Dear Daughters,
I have been enjoying The Chosen and have watched with interest how Jesus responds to women. I have read these stories in the Bible for years, but to actually see it on the screen has been so beautiful and affirming.
Jesus is introduced in the very first episode when He enters a neighborhood pub and finds Mary Magdalene at the bar, drunk. She is the one who the Bible mentions as having seven demons. He calls her by name – the name no one else knew – as she was running away, his words spoken so tenderly.
When a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years touched His garment as a mass of people were crowding around Him, Jesus turned and asked Who touched me? When the woman came trembling at His feet, he gently called her daughter and spoke highly of her faith which had healed her.
I’m not sure why it is so different and more powerful to watch scenes in live action on a movie screen as opposed to reading the stories in my Bible. I know some people are able to read a story and immerse themselves as one of the characters – imagining what it must have been like to walk on a hot dusty road near Jerusalem in the year 30 A.D. I am not able (or maybe have not been patient enough to imagine a scene) to visualize very well what it must have been like.
Later there is the little 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, a leader in the synagogue. Jairus had asked Jesus to heal his dying daughter, but on the way was interrupted by the woman suffering from 12 years of hemorrhaging. So, by the time Jesus arrived at Jairus’ house, his daughter was dead. Yet, Jesus tenderly took her hand and brought her back to life.
In a culture where women were considered to be property, and could not even give testimony in court – Jesus raised them to a beautifully high status, unheard of for women in the first century.
Remember the Samaritan woman at the well? When Jesus asked her to go back and bring her husband, she told him she didn’t have a husband. Jesus simply agreed, replying
You are speaking the truth, you have had 5 husbands
and are now living with a man who is not your husband.
No condemnation, merely true facts. This Samaritan woman – who any decent Jewish man would simply dismiss as untouchable – was treated with care and concern. And it was to her, a woman, to whom Jesus first told in plain words that He was the Messiah.
Jesus gave women rights before women’s rights were even a thought. He gave them a right to express their emotions, kneel before Him and learn from Him, as only Jewish men had in the past been allowed to do.
And then the most remarkable happening of all: After Jesus was raised from the dead, the first person who saw Him was Mary Magdalene – the woman who was previous a demoniac. It was she who was told to quickly go and tell the other disciples – the first woman preacher!
If you have ever doubted you are valued and loved by Jesus, please know that is a lie. His love is always available and free for the taking, it hasn’t changed a single iota since He lived on earth thousands of years ago.
There are many other stories about Jesus’ high opinion of women, and they are all surprisingly different to what we might imagine. Jesus was a man offering healing, acceptance, peace and love to all who sought after Him. He loved them, but would not leave them in their sin. He called them up higher.
Love, Mom
I only wish more non-Christians would actually look to Jesus to see what following Him means, rather than looking to Christians and all of our failures and deciding Christianity is a bunch of hypocrites. They are correct, of course, it is full of hypocrites, myself included. But Jesus didn’t call us to follow other Christians, He called us to follow Him. The more we look to other people and the way they practice “religion,” the more we lose sight of what it means to actually be in relationship with Jesus Himself. I have to ask myself all the time if what I value is actually what He values. Thank you again for sharing your insights!
Yes, I agree Kim. We do need to look to Jesus because all of us fail in our living, yet we need to be compelling enough in our lifestyles to cause others to wonder why we are not anxious but instead have peace; how we can love those who are different than us – even though they may malign us. But in a world filled with distractions on every side, it’s a challenge.