Hidden in Plain View

I’m part of a small group of dedicated Weed Warriors that meets twice a month to weed, prune, and plant in Exton Park, an 800 acre tract of land five minutes from my home.

Several weeks ago, working on the berm along the old farm pond, one of our group casually mentioned he’d seen a coyote with a kit in her mouth and another following behind.

 

I paused in my digging: “Where?”

“On the ridge. On Old Valley Road.”

The ridge runs along the north edge of the Park. Old Valley Road is a partially closed gravel road that skirts between the fields, still leased to an area farmer, and the woods hide the steeper slope of the ridge.  I’d heard rumors of coyotes far north of us, but never in our suburban county.

“And I saw pink lady slippers. Blooming.”

“Where?”

I’ve never seen pink lady slippers blooming, except in books. I’ve occasionally seen their thick, waxy leaves, in small clumps, in New York’s north woods, but never blooming. And certainly not in Pennsylvania.

“On the ridge. Just up from the white barn.”

“Blooming now?”

“Yesterday.”

I asked how to find them, listened carefully, then spent the next two weeks thinking of coyotes and lady slippers. The only way I could see to get to the barn was up a lane that said “private road.” And was that the right barn? I wasn’t sure.

Two weeks later, in a light rain, we were back on the berm, planting. The group was small (not everyone loves planting in the rain), and I asked if we could take a short field trip at the end of our work, to see where the lady slippers grew.

Up the private road, turn onto an unused segment of Old Valley Road, park in a little gravel pull-off, then look for the bit of orange caution tape, tied shoulder-height in a bush beside the road.

I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland, stepping through an unexpected door.  Or Lucy, pushing through the back of the wardrobe into the wintry woods of Narnia.

Just past the weedy, brushy thicket along the road was a steep trail leading up into beautiful, open woods.

 

Beech trees, oak, tulip poplars with an understory of native azaleas, ferns, wood aster.

And there, at the top of the hill, in a clearing where multiple trails converged, were pink lady slippers. Still in bloom.

There was more to see: two springs. A rushing creek, tumbling noisily down the rocky hillside. Remains of an old farm quarry. A precipitous drop clothed in mountain laurel.

I went back alone a few days later, for a short evening walk, and saw a brown thrasher, wood thrush, a great horned owl just heading out for its evening meal.

I haven’t seen the coyotes, but at least I know where to look.

How is it possible I drove past that spot almost every day, for over a decade, and never really saw it?

I’ve walked, worked, birded with that ridge in plain view and never spent much time wondering what was there.

I would have missed it completely if our friend hadn’t told us what he’d seen.

Hadn’t offered to show us how to find it.

After my introduction to the hillside beauty I almost missed I find myself burdened with the knowledge that it’s possible to miss, completely, the wealth and treasure we’ve been already been given.

If our guide hadn’t mentioned what he’d seen I could have driven right by that ridge for the next twenty years and never bothered to venture up to see.

I find myself wondering, what else have I missed? What beauty, treasure, riches, wonders, are hidden in plain sight and I’ve not had eyes to see?

But I also find myself wondering: what are the treasures I’ve seen, myself, that I’ve never bothered to share?

I lead bird walks – in part – because I want to help others see and delight in the beauty of nature that’s been shared with me by others.

This past weekend I sold plants at our neighborhood yard sale – in part – because I wanted to share what I’ve learned about plants and backyard ecology.

I write this blog – in part – because I want to share what I’ve seen, heard, begun to understand about this rich, complex, deeply-loved world we live in.

I posted last week about Pentecost, Church, churches, how easy it is to sit outside and judge.

How maybe the truth of what “Church” is only becomes clear when we step inside, spend time in relationship to others.

Maybe, as friends, we need to share what we’ve seen, and offer to show the way.

I’ve seen a pink lady slipper on a nearby hillside.

I’ve seen a rushing stream dance down a fern-clad ledge.

I’ve seen worship where broken people find joy.

