Thomas J Parlette
“Invisible Influences”
Acts 1: 6-14
5/21/23
Although the first astronauts were all men, crews going into the skies these days often include both men and women. In fact, the Space X Crew 5, which launched to the International Space Station on October 6, 2022, consisted of two men and two women, and one of the women was the commander of the flight.(1)
It is, of course, a good thing that such opportunities and responsibilities are open to both sexes, but historically speaking, it has taken a long time to get there.
That seems especially clear in another “going into the sky” moment we have in our text for this morning. Today we celebrate the Ascension, the moment when Jesus was taken up through a cloud into the heavens. As though who witnessed this phenomenon stood by dumbstruck, staring into the sky – two heavenly messengers, specifically identified as “men”, spoke to them saying, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” The original Greek underlying “Men of Galilee” is andres Galilaioi, literally, “men, Galileans.” Unlike the Greek word anthropos, which is usually translated as “people”, andres denotes males only.(2)
So, is the text telling us that there were only men present at the Ascension of Jesus? Is that true? It’s possible of course, but not likely. We know from several biblical sources that there were women who followed Jesus, and some who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve and provided material support for them.
For example, Luke 8 reports that “Jesus went through one town and village after another, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene… and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susannna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their own resources.”
What’s more, our reading from Acts goes through verse 14, which plainly states that as the apostles devoted themselves to prayer, they were, “together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”(3)
So, there’s a reasonable likelihood that there were also women disciples who witnessed the Ascension, but if so, why didn’t the angels include them in their instruction to stop staring into the heavens? Is it possible that maybe the women were already moving on?
We can’t for certain, but the contemporary Israeli-born historian Tal Ilan points out that according to sociologists, young, revolutionary movements often attract women because they are anti-establishment, and that these movements search for and accept followers wherever they can find them. Ilan says that the Jesus movement fits that definition. But she adds that as these movements transition to established religions, they “often shed either their female following or at least leadership roles accorded to women, in favor of becoming more acceptable to the ruling patriarchal ethos of the broader society.”(4)
If that’s the case, the implication is that this Acts passage may have been masculinized sometime after its original composition. It’s certainly possible because the oldest manuscripts of Acts known to exist date back only to the fourth century, and textual fragments only to the third century. We don’t have the original manuscript at all.
So, there is room to consider whether or not that masculinizing occurred in other places in the New testament as well. Bible scholar Amy – Jill Levine, who is a Jewish professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, says that when reading the New Testament, we sometimes need to read the women back into the story. As an example, she tells of reading the gospel of Mark and getting all the way to chapter 15, with one chapter left to go, before finding an explicit statement about women following Jesus. She’s referring to Mark 15: 40-41, which reads, “There were many women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who followed him when he was in Galilee and ministered to him, and there many other women who had come with him to Jerusalem.”
Did you catch that? There were women who had followed him since early in his ministry – “back when he was in Galilee”- and many other women had come up with him to Jerusalem. There were women the whole time, but Levine notes that the way Mark says it – and says it so late in his Gospel – gives the statement an offhand feel, as in, “Oh, by the way, there were women who followed Jesus, too.” That led Levine to go back through Mark and “fill in” where these women might have come from. Some of her educated guesses include:
-In chapter 1, verse 21, when Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, there would have been women in the congregation.
- In verse 34, when Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases, some of those healed would have been women.
- In Chapter 6, verse 44, after the miraculous feeding of a large crowd, Mark says, “Those who had eaten the loaves numbered 5,000 men.” Matthew elaborates on Mark and says, “those who ate were 5,000 men, besides the women and children.”(5)
And this unfortunate situation of overlooking the women of the Gospel isn’t limited to Mark.
In Luke, we learn about Anna, a prophet who with the four daughters of Phillip also prophesied. She gets just a quick mention, but she is a truth-teller delivering God’s message to the world – on other words, a preacher who packed a punch. Then there’s Phoebe, who gets a quick mention in Romans, who was a deacon in the Roman church and Junia, who the Bible describes not only as an apostle, but an outstanding one at that.
A woman named Priscilla, along with her husband, is someone Paul names as a “co-worker” in Christ, and in Acts 18, Priscilla teaches Apollos, “a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of scripture.” Despite his considerable expertise, Priscilla is able to explain “the way of God more adequately” to him, and he expresses no dismay at her gender. In many of the passages where she is mentioned, Priscilla’s name is listed before her husband’s, which is significant in a culture that usually placed the husband’s name first, suggesting Priscilla, rather than Aquila, was the leader of this particular couple. It’s getting harder and harder to overlook the women in scripture.
