Women - God's image for us!
One of the major things that confront women today is a lack of self worth, I know that guys have that issue to but I think we as women have been bombarded by media images that make us feel bad about ourselves. We have been made to believe that the exceptional beauty we see on a bill board is the norm. In point of fact only 5% of the female population have the ideal body that is presented to us. In fact I think it is probably less than that, whether it’s a weight thing, whether it’s the varicose veins on the back of your leg, whether it’s the pimples on your face, or the shape of your nose, or in my case it’s my height and big boobs, I always wanted neat small pert boobs and some more height! Alas I was born with a typical celtish figure! Only 5% of us have the perfect body according to the media and only 1% of us have the perfect media face. And we’re made to believe that is attainable and that is what we should be like. A survey in New Woman magazine in 2007 was carried out and almost all the women that they interviewed most of them thought that a size 12 was fat!
That is horrific, that’s the pressure we are under as women. And it doesn’t get any easier as you get older. Because there is a terrific cult of youth, now I love watching young people and I love seeing young people grow into the people they should be but as you get older we’ve got to stick with it. You know once it was alright to be Nora Batty………….
You know once as you got older you could reckon that at long last you will be “she who must be obeyed”. You didn’t have to worry about what you looked like because of your age and your experience people would just listen to you and the guys would be afraid of you. But now you’ve got to look like that… you’ve got to be a Joanna Lumley and its hard work!! And gravity takes over anyway and everything realigns itself. Then the NHS takes over your life and you have to have things like mammograms! Where they screen you for breast cancer and those of you who like me are getting to that stage don’t worry about it, just be prepared. This is how Michelle Guinness describes the procedure.
“You go into your garage about 3am in the morning when the temperature of the cement floor is absolutely perfect. Strip down to the waist, lie comfortably on the floor and wedge one of your boobs under the rear tyre of your car. Take a friend with you and get them to reverse slowly over and then turn over and do the other side.”
But fret not for those of you who are younger and by the time you are my age, the NHS will have come up with a similar test for testicular cancer! Some of you will be already facing things like smear tests, during this procedure they put a little paper towel over your knees which is very odd really because I don’t mind really who sees my knees! And have you noticed how many male gynaecologists there are! It’s like a car mechanic who has never owned a car! What does a male gynaecologist know about our bodies?
But there are compensations about getting older. I am one of those people who hate being cold so now I have hot flushes I suppose that’s alright. Emma Kurtz the journalist said that men die, women go through the change because whenever she saw obituaries in the paper they were about women and even when you look now there will be more often than not three men on an obituary page and one woman. And girls I want to change that, I think we Christian women have been given a commission by God , and a very special commission which I’m going to share with you in a bit but first let me just say I want to stay on this whole body image thing for a bit because I think it’s important for us. Gok 1 has been good for us! I never thought I would be quoting from Gok 1. But he said the other day on the tele “Stop pining for what you don’t have and start rejoicing for what you do have, and enjoy what you do have”. You see we see a distorted image in the mirror when we look at ourselves. We don’t see ourselves as we are. Victoria Wood said she used to stand in front of the mirror absolutely naked and say to herself “You have GCSC Latin”.
This is a size nought! Do men really like that! I’m sure most guys would prefer that! Dawn French actually said “If I lived at the time of Ruben’s the painter, I’d be celebrated as a model, and Kate Moss would be a paint brush!” There you go! There’s a Ruben’s ideal woman and she is all curves!
What about our faces to! Mother Teresa said this “At twenty you have the face you were born with, at sixty you have the face you deserve!”
Barbara Streisand, one of my favourite singers, didn’t like her nose. A plastic surgeon once said of her “If she had had plastic surgery she’d have been beautiful! Like any beautiful woman. But because she didn’t she is unique!” And what about George Elliot the writer! Apparently she had such a wonderful speaking voice that men fell in love with her. She had a face like the back end of a bus but that was by the by. Men were just so in love with her voice!
And when you are in France! I spend quite a bit of time in France. The men still think that Brigit Bardot is gorgeous! She is now seventy eight, but they still think she is to die for!...............................
A lot of women love that poem “When I’m old, I shall wear purple” “I think it is wonderful”. And when I look at them, they are wearing beige! And I think what happened then! If you love it let’s do it! You know let’s be quirky, let’s be eccentric, let’s be the people that God has made us. What is it you find attractive in YOUR FEMALE FRIENDS!
Sharing, sense of humour, sensitivity!!!
What physical aspects do you notice?
Eyes, sparkle and smile!!!
Listen in Isaiah 53 v 2; it says “Jesus had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him.” There was nothing in his appearance that was vaguely desirable. Was Jesus attractive? …I think he was the most attractive person who ever lived. Why was he attractive?
Quality of character, his love, God in him, he listens, his tenderness with women and his tenderness with men as well. Look at his tenderness with Peter after he had betrayed him. Peter had betrayed him completely and yet there is that wonderful welcome for Peter and a meal for Peter and reconciliation. Tenderness, gentleness, compassion, wisdom, he knew who he was and he felt right about himself. Not a man who splurged his needs everywhere. Courage, his strength, I love his inner dignity. I fell in love with Jesus when I read about him in John’s Gospel. I only know that, that man Jesus was utterly, utterly extraordinary. And he is our role model of attractiveness. Even though Isaiah said physically there was nothing that humanly made him attractive. He was compelling, utterly, utterly compelling. And both girls, sisters whoever is here we are being changed to be like him from one degree of glory to the next.
