Casa Grande Dispatch from Casa Grande, Arizona • Page 6

6 Casa Grande i DISPATCH Friday, April 5, 1974 During Holy Week Luncheon Series Feature Devotionals Rev. Raymond Wilson (left) Trinity Baptist Church discusses schedule of devotional speakers for the week-long tencbeon series with Rev. James Olnkel, Casa Grande United Methodist Church. The Holy Week series win begin at noon Monday at (he Woman's Club. Hie public is invited to attend the luncheon and services each day.

There is no charge. An offering 'Kill be taken for the work of the Casa Grande Ministerial Alliance. Photo) Noonday luncheon Holy Week -services will be held for the community once again this year at the Woman's Club, Florence Blvd. at Sacaton streets. Special devotional 'speakers on the events of Passion week include Monday, the Reverend James Dinkel of the United Methodist Church; Tuesday, the Reverend John Allt of St.

Anthony's Catholic Church; Wednesday, the Reverend Raymond Wilson of Trinity Baptist Church: Thursday the Reverend Paul Bright of the Church of God and Friday the Reverend C.H. Maddox of New Hope Baptist Church. Lay leaders for the week are Frank Mejia of Emanuel Baptist Mission, Sam Roebl of the Church of the Nazarene, J. David Grooms of the Christian Church, Tom Jepsen of Trinity Lutheran Church and Mrs. Shirley HaB of the First Presbyterian Church.

The luncheons will be prepared by women from St. Peter's Episcopal, the United Methodist, First Presbyterian, New Hope Baptist, Calvary Baptist, Trinity Lutheran, Church of the Nazarene, Trinity Baptist, the Christian Church and St. Anthony's Catholic Church. Musical messages include choirs from St. Anthony's school and New Hope Baptist and soloists, Lester LeMay, Nathan Davis and Donna Elliott.

The services will be from 12:05 p.m. to 12:55 p.m. each noon. There is no charge for the luncheon but an offering will be received for the work of the Casa Grande Ministerial Alliance. "It is hoped that working people who are able to come during their noon hour will join the others who come, to make this a united reminder of the real reason for celebrating Easter," says William Sch- melder.

president of the Alliance. Paul M. To Speak Monday Paul M. Witmer of San Acacia. N.M.

will be guest speaker at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Francisco Grande Motel in Casa Grande at the meeting of the Pinal Chapterof Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship. Dinner will be served at 6:30 and reservations may be phoned to 723-4829 or 723-5845. A traveling gospel worker, Witmer graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA degree in theology. He teaches the word of God in churches, ranches, private homes, and Indian Reservations.

Bike from Phoenix 'Wheelers' Spark Cancer Kick-Off Four disc jockeys from Phoenix and Tucson radio stations riding in the ''Great Arizona Bike I Race for Cancer" will head for Francisco I Grande Hotel, Gila Bend Highway tonight to help kick-off the West Pinal Unit Cancer Crusade i The four, Steve Martin and Larry Daniels ol i- Phoenix, Greg Albright and Dan Gates of Tucson, started from the Phoenix City Zoo today at noon. The route will go through Tempe. Mesa and Chandler. On Saturday morning the riders will head for Tucson. Total distance covered will be 140 miles.

A time clock will be used each day to mark the difference in time at the end of each ride The bike race will end Sunday afternoon at the Pima County Fair, Tucson. Prizes will be awarded to the winning rider and station. Four Casa Grande Valley riders have announced today they will take up the challenge set- by the out of town bike racers, John and Marilyn Sowers, Jerry Halfmann and Vicki Hudson will race on bikes for a distance of SO miles to raise funds for the Cancer Crusade. Al Chew, Crusade Chairman is currently enlisting financial backers and completing arrangements for the date of the ride and the final destination. Jesus Gives Recognition to Women as Persons haspd tvoe sa'd.

that ne wil! me again in nftarkably. to a woman, Editor's note: This article, made herself the way she was; the second in a five-part Easter God had and nature, and precedes about Jesus' liberating sumably it was how she was supposed to be. She just didn't conform to the conventional female function- By GEORGE W. CORNELL WMVKU MMQ view of women, deals with his squelching of a female stcr- AP Religion Writer Stridently or subtly, toe idea has been perjietuatec! women's work is Many of them have overrun those bounds in modern times, but the notion tangs on, vociferously or softly, directly or roundabout. "They should stay in their place," the saying goes, and generally that means the kitchen.

