Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

A couple of weeks ago in the Argus, there was a delightful article about a former highway patrolman named Tracy who recently opened a daycare in his home in Brandon .  I know this fellow, he's a young father whose parents attended my former church, and from what I know of him I bet he's a great childcare provider for his own two little boys and the other children in his care.  I'm particularly delighted to see people breaking out of gender stereotypes, because they open our eyes to the way we tend to assume gender roles in society.  When we assume that only persons of one gender do a certain job, we discourage people from doing what they might be good at or really want to do, because they may fear being different from the cultural expectation.  

Last week I talked a little about feminist theology, and one of the things feminist theologians have done, which is to show how the cultural assumptions of people affect their thinking.  I specifically talked about how the cultural assumptions of the people who translated the Bible influenced their translations from the original languages the bible was written in, Hebrew and Greek, into English.  Often there is no exact word in the language one is translating into, so the translator has to choose some word close in meaning.  

Please turn in your bulletins to the ivory colored insert.  On one side there is a litany or prayer; the other side is what I'd like you to look at. It's entitled Example of Bias in Bible Translations.  This is something I use with the confirmation class when I tell them I won't allow them to use the King James Version of the Bible for study.  Its poetic language is fine for devotions, but it's too imprecise to be used for serious study.   

Please notice that the first translation is marked Literal.  That means if you translate word for word, the English equivalent to the original Greek sentence is:  And I commend to you Phoebe our sister, being deacon of the church, the one in Cenchreae.  

The next translation is the Revised Standard Version, used most commonly in this country until recently.  It translates the same verse as: I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae.  In many denominations deaconess is associated with nursing and caregiving, so there is only a slight change in meaning, since deacon has a stronger connotation of leadership in most churches.  

But now look at the KJV:  I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchreae.  The KJV was the most widely used version from the time the printing press was invented until the mid-1900's, and this translation erased any hint of Phoebe's leadership.

The Living Letters Version, which is a paraphrase version somewhat like The Good News Bible, translates it still differently:  Phoebe, a dear Christian woman from the town of Cenchreae will be coming to see you soon.  She has worked hard in the church there.  Now she has been turned into a nice lady.  The irony is that in the original Greek, it goes on to say that she is one of Paul's benefactors, which implies that she financially supported him as well as serving as a leader in the church at Cenchreae.  And there is no hint of any of that in this translation.  

Finally, the last translation on your insert is from the NEW Revised Standard Version, which was published in 1989 by the ecumenical National Council of Churches, and is the most accurate literal translation available today (because it incorporates the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the mid-1900's).

I show you these to demonstrate to you that the very Bibles we use have been translated by people whose thinking affected how they translated things.  In the middle ages when the KJV was being written, women were still thought to be less intelligent and less moral than men.  It would have seemed inconceivable that Phoebe would have been a leader in Paul’s church, so the translator made a decision to translate the word deacon as servant, even though in every other instance in the entire N.T where the same word appeared in reference to a man (19 times), it was translated as deacon.  The 1 time it was used in reference to a woman it was translated as servant.

Why is this important?  Because it gives you some idea of how subtle language is, and how the translators assumptions affected their work.  In some cases they erased the model of a woman in leadership in the early Christian church.  Indeed, thanks to feminist theology, we are uncovering other instances where the leadership of women in the early church disappeared from the record, right there in the Bible. 

For those of you who weren’t here last Sunday, feminist theology is the study of God from a perspective that intentionally looks for support of women in scripture.  It is advocacy theology, done by people who already believe, based on their experience of life, that justice is God's will for all people.  I said that it should be called personist theology, because feminist theology is really seeking to explain how all persons deserve justice and dignity and self-empowerment, even if they happen to be women instead of men, even if they are old and no longer young, even if they are people of color and not white.

We have become more aware, in recent years, of just how important language is.  While terms such as men and mankind were once understood generically to mean all people (women as well as men),  incresasingly this is not considered acceptable.  My friend Jinny told me a story once about how her own mother became sensitized to the subtle, negative effect of using male gendered language.  Jinny's mother didn’t have much sympathy for feminism, couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, until one Sunday morning at a church here in Sioux Falls, a young pastor finished his children's message.  He ended it by saying to the children, Now go, and live as sons of God.  A little girl burst into tears and exclaimed, I can't be a son!  I'm a girl!  The young pastor was too stunned to respond.  But the little girl's cry had as profound an effect on Jinny's mom as a sermon.  Because she realized how exclusively masculine language makes some of us feel left out.

Granted, when we hear a line like All men are created equal we commonly understand it today to mean all people.  However, the reason it has become accustomed usage is because at one time, it included only men.  And that is because males were considered more representative of the human race than females.  It originiated back in a day when to be female meant being inferior or subordinate.  If you doubt that, take a look at medical textbooks from as recent as 30 years ago.  I have seen reproductions of textbook charts that say things such as Human body average weight and then list the male average weights, followed by, in parenthesis, (female).  The charts say Human body average height and give only male averages, then again off to the side in parenthesis (female). In other words, these textbooks suggest that the representative human body is the male body.  There are not-so-very-old medical books with pictures throughout of only male bodies except the chapter on reproduction.  The implication is that maleness is representative of the human race, and femaleness is a reproductive capacity.