Do we really believe that? You see, people know who my children are; they recognise them because they look like me. Actually they have Mike’s allergies and my neurosis I think! But there is an element of looking like us and that is how people recognise them and more and more I want people to recognise Jesus, in me! When I first became a Christian as you all know my self-image was absolutely appalling. I had a mother who inferred regularly in public that I was not the brightest of her three children. I don’t take after her, she used to say, she looks like and takes after her father. My self esteem and self worth continued to plummet in my teens and early twenties. I began to believe these words spoken over me as this was the message I had understood. These are the messages that we hear. And the moment for me coming to Jesus, from that moment on, I refused to live with those messages. I said to Jesus, if life is gonna be life in all its fullness then here’s the deal I want everything you’ve got for me, if its life in all its fullness I want to live that life. And I want to be whole, Jesus. And it took some time. I had wonderful loving friends who sat with me and let me remember those things and then together we got rid of them. And as I’m telling you now I’m quite shocked at your response as they don’t hurt me, they don’t touch me as I know that Jesus has made me whole. Completely whole. And those words don’t have power to hurt anymore. And as Jesus deals with those things, he tells us he loves us and he approves of us, and we are beautiful to him, and we are beautiful in the eyes of our brothers and sisters.
So there is healing. Deep, deep healing. And all those things that attack our self worth and self esteem, can, and are dealt with.
If I said to you now, stand up right now if you think you are beautiful. I’d like to take a bet very few of you would feel comfortable about standing up. Would you! Some of you would probably but some of you might not. And if you don’t I would say it’s no vote of confidence in your creator. He made you exactly as you are and if we say we are not beautiful, and then you are saying to God “Why did you make me as I am?” “Why couldn’t I have looked like her?” “Or her?” “Why couldn’t I have been different in some way?” Or you’re saying “Maybe I wasn’t worth you dying for after all Jesus!”
You see Amy Carmichael who was one of the most extraordinary missionaries who ever lived and who was one of my favourites and taught about in Junior Church. She went out to India and rescued young women who were used as temple prostitutes. She rescued them from the temple and they grew up in this community called Don A Vor. And as a little girl she used to cry her eyes out because she hadn’t been made with blue eyes. That she had brown eyes. And she said God, she used to pray daily “God change my eyes, I want them to be blue.” And it was only when she got to India and she dressed in a sari, because she wanted to be like local people, that she realised that if she wanted to be like the local people she had to have brown eyes.
Everything we are is for a purpose. How we are. Who we are. God knows exactly who we are and what our purpose is. So, we are attractive as the people God has made us. But our lack of sense of self worth also is historic for us as women. And sadly it’s in the church. And that’s been a place that hasn’t been safe and hasn’t been comfortable for women. Do you know it was 1870 before women were allowed to own their own property in this country? We didn’t get the vote, you were over thirty and you got the vote in 1918. You didn’t get full voting rights until 1928 as women. In 1965 we had the first female Secretary of State. Can anybody remember what she was secretary of, Barbara Gaslon, yes – Transport! Fancy daring to put one of us in charge of cars! It wasn’t illegal to sack a woman who was pregnant until 1975. 1979! What happened in 1979? It was a landmark for women. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. In 1980 women could then apply for a mortgage in their own name, up till then your husband had to do it! 85, equal pay for equal work. And 1988 we got our first female judge, Elizabeth Butler Schloss. So the world has changed and we now have equality but it’s relatively recent. And there are large, large parts of this world where women are not equal. And sisters we need to rejoice in the freedom we have in this country and use it. Annie Garden who is a wonderful female gynaecologist who is now Dean of Medicine at Lancaster University said that she worked in India for many years, she also worked in Africa for many years, “when men own women’s bodies, they abuse them.” We are so fortunate to have that freedom in this country.
So our lack of self worth comes from the church to, sadly in the third century BC, Aristotle wrote this! And Aristotle is the founding father of much of the church’s thought. You see the church grew up in a Greek Roman culture. It did not grow up in the Hebrew Jewish culture of Jesus. So many of the things that Jesus knew and understood, his world view was lost to the church. And you grew up instead with the thinking of Aristotle. And this is what he wrote,
“Man is active! Full of movement! Creative in politics, business and culture. The male shapes and moulds society and the world. Woman on the other hand is passive, she stays at home as is her nature, and she is matter waiting to be formed by the active male principle. Of course the active elements are always higher on any scale and more spiritual. Man consequently plays a major part in reproduction; the woman is merely the passive incubator of his seed.
Augustine, the founding father of Christianity, who picked all this up said, “ Only man is fully created in the image of God, the female state is a deformity.” Aquinas in the 12th century who harmonised Christianity and Greek philosophy said “ Woman’s defective and misbegotten biologically, spiritually and therefore intellectually inferior .” And then he thought about it and said “but she is a necessary object needed to preserve the species and make food and drink for the men”!
And the places women in our churches has often been the flower rota, cleaning, making the tea and even if it hasn’t been that. Then there has been a certain expectation of us girls, has there not, to be nice. You don’t get angry, you’re not powerful in the church, you don’t show negative emotions even though sometimes justice requires our anger. You can’t be forthright! Cause that’s not feminine.
William Booth founder of the Salvation Army, he said “an army can’t go to war and leave half its troops at the kitchen sink. But that’s exactly what it did. And when his wife Catherine got up to preach, there was such antagonism, she was called every name imaginable, simply because she preached the Gospel. When William Booth got up, hundreds were converted, when she got up to preach, thousands came to Christ. And she said as she lay dying in her sixties from breast cancer “What would God have said to me if I had not been faithful to the Heavenly vision and all I had done was wasted that fruit.” And girls if we don’t listen to God Our Father’s vision for our lives, what will he say to us for all that wasted fruit. It’s worth thinking about. And we have been undermined and what I want to do now and if you remember nothing else of this morning I really want you to get hold of some theology now.
We’re going to the book of Genesis, we’re going to look at the whole Creation story again and I want you to see what God’s purpose was from the very beginning of time for women. Because when you grab that it liberates us completely and you know then that nothing is barred to us. And those of you who are younger its just so exciting to share this with you because you are going to change the world! Nothing is going to stop you girls because you’ve heard it now and nothing is going to hold you back!
Geneses Chapter 1 verse 27 – God creates human beings in his own image, male and female. They are given equal authority over creation not over one another. Equal authority over creation. Woman yes is made from man’s rib, I sometimes think it was from his funny bone really!
