Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 787-793). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
His rejection of domination hierarchies could scarcely be more complete than when he taught, astonishingly, “Happy are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly I tell you: he will hitch up his robe, seat them at table [literally, “have them recline,” as at a formal banquet or feast], and come and wait on them ” himself (Luke 12: 37*)!
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 800-803). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The words and deeds of Jesus reveal that he is not a minor reformer but an egalitarian prophet who repudiated the very premises of the Domination System: the right of some to lord it over others by means of power, wealth, shaming, or titles. In his beatitudes, his healings, and his table fellowship with outcasts and sinners, Jesus declared God’s special concern for the oppressed.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 807-810). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
His followers are to maintain domination-free relationships in a discipleship of equals that includes women. They must do away with the hierarchical relationship of master and slave, teacher and student.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 812-814). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The gospel of Jesus is founded on economic equity, because economic inequities are the basis of domination . Ranking, status, and classism are largely built on power provided by accumulated wealth.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 820-821). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Women received the Holy Spirit at the founding event of the church (Acts 1: 14; 2: 1) and were coequal with men in receiving prophetic gifts. They headed house churches, opened new fields for evangelism (Phil. 4: 2– 3), and were Paul’s coworkers . They were persecuted and jailed just like the men (Acts 8: 3; Rom. 16: 7), were named apostles (Rom. 16: 7), disciples (Acts 9: 36– 42), and deacons (Luke 8: 3; Mark 15: 41), led churches (Philem. 1– 2), and even, in one case, acted as Paul’s patron (Rom. 16: 2).
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 900-904). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The church’s defection from the new order inaugurated for women must not blind us to the significance of what Jesus accomplished. Humanity has scarcely begun to take the measure of his message. Biblical feminism not only is an authentic extension of Jesus’ concerns, it has made it possible for us to understand significant aspects of his message for the first time. Now it becomes clear that Jesus treated women as he did, not because he was “gallant” or “nice,” but because the restoration of women to their full humanity in partnership with men is integral to the coming of God’s domination-free order.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 907-911). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Rules of ritual purity are what keep the various people and parts of society in their “proper” place. Without purity regulations, there would be a crisis of distinctions in which everyone, and everything, was the same: women equal to men, outsiders equal to insiders, the sacred no different from the profane. There would be no holy place or holy priests or holy people. Gentile would be no different from Jew. “Clean” people would sit at table with “unclean”; no one would be better in God’s sight. Domination depends on ranking. Without such distinctions, how can one know whom to dominate?
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 924-928). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In contrast to the traditional view that uncleanness was contagious , Jesus regarded holiness/ wholeness as contagious. The physician is not overcome by those who are ill, but rather overcomes their illness. Thus Jesus touches people who have leprosy, or who are unclean or sick or women , without fear of contamination. Jesus is not rendered unclean by the contact; rather, those whom society regarded as defiled are made clean. Holiness, he saw, was not something to be protected; rather, it was God’s miraculous power of transformation. God’s holiness cannot be soiled; rather, it is a cleansing and healing agent. It does not need to be shut up and quarantined in the temple; it is now, through Jesus’ healings and fellowship with the despised and rejected, breaking out into the world to transform it. Consistent with Jesus’ position on purity, the early church tore down the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles. This reconciliation of races and peoples in God was rightly seen as the precursor of true human partnership among all the nations of the world.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 928-936). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Jesus renounces the family as constituted by genetic bloodlines, and offers an alternative: a new family, made up of those whose delusions have been shattered, who are linked, not by that deepest of all bonds, the blood tie, but by solidarity in the work of God. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3: 35). Note the deliberate omission of the father. So also Mark 10: 29– 30—“ There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields … who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”— but no fathers. That this omission of the fathers is no accident is shown by Jesus’ statement “Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven” (Matt. 23: 9) . In the new family of Jesus there are only children, no patriarchs. As feminist scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza remarks, by reserving the name father for God, Jesus subverts all patriarchal structures. No one can now claim the authority of the father, because that power belongs to God alone.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 953-961). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Paul’s surprisingly antifamily attitude in 1 Corinthians 7 becomes more intelligible in the light of Jesus’ teaching. Paul is not simply anticipating an immediate end to history; he is trying to disentangle believers from the most profoundly soul-shaping institution in human society. Some Corinthian women may have found welcome relief in being freed from having to marry, bear as many as fourteen children, and live a life restricted to the household. Paul may have been closer to the mind of Jesus here than he has been credited with being.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 968-972). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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