10-2-4 Women Called By God

And there were other women who felt called by God to serve. Florence Nightingale felt that this was her vocation that she should serve the church by nursing, and the church wouldn’t have her. She very nearly joined a Roman Catholic order in Paris, a nursing order, and then she went to stay with sisters in Kelselworth. After the Crimea her work in Parliament had to be done through a man, through Sidney Herbert in particular. This work was reports and commissions on health and hygiene, in the army and in town planning. She also founded St Thomas’s Hospital and nursing school, and set up district nursing. This was a vocation from God. She wrote in her diary: “I would have given the church my head, my heart; she would not have them, she did not know what to do with them. She told me to go back and do crochet in my mother’s drawing room, or if I tired of that, to marry and look well at the head of my husband’s table. ‘You may go to the Sunday school if you like,’ she said, but she gave me no training even for that. She gave me neither work to do for her, nor education for it.”

Florence Nightingale is one of the people who is remembered so well, but Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor from America, because of her Christian faith wanted to serve women in particular in medicine. She had a real battle to do so. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor in England. There were women writers who had to publish under men’s names. Not that that is to do with the church, but it was the pattern that was set, about how women should be treated. Mary Slessor was one of many women missionaries. When I was in Nigeria a twin said to me how in his village people still remembered Mary Slessor because of the work she did forbidding people to sacrifice twins, and rescuing them when they were exposed at night out on the hillside.

So after all that history, I have to ask, “How much does the way society sees women affect the way the church sees women?” “Women constitute half the world’s population; they perform nearly two thirds of its work hours; they receive one tenth of the world’s income; and they own less than one hundredth of the world’s property,” said a United Nations report.

But should the church in fact lead the way the world understands the role of women? Jesus broke the pattern when he welcomed women among his disciples. Not among the twelve apostles, but among the large number of disciples who followed Jesus. In Luke chapter 8 we know that the women had followed Jesus from Galilee. It says that the twelve went with Jesus, and the women. They travelled together with Jesus. And in Mark 15 they are mentioned again, still present at the crucifixion when most of the men had locked themselves away. After the resurrection it was the women who saw Jesus first. And you remember the men didn’t believe them. We read in Mark 16 that Jesus scolded the eleven because of their unbelief.

I have to ask too, “Are men and women the same? Are men and women equal?” Actually we all have male and female genes, just by being part of mankind. So basically we have a lot in common with each other, men and women, but we are not the same. We not only look different, we think differently.

I want to quote a story told by Pat Jones: She is one of the Assistant General Secretaries to the Catholic Bishop’s Conference, and she spoke to the Anglican clergy a couple of weeks ago. She told the story of how men’s thinking and women’s thinking is different, how men want a solution, how women want solidarity with other people. She told of how a man driver, if he got lost he would go driving round trying to find where he was: he wouldn’t like to admit to a passerby that he was lost. She said a woman driver, if she got lost, first thing she’d do was stop and ask the way, because she is looking for solidarity. She doesn’t mind saying to someone, “I’m lost, I made a mistake.”

And there was another story Pat Jones told: That a youth leader came to the vicar and she said: “I can’t get the kids quiet. At the end of the meeting I want to sit them down for prayer. They won’t do what I say.” And he said to her, “Well, what you could do is play some quiet music, and sort of run things down, and have a space for them to sit down over a few minutes.” And she said, “When it gets to the end of the meeting I can’t keep the kids quiet.” And at the end of all this, she went away thinking, “He didn’t listen to what I was saying; he didn’t appreciate how difficult I was finding it.” And he thought, “She didn’t listen to what I was saying; I told her what to do about the problem.”

So men and women aren’t the same. They are not equal. They are different. But I think that men and women are complementary in the family, in society and in the church. So can Women serve in the church? Traditionally women clean the church, they do the flowers, they make the tea and cakes, and they raise the money at jumble sales and fairs. But throughout the Bible and throughout the history of the church, as I have tried to show, some very outstanding women have shown that God values the spiritual and the theological contribution that women bring into the church, as well as the practical everyday things; people like Deborah, people like Huldah.