Chapter 2 verse 16, Adam is told he can eat from every tree in the garden except one. Which? Knowledge of good and evil, he can’t eat from that tree. So which tree do we know that is also there that he can eat from that he doesn’t eat from? Tree of Life! Why doesn’t he eat from the tree of life? (It will make him live forever. He’s got the chance ) If you knew you could live forever you would eat from the tree of life. ( He wasn’t ready to live forever.) .. I think he had the potential to live forever, I think he did, because they are actually perfect at that point. They are not sinning. I think he didn’t from it and the Chinese Pastor Watchman Li says this, as well as a number of theologians, you see God creates man very independent, adventuress, full of testosterone, very single minded. I mean actually man has to procreate; after all he needs that testosterone. I mean why does it take a thousand sperm to fertilize one ovum? Because men never will ask for directions!
You see I think from the very beginning, he is so independent and headstrong, that he actually doesn’t go for that tree. And he doesn’t eat from it. Right from the very beginning he thinks he’s ok on his own. And in Chapter 2 verse 18, God sees it’s not good. That headstrong, that solitariness, that is there in the male, that single drive. God looks and says “I’ve seen this self sufficiency in the male, this tendency to isolationism and I will out into your deepest need, and I will bring you out and draw you out from that and I will make you see that you need community, you cannot exist on your own.” So what does he do? God makes a helper for him. And the Hebrew word for Helper is Ezer and it’s the same word that is used for “the Lord is my Helper”. So do you see when God makes a helper for the man, oh good we’re just created to help men do their thing! NO! “The Lord is my Helper.” The Lord is there for me, protects me, surrounds me, He keeps me, He comforts me, He urges me on, He cheers me on. That’s what God makes for Adam. And in fact if I help you to cross the road, which of us is the stronger! This is no secondary being, so often that verse has been interpreted, that women therefore are just helpers, we’re secondary. And then a helper that is suitable, perfect fits the man. Neged, the Hebrew word means opposite, but that isn’t used here. A helper suitable is Knegadu, a Hebrew word Knegadu which is more than just opposite. It means standing boldly opposite. Woman is created, eyeball to eyeball with the man. Face to face. Eyeball to eyeball. I’m 5ft and Mike is 5ft 10. However in the Vicarage we have two steps from the entrance way into our hall. When I’m on the top step and Mike in the hall, gives me perfect height to eyeball Mike! For we are created you see to look at guys and to challenge them sometimes when they need it. I mean when we’re feeling depressed what do we do girls we go out and shop! Men go and invade another country! And it’s been there in history. I mean Mo Molam had the breakthrough in Northern Ireland, did she not when she got the guys together and knocked their heads together. And there have been times in history when a woman can do that. And if we allow ourselves to become really warring then we are losing what God has created us for. There are times when we need to challenge aggression. And sometimes in our society that is aggression in women. But more likely than not it can be in the guys as well. And so we are there to challenge when necessary.
And Adam when he sees this he recognises this is good stuff and he says “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Wow I really fancy her!” Because she is identical, she’s not inferior. And in fact we are more like men than we are different. Yeah we love to go on about our differences, and we are different but we are actually more like them. We’re very like them. And then what happens? So Adam has this wonderful being and they live in complementariness, perfect complementariness, male and female, a reflection of God, and equal authority over creation. All is perfect and then, blow me down; they take what is not theirs to have. They eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil. The problem is not the apple on the tree it’s the pair on the ground!
They are separated from God and as they are separated from God, they are separated from one another. And it’s an end to that compatibility and complementariness. Fetch the fig leaves! Enter shame, they were naked until then. You see there was no body image problem there is there! No shame of any kind, emotionally, physically, spiritually, but now there is a body image problem. Now there is a problem on every level. And what are the consequences? I don’t want to say cursed because I do not believe human beings are cursed. God cannot curse the creatures he made with so much love. But there is a consequence. And the first is this: for the woman, let’s start with the woman!
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and sighing, your savon and your exseve”. These words are not necessarily used in child birth. They are a parallel to the hard work and toil that is given to Adam. We will have our hard work and our toil. The pressure, the expectations, the stress that is put upon us, we are a reflection of this. I do think that it reflects child birth as well, cause the Messiah, the great promise of future redemption is that the Messiah will be born of woman. And therefore every birth will be challenged by the evil one. But largely we are seeing the results in our own lives today. With all the expectations that are put upon woman. And this is another key. “And yet, and yet, your desire will be for the man.” Traditionally theologians have interpreted that as sexual desire. Girls! You know which of the genders has most of the problem with sexual temptation? The Men. Yes it’s not us is it really. So what does this mean to be a temptress, that doesn’t ring true? Well the easiest way, if you want to know what a verse means is find it somewhere else in the Bible. Cause it will always give you the key. And the word there is tesuka, tesuka is the Hebrew word for desire. And it’s in Genesis Chapter 4 verse 7, the story of Cain. “Sin” says God to Cain “is lurking at your door”. It’s tesuka means to have you, it’s pull, it’s pull wants to have you. “You” God says to Cain “must master it”. But he doesn’t does he? He kills his brother Able. And it’s the first murder in the Scripture. So what does tesuka mean then for us girls? Your desire is for the man. I think scripture is telling us that our pull is to the male. This means that we always look for male approval. It actually means co-dependency, which many of us will find ourselves in dependant relationships on men. It’s not just marriage either. There are women who are totally subsumed in their marriage relationship. There are women who move from man, to man, to man. We had a young woman in the last church we are at who had five children by five different men. Just looking for love. But it also means those women who would die for their boss at work who will protect him to the enth degree. Who don’t see themselves as having any purpose in life, it’s just this wonderful man they work for. My gran was like that with my Father, she lived for her son, who tragically as you know died when I was very young and he was only 32. And when he died, she had no life left. Women are stretching, our desire is for men. And so often we feel we have to give in to them And we have to be there for them and we pander to them. “What do you want for your tea tonight dear?” Actually Mike does the cooking in our household as he enjoys cooking and destresses whilst cooking which is great for me!
