“Women Hold Up Half the Sky!”

James Lamev 03/04/2022

Readings - John 12:1-8

John is the last written of the four Gospels, Mark, Mathew, Luke and John.  Scholars place its origins probably in Ephesus on the Aegean Sea, and date it’s authorship at around 100 CE - which puts it approximately 65 years after the crucifixion.

Its location was in current day Turkey and it was an important port; it was the fourth largest city in the Mediterranean world at this time.  Rome at this stage had a population of about 2 million (about the same size as Perth now) so being the fourth largest city - this gives us an idea that it was a very substantial and important place.  It was, at the time, Rome’s largest and important slave market.

Possibly John, the author of the gospel, took Jesus’ mother to Ephesus after her son’s death; and Mary of Magdala is thought to have lived and taught there. 

John is thought to have left Jerusalem for Ephesus years before the Great temple destruction in 70CE.  So let’s assume that s/he leaves 10 years before, and may be 25 in 60CE and 65 at the time of the authorship.  So the numbers stake up, Mary would have been about 60 at the time of this departure so that’s possible also.  And whether that is accurate is not really that relevant to this analysis, it’s a nice thought so let’s go with that for now.

What is historically important here is that John is not there for the destruction and trauma.

As Shaia and Gaugy say in their book, Heart and Mind, John the Apostle is thought to have left Jerusalem before the Great Temple’s destruction, and joins a community in Ephesus which has been founded on the teachings of the apostle Paul, and that community had been founded on a practice of inclusion. 

The congregation developed to address the Messianic Jews, and a wide assortment of pagan believers and others.   The community was totally separated from Judaism by this time and this is a unique distinction to this gospel.  They identified as Christians and did not regard Jesus as the Jewish Messiah who had come ONLY for the Jews but for ALL.  The universal Christ had died and been resurrected for all.  And their Messiah would lead them to an inner temple where everyone would find welcome.

By the time of John’s Gospel, Christianity was not a formal religion but was called “the Way”; Paul, who preached in Ephesus, had invited all Women, Men, Greek, Jew, free and slave, and all Gentiles to all share their lives with each other and follow one God.

It’s thought John lived and taught in Ephesus until old age. That the author lived into old age and lived in a relatively prosperous city allowed this Gospel to be in the style it is, that is, more explanatory of what the message was rather than a historical description of Jesus.  And although the writer would have been aware of all the persecution of Christians and Jews within the regions occupied by the Romans; at least they escaped the direct effects of that persecution and this lead to a more succinct Gospel, than it might otherwise have been. 

Almost what we might call dot points of the important parts of the message.

So when we look at the Gospel of John we notice several things:

Firstly, Jesus doesn’t say very much personally, there’s a few quotes, but unlike the other three Gospels that have a lot of words directly attributed, it doesn’t happen here.

Secondly, Jesus is the Christ and existed from the beginning and is directly linked to God.  Unfailingly powerful and divine, stands with the authority of God and uses that to bestow truth, mercy and miracles.

Thirdly, and importantly, it has women doing lots of things in this Gospel.  And really this is the main point of this refection and we’ll come back to this in a moment.

Fourthly, it’s very inclusive, it’s clear that its message is to be directed to all.

And fifthly, it’s clear that they are no longer part of Judaism and are in conflict with Judaism - because the Jewish hierarchy is in conflict with them. 

This anti-Christianess is because, to be too close to the Christians is potentially very dangerous, and also because the Christians are a pain, calling out as they do, the hypocrisy and corruption of the political and economic systems of the day, and making life uncomfortable for those that benefit from that corruption.

There is too much here in these 5 points to unpack in a short reflection, but it is worth backtracking a bit to remember those three decades earlier, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a bitter factional struggle raged through the faith.  There were four main groups.  One believed that an apocalyptic end time had arrived.

The second group, the Pharisees, maintained that the Great Temple’s destruction had resulted from God’s wrath brought on by laxity of religious observance.

A larger group was confused, unsure of what to believe or which way to turn.

And fourthly the Messianic Jews (the early Christians) who believed that their Messiah had already come.   

Within those early Christians, different views arouse and they each emphasized their particular understanding of the meaning of the Jesus message.

And within John we see the development of the Pauline understanding of the Jesus message.  That it’s not all about Jesus - but about the Christ.

So what did this text mean back then, within its historical context?

Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus. 

A 1st century woman anoints the one who has the authority of God? 

I don’t think so, would have been a typical response at the time.

Now if you wanted to write a believable Gospel, then the last thing you would do in the 1st century is have a woman anoint your Christ who has God’s authority.  Usually God anoints his (and I mean his, to put into historical context) his own representative, or perhaps male figures on a mountain do this.  But here a woman who has expensive oil, she must be very wealthy because we are given the cost of the ointment which in today’s money is about $50,000, anoints the Christ.

And women in this Gospel even tell the God authority off and blame him for not showing up on time, saying if you had been here my brother Lazarus would not have died.

This was a totally radical way of writing about the role of women and would have been shocking.

Women at the time had a similar standing of being listened to in the first Century, as much as women in some Islamic cultures have now.

This is the strength of the text and the reason why it’s believable.  And I don’t mean of course literally, I mean in the way a 1st century allegory can convey complex ideas and concepts, which are comprehensible or striking to its readers and listeners.  It’s just so different and far-reaching, it was a new way of thinking, and represented a startling development in consciousness, and the role of women in that development.

Women are interacting directly with the one who has the authority of God and even reprimand him, talking theology at the well with him, the Christ who as the authority of God stops the stoning of women, and the God authority appears first to women after his resurrection. 

All this is very radical in the first century.

Now we could go into questions like, did she anoint his head or his hands or feet?  And did she actually use her hair or something else, and what was the significance of this, if any. But to do so would be to miss the point for two reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly, that would be like analyzing the grains of sand on the beach but not seeing the beauty of the beach.  Or there being a finger pointing at the moon, and everyone looking at the finger instead of the moon. 

The take out here is the feminine anoints the masculine.

The second reason is that we can’t really be too sure of that level of detail.  These Gospels were hand copied from each other over Millennia and the historical record shows that things get modified to suit theology or interests or copying errors are introduced.

Very clearly, in the 1st century this is about inclusiveness for everyone, including women.

Is this message still relevant for us in the 21st Century?  Well yes, it reminds us that the all genders are to be treated the same.  Everyone is to have the same rights, the same opportunities and the same responsibilities.

And if we didn’t have this what would we have missed out on?

The first person ever to be awarded two Nobel prizes was Marie Curie who won them in two different fields, first Physics and then Chemistry - discovering new elements to be used in health treatments.

Ada Lovelace a mathematician, was the first computer programmer.

The first person to implement Neo Liberal economic policy at the Government level, for better or worse, was Margaret Thatcher.

Rosalind Franklin was the first person to describe the DNA double helix.

In the field of astronomy, Women discovered the fundamental methods of calculating distance in the universe, discovered that the sun's atmosphere is composed mainly of hydrogen, discovered pulsars and supernovas, to name a few.

The Gospel of John encouraged these 2,000 years ago and still does in the 21st Century because its central message, when understood in its historical context, was Egalitarianism, Equality, and inclusiveness.