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Women in Mark's Gospel To understand Mark's gospel in relation to women we need to explore very briefly the situation of a woman in Jesus and Mark's time. Otherwise we are likely to miss the absolute radicality of the gospel, and of Jesus. The status of women at that time stems from Greek philosophy which was the ruling philosophy of the world at the time, and beginning to influence even Jewish thought. It also stems from the Jewish religion and its interpretation and practice. Socrates gave us the phrase "the weaker sex.' Women were half way between animal and human.. to be born a woman was divine punishment. Aristotle said that the male is by nature fitter to command.... "this inequality is permanent".... the equality of the two, or the rule of the inferior is always damaging. Women in Athens never went out alone, never shared meals with men, and never entered into the life of the community. They led lives of greatest seclusion. The few Athenian women who were educated.... were for the most part upper class prostitutes specifically educated to be able to converse with their clients. This is the classic Greek period. Later followed the period of the Stoics, who stem from Zeno. Epicetus AD 90 taught that women from the age of 14 think of nothing and aim at nothing but lying with men. He constantly wrote of women as a temptation to men.... this was typical of the Stoics. By the time of Jesus Athens had permeated the known world with its philosophies. Women were inferior and to be used for men's pleasure, or they were a distraction from God and philosophy, and a temptation to men. Some Jewish teachers called for equality. But most devalued women. "A woman has more pleasure in one measure of lechery than in nine measures of modesty." Read Sirach 42:9-14 for more detail (Apocrypha) An unmarried woman was the property of her father, a married woman the property of her husband. Every Jewish man was to pray every morning: "Thank God that he has not made me a Gentile, a woman, or a boor." Women then were fundamentally second class, property for the sake of bearing children, a danger to public morals, and barely human. It is into this Milieu that Jesus came and in this milieu that Mark interprets Jesus. This latter is important.... even in the Bible we find Jesus being watered down by the authors when it comes to speaking about women. We should not just seek to harmonise gospels but seek to see what bias the author is putting upon Jesus words! Let us now look at Mark: 1. Mark 1:30 Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. Mark 1:31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. Mark 1:32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. It is the Sabbath... the religious authorities regarded healing on the Sabbath to be quite wrong and sinful. That's why it says... That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick... Sundown was the end of the Sabbath, and after the end of the Sabbath it was legal to come and be healed. He healed a woman on the Sabbath. And he healed her by touching her. He chose to touch her. A fever, which is what Mark specifically records as being her illness, was one of the illnesses which made a person unclean. So anything she touched was also made unclean. The last thing any respectable Rabbi would do was touch a woman, who was unclean, on the Sabbath, especially to heal her. It would cut him off absolutely from God. It would mean he was sinning several times over. Then "the woman began to serve them." In our society... and from reading the text in English, we naturally think it means she got tea for them. Maybe she did. In the Greek, however, the word serve is diakonos, from which we get the order of ministry we call the Deacon. Jesus is healing the woman not just from a fever, but from a second class status to being one of the ministers of God. Mark never uses the word to talk of serving table. He uses it of the angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness, and of Jesus himself coming to serve and give his life for many in Mark 10:45. The story is not about a woman being healed to wait on table. It is a story of Jesus lifting a woman.... some would say all women... up from the sick bed of prejudice, to minister in the way he does. (And as the men do!) This was outrageous behaviour at the time. 2. Mark 5:21-43 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." 24 So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29 Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." 35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. One story with another in the middle of it... a strong hint we are meant to relate them to each other. First, the woman is again unclean. They had a horror of bodily emissions, none more so of a woman. Some of the most strident and hateful denunciations of any kind of sins in Jewish writing liken them to female genitals or menstrual blood. She should not have been out in public on her own anyway. Should never have touched a Rabbi above all people as she would make him unclean. He praises her... and her faith. That is a radical enough thing in itself. There is more though....... Twelve years bleeding.... twelve years the age to start bleeding.... A woman spent at least a quarter of her life cut off from God through her uncleanliness. But Jesus heals the girl as well. Many would say that he heals women from the sexism of ritual uncleaness for all time. We were still in this century churching women... which was a hangover from the uncleanness of blood been spilled in child birth. People still worry even today about women who are ordained who may celebrate communion while menstruating it is often raised as an issue against the ordination of women. We still have not heard what Jesus said. 3. Mark 7:24-31 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician (from the place of the Canaanite Matthew) origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 28 But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." 29 Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. 31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. The woman comes in public. This is an immensely radical step. It goes further in that Jesus is shown up by the woman. He takes correction from the woman. His sinlessness is shown in that he instantly sees his racism and changes! 4. Mark 14:3-10 While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. 4 But some were there who said to one another in anger, "Why was the ointment wasted in this way? 5 For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor." And they scolded her. 6 But Jesus said, "Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. 7 For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. 9 Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." 10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. This is a hugely expensive gift... thousands of dollars in our money. Anointing: she was saying he was the Messiah. It was so obvious to the early listener that Mark does not even say it. We are shown it in the subtlety of his telling of how the men cannot handle what she has done attack her. And we are shown it in Jesus barbed comment about the poor always being with us. Later in the church the gospels talk of anointing his feet and make the woman a sinner.... there is trouble coming to terms with what she does and what Mark says about it. Even the biblical writers begin to have trouble with Jesus radical nature. Messiah means God's anointed one. Peter calls him Messiah first and yet fails to see what it really means; he denies that the Messiah will die. He then denies Jesus himself. But the woman comes in to a public place.... dangerous, and the opposite of denial. She understood that Messiahship meant death.... she understands where the men do not. What she has done will be told in memory of her wherever the gospel is proclaimed. She is shown as a true disciple unlike all the male disciples. Such a thing was almost unbelievable! And we see Jesus publicly defends her over the men. 5. Mark 15:40 There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. The men have all fled. John feels the need to tidy it up and bring them back on the scene, as does Luke. These women, like the ones who went to the tomb and discovered it empty, are the witnesses to the central facts of the faith. These things are entrusted to women. Women were held to be doubtful witnesses in any legal sense, if valid witnesses at all. SUMMARY I think that at the time of Jesus speaking, and at the time of Mark's writing, this was shattering stuff. You can imagine the uproar in many places if Jesus came today and told us to ordain Gay and Lesbian people. Or if one of his disciples had AIDS. Or if he hung out with the aborigines. In it's context Mark is far more radical than it might seem to us, although much of society has still not heard. How do we find the way he behaved? Is it liberating? Is it frightening? What does it mean for you if you are a woman today? What does it say to us as a man about our attitudes to women? Do we really treat women any different to the people of Jesus time? Do you see where maybe the Bible has begun itself to subvert the message of Jesus we see in Mark? 1 Cor 11:8 Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man. 1 Cor 14:34 women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. 1 Tim 2:11 Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. 12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. Rev 14:4 It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been redeemed from humankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, And yet Paul can say in Galatians 3:28-29 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Scripture quotations from NRSV © Division of Christian Education, National council Churches of Christ in America
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