It is an odd thing not to ordain women, but it is precisely this sort of odd decision that is intrinsic to the Christian form of life. But it is not unfair. It is not unfair because the whole Church is given by an act of love, and makes possible love, which is to say, subordinating ourselves and deferring to others. Since the whole community of God is premised on an act of love, we cannot say that any particular station in it is unfair – it is all for free in the first place. The whole Church is made up of beggars who are surprised and relieved to find themselves in it at all. No one has to be in the Church, and if you really want to get on in the world, dont hang around in the Church, get out there in the world.
It is no more unfair on women that they are not ordained than it is unfair that, in the UK at least, women make up the majority in many congregations. If the Christians all wore a ribbon in their hair or stood on one leg, that would be just another of those odd things, like meeting on Sunday morning or eating fish on Fridays, that marks Christians out and makes them identifiable to the rest of the world. The Christian faith and life is full of things that seem odd at first. It takes long Christian life to discover the reason behind some of them, but that reason usually becomes plain when the Christian community really comes under pressure.
What is the reason for this odd ruling about who is ordained? The church has understood that Christ is our husband and we are his bride, and that this is played out publicly in every church service. Each gathering is a microcosm of the relationship of Christ and his Church, the groom at the head the bride before him. We are that bride. He is the male in this analogy, we the female. If you put a female at the front of the congregation that analogy and microcosm is lost, and with it a large part of the Christian teaching that the Lord is groom to our bride – which you can find summarized in Ephesians 5.
A great part of the Christian gospel is communicated tacitly by the arrangement in which the Christian people stand when they are in church together. In every church service the very form in which each congregation assembles is a big corporate analogy, a microcosm. The arrangement of the congregation of one standing before the many is the public playing out of a microcosm of the relationship of God to his creation, and to his people.
Jesus Christ is the husband of this crowd, the provider and protector of this people. The congregation plays the provided for and the protected – his bride. This analogy works if you have a male at the front and regard the rest of the congregation as his bride. Putting a male at the front says that this particular person, Jesus Christ, who became one of the two sexes for us, is our provider and protector. We are those he protects and provides for. This microcosm played out by the whole congregation is an act of anticipation (prolepsis). It is not yet the reality, but it is the beginning and in-breaking of the reality. If you put a female at the head of the congregation this long-running analogy disappears. Of course all this depends on the news that Christ is our husband is actually being preached and taught, and that the congregation is converted and baptised into this event, that Jesus Christ is the husband of the Church.
But it is not simply an equation of husband with male (for lots of males never become husbands), but of husband with an act of unlooked for love. Being a husband is an act of love, even of compassion. It is entirely God’s act of compassion, and all our acts of being husbands, parents, neighbours… are extensions of God’s act of love. It is an extension of being a generous neighbour to anyone who is without a neighbour, and who needs you to be generous to them. Your ability to be that neighbour is given to you, just so you have something to give to others, by God. God is their neighbour, and he makes you participate in this office, so you become their neighbour, and in this act, become God-like to them and for them. In the same way somebody, one person, in the congregation, is required to play out publicly the role of Christ as groom so the whole congregation can more easily understand itself as God’ s bride. It is neither unfair nor fair, but it is God’s love, unlooked for, but given anyway.
Well, I am not utterly convinced by all this myself, but at least I have had a go at putting it in writing.
