Lesser Man

I hope it’s obvious, by now, that I’m super interested in women doing whatever God has empowered and asked them to do regardless of their marital status or how many children they have or don’t have. Ever since the world got off kilter (before the first humans even had a chance to have children), men have been telling women what to do. They’ve been telling us what makes us valuable and what doesn’t. They’ve been telling us what makes us beautiful and what doesn’t. And, most reprehensibly, they’ve been telling us what our place in the kingdom of God is and what it isn’t.

There are theological circles in which a man can do whatever he pleases and be whoever he pleases. All he has to say is that it’s what God wants him to do. But when a woman says that God wants her to do anything but get married and have children, she’s met with questions. I know because I experienced it and watched others experience it and have heard more stories than I’d like to that go just like this.

I’ve written elsewhere about the hierarchy of holiness for women in Baptist or Baptist-adjacent non-denoms: “You might be able to have a good, God-honoring life without being a wife and a mother, but you’re missing out if you’re not both of those things. The holiest Christians are married with children. Everyone else is second best”.

I love bursting bubbles. 

Both the kind that you blow when you’re a kid and the ideological ones created by men who should shut up and listen for like, I don’t know, at least one second of their life before they speak. (Or, honestly, most of their life because everything that comes out of their mouth is misogynistic and tone deaf, but I digress.)

Jesus also loves bursting bubbles. 

Hold onto your toupees Baptists of the denim-skirt brigade, Jesus welcomed women as fully participating members of his ministry (and full image bearers of God, capable of learning more math than just that needed for baking) whether they had children and were married or not.

Let’s take a look at a familiar story that has actually been used to tell women to spend more time with Jesus, investing in their relationship with him by the same men who would tell women that they ought to just stay home and leave the real work of ministry to men. Talking out of both sides of your mouth is a required skill to be a pastor in some settings. I’m not just being snarky. It’s real and it’s disgusting.

At the end of Luke 10, Jesus has been traveling around from place to place telling people about the kingdom of God, healing the sick, and welcoming outcasts; doing what he does. Finally, he and his disciples come to a village and are welcomed into the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. While Jesus is staying at their house, he continues teaching those that are with him and those that are coming from the village. Among those listening and learning is Mary.

Now, you might not think that this is a big deal, given that we have at least advanced to the point where we don’t restrict women’s access to education and spiritual teaching. Unless you’re part of a super fundamentalist cult like the Duggars. (Again, not just being snarky. Look up the stuff that they “taught” their kids, especially the girls, in home “schooling”.)

The phrase used to describe Mary’s actions here is, “sat at the Lord’s feet”. With the men. Did you know that in ancient Israel, women weren’t allowed to worship in the same part of the temple that men were? They could only get so close to God. The men could get a little closer, but only the priests were allowed to go up into the temple and then only at certain times and on special occasions. More exclusive still was admittance to the holy of holies, the place where God himself dwelt among his people.

Jesus’ (read: God’s) nearness to anybody was a big deal, but it was an especially big deal for women.

Another account. Also in Luke. A little before the last one. Chapter 8.

Jesus was, again, walking somewhere. Specifically, he was on the way to an important religious leader’s house to heal his daughter, who was near death. While they are going to the leader’s house, Jesus stops suddenly and asks, “Who touched me?” His disciples are, rightly, like, “Jesus, there is a literal MOB of people around you. What do you mean, ‘who touched me?’ Everyone Jesus. Everyone is touching you!” But Jesus corrects them. He meant that someone touched him hoping for healing and he felt power go out from him. “Someone did touch me.”

I can almost see her now, cowering, coming out from behind whoever was her shield. We don’t know her name, but we know that she, too, was at Jesus’ feet. She fell down at his feet and the language here indicates that she told him not only that she had touched him, but her whole, sad story. She told him how she had been suffering from bleeding that wouldn’t stop for twelve long years. She told him how she’d been ostracized by her entire family, community, and society in general for being “unclean”. She told him how the very people who were supposed to help and heal her, in this case doctors, had taken all her money and left her worse than she had been before (sound familiar?? I’m still looking straight at you Southern Baptists). 

She sat at his feet and told Jesus the whole story and, even though there was an emergency situation going on, Jesus listened. He didn’t stop her. He listened and he told her, “your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

You have to understand that, in first century Jewish culture, women weren’t even allowed to speak to men in their own families in public. Much less a man they weren’t related to.

Young Jewish girls did get an education, but it stopped short of what was accessible to their male peers and there was but one path for them in life: go home and have children. And hear me loud and clear: that is not a bad or unholy life. It’s just a bad prescription for the kingdom of God which is varied, diverse, full, and beautiful.

I’m dangerously close to the edge of a full-blown soapbox moment here, so let me reel it back in. Jesus welcomed women. He didn’t just welcome them, he gave them a place, a calling, and a commission.

In John 20, he told Mary Magdalene, the first person to see him risen from the dead, to go, get the disciples, and tell them that he was alive.

In John 4, he told the unnamed woman from Samaria to go back to her village and tell everyone that she knew what he had done for her.

In Luke 10, he tells Martha that Mary’s discipleship will not be taken from her.

In Mark 14, Jesus says that the story of the woman who poured out her life savings (literally) on his feet will be told in her memory wherever the gospel is told. And here we are.

In Mark 12, Jesus says that the small gift of a widow (2 coins) is a greater gift than all that the rich folks gave because it was all that she had. He honors her for giving what she had, however small, to God.

And not once, in any of these or any other accounts, did Jesus tell a woman to settle down and have children. He didn’t tell any men to do it either, for that matter. 

If you’re a woman in the kingdom of God, there’s so much more to you and your life than your marital status or how many children you have or don’t have. In my opinion, those are two of the least interesting things about you. You’re a whole person, wanted and welcomed into the kingdom of God no matter what a man has to say about it.

And more than that, he made you to do something. Maybe not something big or earth shattering (but maybe!). Maybe not something anyone else will ever see or hear about. Regardless of the details, he made you on purpose and prepared work for you to do. You can ask him what that is. You don’t need a man, a wedding ring, or a jacked up pelvic floor to tell you what your purpose is. That’s the job of the God of the universe and he suffers no rivals.

Don’t count yourself out of the fullness of the kingdom of God and the work of ministry because you’re a woman. Don’t count yourself out of all the goodness, mercy, and grace that God is longing to give you because you don’t fit the arbitrary and oppressive mold of someone who claims to speak on behalf of God, but doesn’t sound anything like him.

Jesus never counted women out. 

Don’t let any lesser man.