Grateful… a guest post

From Mary Elizabeth Fisher:

I just watched the mid day news…a hundred plus elderly men, really, nearly, all white, all walking in slow procession, dressed in red

and I was grateful…

Grateful for John’s record of Jesus going through hated Samaria and talking to a woman whose life of sexual intimacy was not one of wisdom…

And she is a major witness to who Jesus is… Someone with a dodgy sexual background, a hated Samarian, and a woman…

Then I think of the first human to announce of Jesus – “truly this man was the Son of God…”

And who was he…?

An oppressor of the covenant people of God…

Someone who had been involved in the crucifixion…

And a gentile Roman!!!!!

Then I think of the first Easter Sunday and who did the risen Jesus, the one embodying new creation speak to in the garden… whom did He “ordain” to be the first witness to resurrection life, to new creation…

Not one of the two male leading disciples, Peter or John (whom Jesus was particularly close to)…but a woman…

OH. MY. GOODNESS.!!!

Mary Magdalene what’s more.!!!

SO

Do I think who is elected Pope is important?

YES

Especially if they keep inviting NT Wright to address the Cardinals as they have a couple of times now…

BUT

To be honest I am much more interested in the women in the sex trade who Jesus is encountering to-day through some disciples of His filled with the Spirit…

I am much more interested in what Anji Barker and her husband Ash and their kids are doing in the slums of Bangkok…

I am much more interested in what Lisa Owens and her husband and their kids are doing in the West of Sydney…

I am much more interested in what Megan Du Toit is doing at Morling and Ellen Charry is doing at Princeton or Joy Moore at Fuller..

I am much more interested in what Ali Dench is involved in in Mongolia…

Yes I am much more interested in where sign of the Kingdom breaking into the world is to be found.

As Tim Gombis so wonderfully describes in his writings followers of Jesus are transforming imaginations, are announcing AND living out the fact that JESUS reigns…

And that reign is often, very often, subversive of power structures who do not let the poor, the abused, the foreigner, the oppressed indigenous person ( the Samaritan), the disabled, the women come to the party…

I think of King Jesus turning to the Samaritan woman from some sex trade of the day, turning to the former crazy man in the Greek zone where crazy religions existed, turning to Mary Magdalene and saying as he watches his church around the world with all its ordered exclusions, saying…they just don’t get it do they…?

And on the other hand I do pray that they will chose wisely within the structures of exclusion they have in their segment of God’s people…

And I will keep encouraging those who are lovingly subversive of such exclusion grateful, so grateful for the folks who included me…