Podcast 2.04 When Women Meet the Second Adam

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Transcript

Episode 2.04
When Women Meet the Second Adam

(Musical intro)

Intro: Welcome to the Encounter Jesus podcast, also known as the ‘feel like Jesus is hugging you today’ podcast. I’m Elizabeth Ellynshaw, and we have been talking about my favorite Bible character, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who always shows up at Jesus’ feet. Last week we talked about her courage to stay at the feet of Jesus when her sister Martha was upset, maybe even angry about it, but Jesus approved. This week I want to look at another aspect of her courage that has spoken deeply to my heart. But first I want to warn the listener that this aspect of Mary’s courage in the story, and, more importantly, Jesus’ response to her in the story, opens up a huge topic, or I could call it a huge can of worms. And for many years of my life, I thought it would be better to just leave that can of worms safely sealed and untouched and not risk the mess of asking any questions about it. And even when I did open that topic with Jesus and discover He had such life-liberating truth for me there that I wished I had asked Him to teach me about it many years earlier, I still have never shared about that aspect of my journey in any of my writing or blogging or public media until now.

But Mary’s story leads us there, and I want to acknowledge this aspect of her story and share how much it has helped me, even though all I will be able to do in one episode today is open the topic, share my story and where the Lord led me to in the end, and invite you into your own conversation with Jesus about it.

Today I want to celebrate the courage of Mary to leave the kitchen and go into the living room when the voices of her culture, even her religious culture, unanimously told her that was something women didn’t do. Mary left the place and the role that her religious culture had assigned to women and she went after Jesus into a place that her religious culture had forbidden her. She did something for the sake of her hunger for Jesus that none of the role models she had grown up with had ever done, she risked being criticized for trying to act like a man, and she went to sit at the feet of Jesus like a male disciple being educated for ministry by sitting at the feet of a rabbi.

I used to not see anything radical, revolutionary, or rebellious about Mary quietly sitting on the floor listening to whatever Jesus was talking about. But then I began to learn just how unexpected her behavior was in her culture, where sitting at the feet of a rabbi to listen to his teaching meant to be his disciple, something only men could do. The same wording is used in Acts 22:3 for how Saul of Tarsus was educated “at the feet of” the famous rabbi Gamaliel. Mary was crossing a line. She may have been on her knees on the floor, quiet as a mouse, but she was breaking all the rules. And the most important part of the story is that Jesus supported her in it. Jesus could have sent her back into the kitchen in disgrace, and with her, all the women who would ever try to come after her. Jesus could have said loud and clear, ‘men can follow Me like this, women cannot.’ But instead He said loud and clear for every generation of men and women to come, ‘Mary has chosen the best portion and it will not be taken from her.’

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Prayer: Lord I pray for all the women who have allowed any part of the best portion to be taken from them, and for all the men and women who have believed the lie that You want us to take any part of it away from our sisters, that You would help us give it all back. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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Content: I never had the slightest doubt in all my growing up years that if I had been born a boy, I would have become a pastor like my dad. I had even picked out the seminary I would have gone to in that parallel universe, in that other life. But I also never doubted that, as a girl, I couldn’t follow that dream. Not because people didn’t want me to, but because God Himself had said He didn’t allow it. I’d been told over and over again that the only churches that would ever allow a woman to stand in the pulpit and preach the sermon on a Sunday morning were churches that didn’t really believe the Bible was the word of God.

So when I was 13 years old, I went to all the teachers and counselors at Bible camp with my question, “So, if I was a boy I would want to be a pastor but I am a girl, so what else can I do for God?” I got about three major answers I can remember. You could marry a pastor and be a pastor’s wife. You could write books instead of sermons. Or you could go to another country as a missionary instead of staying here. I picked up the message, ‘little boys become pastors and little girls become missionaries.’

So I pursued all of that advice, even though it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I wondered, Why would it be OK for me to teach about the Bible in writing but be a sin for me to teach the same things in person using my voice? Why was it OK for me to do things in another country that would be wrong for me to do in my own country? If I go to another country and taught women there how to teach the Bible, can they teach it in their own country or would they need to travel to a third country in order to be allowed to use their voices?

But I started studying foreign languages so I could go to another country someday, and I started writing sermons in my little-girl diary for my future husband to preach for me. I hoped I could find a husband who wanted to become a pastor but didn’t want to write his own sermons so he could preach all the sermons I was writing in my diary for him!

And it wasn’t until I was 27 years old and actually in another country and I met women who definitely believed the Bible was the word of God but who preached side by side with their husbands, planning sermon series together as elegantly as a couple dancing a waltz, only then did it ever occur to me to really question whether the Person who had said ‘no’ to my childhood dreams was really God or not.

