This winter at HopeWhangarei we are preaching a sermon series called her Story, Her Voice: women in the Bible. explore the stories of women in the bible and what they have to say to us today. using their inspirational stories and allowing them to speak to us and inspire and encourage us in our Christian walk.
my contribution to that series is going to be preaching a series looking at 'women in leadership in the New Testament: The Silent Witnesses and the Silencing Passages'. Looking at Paul's practice of acknowledging both women and men in ministry and leadership (the silent witnesses) and then wrestling with the so called silencing passages in his writing. verse which have been used and in my humble opinion misused to keep women out of Church leadership.
here is the link to the first message in that series... giving and introduction to the whole series and looking at Mark 16:1-8 the ressurection narrative and Romans 16:1-15 to look at the silent witnesses to women in leadership in the New testament.
here is the script for the message
Today is the start of our winter sermon series here at
HopeWhangarei. The series is called her
story her voice: women in the bible. Looking at the lives and faith
journeys of women in the biblical narrative. There is a tradition of doing
character studies in sermons looking at this biblical character or that person
in the scripture as a way of encouraging and inspiring our own life of faith. Over
the next three months we will be looking at women in the New and Old Testament
and allowing their stories, their journeys, their lives, their experience of
God and their voices to speak to us. AS well as our normal preaching team I’ve
invited our women lay preachers to share those women’s stories with us. To give
them voice. My hope and my prayer for this series is that the Spirit may speak
anew and afresh to us through the lives and faith of these Women. Often
overlooked or not heard, but who are an intricate part of God’s story and ours.
My contribution to this series is going to be looking at
Women in Leadership in the New Testament. Looking at the silent witnesses to
women in leadership within the early church in Paul’s epistles, that’s what we
are going to do today, and then wrestling with the difficult verses in Paul’s
writing which some have called the silencing passages that seem to be
anti-women in leadership. That’s where
I’ll be going over the next few months.
Why do that you ask? Isn’t it really a non-issue? You have
to realise that in our Presbyterian church women have only been able to be
ordained as elders for the past 65 years and as ministers for the last 55. One
of the thy kingdom come videos that really spoke to me over our season of
prayer was the first black women bishop in the Anglican church Rose Hudson-Wilkins
whose message of being open to saying yes to God was inspirational. At the same
time online a facebook friend posted a meme from a professor in a conservative
university in the US which said…’if you go to a church that has women regularly
preach or preach even once… go somewhere else it’s not a proper church’. I know
women who have not been allowed to exercise their leadership and teaching ministry
because of interpretations of Pauline passages we are going to be looking
at.
There is a divide theologically over the issue of women in
leadership, one side of the argument calls themselves complementarianism, that
men and women are of equal value and can have equal access to God but are
created to complement each other and so there are certain ministry and
leadership roles that women cannot have. The other side of the argument is
egalitarianism that men and women are created equal, with equal access to God
and equally able to serve and use the gifts God has given them in any and every
role. Both sides can point to biblical texts and examples to back up their
position, both sides claim to want to be faithful to God’s word. I
don’t think you’ll take long to work out which side of the divide I’m on. But
I’ll try and provide a balanced view on scripture and its interpretation.
Some people have suggested that the Christian faiths change
of stance of women in leadership is a result of the changing understanding of
women and men in our society, they see it as walking away from scripture. Yet
equally the changing role of women in society I believe has caused us to go
back and re-examine the biblical texts and strip away some of our cultural bias
and see afresh what was in the texts all along, women in leadership in the
early church.
When NT Wright is asked about women in leadership he says he
starts by looking at the two passages we had read out to us today. The resurrection
narrative and the passage where Paul brings greeting to his Christian brothers
and sisters in the church at Rome. Because in these two passages we see both
Jesus attitude and Paul’s practice of having women as co-workers.
The resurrection narrative in all four gospels has the women
who went to Jesus tomb being the first to know the good news that Jesus had
risen from the dead and being the first to be commanded and commissioned to go
and tell. Before we have the great commission we have this commission. It’s
often used as part of the argument for the validity of the resurrection
narrative because in Jewish society women were not considered to be reliable
witnesses they were seen as too emotional. If it was a made up story the women
would not be the first on the scene. In mark’s narrative this could be why his
story of the resurrection Sunday finishes with the women being afraid. In
Luke’s gospel we find them not being believed, peter has to go and check for
himself, and on the road to Emmaus Cleopas tells the man who turns out to be
Jesus that the women had some amazing news but they were sceptical. It is hard
to think that Jesus entrusting the good news of his resurrection to these women
was only for the one trip to the disciples to let them know. That they were
then to be dropped from the great commission of going and telling everyone and
making disciples. AS my friend New Testament scholar Mark Keown says ‘there was
a time when the church was only women, as they were the only ones who knew of
his resurrection. It says something of Jesus attitude towards women and their
role in his Kingdom. At Pentecost the spirit of God fell on all 120 people
present, both men and women, to empower them to be Jesus witness to the
nations, as it had said in Joel, that they would all declare forth God’s word,
prophesy.
The passage at the end of Romans contains a list of names of
people who Paul brings greeting to at the Church in Rome. Many of whom he
acknowledges as actively involved in the leadership, working for the Lord.
Reading it in the Good News Version we might miss the fact that in that list of
names are ten women. Who are acknowledged who are described in different ways
as working for the Lord, being active in ministry and leadership. They are the
women along with some others throughout the epistles that Gordon fee calls the
silent witnesses to an acceptance of women in leadership in the early Church.
