I’m a fan of Daniel Kirk’s writing. After meeting him at the 2009 Emergent Theological Conversation, I’ve enjoyed following him online. He is one of the few academics that Tweets about all aspects of life – from theological questions to what he’s making his family for breakfast. As a good postmodern who values authenticity, that’s something I admire. I like the questions he asks and his way of presenting possible answers. I don’t always agree with him, but I always respect how he engages in the conversation – which also sums up my reaction to his book. There are places in the book where I have quibbles (and a few outright objections), but on the whole I appreciate his overall vision that Paul is presenting a narrative theology of how the identity of the people of God gets formed which very much holds together with both the story of Israel and Jesus’ teachings.

Growing up as an evangelical, I received heavy doses of Paul (and little of Jesus), but the Paul I received was a Paul who was both quick to criticize and dismiss his Jewish roots and offer the hope of escaping this world soon by shuffling off the despised mortal flesh. But once I started paying attention to the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus, this Paul no longer made sense. I was one of those that the book suggests needs “a healthy deconstruction of their understanding of Paul” (5). And this book does that and does it well. In rescuing Paul from his forced isolation by demonstrating how he contributes to the ongoing narrative of God working to redeem the world, it transforms the often uncomfortable dogmatic statements and rules into vital (albeit often contextual) parts of that story.

What I appreciated most was how Kirk interpreted Paul’s writings on the hope of the resurrection. He straightforwardly demonstrates that this hope has nothing to do with escape from or rejection of creation, but instead is all about living into the new creation. This hope means that the kingdom of God is now and that Jesus is reigning over it putting it in order. As Kirk writes, what this means is that “The kingdom of God is at hand in the undoing of all the sin and death and brokenness and disorder that mar the very good world of God” (39). The advice that Paul gives in his letters is not about perfecting oneself so that one day one might be worthy of heaven, but practical advice for how the community of God lives in the kingdom here and now as part of God’s work restoring creation.

I appreciate this eschatological interpretation of Paul’s narrative theology that values the present as much as it does the future. It is hard to love the world enough to desire its transformation (as Jesus and the Old Testament prophets did) if one simply desires to escape it someday. But as the book argues, Paul is presenting a vision for how people continue in the way of Jesus and live transformativly in the present. And this is possible because “new creation is not simply something that we look forward to; it is something in which we already participate. The culmination of the story is exerting a sort of backward force, such that the future, by power of the life-giving Spirit, is intruding on the present and transforming it” (47). As one who has had Paul imposed on me as apology for why I shouldn’t care about seeking justice in the world, this rescuing of Paul from his escapist captivity is refreshing. For those who have been uneasy with the Paul they were taught (who seemed to have little to do with the Jesus they love) and who respect the Bible too much to simply reject Paul’s writing, this returning of Paul to the larger narrative context of scripture is a blessing making the book well worth the read. I will be engaging specifically the books’ perspective on Paul’s writings on women next week where I will address a few of my minor concerns with the book, but I wanted to highlight here the book’s exceedingly helpful presentation of Paul in light of the rest of scripture. I encourage readers to follow the blog tour and engage in the conversation as it unfolds.

Be sure to stop by the Blog Tour Hub for a chance to win a free copy of the book!

We somehow seem to have forgotten the earth-shattering reality of that which we await. Advent is more than just a coming; it is the breaking in of the divine into the everyday patterns of this world. It is the hope of the future incarnate in the present making all things new. To live expectantly into the incarnation is to affirm the eschatological hope of the future while at the same time be transformed by that very hope already at work in the present. To observe Advent isn’t simply to reenact a memory of the past or look towards a second coming someday, for both would implicitly assume a present absence of the divine. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, forever transforming possible modes of being in this world. To anticipate the fulfillment of this hope is to accept the new way of being that broke into our world with the incarnation of the long expected Jesus.

It is safe to in remembrance await the coming of a powerless child or to simply tinker with the language and rituals that comfort us with the promise that the liberating hope of Christ is something we can only await. What is seemingly far more difficult is to actually live into the alternate reality that the advent of Christ ushered into the present. To anticipate hope by actively going out to meet it. To await the coming of the Kingdom of God by living in it right now. To declare that the status quos of injustice, oppression, and suffering have no place in the transformed new creation of Christ.

