colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck—all this as plunder?’
[In a final flourish Deborah seeks the glory of God for those who love God and sure defeat for those who do not:]
“So may all your enemies perish, LORD!
But may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.”
Then the land had peace forty years.
The courage of this woman is remarkable. Her theology is bathed in zeal for the Lord, her exhortations capable of drawing all to the battle plain, and her hopes inspiring to this day. I shudder at her Schadenfreude, her “joy over the defeat of her enemies,” but I trust our zeal for God’s glory is as resolute as hers. If there is any single line that captures the spiritual vision of Deborah it is verse 21c: “March on, my soul; be strong!” This too is part of our story.
Deborah is a blue parakeet who was permitted to sing and fly.
Huldah: Prophet above the Prophets
When King Josiah is informed of the discovery of the long-lost Torah in the temple, a certain Shaphan reads the text to Josiah. The king, who has “the most responsive royal heart since the hearing heart of Solomon,”5 realizes the nation has failed to live according to God’s covenant. He falls apart in godly repentance and needs discernment. What should he do? To which of God’s prophets shall he send word to consult? Here are his options: he can consult Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, or Huldah. The first four have books in Israel’s collection of prophets. But he chooses Huldah above the rest. Huldah is not chosen because no men were available; she is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.
She confirms that the scroll is indeed God’s Torah and this, in some sense, authorizes this text as Israel’s Scriptures from this time on. Furthermore, the prophet Huldah, unafraid to tell the truth, informs Josiah that indeed God’s wrath is against the disobedience of this nation. But, she adds, because the king has humbled himself before God, he will be gathered to his ancestors in peace. All of this is found in 2 Kings 22.
Huldah is a female blue parakeet who sang more beautifully than a company of males.
Conclusion
From this brief sketch, we can repeat the question: What did women do?
They spoke for God;
they led the nation in every department;
they sanctioned Scripture; and
they guided nations back to the path of righteousness.
These women were blue parakeets who were allowed to fly and to sing.
But that was then, and this is now. What about in the New Testament? Did women’s roles decrease or increase? If one takes into consideration the King and His Kingdom Story and considers that Jesus ushers in the beginning of the new creation, one should not be surprised to learn that women begin where the Old Testament leaves off and take on new responsibilities. That is exactly what happens.
CHAPTER 16
WHAT DID WOMEN DO IN THE NEW TESTAMENT?
Women in Church Ministries 3
A young woman came to me at the end of class and said, “I’m so upset.” I asked her why. “Because I’ve never heard about any of these women we have been studying.”
“Which women?” you might ask.
Junia, Priscilla, and Phoebe.
Let me ask you (the reader): Do you know about these women? If your experience is like this student’s, you have every right to ask why not. My experience is that more don’t know these women than do.
You are also entitled to ask why so many Protestants ignore the most significant woman in the entire Bible, Mary, mother of Jesus. We begin with her and we ask again, WDWD (in the New Testament). As we ask this question of Mary and other New Testament women, the entire theme of oneness—of God’s restoring men and women to be one in Christ—begins to take on concrete realities.
MARY: A Woman of Influence
Mary makes some Protestants break out in an emotional rash and rant; I’ve seen it happen. Once when I told an older woman that I was studying what the Bible says about Mary, she said to me, “Why? She’s so Catholic!”
Ah, I thought, that’s reading the Bible through the (anti-Catholic) tradition! We believe in the Bible, and it reveals that Mary was a woman of influence, and some of that influence, if you weigh the verses carefully, had to be at the level of teaching.
To begin with, Mary was the mother of the Messiah, and it was no small vocation to be part of forming Jesus the Messiah as he matured. Furthermore, if the early tradition is accurate, Mary became a widow, so when we look at her influence in the early church, we are looking at a widow. I see her influence in the New Testament in three ways. Mary’s influence emerges in her training of Jesus and of his brother James, and she was critical in the formation of our Gospels.
Mary had a powerful influence on her sons—including Jesus. Themes from Mary’s majestic Magnificat show up so centrally both in the teachings of Jesus and in the letter of James, I believe it is clear that Mary taught and was involved in the spiritual formation of Jesus and James.1 I would not want to claim that Jesus learned only from Mary; of course he learned from Joseph and from others. But can we expect that God would give Mary to Jesus as a mother and not qualify her to be a singular and godly influence on him? I think not.
