St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
“The Leadership of Men and Women – The Household of God"
Ephesians 5: 21-33
June 19, 2005
Janet L. Forbes

In 1953, a time when women’s roles are rigidly defined, novice art history professor, Katherine Watson, begins teaching at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College. Despite its academic reputation, success seems to be measured by how well the students marry. In this scene, poise and elocution professor, Nancy Abbey, poses a dilemma.

(VIDEO CLIP: MONA LISA SMILES)

Early in May of 1987, I fly from Nashville, Tennessee to Grand Junction, Colorado. I am to be the Associate Minister of First United Methodist Church. My seminary education at Vanderbilt University is completed a year earlier. I have been working as a chaplain at the Veterans Administration Hospital and as a Presbyterian pastor until an appointment comes open for me in the Rocky Mountain Conference. On Saturday afternoon, the Staff Parish Relations Committee votes to accept the appointment. I will be introduced to the congregation during worship on Sunday morning.

The Staff-Parish Relations chairperson begins his introduction by referring to me as “the new pastor”. “Our new pastor has degrees in both theology and Christian Education,” he says. “Our new pastor will manage our program ministries,” he continues. “Our new pastor has been serving Donelson Presbyterian Church in the suburbs of Nashville,” he grins. He is enjoying not using any personal pronouns. Finally, he announces, “SHE will be our first woman pastor! Janet Forbes, please stand and let us greet you.” I stand on trembling knees to, what might be called, polite applause!

I move to Grand Junction two months later. Following my first worship service, Percy Kreigh welcomes me at the door.

He leans over and whispers, ”Have you ever read the Bible?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Several times.”

“Have you read First Timothy?” he tests tentatively.

“Oh, you mean the one that says, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She is to keep silent.” He nods.

“Percy, I just tore that book out of my Bible, along with Ephesians and Colossians.” He looks really stunned. I apologize.

“I’m sorry. Of course, I’ve read those books. They are very restrictive on the leadership of women and men!”

“Well…,” he takes a big breath as if to muster his courage. “My daughter says that we are all going to hell because you are our pastor.”

For several weeks, we rehearse the biblical leadership of men and women. We begin at the beginning. We learn that two creation stories exist side by side in Genesis. The first affirms that God creates humankind, simultaneously, in God’s own image. “And it Is very good!”

The second story has God creating a woman for the man only after no other animal in creation is found to be a suitable companion. The woman turns to the serpent, leads her husband astray, and God is angry.

We then note that Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, knows both stories.

Jesus preaches that God has responded to people in a new way. “The time is fulfilled,” he proclaims, “and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15) Because of this message, he gathers a counter-cultural community, setting men and women free from the barriers of class, gender, and occupation.

Last week, I invite our historical imagination. We ask this question: Imagine the year, 50. What if the disciples, James and Peter, call a gathering of the Christian missionary movement throughout the Mediterranean? These people, Hebrew and Greek, lead in the power of the Holy Spirit. Both men and women receive gifts and exercise leadership. House churches are founded throughout the region. In baptism, new converts are “clothed in Christ”. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Today, as Paul Harvey says, we get the rest of the story. Page 2!

For Father’s Day, Dave reads one of those “make my day” texts on the submission of wives to their husbands. If he were to read the whole chapter, we would hear that children are to submit to their parents. Slaves are to submit to their masters.

Between the stories of Jesus and the early house churches…and the scripture that Dave reads today, the world for the non-Roman shifts radically. In the year 66, the Romans encourage a riot in which 20,000 Jews are massacred. The Jewish revolt that follows leads to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the year, 70. Any religious group who does not honor Caesar as God is persecuted or exterminated.

Therefore, in the last decades of the first century, writings emerge which urge Christians to live in peace with civil authority. The documents seek to order relationships in ways similar to a Roman household. The term in biblical scholarship is “pater-familias”, patriarchal households based on hierarchy.

The household or domestic codes consist of three pairs of teaching addressing the relationship between wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters. In each case, the socially sub-ordinate first member of the pair is exhorted to obedience to the super-ordinate second. This obedience is based on the order of creation from Genesis 2 and 3: man, plants, animals, woman.

