Good morning, Friends! I hope you’re all doing OK this week. It’s been pretty wet and windy, but we’re all still here!
Today we’re continuing with our series on what Quakers believe. I said at the beginning that Quakers believe a lot of different things. And even if we believe in some of the same things, we live them out in different ways.
We all believe in God. We believe that God made us. We believe that God cares for us. Even if we don’t all believe the same things, we believe in God, or we wouldn’t be here.
We believe in Jesus. We believe in what Jesus taught. We believe in what Jesus told us all to do. Most of us trust in Jesus as the Savior. We might say it in different ways, but we wouldn’t be here, without Jesus.
We believe in the Holy Spirit. There are so many different ways that we experience it. Quakers talk about the “still, small voice.” We talk about the Spirit speaking in our heart. We feel the Spirit in different ways. But it’s here.
So, we’ve been talking for the last month, about things we believe.
And these things tend to group themselves. We may have a lot of different ideas about peace, but peace is something most Quakers care about. We might have different ideas about telling the truth, but truth is at the center of the Quaker movement.
I hope you all know, that in this series, I’m not trying to tell you what to think, or tell you what to do. I have great respect for every one of you. And I know that everyone has a different story.
What I’m hoping for, in this series, is to get you to think about things which many generations of Quakers have thought about. Where you come out is your business. But at least think about these things!
Today, we’re going to turn to another area. And to start us off, here’s something from a letter which Paul wrote to one of the new, small churches he started.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
If you belong to Christ, then you are all Abraham’s descendants and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:28-29
Quakers believe in equality. We believe that God made us that way.
Take it all the way back to the book of Genesis. “God created human beings in his own image; male and female he created them. . .” (Genesis 1:27)
A little later on in Genesis, it says that men and women were created to be helpers and partners for each other. (Genesis 2:18) That’s not a trivial word.
Many times in the Bible, it says that God is our helper, the one we turn to in time of trouble. In Hebrew, it’s the same word, ezer. Men and women are created equal, both in God’s image. And we’re intended, by God, to help each other, the same way that God helps us.
Anything else – any loss of equality – just isn’t God’s will.
That hasn’t always been the case. Up until the 1970’s – not so long ago! – in many states, women weren’t allowed to open a bank account or have a credit card without permission from their husband. Women in many states weren’t allowed to serve on a jury. A whole bunch of colleges and universities didn’t admit women. Women’s sports were a joke.
Women were kept out of many jobs and professions. You don’t realize how unusual it was for one of our members, Eldora Terrell, to be a doctor. Women weren’t doctors. Women were only supposed to be nurses!
That was normal. That was just the way things were.
I remember my grandmother talking with me, about when women got the vote. She marched in the streets in support of changing the Constitution. The 19th Amendment says that “the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” My grandmother was 30 years old when that was passed. But she’d been working for the vote for many years before then.
There’s a story in my family, that when my grandmother and grandfather got married, the minister asked her, “Do you promise to love, honor and obey this man?”
And my grandmother said, “NO! I will love and honor him, but I will not promise to obey!”
The minister almost fell over. But they went ahead, and they were married for 37 years, so I guess it worked out all right.
Looking back, it seems crazy to us, to exclude half the human race from being able to help and contribute to society. It seems beyond crazy for half the human race not to have a voice..
I wonder what people will think, 2 or 3 generations from now, about all the things we still put up with and accept as normal.
That’s the legal side. But underneath and before it all, there’s a spiritual side.
Quakers have said, for almost 400 years now, that women are called by God to be ministers. Almost no Christian church believed that back then, and many Christian churches still think that way.
If you look over next door at the meetinghouse Springfield built back in 1858, there are two doors on the front of the building. One for women, one for men.
That wasn’t to suggest in any way that women were inferior, somehow. Just the opposite! It was to demonstrate, that women and men are equal.
Women could be ministers. Women had their own business meeting. Quaker women controlled their own money, even sent out their own missionaries and traveling ministers.
Quakers wanted everyone in the world to know that. The different doors weren’t just a convenience. They were a symbol, a sign out in the open that everyone could read.
This building – our new meetinghouse – had only one front door was put up 7 years after women got the vote. I guess Springfield thought that the battle had been won by then. (Of course, when this building was put up, Clara Cox was our pastor!)
But you know, once you start thinking about equality, you start thinking about other places that equality might apply. It’s sort of like picking rocks out of a wall. Once one rock comes loose, maybe some other rocks start to let go.
Women got the vote in 1920 – 104 years ago. But, only white women got the vote. Black women, and black men, were excluded from voting in most states. Even now some people are still trying to keep other people from voting and having a voice.