Huldah was a prophetess. The king sent to her for advice even though Isaiah was a prophet at the court at that time, but he wanted Huldah’s advice. There was Mary and Martha; there was Mary herself, the mother of Jesus; there were the women disciples (Luke 8:13). I have already mentioned them. There were also the great number of women mentioned in Paul’s letters. In Romans chapter 16 Paul writes to greet the members of that church as he finishes his letter. He says, “Phoebe. . . she has been a great help to many people, including me... Priscilla and Aquilla, my fellow workers” and in Acts there is more about them and what they did. “Mary who worked very hard for you.... Tryphena and Tiyphosa who work hard in the Lord... Rufus. . . and his mother who has been a mother to me too. . Julia, Nereus and his sister.” He mentions many of these women by name and he mentions that they have worked for the gospel in the church.

As I said, I have mentioned the women down the ages who, when they wanted to serve God, were not able to; their calling wasn’t recognised by the church. And I have also mentioned the theological contribution, a spiritual contribution. One of the prayers that I have always loved and that has always challenged me was the prayer written by Theresa of Avila:

God has no body now on earth but yours.

Yours are the only hands with which he can do his work;

Yours are the only feet with which he can go about the world;

Yours are the only eyes through which his compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world.

God has no body now on earth but yours.

A prayer that we see lived out in its fullness by St Theresa’s namesake, Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Surely women do have a place serving in the church.

There is a lot of questioning about the role of women in the church, but that is not new. What I have been showing this evening is that it has always been there; the questioning and the service. So what is different today? I think God is saying to the church today, “See how I use all the members of the body which is my church.” I think God is saying, “See how I give gifts to the church, to men and to women.” I think God is saying, ‘the time is shorter than when you first believed. I send you all out into the world to proclaim the good news that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, to call us back into the love of God.” God so loved the world; men and women. God called men and women to follow him. God calls men and women today to love him and to serve him, each person in the body of Christ using their different gifts.

I have not forgotten one of the main reasons why women haven’t been allowed into public role. The verse in 1 Corinthians 14, 34: Paul says women should stay silent. But then in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 5 he says, “A woman who prays or prophesies should have her head covered.” So women don’t have to quite keep silent, they can pray and they can prophesy. And yes I do think that that was applied to the society of the time. If women weren’t allowed to go to school, how could they ever teach? But once women had a gospel to teach, then they were to teach it.

A survey was done in America after women were first made priests and it showed that all the parishes where they had had women ministers were in favour of women priests. It was those churches who had never experienced women in ministry who were doubtful about it.

In fact a church not far from here, both the congregation and the vicar were dead against women in the church, but they were sent a student who was to get a feel of a different churchmanship. And so for two or three days a week and on Sundays this woman went along to the church and worked in the church, and visited, and preached, until she went to theological college. At the end of that six months they had all changed their minds because they saw God working through that woman.

I am saying this evening, that I am sure God is calling the church to be open to change, to be willing to use the other 50% of its manpower, womanpower, in the service of his church, in the service of the gospel. Amen.

Chairman

Thank you Jacquie. Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sure that both of our speakers have given you something to think about. We are now going to have a break for about ten minutes or so.

I hope those of you who wish to put questions to our two speakers will write your question out and put it in the appropriate box: remember the boxes are at the front on the right here. And then when later this evening we come to the opportunity for those questions to be answered, I will put them alternately to Duncan and to Jacquie.

So I would ask you please to be ready to start again at five minutes to nine. Thank you.

Interval

Thank you. You will remember from my describing to you the pattern for this evening that we are now to have two responses, first of all from Duncan and then from Jacquie to the points that have been made in both the speeches at this point.

So I am going to ask Duncan, then, to respond to what Jacquie has said, for ten minutes. Duncan.