David Orendorff ·Matthew 1:18-25 · December 23rd, 2007

Thinking about Mother Mary got me to thinking about Jesus and women. And then I thought about Jesus powerful influence in setting women free from oppression. So this sermon is actually a collection of reflections on some women who knew Jesus. All the women we meet where at first considered unholy, unfit for God. But by their contact with Jesus, each became a revelation and a revolution.

Mother Mary – Matthew 1:18-25

Mary was not at first held to be holy. As an unwed mother she was unclean before God. As betrothed, she had betrayed Joseph. But Mary knew her child was a gift from God. And what Mary knew, Joseph came to know and we have come to believe. Every child, no matter the circumstances of their birth, is a gift from God. Because Mary held her head high for the love of her child this child came to the world knowing how loved he was and by his love transformed the world.

Every mother, particularly mother’s whose love for their children is challenged, owes a debt of gratitude and a prayer of thanksgiving to Mary. She began a significant transformation of the world’s view on pregnancy and children. She made the birth of her child the birth of God’s child. She made us all recognize that every pregnancy is the beginning of God being with us.

The Bent Woman – Luke 13:10-17

We are not told the ailment that bent this unnamed woman for over for eighteen years. I wonder if, at least metaphorically, it wasn’t the enormous weight of being a woman. Women of then and many women of now, carry a tremendous burden just being born a woman. Jesus compares the life of a woman to the life of an ox, a beast to be bought, sold and worked hard. And Jesus suggests that perhaps the life of the ox is better because at least these beasts are rested on the Sabbath while the woman must continue to work.

There are women of today whose lives who such heavy loads that they too are bent. I don’t have to list the horrors women face in our world just pick up any newspaper or magazine. It is these bent women that Jesus heals. Women were not property or beasts to Jesus, but sacred children of God equal to any man. Women become his students and are most often the first ones to open their homes to Jesus, his disciples and the poor. Stories abound of Jesus’ liberating women from cruelty.

In Jesus’ encounter with the bent woman we recognize that in Christ there is neither male nor female, as Paul writes to the Galatians. Both are children of God and therefore equal before the law and in grace.

The Woman with a blood flow – Mark 5:25-34

To be a woman with a blood flow, according to Leviticus, is to be unclean and untouchable. Thus, this woman is neither to be touched by anyone nor to touch anyone. For whoever comes into contact with her is also then unclean before God and so rejected by God. Jesus would have had every right when touched by her to curse her. By the law he should have at least immediately gone for a ritual purification. But when Jesus discovers who touched him and her situation he commends her faith; a faith which defies the laws of Moses in a belief that a person’s wounds do not make them unclean; a faith which believes God does not make the ill but heals them.

From Jesus’ encounter with the courage and faith of this bleeding woman we have come to know that God does not consider the bleeding woman, or any of the ill, unclean and undesirable. No illness separates us from God nor is illness a punishment (or lesson) from God. Thanks to this unnamed woman we embrace women with blood flows, lepers and those with AIDS as the beloved of Christ, as brothers and sisters. Christians defy much of the world and some of our own society who regard the ill as cursed by God. This one woman’s faith has continually leads us to visit the hospital, to pray with the ill and to both be and teach our culture and society of universal grace and love.

The Woman from Syrophonecia – Mark 7:24-30

Here is a piece of the history of Jesus that some Christians are embarrassed to tell because the story is more about the transformation of Jesus than the healing of the woman’s daughter.

As with the other women, this woman too is at first to be rejected. She is a woman boldly and immorally asking a favor from a Jewish man. She is Syrophonecian which means she is a gentile that at best she is a heretic. And finally, she has the audacity to ask for the healing of a female apostate child.

There is such much wrong with this woman and her request that Jesus’ first reaction is to refuse her and reject her by saying, “Let the children” - and by this he means the chosen children of God, the Hebrew people – “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

It is a harsh response and not what we would expect of Jesus. Had I been that mother I think I might have responded in kind. But this mother sees a God greater than just the God of the Hebrew. This mother sees a God that loves and cares for all children. She sees in Jesus a man greater than his words and she shows this greater God to Jesus, and shows Jesus his greater self, by simply stating her faith with, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

This woman opened Jesus to a mission that includes gentile women as well as the children of far away lands and strange religions. Because of the greater faith of this woman, Jesus sends his disciples around the world, to the children of China and the Congo, to India and the Middle East to heal the children of neighbors and foreigners, of friends and enemies alike.

Mary Magdalene – John 20:1-18

In all four gospels Mary of Magdala is one of the first, if not the first, to know and carry the news of Jesus’ resurrection. There have been all kinds of wild rumors about Mary, from the tale that she was a prostitute, to the tales that she was perhaps Jesus’ lover and even his wife.

In the Bible there is only one mention of Mary of Magdala outside the resurrection and that is Luke’s account of her being healed by Jesus when he casts seven demons from her. However, she must have been a very significant person in the life and ministry of Jesus because she is more consistently mentioned with Jesus’ resurrection than Jesus’ mother, or anyone else.

It is remarkable that Mary of Magdala carries the resurrection news. Women cannot, in Jesus’ day, be the bearers of the revelations of God. Weren’t all the prophets male (the answer is no by the way)? Weren’t all of Jesus’ close disciples male (and again the answer is “no”)?

For his entire ministry Jesus chose the least among us to reveal the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The least were children, lepers, tax collectors, all kinds of sinners, foreigners, and frequently women. Mary Magdalene embodies the heavenly reality that Jesus would have us see. Here is a believer who once was possessed of demons but now heralds the resurrection promise to the world.

It is usually those who appear to be “least” among us that have the most to teach us of the eternal love of God. What a topsy-turvy world this revelation of God brings us.

Conclusion

We have met five remarkable women who by their encounters with Jesus have been a part of transforming the world to a more graceful and generous place; and who challenge us to transform our faith and understanding of God and life. There are dozens more of these women in both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments. That Jesus loved women and set them free is not limited to the imagination of one or two early Christian writers, or the sermons of feminists, it is the fact of the beginnings of our faith. Jesus was a liberator of women; making pregnancy holy; lifting the burdens that bent them; acting against the falseness of their supposed impurity; expanding his mission to the world; and giving them the first voice in announcing God’s resurrection.

By the beginnings of Christmas and Jesus’ witness we also are called to set the women of the world free. What a great Christmas gift that is. Shalom and Amen.