Sunday, October 25, 2026
The Biblical Texts include the following: Judges 4:1-10 and 17-24; Proverbs 31:10-31; Romans 16:1-16
The Sermon
The title of this sermon asks the question: “How long is 70 years?”
And the answer may well be from any one of us: It depends on who you ask. It depends on what’s been going on in those 70 years. And in our case, it also depends on was going on before those 70 years as well.
Today we are celebrating 70 years of women in ministry. That’s a pretty broad statement that I’d like to focus in on a little more, because as you can see from the scriptures, women have been in some form of ministry for centuries; indeed, millennia. The balloons that are floating above your heads in this sanctuary bear the names of women, most of whom appear in the Bible. Their existence may appear in short mentions, but they are all important for whatever part they played in the movement of God’s work in the world through the people of Israel, Judaism, and Christianity from the beginning of the scriptures to the end. Their numbers may have been few, but they were no less important as the lengthy narratives about male cast of Biblical figures.
The other balloons – seven of them to be exact – five of which bear the names of the women who have served this parish as your pastors, one that names a woman here who has preached in many area churches as lay preacher, and one that names the first female Presbyterian Church U.S.A. But when I say “women in ministry” I don’t mean only the women who served in a pastoral capacity. Add to those balloons the names of practically every woman who has entered this sanctuary, for so many of you have been doing God’s work for years without being given a specific credential or title to indicate the nature of your work. You, too, are women in ministry, and the descriptions on the balloons of the work these women did match the type of work you women do here in this congregation. Serving. Teaching. Offering wisdom and sustenance. Making important decisions on behalf of the congregation; for after all, every person currently serving in some capacity on Session, either as ruling elders or people with an adjunct role to fill, is female.
This brings me back to my original question: “How long is 70 years?” When you look at the long stretch of Biblical history, from some 3,000 years ago, we presume, until this day, 70 years is just two percent of the span of time between then and now. We don’t really know when the earth began. It depends on how literally we take the creation story. But as for the tribes and history of Israel and its people, even then, 70 years is but a commercial in a long TV movie. Think of all the years that have passed; all the ministry that has been done throughout the ages since Jesus walked this earth and since at least some of our recorded history was put down. A blink of an eye.
We are living in a reasonably new era of time, during which women have been handed the keys to the pastor’s office and sanctuary and the privilege of climbing into the pulpit. Most of us here have seen this happen in our own lifetimes, even if we were a bit young to acknowledge it.
I don’t want to forget the scripture readings and what they have to say. I included them because they give us a variety of ways to look at the work of women in the scriptures: how they operated; how they were advised to operate; and how they were perceived by others as necessary servants of God through the expansive era that built what we know today from the Bible. We see women warning and teaching, of cleverly fighting, of being strong and doing the work that is often given to the man to do, of being revered as important teachers and leaders in the early church.
But in those ancient days, what was the role of a pastor really like? Do we see anyone performing in the way that pastors – traditional and contemporary alike in our day – perform? Not really. The church hadn’t yet become what it is now, for better or for worse. I’m sure if we were able to take a peek at the operation of the ministries and gatherings of Jesus followers in the early first century CE, we’d see something quite different from what we see now. Would there have been buildings, boards, committees, pews, libraries, classrooms, and pulpits? No. How would women have operated within whatever structure the church had as it met in rooms and homes all around? Would there have been an order of worship? Likely not. A routine, yes, but rules had yet to be established on a larger scale to form the kinds of institutions we think of when we hear the word “church.” It would do us well to remember that use of that word in the days closer to Jesus’ actually existence on earth did not really mean what we think it means now.
How long is 70 years?
We think about the hundreds of years in which women worked behind the scenes, given roles that seemed either appropriate for them according to societal customs and expectations, or working subtly and subversively, influencing the men who were given the credit for being the permitted purveyors of God’s wisdom in the world. Women worked and had great influence. They just weren’t readily acknowledged.
And in that respect, when looking at the entire timeline of our faith, from the early Hebrews to our current Christian service, 70 years isn’t very much time. We are only just getting started.
This might lead you to wonder how I myself joined the ranks of the minority of women who chose to embark on a journey through the pulpit and guidance of the church.
As is true for most people deciding on a path in life, it was a journey. I had attended church since I was an infant and was baptized there. Going to the big, square building on the top of the hill in the tiny town of Ainsworth, Iowa was an unquestioned part of my life. The idea of not going to church was the strange thought. What else was there to do on a Sunday morning? Where else was there to spend time in classes with school friends hearing Bible stories about Jesus walking on water and reading about the treacherous and miraculous times of Old Testament figures such as Moses, Abraham, and David? It was woven into the fabric of life. Bible books at home and prayers before meals and a general belief in the existence of God was just a part of life for me; I did not consider that there was any other.