That started me on a journey of over a year of studying and researching for myself and praying and seeking counsel and weeping before the Lord and asking Him to show me what He really wanted me to believe. It was an incredible journey and I hope I can one day share the whole long story. And if you were raised the same way I was, or you have the same questions I did about, ‘But wait, how do I honor what God said in His word in this verse, and in this verse, and in this verse, what did He really mean by that?’ I don’t expect you to be convinced by my conclusions until you have gone through your own process of wrestling and researching that may or may not take you more than a year as well! But in the end, I came out of that long dark tunnel into the light of knowing without the shadow of a doubt that there was no glass ceiling over my head from My heavenly Father. People could let me do or not do anything in any given context, and I could be fine with that in their context because I knew it was not what my heavenly Father said about me. In my relationship with God Himself, I was free. I had encountered the Jesus that Mary of Bethany encountered, the One who said, ‘I want you here. This thing you have always wanted, to learn and teach My word to the fullest extent that your brothers can, the thing that other people said you shouldn’t do and even thought I would tell you that you shouldn’t do, just like Martha thought I would tell Mary to leave my group of male disciples and go back into the kitchen, that thing, I want it for you. I want it for you even more than you want it for yourself. The thing you have chosen, it’s good, and I will never take it from you. It will never be taken from you.”

I imagine that Mary with her heart pounding in her throat, slipping silently in among the group of male disciples, sneaking closer to Jesus’ feet as quietly as she can, trying to curl herself up as small as she can to not draw any attention to the fact that she’s there, hoping nobody will notice her and tell her to go away. Hoping the other disciples won’t notice, maybe even hoping Jesus won’t notice. Then I imagine her horror, her embarrassment, maybe even her terror when Martha points her out to the entire room and tells Jesus He should send Mary back where she belongs. And then I imagine her relief and astonishment when Jesus doesn’t do that, doesn’t humiliate her or reject her, and doesn’t even say, “Oh, I guess it’s OK—just this once!” but rather says to Martha in front of all the guys too, “What Mary has chosen is good and I will not let it be taken from her.” Do you need to encounter that Jesus?

As I encountered that Jesus in His word, from Genesis to Revelation, I realized that I had been wrong when all my life I thought, the role of women is an unimportant issue, it’s a non-essential issue because it isn’t part of the gospel. Oh but yes it is! In Genesis 1, God creates male and female side by side in His image and blesses them. In His blessing, He tell them to function as an inseparable, life-giving team and to rule together, not over each other but over the rest of the creation. After they sin, He tells the humans that He had blessed that now there will be a curse, and under that curse, the man will start ruling over the woman, the thing they were both supposed to do over the animals in God’s original design. And part of the gospel is that Jesus came to deliver us from the curse, including that curse, to become a curse for us, and to restore us to God’s blessing, to every spiritual blessing in Him.

In the story of the garden of Eden, there were a man and a woman in a garden, where the woman listened to the snake and the man listened to the woman and many say, “the woman lost her voice because she listened to the snake first so she shouldn’t speak and shouldn’t teach because she can’t be trusted anymore. Men shouldn’t listen to women anymore, women shouldn’t teach men anymore.”

But Jesus was called the seed of the woman who would come as a man and crush the head of the snake. And when that Jesus had died to absorb our curse and had crushed the head of the serpent and risen triumphantly from the dead, what is the very first thing He did after rising from the dead to start ushering in the new creation? He revealed Himself to a woman in a garden, and as they stood there again, a man and a woman in a garden, He gave her her voice back. He told her that He had defeated the serpent and He trusted her, He trusted her to take His message to His brothers. As if for dramatic effect, to show that that serpent was really and truly crushed, Jesus the second Adam showed up to a woman who had had seven serpents inside of her and Jesus had gotten rid of them all. And He told that woman to be His witness, His eyewitness and, go tell the men that He was alive from the dead. Because until the woman, all women, is no longer a deceived deceiver, no longer a tempted temptress, no longer a mouthpiece of the serpent who must be silenced and cannot be trusted, but until she has her voice fully restored as a mouthpiece for the Messiah, until the men and the women stand side by side to rule the new creation, Jesus hasn’t finished winning, Jesus hasn’t gotten everything He died for yet.

Is it any wonder Jesus wanted to say about Mary at His feet, “What she has chosen is what I will be crucified for, it will never be taken from her.”

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Question: Today I invite you to go like Mary to the feet of Jesus and ask Him what He wants to say to you about this. Whether you agree or disagree with me, talk to the Serpent Crusher. Ask Him what His victory entails and how He wants it to liberate your life, and ask Him how He wants you to be part of bringing that victory and liberation to the others, both male and female, around you.

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