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Best-selling author Bruce Feiler tells a story about taking his family to Rome so his twin daughters could experience all the great art and culture. It wasn't going very well. Everyone's feet hurt. The girls were bored. Everybody was tired. And then, finally, they arrived at the Sistine Chapel. Feiler gathered up whatever enthusiasm he had left and said, “Look up! I'm going to blow your mind.” One of his daughters looked up at Michelangelo's famous painting of the creation of Adam and immediately said, “There's no woman. Where's the woman?”
And honestly, that's our question today. Where's the woman? It's a question people have been asking for a very long time. Where is she in our churches? Where is she in leadership? Where is she in the Bible? And even when we do find her, another question follows: What is she allowed to do? Is she really an equal partner? Or is she somehow considered less-than? Subordinate? Restricted? Dependent?
For thousands of years, people have turned to Scripture to answer those questions. And so, as we begin this series on biblical equality and Kingdom partnership, I want to suggest that we need to do something very simple: Let's start at the very beginning.
Let's go back to the Biblical story of Genesis which literally means “Beginning.” But before we begin at the beginning we need to begin our series by committing to reading Scripture carefully and prayerfully because when we do so, I believe we will discover the Bible’s overarching witness: men and women are equal in every way.
That’s a bold statement. I’m not asking you to believe it because I said it. I’m required to show you by offering evidence. So we're going to read carefully. Because Scripture is foundational to who we are. And that's why I want you to bring your Bibles during this series. Underline things. Circle things. Write questions in the margins. Define words. Make connections. Meet with me for coffee, if you need to. Actually, meet me for coffee, please. I love having conversations about Scripture that are invested, curious, and kind. We should never forget that Jesus’ most often asked question was, “Have you not read?” And Jesus articulated his mission and corrected religious teachers by hearkening to Scripture. We should do no less. And when we read Scripture carefully and prayerfully, with Jesus in mind, it leads us redemptively toward freedom from sin and all oppression. Here’s the point. Our denomination, which is currently celebrating its 50th Anniversary for ordaining women, is not teaching egalitarianism between men and women because of a certain politic. We teach it because we believe it’s the redemptive story of Scripture, the mission of Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit.
But there’s another reason to read carefully. We need to study carefully because sometimes the Bible in our heads is not the Bible in our hands. The Bible we think we remember is not the Bible that was written. For example, many people often forget that there are two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 with different chronologies and emphasis. The second is often the one we know best.
Genesis 2 gives us a solitary adam—the human—who is alone. God says, “It is not good that the human should be alone.” Then God creates the woman from adam’s side. And this way of remembering the story has often been used to establish a hierarchy: Adam was created first. Eve was created second. Therefore, some argue, Adam must have been created to lead, while Eve was created to follow. But is that actually what Genesis says? No. And here's the problem. That argument doesn't start at the very beginning. It ignores Genesis 1. So let's start at the very beginning.
Genesis 1 and 2 read together describe the male-female relationship as partnership, not hierarchy. Key point! Adam is not first and foremost a name. It’s a partnership! Take a look!
Genesis 1 says: “Then God said, ‘Let us make adam [humankind] in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky...’” (1:26)
And then: “So God created adam in God’s own
image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.” (1:27)
And then God blessed them and says to both of them: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over it.” (1:28)
Notice. Both men and women are adam—humankind. Both together are God's image. Both receive the same blessing, the same vocation, and are entrusted with the same care for creation. There is no gendered job description or hierarchy where God says: “Men: lead.” “Women: follow.” “Men: make decisions.” “Women: support.” Nothing like that appears. The first creation account gives us something much simpler: Men and women are equal partners in God's image and equal partners in God's mission.
Then we come to Genesis 2. And suddenly we have this irony – a solitary adam [human]. But the irony is short lived because God says: “It is not good that the human should be alone.” (2:18) So quick recap: we end chapter one’s adam-partnership with “very good” and then quickly move to a “not good.” Then God parades a whole host of animals before the adam. Why all the animals? Because the story is showing us that none of these prove to be a “suitable helper.” (2:20) And this is where another misunderstanding often enters the story. The Hebrew phrase is ezer kenegdo. And I’ll tell you that the NIV’s translation of “suitable helper” is easily misunderstood. Ezer [helper] does not mean “assistant,” “servant,” or “subordinate.” It is used most often in the Old Testament to describe God as Israel's helper. God is not the inferior partner. God is the powerful partner who comes to the rescue. And kenegdo means something like “corresponding to,” “matching,” or “facing.” So Genesis 2 is not: man + female subordinate assistant. Genesis 2 is reaffirming the truth of Genesis 1: human + corresponding partner = the image of God (1:26-28). The woman is like the man in every way: face to face, bone of bone, flesh of flesh. Equal image-bearers. Equal partners. Being the ezer kenegdo does not demonstrate Eve’s inferiority. It demonstrates her necessity. She’s created second so that we can feel the problem of the lone adam before we see God’s solution. And God never gives Adam authority over Eve. God does not say in creating her, “Adam, you are now her leader.” God does not establish a chain of command. The first time Genesis explicitly says that the man will rule over the woman comes after something has gone terribly wrong. It comes in Genesis 3.