It’s not about kissing the ground men walk on. It’s not feeling we need them for our sense of self worth and our sense of self esteem. We don’t! Actually Ali Mcbeal said and Betty Davis in a film “ A woman is nothing without a man.” But that is just a reflection of attitude. That is not true! If we don’t serve God when we are single we are not going to serve him when we are married either. And the result of that co-dependency, what is it? It’s this “he will rule” God says. Our very need of a man will enable him to make us feel inferior at times. And what happens then? Well he can’t cope! No man can cope with all this need coming at him! So often we want all our emotional need to be fulfilled in that one person. And no man can cope with that Grand Canyon inside us and have to fill it. So he retreats back into the isolationism. That is the male thing, the newspaper, TV, work, sport computer games. Any thing but have to face that great need in a woman’s heart. And Elizabeth Cady Stanton who was the founder of the USA Suffragette movements said “Whatever the theories maybe of a woman’s dependence on man in the supreme moments of her life, he cannot bear her burdens.” And that’s absolutely true, Cady Stanton was a Christian. He cannot bear her burdens. And for those of us who think that a guy can do that, there is only one person who can. And we know who that person is and I’ll say a bit about that in a moment. But despite all of this, after the Fall, Adam calls his wife Eve, now this is key. The Hebrew word for life is Chi. Chava is more than life. Chava is the spoken word of life. Isn’t that amazing, her name in the Hebrew culture, her name reflects who and what she is. Her name reflects what woman is, spoken word of life. We have been created to speak life, to our families, our neighbourhood, our workplace, and our communities. That is the calling of woman. We were created communicators and we were created relational which is why we go on chatting and enjoying each other’s company, having a sisterhood because we have been created that way and the guys find it so hard. And when it comes to children who need the help of a speak and language therapist, its one girl for every seven boys. We are created relational, and that is such an amazing gift. Do you see now why our enemy has had such a vested interest in muzzling women for generations! Oh you can’t teach! Paul said you couldn’t! Paul never intended his words to be taken like that, Oh let the women keep silent! How could Paul ever intend that when he knows his scripture so well? We are relational; we have been called to speak life, to create community. How could we have been robbed of that? Well we have been robbed of it because of the Fall. But we nolonger have to live with the fall because we have redemption. One man who can meet our deepest needs and did it at the cross. And fills that Grand Canyon, our need for love, acceptance, approval, to feel good about ourselves. We need no one’s approval, but His. Do you know the was a time when I would lie in the bath and name people that I felt I had to earn their love and approval. I used to name them. There was one particular man in our previous parish and I just felt that he thought I had no gifting whatsoever and I just couldn’t please him. And I sat in the bath one day and I called out his name and I said “ I do not need your approval I only need God’s and I have His”. And sometimes you have to do that to liberate ourselves from this need to please.
And you see what does Jesus do with the Samaritan woman, when he meets her at the well and she says I’ve got no husband and He says, “you speak right you had five husbands and that present man you live with is not your husband. This was a woman, whose tesuka, whose desire made her move from man to man to man. And Jesus says “I am everything you need, if you drink from me you will never be thirsty again. You’ll not need to that anymore”. And he cuts her off immediately from that. And she goes back to her village and what does she say “I’ve met a man who told me all I’ve ever done!” All she had ever done was have five men! But now she goes and becomes an apostle, she evangelises her entire village. Her entire community! We don’t know what happened to that community we can only assume that they became followers of Jesus, because of the witness of that one woman who said that power is broken in me, I have met a man who has changed my life and I shall never be thirsty again. And that is what we are called to do! Everywhere we are, to speak life. I love that picture of the Samaritan woman. That’s how she is when she meets Jesus but you can see it in her eyes she’s got it, to do a great deal more than she ever has.
I want to show you a picture “ The Scolds Bridle” found in the Lancaster museum. Apparently if you lived in the 18th century, and you were known as a scold or a nagging wife or a gossip, they would drag you out and they would put you in this Bridle and they would lock it. It was an iron bridle and you had a bit that went into your mouth and they would lock it. They would bring you out to your village and they would stone you. Some women died, some women were very badly injured. When I first saw this I said to the guide, really just for gossiping! And he said look at her again, they’ve given her the face of a crone but actually the most important thing, look at what she is wearing. And I said what is she? And he said “ Look she is a Quaker.” And the Quaker movement grew in the North West. And in the Quaker movement women were key. And they would go out into the street and they would be preaching the Gospel on every street corner round the North West. And they would take people into their homes and do the first ever Alpha courses. And people were converted and it was for that, that they were put into this scolds bridle. Because it was thought unfeminine for women to teach the Bible, even in their own homes.
Would we be prepared, if that is what it was going to cost us? But you see we are not gagged today. And if we are gagged, what are we gagged by? By the media images! Stuff the media images. Our beauty comes from Jesus. By traditions? We’ve got freedoms our sisters in Africa and the East can barely dream of. And yet they are so much braver than us about preaching the Gospel. By the Church? Christian women have been pioneers for years particularly in the 19th century. This is Mary Slessor, they went out all over the world, she got herself on a Scots pound note. These women were denied the pulpit when they got home but that didn’t stop them preaching. And Hudson Taylor said this “ Some of my best men are women”. Do we want to be some of the best men? Girls let’s stand a moment, we’re coming to an end.
I’m just going to pray for us all now. I’m just aware that I might have touched something s that some of you would like to pray a little bit more about. There are members of the prayer ministry available for those who would like to receive prayer.
If you feel you are a woman who has relied or been co-dependant on men and their approval and you want that to be broken do find someone who will pray for you.
But I shall pray for us all now. Do we want to speak life to our world and change it?
Do we wanna be women who change the world?
