I was flipping through Matthew, narrow-mindedly looking only for passages of scripture where Jesus encounters women, when I found this bit on divorce, which I think further emphasized Jesus’ view that women should be treated as people and not possessions.

In Matthew 19:1-9, Pharisees come to Jesus to try to trick him, their favorite past time in the Gospels.  They ask him about divorce.  “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason” is the question according to the NIV.  I thought it was interesting that they only say a man divorces a woman.  Today, women and men divorce each other.  They have equal rights under the law.  In Deuteronomy 24, the Jewish law outlines the grounds for divorce and never mentions that a woman has the power to divorce her husband so I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that a woman’s right to divorce was little to none in the culture of Jesus’ day.  A woman’s only worth in this time was her father’s social standing if she was still single, her husband’s social standing if she was married, and her own purity before and after marriage.  If a woman was divorced or widowed she had nothing–no possessions, honor, or rights.

The Pharisees asked if a man could divorce a woman for any and every reason.  To me, this implies that men could in that day kick their wife to the curb with nothing whenever they were bored or displeased with her.  She wasn’t a person, just another thing a man owned.  Jesus comes back at the Pharisees’ question with the answer that only on the grounds of adultery can a man divorce his wife.  This is Jesus’ way of protecting women of his day from a world and culture very unfeeling towards women.  It reminds me of the Old Testament laws regarding rape.

In the times of the Old Testament and surrouding cultures, if a woman was raped she was no longer worth anything to a potential suitor, and she had disgraced her father’s house.  If she wasn’t killed for the horrible crime inflicted upon her, she lived a life of shame and poverty.  However, according to the laws of Moses, if a woman was raped who was not engaged to be married, the rapist must marry her and provide for her a home and never divorce her.  While this might not be the best situation according to today’s standards, this fate was much better than those experienced by women outside the Jewish culture of that time.  With this law, God was offering women protection just as Jesus does in the New Testament with his answer regarding divorce.

Much love–Char

about the Canaanite woman Jesus meets in Matthew 15.  Basically as far as Scripture as told us in the Gospel of Matthew, this woman is the first foreign woman Jesus has come across.  She begs him to help her daughter and even though she’s not a Jew she recognizes who she is talking to.  She knows he is God and addresses him so even though he’s not one of his peeps.  At first he won’t help her, but she is persistant, just like Jesus urges us to do with our prayers to God in the parable of the widow and judge (not sure where that is, don’t have time to look it up).  Jesus comes back at the woman requests to heal her daughter with a comment about not giving the children’s food to the dog, but what’s interesting is that I have heard he’s not referring to her as a stray mutt on the street.  Apparently he uses the term for family pet dog and she has a wicked smart response for him.  She tells him that even the dog gets crumbs from the table, and for her faith, he heals her daughter.  He is amazed at her persistence and incredible faith in his power.  YAY FOR JESUS LOVING NON-JEWISH WOMEN!

Sorry for the speedy post, but my computer died, and the library is closing, and I wanted to post something because I want to remain consistent with the posting.  I’ll try to clean this up later.

Much love–Char

Soon after the Sermon of the Mount in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus heals two women in one story.  I want to focus on one of those women, the woman who suffered from bleeding for 12 years (Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:21-43, Luke 8:40-56).

This woman suffered from a terrible predicament.  For 12 years, she had bled for no apparent reason.   According to Leviticus 15, this disease prevented her from any human contact.  She was deemed unclean for 12 years–no one could sit where she had sat; no one could lay where she had laid; no one could even touch her.  Any physical contact with her or anything she touched would make that person unclean as well.  She might as well have been a leper.  Imagine the loneliness she must have felt.  And if the loneliness of an existence without human contact wasn’t enough, she might have suffered the whispers and gossip from people who thought that she suffered because of her sin.  In Biblical times, often people’s sufferings were directly related to or believed to be directly related to their sins or their parents’ sins.

In the story according to Mark, the woman spent all the money she had going from doctor to doctor trying to find a cure.  This woman had nothing left.  She had lost all her money, friends, and respect to her condition.  She had nothing to lose the day she went into the crowd in search of a man named Jesus, a man she knew could heal her.  She was desperate.  He was on his way to heal the daughter of Jairus who was on the verge of death.  She reached out, thinking that if she just touched his clothing she would be healed.  The instant she managed to grab a hold of his garment, the woman felt the disease leave her, but Jesus felt it too.  He turned asking those pressing around him the crowd, “Who touched me?”  They thought he was crazy.  Everyone was touching him, after all he was in the middle of a crowd.  But Jesus insisted, and the woman fell at his feet, trembling as she explained what had happened.  And what was his response?  He doesn’t scold her for distracting him from his mission.  He doesn’t mention the fact that she has made him unclean.  He looks at her and says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”  He doesn’t even use his trademark “Go and sin no more!” He had every right according to Jewish laws and customs to be enraged at her for her bold move, not only as an untouchable but as a woman, but he wasn’t.  He ignored all that because he saw a person, hurting and alone, and he had compassion on her and healed her body and soul.

I think the most beautiful part of this story is that he called her “daughter.”  Jesus was on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter and paused to save his own daughter.  That is how Christ sees and treats all people–the hurting, the lost, the lonely, the weary, the humble, and those who are sitting pretty right now.  He sees them as his children, and he cares for them as a loving parent should care for their children as is illustrated in this story.

Much love–Char

I am back from my hiatus and ready to get to work on this blog! Just an update on the reasons for my hiatus: I have successfully graduated from college and married to the man of my dreams! But now I can focus on keeping up with this blog.

The Sermon on the Mount takes up Matthew chapters 5 and 6. It is packed with the central ideas of Jesus’ ministry. He doesn’t actually talk about women or their roles specifically. Mostly Jesus discusses how we should relate to others, how we pray, and he redefines sin as something in the heart not just an immoral act. Jesus also takes this opportunity to explain why He has come to earth in Matthew 5:17-20 where He says He has come to fulfill the law. It’s an incredible two chapters, but I’m going to focus on Matthew 5:27-30 where Jesus talks about lust.

Now in these verses, Jesus expands the definition of adultery to include men lusting after a woman , not just sleeping with a woman other than their wives (I believe Christ says woman in these verses because men seem to struggle with lust more, but I do believe that women can lust after men, and that is not acceptable either). Just like the other sins Christ redefines in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ expands sin to include the what is going on in a person’s heart, not just the outward sinful act.

Something else I wanted to look at in this passage though is what it says about women. Lust is all about objectifying other people, only looking at them as an object intended for our own pleasure and fulfill our own needs. It’s extremely degrading and damaging to both the person being lusted after and the person doing the lusting. By proclaiming lust a sin, Christ is proclaiming that women are not just objects put on this earth to fulfill men’s desires. Women are people that are to be respected and loved, not lusted after. While Christ doesn’t say this outright, I believe that if a man stopped lusting after women as Christ instructs, respect would eventually grow, and I believe that what we see in the Gospels is that Christ wants us to respect and love all people, including women.

Much love–Char