Women’s History Month
I’m sure people are aware that February was Black History Month, perhaps some are unaware that March is Women’s History Month.
I thought it might be interesting just to talk from a Christian perspective of women in the Bible. There are not a lot of women in the Bible. A big part of the reason for that is that the Bible was written by men, was edited by men, and was canonized (the decision process of what books got to make up the bible) by men. All of this done at a time when women had very few if any rights in society.
What I find very interesting when studying a story in the Bible is to always ask myself why are the authors telling me this story. There is a lot that the Bible doesn’t tell us … for instance there is approximately 30 years missing from Jesus’s life, that is a big chunk of time. So the Bible doesn’t and can’t tell us everything, so when an author of one of the books does tell us something, when that story did make it through any editing process and was chosen to be included I think it is important to ask why are we being told this story.
That is no different with the stories about women in the Bible. There aren’t very many but if you look at the stories that do feature women, those stories do have very strong women characters. It is a good question to ask oneself “Why when there are so few stories about women, did the author(s) want to include this one?”
We don’t have time to go through any of the stories in depth in this format (and I am leaving out quite a few of them), but have a look sometime at the women in the Bible, and you will find some amazing stories:
There is Deborah the only female judge mentioned in the Bible who becomes a military leader…something unheard of in her time.
There is Esther and Ruth who have entire books of the Bible named after them. Esther who saves her entire people from annihilation. And Ruth who stands with her family and becomes a forbearer of kings.
In the Christian Scriptures there are many women in small and large roles mentioned. There are some who are only mentioned once like the Syrophoenician women in Mark 7:26 and the Canaanite Women in Matthew 15:22 who aren’t even given a name, yet they are the ones to help teach Jesus about mercy.
There is Lydia who is only mentioned a couple of times in Acts who is responsible for setting up the first Christian Church in Europe.
In all 4 gospels it is women who are the first to witness the resurrection.
Even though women are only mentioned a small fraction of the times men are in the Bible, when they are it is worth taking notice, it is worth asking ourselves what can be learned from this story that was specifically chosen to be included?
This March let us celebrate all of the contributions that women have made to society throughout history, and let us not forget to include those early contributions that can be found in the Bible as well.
Submitted by Mark Laird, Drayton United Church