Choosing the Best Part, Part II: Women and the Call to Ministry

PREPARE YOURSELF: THE THIRD ASPECT OF ANSWERING CHRIST’S CALL

“Well, that is the life of our church this week . . . I hope you have enjoyed the changes we made in our morning service in order to give us time to discuss the announcements in an informal, conversational tone before we engage worship.”  Linda was impressed by the way the young Lutheran minister used the time to banter with his congregation as he informed them.  It set an open, comfortable tone for the liturgy that was to follow.

Basking in the moment, perhaps a little reluctant to move away from the connection he seemed to have made with his congregation, he asked, “Does anyone have anything they want to share with the rest of us?”

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Sarah’s hand shot up and before the young minister had a chance to acknowledge her she was on her feet.  She was an imposing woman, tall and “big boned,” as they used to say when I was growing up.  Her size was balanced, however, by the complete eagerness with which she beamed at the minister. 

“Yes, thank you!  What do you have to share?”  The pastor looked up at Sarah with anticipation.

Sarah’s voice reverberated in the small sanctuary, “I just want to tell you . . . well, I just want to say that you are SO good looking!” 

Her face was transformed by the smile that accompanied her words- her eyes narrowed and crinkled and her cheeks crumpled to make room for the grin that was stretching from ear to ear. 

For the space of a single heartbeat, utter silence commanded the room.  The young minister’s face-  in fact, his entire head- turned beat red.

Then his congregation saved him by breaking out in a gale of laughter. 

I have never asked Linda what she said to Sarah after that incident.  It is a story I love to hear and she tells it so well each and every time that I get wrapped up in her laughter.

As it turns out, Sarah was one of 700 or so residents of a home for developmentally delayed adults and as a chaplain at the facility, Linda had the responsibility to take Sarah and many other residents to attend churches in the community on Sunday morning.  The small Lutheran church was Linda’s last stop on the day that Sarah offered an unexpected and utterly delightful communion service.

I love to hear Linda's stories from her days of preparation- how she worked her way through Southern Seminary as a waitress and part-time youth director at a Disciples of Christ congregation and her days as a part-time Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Intern at a hospital in North Central Pennsylvania, and a chaplain for the residential facility where she met Sarah.  I even love to hear her tell about the agonizing attempt to plant a Southern Baptist church in the heart of Pennsylvania, and about her work as Associate Director and CPE Supervisory Education Student at Geisinger  Medical Center in Danville, PA.

Linda & Aley
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I relate to so many of those stories, the difficult ones as well as the joyful and funny ones.  They mirror many of the stories that marked my preparation for ministry.

I did not, however, get my education and apprenticeship in ministry while almost losing my life due to an ectopic pregnancy and at the same time losing the ability to bear children at 29 years of age. Though I wasn’t there for that part of her preparation, I can see the rich result of Linda’s crisis of faith and of her faithfulness to God  in the way she goes about ministering to hurting people at Parkland Hospital and Iglesia Bill Harrod.

No one warns ministers about that kind of preparation, just as no one could warn Mary and Martha about losing Lazarus, regaining him, and then losing Jesus in the cruelest of circumstances.  Ultimately, however, I believe that preparation for ministry is less about academic preparation and more about how we grow through and learn from personal suffering as we seek to reach out to others.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: GET READY FOR AN ADVENTURE!

Knowing the personal background that informed Linda’s last observations about Christ’s call to Mary and Martha really brought this sermon to life for me.  She has been tested sorely by life, not only through the losses I mentioned above, but in ways too numerous for me to write about here.  In the midst of it all, she has nurtured a sense of humor that I have come to treasure, even to depend upon.  Through all of the heartache she has maintained a fierce determination to be used by God to bring healing.  As much as any person I know, Linda embodies the truth of St. Paul’s words,

“We are persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” (2 Corinthians 4:9-11)

Linda & Clark
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Church history doesn’t give us any detail about what happened to Mary and Martha after Jesus ascended to heaven.  What we know from the Bible are two more stories, one in which Mary anoints Jesus’ feet as a moving object lesson, a confession of faith in Christ through symbolic action, and Martha’s equally powerful confession of faith just before Jesus raises their brother Lazarus from the dead.  After this, they are lost to us.  Yet these two stories provide us with an incredible picture of women disciples whose witness to Jesus as Messiah was every bit as bold and influential as that of any other disciple.

I don’t want to idealize either Linda or the two sisters who followed Jesus.  The point of the gospel stories is that Mary and Martha were ordinary people, just like you and me.  The woman who stood in the pulpit last Sunday is just as imperfect.   The fact that these ordinary, altogether imperfect human beings should embrace lives and ministries that are so incredibly extraordinary, that is what makes me want to get up tomorrow and attempt great things for Christ.  And call girls and women, boys and men to commit themselves to the same adventure.

Seeing Linda in the pulpit again last Sunday- hearing her sermon and her life come together was a remarkable experience.  It opened my heart to God's Word. 

That alone, dear reader, was worth the price of admission.

Please comment about the ways in which God has prepared you for your calling and set you free to experience the joy of it in your heart.

