God Needed A Woman's Touch: Women and The Early Church

"OH GOD JOSEPH IS GONNA BE PISSED."
"See, Elizabeth, the ironic thing about that statement is..."

I find it ironic that a guy is doing a few posts in the coming weeks about women in the early church.

We’re going to have to keep in mind here that the Bible was written at a different time in human history. It has a historical moment rooted in different standards and expectations of behavior for women and how they were expected to interact with society. Those expectations today may seem foreign to some and delightful to most. But for either schools of thought we need to remember that the Bible is a book dating millennia back in time. I’m not going to be dealing with the Old Testament here because I think the phrase “church” has a firm New Testament connotation to it and most of what I want to deal with here sits with the New Testament. I’ll drop OT references left and right (with proper Biblical addresses of course) where need be.

The church today wouldn’t exist without women. It would’ve collapsed so long ago without the role of women. We’ll start in Luke. I’ll cover Elizabeth and Mary for this post because there’s so much incredible activity with these two characters.

Go to Luke 1 and you’ll be given an oddity of an opening scene. That entire first chapter, and the second chapter, reads like a prologue to Luke’s actual gospel. If you were to take the first two chapters of Luke out then you don’t lose anything of the message of the Gospel, it’s just added backstory information. Go to the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1:5-25. Elizabeth and Zechariah are old enough to where having children is a pipe dream. In Jewish culture women had their worth placed in being able to have children and raise a family. Go to the Bible Belt in the US and that expectation is still there and thriving (some things die hard). Elizabeth was barren (Luke 1:7). If we wanna get technical about it (and you’ll quickly learn that I love technical stuff like linguistics and semiotic nuances and the like), this Greek word could have a litany of meanings. It could mean that she was barren and she couldn’t hold children at all. Basically, the car doesn’t even turn on. It could mean that Zechariah was sexually impotent but the blame was cast on Elizabeth. Seeing as how Jewish culture was heavily patriarchal I would see this as a very valid option. Also read those last two sentences as “The driver got in the car and burned the starter.” And then the third and final option of “barren” here, that she couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term. “The car started but died out on the highway.” To me I could see the third one being a very grim reality and that’s the personal interpretation I choose. Reason being is that it adds a layer of impossibility (to humans at least) that God has to deal with in Zechariah’s human moment when the angel Gabriel goes to him (1:13) while Zechariah is in the temple fulfilling his priestly duties and tells him “You’re gonna be a dad! This is amazing!”

I could imagine for a second the reality of what he was being told. If we go with this interpretation of “barren” meaning something synonymous to “miscarried pregnancies” then Zechariah is clearly jaded. I’m sure he’s tired of getting his hopes up just to watch it fail again. I also read “barren” as consistently so. It’s not just a one-time thing. I’m sure they tried time and again to have children and the same result having occurred. All fruitless. And then the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah, who is a priest fulfilling his duties in the temple, being told from an angel who received his message from the throne of God Himself (1:19) and he asked Gabriel “How?” An exhausted and saddened question I’m sure, a statement laden with implied tears and loss. I can’t necessarily blame him for being utterly human in that moment. But the angel sure can and did. Zechariah loses his ability to speak until his child is born. God has zero patience for people who aren’t going to affirm His activities. Either you move with Him or step aside, because Zechariah got in the way and he lost his ability to speak. Elizabeth is visited by Gabriel and she is ecstatic. She believes him. A barren old Jewish woman believes an angel when the priest of the temple, a man constantly within God’s presence as his job, didn’t believe the angel. Mary, much younger than Elizabeth, it’s usually predicted that she was in her teens (what we would call “teens” now, defining age back then isn’t something I really wanna do right now) when Gabriel came to her and said “Hail favored one,  the Lord is with you.”

Okay let’s stop right there for a second. This is a big one.

Mary’s call was prophetic in a very new sense here. Luke is doing something radical and you don’t want to glaze over it. It’s a very unorthodox (pun intended) prophetic call but it’s one nonetheless. Go to Moses when he was given his prophetic call from YHWH through the burning bush. He told YHWH he couldn’t do it (read: “No I’m not going in front of Pharaoh”) because he can’t speak properly. YHWH said, after Moses said “No”, “Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say” (Exodus 4:12). He said no and then God said “I’ll be with you”. Jeremiah tried being slick too. He knew the stories of Moses trying to get out of being used to get in front of Pharaoh.

“Then I said, Alas, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth. But the Lord said to me, Do not say ‘I am a youth’, because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them , for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 1:6-8).

Two of the biggest Old Testament prophets were told “I will be with you.” It’s a future event. God isn’t with them when He was talking to them because He was calling them in the moment before He said “I will be with you.” Moses was told God’s presence was going to be a future event. Jeremiah was told God’s presence was going to be a future event. Mary was told that it was already there. “Hail favored one, the Lord is with you.”Moses and Jeremiah had to go speak for God. Mary had a much bigger job. She was going to give birth to a living God. The living God. It was probably a prerequisite for the job here that the Lord would be with her at that current point when Gabriel appeared to her in Luke 1:26-38. This is a young girl being visited by a sentient being that was at the throne of God, given a message from eternity incarnate, and was told that she will give birth to a living deity. Then she asked “How?” She was probably wondering “Look I don’t know if you know how babies are made, but down here there’s some rules.” She says “How? I know not a man.” Zechariah asked “How” and he was silenced for a long time. Mary asks how and she gets one free question. She’s going to give birth to the savior of the world. It’s fair that at the very least she gets to ask one question. The Holy Spirit was the answer to Mary’s pregnancy and she said, “Behold, I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38). I can’t imagine how scared she must have been. A young Jewish girl giving birth out of wedlock (She wasn’t married yet when this happens in Luke) in a society where being pregnant out of wedlock was a legal reason to be stoned? She had to be scared. But God’s presence was enough of a reason for her to say “Let it be to me according to your word” (By the way, I’m running through a Greek translation of Luke, so if it sounds really proper, almost too proper, it’s because I’m looking at a notebook I’m working in for this gospel).

Mary and Elizabeth are the down and outers of Jewish society. Luke has an interest in the underdogs of society. He starts out his literary work with an old barren Jewish woman who was told that she was going to have a child in her old age and he jumps to a young Jewish woman being told she’s going to give birth as a virgin. Their willingness to believe the angel at his word, even with Zechariah the priest doubts it, shows the strength and character of women early on in the pre-Christ New Testament. And, thankfully, that strength and willingness to obey the call of the Lord carries on into the formation of the Gospel message and into the church’s life.