Jesus: Feminist or Liberator?

Maybe Jesus wasn't as much a feminist as we like to think. Much has been made about how egalitarian Jesus was, how he elevated women in a culture that demeaned them. But this morning, my pastor unpacked a fascinating angle on Jesus' interaction with the Syro-Phoenician woman from Mark 7 and Matthew 15 that gave me a new perspective.

Maybe Jesus wasn't as much a feminist as a liberator.

In the second half of Mark 7, Jesus goes on something of a tour throughout Gentile territories, spreading his message and good deeds. He does this on the heels of an altercation he had with Jewish religious leaders about rituals and righteousness. The Pharisees can't see past certain taboo behaviors, but Jesus is trying to show them that the kingdom of God is not about behavior or rules, but about heart change. Then in Mark 7:24, Jesus lands in Tyre and performs a miracle for someone who is certainly not in the religious in-crowd. In fact, the religious leaders with whom Jesus was feuding would have likely considered her inferior to themselves in at least two ways: she was Gentile, and she was female.

And that's when it hit me that Jesus may not have promoted the cause of this woman, or other women, so much because of her gender, but because of her oppression.

When Jesus announced his ministry in the synagogue at Capernaum, he quoted the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

If Jesus had come in some parallel universe whose history was scarred with female oppression of men, he might have trumpeted the cause of men. But he didn't. He came in our universe where perhaps no other group of people has experienced so much oppression throughout history as women. If Jesus came to liberate and empower victims, he came for women.

I think it's abundantly clear that Jesus was radically progressive when it came to women, but until today, I never thought clearly about the reason for that.

But then, this really isn't a very big revelation, I suppose. Women have never lobbied for special treatment because of their gender, only because of discrimination associated with their gender. The next question, then, is "Where does that come from?" Why do we have this innate sense of justice that tells us that people — male, female, black, white, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, educated, uneducated, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, Hutu, Tutsi, Arab — should not be oppressed?

Genesis tells us that people are icons of God, created in His image. Ecclesiastes tells us that eternity is written in our hearts. There is an innate, moral law that commends fairness and must be silenced for oppression to thrive. When Jesus reached out to women, he may have been saying something about the motherhood of God, but he sent a more resounding message about the justice of God.

Maybe Jesus' feminism was less about gender and more about justice.

Jesus Loves Me

This morning, I read from John's Revelation and one little verse stuck out to me. Revelation 3:9 says, "I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars — I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you."

What a curious and wonderful thing to be acknowledged for! God doesn't promise that in the last days our enemies will fall at our feet and acknowledge that we were right. Or that we were better. Or even that our God was the true god. They will fall at our feet and acknowledge that God loved us. 

There is dignity and security in that. 

At one of the hardest times in our marriage, I remember that a similar message comforted my wife. She read and memorized verses like Jeremiah 31:3

"I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness."

and Jeremiah 31:4,

"I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and dance with the joyful." 

It was comforting and healing for her to be reminded that she is dearly loved. In fact, what else could bring more peace, confidence or joy than to be loved and pursued by your King? 

That reminds me of Jesus' warning in Luke 10 when he told his disciples not to get too worked up about ministry success, but to rejoice only in being beloved. 

"However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

— Luke 10:20

It doesn't matter how many people read your blog, or how few. It doesn't matter whether life is marked by success or failure. It doesn't matter whether you have all the right answers, or jump through all the right religious hoops. What matters is that you are loved beyond words. As usual, we can learn from the beauty and simplicity of our children. 

Jesus loves me, this I know,For the Bible tells me so.Little ones to him belong.They are weak, but he is strong.Yes, Jesus loves me.The Bible tells me so.

Lessons from Dostoevky and the Apostle John

I read 1 John today and was struck by its discussion of love. John's letter mentions love a lot, of course. It's where we get the famous axiom, "God is love." What struck me today was the essential way John sees love in the church. John doesn't seem to be saying that without love, it's hard to be a good Christian. He's saying without tangibly-expressed, risky love for the people in your church, it's impossible to be a Christian at all. 

Let me say that another way: if we're not going out of our way to sacrificially love the people we go to church with, we aren't followers of Jesus. 

Too strong? Consider how John said it:

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother or sister. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

— 1 John 3:10-11

Anyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

— 1 John 3:15

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother or sister.

— 1 John 4:20-21

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother or sister is still in the darkness.

— 1 John 2: 9

And John doesn't abide conveniently vague definitions of "brother," either. 

Thanks to the influence of a church friend, I'm also reading The Brothers Karamazov right now which brings me the torturous combination of shame (at not having read it before) and boredom (at the prose). But there's a clever monologue in that book in which one of the characters explains, better than I can, the difficulty in loving a brother rather than loving our brethren. 

"I love humanity, but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it has been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."

John isn't talking about loving humanity in general. He's writing in the specific. He mentions specific heresies to guard against, and he instructs the believers to pray for a brother (singular) who commits certain sins. He's talking about loving people with names who live in our neighborhoods and worship three rows in front of us on Sunday. 

In fact, John only commands us to love those we worship with. There's no command in 1 John to love the lost. John is only concerned with love inside the church. 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

— 1 John 3:16

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.

