Raise Her Up

Today I preached my senior sermon in chapel.  (Oh, what, I haven't posted in a year and it seems crazy that I'm weeks away from graduation?  Yes. Yes it is crazy.)

Anyway!  I preached my senior sermon in chapel today.  The text was Acts 9: 36-42, the resurrection of Tabitha.  If you're curious what I had to say, read below!

There have been a few interesting trends praising the beauty of women in the media lately. 

 The newest Dove ‘Real Beauty’ ads have been getting a lot of attention. For those who haven’t seen the ads:

The women featured are primarily young, white, and thin. They criticize themselves, saying ‘my nose is too big, my face is too fat’ as if those are traits anyone would and should be ashamed of. However, the overall message can still serve as a wonderful reminder that we are far more beautiful than we realize.

The second trend comes out of the evangelical church.  It actually started a few years ago with that movie ‘Fireproof.’  Suddenly, Christian bookstores were selling shirts proclaiming  ‘my wife is hot’ or ‘my husband is hot.’  The idea has circled back around, only this time it’s focused particularly on men proudly commenting on their sexy wives on Twitter, blog posts, or even from the pulpit.

But shouldn’t we be flattered? Shouldn’t we be grateful?  After all, if you hear these kinds of comments, you know you’re beautiful. It’s not like society has any problem telling you if you’re not.  It positively revels in making you hate everything about the way you look.  So we should praise any movement that offers positive affirmation.

But if all we can talk about is the size of a woman’s waist, the way her hair looks, or the things we’d do to her behind closed doors, how can we see the divine spark of God? Are really able to honor the mind that will pour out new theologies? Or the mouth that will deliver a sermon that brings glory to God?

The problem is not with telling a woman she is beautiful. The problem is that over and over we tell women that ‘beautiful’ is the most important thing we can be.  We make women into objects to be admired or used. We take the fullness of God’s creation and we make it about physical desirability.

And this is killing the women that should be leading us.

It is killing girls like Audrey Pott, and Rehtaeh Parsons.  These two young women, young leaders, killed themselves this year after photos of their sexual assaults were spread around school and they were mercilessly bullied. Their names should be rallying cries for changing the way we talk about sex, domination, and women’s bodies the way Tyler Clementi’s death sparked national conversation around LBGTQ rights.  Instead, there is silence. Or, worse, there is conversation about how much these girls had been drinking and conversation about their sexual history.  We need to make them complicit in their assaults so that we aren’t.  We need to blame them so we don’t have to look at how we talk about the bodies of our women, of our young girls. We don’t want to see the destructive power of telling a girl that her beauty is the best thing she has to offer. We try to ignore the way deeming a girl as either pure or worthless based on her sexual choices is destructive to our young men’s morals. We forget that she, every ‘she’ we objectify and denigrate, is divinely made by God in God’s own image. We forget that these women, created to lead by God, have disappeared.

We desperately need a resurrection.

We make it too easy to ignore the divine spark of God in our women.  We make it too easy for them to disappear in the background.  Often, that is the preferred place for them. Women who stand in the front are too dangerous.  We have made women symbols of sex rather than of strength.  They are treated as a temptation, not prophetic witnesses.  We praise them for the children they produce, rather than the brilliant ideas they birth.  Women are seen as sinful flesh first and a celebrated child of God second.  The church is too willing to pull women down by refusing to address the way the world talks about us and the things that the world does to us. The church stays silent in the face of the objectification and abuse of women, while upholding the unreasonable and biased standards of purity and goodness that only serve to condemn women.

It probably seems odd for me to stand up and assert that the church is failing to nurture its women into powerful leadership.  After all, I have a church appointment. I’m a student body president, who followed a woman, and is being succeeded by a woman. We have deans and professors and incredible examples of powerful women surrounding us every day.  And of course, most of us have women in our lives, like mothers and wives, that we hold close to our heart. But is it enough to create a privileged class of women who have proven themselves smart, good, or pure enough to temporarily transcend the standard objectifications? Are we comfortable pointing out the leaders among us, calling ourselves feminist, and not flinching when the trashy magazines lambast pregnant women for gaining weight?

We desperately need a resurrection.

We desperately need a bodily resurrection.  A resurrection that recognizes the body and the spirit that has always dwelled within it.  A resurrection that is so public, so celebrated, that that the divine spark of our women can’t be diminished or dominated. We need a resurrection that forces us to realize women are so vital we need to raise them from the ground so we can propel the church forward.

We need to raise up our women as Tabitha was raised up. Tabitha, a woman so central to the faith and ministry of the early church that God breathed new life into her.  She was so important that the community came together, crying out for her return, until God heard their prayer.

This is the resurrection power of the church. The church is the place that cries out for the leadership we desperately need. The church also takes our hands and pulls us to our feet.  However, the resurrection should not be declared when women are handed leadership roles.  It is easy for us to look around, see women in power, and think that our work is done. The resurrection should come in the form of a church that recognizes the inherent worth of all people, women especially.

I am grateful for my time working with United Methodist Women, because I think they have always been a strong reminder that ministry by women and ministry TO women is world-changing ministry. They have been on the forefront of most social issues. They see the need to affirm the value of all peoples because women know, all too well, the gifts and lives that are lost when the church decides one group of people should be denied leadership.  United Methodist Women see the unique role that women play around the world, the role that extends beyond giving birth to the next generation, and have a strong legacy of lifting them up as to lift up entire communities.

We need that kind of work to be central in the church. Not that we need to focus all our efforts on women. Men talk like they’re afraid of that, but let’s be real, there’s not a lot of danger of men losing their voice in church leadership.  No, we need to know what United Methodist women, and the women in Tabitha’s community, have always known: there is a wisdom that women bring to the table that is essential. We are prophets that see the world with painful clarity, and see the hope even more clearly.

And I think we need to be willing to talk about sex. We need to be willing to say that women do have bodies to be celebrated but are not JUST celebrated for their bodies. I think we need to talk about the women we respect the same way we talk about the women we pass on the street.  Ask ourselves, and those around us, why it is ok to speak sexually about a woman when she walks by and then preach chastity from the pulpit. How do we decide that some women are worth being honored, while we ignore others as if their choices, or the length of their skirt, have left them outside of grace.  We can’t critically examine the way our objectification pushes women down without naming sexual desires that drive us. We have to talk about sex that is good and sex that is wanted and sex that is actually rape and what yes and no really mean. We have to support women who say no.  We have to support women who say yes.

We have to be the resurrection that is desperately needed.

I follow women like Tabitha.  Like Esther, Hagar, Martha, and Mary. Women like the professors and deans and friends who surround me. I am grateful for the inspiration they provide me as I move into a new ministry in a new place.  And I’m grateful to all of you for allowing me to serve this year. I have felt greatly blessed to be in a community that doesn’t just support women, but allows us to put on plays where we talk about abuse and talk about vaginas – and lets us say vagina in chapel. But we are too good to rest on the laurels of our goodness.  We are just good enough to know we can be better. So now, I call us to a resurrection that restores women to wholeness, to power, and recognizes the divinity that breathes new life into all of us.

Amen.