August 19, 2025 • 42 mins
Pastor Ian Graham presents the tapestry of text, tradition, reason and experience to proclaim an inspirational word on the role of women in ministry.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's good to see you all.
I haven't preached in nineweeks, point taken.
I will.
I'll sit back down, and Iwanted to do that while we were
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here.
It's common for pastors to takea sabbatical and to be away,
and I think there's someimportance to that, but for me
it was important for us to behere while I was taking a little
bit of a break from teaching.
I'm working on a book that somuch comes out of the life of
this community, which is reallybeautiful too.
But I can say with a reasonableamount of certainty that this
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is the church that I wouldattend if I were not the pastor,
and that's a great gift.
But I feel a huge weight juststanding before you today, to be
present with you in this place.
It's an honor and it is a greatprivilege to stand in front of
you, and I just sort of met anew, as I even stood up here with
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that weight this week.
So it's a joy to be a part ofthis church and I think the only
summary I have to say is thankyou.
So if you're new here, welcome.
We're so glad you're here.
We have kids among us thatsometimes make noise, and we
always just want to set theexpectations.
That's okay.
Kids are kids, okay, and theycan make noise and you don't
have to rush them out and hushthem.
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It's really okay.
So we're glad you're here,wherever you're coming from.
Thank you for joining us forworship.
My lovely wife, courtney, boughtme a new water bottle yesterday
.
I have to confess, I waswalking around.
She had this giant purpleStanley cup and I was walking
around.
I'm helping coach my son'sfootball team and I would take
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this giant purple Stanley tofootball practice, and I don't
know what sort of gender normsyou subscribe to, but you know
she was like I can't watch youwith this purple Stanley anymore
.
You look like a white suburbanmom.
So we're going to get you a newcup, and so now I have a manly
here that I've been carryingaround.
(02:16):
But I say that to just preface,not just a terrible pastor joke
, but to preface that we aretalking today about some of the
norms that are prescribed by thescriptures for the different
roles that are assigned to us,you know, based upon our gender,
in the scriptures.
And we arrive.
We were finishing a teachingseries on the book of Romans,
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which is no small undertaking.
And so many beautiful people inour community.
Incredible preachers throughoutthe summer have been carrying
that load for us throughout thesummer, and so it's my honor and
joy to pick up in the lastchapter of Romans Romans 16,
that Alfredo is going to finishfor us over the next two weeks
as we turn towards the fall andtowards the new school year.
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Somewhere around the 12th 13thcentury, gillis of Rome referred
to Junia from Romans 16,alongside Andronicus, as an
honorable man.
In the 16th century, martinLuther wrote the name as Junium
and added a masculine article.
Now you can imagine that MartinLuther's translation of the
Bible was pretty influential.
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In 1858, henry Alford changedthe name Junia to a male name.
The altering of the text wasfurther disseminated when
Eberhard Nestle changed the nameJunia to Junius in the Greek
New Testament.
This was marked by a footnotewhen he did it, but in 1979,
when Kurt Aland became theeditor of the Greek New
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Testament, he removed thefootnote.
Now the Nestle-Aland Greek NewTestament is the standard that
is used in just about everyseminary across the Western
world.
They hand you an NA-28, andthey say here good luck to you
with your Greek.
However, this happened in thelate 70s, during the course of
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Nestle-Alan's tenure here.
A group of scholars digging intosome of the earliest
manuscripts and comparing thebiblical account with the wider
Roman world.
It's always important for us toremember the Bible didn't just
emerge from a vacuum.
It didn't just fall down fromheaven.
It's a part of a cultured story.
And so for us, when we read thetext, especially for those of
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us who are Westerners in theroom, we have to remember that
the scriptures start from adifferent place.
They ask different questions,they make different assumptions,
and when we impose ourquestions and our assumptions on
them, we may be doing the mathbackwards.
So a group of scholars weresaying hold on, what's going on
in Romans 16?
There's not a singleattestation of the name Junius
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as a male name in the widerRoman world.
So the only person ever namedJunius was found in Romans 16?
Or perhaps there's somethinggoing on on?
And these scholars began to digin and they said, whoa, there's
been some shifting going on inthe language around this
specific name.
They could not find anybodynamed Junius, but what they
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could find was several women,including one found in Romans 16
, named Junia.
So why do I start with thislesson in source criticism,
history of translation, maybeeven a little Greek syntax.
Do we have the Bible's versionhere of the Da Vinci Code?
Long conspiracy of erasure?
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Perhaps a little.
We start here to demonstratethat there is often a lot that
women deal with in the churchthat men don't.
When Junia, who is highlightedas esteemed among the apostles
when Junia was known as Juniushe was an outstanding apostle,
but as Junius has been graduallyrestored to Junia, she simply
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became highly esteemed by theapostles.
There's been a consistenteffort of large quadrants of the
church to restore or to putlanguage to the roles that women
can or cannot exercisefaithfully within a church that
is trying to allow thescriptures to have the primacy
of place.
There have been some in thechurch that have challenged this
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impulse as merely reflectingthe spirit of the age, as
third-wave feminism has takenroot in our political and
cultural spaces.
Abigail Favell writessummarizing third wave feminism.
She says this which tended toadopt a postmodern sensibility,
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emphasizing diversity amongwomen and, ironically, playing
with gender norms andexpectations.
And critics suggest that, justas modern culture has entered
into a bit of mass genderconfusion, influenced way
upstream by philosophers likeJudith Butler and Michael
Foucault, the church, inemphasizing the role of women,
is simply capitulating to thewinds of culture and will be
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similarly degraded.
I want to say a couple things.
I want to put up some books foryou.
First of all, I know we havevisitors among us.
I know we have people withdiffering perspectives that are
here every week.
We have women teach, often hereat Ecclesia, and that's a big
part of our life together.
But I also know I know so manyfaithful brothers and sisters
that when they sort of surveythe scriptures, they read in
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places like 1 Timothy 3, theyread in places like 1
Corinthians 11, and they sayit's pretty clear that women
aren't supposed to do that.
And so we are holding that lineand I say to them welcome,
faithful brothers and sisters.
And to those of you who comeevery week and for you, maybe
that's not your reading of thescriptures, and yet I've never
received one report of somebodysitting there with their arms
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crossed because a woman wasteaching.
Thank you.
That, even if it's not what youthink should be happening, is
an expression of somethingreally beautiful and a way that
we hold a unity that is definedby the Spirit of God, not
defined by our preferences, andso, thank you, there'll be many
places that don't revolve aroundgender, that revolve around
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things like worship style or thethings that we talk about, that
may at times step on your toes,and that's called church.
It's a beautiful thing, and soI say thank you.
But what I want to do today isallow the text of Romans 16, and
we will get there, I assure youto inform how we've come to
these conclusions, because thereality is, if we've simply
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arrived at this practice andthese conclusions because we
want it to be so or we want itto feel the same, then we are
not allowing the scriptures tohave their place that they
should have, and so I think thisbrings up a couple of questions
.
But before we get to that,craig, can you put up those
books that are there?
Here's some books that are kindof feeding into where we are
today from a wide range ofperspectives.
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Some of these are biblicalstudies.
Sandra Gland writes about thecontext of the Ephesian church
that 1 Timothy is written from.
So that's the most explicit.
I do not permit a woman toteach, and so what Sandra Gland
is doing is digging into thereality of the Ephesian church
that might have been upstreamfrom Paul's prohibitions there
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in 1 Timothy.
The Genesis of Gender is thebest book on the matriculation
of gender theory that I've everencountered.
Abigail Favell is a Catholicscholar and writer Tell Her
Story.
Nije Gupta is a New Testamentscholar.
I think he's at WesternSeminary.
Is that right?
Thank you.
It's lovely to be in Princetonwhere people are like there it
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is.
He writes about the role ofwomen in the earliest church so
beautiful stuff, making aBiblical Womanhood.
Beth Allison Barr is a medievalChristian women's scholar but
also a pastor's wife in theheart of Texas.
So very unique perspectivethere.
Truth's Table.
These are three black women whohave a podcast that they've
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written a book from, so itfocuses a lot on the experience
of black women who have apodcast that they've written a
book from, so it focuses a loton the experience of black women
in the church.
Nt Wright has a chapter on this,unsurprised by scripture, sheep
Among Wolves that one Prepareyourself.
That's a documentary on theIranian church and these women,
the heroic acts that they doempowered by the Spirit of God,
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will challenge you, and the waythat they lead will challenge
you.
And then I threw in this lastone Water from a Deep Well, is
it?
By a church historian namedJerry Sitzer?
He's an incredible man and hewrote this book about the story
of the church, and we don't stopwith the story of the Holy
Spirit when the scriptures areclosed.