But college happened, and the idea of straying from the guidance of childhood and expectations of loved ones became a possibility. Due to the lessons I’d learned about the nature of sin and its relationship to one’s standing with God, my heart felt the gap between how I was living (which really wasn’t all that bad at all considering the many ways one could live) and how I felt God wanted me to live. Expectations of loved ones I admired and tussled with also fed into my feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy in respect to my standing before God, both on a daily basis and in the longer, endless scheme of eternity. Those questions weighed heavy on my soul in the midst of living that free life away from the rule of parents and family expectations.
And so, in my freshman year of college I felt compelled to give my life to God; to give to God all those questions and concerns, doubts and fears, and let God take over my life and the things in it with which I felt guiltily unhappy.
It was a significant moment, a turning point. From then on the message of what I’d learned about faith in God and how to remain in God’s good stead was always circling through my mind in what I read, said, and did, sometimes to the point where I drove my friends and family a little crazy. During the summer between my freshman and sophomore year I and a couple other church friends put together our own worship service that would function in a different way than normal. We had church people read scripture or give a testimony or answer a question, and of course, it also involved music. I myself, once a rather shy person, reticent to speak in classes and among adults, became more vocal and outgoing. At that time, I thought that heaven existed then and there, and life would be a breeze from then on out. Of course, I quickly discovered it wasn’t so. Needless to say, the seed of ministry was planted that day. But the idea that I myself as a woman serving as a pastor was a distant one, seeing that everyone in that role had been male. It was not really a possibility yet, though for a long time I loved being in the church building, working with church people, striving to pass on the message of God’s love that I so desired everyone to know.
Following college, I worked in a prison ministry. Part of that worked involved getting in front of people and speaking about my faith which was something that was still a challenge. As nervous as I got about doing so, I always came away from the experience feeling satisfied and rewarded. And then there finally came a time when my home church (which was a united Methodist and Presbyterian congregation) had in its pulpit a female Methodist guest minister. That was new and different. I don’t recall hearing comments one way or another that day, except that I questioned in my mind the validity of her choice. After all, didn’t Paul say in the Bible that he did not allow women to teach others? Such a silly question, as I think of it now, because all percent of all my Sunday School and Bible School teachers were women.
Then there came a day when, as I continued to do work in my own life and find a place in churches and Bible studies in places where I lived, I met a woman at my workplace who was in seminary, studying to go into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. We had long discussions about our faith and lives as Christians. At the time, I planned to become a part of an evangelical Christian organization with the hope that doing so would get me closer to a man I had a serious crush on, which only turned out to send me across the country from where he was located. Nothing in the relationship realm ever developed (though we did remain friends), but during my two years of service in the media department with that organization I had a lot of time to evaluate just how I wished to spread the news of the faith, and it seemed ever clearer to me that stepping into the role of the pastor fit well with the many gifts I had already been given and used in the many ways I’d served God in my years of life so far. Music, speaking, thinking, pondering, studying, counseling, praying, writing, and just spending a lot of time in churches with wonderful people, seemed to be a place I felt most at home.
This was in the mid-1980s. And so it was that I embarked on a journey to seminary and into pastoral ministry. It was a rocky, but rewarding journey. I was challenged in my decision by those who felt women were not God’s chosen gender to do church ministry. And though I could see that a literal translation of Paul’s words in scripture might be interpreted to support that view, I knew in my heart that the work of ministry was what God had given me the desire and gifts to do, and how could I finagle any sort of job that would fulfill those things but church ministry?
In seminary, I had much support. There were many women like me, struggling along, excited about the prospect of being on the edge of something new, as few women yet filled pulpits in those days. To me, churches that felt compelled to stick with the old tradition of male pastors were the ones who were missing out, and I was excited at the idea of being the first woman in several congregations to prove to them that there was a blessing in having a minister who also happened to be a woman.
And so here I am today, with no qualms or doubts about my ability to do God’s work, regardless of what anyone thinks or how some might interpret the Bible. “They will know them by their fruits,” and I have seen the fruit of women’s work in the church again and again, even by those who do not call themselves pastors.
And so, as you look at the balloons – there are 30, because that’s the maximum number of balloons I could fill with helium – take note of the prolific nature of women serving God. I know you simply cannot take women in ministry for granted. Both men and women as pastors and leaders have valuable things to offer, and the church is richer for it.
Seventy years isn’t very long in the great scheme of things, indeed, but those years will stretch out longer and longer. Perhaps someday the Catholics will have female priests, and maybe some churches will see God in more feminine terms and preach more on women in the Bible than ever before.
Let us rejoice in the presence of women in leadership in our church – and in every aspect of church life. Let us give thanks to God that all of us: men, women and children alike, are called to use our gifts and knowledge to bring God’s light into the world. Let us serve God faithfully with every ounce of our being. Amen.
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