God we just give you our lives now. We thank you for calling us to speak life. We thank you for making us women and for that special privilege we have. We ask you now to enable us to go out and be a blessing to our world. Let us be a blessing to the men who are part of our lives, free them to, whether its spouses, sons, brothers or colleagues. Lord make us a blessing to the guys. We want to stand hand in hand and change our world. So empower us, equip us, Holy Spirit come! Loosen our tongues. We don’t want the gags anymore, we want to be the women you made us, we want us to be thrilled by who you made us. And we want you to use everything that we are, who we are, what we are and make us shine in our world for the glory of Jesus. To be his reflection and to bring freedom and salvation to our world.
Amen
That is horrific, that’s the pressure we are under as women. And it doesn’t get any easier as you get older. Because there is a terrific cult of youth, now I love watching young people and I love seeing young people grow into the people they should be but as you get older we’ve got to stick with it. You know once it was alright to be Nora Batty………….
You know once as you got older you could reckon that at long last you will be “she who must be obeyed”. You didn’t have to worry about what you looked like because of your age and your experience people would just listen to you and the guys would be afraid of you. But now you’ve got to look like that… you’ve got to be a Joanna Lumley and its hard work!! And gravity takes over anyway and everything realigns itself. Then the NHS takes over your life and you have to have things like mammograms! Where they screen you for breast cancer and those of you who like me are getting to that stage don’t worry about it, just be prepared. This is how Michelle Guinness describes the procedure.
“You go into your garage about 3am in the morning when the temperature of the cement floor is absolutely perfect. Strip down to the waist, lie comfortably on the floor and wedge one of your boobs under the rear tyre of your car. Take a friend with you and get them to reverse slowly over and then turn over and do the other side.”
But fret not for those of you who are younger and by the time you are my age, the NHS will have come up with a similar test for testicular cancer! Some of you will be already facing things like smear tests, during this procedure they put a little paper towel over your knees which is very odd really because I don’t mind really who sees my knees! And have you noticed how many male gynaecologists there are! It’s like a car mechanic who has never owned a car! What does a male gynaecologist know about our bodies?
But there are compensations about getting older. I am one of those people who hate being cold so now I have hot flushes I suppose that’s alright. Emma Kurtz the journalist said that men die, women go through the change because whenever she saw obituaries in the paper they were about women and even when you look now there will be more often than not three men on an obituary page and one woman. And girls I want to change that, I think we Christian women have been given a commission by God , and a very special commission which I’m going to share with you in a bit but first let me just say I want to stay on this whole body image thing for a bit because I think it’s important for us. Gok 1 has been good for us! I never thought I would be quoting from Gok 1. But he said the other day on the tele “Stop pining for what you don’t have and start rejoicing for what you do have, and enjoy what you do have”. You see we see a distorted image in the mirror when we look at ourselves. We don’t see ourselves as we are. Victoria Wood said she used to stand in front of the mirror absolutely naked and say to herself “You have GCSC Latin”.
This is a size nought! Do men really like that! I’m sure most guys would prefer that! Dawn French actually said “If I lived at the time of Ruben’s the painter, I’d be celebrated as a model, and Kate Moss would be a paint brush!” There you go! There’s a Ruben’s ideal woman and she is all curves!
What about our faces to! Mother Teresa said this “At twenty you have the face you were born with, at sixty you have the face you deserve!”
Barbara Streisand, one of my favourite singers, didn’t like her nose. A plastic surgeon once said of her “If she had had plastic surgery she’d have been beautiful! Like any beautiful woman. But because she didn’t she is unique!” And what about George Elliot the writer! Apparently she had such a wonderful speaking voice that men fell in love with her. She had a face like the back end of a bus but that was by the by. Men were just so in love with her voice!
And when you are in France! I spend quite a bit of time in France. The men still think that Brigit Bardot is gorgeous! She is now seventy eight, but they still think she is to die for!...............................
A lot of women love that poem “When I’m old, I shall wear purple” “I think it is wonderful”. And when I look at them, they are wearing beige! And I think what happened then! If you love it let’s do it! You know let’s be quirky, let’s be eccentric, let’s be the people that God has made us. What is it you find attractive in YOUR FEMALE FRIENDS!
Sharing, sense of humour, sensitivity!!!
What physical aspects do you notice?
Eyes, sparkle and smile!!!
Listen in Isaiah 53 v 2; it says “Jesus had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him.” There was nothing in his appearance that was vaguely desirable. Was Jesus attractive? …I think he was the most attractive person who ever lived. Why was he attractive?
Quality of character, his love, God in him, he listens, his tenderness with women and his tenderness with men as well. Look at his tenderness with Peter after he had betrayed him. Peter had betrayed him completely and yet there is that wonderful welcome for Peter and a meal for Peter and reconciliation. Tenderness, gentleness, compassion, wisdom, he knew who he was and he felt right about himself. Not a man who splurged his needs everywhere. Courage, his strength, I love his inner dignity. I fell in love with Jesus when I read about him in John’s Gospel. I only know that, that man Jesus was utterly, utterly extraordinary. And he is our role model of attractiveness. Even though Isaiah said physically there was nothing that humanly made him attractive. He was compelling, utterly, utterly compelling. And both girls, sisters whoever is here we are being changed to be like him from one degree of glory to the next.
Do we really believe that? You see, people know who my children are; they recognise them because they look like me. Actually they have Mike’s allergies and my neurosis I think! But there is an element of looking like us and that is how people recognise them and more and more I want people to recognise Jesus, in me! When I first became a Christian as you all know my self-image was absolutely appalling. I had a mother who inferred regularly in public that I was not the brightest of her three children. I don’t take after her, she used to say, she looks like and takes after her father. My self esteem and self worth continued to plummet in my teens and early twenties. I began to believe these words spoken over me as this was the message I had understood. These are the messages that we hear. And the moment for me coming to Jesus, from that moment on, I refused to live with those messages. I said to Jesus, if life is gonna be life in all its fullness then here’s the deal I want everything you’ve got for me, if its life in all its fullness I want to live that life. And I want to be whole, Jesus. And it took some time. I had wonderful loving friends who sat with me and let me remember those things and then together we got rid of them. And as I’m telling you now I’m quite shocked at your response as they don’t hurt me, they don’t touch me as I know that Jesus has made me whole. Completely whole. And those words don’t have power to hurt anymore. And as Jesus deals with those things, he tells us he loves us and he approves of us, and we are beautiful to him, and we are beautiful in the eyes of our brothers and sisters.