Genesis 3 tells us what went wrong. It’s not a blueprint for human relationships. It is a diagnosis of what happened when sin entered the world. Suddenly everything fractures. Humans hide from God. Humans hide in shame from themselves. Humans blame each other. Trust becomes suspicion. Partnership becomes competition. The whole earth reels from sin’s destructive force. And then God warns the woman: “your husband . . . will rule over you.” (3:16)
Stop there. This is the first appearance of male rule over a female in the biblical story. And it appears in a passage describing the consequences of sin not prescribing God’s intent for proper male/female relationships. That should make us pause.
Because some Christians make a very strange interpretive move. They locate the gendered subordination introduced in Genesis 3 and then say: “That's God's design.” But they don't do that with other elements of Genesis 3. God says childbirth will become painful. They don't say: “Pain in childbirth is God's intent. No epidural for you.” God says the ground will produce thorns. They don't say: “Thank God for weeds. They're biblical. No tractors allowed.” God says human beings will struggle and die. We don't say: “Death is God's original intention for us.” So why would we take the domination of one sex over another—introduced in the aftermath of the fall—and make that the Christian ideal? Why would we make a consequence of sin into a command from God?
Christian traditions that explicitly teach complementarianism - that husbands possess primary authority and that governing or teaching roles in the church are reserved for men - describe this arrangement as a beautiful expression of God's created order. But here’s the problem:
Genesis 3 is not where we locate God's will. It’s where we locate God’s problem. The very thing Genesis 3 describes as “he will rule over you” is precisely part of the problem that Jesus came to redeem. Because that's what salvation does. Jesus doesn't come merely to forgive individual sins. He comes to overthrow all that diminishes God’s design. He comes to restore all of creation.
He comes announcing a kingdom in which the last become first, the powerful become servants, the excluded are welcomed, and those whom society has pushed down are lifted up. And look at what happens to women around Jesus. Women become disciples. Women become theological students. Women are freed. Women first proclaim the resurrection. Women pray and prophesy. Women lead churches in the earliest Christian communities. Paul can write: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) The New Testament trajectory is not toward restoring hierarchy. It’s toward restoring the partnership of Genesis 1 & 2. And if Genesis 3 describes the distortion, then redemption means refusing to baptize the distortion. It means asking:
Where has sin taught men to dominate women when God created us to partner?
Where have we baptized inequality as God’s design?
And perhaps most importantly: Where are we still living out Genesis 3 when we should be living out Genesis 1 & 2?
That is the challenge of biblical equality. And that's why I don't think “feminism” should scare Christians. If Christian feminism means the Biblical conviction that women are fully human, fully God's image, fully gifted by the Spirit, and fully created to participate in God's mission alongside men— then Christians should have no reason to fear that. In fact, we should celebrate that impulse wherever it appears.
Because this is what I believe Genesis is ultimately telling us: God did not create men and women to compete. God created us to collaborate. God did not create men to rule women. God created women and men together to bear God's image. God did not create one sex to have power over the other. God created us to share the work of cultivating creation and participating in God's kingdom. We were made better together.
And that's why I want to return to the image and question that started this sermon. “Where is the woman?” Remember that Sistine Chapel painting? The Feiler sisters finally found her. Eve was in the arms of God.
May all women find themselves in a similar place – for healing, for empowerment, and for love. May all men see in women a proper companion, an equal counterpart, offered by God.
But let’s also go back to Genesis story and remember where we don't find Eve. We don’t find her standing behind Adam or beneath Adam. We don't find her waiting for permission. We find her beside him. Bone of his bone. Flesh of his flesh. Equal image-bearer. Equal partner.
And that leads me to one more picture that hangs in my office, the Harrowing of Hell.
One more image of God, one more image of embrace, one more image of partnership and redemption, one more image of what God and God’s church does. God doesn't abandon humanity when sin breaks the partnership. God begins the long work of restoration. And that work began with Christ who pulls Adam and Eve out of the grave together for partnership. So let's remember the very beginning. Let's read carefully. Let's recognize what sin has distorted. And let's join God in the work of restoring what was broken. Because the Christian vision isn't men over women. It isn't women over men. It isn't even men and women simply tolerating one another. It’s something much more beautiful: men and women, created together, bearing the image of God. Men and women, called together, following Jesus. Men and women, sent together, sharing the work of God's kingdom. Men and women—pulled together, out of brokenness, back into a proper relationship with God, one another, and themselves - better together.
Let’s pray . . .
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