronement? It is Mary from Magdala. . . she is someone who has been cured of terrible multiple demon-possession. But the real shock is not Mary’s character. It is her gender. This is perhaps the most astonishing thing about the resurrection narratives, granted the universal beliefs of the time in the unreliability of women in a lawcourt or almost anywhere else. It is one of the things which absolutely guarantees that the early Christians did not invent these stories. They would never, ever, ever have invented the idea that it was a woman – a woman with a known background of emotional instability, but the main point is that it was a woman – to whom had been entrusted the earth-shattering message that Jesus was alive again, that he was on the way to being enthroned as Lord of the World, and that – this is the significance of the emphatic ‘my Father and your Father, my God and your God’ – he was opening to his followers, as a result of his victory over death itself, that same intimacy with the Father of all that he had enjoyed throughout his earthly life. It is Mary: not Peter, not John, not James the brother of the Lord, but Mary, who becomes the apostle to the apostles, the primary Christian witness, the first Christian evangelist. This is so striking, so unexpected, so embarrassing to some early Christians – Origen had to refute pagan sneers on this very point – that it cannot be accidental. It cannot be accidental for John and the other writers. And I dare to say it cannot be accidental in the purposes of God.

Mary Announces the Resurrection, Mary Charles McGough

"Something has happened in the renewal of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus which has the result, as one of its multiple spin-offs, that whereas before Jesus only ever sent out men, now – now of all moments! – he sends out a woman. And though the church has often struggled – to put it mildly – with the idea of women being called to genuine apostolic ministry, the record is clear and unambiguous. "


In the great resurrection reversal, we are all set free from the second-place status ascribed to us by tradition, culture, or patriarchal law. Jesus said “the truth will set you free,” and across the centuries resurrection people have experienced that reality in the face of prejudice and unjust laws and every voice that continues to insist freedom is for those born in the right place, with the right skin, the right body.

I first saw this resurrection life in my grandmother, Elda Meech Capra. Born in Oklahoma in 1912 to a poor family with too many daughters, she attended two days of ninth grade then quit, ashamed of her one hand-me-down dress. She left home at thirteen, was married weeks after she turned seventeen to a man ten years older, a man who preferred she stay quiet and do what she was told.

In her late twenties she encountered the resurrection on a street corner in Enid, Oklahoma, where an itinerate preacher led her to Christ and gave her a Bible. He told her “start with the gospel of John,” and she did. When she got to John 8, it was as though Jesus himself was speaking to her: “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I have her old Bible, pages falling out, tiny notes scribbled in the margins. John 8:31 is underlined, with little check marks in the margin. And just down the column, the verse she repeated often: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

That freedom blossomed in many ways, but without the encouragement or blessing of any church. A network of strong women, missionaries and teachers, helped Elda learn her way through scripture, pointed her to useful resources, discussed and prayed and invited her to test her gifts leading small group Bible studies. I grew up in my grandmother’s home, watching her study her Bible early every morning, listening to those treasured conversations with missionary friends home on furlough.

Noli Me Tangere, Maurice Denis, 1896, France

Those missionary women planted churches in countries I could only imagine, cast out demons, witnessed miraculous healings, and held us spellbound in Sunday school with their stories of God’s work. But they couldn’t speak from the pulpit.

Over the years, my grandmother shared the resurrection with many people, but was never permitted, in her church, to teach men, or teen boys, or speak in any public way. When a group of women she’d led to Christ asked her to explain the Christian faith to their husbands, she agreed to do so in someone’s home. When the husbands asked if she’d lead a weekly Bible study, she again agreed, in someone’s home. When that study grew and divided, she found herself teaching two nights a week, invited often to other homes to meet other seekers, to lead yet others to Christ. Marriages were healed, parents and adult children were reconciled, new life sprang up in visible ways that drew even more to the good news of resurrection.

Elda encouraged all of those new believers to find churches, to worship regularly, to find their way into households of faith. But she never invited them to her own church, and that new resurrection life never became part of her own local congregation.

Why?

Despite all the declarations of freedom, unity, new life in Christ, many church leaders, then as now, allowed two puzzling passages to determine the roles of women: 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, which says “women should remain silent in the churches,” and 1 Timothy 2:11-15: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

I’m not sure what my grandmother made of those two passages. In her Bible, there’s no note or mark on the Corinthian passage, while many parts before and after are underlined. In Timothy, while the rest of the letter is riddled with small notes and references, that one passage is bracketed, with a short indecipherable note in the margin.

What I do know is that my grandmother believed firmly in the priesthood of all believers: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”

Matin de Pâques, Maurice Denis, 1893, France

In her Bible, the whole passage is underlined, with “priesthood of believers” heavily, repeatedly underscored.

New Testament scholars have spent much time, and ink, exploring the passages about silent women, and trying to understand how those passages fit with Jesus' interactions with women, New and Old Testament descriptions of women in ministry and leadership, and instructions to us all to be more and more like Christ. I list some links below.

But here’s the question that has troubled me since childhood:

What happens to the message of freedom when the church says “That’s for men. The rest of you, stay quiet”?

What happens to the message of unity when the church says “We’re all one, but some of us more than others”?

What happens to the call to witness, to use our gifts, to be like Christ in every way, when as soon as we start, someone says “um, well, no, that gift isn’t for you,” or “you can witness over here, but you can’t speak over there,” or “Jesus wasn’t really talking to you when he said that. But we need someone to serve coffee.”

What stirs our hope in the resurrection, and makes our faith strong?

What stands in the way of faith, and feeds our cynicism and doubt?

I began this series on resurrection with this reflection:

"Those who have seen, experienced, become part of a living community convinced of resurrection power begin to live that power in their own lives, to share it with others, in ways that build hope, and faith, and deepen love. As walls fall down between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, racially and ethnically divided, as God’s people demonstrate the freedom that comes from full forgiveness and the compassion that springs up from the knowledge that all that’s needed is provided, as gifts are affirmed in women, children, the marginalized, the previously ignored, resurrection becomes visible, inescapable.

"If the truth of the resurrection is held in doubt, it’s not our apologetics that needs attention, but our lives together as visible community of love."

What does the resurrection say to women? And to those who love and want the best for women?

Maybe it’s time to go visit the empty tomb, and hear what Jesus has to say.

Jesus Appearing to Mary, Jesus Mafa

For more on the role of women in the church:

Christians for Biblical Equality


N. T. Wright: Women's Service in the Church
Scot McKnight: The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible and Junia is Not Alone

This is the sixth in a series about the resurrection:

Risen Indeed: The Hermaneutic Community 
The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People 
Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection  
Resurrection Challenge: Feed My Sheep
Resurrection Laughter

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the ___comments link below to see comments and to post your own.