Did you know the very first Christian preachers were all women? In all four gospels, women are the first to learn of Christ’s resurrection when he appears to them, and they are the very first people to share this news with others. Depending on which gospel you read, the first proclaimer is either Mary Magdalene, the other Mary or Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and others. Mary Magdalene is noted in all three synoptics. So, if women had kept silent in church, there wouldn’t be a church.(6)
And this tendency to overlook the women isn’t limited to the New Testament. There is no absence of strong women in the Hebrew scriptures – if you look closely enough. For instance, Deborah is named in the Hebrew scriptures as both a prophetess and a judge. The people came to her for a word from God; she leads, directs, and guides them, and no one seems to bat an eye that she’s a woman.
And there’s a woman named Huldah. She shows up in 2nd Kings, chapter 22, and in 2nd Chronicles, chapter 34. We overlook her these days – but she was far from invisible in her own time. As the story goes, King Josiah’s men were cleaning out the temple when they discovered a scroll of the Book of the Law given by Moses. Josiah asked several men, including the high priest, to go inquire of the Lord about the contents of the scroll. Who did they go to seeking answers from God? They went to Huldah.(7)
Ok – so there have been women in the Bible all along. So it seems increasingly likely that both men and women were present at the Ascension. And the lift-off of Jesus was so mid-blowing that we suspect everyone – men and women alike – were looking skyward.
But why is this so important. Why do we continue to set this story aside as a milestone in the story of Jesus and a festival day in the church calendar?
Well, for one thing, most good things do rise. Preacher and Professor Theodore Parker Ferris wrote, “The heavens always fascinate people… The early Christians looked toward heaven because they believed Jesus was there. Though their sight might have been inaccurate according to our standards, their insight was sound. They knew all good things go up, not down. Prayer is good, and we always speak of prayers going up to God, like smoke rising from bowls of incense. Jesus was good –radically and wonderfully good. When he no longer went about his accustomed ways, they knew that he had gone up, that he had ascended, because he was supremely good.”(8)
But what these witnesses to the Ascension were about to discover was that Jesus may have left – but Jesus’ mission hadn’t. When the angels asked the witnesses why they continued to stand there looking toward heaven, they were speaking rhetorically. What they are saying is really – “Why are just standing here? Let’s get going. We’ve got work to do before Jesus comes back.”
We know from the rest of the book of Acts and from Paul’s letters, that the mission was indeed launched. And the mission was crewed by both men and women. For instance, in Romans 16, Paul mentions 29 people who have been workers for Christ in the church in Rome. More than a third of those people were women, and one of them, Junia, is even described as an apostle.
And as our theology continued to evolve, women were there all along, working as invisible influencers, informing the thought of some of our most impactful Christian thinkers.
For instance, around the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion, perhaps the two most important theologians in the development of Western and Eastern Christianity were influenced by the women in their lives. Without the prayers and encouragement of his mother Monica, Augustine of Hippo’s life might have continued on a wayward track. Augustine’s impact on Christian thought and theology can hardly be overestimated, and yet his mother’s name is not nearly as recognized as his own. Still, she is acclaimed as a saint, and those who read Augustine’s Confessions are familiar with her steadfast faith and her role in Augustine’s conversion to orthodoxy.
For Gregory of Nyssa, another important theological figure, it was the influence of his sister, Macrina the Younger, that made him into one of the most renowned theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She helped educate Gregory and the others in her family. Gregory most directly credits Macrina with his work titled Life of Macrina, in which he praises her asceticism and devotion to prayer and spiritual education.(9)
So – bottom line – on this day when we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, let us acknowledge that women were right there beside the “Men of Galilee”, staring into the heavens with them.
The important thing to remember is that we are all called to carry on Jesus’ mission, even though he is not physically with us. We shouldn’t get bogged down on things we can’t know, and aren’t meant to know, like the time or manner of Jesus’ return or why it remains in a future we cannot see, but in which we must simply trust.
In the meantime, let’s read the women back in to the Gospel story and remember their invisible influence on the faith.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Homileticsonline, retrieved 5/1/23.
2. Ibid…
3. Ibid…
4. Ibid…
5. Ibid…
6. Ibid…
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8. Ibid…
9. Ibid…