So there is healing. Deep, deep healing. And all those things that attack our self worth and self esteem, can, and are dealt with.
If I said to you now, stand up right now if you think you are beautiful. I’d like to take a bet very few of you would feel comfortable about standing up. Would you! Some of you would probably but some of you might not. And if you don’t I would say it’s no vote of confidence in your creator. He made you exactly as you are and if we say we are not beautiful, and then you are saying to God “Why did you make me as I am?” “Why couldn’t I have looked like her?” “Or her?” “Why couldn’t I have been different in some way?” Or you’re saying “Maybe I wasn’t worth you dying for after all Jesus!”
You see Amy Carmichael who was one of the most extraordinary missionaries who ever lived and who was one of my favourites and taught about in Junior Church. She went out to India and rescued young women who were used as temple prostitutes. She rescued them from the temple and they grew up in this community called Don A Vor. And as a little girl she used to cry her eyes out because she hadn’t been made with blue eyes. That she had brown eyes. And she said God, she used to pray daily “God change my eyes, I want them to be blue.” And it was only when she got to India and she dressed in a sari, because she wanted to be like local people, that she realised that if she wanted to be like the local people she had to have brown eyes.
Everything we are is for a purpose. How we are. Who we are. God knows exactly who we are and what our purpose is. So, we are attractive as the people God has made us. But our lack of sense of self worth also is historic for us as women. And sadly it’s in the church. And that’s been a place that hasn’t been safe and hasn’t been comfortable for women. Do you know it was 1870 before women were allowed to own their own property in this country? We didn’t get the vote, you were over thirty and you got the vote in 1918. You didn’t get full voting rights until 1928 as women. In 1965 we had the first female Secretary of State. Can anybody remember what she was secretary of, Barbara Gaslon, yes – Transport! Fancy daring to put one of us in charge of cars! It wasn’t illegal to sack a woman who was pregnant until 1975. 1979! What happened in 1979? It was a landmark for women. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. In 1980 women could then apply for a mortgage in their own name, up till then your husband had to do it! 85, equal pay for equal work. And 1988 we got our first female judge, Elizabeth Butler Schloss. So the world has changed and we now have equality but it’s relatively recent. And there are large, large parts of this world where women are not equal. And sisters we need to rejoice in the freedom we have in this country and use it. Annie Garden who is a wonderful female gynaecologist who is now Dean of Medicine at Lancaster University said that she worked in India for many years, she also worked in Africa for many years, “when men own women’s bodies, they abuse them.” We are so fortunate to have that freedom in this country.
So our lack of self worth comes from the church to, sadly in the third century BC, Aristotle wrote this! And Aristotle is the founding father of much of the church’s thought. You see the church grew up in a Greek Roman culture. It did not grow up in the Hebrew Jewish culture of Jesus. So many of the things that Jesus knew and understood, his world view was lost to the church. And you grew up instead with the thinking of Aristotle. And this is what he wrote,
“Man is active! Full of movement! Creative in politics, business and culture. The male shapes and moulds society and the world. Woman on the other hand is passive, she stays at home as is her nature, and she is matter waiting to be formed by the active male principle. Of course the active elements are always higher on any scale and more spiritual. Man consequently plays a major part in reproduction; the woman is merely the passive incubator of his seed.
Augustine, the founding father of Christianity, who picked all this up said, “ Only man is fully created in the image of God, the female state is a deformity.” Aquinas in the 12th century who harmonised Christianity and Greek philosophy said “ Woman’s defective and misbegotten biologically, spiritually and therefore intellectually inferior .” And then he thought about it and said “but she is a necessary object needed to preserve the species and make food and drink for the men”!
And the places women in our churches has often been the flower rota, cleaning, making the tea and even if it hasn’t been that. Then there has been a certain expectation of us girls, has there not, to be nice. You don’t get angry, you’re not powerful in the church, you don’t show negative emotions even though sometimes justice requires our anger. You can’t be forthright! Cause that’s not feminine.
William Booth founder of the Salvation Army, he said “an army can’t go to war and leave half its troops at the kitchen sink. But that’s exactly what it did. And when his wife Catherine got up to preach, there was such antagonism, she was called every name imaginable, simply because she preached the Gospel. When William Booth got up, hundreds were converted, when she got up to preach, thousands came to Christ. And she said as she lay dying in her sixties from breast cancer “What would God have said to me if I had not been faithful to the Heavenly vision and all I had done was wasted that fruit.” And girls if we don’t listen to God Our Father’s vision for our lives, what will he say to us for all that wasted fruit. It’s worth thinking about. And we have been undermined and what I want to do now and if you remember nothing else of this morning I really want you to get hold of some theology now.
We’re going to the book of Genesis, we’re going to look at the whole Creation story again and I want you to see what God’s purpose was from the very beginning of time for women. Because when you grab that it liberates us completely and you know then that nothing is barred to us. And those of you who are younger its just so exciting to share this with you because you are going to change the world! Nothing is going to stop you girls because you’ve heard it now and nothing is going to hold you back!
Geneses Chapter 1 verse 27 – God creates human beings in his own image, male and female. They are given equal authority over creation not over one another. Equal authority over creation. Woman yes is made from man’s rib, I sometimes think it was from his funny bone really!
Chapter 2 verse 16, Adam is told he can eat from every tree in the garden except one. Which? Knowledge of good and evil, he can’t eat from that tree. So which tree do we know that is also there that he can eat from that he doesn’t eat from? Tree of Life! Why doesn’t he eat from the tree of life? (It will make him live forever. He’s got the chance ) If you knew you could live forever you would eat from the tree of life. ( He wasn’t ready to live forever.) .. I think he had the potential to live forever, I think he did, because they are actually perfect at that point. They are not sinning. I think he didn’t from it and the Chinese Pastor Watchman Li says this, as well as a number of theologians, you see God creates man very independent, adventuress, full of testosterone, very single minded. I mean actually man has to procreate; after all he needs that testosterone. I mean why does it take a thousand sperm to fertilize one ovum? Because men never will ask for directions!