We are not the ones creating hope, but neither are we the ones simply awaiting a future hope. Advent reminds us that hope in the form of Jesus has already broken into our world. To live in expectation of that hope is to live into it – to embody the alternate reality Jesus made possible. The world and even the church may resist this subversion of the status quo even as they incant the very refrain “Come thou long expected Jesus,” for they have safely bracketed off hope in the past and future. Expecting to encounter the transforming and liberating hope of Jesus in the present is the far more difficult aspect of the incarnation to await.

“This being caught up into the messianic sufferings of God in Jesus Christ takes a variety of forms in the New Testament. It appears in the call to discipleship, in Jesus’ table-fellowship with sinners… in the healing of the sick, in Jesus’ acceptance of children. The shepherds, like the wise men from the East, stand at the crib, not as ‘converted sinners’, but simply because they are drawn to the crib by the star just as they are… The only thing that is common to all these is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That is their ‘faith.’ There is nothing of religious method here. The religious act’ is always something partial; ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

I found the passage so intriguing because it challenges the Christian assumption that encountering Jesus is an end in itself. For many in the church, “finding Jesus” is the point of conversion and salvation. This encounter is presumed to result in the involvement in religious activities such as attending church (which does not necessarily imply being part of the community of church), acts of personal piety, and the elimination of certain sins like sexual immorality. This encounter is what guarantees one a place in heaven and is often assumed to also grant one financial and social success in this life as well. In a dualistic sense, one’s souls’ eternal destiny is changed by this encounter, while physical life continues mostly as before (just in perhaps a better way). There is the encounter that in theory changes everything and in practice changes very little. For unless one’s whole life gets caught up in that suffering of Jesus, the encounter just affects the partial religious acts.

While some might say that ensuring one’s entrance into heaven is to have one’s life caught up into Jesus, it is still a partial event since it ignore the pre-converted life and often the entirety of physical life as well. As the God who suffered Jesus was already present though in the lives of all – the sick, the children, the shepherds, the wise men. He didn’t encounter them and change them so they could now be part of his story; his story became their story as they moved as they were towards him. To find Jesus in a moment is to assume that one was without God and then suddenly has God. Discipleship though is a journey where as people created in God’s image we move ever towards the people we were created to be.

The journey is our conversion as it was for the wise men drawn by the star. That shaping and forming of our selves into Christ-likeness is not a momentary wave of the magic Jesus wand, but the ongoing process of coming to reflect the image of the one in which we live and move and have our being. It is an entirely new life, like Bonhoeffer states, not simply a religious act we join into when it is convenient to us. And it by necessity involves being caught up in suffering. The suffering of Jesus frees us to reject the systems of the world that leave no room for the suffering (or are the cause of that very suffering). Instead of concentrating on our momentary encounters with Jesus, we are free instead to journey towards that shalom of all. The discipline of participating in Christ, the suffering of Christ, leads us not toward more acts of religion but toward standing in solidarity with the suffering. That is simply part of our conversion as we participate in ever fuller ways in our creator.

So on the morning of September 11, I arrived at the country club where the retreat was being held and situated myself at the conference table in a room with a panoramic view of the far west Chicago suburbs. We dove right into discussing the submitted articles, but about an hour later when the waitress came in with more coffee and danishes she mentioned that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was another personal plane incident like the one that had flown into the Empire State Building a few years before and continued working. When we broke for lunch the head editors called the office and then quickly left. The rest of us stayed on and even watched a Bibleman episode for possible review, fairly oblivious to the events of the day.

It wasn’t until I left the country club in the late afternoon and turned on the car radio that I began to have an inkling of the magnitude of the day. I rushed home to my tiny basement apartment which had no TV reception and tried futilely to get online but the dial-up lines were all busy for hours. I recall going out to get the special evening edition of the newspaper and crashing the Wheaton College student lounge (with their TV and cable hookup) just to get some idea of what was happening. The next day I was scheduled to host my church’s table at the Wheaton College ministry fair, which meant I spent the day surrounded by not only college students but also representatives of every church and parachurch ministry in the Wheaton area. It was a surreal day as people attempted to process the shock and openly shared the subsequent anger and hatred that had started to develop. That evening my church held a prayer meeting, and I recall praying that this act of terror would not lead to people lashing out against the innocent as a form of revenge. I was informed afterwards that my prayer was inappropriate. Three weeks later I heard back from Christianity Today informing me that they had a hiring freeze and the position I was applying for was eliminated in favor of restructuring the department.

