Women Know Best….

Today many countries around the world celebrate the International Women’s Day. It is especially big in former socialist countries, as it started 100 years ago when 15,000 women marched through New York City in 1908 demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. Three years later the first International Women's Day was launched on 8 March in Europe. Over the century what started as a political cause turned to be a reminder of women’s place in our lives. Many churches focus on the empowering of women.

I am thinking about another special role women play – keeping the faith. Statistics for many years show that women attend church, support church community and are involved in ministering to the needs of people more (6:4) than men. Women know best the importance of community.

Sin separates people from god and each other and drives individuals into customized selfishness. Salvation, on contrary, reverses this separation, restores relationship with God and fellow people, and draws people into community with one another. Somehow in the last century as men abandoned their role as spiritual leaders in the family, women continue being keepers of spiritual flame in many families. Different pollsters confirm that more than 65% of families are kept together by faith commitment of a mother.

I am not going to try to understand or reason it. I simply honour women in our midst who keep the faith strong, who keep the church family together, against of all odds. My recent visit to the mission field (Chile) made me reflect on immovable commitment women there have to their church. Often disparaged in a chauvinist culture (not allowed to go up on the platform, etc), they continue to remain the majority in the church.

Saying that women know best how important Church and Faith is for our collective well being I appeal today to all – do we realize importance of the Church? One of the immediate changes that Gospel makes is grammatical: WE instead of I, OUR instead of MY; US instead of ME. Love cannot exist in isolation, away from others – it will bloat into pride. Grace cannot be received privately, cut off from others it will become greed. Hope cannot develop in solitude, without community it goes to seed in the form of fantasies. We are the Body, and no parts, no gifts, no virtues can develop and remain healthy apart from community of faith.

The Reformation challenged ecclesiastical arrogance that “outside the church there is no salvation.” Looking back at what it caused over the last 500 years – some 34,000 disagreeing denominations – I wonder if the universal statement that “there is no salvation outside the church” was actually a spiritual common sense. True, the Church as an organization does not give salvation, Christ alone does. But we are saved into the Body, we grow in the family, we are built up together, as living stones into the Church, which is Christ’s body (Ephesians 1:22-23). I am thinking of John the Revelator, who saw Jesus in vision (Chapter 1), and could have moved individually to the ecstatic scenes of heavenly worship (Chapters 4-5), but instead was told to communicated to the Churches (Chapters 2-3).

Woman is a Biblical symbol of the Church. Women today lead us by example of creating community in the Church. Let’s honour and admire our women today by being more committed to this family of faith we call Church.