Was Jesus a Feminist?

Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz, March 28, 2010

            At this time of year, especially, as we enter into Holy Week—those seven days in the Christian tradition between the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and his death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday—I always feel this overwhelming need to rescue Jesus—from the Christians. Not from all Christians, of course; but from those who seem intent on turning him into a reactionary misogynist as harsh and stubborn and judgmental as they are.

            To me, the man Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most radically inclusive, accepting, and tolerant exemplars that the history of Western civilization presents to us. In his dealings with all people—but with women, especially—his inclusiveness was sweeping in his own time, and speaks still to ours. He was, in many ways, in the deeply reactionary time in which he lived, a sort of proto-feminist: a pre-cursor of a worldview which sees men and women as co-partners with one another in building the Kingdom of God here on earth.

            The three readings we shared earlier this morning illustrate what I mean. Let’s take a closer look at them:

            First, the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years (Mark 5: 25-34). “She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had.” (Sounds like she had a really good HMO!) Her condition was a desperate one, not only physically, but socially as well. Remember: according to Jewish law, she was in a constant state of “un-cleanliness”. She would have been viewed as a pariah, an untouchable, by her society. Everyone who came into contact with her was obligated to bathe immediately and wash all of their clothing in order to “purify” themselves. That’s hardly the way to make friends and influence people.

            Now, of course, any up-and-coming religious leader wouldn’t want anything to do with such a woman. Perhaps we can imagine how that woman felt about herself, and her own body. But even with all this fear and self-loathing inside of her, she approaches the rabbi of Nazareth, she sneaks up behind him, and she touched the hem (just a touch) of his robe.

            And lo and behold—she feels herself healed! Jesus, too, feels the exchange of healing energy that has taken place. He insists on knowing who has touched his robe. So the woman comes forward, and Jesus faces her, and tells her—not “Go away woman!”-- not “Don’t you ever touch me again!”-- not “Quick! Somebody draw me a bath!” No, he tells her: “Go in peace. Your faith as healed you.” Not magic; not even Jesus has healed her. But her own faith has healed her; her trust in the healing powers of the universe, and her willingness to dare to reach out and seek healing have healed her.

            In the second story (Mark 7:24-30) we have a woman whose daughter, we are told, is possessed by an evil spirit. This woman, too, would have been considered an outcast by the social code of her own day, because she was a Gentile, a Greek, a Syrio-Phoenician woman. Most of the Jewish people of the time, it seems, held people like this in contempt; they even referred to them as “dogs”. At first, even Jesus himself seems to agree with this pejorative characterization. He seems to want nothing to do with this foreigner, this Syrio-Phoenician woman.

            So, rather cruelly and abruptly, it would seem, he dismisses her with what he thinks is the perfect rebuff. (No, not “I don’t treat pre-existing conditions.”) He tells the woman to go away, because “It’s not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (It is not right for me to waste my time on you Gentiles and Greeks.)

            But the woman does Jesus one better. “But sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Now, perhaps this woman’s pushiness scandalized most of those who heard it. What right did this Gentile woman have to question their teacher this way? But Jesus himself never seemed to have had a problem with assertive women (from his mother on down). Her pushiness even gets him to change his mind. “For saying this,” he tells her, “your daughter is healed.” And she was.

            Story number three: Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). The two sisters welcome Jesus into their home; they are honored to provide hospitality for him. But, as usual, he’s not alone. He’s got that whole crowd of followers and disciples with him again, all of those advance people and support staff. This really gets Martha a little peeved. “Look at all these people,” she probably thought. “We’re going to have to feed them all, and wait on them. And I always get stuck with and the cooking and serving and cleaning up. Mary just sits there and has a good time.”

            Well Jesus (being the kind of sensitive male that he was) senses Martha’s agitation. He says to her, very gently, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. Only one thing is needed.”

            “Martha, Martha,” Jesus seems to be saying to her, “no one asked you to do everything. No one asked you to multi-task here. No one asked you to be a martyr. You’re doing it to yourself. Do the important things first—live in the Spirit; take time to be with those you care about; take time to listen and to learn. If you don’t, then all this scurrying around is going to amount to nothing. Mary knows that,” Jesus is saying to Martha. “That’s why she takes care of herself spiritually; she does that first of all. Martha, Martha, sit down and join us. The rest of this stuff can wait. The Spirit can’t.”

            What’s clear from all these stories, I think, is that Jesus was operating from an entirely different set of assumptions than the people around him were. He was seeking an entirely new set of relationships, which would set the way of the world on its head. He befriended women at a time when most (so-called) “holy men” felt it beneath their dignity even to speak to them, even to be in their company. By not being afraid of the bleeding woman, he broke an ancient taboo, because, to him, the currents of compassion were more powerful than the letter of the Law and any prescribed cultic rituals. He proclaimed his teachings open to all— women and men, Greek and Jew, poor and wealthy—as equals, all. This was at a time when everyone around him assumed that teaching women was a complete waste of time, if not downright blasphemy.

            The ministry of Jesus centered on the teaching that the Basilea was coming, that the kingdom of God was at hand. (“Basilea” is usually translated as “Kingdom”, but it’s a neuter noun, so “Empire” or “Realm” is probably a better translation; but “kingdom” of God is what we usually call it.)

            That the kingdom of God was coming was something that most Jewish religious groups during the First Century in ancient Palestine agreed on. That was about all they agreed on. Some Jewish groups—the Sadducees and the Pharisees are the main ones we remember—spent hours arguing with each other over exactly how the Law of Moses ought to be interpreted; how, exactly, the cultic rites and rituals ought to be carried out. Other groups within Judaism wanted to reform their faith, and define it in terms of broader outreach, and not cultic purity. Among the reformers were Jesus and his followers.

