Dan J. Brennan

Encountering Truth and Responsibility in Cross-Gender Friendships

 This is a thought-provoking, provocative point by Christine Downing on reconsidering our responsibility to the truth to occasion, to the moment, to the context, to one's own story, to communion, to the greater sense of oneness in God's story, when one "encounters" the other (potential opposite sex friend or ongoing friend). The title of the chapter this quote is found in is called "All Real Living is Meeting" (i.e. Buber).  

"I should like us to consider anew what we would mean by responsibility in heterosexual encounters, i.e. in friendships between men and women alongside of marriage. For I believe that the conventional rules of behavior do not always allow us to be responsible to that which encounters us, as a contextual ethic would do. Where the context is taken into account, responses are directed by situations and persons and not be abstract and therefore legalistic considerations. The most illuminating articulation of the situational understanding of morality with which I am familiar is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's essay, 'What is Meant by Telling the Truth?' He says that being truthful means being true to the occasion and the relationship, finding the right word for the particular other whom we address and for the situation we share...To be ethical, responsible, means being sensitive to the other and to our common situation, means finding the right expression for this personal relationship. By 'right expression' I mean to include the language of the body as well as the tongue; we seek to find the appropriate gesture as well as the right word in the strictly verbal sense. We aim to be faithful to the particular situation, to become conscious of its particularity, of what distinguishes this Between from all others."

Christine Downing, Preludes: Essays on the Ludic Imagination, 1961-1981

 

A Prophetic Call: Sacred Friendships Between Men and Women

Mark Driscoll and John Piper. Patriarchy and sexism are so acceptable in so many Christian communities. Both of these men have such power and influence in the evangelical world. Mark Driscoll's sexism is so blatant. John Piper advocates a Christianity with a "masculine feel." 

Piper doesn't see the culture he creates in a church where right and might make the world:

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Christianity: More than Just a Masculine Feel

Rachel Held Evans has asked men to respond to John Piper's claim that "God has given Christianity a masculine feel."

At one of the most pivotal points in the Christian story, Jesus chooses to reveal his resurrected self to Mary Magdalene before anyone else--before Peter, before John, before the rest of the twelve male disciples--according to John's Gospel (20: 1-10).

It was precisely a defining moment in the eschatological clock in the Christian story. All the miracles beforehand had been somewhat dimmed by Christ's death. All the stunning stories of Jesus engaging people had been overshadowed by his death. At this point in time, even his selection of twelve male disciples to follow him had come to an end. He was dead. The male disciples had all but disappeared when Jesus was hanging on the cross. So much for a "masculine feel."

There were women though who stayed around Jesus to the very end. One of them was Mary Magdalene. 

According to John, it was Mary Magdalene a woman, who Jesus meets first before anyone else in the defining moment for Christianity.  Nowhere else in John's Gospel does Jesus address a woman by her name but here. He knows Mary. She has traveled with him. In the spirit of Ruth's friendship and loyalty to Naomi, Mary went where Jesus went, even to the end in the midst of his violent death. 

Jesus revealed himself to Mary while the veil was still over every one of the chosen male disciples. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor. 3:17).  

"But now go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). Imagine Mary (keeping in mind this male-privileged ancient world) telling the 12 chosen male disciples, "Jesus is alive! He is risen! He's ascending to his Father!" 

In John's Gospel, in the most pivotal, defining moment in the Christian story, Jesus revealed himself, his presence to his friend, Mary Magdalene when no one of his male chosen disciples was around. Think about it.