In verse 1 and 2 Paul commends Phoebe to the church at Rome,
he calls her a servant of the church at Cenchrea, which is on the Corinth
peninsula, and a benefactor to many. I know I may sound a bit pretentious here
but the Greek word translated serves is diakonos
which literally means to wait on tables. Some have suggested that it has the
meaning of our word deacon or in our church polity manager. So Phoebe could
have a leadership role but more of a servant limited one, that maybe reading
back into the scripture our understanding of offices in the church. Our English
word minister comes from this word… to be a servant. Being a benefactor show us
that she was a wealthy independent woman, she may have travelled to Rome on
Business.
Having her mentioned her and being recommend also has been
taken by many to postulate the fact that phoebe was the person who Paul
entrusted with his letter to the Romans. He is asking them to acknowledge her
in that role. That does not mean that she was just the mailman. Letters would
have been read by the people who delivered them and they would have been the
ones who would be asked to explain this and that. What did Paul mean by
justification by faith and righteousness. It is quite probable that the first
ever expositor of this great letter to the Romans, this letter that sparked the
reformation, was a women. Phoebe.
Then we have Pricilla and her husband Aquila, who Paul calls
his co-workers in Christ, a title he uses for people like timothy and Titus..
We know they fled Rome with the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius, Aquilla
worked as a tent maker with Paul, they taught Apollos in Ephesus and from this
section we see they had suffered imprisonment for their faith. Five out of the
six times that Pricilla and Aquila are mentioned in the scriptures Pricilla is
mentioned first which may implies she is seen as the more prominent of the two.
However they were both seen as involved in leadership and teaching. We see also
that they have a leadership role in the church at Rome a house church meets in their home.
Then in verse 6 we have Mary who is said to work very hard
for you. I’m sure its not just in the kitchen making the sandwiches, likewise in 12 Paul greets
three other women who are equally said to work hard for you in the Lord.
Tryphena and Tryphosa and Paul’s dear friend Persis. These
are women’s names and they are said to be actively involved in leading the
church and spreading the gospel.
In verse 7 we have a couple of people who are mentioned
Andronicus and Junia. Who are said to be outstanding amongst the apostles, and
who were in Christ before Paul. There
are some issues with translation here, as outstanding amongst the apostles as
the NIV and NRSV and KJV translate it could also be translated as well known
amongst the apostles, which is what the good news bible says. The challenge is
that while Andronicus is a male name, Junia is a woman’s name, so for her to be
acknowledged as outstanding amongst the apostles, which is the more natural
translation, is to say that she was considered by the church to have an
apostolic ministry, to be a church planter and missionary. Some translations
have circumnavigated that by translating Junia as Junias (like in the good News
translation) which is a masculine name.
However of the over 200 inscriptions in the city of Rome where the name Junia
occurs there are no instances where the masculine is used. None, Junia is the
more natural reading. Problems with this seem to be a more modern occurrence.
We have from amongst the church fathers early Christian writer’s reflections on
this Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the 300’s says ‘the women of
that time were more zealous than the men sharing with the apostles in the
labour of preaching’. Origin also acknowledged this greeting as reason why
women should be seen as ordained into leadership.
We also have Rufus mother and Julia mentioned in this
passage possibly in roles which we might be more used to seeing women. Rufus
mother, whom Paul acknowledges is a mother to him as well. He values the
contribution she makes to him and his ministry. And Julia and the sister of
Nereus are also mentioned as being part of the church and known to Paul. If the
other women were not seen in leadership roles then you could expect that they
may have simply warranted a mention here at the end of the list.
Outside of Romans 16 we have other silent witnesses to women
in leadership roles. In the church in Corinth Paul speaks of Chloe’s people,
who bring to Paul concerns about what is happening in that Church. The
implication is that Chloe was the prominent woman and leader. In Phillipi the
first convert is Lydia, whose household is baptised and opens her house to be
the first church in Europe. She is the head of that household. Then in Paul’s
letter to the church at Phillipi he writes concerning two women who are in
conflict with each other. Euodia and
Syntyche, who Paul speaks of struggling with him for the gospel and calls
co-workers along with male leaders such as clement. Again that word co-worker
is applied to the likes of Timothy and Titus. So a strong affirmation of Paul's
acceptance of women in ministry. The way he calls for there to be mediation
between the two also reflects the respect he has for them as co-workers. Because
of their position in the church their conflict has the potential to cause great
harm.
These are the silent witnesses to women in leadership in the New Testament. We don’t know their stories or anything much about them, they do not speak, but by looking at the people that Paul greets and the way he addresses them we can see that Paul was open to a church where both men and women were actively involved in leadership and working together for the spread of the gospel and the Church. That is important when we come to look at the so called silencing passages because it provides a picture of what the early Church was like, its practice.
I was talking with Elaine Holwell on Tuesday morning before
she went out as our Central City Chaplain which is a very missionary position
to our context here and I was in preacher mode so going through all the stuff
that I’ve just gone through with you and Elaine said well that’s the
information Howard, but what is the revelation, what is there for us. And I was
challenged by that. So here is what I think is the revelation for us it’s short
and its simple.
That Paul seemed to respect and value the ministry and
leadership of women and men, in a whole lot of different ministry and
leadership roles. And Romans 16 paints for us a picture of a church at the heart
of the empire that was vibrant and multifaceted using the gifts of both men and
women to further the spread of the gospel and of the Church. That picture I
believe is a vision for us today as the church as well. To be co-workers
valuing each other’s gifts, leadership and ministry equally, male and female,
young and old to fulfil our churches vision of being a flourishing Christian
community that connects people to God and one another.
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