Stepping up
It takes pluck for a woman to be herself in the church. During CWM community of women and men in mission team visits Presbyterian minister Rev Marg Schrader told of releasing the mother in her ministry.
Soon after I responded to the call to ordination in 1979, I had two experiences that awoke me to feminine approaches to faith.
Rev Marg Schrader. © PCANZ
In 1982 I went to the first National Women's Convention. There an Anglican woman priest celebrated communion. I found myself sobbing as I had never before seen a woman doing that very homely act of feeding the family of God.
Later Rt Rev Dr Penny Jamieson, who was to be the first woman Anglican bishop in the world, told us that her kitchen had burnt down and she prayed: "Mother God, mother my children in their distress." Once again I was stunned at the depths of my emotions. While I for a long time had been aware of feminine metaphors for God and was using them in my own prayers, I had never heard them used publicly.
As I began to explore my own spirituality more deeply I realised that the word that most aptly described my relationship to God was "womb". He was "the God in whom I lived and moved and had my being" (Acts 17.28).
I was too scared to tell anyone about this as I thought they would think I was crazy and unbiblical. Through study I discovered that not only did Paul use the term, but it was a very familiar concept in both Hebrew and Aramaic. "Rachamim", the word for compassion, has the same root as womb. But in New Zealand, I was in a culture where Father, Lord and King were the main ways of describing God. So I lived with an almost secret life within me.
A while later, I was asked to take worship, and spoke about the pain among women in the assembly over the moderator's use of sexist language both i about God and people. I said that while for some the very best way to describe God was to use masculine terms, for others this was deeply painful and seemed as though it denied their identity as women made in the image of God.
I asked some women to bake bread at the back of assembly
The use of more feminine terms or those from nature may be just as offensive, I said. We needed to be able to live and accept each other's deep knowledge of God and perhaps even discover more of God from their experience.
At the end of that session many people came to me from across the wide range of our church and said: "The church needs you as moderator."
Male-oriented:Delegates listen at the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand assembly in 2004. Rev Marg Schrader was uncomfortable with the church 's masculine structures.
© PCANZ
The masculine structure of the assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, with its Book of Order and, "points of order, moderator" was not the sort of environment that I felt comfortable in. I was moderator from 1995 to 1996.
The theme I chose was "one bread, one body," as we were in the midst of enormous pain over the issue of homosexuals in ministry. The church was divided and mistrustful. I asked some women to bake bread at the back of assembly so that during all the assembly business the smell of baking bread wafted over the hall.
In the midst of one of the more painful periods I called the assembly to a halt and asked the women to bring the piping hot bread forward.
As I broke the bread I spoke of the way in which the body of Christ was being broken yet again as we fought with each other. Then I asked people to get up from their chairs and come and take the bread and wine and share it with those they felt they needed to.
Another time I stopped the business and told them that I felt like I used to feel when I had eight kids in the back of the car all fighting. I used to stop the car and pull over until they had stopped and made peace.
Apart from the many roles that a moderator is called to use, the mothering role seemed to be very important.