I’ve seen kindness melt icy walls and warm cold, brittle hearts.

I’ve seen unexpected families embracing unconnected children.

I've seen grace and forgiveness take human form. 

Surprising treasure in jars of clay.

All hidden in plain sight.

If you want to see, I’ll show you.

Pentecostal Prayer

Flame, Babbitt, Minnesota Evangelical Lutheran Church, 2003, Tammy and Kevin Gilmore

Today is Pentecost Sunday – the birthday of the Church.

Church with a capital C: the church universal, the community of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, active across continents and cultures for almost two thousand years.

On Thursday my husband I took part in another birthday celebration, the two-hundredth anniversary of the start of the American Bible Society. Over a thousand guests gathered under a very large tent on the terrace of the Philadelphia Art Museum to commemorate the vision that began with providing Bibles for every indigent American family.

Among the guests were representatives from 140 Bible societies working in more than 200 countries, gathered for the United Bible Societies’ World Assembly, a conference that occurs just once every six years. Many wore the traditional dress of their home countries, a visual reminder of the expansive reach of Christ’s body.

I found myself conflicted during the grand event, just as I’m often conflicted when I think about the Church itself.

It was all so grand. Lovely, well-coordinated, carefully timed, beautifully choreographed. A great deal of thought and expense had been marshaled to provide a stunningly memorable evening.

I found myself watching some of the international guests. One man I noticed kept glancing around with a wry, almost quizzical look, an occasional raised eyebrow.

I can imagine there were representatives there who would find other ways to spend the hundreds of thousands such an event must have cost.

How do we balance a love of excellence with awareness of grave inequality?

I swallowed the question with my wonderfully tender cut of beef, but found myself chewing on another: where were the women?

There were certainly women, many beautifully dressed, many wearing shoes that hurt their feet and dresses not quite warm enough for the unseasonably cool spring evening.

But I was the only woman at my table. Of the women who made it to the front platform, only one spoke, Dr. Diane Langberg. She was part of a brief three-way conversation about trauma as a mission field, and the challenge of being fully present to those shattered and broken by violence and loss.

Tiptoeing around the word “church,” poking it gently with my toe, it occurs to me that part of my struggle is that the word won’t quite stretch to fit different meanings:

One “Church” is a patriarchal establishment, a club with membership dues, inflexible traditions, hierarchies, power struggles, sharply drawn rules about who gets to speak and who does the dirty dishes.

The other Church is diametrically opposed: a breathing organism, gentle and loving, eager to see every gift used, every voice heard, every broken-heart mended.

I saw both on display at the grand celebration.

I see both on display in my interactions at my local church, at other churches, with other Christians.

Yes, I know, we live in this already/ not yet world.

The Kingdom of God has come; the Kingdom of God is coming.

We are not what we were. We are not yet what we will be.

Even so: I read the chapters of Acts and wonder:

In a deeply divided world, where is the Spirit that draws God’s people into unity?

In a broken, suffering world, where is the healing power that repairs, restores, renews?

In a time of captivity to addiction, anger, anxiety, where are the agents proclaiming God’s amazing freedom?

Where is the radical welcome that insists there is no longer male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free?

In my own church this morning, I was reminded that experience of church takes shape and meaning in real relationships over time.

Come sit in my church and I’m not sure what you’d see. An odd mix of people with not a lot in common?

I start describing us, and stop: from one angle some of us look wealthy and aloof. Some look tired, sad, barely holding it together. Some have worn jeans, tattoos, spiked hair. Some have been wearing the same suit for decades, or just bought it in the thrift shop across the hall.

From another angle, we are dearly loved children, woven together with chords of memory, love, prayer. I know these people’s stories: the struggles with depression, the shattered relationships, the longing to grow, the delight in giving.

From one angle, we fall far short: we are not always warm and welcoming, often preoccupied. Our prayer is sometimes half-hearted. We doubt, debate, waste time in foolish ways. We have our own agendas, and pursue them to the detriment of others. We too often look the other way when called to help.

