On Christian Feminism, One Woman, and the Reach

This summer I’m taking a Biblical Interpretation class. It’s been fantastic. Two weeks ago, the assignment had to do with the book of Mark and the many times the author wrote about Jesus instructing his disciples to cross over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They begin in Mark 4:35 “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’

There are more than six distinct moments in the book of Mark when Jesus and his disciples do a bit of crossing over to the other side, and each time they cross over the narratives surrounding the texts have to do with faith. My assignment the other day was to interpret what Mark was trying to do with the imagery. Is this Mark’s motif of the conversion experience? Is he trying to tell his readers that to walk by faith, there is always a crossing over to the other side? There will be storms, and waves, and sometimes we will wonder if the boat of faith is going to capsize, but this too is a part of the journey of faith.

No doubt Mark’s readers were steeped in Jewish narrative and would know by heart the stories of the Israelites crossing over the Red Sea on dry land, and also the crossing of the Jordan River. Does Mark use the imagery of crossing over to other side to show us something about faith?

In Mark five, after they cross over again to the other side, after the scene with the demoniac from the tombs, we meet Jairus, a leader in the synagogue. He’s concerned for his sick daughter. She’s near death. Jairus is a religious man, a leader of the synagogue, who fits nicely into the religious institutions of his day. He begs Jesus to go to his house and help him. Jesus agrees. While on the way, this one woman shows up to the scene who had been suffering with a hemorrhage for twelve years and had spent all she had on doctors. This woman knows that if she can just touch the edge of Jesus’ garment, she’ll be healed.

The woman reaches through the crowd, touches him, and power goes from his body into her body, and she is healed.

Jesus feels the power leave his body, and stops the train headed to Jairus’s house. He wants to know who touched him. His disciples try to shush him and move him along, but he insists.

The woman, the bleeding woman, who by Jewish custom was not allowed to touch anyone because she was unclean, steps into the open air, in fear and trembling. She tells Jesus her whole story.

Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well: go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

It wasn’t until I was reading this passage in the context of crossing over to the other side, that I started to notice a few things about the way Mark chooses to tell the story of this particular woman. One, she shows up while Jesus is on the way to help the daughter of a religious man. A man who is good and clean, a man who is allowed to ask for the healing of his daughter.

She reaches through the crowd and takes initiative in the most bold way, and Jesus loves her for it. He doesn’t scold her or shame her or tell her she should have waited her turn. He doesn’t explain that it’s not her place to reach out and take her blessing, or to presume a touch from God. Instead, Jesus calls her daughter, a most tender word of endearment that is connected to family and to belonging. Jesus was on his way to heal Jairus’s daughter. Notice the word choice. Daughter.

In my own faith tradition, for most of my life, people taught that as a woman it was my job to receive and to respond to someone else’s initiative. I was to follow, not lead. I was to cultivate a contented spirit. But here is this woman reaching across every single religious and societal divide to touch Jesus, the very thing she’s not allowed to do, and Jesus praises her for it.

This woman crosses over to the other side, and it’s in her crossing over by faith that she is made well. She takes initiative. She touches Jesus. And in fear and trembling, this lovely women bears witness, tells the truth of what she has done, unashamed, in spite of how afraid she is.

In my instagram profile, I self describe as a Christian Feminist. It’s taken me years to name it as such. There was always this deep but abiding shame over that word choice, as if Christians were not allowed to also be feminists. But after years of hedging and avoiding, there is no more avoiding it. I’m a Christian, and it is because of my Christianity that I am also a feminist.

A few weeks ago, a very kind woman on instagram requested that I say something about it.

The dictionary says this about feminism: 

feminism | ˈfeməˌnizəm | noun
the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.

I have to ask, why did Mark, Matthew, and Luke tell the story of this woman? Why did she matter enough to remember? Why did Jesus call her daughter?

Has there ever been a time in history when women were not shamed for stepping up and out? For asking for a blessing, for taking what we needed instead of waiting for someone to approve that we’re allowed to have it? Has there ever been a time when it was safe for women to be seen, to be bold and audacious?

Mark wants us to know Jesus is different. In Him there is no shame, there is no need to wait for someone else to take initiative, for someone else to make the invite. There is no need to ensure there is man willing to take responsibility, or offer his spiritual covering.

In Him, daughter, you are free to reach across the boundaries of propriety. And here’s the most beautiful thing … Jesus stops the crowd for you.

***

Please Sign up for Tina’s Hope Notes. These are short, weekly notes meant encourage you. You’ll get my free booklet, called Rekindling: Five Faith Practices for the Burnt Out and Overdone.