Perhaps turning to another of Mary’s sons, James, is a safer way to make this point. Here are the words of Mary’s Spirit-prompted Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55):
And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
The themes of Mary’s song are clear: justice for the poor and marginalized, judgment on the oppressors, holiness, and God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises. James writes in his letter these words:
Believers in humble circumstances [the “poor”] ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. (James 1:9–11)
This prediction of a reversal of fortunes is a central theme to the Magnificat and a central theme in Jesus’s own teachings. It punctuates nearly every chapter of James’s book.
But what strikes me when I read James are these words from James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James and Jesus and their other brothers and sisters were, in terms of first-century Jews, “orphans” because they did not have a living father. An orphan in that society was anyone who had lost one parent. James states that showing compassion for orphans and widows—like his mother—reveals the presence of genuine “religion” or “piety.”
I cannot prove that either James or Jesus got these ideas from their mother. But this Spirit-inspired woman was their mother—the one who uttered potent warnings about rich oppressors and promised comfort to the oppressed poor, rocked their cradles, taught them to sing, and explained to them their “family history” (how does one explain the plan of God to b
ring the Messiah when one is the mother of the Messiah?)—and she had a nurturing impact on the boys that unquestionably showed up in what they believed, how they acted, and what they taught. The things that show up are her godliness, her compassion, her intelligence, and her devotion.
One more point makes sense to me and I hope to you. Where did you think Luke acquired the stories he tells us in Luke 1–2? There are only a few possible sources: God, Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Jesus, and his brothers and sisters. The only person who knew the story of Mary’s words with the angel Gabriel was Mary; Luke may have not spoken with Mary (though I think Luke easily could have since he was in and around Jerusalem collecting information for his gospel), but somehow what he learned about those early days of impregnation and song somehow came from Mary. However you look at it, the first two chapters of our gospel of Luke derive somehow from Mary.
What did Mary do? Mary influenced her messianic Son, her New Testament–writing son James,2 and provided information to Luke as seeds for stories that got his gospel off to a great start. Are you aware that not a few interpreters see Mary, mother of Jesus, in Revelation 12? Read the chapter and think about it.
JUNIA: An Apostle above Other Apostles
Do you know who Junia is?3 Here’s all we know: “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was” (Romans 16:7, emphasis added). Here are words of utter profundity, words that have been silenced like a blue parakeet perhaps more than any other words in the Bible about women: “outstanding among the apostles.” Junia is an outstanding apostle, though to be sure, being a woman had little to do with it. What mattered were her intelligence, her giftedness, and her calling.
Junia is a woman’s name. But because women aren’t supposed to be “apostles,” someone copying the letter to the Romans changed the spelling so that Junia (female) became Junias (male). The RSV of 1946 has “Andronicus and Junias” and adds “men of note among the apostles.” Recent exhaustive study has uncovered this mistake, and we now are virtually certain “Junia” was a woman.4 And she was an “apostle”! Junia and her husband-apostle Andronicus were relatives of Paul or fellow Jews like Paul, they came to faith in Christ prior to Paul’s own conversion, and they were imprisoned with Paul (no doubt because they were believers and leaders among the Christians).
But more importantly, Andronicus and Junia are “outstanding” or “prominent” (NRSV) among apostles. This could mean they were recognized as leaders by the apostles, but the evidence in the early church is that everyone translated this expression as “prominent apostles” among the first generation of Christians. Perhaps we should take a deep breath and get our bearings before we go any further. A statement by St. Chrysostom, a famous preacher and theologian who read and preached in Greek, seals the deal; I put in italics the most significant words:
“Greet Andronicus and Junia . . . who are outstanding among the apostles”: To be an apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the apostles—just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were outstanding on the basis of their works and virtuous actions. Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was even deemed worthy of the title of apostle.5
We draw two conclusions: Junia was a woman and Junia was an apostle. A third: not “an apostle” but a “prominent” apostle.
But what kind of apostle? Some forget to ask this question. She clearly was not one of the twelve apostles chosen and sent out by Jesus. So what kind was she? The answer is in the Bible. As the story of the Bible unfolds, not only were there the twelve apostles but there were other apostles. Some have called them missionaries. While this is in the right direction, the term “apostle” can only mean they were specially sent because of special giftedness, and they would have been church-planting, teaching, theology-forming leaders in the churches they planted. They were both like modern-day missionaries (called, gifted, sent, church-planting) but they were also quite unlike our missionaries. How so? It is exceedingly rare for anyone to call our missionaries “apostles.” Why? That title belongs to a special giftedness. There were others in the New Testament called “apostle” in this sense, including Barnabas (Acts 14:14), James (Galatians 1:19), Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25), and other “brothers” (2 Corinthians 8:23). (Sometimes the Greek term apostolos, our “apostle,” is translated as “messenger” or “representative” in these passages.) Even if we rank Junia among the missionary apostles, she is still an apostle and is considered top drawer for her work.