And yet: I look around again. We are fellow travelers on a journey full of detours, unexpected stops. When we can, we carry each others’ burdens. When we can, we urge each other on.

It’s easy to sit on the outside and judge: to sit at a dinner and notice what’s missing, to visit a church and coolly assess its failings.

Maybe Church – global Big C Church, local little c church - only comes alive, is only known, from the inside, not the outside. In relationship to others. In communion with Christ himself. In the shoulder-to-should, life-to-life conversations that happen across years, good times and bad.

Maybe.

But it seems that there should be a visible reality to the church that is so warm and welcoming that those outside find themselves hungry to be part of it.

I’ve seen that happen.

See it happening still, as newcomers wander in, watch, listen, then find themselves part of the family.

Church of the Good Samaritan, Paoli, PA

I wish it happened more.


I'm in awe it happens at all.

Lord, forgive us when we live church as club, tradition, hierarchy, patriarchy, gated enclave, private performance, exclusive enterprise.

Fill us, unite us, renew us in your Spirit.

Make us a visible witness to your love.


Other Pentecost posts:

Resurrection Power: A Prayer for Pentecost  May 27, 2012

Waiting for Pentecost June 5, 2011

An Altogether Different Language June 26, 2011

Pentecost People of Blessing May 19, 2013

What I'd Give: Foundational Faith

This Epiphany season I’m writing about formative gifts I’d love to give, but can’t. Gifts that aren’t mine to give.

“What I’d give you if I could.”

Last week I wrote about the gift of “living into love.” The love is already given – long before the world was breathed into motion. But awareness of that love, willingness to live into that love: that’s the gift I would give, but can’t.

This week I’ve been thinking about the gift of faith: not just randomly directed faith, but faith in a God who dreamed the world in love, who spun it into orbit, who calls us into a compelling intergalactic narrative in which we all have significance, all are invited to a never-ending ever-after.

Faith, as we use the word, is often undirected: “Just have faith.” In what? Whom? Why?

Or it’s offered as a static expression of cognitive assent, expressed through a short sentence of prayer, or repetition of a creed.

Faith, as I see it expressed in the gospels, as I see it demonstrated and described by Jesus himself, is an immersive, embracing, encompassing reality: a foundation to stand on, a fellowship to live within, a future to run toward.

Sprouting acorn, Wikimedia commons

There’s no moment when we can say faith begins. It’s a seed, dropped into dark earth, with roots slowly spreading, slender shoots emerging, until one day, maybe long after, it’s an edifice of grace, feeding and fueling constellations of others.

I’ve been spending time in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7, bemoaning the childhood presentation of faith that flattened something marvelous into a yes or no checkpoint on some Sunday School teacher’s script. The wise man built his house on the rock, Jesus said, and we were led to believe that rock was “Do you believe in Jesus?”

Believe what: in an old Hebrew name? In the flannel board figure drooping on the dusty backdrop? Believe that if I say a few words I can do what I want, and I’ll show up at heaven’s gates with a free pass that says “enter: one”?

The foundation Jesus described was at the very end of the teaching Matthew recorded, an encapsulation of the most radical, most impossible way of life any religion has ever offered: love those who despise you, persecute you, oppose you at every turn. Forgive those who harm you, hate you, do their best to make your every moment hell on earth. Give generously, beyond reason: resources, time, energy, mercy. Demonstrate deep faithfulness of heart and mind. Set aside fear, anxiety, anger.

Impossible without walking in deep friendship with the one who invites us.

What Jesus said was this: trust yourself so deeply to this way of life I’m offering you, align yourself so closely to my vision and my power, live into my love so completely that you become someone different: radiant, radical, redemptive. A light in a dark world. A beacon of joy when all reason denounces any glimmer of hope.   

My grandsons love Star Wars: the story of Luke Skywalker, orphaned nephew of a nowhere nobody, drawn into the fellowship of rebels standing against evil forces seeking to rule the galaxy. It’s a big story and they picture themselves inside it: rescuing Han Solo from his frozen doom. Confronting Darth Vader with light sabers and forgiveness..

