The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one. Good odds for any Greek. This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny — and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine. Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave three hundred — to victory.

I know it’s a comic book version of history, but I am irresistibly attracted to 300 — both Frank Miller’s graphic novel [i.e., comic book for “grown ups”] and the movie it inspired. Forget the poetic license (we don’t know why the shepherd Ephialtes betrayed the Spartans, we don’t know how King Leonidas’ wife supported his campaign back home, we don’t know if the doomed king made anybody like the above-quoted Delios return home to tell the tale and marshal support for the next campaign) — 300’s license is no greater than Braveheart’s. Forget the over-the-top visual and auditory reconstruction — yeah right, the Spartans fought with exposed six-pack abs and celebrated to heavy metal music while Zeus punished the Persian navy. The genre is Classics Illustrated on steroids — perhaps literally to judge from how buff this Leonidas and his Spartan warriors are.

The fact is: Europe came close to capitulating to Persian conquest in 480 B.C. — save for the time purchased and the example set by 300 brave Spartans (and others, to be sure) who perished in the shade of Persian arrows (a line Frank Miller takes directly from Herodotus) at Thermopylae. Fictional though the character is, and fictional though his lines are, Delios’ (and through him, Frank Miller’s) homage is apt.

“Huzzah!” for the 300 who didn’t come back, either “carrying” or “on their shields” (another great line Miller took from historical sources — this time from Plutarch). And “Huzzah” for leaders who understand the stakes are as high for us today. I’m glad I’m not “The Decider.” I don’t know if George W. Bush was naive about how much harder winning a peace would be than winning a war. I do know brave men and women are giving it their best shot … in that regard, I commend, in passing, Peggy Noonan’s piece “To Old Times” in the Wall Street Journal (8/25/07; Page P14), her own “Huzzah!” to American soldiers in Iraq: “I always notice the pictures from the wire services, pictures that have nothing to do with government propaganda. The Marine on patrol laughing with the local street kids; the nurse treating the sick mother. A funny thing. We’re so used to thinking of American troops as good guys that we forget: They’re good guys! They have American class.”

Anybody who has questions about what has been at stake at least since the attempted bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and its actual destruction in 2001 would do well to read the Christian sociologist Jacques Ellul’s impassioned and insightful The Betrayal of the West (Seabury Press, 1978), a plea for a defense of what is good in Western civilization. Ellul understands two things many pundits don’t. First, he understands that the contemporary war against the West began before 1993 and that it was launched by voices internal to the West (but that’s not the subject of this posting). Second, he understands that what makes the West worth fighting for is that it itself succumbed to a more lethal attack from the East, an attack that followed Xerxes’ by half a millennium.

According to Ellul, a smaller but deadlier army came against the West when the Apostle Paul, in Turkey at the time, had a nighttime vision of a Greek pleading for him to cross the Aegean Sea and bring the good news of Jesus Christ from Asia to Europe (Ac 16:9-10).

As Ellul puts it:

Upon this vision the specific character of western civilization depends; at this moment the mystery peculiar to the West and the contradiction that runs through western history come into being.

Imagine Christianity expanding toward the East instead of toward the West. The result? Western history would have been radically different, proving that all the major historical events were secondary in comparison with Paul’s dream. If the Persians instead of the Greeks had won at Marathon [ed. note, where Xerxes’ father, Darius had been turned back in 490] or Salamis [the turning point of the campaign against Xerxes some months after Thermopylae], western civilization would not have been different. …

If, however, the Mediterranean world had remained pagan, had developed according to its native genius, and had expanded under Germanic auspices, how differently the West would have turned out! The course of history would have been radically altered if the western will to power had been given free rein, unhindered by a bad conscience. The Middle Ages would have been different, and so would capitalism. Paul’s vision was thus the crucial moment for western civilization. It was the moment when God took radical action in the political and intellectual spheres. (pp. 73-74)

Beginning the day the Apostle’s feet hit European soil, God’s self-giving agape has been conquering Europe’s eros, its pride, and its autonomy. Jesus’ ambassadors came in love rather than imperial arrogance, but they came nonetheless with a demand as fundamental as the Persians’ “earth and water”: “There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Ac 4:12).

