Memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs

Lectionary: 447

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,

This is fascinating: Jesus' peripatetic band included women. In this age of social experimentation, many people are deeply committed to creating a Utopian society of equal opportunity, dignity and rights. They suppose that the Apostolic Community of Jesus, the original church under his supreme authority, mixed equally. He would not have tolerated male superiority or the subordination of women. They rightfully point out that any form of cultural or institutional inequity leads directly to exploitation, harassment and violence.  Perhaps Jesus set the example and taught his disciples an ideal, enlightened lifestyle.

Elaine Pagels and others have supposed the patriarchal apostles, after Pentecost, immediately purged the Church of the Lord's egalitarian impulses. That is why we find so little evidence of it in the gospels. They say, however, it survived in certain second century, Gnostic texts, which Dr Pagels translated in the 1970's. Much of it, as I read her seminal work, was apparently in what was not said, in the ellipses. It was an argument from silence. Because Jesus did not say men are superior, he must have regarded women as equal. It sounds like wishful thinking to me. 

Modern thinkers often forget that Jesus never taught Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Those ideals were separated from the Gospel like wheat from chaff by "Enlightened" European deists, with their sanitized notions of a fleshless God who is nonetheless male. 

If, as Luke says, the women "provided for them out of their resources," they apparently had control of those resources and, with control, authority. In that fellowship, resourceful women had standing and the Lord encouraged it. 

Saint Luke sometimes suggests that the early church enjoyed a honeymoon period when all was right. Can we dare to think the company who traveled with Jesus honored the dignity and intelligence of each person, regardless of their gender, age, race, nationality, intelligence, dexterity, class or body type? The four gospels certainly don't describe his followers like that.

Was their humor appropriate and respectful? If a clumsy word or gesture stepped over the line and felt wrong, did the Lord, one of the men, or one of the women rebuke it? Did he call some members aside and speak quietly about their prejudices, beliefs and attitudes? Did he resolve disputes of inequity among them, or just tell them to, "Knock it off?" 

In her book Why Religion?, Dr Pagels eventually decided her church would be formless, unstructured and entirely spiritual. A loose assortment of well-heeled friends, it's only guidelines are those accepted by its individual members in their particular solitudes. A truly egalitarian if ephemeral congregation.

On this memorial of the Korean martyrs, we should remember our knowledge of the gospel begins with our faith in Jesus, not in a hope that certain fashionable ideals can be attained in this world or the next. The martyrs tell us where we are going and the fare price. Their Church is comprised of real flesh and real blood, neither pretty nor desirable by popular standards. Their destination is perfect beauty, unattainable and unimaginable except by God's mercy.