Who is at the table?

It is this simple question that our group echoed many times this week: “Who is at the table?” Who is welcome in the kingdom of God? Who is welcome with us? Who do we welcome, personally? It’s a more complex question, one that evolved as we considered it. Although we would like to consider ourselves as welcoming, even as we thought of welcoming our own bodies we recognized biases and differences in what exactly that could mean.

We read and discussed the article Resurrection of the Body: An Eschatology. Even within this article we felt the tension between what it might mean to have an African female body as opposed to our own bodies. The experience in this article included slavery, bondage, and abuse that reaches depths that none of us have experienced. Struggling with the ways in which we ourselves have been oppressed (as a group of entirely women) it was heartbreaking to consider the types of violence that these women experience.

From these perspectives it becomes more imperative to understand what it could mean to redeem women’s bodies within the message of Jesus and the promise of the Kingdom. Oduyoye writes, “Women’s hope for the resurrection of the body is also a hope that Christianity will finally come to terms with the fact that we as humans are embodied in different forms, but both sexes constitute gifts of God and that women do not have to become men to be human. It is a hope that women themselves will feel fully human in the body God has given them (111).” She writes, and we discussed the different ways that women have been considered valuable because of their ability to give birth and care for children.

As we discussed who is welcome within the church and the ways in which we exclude people, we wondered what it could be like to include women with many different gifts and talents. The hope discussed in this article is a powerful one: a dream to welcome many different sorts of women to the table. This is a process that is gradual but is also specifically committed to. As we work towards this goal, we intentionally work in ways the counteract the culture around the patriarchy. We engage in ways that welcome others who are different from ourselves. In doing this, we invite change in larger ways and angle ourselves toward a different kind of cultural narrative.

Oduyoye puts it brilliantly when she says, “The experience of the resurrection of Jesus has been the source of empowerment for the resurrection of women’s bodies, which has in turn knit together once more the integrity of women’s humanity… Resurrection does not wait for a physical end of the world, but happens any time new life in Christ is experienced (118).” It’s in this hope that women around the world continue to understand each other’s experiences and work towards the liberation of all. Fighting oppression involves many different perspectives and the unpacking of cultural differences. This is something that must be practiced continually, in an effort to fight oppression for all women.