One of my favorite books is a novel that my son, Ben, gave to me called: The Book of Strange New Things. When my son gave me this book, he told me that he loved it so much that it almost made him want to be a Christian again. “Wow!” I thought, “I’ve got to read this book! I mean if it had that kind of power, then I can’t wait!” I was disappointed at first to realize that it was a Sci-Fi novel! What, was Ben just trying to throw a dig at his “old-fashioned” dad who still believed in God?!? Was this it? Was he trying to say that my faith was pure Sci-Fi? But then I persisted. Man, what a book! IT was a book about a young man who is asked to travel to another planet and be a pastor to a group of aliens who were so different from him that at first you might not even recognize these folks as human. In fact, they weren’t. They were truly aliens…different beings…and yet they believed. And to watch this young man be transformed by the love these alien believers had for him and each other was truly infectious. By the end of the book, I too truly wanted to be a Christian!
One aspect of this book that was intriguing to me as a pastor was that it reminded me of just how challenging ministering to different people in different contexts can be. We humans have this tendency to want to make everyone just like us, don’t we. We tend to iron out everyone’s differences and make everyone look and feel just like our kind. But that’s not the way God has designed our world, is it! We are such a diverse people!!!
When I read the Bible, I must fight this tendency. I tend to read the Bible like it was written just for me in my context and in my era. Jesus was someone who spoke English and went to the same high school I did. Paul dated my sister and was in my intro to literature class in college. Jesus may have worn sandals and a robe, but he still rode the bench with me on my 7th grade basketball team and had to endure the half-time tirades of my JH coach! And at camp Jesus was the kid who, unlike me, didn’t succumb to the temptation to smoke a cigarette under the little walking bridge at our UMC camp in the Black Hills! I forget sometimes that Jesus spoke Aramaic and lived in a time where Basketball and maybe even cigarettes weren’t even invented yet!
As hard as I try to remember that the Bible is written in a totally different world, I still find myself misreading it. For instance, this week I found myself doing some research on a disciple named Cleopas who is mentioned in Luke 24, the wonderful Easter story we call “The Walk to Emmaus”. In the story, one of Jesus’ followers, Cleopas, and his companion are headed out to Emmaus on the eve of that first Easter. They are struggling with everything that has happened, and especially with the fact that Jesus had been crucified. As I read this scripture passage, I started to ponder a couple of questions. The first was, just who was this Cleopas character? I mean Matthew doesn’t mention him as being one of the 12 disciples, does he? Who is this guy? And second, who was his companion?
I did a little research and I found out that most scholars believe that the Cleopas’ companion is none other than his spouse! And that her name might actually be MARY! And that this woman, Mary, was most certainly one of the Mary’s at the tomb! I don’t know what blew my mind more: the fact that there was now three Mary’s at the tomb, or the fact that I really had no clue who these women were! I mean, I’m embarrassed to say that I really know nothing about these women. Well, not nothing. I mean I know a bit about Jesus’ mother and about Mary Magdalene, but compared to Peter? I’m clueless and more than a little embarrassed! And I should be. And we should be! These are significant figures in the history of our faith, and yet we can barely name them!
I don’t know why this surprises me so, because in the end, I believe that is kind of the way we all tend to be about the history or herstory of women! Most of us grew up in an era where the men were the history makers and the women, well, don’t kill me for this, were just a part of the crowd, or at best played a minor supporting role. Of course, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But it’s true! The good news is that this is starting to change. People are starting to write women back into their rightful place in our story and let me tell you they were major players!
One of the folks that has helped me see this is an author that has written some awesome books as of late: Kristin Hannah! I know she’s a prolific writer, but her last three novels are excellent examples of how women have always been key players in our history and herstory.
Please read these books: “The Nightengale, “The Great Alone,” and “The Four Winds”. (By the way you may be excited to know that Kristin Hannah is from the PNW. She resides on Bainbridge Island!) I just finished her last novel, “The Four Winds,” and just have to say that if you want to understand the role women played in the story of the great depression, and the power of motherhood in the life of a family, then this read this book! I can’t recommend it enough. In fact, as we move towards celebrating mothers in a couple of weeks, if you text the word “mother” to 425-364-6545, I will gift you this book! That’s how much I believe it will change who you are.
This wonderful book has helped me rethink the role of women in my own personal journey. And that leads me to an odd conundrum we have in the McBride/Zantow family in trying to tell the story of the women in our family. And it is similar to the story in the Bible concerning the women at the tomb, in that we have too many Mary’s! At the tomb there were 3 Mary’s! In the McBride/Zantow clan there were five! This made family reunions a major problem. We couldn’t keep all our Mary’s straight! In the end, here’s how we identified them. There was Dad’s older sister who we identified by her middle name: Mary Eileen. And then there was Dad’s brother, Lloyd George’s, wife who we identified again by her middle name: Mary Jane. Easy so far. But then came Mom’s side, the Zantows. Mom’s sister was easy, we just called her Mary. But then came Mom’s brother Fred’s wife: the Mary we called “Fred’s Mary”, and then, finally, Mom’s brother Adolf’s wife: Mary who we called “Adolf’s Mary”.
To be honest, I’m not proud of the way we named some of these Mary’s. I often wonder how “Fred’s Mary” and “Adolf’s Mary” felt about being identified that way. I wonder if they ever got frustrated by being associated only with their husbands. They were so much more their husband’s helpers, weren’t they? They had each played a leading role in the lives of our family, and we seemed to be giving them only the status of a supporting role.
They deserved to be recognized not only for who they stood next to and who they raised, but for how they lived and what they stood for! They were incredible pioneers who carved out their life with their hands and hearts!
In a couple of weeks, we are celebrating Mother’s Day. In honor of these women in my life, I have decided to dig back into my family history to find out more about these incredible women in my life and I encourage you to do so, too! And as you investigate their herstories, I leave you with this amazing quote from Kristin Hannah’s book, The Four Winds:
“Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they? I am forty years old, and I just learned this fundamental truth myself. Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation. I am in love. There it is. I've written it down. Soon I will say it out loud. To him. I am in love. As crazy and ridiculous and implausible as it sounds, I am in love. And I am loved in return. And this-love-gives me the courage I need for today.
The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again. Jack says that I am a warrior and, while I don't believe it, I know this: A warrior believes in an end she can't see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me."
Your friend and pastor, formed and shaped by a long line of warriors named Mary, Brook