Deborah? Phoebe?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 11, 2008
Pentecost and Mothers Day

Deborah? Phoebe?
Judges 4:1-10
Romans 16:1-2

A woman as judge and prophet in the nation of Israel?
Who had ever heard of such a thing?
Who was this Deborah,
and how in the world had she become a leader
in ancient Israel?

This was more than 3,000 years ago,
back when men ruled.
Men were supposed to be judges, not women.
The structure of ruling patriarchs began with Moses,
and then the 70 Elders who ruled with him.
Before Moses died, he anointed Joshua to succeed him.
The Book of Judges begins with men –
men, not women.
Wasn’t a woman’s job to look after the home,
prepare the meals,
and raise the children?
“Be fruitful and multiply”:
that was a woman’s job, wasn’t it?
Surely it was a man’s job to judge,
a man’s job to rule,
a man’s job to lead?

But, wait….. let’s think about this for a moment:
It is true that Moses anointed Joshua to succeed him,
but who picked Joshua to succeed Moses?
Moses? The Seventy Elders?
No: it was God who picked Moses,
and God who picked Joshua.
It was God who raised up each judge,
and it was God who called Deborah,
who picked Deborah to serve as judge
and prophet to Israel.

And why not?
After all, doesn’t the Bible begin with:
“God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them,
And God blessed them… (Gen. 1:27)

Did you forget that there are two different
creation stories in Genesis?
That one is the first one,
the one we learn before we get to the more familiar story
of Adam and his rib.

God selected Deborah to judge and to serve as his prophet.
Indeed, Deborah was as much God’s choice and selection
as Barak was God’s selection
to serve as the military leader of Israel.

Among a people where faith comes first,
the gender of a ruler should not matter,
because among a people where faith comes first,
everyone knows that it is God who gives each person
unique skills and characteristics,
and God who calls each person to use those skills --
use those skills to do God’s work.
Gender should not matter.
If God calls a woman to judge, why not?
If God chose, as he did, to lead Sisera,
the leader of the opposing army,
to death at the hand of woman,
isn’t that within God’s power?
Of course it is.

Gender should not matter to us,
because gender does not matter to God.
God is neither male nor female,
and yet God is both male and female:
our loving Father in heaven,
and yet also one who will,
as God says through the prophet Isaiah,
comfort us as a “mother comforts her child”.
(Isaiah 66:13)
Christ himself speaks of his desire to gather the children of Israel
“as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
(Matthew 23:37)

If we look closely, we can find countless examples of women
serving in leadership roles throughout the Bible.
The stories are often fleeting and short,
but they are there,
if we just look hard enough.
Could the reference to Phoebe
in our second lesson be any shorter?
Two sentences at the end of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome.
We don’t know any more about Phoebe
than we know about Lydia,
the seller of purple who helped establish the Church in Philippi.
But even in those two short sentences we learn that
Phoebe was a leader of the church.

Paul used the term, “deacon”,
which meant a “leader in the church”,
as it does today.
Some scholars suggest in Paul's day there might have
even been a ministerial element to the position.
It was Phoebe who carried the letter
that Paul wrote to the Romans.
She was with him in Corinth, where he wrote the letter,
and from there she went to Rome,
while Paul went south to Jerusalem.

Phoebe and Deborah were women of faith,
the seed of faith planted firmly in their hearts
by God through the Holy Spirit.
And they responded to their faith;
responded to God’s call to serve.
It didn’t matter to God that they were women.
for they had been created in God’s image
in exactly the same way every man had.

Do you remember the story of Jesus and the Woman of Samaria?
That’s in the fourth chapter of the gospel according to John.
Our Year of the Bible group read the story this past week.
Jesus stopped by a well;
it was hot, he was tired and thirsty and wanted a drink of water.
His disciples had gone off to town to find some food,
and while Jesus waited by the well for their return
a Samaritan woman came to draw water.
Jesus spoke to her, which at first may not seem unusual.
But the Samaritans and the Jews
looked upon one another with contempt,
viewing one another as enemies.
When the disciples returned from town with their food,
they were horrified and amazed by what they saw.
But it is fascinating to read what John recorded
as the greater concern for the disciples:
not that their Master was speaking to a Samaritan;
but rather, “they were astonished
that Jesus was speaking with a woman.”
(John 4:27)

Why were they astonished that Jesus was speaking with a woman?
Wasn’t she a child of God, created in God’s image,
just as they were?
The reaction of the disciples reflected the culture
in which they lived, the prevailing way of thinking.
Jesus, of course, didn’t pay any attention
to society’s artificial rules;
what mattered to him
was doing God’s will and following God’s law.