Generic language that uses male terms not only resulted from, but reinforces these assumptions!  That's why the UCC as a denomination is committed to using language that is not exclusively male gendered, so we don't perpetuate notions of inequality.  Instead of saying mankind, we say humanity instead of saying men we say people or persons or women and men instead of saying brothers in the faith we say sisters and brothers in the faith.  Even though the Biblical writers lived in a male dominated culture we can quite easily apply Jesus' message in more sensitive language.  It's a hard habit to break at first, but it's for a good cause remembering the little girl who knew she was not a son but a daughter of God, helps us make the effort!

A 2nd thing feminist theologians have demonstrated is that the Biblical writers were also influenced by their culture. Paul, who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, is a good example.  At various places in Corinthians, for example, Paul reflects assumptions from the 1st century and it's important to separate his unconscious assumptions from his analysis of what Jesus taught. He says at one point, Women should never pray in church without a veil or something on their heads, because nature itself teaches that long hair is a woman's glory but long hair on a man is degrading. (I Cor. 11:13-14)  Now think about that:  nature teaches that long hairstyles are degrading?

 You and I know that nature doesn't teach that certain hairstyles are degrading on a man.  The only thing nature teaches about hair is that it grows.  Whatever is popular in a culture dictates what hairstyles are acceptable.  But Paul displays an unawareness of what is the trend in his cultural setting, and what is natural.  He assumes that what he sees as usual, must be natural!   He displays the same lack of awareness about slavery; he never questions it.  He seems to simply assume it is the natural order of things!  Slavery had been around for thousands of years by the time Paul lived.  It was widely accepted as what nature teaches.  So when a Christian slave ran away from his master, Paul sent him back (Philemon 4), and asked the master not to be too hard on him.  And for the next 2000 years Christians quoted Paul when they argued that God approves of  slavery, because they weren't able to see that Paul's thinking was somewhat influenced by what he learned from his environment, his culture.  It's as if he was wearing cultural blinders.

We all wear cultural blinders!  We pigeon hole people: She's Black she must not be the new executive.     He's a guyhe can't be the child care professional.  These careless assumptions presume that what is usual is natural, and what is unusual is not.  When Paul appeals to what nature teaches remember his remarks about long hair, and that natural for Paul sometimes means what is popular thinking in his day.  That's something we need to consider when we study homosexuality and  Paul says it is unnatural.

I want to tell you a funny little story that I read in a recent Lutheran magazine I get.  It was written by a man named Everett who joined the Property Committee at his church.  At the first Property meeting Ralph Redgren started talking about double-fired boilers and intake valves, and he sat there thinking, I'm really out of my league here.  I'm ok with a broom and maybe a screwdriver, but I sure hope that furnace doesn't break down when I'm the only one around.

He wasn't the only new person on the committee.  The other new member was Ann Roelofs, the only woman in the room.  She had volunteered to be on the Property Committee.  Her bravery impressed him, although he couldn't imagine how she would be able to keep up with this steep learning curve.  After all, if he was stumped by furnaces, he figured she must be totally lost.

He glanced at her occasionally, hoping to catch her eye and share a can you believe all this stuff we're expected to know kind of look.  She stared down at her agenda, studying it like a schoolgirl.  He felt sorry for her, she looked so earnest.  Then she opened her mouth.  

Who did the H-VAC work in the Fellowship Hall? she asked.  Who, what, huh? he thought.  Her mouth opened again.  How did that work when they retrofit those pipes along the corridor?  Ralph went into a complex code of construction speak as dense as concrete. Everett said he couldn't for all the money in the world tell you what he said, but Anne Roelof was with him the whole way, nodding, interrupting on occasion with a follow-up question, and shaking her head, satisfied, when he finished. Everett wasn't the only one in shock, though.  He said Charley Lorrison slowly looked up from his agenda as she talked, as though he'd heard a siren in the distance. 

Everett said that when he walked home that night, he was thinking about how they'd get along without Ralph someday; he knew every inch of that church.  Everett couldn't see any of his buddies stepping forward to fill his shoes.  But then he remembered Anne Roelofs.  Thank goodness she knew all about that stuff!

Jesus showed us how to treat people with tremendous respect men and women.  These days, I think we could take a lesson from Jesus on how to treat men too.  For the past several decades, the needs of women have been highlighted.  But only recently have we begun to look at how men have been hurt by a culture that often assumes things likeone becomes a real man by playing sports or conquering a lot of women or making a lot of money.  I'm reading a book by Sam Keen entitled Fire in the Belly.  In it he describes cultural models of manhood that injure men.  They also deserve to be empowered to enjoy nurturing, satisfying, whole lives. 

Our UCC national office website has a link to men's ministry now and it's got an interesting new manifesto that is a more liberal piece than Promise Keepers' pledge called the Silver Lake Challenge.  Go to www.ucc.org and click on men's ministry to see it.

In the near future I hope to give men equal time in a sermon of their own.  Until then, I hope this has helped you to think about assumptions you might unconsciously be making.  Amen.