It’s strange to reflect back on the day the world changed. And a bit eerie to recall that I spent the afternoon of September 11 watching the Bibleman episode about how good Christian students need to stop hanging out with their non-Christian peers because they can be a bad influence on their faith and then spent the next day listening to Evangelical leaders responding to their enemy in hate. I couldn’t have know it at the time, but within those first two days after the attack I caught a glimpse of how the events of Sept. 11th would shape the church over the next ten years. The world has irrevocably changed – despite the ongoing attempts to pretend that that the false security and pride of American exceptionalism is still a viable option in a globalized world. Over this past decade this new world has forced me to abandon a naïve faith that cared only for the state of my own soul, and embrace the fact that I am connected to others as a child of God. Who I am is as much dependant on how I honor the image of God in them as it is on any acts of ritual or piety I engage in.

Perhaps it took 9/11 and the response of fear and hatred I found in the church to push me to finally realize that my faith had to be more about God than myself. I don’t know if I will ever know for sure, but it has assuredly been a decade of change from which there is no going back. And sadly, constantly living in a culture of fear has prevented many in the church from wondering what sort of people we are being changed into. But the questions need to be asked. Are we more Christ-like now? Is God’s Kingdom more visible ten years later? Maybe simply asking those questions this Sept. 11th can help us turn a day that could easily kindle new waves of hatred into one that pushes us outside of our all-consuming selves and back to the sort of people Jesus calls us to be.

That sort of denial of the created world in favor of escaping it all someday was difficult to hear, but it wasn’t surprising. As much as a few more moderate evangelicals attempt to deny that such “pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die” theology is still around, it still shapes the faith experience of the typical evangelical church most Sundays. What has surprised me recently is hearing similar dualism preached in churches that would never self-identity as being anywhere near such evangelicals theologically. But despite having disparate views on the Bible, justification, and inclusiveness, the outcome of such dualism in those churches is the same – a disparaging of the body and elevation of the soul. Be the roots a shallow neo-Gnosticism or popular Buddhism or simply a theology that starts with the Fall instead of creation, what get preached is that we are not our bodies.

It’s a way of viewing the world that makes that bumper sticker, “We are spiritual beings having a physical experience,” so popular. What gets valued is not the actions of faith – caring for others, studying the word, serving the poor, tending to creation, feeding the hungry – but finding spiritual contentment deep down in one's soul. While evangelicals admit that life now is messed-up and so look forward to escaping it all someday, progressive dualists want to escape it now through meditating, unplugging, and letting-go of any obligation to help build a better world.

And therein lies the problem. When faith is all about a dualistic escapism, it sadly allows no room for mercy. Evangelicals often mock calls to work to save the environment or end extreme poverty because this world is not our home and is all going to burn anyway. Progressive dualists similarly mock calls to work for justice as imposing unnecessary shoulds upon them that get in the way of them being present with their souls. Both forms of denying our embodiment in this world provide convenient excuses for ignoring the needs of others as individuals are allowed to focus solely on their own personal spiritual needs. It’s easier to opt out of loving one’s neighbor when one’s theology is built around such a hierarchical view of creation that not only divides our body and souls, but privileges the one over the other. And with such views held by those in power, the bodies of the marginalized (women, the poor, the racially other, the queer, the old, the disabled) continue to be oppressed and ignored by those whose theologies assume they aren’t worth being bothered about.

These are theologies that I can’t reconcile with the way of Christ. With the story of a God who, challenging the dualist religious assumptions of the time, became flesh and dwelled among us. Who broke bread, healed bodies, and suffered on the cross. Who says he despises our religious gatherings if all we do is pray and worship and neglect caring for the bodies of the hungry and the oppressed. I have to affirm creation in its wholeness – undivided body and soul included. My theology is embodied because spirituality encompasses all creation, not just the parts I happen to prefer. I think Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel phased it best as she described what it means to live out this embodied theology –

Disembodiment is lovelessness. Insecurity, coldness, power and weariness are hidden behind abstraction. A theology of embodiment mistrusts all self-made fantasies of the beyond which are engaged in at the expense of the healing of people here and the realization of the kingdom of God on this earth. It is committed to a this-worldly expectation which here already looks for full, complete life, for wide spaces for women and men, and from this work derives the hope that nothing can separate us from the life and love of God.

