Talk: Women in the New Testament — Again, But With Feeling

This is a talk I gave in church a few weeks ago, so you might notice that there are some genre elements that are different than usual:

Today, I’m going to talk about how the women in the New Testament are different than in any other type of scripture because they are not introduced or usually primarily characterized by their relationship to men. I am pretty convinced that that’s because Jesus was there, because you can’t tell Jesus’s story without telling at least some of theirs. He cared about them too much, talked to them too much, interacted with them too much for them to disappear in scriptures about him.

In Samaria, Jesus talked to a woman at the well, and if she was a mother, it didn’t come up. Instead, they joked around, bantering back and forth about history and metaphors. They talked about how the woman had had five husbands. Despite the prominent positioning of her husbands in this story, she isn’t introduced or characterized as someone’s wife. Rather, the fact that she has had five husbands tells us about the kind of life she lived: Five husbands? Did they all die? Did they divorce her? Does this include people she lived with out of wedlock, of which we know there was at least one? None of these answers indicate this woman had an easy life. All of them suggest she was poor, at the mercy of the people around her, and likely looked down upon.

And this is the first person Jesus tells that he’s the Messiah. A woman who was never going to be noted by history, going about her every day work, unremarkable except for things that society would shun her for. Jesus chose her. And, then, she chose Jesus back. She went back to her town and said, “You’re never going to believe this, but there’s a prophet at our well, and he knows everything about me.” And her whole town came and listened, and many Samaritans came to know Jesus as their savior.

And then there’s Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha are main characters in the New Testament in their own right, not because of who they’re married to or who they mothered. The first we hear of them, Jesus showed up in their town and Martha let Him and his followers stay with them. Occasionally, Austin and I have people come stay with us, and while we love it, it is not relaxing, even when it’s our parents, who we know very well and adore very much. Martha invited strangers–at least thirteen strangers, but probably a lot more–into her house. She fed them and served them. And, we know from the story, she was exhausted and stressed out, and her sister was just sitting there! While she ran around and did everything!

But when Martha went to Jesus and said, “Lord, can you please tell my sister to come help me out,” he said, “Look, Martha, you’re putting so much energy into this and being so careful to take care of us–but I would really rather you sat down and listened to me. Sit down with the rest of my followers. I’m here for you as much as for them.”

Jesus relieved her of her traditional role and made her the equal of everyone sitting at his feet. We are all equal, sitting at Jesus’s feet.

I never want to imply that their marriages and their children weren’t important to Jesus. Of course they were.

Last year, Molly was in the NICU for six weeks, and one of the New Testament stories I kept coming back to was the widow of Nain. Jesus and his followers entered a new town and immediately came upon a funeral procession. The funeral was for the son of a widow; she was walking behind her son’s body to his grave. Luke writes, “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, ‘Don’t cry.’” He raised the man from the dead and, quote, “Jesus gave him back to his mother.”

I read that, one night after coming back from a very discouraging day in the NICU, and I sobbed. I knew that night Jesus’s heart went out to the widow and to me. “Don’t cry,” he told the widow and me. I knew he would give my daughter back to me, just as he had given the widow’s son back to her.

Jesus cares about our motherhood, of course, but he also knows what I can sometimes forget–it does not encapsulate us. Whether we have children or don’t have children, it does not swallow up everything we are or stand for everything we can be. Jesus cares about our children and our husbands and our souls, our minds, our sense of humor, our sibling rivalry, our weariness, our pain.

Jesus also cares about our bodies. One of the things I love about our theology is how seriously and sacredly it treats bodies. Women's bodies have been and still often are objectified either for beauty or utility. When there are women in the scriptures, they are often denoted primarily by their ability to have children or not have children or the degree to which they’re beautiful enough to be desirable wives or temptresses–think of Rachel, Esther, Saraiah, Isabel. But in the New Testament, when women’s bodies are mentioned, it’s primarily to talk about their health.

In Luke 8, a woman with “an issue of blood,” approached Jesus in a crowd and touched the hem of his clothing, believing that even such passing contact with Jesus would cure her, and it does. In Mark 1, Peter’s mother-in-law was sick, and as soon as Jesus heard about it, he went and relieved her fever.

The authors of the scriptures aren’t focused on the way these healed bodies would be useful. They don’t say that the woman with the issue of blood went away and was finally able to have children. They don’t say that Peter’s mother-in-law was looking really terrible, but after Jesus cured her she was a radiant beauty and desirable again. The pain these women experienced mattered to Jesus not because of how society experienced their bodies but how they did. Because they mattered to him.

I have always been hungry for more women in the scriptures, but now that I’m a mom, I want it even more, for me and for Molly.

I wish we knew more about Mary’s experience raising one perfect child and at least six imperfect children. I want to know if Jesus was a holy terror when he was teething. I want to know about Abish’s dream. I want to know how Saraiah understood the conflict between Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. I want to know about the daughters of the Lamanites who were kidnapped by the priest of Noah—how did the rest of their lives go? I want to know about Moroni’s mom and how Sarah felt when Isaac came back and told her how Abraham almost sacrificed him. I want to know about all the women that are never named, who never once make an appearance.

There are so many stories I want to know, but I’m so grateful for the ones we have. I love that there are more women in the New Testament, and I love that they’re there because of Jesus. His gentleness with them, the love he shows them, the ways he sees them with wholeness–it helps me know him better and helps me know how he sees me. How he loves me and hopes I love myself.