Twenty-First Sunday of 1997

The restoration of equality between men and women

There is a bit of current history that will provide some context for what I’d like to talk about this morning: remember earlier in the summer I passed out copies of that statement that was made by the Catholic Theological Society of America - which was passed by an overwhelming majority - about the discussability of the ordination of women? Well, in the wake of that, several bishops, the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston being the most prominent, wrote truly vituperative articles in their diocesan papers about the Catholic Theological Society of America and how it was formed out of all these uppity theologians and how they were usurping roles... The language was truly intemperate. It suggests, of course, that a nerve had been hit. Now is this just the Episcopal ego that is being bruised, or is something larger than that going on? I think something larger is going on, and that is the position of women on this earth. So, that’s the context, and it’s still a very fiery issue in the Roman Church. Then we have this reading from Ephesians that Gileen was brave enough to do. So that’s the context and that’s what I want to address today because it is a neuralgic issue and I don’t think I’ve ever spoken just about that.

We’re talking about a Jewish phenomenon. Christianity is a Jewish phenomenon, so it’s important to go back and look at what the Jewish tradition at its best has to say about the relations between men and women. The clearest statement of that was written down about 700 years before our era in the Book of Genesis. Remember there are two creation stories. In the first chapter it goes: day one, day two, day three..., and at the end of it God said, "now let’s sit-back and think hard on this and make somebody like us." And God made people, male and female, and there was absolutely no distinction. This is more than suggestive. The second story which begins in the second chapter has this long story about talking snakes, forbidden fruit, and all that business... It also has the creation of woman out of a rib of the man. But, again the context is that God had Adam, a name which simply means human being in Hebrew, looking around at all of creation and saying: "there is nobody that is a real partner for me who can be co-responsible with me." And out of that context the writer came up with this little story about the creation of women. Although some writers have made a great deal out of the business of woman being created from the side of man, I think if you read further in that same text, in the third chapter where it talks of the punishment for the fall, the fact that women are subservient to men is itself part of the disorder that sin introduced into the world. That’s what the text says. So what I’m suggesting is that even in this intensely patriarchal society of almost three millennia ago the Jews were extraordinary in their view that men and women were equal.

At the time of Jesus, Judaism had taken on a lot of the coloration of the neighbouring civilisations and women really were subordinated to men. Then we have this Jew, Jesus, showing up, who does what? He lets a menstruating woman touch him--no Jewish man would let that happen. He addresses a lady of questionable reputation publicly (that’s Jesus’ talking to the woman at the well in the Gospel of John). And then you have one of the earliest interpreters of Jesus, Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament, saying in the Letter to the Galatians that, by dint of Jesus, the original order of creation was restored. Jesus is the new Adam, the founder of a new humanity. He says, point-blank, that now in Christ there is neither male nor female, and he goes through all the other subordinating divisions of society: Greek, Barbarian; slave, free... In other words, Paul wants to say that now, in Jesus, we have the restoration of equality between men and women. Then the plot thickens...

In the Pauline letters, Paul clearly refers to fourteen or seventeen women as his co-workers. In fact, in the famous First Letter to the Corinthians he talked about women leading prayer services, etc., etc., etc., and then he had this mysterious line: "Let women be silent in the Church." This is in the same letter in which Paul took for granted that women took leadership positions in the Christian Church. What’s going on? Well, a great number of scholars believe that was an interpolation by a later writer. All this stuff was handed on only because it was copied and we know all kinds of instances where a copyist said: "Well, this needs a little cleaning-up..." By the time we get to the Letter to the Ephesians, and, even more importantly, to the Letters to Titus and Timothy where the subordination of women to men is made absolutely clear and indisputable we have moved well beyond the Pauline corpus. Paul was dead, and Paul, according to the majority of scholars, did not write these lines that Gileen read. The Letter to the Ephesians is not proto-Pauline, as we say, it is Deutero-Pauline, which means it was written by a disciple of Paul, as certainly and unquestionably were the Letters to Timothy and Titus where the subordination of women to men is made absolutely blatant, in fact it is not only made, it is enjoined on people. What’s going on here? If it is the case that somehow women being moved by the figure of Jesus joined this group believing that God had raised him from the dead, then that would necessarily have changed their behaviour.

The so-called "Jesus Movement" was initially a very small group within Judaism and an even smaller group within the Roman Empire which was of course patriarchal, androcentric. By the year 64, both the Jesus Jews and the non-Jesus Jews were, kicked out of the city of Rome by the Emperor because they were fighting each other and upsetting the Roman law and order. What I’m getting at is very clear. Because the Christians were an outlaw group, until Constantine legitimised them in the year 313, for a woman to behave as Paul said she was to behave, and as the practice of Jesus clearly indicated she was to behave, was to draw attention not only to one’s self, but to one’s own group, and therefore to endanger the group. And so we have the first of many instances where the Christian group takes on the coloration of the larger society in an act of retrenchment of what was originally acted and spoken by Jesus in the earliest strata of the Jesus tradition. That’s really important.

This is pre-Gloria Steinem, this is pre-Germain Greer..., this is "pre" even all those wonderful feminists of the late nineteenth century, Christian feminists too... So this needs to be spoken, this needs to be addressed, this needs to be acknowledged..., and here the Church has done what it has too often done: failed to live up to its own vision. The question of the ordination of women is, it seems to me, a real issue here because when we are talking about the Sacrament of Order--Order, which just means "to get organised," the issue of power inevitably comes up. Power is inherent in any notion of order and the New Testament says over and over again that power is dangerous and a potential menace. So that if you really want to be powerful, you become the servant of all, you make yourself the least and you wash feet, which was the absolute most menial job of the least significant person in the household.

So, is the ordination of women a significant issue? I think it is, and it is not going to die because it is just one instance of this terribly forgotten part of our tradition which has left us with this terribly untilled ground. What does it mean for men and women to really look at each other as equals? I don’t know. Is it nature, or is it nurture that causes sexual identity? I don’t know, and I don’t know anybody else who knows, although parents tell me that little girls clearly operate differently than little boys, but again where do little kids get their cues? I don’t know, I speak from profound ignorance, so I’ll leave that to my betters among you. But the fact is that somehow we have to overcome in the name of God and fidelity to these texts the reduction of women to inferior status. We must... in the name of Jesus.

This is a kind of fey move, I grant you: but if in the Gospel of John as it was set up in the reading today, if when Jesus said, "eat my flesh and drink my blood" it was off-putting to society, what would have happened if he had gone on and said "and you women are as good as you men?" I suggest that that’s at least as off-putting as eating his body and drinking his blood. And so we’re stuck like Peter. "Are you guys going to leave too?" "Where else are we going to go? I don’t know how this is going to work out, but you have the word of eternal life." It is in you, we believe, that we discern the intention of God for us human beings. Now, how are we going to do that? I don’t know, but that’s the vision and any move away from that is an act of betrayal, an act of infidelity. We’ve got lots and lots of room to catch up and to pay for in this place.

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RT 5/9/97