While many from the left were outraged by the idea of associating these arch-conservatives, who stand against many of the things historical feminists have supported, with feminism, others supported the idea. Naomi Wolf, who seems to have a love/hate relationship with feminism, wrote that the problem some have with calling those women feminists is that we don’t understand the history of feminism. She argues (rightly in my opinion) that feminism has only become associated with leftist agendas since the 1960’s, but was, in its origins, more balanced and open to conservative values. But then she explains her reasoning why -

The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it is these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left. But, apart from these sound bites, there is a powerful constituency of right-wing women in Britain and Western Europe, as well as in America, who do not see their values reflected in collectivist social-policy prescriptions or gender quotas. They prefer what they see as the rugged individualism of free-market forces, a level capitalist playing field, and a weak state that does not impinge on their personal choices.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are many forms of feminism. And I’ll even admit that this rugged individualist strain made up of (as Sarah Palin described it) “gun-toting self-reliant women” is, in its own way, a form a feminism. But I am highly uncomfortable with people who, like Wolf, reduce feminism to simply being about “individual choice and freedom” (and I’m not the only one). This reduction is something I encounter in the church-world all the time. Feminist or liberation theology is labeled as merely being about individual rights, and since Jesus didn’t come talking about rights but about how we can live communally and eucharistically together as the body, such theologies must be dismissed as simply cultural and therefore unbiblical. Granted, such a dismissal usually allows for the powers that be to continue to assert their own individual preferences and ideas over those of everyone else in the guise of being biblical, but the conversation has already been shut down.

It’s like the people who mock or complain about so-called political correctness. They view having to be aware and sensitive to the feelings and situations of other people as infringing upon their rights (like their right to make fun of other people). It’s not about loving and respecting others, but about losing their right to oppress. Complaining about other people doing the very thing they’re already doing ensures that meaningful conversations that might lead to change never occur.

But, contrary to what those who fear their loss of power might assert, individual freedoms and rights has never been what feminism has been about for me. My affinity to feminism (or postcolonialism or liberationist thought) has always been based on that call to live faithfully as the body of Christ. Loving others as Christ loved us means loosing the bonds of oppression and setting captives free. It means treating people, all people, as image-bearers of God. If that means advocating for rights for some, and for the elite to relinquish some of their power in order to put an end to oppression, then so be it. If that means giving up personal comfort and choices so that I can respect, instead of mar, the image of God in others, then so be that as well. Rights for the marginalized are simply a by-product of the privileged finally attempting to live self-sacrificially as part of the body of Christ. Conversations about feminism or postcolonialism help me become aware of who the people are who need love and what ways I can make myself a living sacrifice in order to do so.

Holding so tight to privilege that one rejects discussions about helping others, or disdains collectivist social-policies that mirror the sort of eucharistic life Christ expects of us, is more in line with rugged individualism than the feminism I have known. Associating feminism with that selfish, individualist, and blatantly unchristian way of living that the far right preaches these days, hurts. Just as I often have to say in response of some far-right Christians’ attempts to harm the poor, destroy God’s creation, and keep people captive, that that sort of Christianity has little to do with the message of Jesus I find in the Bible, I guess I now have to start saying to the rugged individualist feminists that I am not that sort of feminist. Palin and Bachmann can have their “it’s all about me and my privilege” feminism, but, as a Christian, that has nothing to do with me.

Whether it was a brilliant marketing strategy or just a sad reflection of the charged atmosphere of Christian dialogue these days, one cannot deny that Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins has stirred up a load of controversy before it has even hit the shelves. As a book claiming the daunting task of being “A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived,” the uproar was understandable although disappointingly cruel at times. For some reason many Christians hold to the notion that where we go when we die is the most important aspect of our faith and thus get rather up in arms when people even dare to open that topic up for conversation. Bell deftly addresses the need to re-prioritize what is central to our faith, but more on that in a moment. Let me first get the controversial stuff out of the way.

