God gave Christianity a feminine feel

Ephesians 5
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.


In order to follow Christ, believers must become somewhat feminine. We respond to Christ as a wife responds to her husband - in obedient submission. There is no room in the church for alpha male types. Christ fulfils this role. He is our alpha.


And he delights to choose people (male and female) who delight in being beta. Compare Jesus' encounters with Nicodemus (Jn 3) and with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4). Jesus was not pleased with Nicodemus' masculine competitiveness and took him down a peg or ten. He favoured the more feminine response of the Samaritan woman.


God gave Christianity a feminine feel on purpose. Throughout history his choice has consistently been for the underdog - quiet, bookish Jacob over big hairy Esau , harp playing poet David over beefy Goliath, the village of Bethlehem over the city of Jerusalem, a stable over a palace... and now, the oppressed gender over the oppressor gender. It makes sense that Christianity has  a distinctly feminine feel. If one wants to be part of God's kingdom he/she will need to leave macho behind and  learn to submit to Christ as a woman does to her husband.     


Of course to speak of Christianity having a feminine feel is silly. I want to stay in the complementarian camp, but Mr. Piper, you are making it really hard.

Who says there are seven signs in John's gospel anyway?

Okay, so I'm trying to organise a unit of Sunday School lessons on John's gospel for term 1 next year. Ideally, it would work such that a minister could take it and organise a preaching series to run at the same time, aligning nicely. Trouble is, with kids you can't go through a book like John from beginning to end like you might with adults in church. It's too long.

But how to chose which bits to do? And would any guy actually want to follow my plan?

I'm working with 2 ideas at the moment. They've both got their problems.

1. 'I am' statements.
The unit would be called 'Who am I? Detective work in John's gospel' or something like that.
We'd do:
1. John 6 - Feeding the 5000 - I am the bread of life
2. John 9 - Healing the man born blind - I am the light of the world
3. John 8 - Dispute with the Jews - Before Abraham was born, I am.
4. John 11 - Raising Lazarus - I am the resurrection and the life
5. John 14 - Farewell Discourse - I am the way, the truth and the life
6. John 10 / John 19 - Crucifixion - I am the good shepherd
7. John 20 - Resurrection (doubting Thomas) - My Lord and my God

I could add an 'I am the vine' one, but I can't imagine how I'd teach it in a compelling way.

2. Signs

Apparently there are seven signs in John's gospel. Commentators argue over what the seven signs are. I'm not sure who came up with this number seven. Seems a bit random to me. Was John counting anyway? 

I could fairly easily do a seven signs unit. I can imagine how it would look visually. I'd make a graphic like a street sign for each week and the kids would have to tell me what each sign meant - not just which story it referred to, but the significance of it.

Trouble is, which signs?

Someone suggested this formation:

1. Water into wine

2. Healing official's son

3. Healing paralytic at pool

4. Feeding 5000

5. Walking on Water

6. Healing a man born blind

7. Raising Lazarus

The most obvious problem is that these all signs are all from the first half of the gospel. Seems wrong to leave out the crucifixion and resurrection narratives. Why isn't the resurrection a (the!) sign? Remember back in chapter 2 after the cleansing the temple incident... the pharisees asked for a sign to show that Jesus had the authority to change temple practice. Jesus said 'destroy this temple and I'll raise it in three days,' speaking about his death and resurrection. Surely that qualifies the cross as a sign...  And I'm not sure why I'd bother with the paralytic at the pool story or the walking on water incident... 

My main issues with both the signs and the I am approaches is that neither of them lets me teach a lesson on Nicodemus. And I'd really like to do that. And how cool is the snake lifted up on the pole image?