The Spirit is ongoing and doingthings, and he writes about the
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generations of people thatfollow after we have the canon
closed.
So take that, run with it, dowhat you can with it, but that's
some of the stuff that'sfeeding it.
So this brings up a couple ofimportant questions as we begin
today.
What does the tapestry of thescriptures have to say to the
role of women?
Where do these proclamations ofpromise intersect with the
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claims of our culture?
And again, when we interactwith culture, we find that there
are a lot of shared longings,because if we're all made in
God's image, if he made us all,then there are going to be
things that manifest, even inthe lives of people that don't
believe in Jesus, that areechoes of that stamp that he put
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upon us.
And so there are going to beplaces where our assumptions and
our desires, as the people ofGod seeking to be formed by the
Scriptures and the Holy Spirit,converge, and there will be
places where they diverge, andso we want to be shrewd about
those.
And how are these proclamationsof promise, good news for the
entire church and the entireworld.
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John Wesley was the founder ofthe Methodist movement and his
life with Jesus was heavilyinfluenced by his mother's
discipleship and leadership.
Susanna Wesley was John'smother and also Charles Wesley's
mother.
Charles Wesley remains one ofthe greatest hymn writers the
last 400 years.
And Susanna was married to apastor and while her husband,
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samuel, was away on a pastor'sgathering where he had to go to
London to be with other bishops,susanna would gather the parish
for Bible study and for prayer.
Now, this is the 18th century.
At that time it was unheard offor women to host these sorts of
gatherings and Samuel'ssupervisors caught wind of what
Susanna was up to back on thehome front and they said listen,
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you've got to get your wifeunder control.
Like write her a letter.
So Samuel's like okay, yes, sir.
Writes a letter to Susanna, I'msure with a reasonable amount
of fear and trembling, givenwhat Susanna says to him.
So Samuel writes his lettercease and desist, stop hosting
Bible studies.
And Susanna says if you forbidme from doing good, you will
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have to stand with me onjudgment day and explain to God.
Why have you given me thiscommand?
Point taken.
Needless to say, samuelrelented.
Susanna Wesley had nine childrenthat made it out of infancy.
She gave birth to some 20children and she would often,
during the chaos of her life,she'd put an apron over her head
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and just be like I'm spendingtime with the Lord, I'm here
with Jesus, and her life withJesus was formative and upstream
of one of the greatestmovements of the kingdom of God
that the world has ever seen.
I was driving through ruralWest Virginia and there was this
old, dilapidated Methodistchurch and as I'm passing the
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church I thought of sociologistRyan Burge's statement that the
Methodist church at one point inthe history of the United
States had a church in nearlyevery county in the United
States.
Now I'm a church planter.
I have other friends that arechurch planters.
There aren't many of us thatare going to rural West Virginia
.
I'm going to be honest.
Most of us are going to NewYork City and Washington DC and
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places like Princeton, wherepeople will name seminaries that
you can't remember, where thescholar's from.
It's nice teaching you guys, butI say that to say Susanna
Wesley's life is at the fount ofa move of God in ways that we
could never account for, andJohn Wesley, her son developed
an epistemology which is just afancy way of saying how we know
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things, and it's important forus to keep in the backdrop as we
talk today.
This is called the Wesleyanquadrilateral.
I went to a Wesleyan seminary,so I'm partial to Wesley.
Wesley didn't formalize thisstructure.
He didn't say now I'm going totalk about scripture, now I'm
going to talk about tradition,now I'm going to talk about
reason.
But it was implicit ineverything that he sought to
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teach and do, and after his time, scholars named this the
Wesleyan quadrilateral.
It tells us you see, that thescripture circle is encompassing
.
It's the fountainhead fromwhich all of these others flow
and have their points of contact.
But scripture does not exist inisolation.
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Again, if it did, did when wewere reading books from another
culture, in another language,how would we read that?
How would we know that right?
So we need other interactionpoints in order to begin to
understand the scriptures.
We don't invent ways to readthe Bible with each succeeding
generation, but we receive atradition that is passed on to
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us, a hard-won tradition, thedoctrine of the Holy Spirit
forming sometime in the fourthcentury of the church, and so
the church as they see themanifestation of what Jesus has
done, is then beginning todiscuss what does this mean?
And there are many detours andfits and starts within that
discussion.
There are heretics, there arepeople that lead the story
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astray, but the overall sweep ofthe church is pulling them back
towards something that werecognize as orthodoxy, that
brings us together fromdifferent traditions, places
like the Nicene Creed, and sothis is not.
This didn't just happen.
It matriculates slowly overtime, and so tradition is
something we receive.
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We don't have to, with eachsucceeding generation, figure
out if Jesus was fully God andfully man.
We receive that as a gift.
We don't have to discern theHoly Spirit for ourselves.
We receive that as a gift.
There is tradition involved inour reading of the Scriptures.
We don't make it up.
We read our Scriptures as aliving document that it will
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have a bearing on our livedexperience, that what God is
doing will be validated by theministering of the Holy Spirit
in the present, and we read itin light of the reasonable
faculties that God has given us.
This is a basic fourfold testthat I want to apply as we look
at what Romans 16 seems to sayand to imply of both Junia and
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Phoebe, as we tease out thequestion of what this means for
the church and women's place inthe church.
So, first, experience Does ourexperience say that women are
gifted for the various ministryand leadership of the church
that men are assumed?
Yes, next question Thanks forthat.
I thought about just doing that.
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I'd be like yep cool If you'vebeen here for any amount of time
that answers a quick yes andperhaps the church you're coming
from.
Women like Courtney, sarah,annale, lee, laura and Elisa,
who lead us faithfully andcourageously as elders.
Savannah, whom we miss alreadyFor those of you who are new to
our gathering, we just bidfarewell to a dear staff member
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last week and it was heartfeltand beautiful and sad for us.
Carrie, who ministers with ISI,which is an international
student outreach to places likeIran that have come to Princeton
, who preaches faithfully andbeautifully every time she's up
here.
Women like Yuk-Young and Alexa,who lead our prayer ministry
and guide us faithfully inprayer each week.
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Campbell, who leads our teens,and I'm sure I'm forgetting
somebody.
I feel so much sympathy withPaul when he's just like oh, let
me say hi to everybody, but Ihope I don't forget anybody.
These are just the women in ourchurch that lead in official
capacities.
There are so many others thatlead setting up, tearing down,
do all kinds of things, so wecould spend all day listing off
the ways that the women in ourchurch contribute.
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So, yes, experience is oftengiven primacy of place in our
romantic culture, but the geniusof the Wesleyan quadrilateral
is that there are other litmustests that have to be applied.
Something can be experiencedlike.
This seems good, but what dothe scriptures say?
What does tradition say?
Are we inventing something newor are we going back to
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something that we have received?
Does reason tell us that womenshould be free to serve in these
ways?
Well, I just want toacknowledge that for some of us
in here, it sort of depends.
Right, reason and gender have acomplicated relationship in our
culture right now.
Couple that with the fact thateverything in our culture is
politicized, which is to saythat everything in our culture
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is polarized, then genderbecomes a zero-sum game.
In America, the past 50 yearshave seen significant gains in
women's wages, education levelsand the platforms available to
them to speak out against theinjustice they often experience.
These are good things, but, asRichard Reeves and several
others have pointed out, aswomen have excelled, many men
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are also getting left behind andstuck, and for some men they
have constructed this narrativethat things were simpler in
earlier eras, where hard gendernorms were defined and immovable
.
Women's rights have largelybeen associated with progressive
causes, and so often yourpolitical leaning will determine
kind of how you feel about thisarea, because politics has
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become a religion and men'smovements tend to be
conservative and again peoplefeel pulled to either one side
or the other.
There's not a lot of room fornuance in our political
conversations.
Now, the pining for earliereras I leave that to you.
I'm grateful I don't have tospend all day in a coal mine, I
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just am.
I'm grateful for antibiotics,all these kinds of things.
So there are things about thatthat I'm like oh yeah, maybe I
could see there's some beautifulsimplicity there, there's some
things, but there's also thingsI'm like I don't know and I
think every time we're piningfor earlier eras it's like who
was this good for?
You know, I speak to theexperience of our black brothers
and sisters who are like takeme back to that golden era when
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everything was great for us.
So I don't know about that, butneedless to say, we live in a
largely unreasonable age when itcomes to gender, and so
applying the litmus test ofreason feels, at the very least,
complex.
Our culture does not offer acompelling vision of mutual
flourishing for men and womenbecause our cultural metrics of
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flourishing are so askew.
Think about it.
We can only measure success inthings like monetary value,
productivity, freedom forconsequence, less sex,
accumulation of status.
And so reason, if we simplyapply the reason of our age,
lacks a definitive conclusion.
But that's where using ourquadrilateral is helpful,
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because as Christians, ourreason is not merely a product
of the time and place that welive, but rather, as Paul tells
us, we have the mind of Christ.
So let's set reason aside, withsome of its complexities, and
go on to tradition.
You find an endless treasuretrove of heroic women leading,
teaching, ministering andperforming miracles.
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An early second century letterfrom Pliny, a governor of
Bithynia in modern day Turkey,to the emperor of the Roman
Empire, trajan, gives usevidence of two female slaves
who were deaconesses in thelocal church.
Pliny writes he saysAccordingly, I judged it all the
more necessary to find out whatthe truth was by torturing two
female slaves who were calleddeaconesses.
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And there's so many beautifulthings going on here, aside from
the persecution, but thetestimony of the early church
that not only were women leadingin some official capacity in
the role of the church, but alsothey were from the lower
classes of this culture.
And I consider how often in ourown churches people with lower
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socioeconomic status areelevated to positions of
leadership.
But we see this testified inthe early church.
These two women, as Pliny istrying to get information out of
these people, he's trying tohelp them conform to the norms
of the Roman Empire, and theyhold fast, but we see that these
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two female slaves are leadingin an official capacity.
It's with that.
I want to turn to Romans,chapter 16.
We could spend all day onchurch history and women, so I
commend those books to you.
As Paul writes, a deacon ordeaconess, all the churches of
the Gentiles Greet also thechurch in their house.
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Greet my beloved Eponitis, whowas the first convert in Asia
for Christ Pretty strong thingon your CV there.
Greet Mary, who has worked veryhard for you.
Greet Andronicus and Junia, myfellow Israelites who were in
prison with me they.
So I want to just focus on acouple of the women that are
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highlighted here.
First we have Phoebe.
Phoebe in Romans 16 isdescribed as a diakoness and a
prostasis.
These are Greek words.
Some translators offer this asservant and helper, but I don't
think those are strong enough.
New Testament scholar LucyPepiot.
Some translators offer this asservant and helper, but I don't
think those are strong enough.
New Testament scholar LucyPepiot, who writes a lot on the
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intersection of the story of thescriptures and the way that
they fall upon women, writesthis she says that Paul is
commending Phoebe to take thisletter to the church.
And here's what happens.
The task of taking a letter toa church would have entailed not
simply delivering the letter,handing it over, but, in all
likelihood, performing theletter for the hearers.
It's important for us toremember this was not a literary
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culture by and large, and sothese letters are not just hey,
we got a new letter from Paul,pass it around.
This was also a rhetoricalculture.
I have a New Testament scholarwho is one of my teachers, named
Ben Witherington, and he writesa lot about the rhetoric that
is implied in the New Testamentscriptures.
It's not just that these wordswere meant to be read by us.
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They were meant to be heard byus, and so the first person to
make the words of Romans, whichmany consider Paul's most
complete and beautiful letterwas Phoebe, and she shows up
with this letter and she, by hergreat skill and calling from
God, would lead the Roman churchin the words that Paul had.
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Lucy Peviot goes on.
In other words, she would haveread the letter knowledgeably.
In addition to this, she wouldhave had the task of explaining
it to the gathered churches.
She was an emissary tasked withthe job of delivering,
performing and explaining Romans.
She goes on.
In the masculine form, prostasisalways connotes authority and
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the exercise of authority overothers.
In the verb form it istranslated to preside, to rule
over, direct, to maintain andthe like.
She was one who ruled and led.
Prostasis also tells us thatshe was a patron or a benefactor
with considerable means andinfluence.
She funded Paul's mission andclearly had a relationship with
him constituted by mutual trustand respect.
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This is Phoebe.
Priscilla, prissa and Aquila arePriscilla and Aquila from Acts,
chapter 18.
And I love Paul, he's like.
These are my dear friends whosuffered in prison with me.
In Acts, chapter 18, we firstmeet Priscilla and Aquila.
We find them After this.
Paul left Athens and went toCorinth.
There he found a Jew namedAquila, from Pontus, who had
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become recently from Italy, withhis wife Priscilla, because
Claudius had ordered all Jews toleave Rome.
Again, this is our sort ofhypothetical context, for the
letter to the Romans is thatClaudius had evicted all the
Jewish people from the Romancapital After his death sometime
in 54 AD.
All of the Jewish people thatpreviously lived in Rome are
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invited to come back.
Now there was a church therepreviously of Jews and Gentiles,
but the Gentiles have enjoyed alittle bit of privilege while
the Jewish people were kickedout of the city.
But now they've been broughtback and Paul's like hey, it's
going to be hard to figure outhow to live together again.
Cultures are hard to merge andthe more we ignore that, we do
that to our peril.
And so how do we do this?
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In the power of the Spirit, andthat's a lot of the context for
the letter to the Romans.
Paul went to see them andbecause he was of the same trade
, he stayed with them and theyworked together.
By trade.
They were tent makers.
Every Sabbath he would argue inthe synagogue and would try to
convince both Jews and Greeks.
Priscilla and Aquila becomePaul's dear friends and
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co-workers, and we see them atthe end of Acts 18, even helping
Apollos clarify his teachingand his doctrine.
And they have returned to Romefollowing the death of Claudius
and are hosting one of thescattered house churches that
make up the Roman wider churchin their home.
Priscilla is named before herhusband as a subtle nod of
prominence and honor.
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And then we arrive at Junia,john Chrysostom, who is not a
large proponent of women, to putit nicely.
He says this of Junia'sapostleship To be an apostle is
something great, but to beoutstanding among the apostles
just think what a wonderful songof praise that is.
They were outstanding on thebasis of their works and
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virtuous actions.
This is sometime in the fourthcentury.
We're talking very clearly thatJunia is an apostle.
But even he does not stop butadds another song of praise
besides.
It says who were also in Christbefore me.
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Yes, I am aware of injunctionsagainst females teaching or
leading in places like 1Corinthians 11, as we've already
mentioned, 1 Timothy 3.
And as I've commended books toyou, you can do your own
research and looking, and Iencourage you to do that.
I'm not making any edicts uphere.
I find those specificinstructions in those places not
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meant to be universalstatements when, weighed on the
scale of places like Romans 16and the shape of the
announcement of the gospelmessage itself, we could preach
this message so many ways.
We could go back to Genesis 1.
Right now we're going to go tojust the broader story of the
gospel story, the account ofJesus' life, death and
resurrection.
We see the prominence of womenat every turn.
The angel Gabriel appears toMary in Luke, chapter 1 and says
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Greetings, favored one.
The Lord is with you.
She listens to the stunningannouncement about what the Lord
is doing, that the Holy Spiritis going to come upon her, that
she will bear a son and, thoughshe has questions, she is the
first to declare her faith inthe coming son.
Let it be unto me, according toyour word.
And we see her.
The first time she shares thisnews is with her relative
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Elizabeth.
Elizabeth pronounces blessingover Mary, and then Mary shows
you that this is no young womanwho's just merely going along
for the ride.
This is a powerful theologian.
Luke, chapter 1, verse 45.
Elizabeth says Blessed is shewho believed that there would be
a fulfillment of what wasspoken to her by the Lord.
And then Mary said my soulmagnifies the Lord and my spirit
(30:21):
rejoices in God, my Savior, forhe has looked with favor on the
lowly state of his servant.
Surely, now on, all generationswill call me blessed, for the
mighty one has done great thingsfor me, and holy is his name.
Indeed, his mercy is for thosewho fear him.
From generation to generation,he has shown strength with his
arm.
He has scattered the proud inthe imagination of their hearts.
(30:43):
He has brought down thepowerful from their thrones,
lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry withgood things, sent the rich away
empty.
He has come to the aid of hischild, israel, in remembrance of
his mercy, according to thepromise he made to our ancestors
, to Abraham and to hisdescendants forever.
Mary was a theologian, amen.
We see another Mary in Luke,chapter 10.
(31:06):
Jesus has come to visit Mary andMartha.
The societal expectation wasthat she and her sister would
jump into action, cooking,serving, but Jesus is teaching
and Mary doesn't go to thekitchen.
She goes to the feet of theLord, which is the place of a
disciple, which, in this culture, is the place reserved for a
man, a devoted man, at the feetof his rabbi.
(31:28):
But Mary shirks custom of everysort and Jesus commends her for
it.
She has chosen the better part.
At the cross of Jesus we finddevoted women as witnesses to
the crucifixion of Jesus, asJesus gives his life for the
sake of the world.
They are among the few who havethe courage and the fortitude
to stay with Jesus, to bearwitness, to be with him as they
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watch their world being undone.
And on the resurrection morning, wracked with grief and simply
coming to mourn, not expectingany fireworks at the tomb, mary
comes to the garden tomb tomourn her fallen Lord and friend
.
To her horror, she finds thatthe stone has been rolled away
(32:11):
and she can only conclude theworst that robbers have either
stolen from the grave or thosewho would seek to desecrate
Jesus further have come andtaken his body.
Her grief is compounded.
John 20 tells us she saw twoangels in white sitting where
the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other
at the feet.
They said to her woman why areyou weeping?
(32:32):
She said to them they've takenaway my Lord and I don't know
where they've laid him.
When she had said this, sheturned around and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did notknow that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her Woman why areyou weeping?
Whom are you looking for?
The questions that heaven askedearth in this setting so
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beautiful, supposing him to bethe gardener, the writers of the
scriptural story are just likehey, remember where all this
started?
In a garden.
Supposing him to be thegardener, it's just like just
nud, remember where all thisstarted?
In a garden.
Supposing him to be thegardener, it's just like just
nudging you the whole way.
Come on, you can come with me,sir.
If you've carried him away,tell me where you've laid him
(33:15):
and I will take him away.
Jesus, said to her.
Mary she turned to him.
In Hebrew, rabbeni, which meansteacher.
Jesus said to her do not touchme because I have not yet
ascended to the Father, but goto my brothers and say to them I
am ascending to my Father andto your Father, to my God and to
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your God.
That's so beautiful theResurrected Christ.
Go to my brothers.
Mary Magdalene went andannounced to the disciples I
have seen the Lord, which iscalled preaching the gospel, and
she told them that he had saidthese things to her the first
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word of the new world is awoman's name and the first
apostle is Mary.
Apostle to the apostles, sentto declare the good news of
Jesus to his brothers.
If we take these gospel accountsas a complete thought, we have
the ministry of women at thecenter of every single movement,
and this is good news for theentire church because we see
that in Christ Jesus we are allchildren of God through faith,
(34:20):
as Paul writes in Galatians,chapter 3.
As many of us who were baptizedinto Christ have clothed
ourselves with Christ, there isno longer Jew or Greek, there is
no longer slave or free, thereis no longer male or female, for
all of you are one in ChristJesus and if you belong to
Christ, then you are Abraham'soffspring heirs, according to
the promise.
So we go back to our originalquestions.
(34:43):
What does the tapestry of thescriptures have to say to the
role of women?
The tapestry of the scriptures,in my opinion, alongside
experience, reason and tradition, makes all roles in church
leadership and ministryavailable to women.
Where do these promises,proclamations, intersect with
the claims of our culture andwhere do they diverge?
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Women in our culture broadlyhave specific longings for
liberation and flourishing thatare expressed in our culture.
Jesus calls women to be holywomen, of valor, of courage, who
manifest the image of God intheir womanhood.
But the key to this liberation,as is true for every subgroup
of humanity, is notself-liberation, it's not
(35:25):
self-fulfillment, it's being setfree by Christ Jesus, the
liberating king.
How are these proclamations ofpromise good news for the entire
church?
When women are restored,empowered and celebrated, when
they proclaim the good news inlife and deed, the world is
shaken with the love of God.
Whereas human culture haslargely been a story of zero-sum
(35:48):
power games, with menoverwhelmingly having the upper
hand in Christ, we have beencalled, as a new humanity, to
bear witness to a new way ofbeing human, that the economy of
kingdom leadership is notzero-sum of scarcity but of
endless abundance, that we arecalled to bear witness in mutual
honor and submission andexhortation and to proclaim the.
(36:09):
Romans 16 is one of the mostbeautiful chapters in the
scriptures because it is simplyPaul naming people who are
serving the Lord.
I mean, imagine if you knewthat your small acts of ministry
(36:32):
, of service, of leadership,would get your name forever
written in the Bible to be readfor the rest of human history
and beyond.
That's pretty good fame, prettygood level there, right?
Phoebe, priscilla, mary, Juniaaren't remarkable because
they're women.
They're remarkable because, inresponse to the grace of Jesus,
they have leveraged everythingthey have for kingdom purposes,
(36:54):
their gifts, their resources,their suffering, all devoted
solely to King Jesus.
And that is the call to eachone of us to receive the grace
of God, the forgiveness of sins,the liberation that he only can
provide, and to know that ourreception of that grace and our
giving in response of all ourheart, our soul, our mind and
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our strength to Jesus willinscribe us in the Lamb's book
of life.
I'm going to invite our worshipteam forward as we respond.
Macrina, the brother of Basil,and Gregory the Great, two of
the Eastern fathers.
Her last words were recorded byher brother, gregory, and
Gregory and Basil both talkabout how they get a lot of the
(37:38):
notoriety, but Macrina was thetheologian in the family and her
last words are so beautiful asa call to us to pay attention to
the reality of the Holy Spiritamong us.
And before I read them, I justsimply want to say, looking at
the women in the room if youhave been hard-pressed in church
(37:59):
, if you have been compressedinto something that seems
extra-biblical, I'm sorry and Ipray that the Holy Spirit would
minister to you in these moments.
If you have been told thatthat's not for you.
Again, this isn't like some newteaching, it's not like, oh,
you know, everything you've everbeen told is wrong.
I don't want to do that, butwhat I do want to say is, in
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trying to be faithful to thescriptures, if you have received
a call on your life and you'resaying I don't know what to do
with this, then I think Jesus isthe author of that call and is
echoing it again here today andI pray that you'll pick up maybe
what you let down becausesomebody told you you had to.
For those of you who have beenthe victim of various forms of
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abuse because of the culturesthat often come from the
polluted fountains of thesesorts of teachings, I pray that
the Holy Spirit would comfortyou here in this place, and for
all of us, for men and for womenhere.
Our call to be this newhumanity is a call for us to
cultivate.
It's a call for us to receive.
So we do that in the power ofthe Holy Spirit and nothing less
(39:07):
.
Macrina, the last words that shewas reported to pray on her
deathbed.
She says this you have releasedus, o Lord, from the fear of
death.
You have made the end of lifehere on earth, a beginning of
true life for us.
You let our bodies rest insleep in due season and you
awaken them again at the soundof your last trumpet.
(39:28):
You entrust to the earth ourbodies of earth, which you have
fashioned with your own hands,and you restore again what you
have given, transforming withincorruptibility and grace what
is mortal and deformed in us.
You have redeemed us from thecurse and from sin, having
become both on our behalf.
You have redeemed us from thecurse and from sin, having
become both on our behalf.
You have crushed the heads ofthe serpent who had seized the
(39:49):
man in his jaws because of theabyss of our disobedience.
You've opened up for us a pathto the resurrection.
Having broken down the gates ofhell and reduced to impotence
the one who had the power overdeath, you've given to those who
fear you a visible token, thesign of the Holy Cross, for the
destruction of the adversary andfor the protection of our life.
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Thanks be to God.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, we pray.
Come Holy Spirit.
We pray, come to the comforter,to the one who assuages and
heals all of our wounds.
Lord Jesus, god for those of uswho have wounded.
(40:33):
God for those of us who havebeen heavy-handed, lord, we ask
for your forgiveness, god, forthose of us who have worn the
wounds of cultures, ofrelationships, of families.
Lord, we don't simply putourselves in the place of a
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victim, lord, in a way that weso often do in our culture.
Lord, we know we've seen ourpain, lord, we know that you
have seen it and so, god, we askthat you would comfort, that
you would heal, and we ask foryour grace, lord Jesus, the
power of your Holy Spirit tolive differently, in holiness,
(41:16):
god, in expectation, lord, thatyou are doing something far
beyond what we could ask orimagine in our midst, lord Jesus
.
So to the dear sisters andbrothers here in this place,
lord, would you come?
We ask these things in thepower of your name, god, in the
beautiful name of Jesus, we prayAmen.
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I'm gonna invite you to stand aswe respond in time of worship,
friends, and as we do so, I justinvite you, during this time of
our service, to just fix yourattention on what Jesus might be
saying.
He often whispers in thegentleness of our hearts.
He speaks through the wordsthat we've said.
He speaks through things thathe brought to mind while we were
talking.
He speaks through the words ofthe song, and so he is speaking
(42:01):
here.
That's what we believe, and sonow it's an invitation to
encounter this grace.
Let's turn our attentionstowards God as we worship and as
we pray.
In just a few moments, we'llcome to the table together.
Hello, it's good to see you all.
I haven't preached in nineweeks, point taken.
I will.
I'll sit back down, and Iwanted to do that while we were
(00:26):
here.
It's common for pastors to takea sabbatical and to be away,
and I think there's someimportance to that, but for me
it was important for us to behere while I was taking a little
bit of a break from teaching.
I'm working on a book that somuch comes out of the life of
this community, which is reallybeautiful too.
But I can say with a reasonableamount of certainty that this
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is the church that I wouldattend if I were not the pastor,
and that's a great gift.
But I feel a huge weight juststanding before you today, to be
present with you in this place.
It's an honor and it is a greatprivilege to stand in front of
you, and I just sort of met anew, as I even stood up here with
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that weight this week.
So it's a joy to be a part ofthis church and I think the only
summary I have to say is thankyou.
So if you're new here, welcome.
We're so glad you're here.
We have kids among us thatsometimes make noise, and we
always just want to set theexpectations.
That's okay.
Kids are kids, okay, and theycan make noise and you don't
have to rush them out and hushthem.
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It's really okay.
So we're glad you're here,wherever you're coming from.
Thank you for joining us forworship.
My lovely wife, courtney, boughtme a new water bottle yesterday
.
I have to confess, I waswalking around.
She had this giant purpleStanley cup and I was walking
around.
I'm helping coach my son'sfootball team and I would take
(01:56):
this giant purple Stanley tofootball practice, and I don't
know what sort of gender normsyou subscribe to, but you know
she was like I can't watch youwith this purple Stanley anymore
.
You look like a white suburbanmom.
So we're going to get you a newcup, and so now I have a manly
here that I've been carryingaround.
(02:16):
But I say that to just preface,not just a terrible pastor joke
, but to preface that we aretalking today about some of the
norms that are prescribed by thescriptures for the different
roles that are assigned to us,you know, based upon our gender,
in the scriptures.
And we arrive.
We were finishing a teachingseries on the book of Romans,
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which is no small undertaking.
And so many beautiful people inour community.
Incredible preachers throughoutthe summer have been carrying
that load for us throughout thesummer, and so it's my honor and
joy to pick up in the lastchapter of Romans Romans 16,
that Alfredo is going to finishfor us over the next two weeks
as we turn towards the fall andtowards the new school year.
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Somewhere around the 12th 13thcentury, gillis of Rome referred
to Junia from Romans 16,alongside Andronicus, as an
honorable man.
In the 16th century, martinLuther wrote the name as Junium
and added a masculine article.
Now you can imagine that MartinLuther's translation of the
Bible was pretty influential.
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In 1858, henry Alford changedthe name Junia to a male name.
The altering of the text wasfurther disseminated when
Eberhard Nestle changed the nameJunia to Junius in the Greek
New Testament.
This was marked by a footnotewhen he did it, but in 1979,
when Kurt Aland became theeditor of the Greek New
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Testament, he removed thefootnote.
Now the Nestle-Aland Greek NewTestament is the standard that
is used in just about everyseminary across the Western
world.
They hand you an NA-28, andthey say here good luck to you
with your Greek.
However, this happened in thelate 70s, during the course of
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Nestle-Alan's tenure here.
A group of scholars digging intosome of the earliest
manuscripts and comparing thebiblical account with the wider
Roman world.
It's always important for us toremember the Bible didn't just
emerge from a vacuum.
It didn't just fall down fromheaven.
It's a part of a cultured story.
And so for us, when we read thetext, especially for those of
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us who are Westerners in theroom, we have to remember that
the scriptures start from adifferent place.
They ask different questions,they make different assumptions,
and when we impose ourquestions and our assumptions on
them, we may be doing the mathbackwards.
So a group of scholars weresaying hold on, what's going on
in Romans 16?
There's not a singleattestation of the name Junius
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as a male name in the widerRoman world.
So the only person ever namedJunius was found in Romans 16?
Or perhaps there's somethinggoing on on?
And these scholars began to digin and they said, whoa, there's
been some shifting going on inthe language around this
specific name.
They could not find anybodynamed Junius, but what they
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could find was several women,including one found in Romans 16
, named Junia.
So why do I start with thislesson in source criticism,
history of translation, maybeeven a little Greek syntax.
Do we have the Bible's versionhere of the Da Vinci Code?
Long conspiracy of erasure?
(05:37):
Perhaps a little.
We start here to demonstratethat there is often a lot that
women deal with in the churchthat men don't.
When Junia, who is highlightedas esteemed among the apostles
when Junia was known as Juniushe was an outstanding apostle,
but as Junius has been graduallyrestored to Junia, she simply
(06:00):
became highly esteemed by theapostles.
There's been a consistenteffort of large quadrants of the
church to restore or to putlanguage to the roles that women
can or cannot exercisefaithfully within a church that
is trying to allow thescriptures to have the primacy
of place.
There have been some in thechurch that have challenged this
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impulse as merely reflectingthe spirit of the age, as
third-wave feminism has takenroot in our political and
cultural spaces.
Abigail Favell writessummarizing third wave feminism.
She says this which tended toadopt a postmodern sensibility,
(06:44):
emphasizing diversity amongwomen and, ironically, playing
with gender norms andexpectations.
And critics suggest that, justas modern culture has entered
into a bit of mass genderconfusion, influenced way
upstream by philosophers likeJudith Butler and Michael
Foucault, the church, inemphasizing the role of women,
is simply capitulating to thewinds of culture and will be
(07:04):
similarly degraded.
I want to say a couple things.
I want to put up some books foryou.
First of all, I know we havevisitors among us.
I know we have people withdiffering perspectives that are
here every week.
We have women teach, often hereat Ecclesia, and that's a big
part of our life together.
But I also know I know so manyfaithful brothers and sisters
that when they sort of surveythe scriptures, they read in
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places like 1 Timothy 3, theyread in places like 1
Corinthians 11, and they sayit's pretty clear that women
aren't supposed to do that.
And so we are holding that lineand I say to them welcome,
faithful brothers and sisters.
And to those of you who comeevery week and for you, maybe
that's not your reading of thescriptures, and yet I've never
received one report of somebodysitting there with their arms
(07:49):
crossed because a woman wasteaching.
Thank you.
That, even if it's not what youthink should be happening, is
an expression of somethingreally beautiful and a way that
we hold a unity that is definedby the Spirit of God, not
defined by our preferences, andso, thank you, there'll be many
places that don't revolve aroundgender, that revolve around
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things like worship style or thethings that we talk about, that
may at times step on your toes,and that's called church.
It's a beautiful thing, and soI say thank you.
But what I want to do today isallow the text of Romans 16, and
we will get there, I assure youto inform how we've come to
these conclusions, because thereality is, if we've simply
(08:34):
arrived at this practice andthese conclusions because we
want it to be so or we want itto feel the same, then we are
not allowing the scriptures tohave their place that they
should have, and so I think thisbrings up a couple of questions
.
But before we get to that,craig, can you put up those
books that are there?
Here's some books that are kindof feeding into where we are
today from a wide range ofperspectives.
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Some of these are biblicalstudies.
Sandra Gland writes about thecontext of the Ephesian church
that 1 Timothy is written from.
So that's the most explicit.
I do not permit a woman toteach, and so what Sandra Gland
is doing is digging into thereality of the Ephesian church
that might have been upstreamfrom Paul's prohibitions there
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in 1 Timothy.
The Genesis of Gender is thebest book on the matriculation
of gender theory that I've everencountered.
Abigail Favell is a Catholicscholar and writer Tell Her
Story.
Nije Gupta is a New Testamentscholar.
I think he's at WesternSeminary.
Is that right?
Thank you.
It's lovely to be in Princetonwhere people are like there it
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is.
He writes about the role ofwomen in the earliest church so
beautiful stuff, making aBiblical Womanhood.
Beth Allison Barr is a medievalChristian women's scholar but
also a pastor's wife in theheart of Texas.
So very unique perspectivethere.
Truth's Table.
These are three black women whohave a podcast that they've
(10:04):
written a book from, so itfocuses a lot on the experience
of black women who have apodcast that they've written a
book from, so it focuses a loton the experience of black women
in the church.
Nt Wright has a chapter on this,unsurprised by scripture, sheep
Among Wolves that one Prepareyourself.
That's a documentary on theIranian church and these women,
the heroic acts that they doempowered by the Spirit of God,
(10:28):
will challenge you, and the waythat they lead will challenge
you.
And then I threw in this lastone Water from a Deep Well, is
it?
By a church historian namedJerry Sitzer?
He's an incredible man and hewrote this book about the story
of the church, and we don't stopwith the story of the Holy
Spirit when the scriptures areclosed.
The Spirit is ongoing and doingthings, and he writes about the
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generations of people thatfollow after we have the canon
closed.
So take that, run with it, dowhat you can with it, but that's
some of the stuff that'sfeeding it.
So this brings up a couple ofimportant questions as we begin
today.
