Home

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Feminism

Viewpoints

Quote of the Month

Quarterly Newsletter

On-Line Discussion Forum

Letters to the Editor

Mission

The Persecuted Church

Ecumenical Connections

How You Can Help

The VOW Budget

Contact VOW
 

In the introduction to the January/February section of Horizons, the Editors refer to the varied phrases used to describe the connectedness of those in the church and they ask the question, “What is it that truly connects us?” This issue of Horizons looks at human kinship, particularly that of women. The focus includes women and their friends, the congregation and their relation to the newly baptized, vocation in the church as it relates to family ties, and the relationship of women and girls in Ethiopia at the Bethel Mekane Yesus School. One article which seems to be as much about disconnectedness as connectedness is “Finding a Way to Have Both,” an article about inter-faith marriage. Rebecca Irwin Diehl explores family issues in the story of Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael and Abraham. Another article not really connected to those of kinship is one by feminist theologian Cynthia M. Campbell who writes about the celebration of the anniversaries of women deacons, elders and pastors in the Presbyterian Church USA. And of particular interest is the article which announces the coming 2006 gathering of Presbyterian Women. The article focuses on the scriptures which guided the choice of a theme for the gathering.

 The article about the relationship of the congregation to the newly baptized is “A Little Water and A Lot of Love,” by Jean Davidson. It is a good place to begin since baptism is after all where we all begin when we become members of the church of Jesus Christ. This is a very devotional article and yet a practical one. It is theology applied as a pastor should apply her sermon to the lives of the congregation. Davidson tells the story of a small baptismal candidate who quickly moves away from her water filled hand at his baptism. She explains how his parents and a member of the congregation surround him preventing his complete escape down the church aisle. Davidson reminds us all that we have a responsibility to keep the vows make during the baptismal service to new members of the church. Using the Book of Order, she asks. “In that moment when you ‘express [your] willingness to take responsibility for the nurture of those baptized’ (W-3.3603g), do you know what you’re really saying?” Davidson goes on to express the extent of that commitment. She writes, “It involves letting God’s Spirit help us love one another unconditionally, with the kind of love Jesus showed us over and over again in his life and death—tough, deep, agape, sacrificial, God-filled love (13).” This is, thankfully, not just an article for women but for the whole church.

I will use some of Davidson’s thoughts to critique other articles in this issue of Horizons. That is, do the authors take responsibility for the members of Christ body in their articles? Is the message in their articles borne from a sense of Christian responsibility that is bolstered by “tough, deep, agape, sacrificial, God-filled love”? I would add to this are the authors nurturing by use of God’s word, are they building up in the faith those who belong to Christ. 

The first article in the magazine, “When You Can’t Go Home: Blessings of Kinship Across Three Continents,” by Camille K Hedrick, might be found in any woman’s magazine. There is no reference to God, and only a slight reference to religion in the title and on page seven. But this is a good article, interesting and encouraging when pointing out the importance of women’s friendships. Further, there is nothing in the article that would detract from or down grade the Christian faith. Still, I thought of C.S. Lewis who praised friendship and understood it as a gift of God. However, Lewis offers the reader a deeper understanding of our need for home versus the gift of friendship. Lewis understood that our sense of needing roots and our yearning for home can only be fulfilled in our relationship with Jesus Christ. Friendship and security are two different things. Lewis wrote: 

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. (The Problem of Pain 103.)

