Encounter at the well: the ecumenical women's movement.

The history of women in ecumenism, e.g. the history of the Women's World Day of Prayer is a history of courageous women who have started to mature spiritually for themselves and who want to share this experience with the rest of the world. And it is a history that shows how women make "her"--story of their very own. They do it in a spiritually mature way, in spite of the dark aspects of this world like poverty, injustice, war, xenophobia and degradation of the environment. They halt the course of human history and change things for the better by overcoming the ingrained feelings of fear and inferiority, which they are experiencing every day, by reaching out to God and by sharing this experience of the human God, whose commandments make practical sense and whose love adds a new dimension to life.

It was women in ecumenism, women in the Women's Church, who dared to break out of a Church which had gone wrong and had become hard, in which they increasingly suffered from spiritual starvation. Their longing for being close to God did not find expression in places where dogmas had turned into rigid laws and where there was no more room for dancing and singing, for wailing and mourning and for community. After centuries of frustration, of feeling inferior and homeless, women--including in the Church--broke new ground and sought possibilities of reclaiming every day language and liturgical language for themselves and new images of God. They began to build a new home for themselves, sometimes even out of the Church, to reconquer the world and to do what is necessary to make it a home for all humans--irrespective of age, color of skin, religion and gender. And a home for all God's other creatures--because they share with them all the longing for wholeness and perfection before God.

Women started with language because justice and change begin with language; language shapes our thinking and actions, and language imposed and forced upon us by others makes us dependent and turns us into losers who are pushed to the fringe of the Church and of society. This is why our rebellion and our resurrection begin with new words and new songs. For centuries, women have been deprived of their roots, found neither spiritual tranquility nor omnipotence when addressing God as Father and Jesus Christ as Lord. To address God as Father may then imply that men are created more markedly in the image of God; or to address as Lord (Kyrios) no longer implies that no human should rule over others because God alone is the Lord, but it may rather turn tyrants into idols.

Both God's love and freedom and his being the image of all humanity needs to be described either in non-active terms (silence, tranquility etc.), such as in mysticism, or in all conceivable diversity (woman friend, sister, lover, mother, brother etc.) Thus it becomes apparent that God's incarnation in Jesus Christ offers salvation to all humanity--not only to the fathers and lords. God does not distinguish between different types of individuals, but everyone, both men and women, irrespective of their merits and legal status, have an opportunity to be embraced and supported by this love which is as strong as death. We recognize God in the eyes of those we are talking to, in the encounters with the others. It is in this that we find inspiration for our actions, for our commitment for democracy and justice, for our involvement in ecumenism and plurality. It is because of this very fact that we are able to accept both God's demands and God's encouragement. We trust God's promises because God is not part of an image, because God is the cause of all our knowledge and thus gives us hope for everything as yet imperfect.

Without feelings of guilt, women are now finding new similes for God, new approaches to addressing him/her: as a woman friend, as a lover, as mother, as father, as sister, as a fountain, as a root, as a well and as love, wisdom and silence. They again find words to communicate with God and at the same time free all believers of the misconception that there are right and wrong ways of worshipping God. Women find new sounds of music which celebrate in song the vision of wholeness, of the belonging together of all things living, of the indivisibility of heart and mind, reason and spirit.

Women have been the first to redefine the way in which they communicate with God. The story of the "transformation at the well" (John 4:1-42, "Jesus and the Samaritan Women") is a symbol of and an encouragement for this. As the Samaritan woman senses God's presence in her encounter with Jesus, she does not let go but cautiously continues the talk in spite of all her fears, crossing the barriers of education and self-ascertainment, exposing herself to the unknown. Jesus, a pious Jew, in turn is led to tell her, a stranger, a Samaritan woman, who is ethnically not recongnized by Judaism, as one of the very first, the "secret of the Messiah". She declares her faith in his God, his religion and the hope in the coming Messiah who is said to be born in the midst of this people which are strangers to her.

That the declaration of faith in the Messiah is provoked by a woman and that in addition Jesus reveals himself to a stranger at this early point goes beyond what has been conceivable within both Jewish and Christian religious life and belief, ethics and culture for a long time. This offers an opportunity of participating in the spiritual and ethical community to women as well. The story shows us that God's salvation is meant for all humanity and does not depend on religion, culture, ethnic background, denomination, age or gender. It is all the more surprising then that equality of gender, recorded in the New Testament from such early beginnings of Christianity, has fallen more and more into oblivion in the course of church's dogmatic and hermeneutical history.

The woman at the well offers her fellow beings, a new view of themselves and a new relationship with God. She turns from a convinced to a convincing follower. She is convincing because of her new self-assurance and because of the manner in which Jesus lovingly turns to her, and because of how God takes seriously her life story through Jesus, touches her heart and strengthens her recognition. In the end, it is not the new rites or the places of worship that count. Jesus convinces by his deeds, by the manner in which God's love manifests itself in him. Many women share with him this self-perception and the sense of truth and reality reflected in it. They try to behave appropriately in a given situation and seek to be close to God, instead of looking for laws and eternal truth. God's truth is in the process of developing. This is why they try to revoke it again and again and to experience it together in prayer, discussion, dance and dream. They try to discover as potentially enriching, what is different, even if it initially makes them fearful or gives them pain; but God's love for this world can best express itself in terms of an ever-changing diversity.

Women in Church, women in ecumenism, make this visible by drawing up common cross-denominational liturgies, by speaking up for equal rights of all Christians, both male and female, and by taking seriously and respecting the diverse context in which faith and theology find their place. It is God's intention and enrichment for our churches--as has been repeatedly demonstrated by ecumenical fellowships like the World Day of Prayer--when human beings incorporate everything in a larger community that has been good in their own culture and their former faith.

Women at the well, women as a source of love for the world are the very foundations for living together in peace not only within the Churches, but in their given local communities. They support the building-up of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious and just societies worldwide. They use increasing globalization as a means of exchanging information and of networking in a world which should become a home and a place for a secure and good life for all. And when their voices can be heard in the streets and lanes, in the churches and houses, then we will finally once more have a place in this world, and we will be courageous and strong enough to initiate change and implement it.

Sybille Fritsch-Oppermann, Ph.D. Germany