All our best stories point to the one great story that fuels our faith. As a child, I read and reread the Chronicles of Narnia. I was Lucy, third of four children pulled from a boring train depot into a frozen world held hostage by the snow queen. I was captured by the idea that four children could be part of a story larger than themselves, a story that began before they were born, stretched on, larger and larger, to a grand and joyful ending.

Faith is no flat, propositional assent. Read Hebrews 11, one my all-time favorite passages: by faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham left his home and went to live in tents like a stranger in a foreign land. By faith Moses left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger.  By faith Rahab welcomed the spies. The list goes on: men and women who saw miracles, administered justice, faced great trials, suffered unspeakable persecution.

By faith.

If you’d asked them what they were putting their faith in, I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t have offered that favorite of all Sunday School answers: Jesus. They didn’t yet know him.

And I’m doubtful they would have offered a doctrinal statement. 

What they knew of God went beyond words: experiential, personal, immediate, life-shattering.

They were fueled by, compelled by, their experience of a God who called them by name, who invited them in to an unfolding story of obedience and rebellion. They were imperfect people, willing to set aside comfort, safety, the known status quo, propelled by a vision of a world where grace and goodness rule.

I have friends and relatives – many – who say “I just can’t believe God would welcome some jerk into heaven just because he said ‘I believe in Jesus,’ and turn aside someone who was good all his life but never said he believed.”

And I have friends and relatives who see faith as just one of those ideas people like to fight about because they want to be right: an unprovable proposition deserving no more than a shrug, a roll of the eye, a weary “sure, whatever.”

The Christian church – in its many incarnations – has done a great disservice to the life of faith by claiming to know who God will welcome, who God will turn away, by flattening the fullness of Christ’s gospel to a simple yes/no checkpoint on someone’s self-righteous survey.

The end of the Sermon on the Mount is instructive: it contains familiar words that are rarely considered as one, complete whole:

Sermon on the Mount, Charles Plessard, France 19??

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

I grieve at the way the notion of faith has been used as a cudgel to knock others into line, as permission to judge, to dismiss, to exclude.

I grieve at the way it’s been flattened, falsified, simplified, sullied – easy to ridicule, far too easy to reject.

The life of faith I’ve found has been that firm foundation Jesus offered: a fellowship of compassionate, courageous fellow-travelers, a plumb-line for each attitude and action, strength to face daily sorrows and struggles, a vision of redemption that shapes my decisions and propels me toward a future very different from today.

I can’t give you that. Can’t undo the harm done by institutional religion, can’t give you 3-D glasses when you can’t see what I see.

All I can do is live a life of faith that suggests, just a little, something more, something greater. Invite you to meet others whose lives are fueled by faith.

Pray you’ll be surrounded, supported, propelled forward by that great cloud of witnesses described in Hebrews  12 so that together we can “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

detail from The Christian Martyrs of Nagasaki; anon. 16th-17th century Japanese painting

During this Epiphany season (from the beginning of January until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, February 10) I’ll be blogging about those things I would give if I could.

January 3: What I'd Give You

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

Foolishness

Crucifixion, Jesus Mafa, Cameroon, 1970s 

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent

I will frustrate.

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  but to those whom God has called,both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength ((1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

Who decides what’s possible?

Reword that: What framework do we use for deciding what’s possible?

What are the boundaries of plausibility?

And what does it take to break through the invisible walls of our plausibility structures?

The term “plausibility structures” was first used by sociologist Peter Berger to describe the interplay between culture and understanding, the ways that the undefined assumptions of our culture shape and control our ability to interpret information. Each culture, even subculture, has its own plausibility structures, its own ways of deciding what could be considered true.