Leading us to this question about what women did: What kind of work did an apostle like Junia get involved in? Or what did women do? We cannot be sure but probably these kinds of things: Junia, along with her husband, Andronicus, were commissioned or recognized as having gifts from God. Those gifts involved such things as evangelizing, teaching, preaching, establishing, and leading churches. Underneath it all would have been an exemplary character of godliness and love that provided a template for others to observe and imitate.
PRISCILLA: A Teacher of Scripture and Theology
We know much more about Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, than we do of Junia. Aquila and Priscilla were from Rome (Acts 18:2); they were kicked out of Rome when Claudius ordered all “Jews” to evacuate. They became acquainted with Paul in Corinth and began to make tents together (18:3). This friendship led to their traveling with Paul to Ephesus, where—and here we are offered another glimpse into what women did in the early churches—Priscilla and Aquila “explained to [Apollos] the way of God more adequately” (18:26). This husband and wife, instead of fighting for power with each other (cf. Genesis 3:16), worked together for the gospel. The mutuality theme is obvious here. Their availability to God for an itinerant life is also obvious.
There are some details here that deserve a careful look. First, Priscilla’s name is often given first (Acts 18:18, 26; Romans 16:3; 2 Timothy 4:19). Listing a woman’s name first was not impossible in the ancient world, but it was unusual. More significantly, she is almost always named before her husband, leading many to think she was the leading light when it came to this ministry and also probably more socially prominent. The only exceptions are Acts 18:2 and 1 Corinthians 16:19. We should not make too much of her name being first since she may have had more social status in the Roman world.
More importantly, “they”—and again her name is first—“explained” to the scholar Apollos “the way of God more adequately.” Priscilla knew her theology and her Bible, and she knew it so well she could lead Apollos from a John-the-Baptist faith to a Jesus-faith. This husband-wife team taught Apollos so well he was able—two verses later—to refute nonmessianic Jews in public debate by opening up the Scriptures for them (Acts 18:28). Clearly Priscilla was a theological teacher. This is why Priscilla and Aquila are called Paul’s “co-workers” in Romans 16:3.6 “Co-worker” was Paul’s special term for his associates in church ministries. What did they do? They—including Priscilla—shared with Paul in being called by God, in preaching the gospel, in carrying on pastoral work with churches, and in risking their lives for their faith.
So what did women do in the New Testament church? We have one woman who was an apostle and another who was a fellow worker and teacher. We must look at one more—a woman who was at a minimum the official interpreter of Paul’s letter to the Romans!
PHOEBE: Deacon and Benefactor
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me. (Romans 16:1–2, emphasis added)
One of the most noticeable features of women in the earliest churches was that they directed their own households. So when the churches moved into the homes, these household-directing women became de facto directors and leaders of local household churches. A good example is Phoebe; another
is Nympha (Colossians 4:15). Unlike Priscilla and Junia, who were both married, Phoebe’s husband is not mentioned. This could indicate that she was single. Perhaps she was a widow. Perhaps her husband was not a believer. We cannot be sure. She stands in this text alone as a single woman. What matters is her calling from God and her giftedness. Paul tells us that she was from Cenchreae, a city just outside of Corinth in Greece, and that she had traveled to Rome. Many today think Paul wrote Romans from Cenchreae and that he may well have written from her home. What did Phoebe do?
To begin with, Phoebe is called a “deacon.” This word “deacon” is the same word in the New Testament, whether the person is a man or a woman, for a leader in the church. When Paul calls her “deacon,” he is not thinking of the “deaconesses” in our churches who clean up communion cups in the church kitchen. Phoebe is called “deacon” because she exercised a ministry, or service, in the church.
What kind of ministry? Deacons are often connected to “ministry/ service of the word” in Paul’s letters—see, for example, 1 Corinthians 3:5–9.7 But since Phoebe is called “a deacon of the church in Cenchreae,” we should think of her “ministry” in terms of the list of qualifications and ministries we find in 1 Timothy 3:8–12. Doug Moo describes a safe conclusion: “It is likely that deacons were charged with visitation of the sick, poor relief, and perhaps financial oversight.”8 Others think more is involved, that is, that “deacon” describes an official ministry of God’s Word. I think the latter view may be closer to the facts, though it is unwise to stretch the evidence to fit what we’d like to be true.
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