A Story About And For Women!

Karen Sloan 27/06/2021

Reading - Mark 5: 21-43

Today I want to talk about women.  And particularly women in the church.  Of course we have been surrounded lately with so much stuff about the life of women and what discrimination they have to withstand in many professions, you only have to look at Saturday’s paper…

But what about in the church…

What about a women I have met who was one of the first women priests ordained in the Anglican tradition.  She says she would preach and no one would turn up, her husband preached and the church would be full.

What about the female priest who I met at a Disaster Chaplaincy program a couple of years ago, who couldn’t be a priest in a country church she went to after retiring from her farm because, well she was a woman. Luckily she found the Uniting Church. 

So the church has not been a great place for women.  And during the week, I was sent a publication called St Mark’s Review, a journal of Christian thought and opinion, that explodes the topic hugely –

It devotes a whole St Marks edition on sexual harassment, violence and prejudice against women in the church.  It’s called “When women speak: domestic violence in Australian churches”.  There is an article  by Julia Baird, who led an investigation in 2017 about violence against women in the church. But there are many other articles from writers from other Christian traditions and they are pretty confronting.

It appears the church has been and probably still is one of the most sexist institutions in the western world.  Both Pentecostals and conservatives with their belief that men are the head of the household and therefore hold all the power, and in mainline churches where some don’t see women as leaders and preachers and priests contribute to the inequality in a wider setting. Taking readings out of context, or literally, instead of a mixture of myth, and fact and for many, presenting their own agendas while being ignorant of the modern world, and the knowledge both physiological, geological, psychological and cosmological leads to the situation we are in now.

This is why the reading from Mark today is so apt.  Because there is a big difference between what many in the church say and think about women and what Jesus thought and did. Jesus the radical. Jesus was radical in terms of his response to women.  He included them, ate with them and loved them.  He saw them neither as male or female, but individuals with which to share his life and message with.  In fact he was probably the first true feminist.

So to the reading.

The reading focuses on Jesus in a crowd and on two females, one a girl of 12 years, and one a women who had been haemorrhaging for 12 years.  It is interesting to note the two stories are placed together, and have in common the number 12 and the gender of the principle characters.  This suggests that the events may not have happened together or at all but were linked later to reveal something vitally important in the ministry of Jesus.

In regards to the woman the purity laws of the day were extreme.  Menstruation was regarded as unclean, meaning you were an outcast when menstruating.  If on top of the normal monthly bleeding a woman also had a gynaecological complaint, which meant she bled more often or all the time, then she most likely would become totally isolated and rejected from the rest of the village or town. This was the plight of the woman in the story.

This woman comes to Jesus for healing but is afraid to face him directly so just touches him in the crowd.  Jesus responds by trying to find out who has touched him, and speaks to the women personally.  She tells everything to him and he listens intently, never once worrying about any laws that might preclude their contact.  He sends her away healed and in peace.

In this story Jesus has responded to a women, isolated by her condition, by healing her and including her in his faith mission.  But the healing is ambiguous, is it a physical healing or is it a healing that comes from knowing you are loved and worthy.  It doesn’t matter, for what it says is that God’s love is freely offered, and it is offered to all, including and especially those society casts aside.

This is emphasised by attaching the resurrection of the little girl as a  follow-up of the woman’s story. Jesus enters the house of the girl suggesting that she has been raised, even though her family thinks otherwise and is in deep mourning.  He heals her and lifts her up to meet her parents who of course are amazed at this event.  Then he goes on his way. 

The physical resurrection of the little girl is seen in contrast to the healing of the women as the two stories sit side by side.  Mark is stressing here that all are equally valued in the eyes of God, for while the child is the child of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue and is on the verge of fertility and greater status in society,  the women has bleed for 12 years and is therefore impure, outcast and poor.  For Jesus all are valued, regardless of social status, religious purity or gender and all are worthy of his love and compassion.

When this reading is interpreted it is often the woman’s actions that are the focus. How she responds to Jesus and her show of faith.  But it is the action of Jesus which is the most miraculous.  Not the miraculous healing of the girl or even the women but the inclusive way he performs both.  His gospel is for everyone, women and men, young and old, sick and healthy, and does not require an intermediate party to deliver it.  The woman was empowered by Jesus, to continue her life, the little girl was empowered to continue hers.  This is the type of resurrection that comes from Jesus.

Empowering women today should be a major focus of the church.  Not excluding them, not denying them, not beating them, but empowering them. If we in the West  and in Western Churches cannot see the clash between the ideals of Jesus, who not only called for equality between people and between resources, but also compassion for the poor,  of which women make up a vast majority,  and the view that women are somehow less worthy than men, then we are spiritually lost. And how can we expect to influence other societies also steeped in this myth, if we do not denounce it ourselves with our words and actions.

Challenging, yep.  But as a church which has many women in leadership we have a responsibility to speak loudly into the space.

Because there is a wave of change in the world and the church needs to rise with it.

Amen