So, “Huzzah!” indeed for King Leonidas and Sparta’s brave 300. But “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” for ambassadors of the King.

For my friend Richard Pratt who tirelessly urges American evangelicals to prepare for the coming conflict with Islam.

For courageous African Anglican bishops who extend the agape of pastoral care to U.S. believers whose church leaders have reverted to pre-Christian eros.

For Emad (not his real name), formerly in the personal guard of the deposed head of state in what was once Xerxes’ Persia, who trains for gospel ministry in exile praying for the day he can return home. For Fadilah (also not her real name) whose Mideast politician-father was martyred for his Christian faith and who herself lives and ministers in the Mideast knowing she may pay the ultimate price as well.

For Joyce (her real name), my administrative assistant, who took Jesus’ footwashing example to the Mideast and found, to her delight, that Christians there were eager to take this modeling of Jesus’ cruciform life to Christian neighbors elsewhere in the Mideast.

For countless Christians in China, many of whom worship in secret as they prepare for their own missionary campaign to their west — places where we Westerners have long lost our voice.

Whatever the odds against us, they are paltry to King Jesus and his brave three hundred. As Frank Miller’s graphic novel concludes: “The order is given. The battle flutes play. To victory — we charge.”

Women, more especially,—in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,—came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. (ch. 24)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter revolves around three sinners who respond to their sinfulness in wildly different ways and with wildly different results. The adulterous pastor Dimmesdale hides his sin, and nearly loses his soul in the process. The sinned against physician Chillingworth never forgives. Instead, he grows obsessively vengeful and finally becomes devil’s food. Hester Prynne owns her guilt, accepts the full consequences of her sin — and even goes the second mile, so to speak, by generously (if misguidedly) protecting the identity of both her paramour and her husband. In the end, she emerges with a quiet radiance about her. She becomes a magnet for others whom sin has left “wounded, wasted, wronged, and wretched,” especially women. She can comfort and counsel chiefly because of her crucible.

It was impossible for me to read The Scarlet Letter and not burn with Hawthorne’s anger at a world and a church that suffered the male pastor’s hypocrisy and the male physician’s duplicity at the sinful woman’s expense. Yet the world Hawthorne longs for in the future — one in which “the whole relation between man and woman” is established “on a surer ground of mutual happiness” — I find in the new creation Jesus came to inaugurate in the first place. How sad that it remains so elusive.

Jesus comes to an adulterous woman’s defense, demanding that the sinless among the (male) scribes and Pharisees throw the first stone, and setting her free when her accusers wither at his challenge (Jn 8:1-11). Jesus accepts the hospitality of Samaria’s infamously five-times-over serial-adulteress (Jn 4). Jesus allows the up-close-and-personal touch of a woman who is marked out only by the moniker, “a sinner” (Lk 7:36-50). Jesus chooses women as first to witness his resurrection, and with his “Go tell …,” makes them, if you will, apostles to the apostles (Mt 28:1-10). Surely, this is part of what he did to “make all things new” (Rev 21:5).

Even the apostle Paul — whom Hawthorne’s Puritans would arguably have considered more an authority anyway — sees a different and new place for women in Jesus’ new creation. Paul notes approvingly the fact that women are praying and prophesying in church — a sign of the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that the day would come when God would pour out his Spirit on all people (1Co 11:2-16; Joel 2:28-32; and cf. Ac 2:16-21). He calls Phoebe a “minister,” employing the same term he applies to Jesus, to himself, to Timothy, and to what appear to be junior officers in the church — in fact, he (at least as I understand the text) lays out in his first letter to Timothy specific requirements for women who are to fill this office (Rom 16:1; 15:8; 2Co 3:6; 1Tm 4:6; 3:8-13, and note. v. 11). He may number a Junia among the “apostles” (interpreters disagree) in the same way Luke numbers Barnabas among them (Rom 16:7; Ac 14:4). Paul accepts the hospitality of Lydia, an unattached, business woman — no doubt one of those “new Roman women” whom Bruce Winter’s scholarship has brought into relief (Ac 16:14-15). And so important are his women Philippian “coworkers” Euodia and Syntyche — “who have been fellow athletes with me in the gospel” (to render his phrase overly literally, just to make the point) — that he urges their reconciliation for the sake of the ongoing ministry (Php 4:2-3).

