Brunswick Baptist Church 9 May 2010

Bible readings: Acts 16:11-18, Revelation 21:22-22:5

Theme – Mothers Day, women and leadership

Mothers, I salute you. You have one of the most important roles to play in society by giving birth to, and forming the values of, the next generation. Mothers Day, or Mothering Sunday as it has been known in Europe, has a long history, if Wikipedia is to be believed. It has precedents as far back as Roman times and quite possibly earlier. But it can have a down side, as can most of our traditions like Anzac Day which we observed two weeks ago. Mothers Day can make women who long for children, but for whatever reason are unable to have them, feel as if they are somehow inadequate and undervalued. It can also be an unconscious way of communicating to women that motherhood and servanthood are the only roles in society that they are created for, and therefore they should not aspire to other roles which only men should undertake.

Let me tell you a little story about my own mother. My mum was a clever woman who loved to dance. Before she was married she worked for a dentist and I gather kept the surgery under control doing bookkeeping as well as helping out as what we would call today a dental nurse. Every Saturday she would go ballroom dancing and she became a dancing instructor at the local dance school in Aberdeen. She was even invited to go to London to become an instructor with the Victor Sylvester dance band. I have photographs of her in those days and she was very beautiful and elegant. She met my father while dancing. He was a policeman and the son of a farmer from Fife, and anyone who has met a Fifer will know that they are a dour lot. After they married, mum had to leave her beloved Aberdeen to live with my father in Dundee. He wouldn’t let mum work because that would have been a shameful thing in those days. I also have photos of mum in Dundee after they married and she looks rather dull and sombre. She was a lovely mother, but she was not created to only be a mother, she was created to dance and to use her organisational talents in the work force.

There was a happy sequel to the story. My dad hated the police force and he had always said to mum, ‘When I retire we’re going to Australia’. Of course she couldn’t say, ‘Over my dead body’, but she just quietly hoped and believed it would never happen. I still remember the day when he came home and said, ‘I’ve put in my retirement papers, booked our passage to Australia, and we leave in six weeks’. Mum knew nothing about it till that day, but to her credit she said, ‘Right. I will go to Australia provided I can go back to work’. And she did, and she had some very responsible jobs first with Bearing Service Company and then with a customs and shipping agent. In a strange way, even though she was frightfully homesick, migration liberated my mother from the straitjacket of Scottish societal expectations and restored some of the old Jessie.

Sadly through history, and right up to the present, the church has created its own straitjacket for women. At one of my former churches I had to work very hard to convince one very capable and deeply spiritual woman to accept nomination to the diaconate. The cultural conditioning that decreed women could not exercise leadership in church was so strong that she never really felt comfortable, even though she was by far the best leader on the diaconate.

So where does this cultural conditioning in church and society come from? Well, we have to face the truth that some of it comes from the Bible. The Bible from cover to cover was written by men; the social structures from the time of Abraham through to the latest writings of the New Testament were patriarchal; the histories and genealogies are men’s stories with some notable exceptions like the women in the Gospels – a woman was the first witness to the resurrection.

But many of the stories of women can only be guessed at, like Lydia in the story Daniel read to us. What do we know of her? She was from Thyatira in what today we call Turkey, a city known for its wool and linen industry. But now she was living in Philippi, a major Roman colony in Macedonia, a long way from home. She was a dealer in purple cloth – a business woman. She was a worshipper of God, most likely a Jewish proselyte, before she heard the Christian Gospel from Paul. She was able to invite Paul and Silas to come and stay at her home, without first having to check with her husband. Lydia was a woman of authority and substance, and yet we know so little about her. We know from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi some time later when he is in prison and most likely facing execution, that there were women leaders in Philippi. Euodia and Syntyche ‘have struggled beside me in the work of the Gospel’, says Paul, ‘together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers’. In his letter Paul makes no distinction between male and female leaders, and yet the church from then on increasingly sidelined women and excluded them from leadership roles. How very sad.

My concern about the sidelining of women in the leadership of the church is a matter of justice for those women who have both the gifts and calling for leadership roles, but it is much more than that. I believe with all my heart that the church is distorting the Gospel of Christ when it silences the voices of women. We can say in our small corner here at BBC, ‘But we welcome women in pastoral leadership so why the fuss?’ The fuss is that very few BUV churches will accept women in senior pastoral roles. The fuss is that the Gospel of liberation is not just for us here at BBC, it is for all people everywhere. Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a wonderful feminist theologian, quotes an early radical women’s liberation movement catch cry, ‘Until every woman is free, no woman is free’. Patriarchy is so entrenched in the church, in the workplace, in politics and even in the home, that we have barely begun to balance the scales. That’s why we cannot rest on our laurels here at BBC and forget about the issues of women in leadership in the rest of the world.

The story of the slave girl in Acts is a picture of the reality of life for millions of girls and women around the world today. Listen to it again:

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

This girl, who would have been little more than a child, was being exploited by her owners like a side show freak because she could predict the future, she was a fortune teller. What was Paul upset about? It sounds like he was annoyed because she kept stalking him and calling out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation’. But in his defence the word ‘annoyed’ can be translated ‘grieved’. Perhaps Paul grieved this poor child’s helplessness and abuse, and so commanded the evil spirit to come out of her. In the process he ruined her ability to make money for her owners, and for his trouble was thrown into jail.

‘Until every woman is free, no woman is free’. I was listening to Philip Adams on Late Night Live last week when he interviewed an Oxfam researcher who had been involved in research into the horrific stories of systematic rape of women and girls as young as twelve in the eastern states of the Congo. Thousands and thousands of women, girls and boys are raped each year, many of them multiple times as sexual slaves, many by militias using rape as  weapon of terror and control. I could hear the anguish in Philip Adams’ voice as he heard the story; I could hear the pain in the researcher’s voice as she told the story. I wanted to change stations and find a footy show that would anaesthetize my brain against the invasion of these ghastly images and truths.

Having more women involved in leadership of church and society may not eradicate the exploitation of the vulnerable, but it must make a difference. Perhaps hearing these reports that are so difficult to listen to might make us angry, make us grieve, just as the slave girl’s situation made Paul angry. And perhaps it will galvanise us to pray for the abused and exploited, and to support organisations like Oxfam and MSF that work with the most vulnerable.

‘Until every woman is free, no woman is free’.

As a man, it has taken me a long time to understand how important it is that women are recognised and liberated to exercise their God-given gifts in equal measure to men. It has taken me a long time to understand something of the experience of my mother, and to think of what might have been had Scottish culture been less patriarchal and restrictive.  We are all subject to the limitations of human experience, but the very heart of Jesus’ ministry was to set the captives free, and to open the eyes of the blind, so many of whom are blind to the injustices and inequities that are all around us.

On this Mother’s Day 2010, let us honour mothers, and let us value them for all that they contribute to the home, to the church, and to society.