Rebecca Irwin-Diehl, author of “The Problem of Ishmael,” offers some wonderful affirming views of the sanctity of life, but she does bring some confusion to the biblical text. Irwin-Diehl wishes to affirm her adopted children’s right to life by offering a different take on the story of Abraham, Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac. Protesting that too many pastors explain that Ishmael was a mistake and that Sarah was right to insist that Abraham send both Hagar and Ishmael away, Irwin-Diehl offers a different view. She believes that Sarah properly offered to give her maid Hagar to Abraham in order to produce an heir. She also believes that Ishmael could have been the chosen one to receive the promise of the covenant. Irwin-Diehl writes, “The problem with Ishmael is really rooted in the Judeo-Christian assumption that the Abrahamic covenant would be fulfilled through Sarah and no one else (26).” Further she suggests that God’s revelation to Abraham was progressive and that God only named Sarah, “the mother of the covenant” after Sarah had already rejected Hagar and Ishmael. There are several problems with Irwin-Diehl’s interpretation.  She is wrong about the timing. It is true that in chapter seventeen God gives Sarah the promise of being a mother of nations and kings and she shares in the covenant with Abraham. But Isaac is not yet born and it isn’t until chapter twenty-one that Sarah rejects Hagar and Ishmael. Still, there is an even greater problem than this. All the stories of Genesis are really about God and his sovereignty. It is God who chooses. Furthermore, the plans of God are not abstract; they are tied to real locations and peoples. Abraham and Sarah were chosen in the eternal plan of God to be the parents of the people of the covenant. But Ishmael was also chosen, he was to be the father of twelve princes (Genesis 25: 12-18) and his descendents also belong to Abraham. As Derek Kidner, author of Genesis, in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries,  puts it: “God’s absolute right of choice meets us everywhere in these chapters (cf. Rom. 9:9ff.), but He had other blessings than those reserved for Israel, and other eventual heirs of the covenant than those who historically transmitted it (cf.Rom. 9:24ff.).” (130)

The family of Abraham was dysfunctional as all families are to a lesser or greater degree. After all we are all sinners, but it is God who chooses, plans and redeems. Hagar did not sin in having a child and God gave promises to both Hagar and Ishmael. Nonetheless, God’s choice for the beginning of his covenanted people was Abraham and Sarah. Furthermore in choosing Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, God also chose Hagar and Ishmael if they would receive the promise. Those in the Hebrew bible who looked forward to the promises of God in Christ belonged to that ancient church, just as those who today, looking back to the incarnation, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, also belong to ancient Israel. God’s choice is wrapped in his grace not in humanity. To the ancient believers God’s word was, “The Lord did not choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples (Deut. 7:7),” and to those who belong to God today his word is:

 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4-7).

God’s call for light in verse three of Genesis holds a unique place in the understanding of Jesus Christ. Although Catron refers to the sun, moon and stars in her commentary on the third verse of Genesis, the text’s statement “God said ‘let there be light; and there was light,” is not a comment about the creation of the sun, moon or stars. The text which tells of their creation is Genesis verses 14-19. The light referred to in verse three will become a metaphor or image of the great light that already exists and will exist eternally. As Kidner puts it, “Light, which has lent its name to all that is life-giving (Jn. 1:4), truth-giving (2Cor. 4:6), gladdening (Ec. 11:7) and pure (1 Jn. 1:5-7), appropriately marks the first step from chaos to order; and as it here precedes the sun, so in the final vision it outlasts it (Rev. 22:5).” (47, Kidner notes, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III, I 167.) 

This verse about the beginning of light in the created order ties beautifully into John 1:1, 3-4. The actual translation in the New Revised Standard Version is:

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (Verse 2 is included here.)

Catron compares God’s first creation of life with the gift of life given by Jesus Christ. Likewise she uses the guidance of the lights of heaven as a comparison of the light that Jesus Christ gives to guide our “Christian journey.” Finally she builds on the involvement of God with the world he created to explain his deeper involvement through Jesus Christ. In her commentary Catron fails to emphasis the real work of redemption Jesus Christ came to perform. She simply writes that God, as the incarnate Word “acts in the present to push back sin and death, making room for new life (salvation).” Additionally she writes that Jesus’ time on earth came about so that he could, “experience the journey through life as we do.” She adds, “In the process, God shows us how the journey should go.”  However, as the author of Hebrews states, “but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Heb. 9:26b).” And John clearly links our fellowship with one another to the bloody redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ. “but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).” 
 
The articles in this particular issue of Horizons are, seemingly, at war with each other. More importantly, most of the theology is at war with its theme, kinship. For Christians, fellowship with one another, whether that means between family members or neighbors, has its solid anchor in fellowship with Jesus Christ. Fellowship with Jesus Christ can only exist in the relationship he provides through his death on the cross. Our love for others, both enemies and friends rests only in the fellowship we have with Jesus Christ

_____________

1 Cynthia M. Campbell, in her article, “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning,” advocates for the expunging of male words for God. She writes, “As long as the way we talk about God is limited to male titles and masculine pronouns, women as religious leaders will always seem at least a little abnormal (21).” But it is God who names himself, and his names are beyond our definitions of gender. For an excellent critique of this issue see, Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Alvin F. Kimel, Jr. Eerdmans. This book has several chapters written by women theologians none who seem to be in the least abnormal.