It was the blanket rule in ancient times, continuing down through the ages in varying degrees. Women were expected to stick.to the wold to keep house and get dinner on the fable. It was the overwhelming in Jesus' day. But on an occasion when he was specifically urged to affirm be crisply repudiated it. The masculine-dominated environment in which he lived was so steeped in the view that women belonged strictly in the home that one Jewish scholar of the times, Philo, maintained that women ought not to leave their households except to go to synagogue.

Esen there, they were segregated and were not counted in making up a quorum, being classified with children and slaves who also were not qualified. Similarly, at the Temple in women were restricted to a woman's court five steps below the Court of Israel for men only. Women were not included in the synagogue schools, and mere was no chance at all for mem to enter thf professions or the academies to study philosophy, law, history, writing or other matters. Even at home, in thoughtful discussions among men, women were out of it. But Jesus contravened (hose norms, including the stereotyping of strictly as household labor.

"Jesus was a woman's advocate," 'writes theologian William E. Phipps. "Unlike Con- fucious, Guatania, Hillei. Mohammed and Aquinas lo single out a few top-ranking religious geniuses of world culture Jesas attempted to break the domestic drudge mold in which woman has commonly been cast." The case in which he explicitly rejectee! the kitchen- bound convention for women involved a young suburban woman, Mary, and her sister, Martha. He loved them both, John 11:5 notes.

But there was a sharp difference between them, projected in the following scene: Slamming thf door. Mars bolted from hotse and headed toward 3 wooded knoll where she often retreated to gatlier her wils when these 'tempestuous moods ca-nc over her. She had to get awaj. to break free, to fly from smothering demands thai siv be "womanly," thai siw KIU in and subscribe the dome.stu pattern. She just didn'i fit She was her own person, ar- individual Her pare slowed she climbed the hill behrwl tU'ir borne in Bethain.

im tin- oui- sktrtsi Jeruta ICHI hadn'! alism. Oh, she could manage the routines. But they didn't interest her the washing, mending, grinding, cooking and serving. Certainly she couldn't match Martha's fervent proficiency at it. And Martha continually chided her about it.

Outbursts didn't help, though Her fury subsiding, Mary regretted the sharp argument with her older sister about it, the tension that had driven her from the house. The issue had arisen again because guests were coming, including their beloved friend, Jesus. She wondered. How would he says, she "was distracted with much serving." But Mary, that imaginative, independent-minded sister, had followed her own inclinations. While Martha rushed about, replenishing the wine, bringing bowls of boiled lentils-, salted fish and olives, fetching more loaves, warming the fig cakes in the oven to have them hot and ready, Mary sat on a floor cushion, listening to the men's conversation.

It was the customary posture of a disciple of a teaching rabbi to sit at his feet, but only men were deemed suitable for it. Yet Mary sat there, engrossed in the table talk of Jesus and his men, fascinated by his free, fresh way of amplifying life's possibilities and promise. He made it a tremendous jt7 venture, a great, open vista, of To her, there should be wider limitless opportunity and hope, possibilities for women than There certainly was more to it being mere handy, household than pantry pots and smoky appendages, even though ovens. Of course, Mary knew society had pigeonholed them she was flouting the womanly as that as housekeepers and formulas by sitting in on the conversation. It was considered undignified for men to share their discussions with women.

As the rabbis warn, he "who speaks much with 'a woman draws down misfortune on himself, neglects the words of the law, and finally earns hell." Moreover, women weren't supposed to be instructed in Scripture. According to a rabbi of that period, Eliezer, "whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who her lasciviousness." But Mary, with her questioning, exploratory mind and willful ways, sat there, utterly absorbed, taking in the observations of Jesus, his clarifications of Scripture, his vision of human grandeur and the infinite put him on, asking him to arbitrate a personality clash between two dose friends, the one conventionally domestic and dutiful, the other a thinker and dreamer. As Jesus, sized it up, despite contrary assumptions, women need not be chained to the kitchen, and obsession with it could be crippung. To him, there were other more important concerns of intellect and spirit to which women were entitled and fee pursuit of which he commended. It was a stunningly novel view in those days of almost universal restriction of women to the housekeeping niche.

On another occasion, as re- lated in John 12, when Jesus was dining at the house in Bethany, the impulsive, adoring Mary took a jar of costly perfume and anointed Jesus' feet and hair. An apostle rebuked her for it, saying the money spent for the ointment should have been given to the poor. But Jesus defended her, saying it was a loving deed. "Leave her alone," he admonished. In upholding Mary's particular qualities, however, he did not set them up as the only womanly format, any more than he accepted housework as woman's only calling.

He simply rejected the habit of limiting women to a uniform, sex- based type. In fact, it was to Martha, the diligent, bustling housekeeper, that Jesus disclosed one of the most telling dimensions of his ministry. This happened, as related John 11, when the two sisters summoned him to help their brother, Lazarus, who was ill. Delayed in getting there, Jesus found that Lazarus already was four days dead, the circling march of thp funeral mmirners in the fourth of seven days, their wailing chant filling the air. Martha, grieving, distraught.

came rushing down the road to meet Itm, chiding him for being late, but still having faith he could help. "I know," she said, "that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and- the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he you believe this?" "Yes, Lord: I believe that you are Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." The exchange with a woman sums up the core of Christian conviction, both of Jesus' redeeming role and human faith in it. His keynote declaration, the only time the gospels that he uses that phrase which has echoed down the centuries "I am the resurrection and the life" was delivered, re- markably, to a woman, aa agitated, fussy housekeeper, Martha of Bethany. COME WORSHIP WITH US AT TRIfflTY BAPTIST GNURGH Trskell Rd- a- Trinity PI. 8362383 l.rep.iratld'r: Flaase 836 2512 Raymond A.

Wilson, Pastor Semion Toon. The Joy of.tbe Mi Wan SOi-'t-ne Baptist in- for c'h i 1 diearers, without telligence or competence anything else. Mary paused beside the stony pathway, kneeling to examine a pink flax blossom, its stem thrusting determinedly through a crevice in a rock. Such a lovely flower, yet tough, versatile, surmounting its situation. She went on to the hilltop, hoisting herself up on the branch of an cypress tree there, her private musing place.

The Kidron valley spread out below, and beyond that the city and the gleaming alabaster spires of the Temple. -So God created man in his own and female he created them," the book of Genesis put it. The same "image the same sacred imprint, blessedness of human exis- the same hallowed human dig- tence. He was wonderful, roty and high potentiality. But She hadn't noticed Martha, why didn't the world accept it? except as a sort of whisking Shortly, Mary returned to the movement to-and-fro in the house, 'in time to welcome background, carrying, lifting, Jesus and his men.

"Shalom, removing and filling, always my sisters." They embraced in rushing, until the older sister ttw Jewish manner, kissing stood there beside the table, each other -on the cheek, her harried face tense, a lock -Blessed be your coming," The of hair falling over her per- women's house was a favorite spiring brow, stopping place of Jesus. She spoke insistently to Marthj had the footbowls Jesus, "Lord, do you not care removing their sandals, that my sister has left me to rinsing their dusty feet and serve lone 1 Tell her then lo help me." Jesus Ipamng OP arm, looked down at Mary, so attejitne and hopeful, then back at Martha, so industrious stoking the fire, bringing gob- and harassed, both of them lets and a pitcher of cool water, dear to him. He raised himself lighting the candles, arranging to a sitting position and said the cushions on the dining gentl): couches the iricliniums. "Martha, Martha, you The men stretched out on the anxious and troubled about sloping couches, the highest many things. One thing is need- end near the table, which was ful." His gaze shifted lo Mary, surrounded on three sides, leav- 'Mary has chosen the good iitg one side open for serving, portion, which shall not be tak- tthich Martha feverishly set en away from her." ahwit rlnmc As 10-40 it had been a rough spot to wiping tliem with a towel, Mary poured water from anoth- cr basin for their hands.

They were soon inside, and already Martha was scurrying about, REVIVAL Casa Grande Church Of God Starts Sun, Apr. 21st, 7:30 Nightly Gome hear the unusual ministry of Rev. Dewey Baldwin of Greenville, Tenn. THE ENERGY SAVER HOME It's the kind of home you'd expect from Singer. Here at Casa Grande Vista, we've been building environmentally-planned homes designed to save energy long before the current crisis For example, a Singer home exceeds the rigid, energy-conserving specifications set by the FHA This coupled with the quality insulating materials we use, assures you that there isn a house built that will make energy go farther.

If you would like a more thorough explanation of how a Singer Energy-Saver home is the home you should be looking into just talk with our salesman. He's ready to answer any questions you have now. Look into owning a big, beautiful 3 bedroom Singer home, complete with dining room. Then look at the low price: only Grande A name you Singer Housing Company i' 7.1 Uv CHUT Mudt-'s kilo 7 qu.J 1 Hoi vna Bu'd'T.