What does the tapestry of thescriptures have to say to the
role of women?
Where do these proclamations ofpromise intersect with the
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claims of our culture?
And again, when we interactwith culture, we find that there
are a lot of shared longings,because if we're all made in
God's image, if he made us all,then there are going to be
things that manifest, even inthe lives of people that don't
believe in Jesus, that areechoes of that stamp that he put
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upon us.
And so there are going to beplaces where our assumptions and
our desires, as the people ofGod seeking to be formed by the
Scriptures and the Holy Spirit,converge, and there will be
places where they diverge, andso we want to be shrewd about
those.
And how are these proclamationsof promise, good news for the
entire church and the entireworld.
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John Wesley was the founder ofthe Methodist movement and his
life with Jesus was heavilyinfluenced by his mother's
discipleship and leadership.
Susanna Wesley was John'smother and also Charles Wesley's
mother.
Charles Wesley remains one ofthe greatest hymn writers the
last 400 years.
And Susanna was married to apastor and while her husband,
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samuel, was away on a pastor'sgathering where he had to go to
London to be with other bishops,susanna would gather the parish
for Bible study and for prayer.
Now, this is the 18th century.
At that time it was unheard offor women to host these sorts of
gatherings and Samuel'ssupervisors caught wind of what
Susanna was up to back on thehome front and they said listen,
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you've got to get your wifeunder control.
Like write her a letter.
So Samuel's like okay, yes, sir.
Writes a letter to Susanna, I'msure with a reasonable amount
of fear and trembling, givenwhat Susanna says to him.
So Samuel writes his lettercease and desist, stop hosting
Bible studies.
And Susanna says if you forbidme from doing good, you will
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have to stand with me onjudgment day and explain to God.
Why have you given me thiscommand?
Point taken.
Needless to say, samuelrelented.
Susanna Wesley had nine childrenthat made it out of infancy.
She gave birth to some 20children and she would often,
during the chaos of her life,she'd put an apron over her head
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and just be like I'm spendingtime with the Lord, I'm here
with Jesus, and her life withJesus was formative and upstream
of one of the greatestmovements of the kingdom of God
that the world has ever seen.
I was driving through ruralWest Virginia and there was this
old, dilapidated Methodistchurch and as I'm passing the
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church I thought of sociologistRyan Burge's statement that the
Methodist church at one point inthe history of the United
States had a church in nearlyevery county in the United
States.
Now I'm a church planter.
I have other friends that arechurch planters.
There aren't many of us thatare going to rural West Virginia
.
I'm going to be honest.
Most of us are going to NewYork City and Washington DC and
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places like Princeton, wherepeople will name seminaries that
you can't remember, where thescholar's from.
It's nice teaching you guys, butI say that to say Susanna
Wesley's life is at the fount ofa move of God in ways that we
could never account for, andJohn Wesley, her son developed
an epistemology which is just afancy way of saying how we know
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things, and it's important forus to keep in the backdrop as we
talk today.
This is called the Wesleyanquadrilateral.
I went to a Wesleyan seminary,so I'm partial to Wesley.
Wesley didn't formalize thisstructure.
He didn't say now I'm going totalk about scripture, now I'm
going to talk about tradition,now I'm going to talk about
reason.
But it was implicit ineverything that he sought to
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teach and do, and after his time, scholars named this the
Wesleyan quadrilateral.
It tells us you see, that thescripture circle is encompassing
.
It's the fountainhead fromwhich all of these others flow
and have their points of contact.
But scripture does not exist inisolation.
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Again, if it did, did when wewere reading books from another
culture, in another language,how would we read that?
How would we know that right?
So we need other interactionpoints in order to begin to
understand the scriptures.
We don't invent ways to readthe Bible with each succeeding
generation, but we receive atradition that is passed on to
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us, a hard-won tradition, thedoctrine of the Holy Spirit
forming sometime in the fourthcentury of the church, and so
the church as they see themanifestation of what Jesus has
done, is then beginning todiscuss what does this mean?
And there are many detours andfits and starts within that
discussion.
There are heretics, there arepeople that lead the story
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astray, but the overall sweep ofthe church is pulling them back
towards something that werecognize as orthodoxy, that
brings us together fromdifferent traditions, places
like the Nicene Creed, and sothis is not.
This didn't just happen.
It matriculates slowly overtime, and so tradition is
something we receive.
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We don't have to, with eachsucceeding generation, figure
out if Jesus was fully God andfully man.
We receive that as a gift.
We don't have to discern theHoly Spirit for ourselves.
We receive that as a gift.
There is tradition involved inour reading of the Scriptures.
We don't make it up.
We read our Scriptures as aliving document that it will
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have a bearing on our livedexperience, that what God is
doing will be validated by theministering of the Holy Spirit
in the present, and we read itin light of the reasonable
faculties that God has given us.
This is a basic fourfold testthat I want to apply as we look
at what Romans 16 seems to sayand to imply of both Junia and
(17:04):
Phoebe, as we tease out thequestion of what this means for
the church and women's place inthe church.
So, first, experience Does ourexperience say that women are
gifted for the various ministryand leadership of the church
that men are assumed?
Yes, next question Thanks forthat.
I thought about just doing that.
(17:26):
I'd be like yep cool If you'vebeen here for any amount of time
that answers a quick yes andperhaps the church you're coming
from.
Women like Courtney, sarah,annale, lee, laura and Elisa,
who lead us faithfully andcourageously as elders.
Savannah, whom we miss alreadyFor those of you who are new to
our gathering, we just bidfarewell to a dear staff member
(17:47):
last week and it was heartfeltand beautiful and sad for us.
Carrie, who ministers with ISI,which is an international
student outreach to places likeIran that have come to Princeton
, who preaches faithfully andbeautifully every time she's up
here.
Women like Yuk-Young and Alexa,who lead our prayer ministry
and guide us faithfully inprayer each week.
(18:10):
Campbell, who leads our teens,and I'm sure I'm forgetting
somebody.
I feel so much sympathy withPaul when he's just like oh, let
me say hi to everybody, but Ihope I don't forget anybody.
These are just the women in ourchurch that lead in official
capacities.
There are so many others thatlead setting up, tearing down,
do all kinds of things, so wecould spend all day listing off
the ways that the women in ourchurch contribute.
(18:31):
So, yes, experience is oftengiven primacy of place in our
romantic culture, but the geniusof the Wesleyan quadrilateral
is that there are other litmustests that have to be applied.
Something can be experiencedlike.
This seems good, but what dothe scriptures say?
What does tradition say?
Are we inventing something newor are we going back to
(18:52):
something that we have received?
Does reason tell us that womenshould be free to serve in these
ways?
Well, I just want toacknowledge that for some of us
in here, it sort of depends.
Right, reason and gender have acomplicated relationship in our
culture right now.
Couple that with the fact thateverything in our culture is
politicized, which is to saythat everything in our culture
(19:14):
is polarized, then genderbecomes a zero-sum game.
In America, the past 50 yearshave seen significant gains in
women's wages, education levelsand the platforms available to
them to speak out against theinjustice they often experience.
These are good things, but, asRichard Reeves and several
others have pointed out, aswomen have excelled, many men
(19:36):
are also getting left behind andstuck, and for some men they
have constructed this narrativethat things were simpler in
earlier eras, where hard gendernorms were defined and immovable
.
Women's rights have largelybeen associated with progressive
causes, and so often yourpolitical leaning will determine
kind of how you feel about thisarea, because politics has
(19:58):
become a religion and men'smovements tend to be
conservative and again peoplefeel pulled to either one side
or the other.
There's not a lot of room fornuance in our political
conversations.
Now, the pining for earliereras I leave that to you.
I'm grateful I don't have tospend all day in a coal mine, I
(20:20):
just am.
I'm grateful for antibiotics,all these kinds of things.
So there are things about thatthat I'm like oh yeah, maybe I
could see there's some beautifulsimplicity there, there's some
things, but there's also thingsI'm like I don't know and I
think every time we're piningfor earlier eras it's like who
was this good for?
You know, I speak to theexperience of our black brothers
and sisters who are like takeme back to that golden era when
(20:43):
everything was great for us.
So I don't know about that, butneedless to say, we live in a
largely unreasonable age when itcomes to gender, and so
applying the litmus test ofreason feels, at the very least,
complex.
Our culture does not offer acompelling vision of mutual
flourishing for men and womenbecause our cultural metrics of
(21:06):
flourishing are so askew.
Think about it.
We can only measure success inthings like monetary value,
productivity, freedom forconsequence, less sex,
accumulation of status.
And so reason, if we simplyapply the reason of our age,
lacks a definitive conclusion.