To be sure — if I correctly understand two passages in Paul’s letters, 1Co 14:29-63 & 1Tm 2:9-15 — there is a point of demurral. A point at which women in the church defer to, as an Episcopal bishop recently put it to me, “a male presbuterate.” But what that point of demurral is isn’t obvious. And I would submit that according to Jesus and Paul, it’s not the first thing you look for. In fact, you only realize what it’s there for in an atmosphere that is alive with men and women co-laboring together in the gospel ministry. There have to be a thousand ways ecclesiologies can respect the dance that Paul envisions — and the whole argument about “ordination” is altogether beside the point.

In the last few years, I’ve been blessed with a number of relationships and models that have made it more important to me to urge us all to work harder to approximate the world of vibrant male-female co-laboring in ministry that Paul experienced and promoted.

Just for starters …

There’s Carla Waterman, with whom I team-teach in the Robt. E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies. Carla is the sister I never had. It’s amazing to me the way she completes my sentences. My, “That you may have life,” inevitably leads to her, “And that more abundantly.” My, “That reminds me of a carburetor that’s got too rich a mix of fuel and air,” invariably prompts her, “You know, it’s like your yard is a jungle you want to make into a garden.” Carla says she looks to me for grounding. I look to her for wings.

There’s Carolyn James, whose books, When Life and Beliefs Collide and Lost Women of the Bible, boldly, biblically, and astutely encourage women to become students and sharers of God’s Word regardless of the shape of specific vocation.

There’s Geri Scazzero who complements her husband Pete’s (author of The Emotionally Healthy Church and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality) voice so nicely, if forcefully — using her public strength to urge him to protect her by telling people the truth, not necessarily what they want to hear.

There’s Vicki Taylor, my co-laborer at Orangewood Presbyterian, whose own tutelage in Christ’s school of suffering gives her a whole-souled winsomeness, whether she’s singing or counseling or mothering or speaking in public.

Of course, there’s Shari, my wife, who has chosen to teach her sons at home, all the while supporting my various ministries — nobody will ever know how much of what I teach or write that is of any value has really come from her.

And, finally, there are any number of women who have come to a testosterone-rich RTS/Orlando for training in ministry. Often from left-of-whoopee denominations, these sisters have convictions that have led them — often in defiance of church officials — to come to us for training that is theologically orthodox. They do so just so they can stand in pulpits that otherwise would be sub-orthodox. Their courage shames me because, unlike them, I’m in a theologically “safe” denomination — gee whiz, the most courageous thing I’ve done in years is force my eyes to accept contact lenses. But these sisters’ bravery bespeaks the promise that Jesus is not finished with his new creation.

What follows is the republication of a tribute I offered earlier this week at Common Grounds Online to my departed (too late in life) friend and mentor, Robert Webber. The blog is based, in part, on comments I offered this past June in a discussion at the Institute for Worship Studies.

A few — a very few — people you get to know in life are larger than life. The force of their character seems to enlarge a room when they walk into it. Of course, larger than life people can either be “black holes” that suck everything and everybody into themselves — you get smaller because they’re there. Or they can be “suns” that make everything and everybody else shine brighter — you get larger because they’re there.

Bob Webber was larger than life in the latter sense. He went on to glory this spring, and I’ve spent a lot of quiet time this summer parsing his passing. He made me shine brighter and feel larger, and I’ve been trying to understand why.

A lot of what made Webber an enlargingly large presence comes to light in the last book that was “in the pipeline” before he became ill, Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives (Zondervan, 2007). (Happily, during his illness, Bob was able to write quite a bit, and so this is not the last book we will see.) I’d like to offer some observations (reader beware: this is not a review … so not only will you be spared any ending-spoiling revelations, you’ll also be spoiled any real plot analysis … suffice it to say, Webber assembles essays on theological concerns by “emergent” leaders, from right to left: Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, and Karen Ward).

