I grew up in a fairly typical Lutheran church. As I was growing up there was never any question whether women could be pastors or not. Of course not. Everyone knew that women couldn’t be pastors, because they never had been. Besides, Jesus only chose male disciples. I remember some of the ‘Fuzzy Felt’ bible stories shared in kids’ talks and Sunday School in my church (yes, I know that dates me quite severely!) There was the felt figure of Jesus, with the felt figures of his male disciples following him, on a felt board. In all of the children’s bible story books I read, Jesus was always surrounded by his bearded, male disciples. The only women in the illustrated bible stories were the ones in the domestic scenes –Mary and the baby Jesus, Martha and Mary in their home. 

And so when the LCA began to debate whether women could be pastors, I thought it was clear. I thought Jesus didn’t let them, and Paul clearly didn’t permit it. 

Later, though, I studied more of what the Scriptures actually say about women in ministry and the texts which seemingly prohibit women being pastors.  My understanding began to develop in surprising ways, quite different to what my Sunday School story books portrayed. My mind began to change and I started to believe that biblically, women could become pastors.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit opens the Scriptures for us in surprising new ways. Sometimes the Spirit allows us to see what was always there but we never recognized, like the two disciples walking with the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, as he opened the Scriptures to them.

I remember one LYV Easter Camp on which I was pastor. One of the ‘quiet time’ exercises was to read through an entire Gospel over the course of the Easter weekend. I got to the end of Luke’s gospel, with the account of the first Easter morning, and I had a profound sense that my eyes were similarly opened. The angels at the tomb say to the women, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, he is risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee, ‘The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ Then the women remembered his [Jesus’] words.’

I was puzzled but had a mounting sense of excitement. Where had Jesus told the women that the Son of Man must be delivered, crucified, and on the third day be raised?’ I knew I had read those words somewhere in the Gospel of Luke. I turned to my concordance to look it up. There it was in chapter 9:14-22.

Once when Jesus was teaching his disciples in private, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say I am?’…Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone, and he said, ‘The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.’

That moment opened Scripture like a shaft of light that illuminated so much of what the bible actually says. Here is Jesus, teaching his disciples, in private! And here are the women on the first Easter morning, hearing the words of the angel, ‘Remember how he told you, when he was still with you in Galilee…’ And here are the women, remembering the words Jesus told them! But that must mean…

That when Jesus taught his disciples in private, the women were there.

That the disciples were not just a bunch of bearded blokes.

That my Fuzzy Felt view of the bible was wrong.

That I needed a paradigm shift.

That wherever the word ‘disciples’ is used in Luke, the women are there (unless we are told explicitly that they are not).

That maybe my other views of women in ministry were limited and inadequate as well.

This moment unlocked so much of Scripture for me! It had been hidden in plain sight. I started to hungrily search the Scriptures with this new understanding of Jesus, women, and ministry, and what I found inevitably surprised, delighted, and changed me.

I found Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaking the wonderful words of the Magnificat, which is now for us also the Word of God in Holy Scripture.

I found Anna the prophetess, publicly proclaiming Jesus as Messiah in the worshiping community in the Temple.

I found Jesus, the only Jewish Rabbi recorded to use female imagery and parables  for God (such as the diligent woman and the lost coin, the baker woman and the yeast…)

I found Jesus, declaring of his male and female disciples, ‘Here are my brother and sisters and mother.’

I found the Samaritan woman at the well, becoming the first Christian preacher and evangelist, the person with whom Jesus had the longest recorded conversation in the gospels, the first person to whom he revealed his identity as ‘I Am,’ the first one to hear an ‘I Am’ saying from Jesus in John’s gospel.

I found the risen Jesus deliberately choosing to meet first with women after his resurrection, and commissioning them to be the first preachers to his male disciples.

I found Mary Magdalene, who for a brief moment on Easter Sunday was the church, the first and only believer in the resurrected Jesus, being commissioned to preach the good news.

