Day 27: Jesus is an Advocate for Women

Afterward he was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary, called Magdalene (seven demons had come out of her); Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward; Susanna; and many others who were supporting them from their possessions. LUKE 8:1–3

WHEN JESUS ADDED WOMEN to His entourage, He may as well have poked a hornet’s nest with a short stick because, by doing so, He effectively thumbed His divine nose at pervasive misogynistic standards that had been in place for more than a millennia in the ancient Near East. Women being included as disciples in a rabbi’s band of pupils wasn’t simply a novel concept in this patriarchal period where women were typically disregarded as chattel—as something a man could own—it was outrageous.

Furthermore, religious leaders during the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ were beyond complicit when it came to gender discrimination. A familiar rabbinic proverb declared: “It’s better that the Torah be burned than it should be taught to a woman.”17 Even more disheartening, the last line of a common prayer that was expected to be recited three times a day by rabbis during the era of Christ is: “Praised be Thou, O Lord, who did not make me a woman.”18 Josephus, a famous first-century Jewish historian and contemporary of both Jesus and Paul, infamously asserted: “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man.”19 And a modern expert on women’s lives during the time period of the apostolic witness, Dr. David Scholer, sums up how women were perceived in Jewish and the larger Greco-Roman society: “In very general terms Jesus lived in social-cultural contexts in which the male view of women was usually negative and the place of women was understood to be limited for the most part to the domestic roles of wife and mother.”20

Therefore, the description of Jesus’s posse as a dozen mistake-prone men and three chicks was a shocking concept.21 By allowing them to be an integral part of His public ministry, Jesus challenged a centuries-old paradigm of women being subjugated as second-class citizens. Contrary to culture, Jesus’s inner circle proves He considered women to be valuable; He treated them as trusted companions and worthy ambassadors of the Gospel. And they returned the favor because the phrase “many others” and the pronoun “who” are both feminine in the original Greek manuscripts of Luke,22 which means Mary, Joanna, and Susanna had gal pals who supported Jesus’s ministry as well. Picture a first-century book club filled with chicks who wrote checks! Which means Jesus didn’t view women as weak and dependent. He didn’t patronize them when they pulled out their purses and say, “Put that away. You girls save your money because there’s an awesome mall in the next village!” Instead, He humbly allowed them to invest in His life’s work. He treated them with dignity.

And they weren’t just baking cookies and casseroles when they weren’t writing checks, either. In fact, Joanna (a woman of position and means) was probably the head of His security detail because her spouse, Chuza, was Herod Antipas’s right-hand man. Remember, Herod Antipas is the same womanizer who had John the Baptist murdered for calling him out on sexual immorality (Mark 6:14–29). Plus, his father, Herod the Great, was the megalomaniac who schemed to have Jesus killed when He was a baby (Matt. 2:16). Which means Joanna’s missionary work with the Messiah was going on right under the enemy’s nose. Can you imagine how interesting Joanna and Chuza’s pillow talk was? And can you imagine how much courage it took to maintain an alliance with Jesus (all the way to the cross, mind you) when her husband’s boss—a very powerful and jealous narcissist—was His archrival? It’s amazing to think about: that much extremely important intel flowing through the vessel of a woman. (Not to mention a married woman, who would have undoubtedly endured a lot of societal suspicion for following, learning from, serving, and publicly supporting a man like Jesus without her husband around!)

Then there’s Mary Magdalene, whom Luke describes as being afflicted by seven demons (she’s the only person healed from demon possession in the four Gospels whose exact number of demons is specified) before she encountered Jesus and was healed. And remember the number seven illustrates completion in biblical literature, so it implies that she was completely oppressed by the enemy. (Please forgive me the intentional grammatical error of not capitalizing that lying lizard’s name, even though “enemy” or “satan” are technically proper pronouns!) Yet John’s Gospel describes this very Mary as the very first person to see the risen Messiah. Which surely caused more than a few to cry, “FOUL!” Most folks probably raised their eyebrows and wondered: “Is she really the best spokesperson for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus?” In fact, based on their initial dismissal of her claim (Mark 16:11; Luke 24:10–11), even the disciples, who’d known Mary for years, seemed to think the cause of Christ would be far better off with a more credible eyewitness to Easter.

I’ve heard the resurrection described as “the fulcrum of the Christian faith.” In other words, our entire belief system hinges on Easter—on the fact that our Savior didn’t stay dead. And don’t forget, our Creator-Redeemer is a God of details; He put stripes on zebras and gave cells their nucleus—so you can bet everything about that first Easter week was preordained, from the placement of the cross to the borrowed tomb. Therefore, don’t you think it’s incredibly cool that God chose Mary Magdalene—not just a woman, but one who’d been totally marginalized—for what is arguably the most important job in human history? To be the very first person to testify that Jesus has indeed come back to life!

• READ ROMANS 8:12–17. Note that in the beginning of the passage, the word brothers in the original language doesn’t refer to gender in this particular context, but instead to all fellow believers—to brothers and sisters. Knowing this, how does your understanding and application of this text change?
• READ NUMBERS 27:1–11. How does this passage help prove that, contrary to some modern assumptions, our Creator-Redeemer was not a misogynist?