Does Bell believe in hell? Yes. Does Bell believe in heaven? Yes. Is Bell firmly rooted in Christian Orthodoxy? Yes. Does Bell think that Jesus is the way? Yes. Is Bell a universalist? If by that we mean that God is reconciling all creation to himself and that we shouldn’t assume that God will fail at this, then yes, Bell is a universalist. If that’s all you want to know so that you can judge, label, dismiss or whatever, then you can stop reading now. But if you are curious about what the book is really about and the hope-filled message of transformation it contains, then I invite you to keep reading.

At the most basic level, Love Wins is a typical Rob Bell book. Which is to say that he writes like he speaks and so what the reader encounters is an easy to read yet powerful narrative that speaks straight to the heart. Bell’s gift is to take tremendously complex theological concepts and translate them so that they are not just understandable to all but also blessedly practical. People can complain that he is too popular or over-marketed, but it is this gift that makes him resonate with so many people. At the same time, those who are versed in history and theology can clearly see the conversations of Christians through the centuries behind the ideas Bell expresses. He is not espousing anything new in this book, simply making accessible the rich tradition of Christian thought for believers today.

And what he is saying is powerful. Bell gets at the heart of what Christians believe about God and isn’t afraid to challenge the implicit assumptions about God that are at the core of some Christians’ belief systems. Central to that message is the suggestion that our relationship with the God of the universe is a dynamic and not static reality. Jesus’ work on the cross isn’t just an historical event, but an ongoing narrative of redemption and reconciliation. Our faith isn’t just about going to heaven when we die, but about entering into a relationship and partnership with God now and for eternity. Heaven and hell are real for Bell, but are not simply places we go when we die. They are connected to who we are in Christ now. We are called to accept the gift of a transformative life that can endure even death. This life is a gift from a God who truly desires life on earth to be like it is in heaven, both now and for eternity, and who lets us serve as partners in this work of reconciling a world that God loves and will never give up on.

This message that God loves his creation so much that God refuses to give up on us, forms the core of Bell’s book. Bell points out, that since the early church fathers, Christians have held that since God’s central essence is love, it is reconciliation and not eternal suffering that brings God the most glory. What we believe and how we act are vitally important, but in the end upholding and glorifying the essence of God is most important. And when we insist that people who think differently than us, or who haven’t had the same revelation as us, or who said a different prayer than us will be eternally separate from a God the scriptures say works for and longs for the redemption of all things, we are stripping God of his power and denying him glory.

At the same time, Bell doesn’t deny that love involves freedom. We are free to deny God and to refuse to live the ways of God’s kingdom. God cannot abide injustice or greed or hatred – such things have no place in the world to come and have significant consequences in the world now. Suffering exists and God cares about those in pain, yet God loves us enough to allow us to continue to live in the hell of our own choosing. Hell is real, but it is a place we create for ourselves as we reject the gift of life God offers to us. But in the scriptures judgment is always connected to restoration. God essence is love and that essence can never change. The gates of heaven never shut, for even as God will not abide injustice and sin in his realm he by nature is always desiring the reconciliation and restoration of all things. God can never stop being God which means that in the end, love has to win.

Love Wins is not a book about who is in or out. That sort of talk is too small. It is a book that invites people to remember the life God is offering them and that encourages them to thrive as they joyously participate in that life. Bell challenges theologies that seem to have forgotten what it means to live this life and moves the conversation back to a placed where Christians have the freedom to say yes to the gift God continually offers. Christianity isn’t about being right or wrong, it’s about living joyously and transformativly for Jesus – and that is a message we can all benefit from being reminded of.

How can Mary sing that the Lord has done great things for her? It's a little crazy: how can this young, lower-class girl who finds herself knocked up sing that God has already–in the past tense–ended injustice and oppression? All she has to do is look around her to find evidence to the contrary.

I answered the question, working in the requisite readings. But days later the question is still haunting me.

What intrigues me is the gap between what the song proclaims and how the song is commonly used. As the exam question implied, we tend to get confused about the song's verb tense. It isn't simply past tense, announcing the fulfillment of the eschatological vision in which rulers are brought down and the lowly are lifted up. Nor is it simply a future hope for a time when all will be made right.