When Jesus stopped to rest at the home of Mary and Martha,
Martha tended to her chores in the kitchen,
while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet to learn.
Jesus did not shoo away Mary
telling her to go help her sister in the kitchen,
No, just the opposite: he chided Martha
for being too concerned with domestic chores
to focus on God’s will and God’s way.
“There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part.”
(Luke 10:42)

Men are not from Mars any more than women are from Venus.
Yes, we are different in many ways.
Just watch reruns of Home Improvement, with Tim Allen,
and you’ll see the colorful differences laid out
not only in comical ways, but thoughtful ways.
I will say, I have never been able to explain adequately
to my sisters or my wife why men find so much pleasure
in the Tool department of Sears.

But for us as children of God and disciples of Christ,
what we know is that men and women are equally equipped
for the tasks to which God calls us
including, as in Deborah and Phoebe’s cases, leadership.
We should never be surprised when a woman rises up to become
a principal in a school,
editor of a newspaper,
or head of a company.
It is our society that has put restrictions on women;
not God, not Jesus.
The few passages in the Bible that seem demeaning to women
reflect the time in which they were written,
the social constructs and mores.

Back in 1995, before I entered seminary,
when I worked at The Economist in New York City
as editor and head of their management
and finance publications group
we produced a study on leadership.
Our focus was on the business world
and we wanted to look at various styles of leadership,
and dig into the question, were leaders born or made.
If leaders were made,
we wanted to learn what businesses
were doing or could do
to train and develop more effective leaders.
Back in the late 1980s and early 90s leadership
was the hot topic for business writers and consultants.

One academic study was being talked about
more than any other study, book or article.
It was entitled simply “Ways Women Lead”.
A professor named Judith Rosener,
who taught at the University of California,
had done an exhaustive study
comparing the natural tendencies of men and women
as they exercised leadership.
What she found was that women were more inclined
to exercise “interactive leadership”:
to work actively “to make their interactions
with their subordinates positive for everyone involved”
(Ways Women Lead, Harvard Business Rev. Nov. 1990)

Put another way, Rosener found that women more than men
encouraged participative management,
rather than trying to emulate men’s preferred style
of command and control.
Women were more adept than men at
leading by example,
leading by involvement,
and leading with encouragement.

Rosener was probably not aware of it,
but what she found was that
women were modeling how Jesus led,
how Jesus leads us,
and how Jesus calls us to lead:
By example, by involvement,
by encouraging.
Teaching us, then sending us out,
confident in the knowledge that the Spirit will guide us
and lead us further.

God created each one of us in his image,
God blessed each of us with different gifts and skills:
and calls us to use our gifts to bring honor and glory to him.
When any of us stands in the way of someone else for any reason,
we are standing in God’s way,
blocking God’s work, and God’s will.

There is no place in God’s world for sexism, or racism
or any kind of ‘ism” that creates barriers,
that stands in God’s way.
Three thousand years ago Barak didn’t say to Deborah,
“I am off to battle,
And since war is a man’s job,
you just stay here under your palm tree.”
He knew that Deborah had been called by God
and so he listened to her,
and followed her directions.
He went so far as to say that
he would only go out to battle if she went too.

Count the women who fill the pages
of both Old and New Testament
in addition to Deborah, Phoebe, Lydia, Mary, Martha --
all there if we only look closely enough.
Each a child of God,
each created in the image of God,
each called to serve God.
Every woman in this church has been created the same way:
every woman called to serve,
and called to lead in ways both small and large.

It seems to me that one of the best gifts
we can give to every mother today
is to remove barriers:
barriers that may have impeded her,
barriers that might impede her daughters
or her granddaughters;
Barriers that get in the way of their responding
to God’s call,
and God’s will.

It is a gift that will cost us no money,
But it will be a gift from the heart,
a gift given in love,
and a gift given in faith.
It would be a gift given from one child of God to another,
a gift that would delight the one we call our Father in heaven,
who is just as much our Mother in heaven,
the One who shelters us
as a hen shelters her brood under her wings.
And it would be a gift that would make clear
that we have heard and followed the words of our Lord:
“There is need of only one thing.
[and we are called to choose] the better part.”
AMEN