— 1 John 4:16-17

These are the words of the Beloved Disciple, who leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper and heard him say, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

So if there's no wiggle-room in the object of our Christian love, then maybe we can find a loophole regarding the its depth. I mean, some of those people at church are downright un-lovable! Surely we're only supposed to love them in principal, and not practice, right? In general, not in particular, as Dostoevky wrote.

Again, John doesn't let us off the hook:

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother or sister in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

— 1 John 3:17

Apparently, this love commanded of us is to be proved out in tangible ways. 

So John defines a Christian as someone who loves their fellow church members tangibly, in a way that costs them. According to the disciple whom Jesus loved, if we're not going out of our way to love the people we go to church with, we aren't followers of Jesus.

So how are we doing with the command of John and Jesus? Who do you love, and how?

We Are All Terrorists

Texas Monthly's most recent issue has a special report on water. Coming off the driest year in Texas' recorded history, and already getting tired of 100-degree summer days, I was interested. But what I read there got me thinking less about water and more about God and terrorists. And by terrorists, I mean all of us.

Roger D. Hodge's article retells Texas' long and familiar history with drought. For centuries, Texans before us have recorded dry times, some in newspapers, some in scratchings on cave walls. Standing in front of a cave mural on the Pecos River, one of Hodge's sources muses:

"Perhaps the paint chips were used in rituals to summon the rain, or to start new batches of paint for rituals to ensure the sunrise."

And that's where I stopped thinking about drought and started thinking about terrorism.

Rituals to ensure the sunrise? What's that about? Why would anyone ever waste time on that? Wasn't it clear, even to the most primitive mind, that the sunrise is beyond human control?

Imagine that you're a primitive person living thousands of years ago in what may have then been the swamps or forests of the Trans-Pecos. And one morning, because of an eclipse or some other weather phenomenon you don't understand, the sun doesn't come up. This frightens you not only because it reminds you of your powerlessness in the world you inhabit, but because it presents a very real threat: whether you're a hunter, gatherer or farmer, without sun, your food source is threatened.

There are already hundreds of threats to your existence beyond your control. You seem to live at the pleasure of the weather, the crops, the rival tribes, the saber-toothed cats, and the angry gods that surround you.

So how do you respond to this frightening development? Think about that for a moment. It might help you to answer that question if you think about how you respond to threats beyond your control in modern day: accidents, crime, disease, layoffs. How do you respond to those threats?

Apparently, at least some early Texans responded by trying to control the uncontrollable. They looked at the darkened sky and thought of the 1980 comedy "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and so they decided to take action.

Great god of the sun, we noticed you didn't come through this morning. It seems plainly obvious to us that sunrises are good things. We have considered the idea that an occasional break from sunrises might be part of some larger scheme you have going related to the delicate balance of nature, yadda, yadda, but then we thought, "Nah. Let's just keep the sunrises coming." We've got bills to pay.

But this is where we need your help (read: obedience). We can't make the sunrise, but we'd like to have it do so. Please continue to produce a sunrise every morning. If, at any point, we decide that we're ready for a break in sunrises, we'll let you know.

Thanks,
Ug

I'm certainly not suggesting that we never entreat God for anything beyond our control. In fact, that's exactly what we should be doing. I pray for things beyond my control every day.

But I also know that throughout our history, too much of our worship of God has amounted to attempts to control God and therefore become God.

Last week, after a week of Vacation Bible School, Christine and I were joking about the little terrorists living in our house. Children often use threats, violence, and other outrageous behavior to get attention or get what they want. You know what else we call people who do that? Terrorists.

It occurred to us that all children are tiny terrorists. That's sort-of what it means to be born into sin. It's our job as parents to teach them how to leave terrorism behind and live in peace with others. God is parenting us the same way.

This morning, I happened to read the account of Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane from Matthew 26. He prayed:

"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

You've read that before but pause for a moment and consider how remarkable it is. This verse reveals conflict between two persons of the Godhead. Apparently, there was at least one time in history when the desires of the Son weren't in sync with the desires of the Father. Jesus knew what was coming, and he really would have preferred to skip it. I would have too! And so he prayed for another way.

God, is there any other, even better, way to accomplish the redemption of mankind that doesn't involve torture? I mean, You are — WE are — the God of the Universe here. Surely we can think of something!

But as much as he wanted to escape it, Jesus may have already known what the Father's answer would be:

There is no more holy, beautiful, powerful, redemptive, life-giving, world-changing, inspiring, truthful, loving story to write. Yes, we could have waved a magic wand back in that other garden and set everything right a couple of thousand years ago, but that's not the story we've decided to write because that doesn't reveal our heart to the world. This is the story we've been writing for all this time, and now we've reached the climax, and has hard as it is, we have to finish the story.

This conversation between the Father and Son strikes a remarkable balance as an example for us; the balance between, "Hey, what's going to happen is going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. So why pray?" and "I know what I want and I know what's best for me, my family, my church, my country. It's my way or the highway. God, I need you to get on board."

We are all born terrorists; from our ancient forebears to postmodern millennials. From scratching on cave walls to building our enormous national debt, we simply want what we want. We want control and comfort. We'll take extreme measures to get it. And we're really not very concerned about what God might want for us instead.

I wonder what I can do today to leave terrorism behind. I think I'll go have a glass of water and think about it.