I found the women and men disciples gathered in the upper room as Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father sent me, I am sending you. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven.’ I found the women and men disciples gathered with Jesus saying to them, ‘Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in my name to all the nations. You are witnesses of these things.’

I found the Holy Spirit pouring out on the women and men on the day of Pentecost, causing them to publicly proclaim the good news in Jerusalem to the crowd from all the nations, and to fulfill that ancient prophecy of the prophet Joel. ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy… Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’

In other words, in the Scriptures, I found Jesus commissioning women to publicly preach, to forgive sins, to receive and share the Holy Spirit through proclaiming the good news. I honestly believe, and both sadly and joyfully declare, that Jesus would slap his forehead and say to us, ‘You don’t ordain women? Could I have made it any clearer to you?’

From a mild, ‘it’s probably okay’ stance, I shifted to being a strong, public advocate for women’s ordination. All because of that one moment when God opened my eyes at Easter Camp.

But what about Paul’s writings? He disliked women, didn’t he, and explicitly banned them from public preaching, and prevented them from being pastors?

Well, not quite. With my thirst for biblical understanding I dug a little deeper. Again, I was surprised to find a similar paradigm shift in my understanding of Paul’s words about women in ministry.

As I studied the Greek of the NT, I was delighted to discover that Paul used exactly the same terms for women in ministry as he did for men that we would call pastors. Paul never referred to someone by the title of ‘the pastor of the church in…’ It seems that ‘pastor’ was not yet a title that was used for church leaders. The only place Paul uses the word is in Ephesians 4, where he writes that the ascended Jesus ‘…gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.’

Yet Paul positively affirmed women in all the roles of ministry named in the NT.

In Romans 16 I discovered Phoebe, ‘…the deacon of the church in Cenchrea.’ Phoebe is, surprisingly, the only person named in the NT in an ordained ministry role in a particular place. Phoebe was also the bearer of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, and therefore its public reader/preacher and explicator. ‘Deacon’ can also be translated as ‘minister’ and often is – Paul uses it in this sense of himself, of Jesus, of Epaphras. The deeper I dug the more sure I became that Phoebe had been Pauls’ ‘pastor’ while he was in Cenchrea.

In 1 Corinthians I discovered the women who were prophets in the church, publicly and clearly teaching God’s word in the assembly for the conviction of sin and the true knowledge of God.

In Philippians I discovered Euodia and Syntyche, who Paul described as his ‘co-workers’ in the gospel. 

In Romans again I read of ‘Andronicus (a man) and Junia (a woman), who are outstanding among the apostles.’ 

I read of Paul’s close and fond relationship with Priscilla (a woman) and Aquila (a man) and of their teaching of Apollos, another pastor and church planter.

In short, Paul described and affirmed women in all of the ministry roles in the church at the time. Deacon/minister/pastor; apostle; prophet; teacher; evangelist; co-worker; brother/sister; labourer in the gospel. 

Far from being a misogynist, Paul affirmed the call of women to all of the leadership positions in the church. He begged the church to properly receive women whom he believed Christ had given to the church as apostles and prophets, evangelists and pastors and teachers. He asked the church to honour these women and to help them in the Lord. And I believe he sat under the leadership of a woman pastor, Phoebe, in Cenchrea. He trusted her so deeply as a minister of a local church, that he entrusted to her the delivery, public reading, explication, and preaching of the letter the Romans, which is possibly the most profound theological document ever written.

I believe that Paul, like Jesus, would have slapped his forehead and said, ‘You don’t ordain women? Didn’t I tell you about Phoebe the minister and Junia the apostle and Priscilla the teacher and Euodia and Syntyche my fellow workers in the gospel, and the female prophets in Corinth? What?’

And I hope and pray that one day our daughters and granddaughters, empowered by the Holy Spirit and preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations, and baptizing and celebrating Jesus with Thanksgiving in the Eucharist, will look at us and say, ‘Your church didn’t ordain women? What?’ And I hope and pray that we will laugh along and say, ‘It took us a long while to move from Fuzzy Felt to fully formed in our understanding of God’s call on women.

But we did.’