You see I think from the very beginning, he is so independent and headstrong, that he actually doesn’t go for that tree. And he doesn’t eat from it. Right from the very beginning he thinks he’s ok on his own. And in Chapter 2 verse 18, God sees it’s not good. That headstrong, that solitariness, that is there in the male, that single drive. God looks and says “I’ve seen this self sufficiency in the male, this tendency to isolationism and I will out into your deepest need, and I will bring you out and draw you out from that and I will make you see that you need community, you cannot exist on your own.” So what does he do? God makes a helper for him. And the Hebrew word for Helper is Ezer and it’s the same word that is used for “the Lord is my Helper”. So do you see when God makes a helper for the man, oh good we’re just created to help men do their thing! NO! “The Lord is my Helper.” The Lord is there for me, protects me, surrounds me, He keeps me, He comforts me, He urges me on, He cheers me on. That’s what God makes for Adam. And in fact if I help you to cross the road, which of us is the stronger! This is no secondary being, so often that verse has been interpreted, that women therefore are just helpers, we’re secondary. And then a helper that is suitable, perfect fits the man. Neged, the Hebrew word means opposite, but that isn’t used here. A helper suitable is Knegadu, a Hebrew word Knegadu which is more than just opposite. It means standing boldly opposite. Woman is created, eyeball to eyeball with the man. Face to face. Eyeball to eyeball. I’m 5ft and Mike is 5ft 10. However in the Vicarage we have two steps from the entrance way into our hall. When I’m on the top step and Mike in the hall, gives me perfect height to eyeball Mike! For we are created you see to look at guys and to challenge them sometimes when they need it. I mean when we’re feeling depressed what do we do girls we go out and shop! Men go and invade another country! And it’s been there in history. I mean Mo Molam had the breakthrough in Northern Ireland, did she not when she got the guys together and knocked their heads together. And there have been times in history when a woman can do that. And if we allow ourselves to become really warring then we are losing what God has created us for. There are times when we need to challenge aggression. And sometimes in our society that is aggression in women. But more likely than not it can be in the guys as well. And so we are there to challenge when necessary.
And Adam when he sees this he recognises this is good stuff and he says “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Wow I really fancy her!” Because she is identical, she’s not inferior. And in fact we are more like men than we are different. Yeah we love to go on about our differences, and we are different but we are actually more like them. We’re very like them. And then what happens? So Adam has this wonderful being and they live in complementariness, perfect complementariness, male and female, a reflection of God, and equal authority over creation. All is perfect and then, blow me down; they take what is not theirs to have. They eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil. The problem is not the apple on the tree it’s the pair on the ground!
They are separated from God and as they are separated from God, they are separated from one another. And it’s an end to that compatibility and complementariness. Fetch the fig leaves! Enter shame, they were naked until then. You see there was no body image problem there is there! No shame of any kind, emotionally, physically, spiritually, but now there is a body image problem. Now there is a problem on every level. And what are the consequences? I don’t want to say cursed because I do not believe human beings are cursed. God cannot curse the creatures he made with so much love. But there is a consequence. And the first is this: for the woman, let’s start with the woman!
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and sighing, your savon and your exseve”. These words are not necessarily used in child birth. They are a parallel to the hard work and toil that is given to Adam. We will have our hard work and our toil. The pressure, the expectations, the stress that is put upon us, we are a reflection of this. I do think that it reflects child birth as well, cause the Messiah, the great promise of future redemption is that the Messiah will be born of woman. And therefore every birth will be challenged by the evil one. But largely we are seeing the results in our own lives today. With all the expectations that are put upon woman. And this is another key. “And yet, and yet, your desire will be for the man.” Traditionally theologians have interpreted that as sexual desire. Girls! You know which of the genders has most of the problem with sexual temptation? The Men. Yes it’s not us is it really. So what does this mean to be a temptress, that doesn’t ring true? Well the easiest way, if you want to know what a verse means is find it somewhere else in the Bible. Cause it will always give you the key. And the word there is tesuka, tesuka is the Hebrew word for desire. And it’s in Genesis Chapter 4 verse 7, the story of Cain. “Sin” says God to Cain “is lurking at your door”. It’s tesuka means to have you, it’s pull, it’s pull wants to have you. “You” God says to Cain “must master it”. But he doesn’t does he? He kills his brother Able. And it’s the first murder in the Scripture. So what does tesuka mean then for us girls? Your desire is for the man. I think scripture is telling us that our pull is to the male. This means that we always look for male approval. It actually means co-dependency, which many of us will find ourselves in dependant relationships on men. It’s not just marriage either. There are women who are totally subsumed in their marriage relationship. There are women who move from man, to man, to man. We had a young woman in the last church we are at who had five children by five different men. Just looking for love. But it also means those women who would die for their boss at work who will protect him to the enth degree. Who don’t see themselves as having any purpose in life, it’s just this wonderful man they work for. My gran was like that with my Father, she lived for her son, who tragically as you know died when I was very young and he was only 32. And when he died, she had no life left. Women are stretching, our desire is for men. And so often we feel we have to give in to them And we have to be there for them and we pander to them. “What do you want for your tea tonight dear?” Actually Mike does the cooking in our household as he enjoys cooking and destresses whilst cooking which is great for me!