Instead it's both; it's the already and not yet. This can be hard to understand, in part because English lacks the aorist tense. The Magnificat testifies to God's work to reconcile all creation, work that has already begun and will continue forever. Like Mary, we are invited to be intimately involved in this work.

Mary wasn't crazy. She was carrying the hope of the world inside her; she knew that God had entered the world in a dramatic way. This changed everything–but to accomplish the change, the hope had to be proclaimed with assurance. We don't just place our hope in a past event or a future reward; we live into it.

When God sent Jesus to the world to reconcile all things, his incarnation and work on the cross did the job. Salvation dealt with the world's injustices and oppressions. But as humans we could not be transformed all at once–that desire is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden. God works gradually in our lives and world, helping us grow up into the hope that is already there.

Like Mary, we magnify the Lord for already overcoming injustice and oppression–and we also work to end such evils. Mary trusted so profoundly in the reality of the baby she carried that she asserted God's fulfillment of hope in the past, present and future. Her faith challenges me to join her in magnifying God by making this hope a reality.

They might be overdone and cheesy, but there is something visceral about the collective emotion that Christmas songs tap into. Something is stirring even in all the schmaltz and sentimentality, something that goes beyond the consumeristic trappings. God shows up in the midst of all that cheese.

This week I finally allowed myself to click on the "Christmas Songs" playlist on my iPod (yes, I waited until Thanksgiving week). The songs shuffled between Willie Nelson and Enya and Harry Connick Jr. and The Wiggles. Then the player landed on U2's version of "I Believe in Father Christmas." Released two years ago to raise awareness for World AIDS Day, this quickly became my favorite Christmas song–mostly because of a one-word change Bono makes to the lyrics.

The original lyrics question any deeper meaning of Christmas and encourage people to simply enjoy the chance to be with family. The song writes off the reasons for the season as a mere bill of goods:

They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
They told me a fairy story
Till I believed in the Israelite.
And I believed in Father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise

We were apparently sold to and told until we believed. But Bono changes the fourth line to "But I believe in the Israelite." This present-tense affirmation changes everything:

We still have the trappings of Christmas and the competing narratives. But God shows up–there is room for belief. Yes, our eyes are full of cheap tinsel; yes, we can see through Father Christmas's disguise. We may not get the snow at Christmas or peace on earth–but that isn't all there is. We can say, "But I believe in the Israelite," and this affirmation provides a meaning that the season otherwise lacks–and even infuses the season's trappings with meaning. The sparkly lights, the trees, the tinsel and the songs (even the cheesy ones) can connect us with a surprisingly weighty soul language.

Obviously kings and messiahs have to be born of women, but that fact is generally overlooked. It is the great men they become that is focus of the narrative, not their humble origins as children. Perhaps if the hero of the story performed some miracle as a child or possessed great wisdom tales would grow around the events of their younger years, but usually the humble story of a woman carrying a child in her womb has no part in the stories of great men. Kings win battles, they are anointed by prophets, they inspire the people – their stories don’t start with God appearing and announcing that one woman’s world will be turned upside down.

Mary was no Bathsheba or Jezebel – women only included in the narrative for their role in destroying the great men in their lives. Mary was ordinary and yet God showed up unexpectedly in her life – and her tale ended up being told. On one hand I can lament the fact that telling the story of a woman’s pregnancy is unexpected. But I can also rejoice that surprisingly the narrative of God scorning not the virgin’s womb is part of the story of redemption.

Often in our theologizing about the role of Mary we forget the unexpected physicality of this part of the story. We want to jump ahead to the story of the child she carried or debate her role as mediator. But God does not just show up in the safe boxes of our sanitized theologies. God was in the womb. Mary’s reality – from suffering bouts of morning sickness to feeling the savior of the world kicking her lungs with an intensity that took her breath away – matters. God showed up and grew in her. It is an easy thing to overlook or skip over in the telling of the tale, but God showed up there nevertheless.

In a church that often despises the offerings of women or sees our contributions as inferior, it is important that God showing up in a womb is remembered. The ability of women to gestate and birth the divine is just as possible today as it was with Mary. Perhaps recalling that God elevated this often overlooked contribution of women can help us not be so surprised when God chooses to speak through women these days. God shows up where the culture least expects just to remind us that perhaps we should have been expecting God there all along.