Thoughts on women...

Matthew 27 & 28 Mark 15 & 16 Luke 23 & 24 John 19 & 20 The accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection are a powerful read this morning, on Good Friday. Reading them together gives an incredible 360 view of the scene. Reading the Bible through the lens God has given me, I'm usually drawn to the women in the narrative. None of these accounts of Christ's death and resurrection disappoint. The women are there. They follow him to the hill of crucifixion, they stay with him as he dies, care for him and watch over him in death and first witness the empty tomb and his resurrection. Jesus addressed them on numerous occasions, to comfort them, to care for them and finally to send them as the first messengers of the gospel. It is incredible but not surprising to see Jesus in his final hours reaffirming the presence and integrality of women. Throughout his life Jesus never missed an opportunity to include women and to elevate them to the status of human, bucking social n...

John 4:4-42 The Samaritan Woman I was recently introduced to Sheila Gregoire (to her work, not to the woman herself sadly), an amazing writer and women's rights advocate, particularly in the church sphere. She wrote a fascinating piece about Queen Vashti ( read it here ) and it blew my mind. She was hopelessly positioned as the villain of the piece rather than the disrespected sex slave she ultimately was. It got me thinking about other times when women have been misrepresented in bible accounts. Bathsheba is one (she was not on the roof ok!) but the other one I recently discovered was the Samaritan woman at the well. I have to be honest and say this one hit me in the gut because I have believed those misrepresentations of this woman. She has been held up as the woman who had 'many husbands' and was currently living 'in sin' with a man who was not her husband. The implication being that she had left these men one failed marriage after the other. We are taught that s...

We don't need to read far into the Bible to see Gods blueprint for the earth and humanity. All of creation was designed to work in harmony and at peace with one another. Everything was 'good' until He created mankind and it was the completion of everything including humanity, which earned his final, sixth day 'very good'. God said "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over...[every living creature].. so God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (v26-27). God is fully expressed in the combination of male and female. One is not complete without the other. Not necessarily in a marriage sense, but humanity is only complete when both male and female are fully expressed as they are in God. It is here also that the counter culturedness of scripture is established. Early readers and writers of scriptures were familiar with predominantly male kings and rulers being...

Mary paused again as the back ache which had been plaguing her for the last few hours gripped her, causing her to grasp onto the donkey’s pack as she walked alongside. She looked up as the sensation passed and saw the outline of the town up ahead and sighed inwardly in relief, careful not to let Joseph hear her. He had been so kind and gentle with her since this whole thing had started and though she felt sure that he would continue to stand by her, she worried that it wouldn’t take much for him to take the advice of all their friends and family and reject her completely. He didn’t talk about it but she knew that the community was confused by his determination to stand by his pregnant bride to be. Many of his family could barely look him in the face and business had fallen recently, he was a skilled carpenter, taking pride in carrying on the family business, but he didn’t seem to waver. There were the faithful few though who seemed to trust his judgement however and whil...

Every year on the 25th November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. This date sees the beginning of 16 days of activism and raising awareness of the systemic misogyny faced by women and girls globally every single day. On the 16th day, the event culminates in Human Rights Day on 10th December 2021. The event is now 30 years old and the theme this year is centred around the issue of femicide or the gender related killing of women. Femicide is defined as a hate crime, whereby a woman is killed as a result of her gender usually by a man or men. In 2017, 87,000 women were murdered, of which 50,000 were killed by either an ex-partner or a member of their family.  This is 137 women killed daily or 6 women every single hours of every single day by people they should be able to trust not to harm them.  In the UK a man kills a woman he 'loves' or cared for, every three days. This statistic has remained the same for the past 10 years. “Men’s violence...

I have recently fallen in love all over again with the story of creation in Genesis. It appeals to my inner optimist on such a primal level and I can feel the joy as God brought his beautiful creation into being. I can almost see his eyes twinkle as he fashioned creature after creature, plant after plant, wove the seasons into being and established circadian rhythms into time and declared them all "good". When God made us though he declared we were "very good" and of course this was true because he made us in his image and he is, of course, VERY good. " Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in...

 I love the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus has come to spend time with his friends and is staying with Lazarus and his two sisters. Martha is busily running around being the hostess with the mostest as was normal at that time. Mary had sat herself at the feet of Jesus. So far, so familiar. Except to do anything at this point but hold your hands up in wonder at just how counter culture this was would fall short of the attention it deserves. First century Israel was a time of segregated patriarchy. Men spent leisure, work and religious time with men. Women likewise with women. Learning and teaching was at that time within the exclusive remit of men. And yet here we have Mary, brazenly sat at the feet of Jesus. To sit at the feet of someone at these times was to demonstrate your discipleship. It was a posture of willingness to learn and a desire to be like the person of your focus. This was not the normal posture of women at this time because the structure of society determined the w...