It’s not about kissing the ground men walk on. It’s not feeling we need them for our sense of self worth and our sense of self esteem. We don’t! Actually Ali Mcbeal said and Betty Davis in a film “ A woman is nothing without a man.” But that is just a reflection of attitude. That is not true! If we don’t serve God when we are single we are not going to serve him when we are married either. And the result of that co-dependency, what is it? It’s this “he will rule” God says. Our very need of a man will enable him to make us feel inferior at times. And what happens then? Well he can’t cope! No man can cope with all this need coming at him! So often we want all our emotional need to be fulfilled in that one person. And no man can cope with that Grand Canyon inside us and have to fill it. So he retreats back into the isolationism. That is the male thing, the newspaper, TV, work, sport computer games. Any thing but have to face that great need in a woman’s heart. And Elizabeth Cady Stanton who was the founder of the USA Suffragette movements said “Whatever the theories maybe of a woman’s dependence on man in the supreme moments of her life, he cannot bear her burdens.” And that’s absolutely true, Cady Stanton was a Christian. He cannot bear her burdens. And for those of us who think that a guy can do that, there is only one person who can. And we know who that person is and I’ll say a bit about that in a moment. But despite all of this, after the Fall, Adam calls his wife Eve, now this is key. The Hebrew word for life is Chi. Chava is more than life. Chava is the spoken word of life. Isn’t that amazing, her name in the Hebrew culture, her name reflects who and what she is. Her name reflects what woman is, spoken word of life. We have been created to speak life, to our families, our neighbourhood, our workplace, and our communities. That is the calling of woman. We were created communicators and we were created relational which is why we go on chatting and enjoying each other’s company, having a sisterhood because we have been created that way and the guys find it so hard. And when it comes to children who need the help of a speak and language therapist, its one girl for every seven boys. We are created relational, and that is such an amazing gift. Do you see now why our enemy has had such a vested interest in muzzling women for generations! Oh you can’t teach! Paul said you couldn’t! Paul never intended his words to be taken like that, Oh let the women keep silent! How could Paul ever intend that when he knows his scripture so well? We are relational; we have been called to speak life, to create community. How could we have been robbed of that? Well we have been robbed of it because of the Fall. But we nolonger have to live with the fall because we have redemption. One man who can meet our deepest needs and did it at the cross. And fills that Grand Canyon, our need for love, acceptance, approval, to feel good about ourselves. We need no one’s approval, but His. Do you know the was a time when I would lie in the bath and name people that I felt I had to earn their love and approval. I used to name them. There was one particular man in our previous parish and I just felt that he thought I had no gifting whatsoever and I just couldn’t please him. And I sat in the bath one day and I called out his name and I said “ I do not need your approval I only need God’s and I have His”. And sometimes you have to do that to liberate ourselves from this need to please.
And you see what does Jesus do with the Samaritan woman, when he meets her at the well and she says I’ve got no husband and He says, “you speak right you had five husbands and that present man you live with is not your husband. This was a woman, whose tesuka, whose desire made her move from man to man to man. And Jesus says “I am everything you need, if you drink from me you will never be thirsty again. You’ll not need to that anymore”. And he cuts her off immediately from that. And she goes back to her village and what does she say “I’ve met a man who told me all I’ve ever done!” All she had ever done was have five men! But now she goes and becomes an apostle, she evangelises her entire village. Her entire community! We don’t know what happened to that community we can only assume that they became followers of Jesus, because of the witness of that one woman who said that power is broken in me, I have met a man who has changed my life and I shall never be thirsty again. And that is what we are called to do! Everywhere we are, to speak life. I love that picture of the Samaritan woman. That’s how she is when she meets Jesus but you can see it in her eyes she’s got it, to do a great deal more than she ever has.
I want to show you a picture “ The Scolds Bridle” found in the Lancaster museum. Apparently if you lived in the 18th century, and you were known as a scold or a nagging wife or a gossip, they would drag you out and they would put you in this Bridle and they would lock it. It was an iron bridle and you had a bit that went into your mouth and they would lock it. They would bring you out to your village and they would stone you. Some women died, some women were very badly injured. When I first saw this I said to the guide, really just for gossiping! And he said look at her again, they’ve given her the face of a crone but actually the most important thing, look at what she is wearing. And I said what is she? And he said “ Look she is a Quaker.” And the Quaker movement grew in the North West. And in the Quaker movement women were key. And they would go out into the street and they would be preaching the Gospel on every street corner round the North West. And they would take people into their homes and do the first ever Alpha courses. And people were converted and it was for that, that they were put into this scolds bridle. Because it was thought unfeminine for women to teach the Bible, even in their own homes.
Would we be prepared, if that is what it was going to cost us? But you see we are not gagged today. And if we are gagged, what are we gagged by? By the media images! Stuff the media images. Our beauty comes from Jesus. By traditions? We’ve got freedoms our sisters in Africa and the East can barely dream of. And yet they are so much braver than us about preaching the Gospel. By the Church? Christian women have been pioneers for years particularly in the 19th century. This is Mary Slessor, they went out all over the world, she got herself on a Scots pound note. These women were denied the pulpit when they got home but that didn’t stop them preaching. And Hudson Taylor said this “ Some of my best men are women”. Do we want to be some of the best men? Girls let’s stand a moment, we’re coming to an end.
I’m just going to pray for us all now. I’m just aware that I might have touched something s that some of you would like to pray a little bit more about. There are members of the prayer ministry available for those who would like to receive prayer.
If you feel you are a woman who has relied or been co-dependant on men and their approval and you want that to be broken do find someone who will pray for you.
But I shall pray for us all now. Do we want to speak life to our world and change it?
Do we wanna be women who change the world?
God we just give you our lives now. We thank you for calling us to speak life. We thank you for making us women and for that special privilege we have. We ask you now to enable us to go out and be a blessing to our world. Let us be a blessing to the men who are part of our lives, free them to, whether its spouses, sons, brothers or colleagues. Lord make us a blessing to the guys. We want to stand hand in hand and change our world. So empower us, equip us, Holy Spirit come! Loosen our tongues. We don’t want the gags anymore, we want to be the women you made us, we want us to be thrilled by who you made us. And we want you to use everything that we are, who we are, what we are and make us shine in our world for the glory of Jesus. To be his reflection and to bring freedom and salvation to our world.
Amen