But that's where using ourquadrilateral is helpful,
(21:28):
because as Christians, ourreason is not merely a product
of the time and place that welive, but rather, as Paul tells
us, we have the mind of Christ.
So let's set reason aside, withsome of its complexities, and
go on to tradition.
You find an endless treasuretrove of heroic women leading,
teaching, ministering andperforming miracles.
(21:51):
An early second century letterfrom Pliny, a governor of
Bithynia in modern day Turkey,to the emperor of the Roman
Empire, trajan, gives usevidence of two female slaves
who were deaconesses in thelocal church.
Pliny writes he saysAccordingly, I judged it all the
more necessary to find out whatthe truth was by torturing two
female slaves who were calleddeaconesses.
(22:13):
And there's so many beautifulthings going on here, aside from
the persecution, but thetestimony of the early church
that not only were women leadingin some official capacity in
the role of the church, but alsothey were from the lower
classes of this culture.
And I consider how often in ourown churches people with lower
(22:35):
socioeconomic status areelevated to positions of
leadership.
But we see this testified inthe early church.
These two women, as Pliny istrying to get information out of
these people, he's trying tohelp them conform to the norms
of the Roman Empire, and theyhold fast, but we see that these
(23:01):
two female slaves are leadingin an official capacity.
It's with that.
I want to turn to Romans,chapter 16.
We could spend all day onchurch history and women, so I
commend those books to you.
As Paul writes, a deacon ordeaconess, all the churches of
the Gentiles Greet also thechurch in their house.
(23:44):
Greet my beloved Eponitis, whowas the first convert in Asia
for Christ Pretty strong thingon your CV there.
Greet Mary, who has worked veryhard for you.
Greet Andronicus and Junia, myfellow Israelites who were in
prison with me they.
So I want to just focus on acouple of the women that are
(24:04):
highlighted here.
First we have Phoebe.
Phoebe in Romans 16 isdescribed as a diakoness and a
prostasis.
These are Greek words.
Some translators offer this asservant and helper, but I don't
think those are strong enough.
New Testament scholar LucyPepiot.
Some translators offer this asservant and helper, but I don't
think those are strong enough.
New Testament scholar LucyPepiot, who writes a lot on the
(24:24):
intersection of the story of thescriptures and the way that
they fall upon women, writesthis she says that Paul is
commending Phoebe to take thisletter to the church.
And here's what happens.
The task of taking a letter toa church would have entailed not
simply delivering the letter,handing it over, but, in all
likelihood, performing theletter for the hearers.
It's important for us toremember this was not a literary
(24:47):
culture by and large, and sothese letters are not just hey,
we got a new letter from Paul,pass it around.
This was also a rhetoricalculture.
I have a New Testament scholarwho is one of my teachers, named
Ben Witherington, and he writesa lot about the rhetoric that
is implied in the New Testamentscriptures.
It's not just that these wordswere meant to be read by us.
(25:08):
They were meant to be heard byus, and so the first person to
make the words of Romans, whichmany consider Paul's most
complete and beautiful letterwas Phoebe, and she shows up
with this letter and she, by hergreat skill and calling from
God, would lead the Roman churchin the words that Paul had.
(25:32):
Lucy Peviot goes on.
In other words, she would haveread the letter knowledgeably.
In addition to this, she wouldhave had the task of explaining
it to the gathered churches.
She was an emissary tasked withthe job of delivering,
performing and explaining Romans.
She goes on.
In the masculine form, prostasisalways connotes authority and
(25:55):
the exercise of authority overothers.
In the verb form it istranslated to preside, to rule
over, direct, to maintain andthe like.
She was one who ruled and led.
Prostasis also tells us thatshe was a patron or a benefactor
with considerable means andinfluence.
She funded Paul's mission andclearly had a relationship with
him constituted by mutual trustand respect.
(26:18):
This is Phoebe.
Priscilla, prissa and Aquila arePriscilla and Aquila from Acts,
chapter 18.
And I love Paul, he's like.
These are my dear friends whosuffered in prison with me.
In Acts, chapter 18, we firstmeet Priscilla and Aquila.
We find them After this.
Paul left Athens and went toCorinth.
There he found a Jew namedAquila, from Pontus, who had
(26:40):
become recently from Italy, withhis wife Priscilla, because
Claudius had ordered all Jews toleave Rome.
Again, this is our sort ofhypothetical context, for the
letter to the Romans is thatClaudius had evicted all the
Jewish people from the Romancapital After his death sometime
in 54 AD.
All of the Jewish people thatpreviously lived in Rome are
(27:02):
invited to come back.
Now there was a church therepreviously of Jews and Gentiles,
but the Gentiles have enjoyed alittle bit of privilege while
the Jewish people were kickedout of the city.
But now they've been broughtback and Paul's like hey, it's
going to be hard to figure outhow to live together again.
Cultures are hard to merge andthe more we ignore that, we do
that to our peril.
And so how do we do this?
(27:24):
In the power of the Spirit, andthat's a lot of the context for
the letter to the Romans.
Paul went to see them andbecause he was of the same trade
, he stayed with them and theyworked together.
By trade.
They were tent makers.
Every Sabbath he would argue inthe synagogue and would try to
convince both Jews and Greeks.
Priscilla and Aquila becomePaul's dear friends and
(27:44):
co-workers, and we see them atthe end of Acts 18, even helping
Apollos clarify his teachingand his doctrine.
And they have returned to Romefollowing the death of Claudius
and are hosting one of thescattered house churches that
make up the Roman wider churchin their home.
Priscilla is named before herhusband as a subtle nod of
prominence and honor.
(28:06):
And then we arrive at Junia,john Chrysostom, who is not a
large proponent of women, to putit nicely.
He says this of Junia'sapostleship To be an apostle is
something great, but to beoutstanding among the apostles
just think what a wonderful songof praise that is.
They were outstanding on thebasis of their works and
(28:27):
virtuous actions.
This is sometime in the fourthcentury.
We're talking very clearly thatJunia is an apostle.
But even he does not stop butadds another song of praise
besides.
It says who were also in Christbefore me.
(28:48):
Yes, I am aware of injunctionsagainst females teaching or
leading in places like 1Corinthians 11, as we've already
mentioned, 1 Timothy 3.
And as I've commended books toyou, you can do your own
research and looking, and Iencourage you to do that.
I'm not making any edicts uphere.
I find those specificinstructions in those places not
(29:11):
meant to be universalstatements when, weighed on the
scale of places like Romans 16and the shape of the
announcement of the gospelmessage itself, we could preach
this message so many ways.
We could go back to Genesis 1.
Right now we're going to go tojust the broader story of the
gospel story, the account ofJesus' life, death and
resurrection.
We see the prominence of womenat every turn.
The angel Gabriel appears toMary in Luke, chapter 1 and says
(29:34):
Greetings, favored one.
The Lord is with you.
She listens to the stunningannouncement about what the Lord
is doing, that the Holy Spiritis going to come upon her, that
she will bear a son and, thoughshe has questions, she is the
first to declare her faith inthe coming son.
Let it be unto me, according toyour word.
And we see her.
The first time she shares thisnews is with her relative
(29:56):
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth pronounces blessingover Mary, and then Mary shows
you that this is no young womanwho's just merely going along
for the ride.
This is a powerful theologian.
Luke, chapter 1, verse 45.
Elizabeth says Blessed is shewho believed that there would be
a fulfillment of what wasspoken to her by the Lord.
And then Mary said my soulmagnifies the Lord and my spirit
(30:21):
rejoices in God, my Savior, forhe has looked with favor on the
lowly state of his servant.
Surely, now on, all generationswill call me blessed, for the
mighty one has done great thingsfor me, and holy is his name.
Indeed, his mercy is for thosewho fear him.
From generation to generation,he has shown strength with his
arm.
He has scattered the proud inthe imagination of their hearts.
(30:43):
He has brought down thepowerful from their thrones,
lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry withgood things, sent the rich away
empty.
He has come to the aid of hischild, israel, in remembrance of
his mercy, according to thepromise he made to our ancestors
, to Abraham and to hisdescendants forever.
Mary was a theologian, amen.
We see another Mary in Luke,chapter 10.
(31:06):
Jesus has come to visit Mary andMartha.
The societal expectation wasthat she and her sister would
jump into action, cooking,serving, but Jesus is teaching
and Mary doesn't go to thekitchen.
She goes to the feet of theLord, which is the place of a
disciple, which, in this culture, is the place reserved for a
man, a devoted man, at the feetof his rabbi.
(31:28):
But Mary shirks custom of everysort and Jesus commends her for
it.
She has chosen the better part.
At the cross of Jesus we finddevoted women as witnesses to
the crucifixion of Jesus, asJesus gives his life for the
sake of the world.
