Revelation

Somewhere in the winter that spanned the last months of 2000 and the ones that began 2001, I was troubled by scripture. As I worked out my vocation, I just didn't understand the passages that related to my gender. On the one hand, Joel 2 and Acts 2 sang out that when the Spirit came, both the sons and the daughters would prophesy. The legacy of such women as Priscilla, Huldah, Anna, and Deborah gave me assurance as I explored what it would mean for me to teach. I had been given a great gift of an education in God's Word, and my heart burned to share it.

I just didn't know what to think of 1 Timothy 2: I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. One of my assignments for a Pauline epistles course was to memorize the whole of Paul's letter to his young friend. As I recited it aloud, I would speed through verse 14. It seemed like such strong language. How could I reconcile my gifts and passions with this little mighty verse.

Another one of my assignments was to read a commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. I was not keen on this assignment since any previous commentary reading I'd done was wordy, boring, and above my head. So with little expectation, I began to read and found my heart strangely warmed. Over and over the author reminded me that this letter was written to a particular context at a particular time. Timothy was in Ephesus, a place where false teaching was flourishing. Women were among the ones advancing false teaching. So even though women prophesied and likely taught in Corinth (1 Cor 11:5; 1 Cor 14:26), it is best they not teach in Ephesus.

As I put the book down, I felt at peace again. And I thought, "Wow. I want to be able to read scripture the way this guy does." That guy is Gordon Fee.

I never cease to marvel at how God strings the yarns that come together and make our stories. The way people on three continents shepherded me to Regent College in rainy Vancouver. The way I heard of the legend that is Rikk Watts, a New Testament man who keeps it rooted in the Old. Then one day as I perused the school's website, I came across that guy's name again: Gordon Fee, Professor Emeritus. It was then I knew for sure that Regent was the school for me.

This last semester, my final semester, for my final course, I was able to take Revelation from Gordon. At eight o'clock, two mornings a week, my coursemates and I would nestle into the chapel, coffee cups in one hand, pens madly scribbling in the other, trying to soak up as much wisdom as we could. The great apocalypse/prophesy/letter that closes our canon became not a cryptic timeline of eschatology, but a reason for worship, a promise of restoration, a call to persevere amid suffering, a warning to not be lulled to sleep by empire, and a great vision of Christ himself that awoke our imaginations with its striking imagery. It became rooted in the first century and the churches of our ancestors in the faith, and in the hope of the New Jerusalem coming down, our restored Eden.

Last Tuesday, we listened to Over the Rhine and a sermon written by Kasemann, sang a hymn, and listened to Gordon teach us the final verses of John's vision. Then his daughter got up and told us that we had just heard his final lecture as a teaching professor.

I was reminded of a moment from Frederick Buechner's Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, page 17, when he speaks of his mentor, the great scholar James Muilenburg:

He was a fool, I suppose, in the sense that he was an intimate of the dark, yet held fast to the light as if it were something you could hold fast to; in the sense that he wore his heart on his sleeve even though it was in some ways a broken heart; in the sense that he was absurdly himself before the packed lecture hall as he was alone in his office; a fool in the sense that he was a child in his terrible candor. A fool, in other words, for Christ. Though I was no longer at Union when he gave his final lecture there, I am told that a number of students from the Jewish seminary across the street attended it and, before entering the great room, left their shoes in the corridor outside to indicate that the ground on which the stood with him was holy ground.

We hadn't had a chance to take off our shoes on Tuesday, but we did weep, and rise to our feet clapping. Thank you, Gordon for choosing the path of teacher. God has used you, and God has been present.