Spiritual Articles 屬靈文章 by Heather Cetrangolo
I don’t know what it’s like to be a man, let
alone, a middle-aged man in today’s world. I wonder, what it is like to be a
man today? I imagine it is something of a challenge.
It strikes me that we do live in changing
times; times in which men no longer have defined roles as they once did. I
notice this a lot in my work as a lawyer. Working in family law, I see a lot of
men who are truly displaced by the experience of family breakdown, divorce,
mental breakdown and of the experience of unemployment and redundancy. Perhaps
they wonder, what is the purpose and meaning of my life if nobody needs me: if
my children only visit me once a fortnight, if I cannot provide for them
financially, if my wife can work and raise the children, and she wants nothing
to do with me … who am I? How can I be a man in this context?
Perhaps you cannot directly relate to the
experiences of many of the male clients who I see, but I suspect that you know
what I’m talking about: because you have children in difficult or broken
marriages, or you aren’t quite sure how to face retirement, or your
grandchildren speak a language that you don’t understand, and it saddens you
that they aren’t interested in going to church, or in your quiet, more honest
moments, you wonder whether the family values you grew up with have really
served you well … or perhaps you have a wife who has changed a lot since you
first met and married, and she is dissatisfied with her life (she wants more) …
and you’re wondering whether you are enough …
It seems to me, that being a man can’t be
easy … when your deepest desire is to meet the needs of your family, but
exactly how one does that, seems to be increasingly illusive and complicated.
What do women want? What are they even thinking half the time? What does it
mean to be a man in today’s world?
I don’t know all the answers, but it might
be a comfort to know that women are struggling with the same questions. Us
girls today are drowning in this pressure tank which I call “trying to have it
all at once”, because we were promised in school that there is no limit to what
women can do, that we are super-human and that we don’t have to sacrifice anything
in order to have the desires of our hearts. We can just have it all: the house,
the career, the marriage, the children … and none of this will tie us down. But
actually, there’s no responsibility in that. It’s a fool’s paradise, and it
often takes mental breakdown before a woman realizes the wisdom of Ecclesiastes
where we read in chapter 2: “I denied by
heart nothing … Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had
spent in doing it … it was all vanity and a chasing after the wind …”
So, how do we cultivate a society, and
indeed a church, in which men and woman can be healthy, valued and fulfilled? As
a woman, newly ordained, I am passionate about the church becoming a place in
which there is a better way … a place where there is good news for men and
women, and where the good news of Jesus Christ speaks directly to the bad news
of: marriage breakdown, financial crisis, workaholism, childhood development
problems, prescription drug dependency, depression, the displacement of men and
the oppression of women.
These questions matter, because at the end
of the day, we cannot separate the gospel from the flesh and blood reality of
life, and therefore of gender. Gender matters. There is no getting away from
it. I was taught at university that gender is not a reality but a mere
construction. I don’t think so. The God that I believe in made men and women,
came into the world as a man, a man who was born of a woman, and a man who
prayed to God as Father. The God that I believe in chooses human beings to be
the medium through which he loves, touches and heals the world … and that
means, God is working with and through gender.
Which means, that the world, and women in
particular, need godly men in their lives. For how can we pray to the Father if
we ourselves have never been fathered? And how can we relate to the Son of God
other than to meet him as a man?
There was a time in my life, before I met
and married my husband, Adam, where I was becoming what you could term a
radical feminist. In fact, I distrusted, even hated men. My experience of men
growing up had at times been abusive and violent … and I thought it best
perhaps to steer clear and deny the desire in me to be loved and accepted by a
man. But the Father’s love, which came to me through Jesus Christ, transformed
me out of that fear … and looking back, I have to say, that my life has been
graced by the love of many godly men. It is through them that I have come to
know Jesus and come to realize a vocation to ordained ministry. If it weren’t
for them, I don’t think I would have. Because Jesus doesn’t come into our lives
separate from people. He doesn’t therefore, come into our lives separate from
gender. We learn about him from the scripture, but it is not until the gospel
narratives take root in our lived experience, that we come to see and touch
Jesus the man.
So, all of this is a long way of me getting
to the point, which is that I want to tell you about my experience of this man
Jesus … because there is a lively debate in the life of the church at the
moment about the place of women in marriage and in leadership in the church …
and this is an important debate … but I believe a far more pressing discussion
needs to be had of how men are called to behave in marriage and in the church?
What does a church look like when men treat women the way Jesus does? How does
Jesus relate to women and express his masculinity? And do the men in our
churches reflect this kind of manhood?
The first point I want to note here, is
that if we really were to read the gospels with these questions in mind, we
might be very surprised at what we discover …
For some reason
the world has become a bit obsessed with the nature of Jesus’ relationship with
Mary Magdalene. I’m not sure why. The scriptures really don’t tell us much
about it, other than that she was clearly a very important follower of his.