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Choosing The Best Part: Women & The Call To Ministry

Linda in Paris . . .
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Linda was back in the pulpit on Sunday after taking the summer off due to a combination of health and work related demands.  As I watched her baptize Aley then preach, I found myself feeling unexpectedly protective, a combination of uneasy vigilance and fearful anticipation.  Every sense seemed to be heightened; my heart was pumping a little too fast the whole time. 

That is a new experience. It came as a big surprise. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, considering all that she has been through this summer, but that is another essay for another time. 

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR LIFE

Linda preached about Jesus’ visit to Martha and Mary’s house.  Even though I had the advantage of a sneak preview of her message, I found myself getting caught up in the story as if for the very first time.  Something that she said as we were discussing the passage hit home with much greater clarity on Sunday morning.  “A number of theologians see this story as a call narrative,” she told us, “much like the narratives that related the call of the male disciples.” As I listened, it occurred to me that Jesus encountered each of those disciples in the midst of their daily occupations just as he encounters Mary and Martha in this story.

“I was living in Barnwell, South Carolina,” Linda told us.  “I had taken a job as an industrial engineer for a carpet manufacturer there.  I began to feel, however, as though God did not intend for me to spend the rest of my life making carpet.”

As I listened to her story, I remember hearing Linda talk about how she had first felt as though God were calling her into the ministry as a teenager.  Like many teenagers, she wasn’t attracted to the idea.  “I spent my teen and college years searching.  I did not feel as though I were out of relationship to God, so much as I just found myself in one long debate.” 

Today I asked her to tell me a little more about those on-again-and-off-again debates with God.   She paused for a long time, seeming to be wrapped up in thought.  “Well, I took long drives in the country and just sort of argued with God, mostly about how I was right to do what I wanted to do.”  She laughed and said, “You know I can be pretty stubborn.”

“When I got to Barnwell, I began to feel alone and lonely.  I started going to church just to have a social group, but it gradually grew to something deeper, something that had a larger meaning for me than just passing the time.”

In her sermon yesterday, Linda lifted up for us the ways in which both Martha and Mary were paying attention to their lives.  Though the clear pattern of preaching on the story at this point in Christian history is to cast Martha as wrong and Mary as having it right, Linda invited us to take a slightly different view of the story.  “Jesus relates to both women in a respectful and affectionate manner.  He receives Mary, who sits at his feet along with the men and he talks to Martha in a gentle and patient tone.”

Indeed, ClaraBeth Speel Van de Water, in her exposition of the story, points out that the exchange between Jesus and Martha probably should be interpreted something like this: “Martha, my dear Martha, you are getting stressed by making too many things (preparing too many dishes for the meal) when we only need a simple meal . . .” Indeed, Jesus is inviting Martha to pay attention to her life, to let go of her desire to please long enough to actually learn something from her sister, and more importantly, from Jesus.

Martha’s approach was not necessarily inferior to Mary’s. Both forms of discipleship are affirmed in the early church. It was Martha’s temptation to get caught up in doing for Jesus that caused him to invite her to look at her life.

“The more I talked to my pastor, Billy Vaughn, the more I became convinced that God was calling me into full time ministry.” Billy gave Linda and her fellow church members a chance to explore God’s purpose for her life when he initiated a Wednesday night Bible study on the role of women in the New Testament. 

Whenever I hear Linda tell this part of her story, I find myself feeling a fierce gratitude to this minister whom I have never known. It was rare in Southern Baptist circles back in the eighties for male ministers to be as open as this man was to the possibility that God might be calling a woman. It was even rarer for a church leader to take the step to nurture that sense of calling within a context of deep faith in the Scriptures.

MAKE A DECISION TO FOLLOW GOD’S CALL

Jesus invites Martha to look at her life, and he lifts up Mary’s decision to follow Christ by choosing “the better portion.” Another image of food.  Though Martha brought lots of food to the fellowship, Mary chose the best part of the feast. 

I have developed a little breath prayer that I try to use at some point every day.  It goes like this, “I embrace God’s love even as I embody God’s love.” Both sides of the equation are so important.  I believe that is why Linda was careful not to take the popular route of condemning Martha’s “busy-ness” as opposed to Mary’s decision to sit at Jesus’ feet.  Both are needed and the decision to balance service with learning, contemplation and action sum up what following God’s call is all about.

Linda chuckled yesterday as she told us about making public her decision to follow God’s call into ministry.  “Even after weeks of bible study and a very clear description by my pastor, a number of church members came by to shake my hand and to congratulate me on ‘going to the mission field.’ It was their only way to understand how a woman would answer God’s call.”

In Mary’s time there was a similar debate raging about whether women should be taught the Torah (Hebrew Bible).  One rabbi said that you might as well teach a woman “lechery” as to teach her the Scriptures.  Other rabbis gave explicit permission for men to teach their daughters the Torah.

No matter what people might think about Mary’s act, her decision to sit at Jesus’ feet was clear to all. She chose to become a disciple and she was accepted into the company of Jesus’ followers. It required an act of courage on her part as well as one of deliberate invitation on Jesus’ part.

I am going to have to finish this essay tomorrow, but before I say good-bye to you, I would love to hear your thoughts about this scripture and its meaning for your life.  Where has God invited you to pay attention to your life and to follow in the steps of the first disciples?

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