I started seminary in the early 1990’s, the decade when the Synods of the Christian Reformed Church debated whether women could serve in the office of elder and minister.

The debate itself and conclusions of Synod 1995 for a local option would rip apart families, Christian schools, and congregations, and eventually lead to the formation of a new denomination — the United Reformed Churches in North America.

I remember watching the debates on the floor of Synod with no small amount of horror, the pain of those who spoke and those who didn’t speak was palpable. As a woman seeking ordination, I felt both a sense of relief, but also, the weight of the fallout on my shoulders when the decision was finally ratified in 1995.

Not surprisingly, those for and those against women in office both claimed to have the Bible on their side, pointing to various texts or themes or trajectories to prove their point. Even at the time, I remember wondering how one group of people who both claim to love Jesus and to be seeking God’s will could come to such vastly different readings and opposing conclusions about what the biblical text says. Was it true that those who were against women in office exhibited a high view of the authority of Scripture whereas those who were for women in office failed to take Scripture seriously?

Last week, I mentioned that my blog posts for the Sundays in August would explore the writings and insights of Walter Brueggemann, a widely-respected biblical scholar and preacher by Christians across the theological spectrum. While Brueggemann never took up the issue of women in ministry in his writings (to my knowledge), he did have a lot to say about Christian’s engagement with Scripture.

As it turns out, Brueggemann was convinced that neither (theologically) liberal nor conservative Christians take the Bible seriously. Conservatives, he noted frequently, domesticate the Bible into theological clichés and prioritize doctrinal purity over the emancipatory nature of the gospel. Liberals strip the Bible of its contemporary relevance by expending all their interpretive energy on historical-critical rabbit holes. Both fail by reducing the Bible to something we manage and control. 

I confess I’m fascinated by Brueggemann’s assessment. Part of the reason we come to such completely different conclusions about how Scripture speaks on various topics is that we are using the Bible in ways it wasn’t intended. And because of that, we are missing the radical liberating invitation of the gospel. What Brueggemann suggests by contrast is that Christians of all stripes need to immerse themselves more deeply into the narrative world of the Bible and to allow its counter-world to interpret, inform, and transform our way of inhabiting the world.  

While Brueggemann regularly alludes to this counter world, this alternative frame of reference that Scripture invites us to inhabit, one of my favorite articulations is in his book, From Whom No Secrets are Hid. Focusing his attention on the psalms but certainly applicable to all of Scripture, Brueggemann describes the world we find there as:

1. A world not of anxiety and fear but of trusted fidelity. A world where we trust the abundance of the world God created and live in dependence on God’s covenant faithfulness in such a way that we are not constantly worried about “not having enough, not having done enough, not measuring up . . . “ (p. 10). “The Lord is our light and our salvation. Whom shall we fear?” (Psalm 27:1)
   
2. A world not of greed but of generosity. A world in which we need not hoard resources and wealth out of fear of not having enough but instead, can be generous with what we have because we know all that we have are gifts from God.
   
3. A world not of denial but truth-telling. A world where, instead of trying to anesthetize our shame and bury our guilt, we name, acknowledge, lament, and grieve the cracks and fissures in our lives and in our world that remind us that not all is well. Where we name our failures and confess that we don’t have all the answers. That in fact, we need God.  
   
4. A world not of despair but hope. That as dark and troubling as things may get, we live with the confidence that this is not the end of the story, that evil will not win, that God is still active in the world, and that Christ’s resurrection is the promise that God can transform even the most dire situations into new life.
   
5. A world of shared norms. A world with a shared understanding of what is good and right and decent and appropriate such that even if we don’t always practice it, we recognize good for good and evil for evil.

Brueggemann has more, but this gives you an idea of where he is going. What I’m drawn to is Brueggemann’s conviction that God wants so much more for us than the closely-held assumptions that shape our living. And that instead of using the Bible as a weapon against others, the biblical narrative invites us to experience renewal and transformation ourselves, to be swept up in the profound goodness of the gospel. 

For Brueggemann, God never intended life to be a zero-sum game where some win and some lose, some eat and some starve, some control and some are controlled, some are in and some are out. Human beings created that world. As disciples of Jesus, we are invited to live out a different frame of reference rooted in the conviction that God is an active presence in our world, that God’s steadfast love never ceases. And in response to God’s covenant faithfulness, we are then called to live out radical discipleship and covenant obedience not through the exercise of control, but the outpouring of love for others. 

What a beautiful witness to the goodness of gospel!  They will know we are Christians by our love.

Feast photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Paradise sign photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash