Jesus & Women
Luke 7:11-17, Luke 8:1-3, John 4:1-30,39-44,
When Jesus, the eternal God in the form of a Jewish man, began his ministry in Ancient Israel, He entered a culture where political and social status were everything, to the religious and irreligious alike. He lived in a time where a person’s race, wealth, social standing, and gender determined how their life would be. Jesus flipped this social construct upside down through His life and the redemptive and restorative teaching He shared. He showed that He came to restore and redeem all peoples contrary to what was the accepted norm. Through looking at the way that Jesus interacted with women in the span of His ministry, we can get a clear view of who Jesus is and His heart for all people.
During the time of Jesus’ ministry, women in particular were viewed as second class citizens. In fact, when Jewish men would pray, they would often recite “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not created me a woman, a gentile, or slave”. Women were not even taught the Torah. Women were automatically in a position where their interactions with the God of the universe was extremely limited, that is, until Jesus intersected the story.
In Luke 7, starting at verse 11, Jesus is continuing His journey throughout ancient Israel, and enters the town of Nain. There, He comes face to face with a woman who is grieving her only son and is on her way to bury him. We don’t know a lot about this woman other than she recently lost her only son and she is a widow which would have most likely left her socially and economically disadvantaged. Immediately, when Jesus saw her, “...He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”” (Luke 7:13). Without her asking Him, Jesus miraculously heals her son. He makes a statement here that He is God and He has come to heal all types of people, not just those with power or wealth.
Later in Luke, we read that along with the 12 disciples, Jesus is accompanied by “...some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.” (Luke 8:2-3). In this day and age, it was common for a Rabbi to choose a young Jewish man to become an apprentice of his. This would allow the young man to learn of the Lord and to study the Torah. When Jesus invites the women to accompany him, this is what He is doing. Normally this opportunity was not extended to women of the day. Jesus not only healed women, but also invited them to accompany him in his ministry.
Along his ministry journey, Jesus stops at a well to get a drink. Here He meets a Samaritan woman. Jewish people at the time were very divided from the people of Samaria. The people of Samaria were considered unholy by Jewish people due to their traditional worship of pagan idols. In addition to that, this particular Samaritan woman was living in sin with other men. She was not only an outcast to Jewish society, but she was also an outcast in her own town. We know this because she was at the well in the heat of the day rather than in the morning when most other women would go. Jesus approaches her, talks with her, and calls her out of her sin. What’s even more groundbreaking about this interaction is that this is the first time (and only time) that we see Jesus reveal His identity as the Messiah to anyone. He had been acknowledged as the Messiah by his disciples before, but when the Samaritan woman says “I know that Messiah is coming… Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” Jesus did not reveal himself as the Messiah to a group of elite, religious officials, or even to His disciples first. Rather He shows Himself as the One who would take away the sins of the world to a woman that had been cast out of society and had been living in sin. Here, we see the nature of the God that we serve. That He did not come for the religious whole or self-righteous, but that He came for the sick and the broken; to those whom society had deemed “second class” or “unworthy.” Later on we see that, “Many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39). Jesus not only saves this woman, but goes on to use her story to save the people of her town.
Through these interactions, we see God who cares deeply for the marginalized and outcast. We see His loving tenderness and His saving grace on display through the interactions He has with various women. Through these passages, our God reveals himself as the lamb who has come to take away the sins of the world. Not just of the ones with power, or money, or social status, but ALL peoples. In light of this, we can rejoice that our God’s saving grace extends to all. We also must share this good news with all people around us. Both in our areas of influence and beyond that. Jesus has shown us that His love and mercy has no boundaries. We are now able to live in freedom and on mission because of this beautiful enduring truth.
