As many of you know, we will be feeding our homeless friends under the Broadway bridge on Christmas Eve (12/24). We have decided to not only make this a meal for them…but also have a Christmas party. I mean, it’s Christmas, and they’re homeless! They need some joy in their life! We are going to try and make it a joyous time for all involved.
One of the most incredible things about following in the way of Jesus is the honor of working to make God’s Kingdom come on earth, as it is in Heaven. In Matthew 25 Jesus said that when we provide food, shelter, clothing, friendship and love to the overlooked, voiceless people in society we are providing those things to him. When we share tears, laughter, our lives and resources with our downtrodden brothers and sisters we are sharing those things with Jesus himself. If you stop to think about that long enough the joy becomes overwhelming.
As I said in my introduction in Part 1, when I set out to prepare for the talk at my church that led to this blog series, I was thinking I might end up just having to “chuck” some sections of the New Testament, particularly Paul’s letters. I thought there was just no way I was going to build a case for the full inclusion of women without having to admit that I think, in some cases, parts of the Bible can just be plain outdated and inapplicable to modern life. But, to my surprise, I discovered a rich tradition of women leaders in the early church, even in Paul’s writings!
Although we are most familiar with The Twelve Disciples, all of whom are men, Jesus had more than just 12 disciples, and these disciples included women. (Also, from Woman in the World of Jesus: “The logic from which the male composition of the Twelve would exclude women from high office or role in the church would likewise exclude the writers and most of the readers of this book, for there were no non-Jews among the Twelve. Unless one would argue that “apostolic succession” is for Jews only, it cannot be for men only.” (125))
EDITORIAL NOTE: this past sunday (10.17), sarah orsborn led our teaching time with a look at jesus and gender equality. it was a great perspective on this vastly important value at eikon and we decided it would be nice to cross-post from her blog. as she works through this series, we’ll update here. enjoy! Welcome [...]
Before we can understand just how radically inclusive Jesus was for his time, we have to understand just how invisible women were in his culture. Think about one of the most famous stories of Jesus: “Jesus feeds the five thousand.” We all know it—Jesus had been teaching a huge crowd, and dinnertime comes, and Jesus miraculously multiples five loaves of bread and two fish and feeds the whole bunch with leftovers beside. Except that it wasn’t 5,000 people. It was “about five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matthew 14:21). At the time of Jesus, women literally did not count. Even though it would be a much cooler story to say “Jesus feeds the twelve thousand” or whatever, the writer of Matthew only counts the men.
I wrote not too long ago about how we’d finally found a church to call our own here in Little Rock, a strange and awesome group of people called Eikon Church. You know they’re strange and awesome, because they asked a loud, crazy, outspoken, feminist like me to teach about Jesus and gender equality at our weekly gathering last night.
we recently shared about the big changes occurring here at eikon and we’ve really been glad to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback, with many sharing in our excitement. if you haven’t heard about the changes, take a minute to read through the blog post that lays out the basic ideas. following those announcements, we gathered a few weeks ago at our new space for a bit of a preview of sorts. once again, we were excited to get great feedback and create an energy surrounding our upcoming move. well, we have now reached the time for that move.
despite it being relatively quick notice, we’re excited to share with everyone about our preview gathering this sunday night at our new building. we recently shared about the big changes occurring here at eikon and we’ve really been glad to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback, with many sharing in our excitement. if you haven’t heard about [...]
Last week three (now) friends and I did a backpacking trek in the Beartooth Mountains of south central Montana. The only person out of my three backpacking companions I knew before the trip was my friend Thad from Nashville. He and I have known each other for only a year or so. His friend Jon lives in Bozeman, MT and largely put the trip together. Jon’s friend Mark went along too and neither Thad nor I had ever met him. The point being that the four of us didn’t start this trip out with a deep, close friendship.