A Woman’s Place

This Sunday’s Gospel reading (Lk. 7:36-8:3) is about women and their place. 

The first is “a woman in the city, who was a sinner.”  We often assume it was Mary Magdalene.  Luke doesn’t say that.  We also assume she might have been a prostitute.  Luke doesn’t say anything remotely like that. 

What Luke does say is that this unnamed woman lavished herself on Jesus, bathing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, after which she continued to kiss his feet and them anointed them with ointment.  It is not that the woman is coming on to Jesus.  It is that she welcomes him. 

This does not sit well with Simon, a Pharisee, who was actually Jesus’ host.  He focused on her status as a woman and a sinner.  But he missed the point.  Jesus pointed out to him that what this unnamed woman had done was really more Simon’s responsibility as host than hers as an anonymous and uninvited attendee, but had been neglected.  Thank heaven she stepped out of her place and did Simon’s job for him, indeed going well beyond what might have been expected of Simon as host.  The woman stepped out of her place to that of the host, a place the world would have thought was not properly hers.  

This woman of the city is not the only woman in the story.  Luke goes on to report that after the event at Simon’s house, Jesus “went on through the cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God” (8:1).  The twelve were with him, and also some women, women who must have looked a lot like camp followers to those who observed.  Some of them had been cured of infirmities and evil spirits.  Mary Magdalene was there. 

And then Luke includes a very important detail.  Two of the women travelling with the group were Joanna and Susanna, both well-placed women of some means.  Luke is careful to note that it was these women who financed the whole group, providing for all from their resources.   

Now, that is certainly different than what our preconceptions might be about the proper place of women in the society of first century Palestine.  It is, though, very much the story of the church.  Indeed, we see that it has been the story of the church from its very beginning.  Women have always taken a leading role in the church and have backed it up with their resources.  And, as we all know, money is power.  One wonders if it isn’t this reality, women exercising power, just as much as women stepping into the role of host, with which goes certain power as well, that really upset Simon and not the fact that the woman, just like everyone else, was a sinner. 

Women stepping into positions of power, so central to Jesus’ living proclamation of the Gospel, is at the very core of what so upsets the way things are and those who cling to it.  So much of our life in the kingdom turns out to depend on women knowing their place and stepping into it.

Peace,
+Stacy