Let’s take a look at something else. Quakers have always rejected the whole idea of nobility and titles of respect. Back in the beginning, Quakers even refused to take their hats off to people. Quakers didn’t call people Mr. or Mrs., because those words really meant Master and Mistress. We remembered a Bible story about someone who was trying to butter Jesus up. And Jesus said, “Why do you call me ‘good’? No one is good, except God alone!” (Luke 18:19)
Over and over in the Old Testament, God told his people, “Never forget that you were slaves once upon a time, back in the land of Egypt. Always treat people well – the poor, the orphaned, widows, foreigners.” (see Deuteronomy 24)
That’s equality, from the bottom up. Treat other people well, because you haven’t always been treated well. Treat people the way you would want to be treated, if you were in their place.
A whole lot of equality is simply putting ourselves in the other person’s place. Walking a mile in their shoes. Imagining if we had to live their life. If we wouldn’t like it, then don’t do it to somebody else.
And even if we resist changing the rules about equality, even if it’s not our will, ask yourself, “Would Jesus want things to be unequal like this? Even if it makes me uncomfortable, would Jesus stand up for them?”
As I said, once you start picking rocks out of the wall, other rocks start coming loose. Part of us wishes that all the walls could come tumbling down, all at once, the way the Berlin Wall did, 35 years ago.
Sometimes it takes a little longer. But Quakers have always been on the side of people who are trying to take walls down, rather than on the side of people who are trying to keep walls up.
We don’t always agree on the best way to bring about equality. Here at Springfield, everyone was against slavery. But there were some people in the meeting who believed we needed to stay within the law, while other people in our meeting worked on the Underground Railroad.
A whole lot of people in the meeting – maybe more than half – decided that the only way to oppose slavery, was to leave North Carolina, and move to one of the Free States.
After the Civil War, people in our meeting put a lot of money and effort into building schools for former slaves.
My point is, equality is a big, broad area. And most of us have to choose what part of it we focus on. But Quakers have always believed in equality. And whether a particular area is our area or not, we respect people who are trying to make things better.
We wouldn’t be here, if Paul hadn’t worked to break down a wall. Back in Paul’s day, society was deeply divided. And Christians were often maintaining those walls.
Everybody thought that the world was permanently divided. There were Jews, and everybody else. Christians were just a small breakaway group, within the Jews.
If you became a Christian, people said, you had to be Jewish. You had to obey all the rules, all the laws which people believed God gave to Moses. Every last one. It was like you had to be converted twice! Just saying you followed Jesus wasn’t enough.
Paul said, “That’s not fair. That’s laying an extra burden on people, who only want to follow Jesus.
And Paul said, “These distinctions, these divisions, aren’t anything God wants.”
As Paul put it, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are all Abraham’s descendants and heirs according to the promise.”
Paul really threw the door open when he said that. In Christ, we are all one. In Christ, we all belong to God’s people. There’s no insiders or outsiders. We are equal before God.
I’m not making this up. In another part of the Bible, the writer of James says, “My brothers and sisters, you are believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. You must not show favoritism. Suppose a person comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor person in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the person wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor person, “You – stand over there in the corner” or “Sit down on the floor,” haven’t you discriminated among yourselves? Haven’t you become judges? Haven’t your thoughts become evil?” (James 2:1-4)
This is such a big subject. And there are so many different ways we all approach it. Equality may just seem really obvious to you. Or maybe there’s some special area of equality that you struggle with, every day.
This week, my wife and I have been reading a book from the middle school section of the library. It’s about a boy who was born with serious health problems. He’s had multiple operations, and he doesn’t look like everybody else in school. Other kids make fun of him. In one chapter, some kids bully him, and smash his hearing aid. He’s smart. He knows all about his health problems. He’s scared of school. He says, “”I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an XBox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary: Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go. If I found a magic lamp and I could have one wish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all. I would wish that I could walk down the street without people seeing me and then doing that look-away thing. Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.” (Wonder, by R.J. Palacio) (Wonder, by R.J. Palacio)
That’s what it’s all about. How we treat each other. How we wish we were treated ourselves.
Equality isn’t the only thing Quakers believe in. But it’s important to us.
We may have different ideas about what equality means. And we all have different experiences in life.
But before God, we are not rich and poor. We are not white or black. We are not better, for being male or female. All of us are made in God’s image. The country our family came from, doesn’t matter to God. The language we speak doesn’t matter – God speaks them all.
We all need God’s help. We all fall short of where God wants us to be. None of us is without sin. All of us need God’s mercy. That makes us equal, in a different way.
Whatever way we feel this, whatever way we deal with this, Jesus says we are sisters and brothers. We are all children of God.
And if all this matters to you – well, you might just be a Quaker already.