Our reading from Ephesians follows the basic outline of the Code: wives are to be subject to husbands, children to parents, slaves to masters. The code is spiritualized in a comparison to Christ and the church. The implication stands that if husbands love wives, the wives, also, will be cleansed. It is true that this statement of the household codes somewhat softens traditional subordination roles, in that both wives and husbands are equally addressed, equally responsible in marriage, mutually submissive to the other. Yet, it is startling to hear the age-old theme, however, cloaked, that woman is unclean. The new freedom in Christ is quickly fading. The discipleship of equals in the Jesus community is no more.

The letters to Timothy and Titus are later documents from the beginning of the second century. Roman persecution is fierce. The Christian communities are trying to blend into society, attempting to stay under the Empire’s radar.

First Timothy is mostly Household Code, modified for the Christian community. The writer makes mention of rulers, men, women, bishops, deacons, widows, and slaves. Chapter two is concerned about the regulation of worship. The writer asks in verse 1 that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” be made for kings and all in high positions, “that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.” He goes on to request in verse 8 that in every place men should pray, “lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling”. The women, he says, should adorn themselves sensibly. And then comes the final directive.

Let a women learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the women was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

The writer appeals to the rib story of creation for his authority. The shift is complete, from the spirited church “in her house” to the church as obedient “household of God”. The subordinate members must subject themselves to the head of the house. Just as wives, children, and slaves must be submissive within the household, so they must observe their sub-ordinate role within the community of faith.

These texts give birth to the “obey” language found in wedding covenants that you will hear in other churches. These texts restrict leadership. No woman can serve. No divorced man can serve.

In my mid-twenties, my first husband, Mike, and I belong to an ecumenical Bible study group. We study the scripture. We pray for spiritual gifts. Men and women speak in tongues. It is the 1970s. The Charismatic Christian movement flourishes.

After one evening’s study, the women gather in the kitchen to prepare the refreshments. I miss the men and inquire after them. “Oh, they’re in the living room with Susan, praying for her healing,” Joan tells me, as she lays chocolate chip cookies on a platter. “I want to pray, too”, I say, and head for the door. Joan reaches out to physically restrain me as she stands in the doorway. When she gets my attention, she continues with the cookies. “As biblical wives, we understand that only the men participate in the laying on of hands. Women aren’t allowed.” She chastises me!

Friends, it is years before I can eat another chocolate chip cookie.

Later that evening at home, I explain to my husband that I cannot be a biblical wife any more. Why would anyone stay in the kitchen sorting chocolate chip cookies when the Spirit of God is moving in the living room?

It is years before I can articulate what happens inside me that evening. Jesus gives his life so that both men and women might be saved. The gift of abundant life is as free to me as to anyone. Jesus would not bar me from any doorway!

Over the years, I come to understand the not all scripture is equally instructive for me.

But, the journey to that conviction is dangerous and lonely.

I leave the church, thinking that there is no place for me if cannot believe every word in the Bible.

I leave the church, thinking that there is no place for me if I cannot be properly submissive.

I leave the church, thinking that there is no place for me if I cannot stay married to my husband.

I no longer take the Bible literally. I do, however, take it seriously, using Jesus – his life, death, and resurrection – as my lens. I sit among his disciples, straining to hear his voice, “The Kingdom of God is among you!” The authority of the Bible lies for me in the discipleship of equals in the community that Jesus gathers.

In my first weeks as Associate Minister in Grand Junction, I learn that Percy Kreigh is the media technician. We share leadership in worship weekly. After a year together, he whispers to me, “I just want you to know that I think my daughter is wrong.” I hug him, and whisper back, “Just love her.”

In 2006, the United Methodist Church celebrates fifty years of the ordination of women as clergy. But that status remains vulnerable. Susan, the Southern Baptist girl friend, who leads me to a decision for Christ at the age of 8 refuses to come to my ordination. She tells me that no one will ever want me as a pastor. When she marries Kent, she vows to “obey” him, to submit to his leadership. When she divorces Kent, she calls me to help her search the Bible to proof-text her decision.

I love her and keep raising up for her another image of the Bible. I love her and shower her with grace. I love her until she knows that she is not “less than”.

I am hopeful. She has found love again. No one in her tradition or in his tradition will marry them. When she calls, she says, “Janet, Brian and I would like to visit with you about a wedding.”

Thanks be to God.