            The Jesus movement didn’t reject the validity of Torah and Temple. But Jesus did say that Torah and Temple were secondary to something much more important: the presence of the Spirit of God within the world, and within each individual man and women.

            The Jesus movement declared that holiness is best expressed in human wholeness. To them, the coming of the kingdom of God meant that the sick found healing; the lost found their way; the uninvited are welcomed to the feast; the prodigal is reconciled; and that the last become the first. Their movement was based on the lowly, the outcast, the despised—“the least of these”-- and from there, it grew and expanded, and sought to include all people, all of the sons and daughters of God, created in God’s holy image.

            In spite of protestations of the later Church’s hierarchy to the contrary, there seems to be little doubt that in the early days of his ministry, Jesus was surrounded by women disciples as well as men. He instituted among them what the theologian Elizabeth Schlusser Fiorenza calls a “discipleship of equals”. Women within the Jesus movement were able to contribute their gifts in ways they couldn’t elsewhere in society. And strikingly, on that dark Good Friday, when Peter and all of the other men fled, it was the woman who remained at the foot of the Cross, and cared for his body, and washed him, and prepared him for burial.

            In deeper ways, too, the Jesus movement manifested a distinctly inclusive ethos. In the teachings of Jesus, God is never pictured as the stern and demanding Yahweh of Moses and the Hebrew patriarchs, but rather, as a  Heavenly Parent, radiating all-inclusive love and caring, who cares for all His children, who lets the rain fall equally on the just and unjust. This good and gracious God of Jesus is a reflection of the Wisdom tradition, which had been present in Jewish religion from at least the time of King David. The Wisdom tradition was deeply influenced by the religious outlook of the countries surrounding Israel, especially by Egyptian worship of the goddess, Isis. The Wisdom school pictured the grace and goodness of God as Hokmah, which in New Testament Greek becomes Sophia, and is translated into English as Wisdom—or, more accurately (because it’s a feminine noun) as Lady Wisdom (maybe even Ms. Wisdom). Wisdom— Sophia— Hokmah are feminine characterizations of the Spirit of God, and Jesus used this feminine characterization interchangeably with his image of God as “Abba”—“Father”.

            Imagine the difference it would have made in Western civilization if Christianity had retained, on equal; footing, both feminine characterizations of the divine—both Abba/Father and Sophia/Wisdom. (Indeed, part of the reason that the Virgin Mary is such a powerful aspect of Christianity for many people is that she represents our yearning for this feminine face of God, which has been taken from us, especially in the Protestant tradition).

            Where did it go? What happened to the feminine face of God, which Jesus and his followers worshipped?

            In the years immediately following the death of Jesus, women continued to play important leadership roles in many of the “home churches” that had started to meet in various cities of the ancient world. In his letters, Saint Paul sends greetings to these early women leaders; he even refers to them as synergos, or co-workers (comrades) in the faith.

            But as the generations passed, and the Christian Church moved out of people’s homes, and into more separate, settled institutions in the community (what we would call “churches” today) changes started to take place. The establishment of a more hierarchal clergy (increasingly male in composition) helped to transform the once equalitarian household of God into a mere reflection of patriarchal, male-dominated society. Under the influence of Greek thought (especially Aristotle) the early Church Fathers (from Philo to Augustine and beyond) began to equate divinity with maleness. Females, rather than being seen as sisters in Christ and synergos in the faith, were increasingly characterized as “misbegotten males” and “daughters of Eve”. So were the sewn the seeds of the Church’s “woman problem”—it’s tragic misogyny, from which, we pray, Christianity might finally be starting to emerge.

            The Church has a problem with women that I don’t believe for a second that Jesus ever had.

            In the gospel of Mark, there’s another story about a woman, one from Bethany who, we are told, out of respect and love, anointed the head of Jesus with a whole flask of oil—very costly stuff, indeed. This made some of the disciples very angry, and it seems they rebuked her for being so “wasteful”.

            But Jesus defended her. He knew, of course, that anointing a person’s head with oil was the sign used to the ordination of the kings of Israel. In anointing him in this way, the woman was indicating that she understood that Jesus was the anointed one of God, and that his message would long transcend his own mortal existence, and would even be strong enough to transcend the imperfect vessels who would attempt to pass it down through the ages.

            Knowing how short his days upon the earth were to be, Jesus understood the poignancy and the propriety of this unnamed woman’s seemingly wasteful exuberance. In the name of future generations, he is grateful. “And truly I say to you,” he tells those present, “that whenever the good news is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

            Sometimes, in order to see the stars at night, we have to get away from the city and all of its artificial illumination, and go somewhere quiet and basic, so that we can gaze undisturbed at the glories of the heavens.

            Sometimes, in order to grasp the real truth of a religious tradition, we have to peel away the accumulation of the centuries, and approach again the source, the original spirit which brought a faith to birth.

            It is important for us, in this season of Easter, to remember the women of the Early Church, who kept their faith alive, when days were dark indeed.

            May their lights shine on through their daughters and sisters, as the Church emerges, at last, from its present dark age.

            May we hold in our hearts and minds those women, and those men, who have witnessed boldly and bravely, through the generations, to that force that moves through history, battering down all barriers that divide our human family, calling us all to a radical discipleship of equals. May their spirits radiate on through each of us, so that we, too, may help to usher in that reign of peace and reconciliation—true Sophia—true Wisdom—among all the children of our Blessed Mother, the Earth.

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