There is another Mary, however, who we hear quite a lot about: Mary, the sister
of Lazarus. And the relationship that Jesus has with her seems to me
extraordinary for his time. My guess is that they were very good friends:
In Luke’s gospel
Jesus is depicted talking with her whilst her sister Martha does the housework,
breaking with protocol of his time. In John’s gospel we read that he allowed
her to pour expensive perfume on his feet and dry them with her hair … a really
intimate and extravagant and very public act of love. Jesus is not ashamed of
her. His heart was close to hers, as we read in John 11:33-35. After Mary’s
brother had died it is not until Jesus saw her pain that he himself began to
weep, it reads: When Jesus saw her
weeping … he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved … and Jesus began
to weep.
So being a man, according to Jesus anyway,
means that you know how to cry for a start. It means that you risk deep
companionship and friendship with women; the type where you feel their joy and
pain. And this is the Jesus I have come to know; a man who cares deeply and
intimately for me and who is not ashamed to show it. It is Christian men in my
life who have mediated this love to me.
As many of you would know I did grow up in a
Christian family and indeed a clergy family. My Father was ordained when I was
two years old, so, for me, there was never a time when I did not know Christ. I
can remember my first powerful encounter with Christ happened in a dream, when
I was maybe five years old. I dreamt that I had woken up in the middle of the
night, and wandered out into the hall and towards the front door. I was the
only one awake, and I heard a knocking at the door and I felt compelled to open
it. So I did. And Jesus was standing there. He had come to see me. And without
saying a word, he reached out and held me in his arms. And I loved him. And
then he put me down and gestured for me to go back to bed.
I guess it was a dream, but it was real
enough that, in a sense it wasn’t. Jesus was already a tangible reality in my
life. But his coming into my life preceded me. It began, really, with my father
and his witness to me.
My father was in his early twenties when he
first came to faith. He tells the story of waking up one Sunday morning with a
hang over, feeling lost, as though his life had no meaning .. and he could hear
from his bedroom the church bells down the street. He says, “I felt as though
the bells were calling me, so I followed the sound until I stumbled into a
little Anglican church where a service was beginning. Suddenly I felt the
strangest compulsion to walk up to the front where the sanctuary was, and as I
stood there, (he says) I felt as though someone was taking my arms from behind
my back and stretching them out in front of me.” I didn’t know what communion
was at that time, but I guess I was holding out my hands, saying “Yes God, I
need you.”
And so God picked my father up out of the
mess he was in and gave him a new beginning. It was after this that Dad met
Mum, and they have always witnessed to me, that if it wasn’t for God, I
wouldn’t even be here … that everything is given to us by his grace.
Another man who influenced me in my early
life was my God-father, Tim Wong, who would spend hours teaching my about the bible,
and always reminding me that my life’s purpose can only be found in God. Tim
spent a lot of quality time with me as a child, listening to me, cooking
Chinese food for me, and ministering God’s love to me. Later, I met Ray Taylor,
a Vietnam
veteran, who sponsored me for my confirmation. Ray also, before he died a
couple of years ago, spent hours listening to me talk about anything I wanted.
I even lived with him for a couple of years when I first left home, and he was
like a father to me in Christ.
As I grew up I was blessed with a number of
wonderful male teachers at school. One in particular who made a great
impression on me was my high school principal John Kennedy, who continues to
pray for me to this day, and even attended my ordination of February this year.
John taught me the importance of discipline and of maintaining optimism in all
things, and I was touched to discover, that he was proud of the choices I had
made in my life to serve God.
One of my good friends to this day is a
young man who I went to school with called Mark. Mark and I used to hang out
together every day from about the age of fifteen. We laughed together a lot. He
was maybe the first boy at school who treated me like I was interesting, and
who enjoyed debating ideas with me. He invited me to his church youth group,
where I experienced a new kind of love and acceptance that I had not known at
school.
It was at this youth group that I first met
a young man called Adam, who really did turn out to be influential in my life. Six
years after we first met, I married him, and the series of events that led to
our engagement, I guess could only be described as divine providence. I
remember having a profound God-moment on the day of our wedding, when I first
arrived at the church. Being the head-strong kind of woman that I am, I entered
the church feeling very cool, calm and collected about the whole thing: I knew
what I wanted and I knew what I was doing … but as soon as I saw Adam standing
beside the communion table, waiting for me … I was suddenly overwhelmed with
emotion .. I realized that God had given Adam to me … that just as my father
first put his hands out to God at the communion table, twenty five years ago, I
had put my hands out, and God had given me Adam … a man who loved me for who I
was, and who I could trust for the rest of my life.
So Jesus really is in the men in my life …
and in particular, in the countless clergy and ministry students who have
journeyed with me and supported me to become ordained.
There was Ray Sanchez, a Catholic priest
who mentored me for years, and taught me to be honest with myself, because the
truth does set us free. There was Peter Robinson, who married us and has
supported us in our marriage for the last seven years. And Ron Bundy, the first
man to tell me that he believed I had a gift for preaching.
And, of course, this year there has been a
new edition: one Chris Appleby, who perhaps against his better judgement, took
a risk and invited me to be a part of St
Thomas. Chris has been more of a sign of God’s
providence to me that he perhaps realizes, and is, I believe, a shining example
of the compassionate heart of Christ.
So there is good news! There are good,
godly men in the world, and the world needs them desperately. The church needs
them. Women need them.
For how can we pray to the Father if we
ourselves have never been fathered? And how can we relate to the Son of God
other than to meet him as a man?
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