They are among the few who havethe courage and the fortitude
to stay with Jesus, to bearwitness, to be with him as they
(31:51):
watch their world being undone.
And on the resurrection morning, wracked with grief and simply
coming to mourn, not expectingany fireworks at the tomb, mary
comes to the garden tomb tomourn her fallen Lord and friend
.
To her horror, she finds thatthe stone has been rolled away
(32:11):
and she can only conclude theworst that robbers have either
stolen from the grave or thosewho would seek to desecrate
Jesus further have come andtaken his body.
Her grief is compounded.
John 20 tells us she saw twoangels in white sitting where
the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other
at the feet.
They said to her woman why areyou weeping?
(32:32):
She said to them they've takenaway my Lord and I don't know
where they've laid him.
When she had said this, sheturned around and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did notknow that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her Woman why areyou weeping?
Whom are you looking for?
The questions that heaven askedearth in this setting so
(32:54):
beautiful, supposing him to bethe gardener, the writers of the
scriptural story are just likehey, remember where all this
started?
In a garden.
Supposing him to be thegardener, it's just like just
nud, remember where all thisstarted?
In a garden.
Supposing him to be thegardener, it's just like just
nudging you the whole way.
Come on, you can come with me,sir.
If you've carried him away,tell me where you've laid him
(33:15):
and I will take him away.
Jesus, said to her.
Mary she turned to him.
In Hebrew, rabbeni, which meansteacher.
Jesus said to her do not touchme because I have not yet
ascended to the Father, but goto my brothers and say to them I
am ascending to my Father andto your Father, to my God and to
(33:35):
your God.
That's so beautiful theResurrected Christ.
Go to my brothers.
Mary Magdalene went andannounced to the disciples I
have seen the Lord, which iscalled preaching the gospel, and
she told them that he had saidthese things to her the first
(33:56):
word of the new world is awoman's name and the first
apostle is Mary.
Apostle to the apostles, sentto declare the good news of
Jesus to his brothers.
If we take these gospel accountsas a complete thought, we have
the ministry of women at thecenter of every single movement,
and this is good news for theentire church because we see
that in Christ Jesus we are allchildren of God through faith,
(34:20):
as Paul writes in Galatians,chapter 3.
As many of us who were baptizedinto Christ have clothed
ourselves with Christ, there isno longer Jew or Greek, there is
no longer slave or free, thereis no longer male or female, for
all of you are one in ChristJesus and if you belong to
Christ, then you are Abraham'soffspring heirs, according to
the promise.
So we go back to our originalquestions.
(34:43):
What does the tapestry of thescriptures have to say to the
role of women?
The tapestry of the scriptures,in my opinion, alongside
experience, reason and tradition, makes all roles in church
leadership and ministryavailable to women.
Where do these promises,proclamations, intersect with
the claims of our culture andwhere do they diverge?
(35:04):
Women in our culture broadlyhave specific longings for
liberation and flourishing thatare expressed in our culture.
Jesus calls women to be holywomen, of valor, of courage, who
manifest the image of God intheir womanhood.
But the key to this liberation,as is true for every subgroup
of humanity, is notself-liberation, it's not
(35:25):
self-fulfillment, it's being setfree by Christ Jesus, the
liberating king.
How are these proclamations ofpromise good news for the entire
church?
When women are restored,empowered and celebrated, when
they proclaim the good news inlife and deed, the world is
shaken with the love of God.
Whereas human culture haslargely been a story of zero-sum
(35:48):
power games, with menoverwhelmingly having the upper
hand in Christ, we have beencalled, as a new humanity, to
bear witness to a new way ofbeing human, that the economy of
kingdom leadership is notzero-sum of scarcity but of
endless abundance, that we arecalled to bear witness in mutual
honor and submission andexhortation and to proclaim the.
(36:09):
Romans 16 is one of the mostbeautiful chapters in the
scriptures because it is simplyPaul naming people who are
serving the Lord.
I mean, imagine if you knewthat your small acts of ministry
(36:32):
, of service, of leadership,would get your name forever
written in the Bible to be readfor the rest of human history
and beyond.
That's pretty good fame, prettygood level there, right?
Phoebe, priscilla, mary, Juniaaren't remarkable because
they're women.
They're remarkable because, inresponse to the grace of Jesus,
they have leveraged everythingthey have for kingdom purposes,
(36:54):
their gifts, their resources,their suffering, all devoted
solely to King Jesus.
And that is the call to eachone of us to receive the grace
of God, the forgiveness of sins,the liberation that he only can
provide, and to know that ourreception of that grace and our
giving in response of all ourheart, our soul, our mind and
(37:15):
our strength to Jesus willinscribe us in the Lamb's book
of life.
I'm going to invite our worshipteam forward as we respond.
Macrina, the brother of Basil,and Gregory the Great, two of
the Eastern fathers.
Her last words were recorded byher brother, gregory, and
Gregory and Basil both talkabout how they get a lot of the
(37:38):
notoriety, but Macrina was thetheologian in the family and her
last words are so beautiful asa call to us to pay attention to
the reality of the Holy Spiritamong us.
And before I read them, I justsimply want to say, looking at
the women in the room if youhave been hard-pressed in church
(37:59):
, if you have been compressedinto something that seems
extra-biblical, I'm sorry and Ipray that the Holy Spirit would
minister to you in these moments.
If you have been told thatthat's not for you.
Again, this isn't like some newteaching, it's not like, oh,
you know, everything you've everbeen told is wrong.
I don't want to do that, butwhat I do want to say is, in
(38:22):
trying to be faithful to thescriptures, if you have received
a call on your life and you'resaying I don't know what to do
with this, then I think Jesus isthe author of that call and is
echoing it again here today andI pray that you'll pick up maybe
what you let down becausesomebody told you you had to.
For those of you who have beenthe victim of various forms of
(38:43):
abuse because of the culturesthat often come from the
polluted fountains of thesesorts of teachings, I pray that
the Holy Spirit would comfortyou here in this place, and for
all of us, for men and for womenhere.
Our call to be this newhumanity is a call for us to
cultivate.
It's a call for us to receive.
So we do that in the power ofthe Holy Spirit and nothing less
(39:07):
.
Macrina, the last words that shewas reported to pray on her
deathbed.
She says this you have releasedus, o Lord, from the fear of
death.
You have made the end of lifehere on earth, a beginning of
true life for us.
You let our bodies rest insleep in due season and you
awaken them again at the soundof your last trumpet.
(39:28):
You entrust to the earth ourbodies of earth, which you have
fashioned with your own hands,and you restore again what you
have given, transforming withincorruptibility and grace what
is mortal and deformed in us.
You have redeemed us from thecurse and from sin, having
become both on our behalf.
You have redeemed us from thecurse and from sin, having
become both on our behalf.
You have crushed the heads ofthe serpent who had seized the
(39:49):
man in his jaws because of theabyss of our disobedience.
You've opened up for us a pathto the resurrection.
Having broken down the gates ofhell and reduced to impotence
the one who had the power overdeath, you've given to those who
fear you a visible token, thesign of the Holy Cross, for the
destruction of the adversary andfor the protection of our life.
(40:09):
Thanks be to God.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, we pray.
Come Holy Spirit.
We pray, come to the comforter,to the one who assuages and
heals all of our wounds.
Lord Jesus, god for those of uswho have wounded.
(40:33):
God for those of us who havebeen heavy-handed, lord, we ask
for your forgiveness, god, forthose of us who have worn the
wounds of cultures, ofrelationships, of families.
Lord, we don't simply putourselves in the place of a
(40:54):
victim, lord, in a way that weso often do in our culture.
Lord, we know we've seen ourpain, lord, we know that you
have seen it and so, god, we askthat you would comfort, that
you would heal, and we ask foryour grace, lord Jesus, the
power of your Holy Spirit tolive differently, in holiness,
(41:16):
god, in expectation, lord, thatyou are doing something far
beyond what we could ask orimagine in our midst, lord Jesus
.
So to the dear sisters andbrothers here in this place,
lord, would you come?
We ask these things in thepower of your name, god, in the
beautiful name of Jesus, we prayAmen.
(41:38):
I'm gonna invite you to stand aswe respond in time of worship,
friends, and as we do so, I justinvite you, during this time of
our service, to just fix yourattention on what Jesus might be
saying.
He often whispers in thegentleness of our hearts.
He speaks through the wordsthat we've said.
He speaks through things thathe brought to mind while we were
talking.
He speaks through the words ofthe song, and so he is speaking
(42:01):
here.
That's what we believe, and sonow it's an invitation to
encounter this grace.
Let's turn our attentionstowards God as we worship and as
we pray.
In just a few moments, we'llcome to the table together.
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