Last week I quoted Lesslie Newbigin, missionary to India for forty years. Newbigin found that the idea of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection challenged the plausibility structures of his Hindu friends, who were happy to hear stories of the supernatural, and very willing to see Jesus as one more deity in a tradition that recognizes three hundred and thirty million of them. Less plausible was the idea that one deity might supersede all others, that one religious story might hold the clue to all existence, or that the divine would value the lives of those the culture deemed untouchable: widows, Dalits, slaves. 

Returning to post-Christian London, Newbiggin found a different reigning plausabilty structure, the “central citadel of our culture":

the belief that the real world, the reality with which we have to do, is a world that is to be understood in terms of efficient causes and not of final causes, a  world that is not governed by an intelligible purpose, and thus a world in which the answer to the question of what is good has to be left to the private opinion of each individual and cannot be included in the body of accepted facts that control public life.(Foolishness to the Greeks, p 79).

 Like Paul in First Corinthians, Newbigin recognized that the cross and resurrection, rightly understood, would challenge every reigning plausibility structure, from the days of the Greeks and Romans, through the rationalism of enlightenment, to our own post-modern pluralism. 

It is obvious that the story of the empty tomb cannot be fitted into our contemporary worldview, or indeed into any worldview except one of which it is the starting point.  That is, indeed, the whole point.  What happened on that day is, according to the Christian tradition, only to be understood by analogy with what happened on the day the cosmos came into being.  It is a boundary event, at the point where (as cosmologists tell us) the laws of physics ceased to apply.  It is the beginning of a new creation – as mysterious to human reason as the creation itself.

 But, and this is the whole point, accepted in faith it becomes the starting point for a wholly new way of understanding our human experience, a way which – in the long run – makes more sense of human experience as a whole than does the reigning plausibility structure.  That the crucified Jesus was raised from death to be the firstfruit of creation is – in the proper sense – dogma.  It is something given, offered for acceptance in faith, providing the starting point for a new way of understanding which, instead of being finally defined by the impassable boundary of death (our personal deaths and the final death of the cosmos), moves from death outward to an open world of infinite possibilities beckoning us into ever fresh regions of joy. (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 12)

Newbigin’s own agnosticism was shattered in 1929 at the age of 19, when he spent a summer working at a Quaker service center in the economically depressed mining region of South Wales. Troubled at the hopelessness of the unemployed miners he encountered, he experienced a vision of the cross “as the one and only reality great enough to span the distance between heaven and hell, and to hold in one embrace all the variety of humankind, the one reality that could make sense of the human situation” (Journey into Joy).

St Paul:Conversion, Granger Collection, 19th C

His experience was one in a long, long line of such conversions: illumination shattering the plausibility Damascus was another. Once so committed to the structures of his own Jewish tradition, willing to stone those who threatened the authorities and beliefs he held dear, he experienced physical blindness in a way that shattered his spiritual blindness and opened his eyes to the good news of  resurrection. 

structures that make it hard to see the unexpected. The Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. (1 Corinthians 15:3-10) 

As I celebrate resurrection, I find myself also wondering about the plausibility structures that obstruct my own sight, even now.

If the cross and resurrection demand a breaking down of walls between slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female, Dalit and Brahmin, what does it demand of my own understanding of current categories: political, demoninational, economic, cultural?

If resurrection is the ultimate reality, and eternity the context of determining value, how should that reshape the contours of my day, or refine my daily priorities?

In a culture that demands evidence – now!

that wants results – today!

that judges every action, every person, by performance and appearance,

how do I live in a framework of grace, hope, endurance, compassion?

As both Newbigin and Paul made clear, the church – writ large or small – is no refuge from plausibility structures that enforce cultural norms and crowd out Christ’s good news. 

Even among Christians, it sometimes seems foolish to love those least loveable, to spend time on “lost causes,” to hope for change when change seems impossible, to insist on good news for those most in need of mercy. 

But if my life, if our corporate life, looks no different from those who doubt the resurrection, if my own plausability structures deny, or disregard, the power of the resurrection, surely I've missed the point?

Would that be the ultimate foolishness?

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:17-21)

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.