To begin, there’s the existence of the book itself. Listening bespeaks the “Blues Brothers” heart of Bob Webber. Jake and Elwood Blues didn’t get the band together because they wanted to hear themselves play — they got the band together because God gave them a mission to save the orphanage. In the latter part of his career Bob Webber spent an exceptional amount of his energy giving voice to a future generation. He put together the Institute for Worship Studies so ministers of music could receive doctoral training in theology. He launched the Ancient-Future series (Faith, Time, Evangelism) so we might all learn from the post-apostolic church. And he wrote two books that were explicitly about hearing from voices of a generation following his own, The Younger Evangelicals (Baker, 2002) and Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches. In this last book, especially, the breadth of Webber’s spirit comes to expression. It takes a guy who could graduate from Bob Jones and spend his early teaching days at Covenant College & Seminary to appreciate what a Bible-bullet shooting (and “emergent” label eschewing) Mark Driscoll contributes to the emergent conversation. And it takes a guy who has come to learn from feminine voices and to prize African Americans’ experiences to make sure Episcopal priest (and congregant-quoting, theology-as-recipe-quipping) Karen Ward is part of the conversation. It’s amazing to me how persistent Bob was in his belief that discordant voices in the body of Christ will ultimately yield harmony — to him, first and last, the body of Christ is the body of Christ. I love him for that..

To follow this last comment, Bob Webber keeps calling us to see “both/and” where we are inclined to see “either/or.” Emerging from the inharmonious voices of Listening are three desiderata of my own:

First, I want a view of Scripture that is as bold and bracing in its formal acceptance of the authority of Scripture as I see in Driscoll, Burke, and Kimball (voices more to the right and center) — and I want a view of Scripture that is as bold and bracing in its functional submission to the authority of Scripture as I see in the way Pagitt tells Scripture’s story in his argumentation and in the way Ward presses Scripture into the people under her care in the liturgy at her church (voices further to the left).

Second (a “both/and/and” that sort of emerges from the previous point), I want a style of doing theology that is a bit of a mix of all five of these writers. Despite the tensions that necessarily emerge, we need a perichoresis (to use an early church term that means something like “dance”) between three ways of thinking and being. To borrow from my friend and colleague John Frame, I long to see a Trinitarian way of being theologians:

• as existential/personal/candid as at least 4 of these 5 seek to be, and
• as attentive to the cultural/social situation as, say Pagitt and Ward, try to be, and
• as unapologetically submitted to the authority of Scripture and the creeds as each of these tries to be in his or her own way.

Third (also, a “both/and/and”), I wish we could agree that the atonement is not either Driscoll’s & Burke’s (and I think Kimball’s) substitutionary model (taking care of the guilt of violating God’s commandments and invoking his wrath) or Pagitt’s and Ward’s relational at-one-ment model (God-moving-towards-us to remove our alienation and shame), but is precisely both these because of a third dimension of the atonement. Christ is, as Bob Webber says, “victor over the powers of evil — the powers that were bound at the temptation, dethroned at the cross, and to be destroyed at the end of history” (p. 215, emphasis mine). Three wonderful benefits accrue to us at the cross, Jesus substitutes his righteousness for our unrighteousness so we are no longer guilty, Jesus embraces us in our woundedness and reorients us in our shame to his love and to love of neighbor, and Jesus inaugurates the glorious Kingdom he empowers us to actualize in his name. We are silly to settle for less than the full package.

One final word of thanks for what made Bob Webber enlargingly large: it was the way he bore in his being the “eternal weight of glory” for which he was being prepared. Bob was a Jesus-soaked man. And it was the full Jesus, the one who was book-ended by two exquisite musical selections at Bob’s memorial services: the rejected, emaciated, sinner-loving Jesus of the “Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, and the triumphant, one-day-to-return, sinner-saving Jesus of the “Hallelujah, Amen!” from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus.