A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Sunday 25th February 2024
Mark 10.32-52
The Baptist Union, or ‘Baptists Together’ as we’re supposed to call it these days,
has recently been undertaking a significant research project,
called ‘Project Violet’ [1]
It is named after Violet Hedger,
the first Baptist woman to be college-trained for ordination,
and it has investigated women’s experiences in ministry.
Project Violet will help us understand more fully
the theological, missional, and structural obstacles
women ministers face in the Baptist community in Great Britain
as well as identifying ways forward.
Whilst the findings from this project will be released in May,
as a precursor, they are releasing a podcast,
and I was invited to be a guest on the first episode,
which explores the history of women in Baptist ministry.
I think I was invited because, a few years ago,
I wrote a small book on the history of Baptist women in ministry. [2]
Anyway, you can listen to the episode from the Project Violet website,
and the link will be in the News and Views email. [3]
Actually, this was the second Podcast I’ve been on this year,
as I was also a guest on a Leadership Podcast
discussion my philosophy and practice of leadership. [4]
I mention these two podcasts, one on women in ministry, and one on leadership,
because they raise the issue that we’ll be exploring in today’s sermon:
which is the question of who has authority, and on what basis?
In our journey through Mark’s Gospel,
we have seen again and again
how Jesus challenges and removes
the barriers to social inclusion
that hold the vulnerable, the weak, and the marginalised
in positions of exclusion.
We’ve seen Jesus casting out spirits of uncleanness,
declaring women acceptable and equal,
removing the stigma of poor mental health,
and welcoming the powerless to the very centre of his circle.
And Mark tells these stories,
not just to educate his readers about the life of Jesus,
but because he wants those who follow Jesus
to actually create communities where these values are made real.
So to help his readers realise what kind of disciples they are to be,
Mark offers us the disciples gathered around Jesus,
as a kind of object lesson in how to get it badly wrong.
We saw this last week,
with the argument about which disciple was the greatest,
and we meet it again this week
in the story of James and John vying for positions of power.
The key issue here is one of leadership,
and of what kind of person should be a leader
within the group of Jesus’ disciples.
Now, I have to confess a certain level of vested interest in this question.
After all, for the last twenty-five years, in various capacities,
nearly half of them here at Bloomsbury,
I’ve been involved in the task of leadership within Christian communities.
I was talking about this with my Spiritual Director,
and he asked me how I would describe myself and my role,
and my answer was clear:
I’m a minister.
I’m not an academic,
although I have some academic skills that I use in the task of ministry.
I’m not a musician,
although I have some musical skills.
I’m not even a pastor,
although I do a lot of pastoral work.
I’m a minister.
And the key thing here is that the word ‘minister’
comes from the Latin word for ‘servant’.
The leadership that I offer to Bloomsbury, and within the wider Christian world,
is - or at least should be - a leadership that is grounded in serving others.
It is not a leadership founded on status, or domination, or power.
And yes, sometimes, I know that I need to remind myself of this,
but I can think of other ministers who might need reminding of it too,
not just church ministers but, of course,
but also those servants of the people
who serve as ministers in government.
So, what kind of a person should be a leader
within the community of Jesus’ disciples?
I need to note here that for many centuries,
and indeed still in many churches today,
the prime criteria for Christian leadership
is that you need to be a man.
Even in these enlightened times, and within our own Baptist family,
ordained ministry is still overwhelmingly male,
and within many churches there remains strong resistance
to women preaching or serving in roles such as deacon or elder.
And yet I could point you to Dorothy Hazzard,
who is recognised as a pioneer church planter:
she started Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol in 1640.
I could point you to Anne Steele,
who was a prolific Baptist hymn writer,
with her works being included in almost all hymnals
published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
I could point you to Hannah Marshman,
who is considered to be the first Baptist woman to be a missionary.
In 1799, Hannah and her family set sail for India
landing at the Dutch colony of Serampore.
Within a year, she had opened two boarding schools.
I could point you to Edith Gates,
who became the first female minister
in pastoral charge of a Baptist Church in 1918, aged 35.
And of course I could point you to Violet Hedger,
who was the first woman to train at a Baptist College,
and was called to her first pastorate
at Littleover Baptist Church, Derbyshire in 1926. [5]
I could point you to many women
who today serve as ministers across our Baptist family of churches,
including our General Secretary Lynn Green,
and the women we’ve had as ministers here at Bloomsbury,
from Barbara, to Ruth, to Dawn.
Bloomsbury has a long and proud history
of recognising and affirming the ministry of women.
But still, these stories are a minority,
and Bloomsbury is a minority;
and part of the problem is that leadership in our world more generally
is still predicated on systems
that we have inherited from the ancient world,
systems which we might call: patriarchy, paternalism, and patronage.
The world in which Jesus lived was one where leadership was male,
and where, from the Emperor downwards, power in Roman society
flowed through deeply entrenched systems of male privilege.
Every man had a master,
and every master had people who were dependent on him.
Your status within society was determined
by how high you managed to climb in this social pyramid of preferment.
This client-patron relationship system was called patronage
and it determined most of the social and cultural infrastructure
of the Roman Empire.
Patronage was not just confined
to the military, economic, and political aspects of the Roman lifestyle,
it was also linked with public displays of status, social ranking,
the legal system, and even the arts. [6]
To this day, we call a person who gives money
to a theatre or cultural project in exchange for recognition
a patron of the arts.
Roman mythology told that Romulus, the founder of Rome,
had appointed 100 men to serve as senators.
These men were known as ‘Patricians’, from the Roman word for ‘father’,
and the idea was that Roman society
should mirror the power structure of the Roman home,
where the father was the head of the household.
Lower class Roman men would be the clients
of these upper-class patricians, or patrons,
who would bestow status and power on those that served them,
like a father giving special gifts to his most loyal and faithful sons.
Women, children, and slaves were excluded from this system:
they had no power, and no way of gaining any.
So, it was something of an ideological bombshell
for Jesus to say that within the community of his followers:
‘Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,
and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.’ (10.43-44).
This was not the way ancient society worked at all!
Certainly, it wasn’t the way
that James and John the sons of Zebedee thought it would work.
The brothers’ petition to Jesus,
to be allowed to sit at his right hand and his left,
demonstrates that they have completely misunderstood
everything that Jesus has been saying to them
about why he is going to Jerusalem.
They clearly seem to think that they are part of some kind of messianic coup,
a regime change where the Jews finally get their autonomy back from the Romans,
and here in Mark’s gospel we see them lobbying for, in effect,
the positions of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary
in Jesus’ new government, when it comes into power.
There was then, and still is today,
an expectation that a newly powerful leader
would reward their most faithful followers with positions of power.
We have seen this in some of the appointments within our own government,
and it was the same back then.
The rule of client-patron obligation
meant that loyalty paid.
It’s worth our while noting that this system of patronage
didn’t die with the end of the Roman empire,
it just moved over into the medieval European societies of the tenth century
through systems of feudalism,
and then segued into the Middle Ages
in terms of courtly power,
then merged into the class structures
of the European imperial powers,
before entrenching itself in our education system.
It is still with us today in the patterns of preferment
that we see in government
and other powerful institutions in our society.
It remains as true today as it was in the first century,
that the best way to get money and power
is to be part of a wealthy family, to go to a powerful school,
and to make influential friends.
So for James and John,
mistakenly expecting Jesus to be the next king of Israel,
the request to sit at his right hand and his left hand was a perfectly sensible,
if rather self-serving,
request to be those with power and influence
in the new world of Jesus’ kingdom.
In exasperation, Jesus throws the question back at them,
using the sacramental language of baptism and cup.
‘Are you able to drink the cup that I drink,
or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ (10.38).
Baptism, of course, harks back to the beginning of the story,
where it all began;
and for Mark’s readers at least, if not yet for James and John in the story,
the cup anticipates the end,
the shared cup of the last supper
and the shed blood of Jesus on the cross.
In effect, Jesus is asking them if they truly can walk ‘the way’,
the path that he is going to walk,
which won’t be one of power and glory
but of suffering and death.
James and John, the gung-ho sons of thunder, of course say ‘of course’,
but as Jesus points out to them,
they don’t really know what they are asking for, or indeed saying yes to.
They never get an answer to their original question,
you may notice.
Jesus just says that such positions of preferment
are not for him to grant.
But those of us who read on through the gospel
will get to see the answer in due course,
as the next time two men appear at the left and right hands of Jesus,
it is the criminals crucified next to him (15.27).
Jesus doesn’t repudiate the vocation of leadership,
rather, he insists that in his kingdom, in contrast to the Empire of Rome,
it is not transferred through patronage.
Leadership amongst the disciples, leadership in the Kingdom of God,
can belong only to those who learn to follow ‘the way’ of nonviolence,
and who are prepared to not dominate,
but rather to serve and suffer at Jesus’ side.
These are tough words to hear for those of us who are leaders,
and they are a reminder to us
that we are here to serve a cause
that goes way beyond our personal needs.
So please, don’t forget to pray for your minister
and for your deacons and for your officers.
We are very fortunate here at Bloomsbury
to have a wonderful group of leaders,
but they need the support of the congregation
if they are to serve well.
Anyway, back to Mark’s story,
and perhaps predictably things start to escalate
as the other disciples get indignant.
It starts to look as though the whole community of disciples
are part of this great struggle for power.
So Jesus ramps up his language,
and compares the disciples to the Roman power structures
that oppress and dominate his society,
whilst telling them that this is not the way it should be amongst them!
The very powers that will kill Jesus
are the Roman administrators
those who practice the philosophy of leadership-as-domination
that Jesus has laboriously taught against.
Roman power structures demanded that the Romans ‘Lord over’ their subjects,
and tyrannise their people;
and, like the Herods and the Pharisees,
the disciples are getting sucked into these systems of domination,
and are enacting them in their own community.
Which raises the questions for us to consider,
of where we encounter dominating power in our society?
And where we encounter it in our own Christian community?
As I’ve said, our world runs along similar lines to the first century world,
with systems of patronage
that privilege the powerful and disadvantage the weak,
and the temptation for the church
is that we end up mirroring or, worse, emulating
those systems in our own community.
So, let me put it clearly…
Whenever a church excludes someone
on the basis of their powerlessness or minority status,
we emulate patronage.
Whenever a church denies or restricts the ministry of women,
or those who are LGBTQ+, or those who are Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic,
we emulate patronage.
Whenever a church prefers those who are powerful or wealthy,
we emulate patronage.
Whenever a church does a deal with power
to gain influence in society,
we emulate patronage.
Whenever a church justifies violence,
we emulate patronage.
The path of Christ is a path of peace, a path of inclusion,
a path of service, of putting others ahead of ourselves.
And Jesus identifies himself as the embodiment of the way of nonviolence,
saying that he came to serve, and to give his life;
not to dominate or to take the lives of others.
Last week I started with a quote that,
despite often being attributed to Ghandi, wasn’t actually said by him.
However, here I’d like to share a quote that was:
Ghandi said that the way of nonviolence
will not prevail on account of words or argument,
but that ‘it shall be proved by persons living it in their lives
with utter disregard of the consequences to themselves.’ (1948).
I can’t help but feel that Ghandi understood Jesus rather better
than his disciples did!
The path to great leadership lies not in eloquence or power,
but in a shared commitment to non-violently resisting
the power structures that keep some down and raise others up.
The path to great leadership lies in centring the marginalised,
in casting out spirits of uncleanness that exclude and oppress,
and in taking decisive action to restore people
to right relationships with each other and with God.
So let’s go back to the issue of women in church life.
And in these thoughts that follow I should acknowledge my debt
to the wonderful commentary on Mark’s gospel by Ched Myers. [7]
Consistently on our journey through the gospel,
we have seen Mark critiquing the systems of power
that are at work in society.
He’s addressed political domination, patriarchy, and the family system.
And we should pay attention to the fact
that all three of these are domination systems
based on the subjugation of women by men.
Mark has already argued that women
should have equal rights in the marriage contract,
by rewriting the Pharisees’ regulations on divorce (10.11-12);
and further on in the gospel he will defend women
against the ideology of patriarchy,
by ridiculing the Sadducees’ argument about Levirate marriage (12.18f).
It’s also noticeable that married couples
are almost entirely absent from the stage of Mark’s gospel,
with the only two minor exceptions
being Jairus and his wife (5.40)
and the illegitimate marriage of Herod to his brother’s wife (6.17).
More to the point, apart from these two exceptions,
women always appear in Mark without husbands.
In a world where the patriarchal system
considered women as second class citizens,
and unmarried women as third class citizens,
this is a truly subversive narrative strategy.
So why does Mark do this?
Mark seems to go out of his way to discredit the male disciples,
especially regarding their aspirations to leadership and power (9.34; 10.35ff).
In contrast, Jesus advocates and embodies
a vocation of leadership predicated upon an ideology of service.
The only other characters in Mark, beyond Jesus,
who are shown to have a vocation of service are women.
From the beginning of the story where Simon’s mother in law
served the disciples after being healed (1.31),
to the end of the story where the women minister to Jesus and the disciples
as they go up to Jerusalem (15.41).
We need to be careful here not to take Mark’s positive role models
of women embodying servant leadership,
and turn them into a model of femininity based on service to men!
There are strands of Christianity
which would require a faithful woman
to be obedient and subservient to men
both in the home and in church life.
To which I would just observe that patriarchy is very effective
at turning women’s emancipation against them.
Interestingly, if the word ‘minister’ comes from the Latin word for service,
did you know that ‘deacon’ comes from the Greek word for service?
Our models of leadership, whether male or female,
should be deeply rooted in serving others.
But the disparity between Mark’s portrait of male and female disciples
is intensified in his conclusion:
whereas the men desert Jesus
at the very point at which their following becomes politically risky,
the women stay with him to the cross and after.
Consequently it is the women who are the witnesses to the resurrection,
not the men.
I don’t think it’s too much to suggest
that the model of leadership which Jesus teaches,
where the leader must be the slave and servant of others,
is a model which was primarily fulfilled in Mark’s gospel
by women rather than by men.
The male disciples are constantly jockeying for position,
taking the patriarchal, paternalistic models of patronage
and emulating them in their desire for power.
In contrast, it is the women who serve,
and who therefore are the models for servant leadership.
By this reading, Mark is suggesting
that in a thoroughly patriarchal socio-cultural order,
women alone are fit to act as servant leaders.
This would help explain the appearance
of various ‘independent’ women in the gospel,
who appear without reference to their husbands.
It’s not that Mark is rejecting the vocation of marriage,
any more than he would reject the vocation of leadership.
However, he understands that the whole social system of patriarchy,
which renders tyrants strong in the world
and women subject in the home,
must be overturned.
So the first concrete step in the ‘last as first’ revolution
is to bring women into leadership,
and in order to do that
the rigid definitions of their traditional social roles,
as wives and child-bearers only,
must itself be undermined.
In our world, we have more nuanced understandings
of gender and gender roles,
and we no longer have a pattern in our society
where women can only occupy servant roles,
but Mark’s challenge,
that the least and the last will be the first and the greatest,
still echoes down to our world,
challenging us to notice those places
where women are still marginalised, oppressed, and violated,
and to take action to bring equality
not only by raising up the weak and the vulnerable
but by undermining the structures and patterns of leadership
that perpetuate dysfunctional and abusive gender roles.
Patriarchy, paternalism and patronage
have no place in Christian communities.
And, like Bartimaeus,
we need Christ to give us the gift of clear sight
if we are to follow faithfully the path of discipleship
where the last are the first, and the first are the last.
[1] https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/363245/Project_Violet.aspx
[2] https://www.baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=304877
[3] https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/415114/Podcasts.aspx
[4] https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chris-waters11/episodes/In-Discussion-With---Revd-Dr-Simon-Woodman-Minister-of-Bloomsbury-Central-Baptist-Church-e2eo05d/a-aasck1o
[5] https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/310743/100_years_of.aspx
[6] https://sites.psu.edu/romanpatronagegroupdcams101/societal-patronage/
[7] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 280-281.
