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Martha, Misunderstood

October 2, 2014 by Cara Strickland

I can’t imagine a world in which it would be culturally acceptable for a hostess to walk up to her guest of honor and ask him to have a word with her sister, who was not anticipating the needs of her guests with the same alacrity as the hostess (especially loudly enough for at least one eyewitness to hear and write about it). That is not the world that I live in, and it was certainly not the world that Martha of Bethany inhabited.

I’ve heard quite a number of sermons about “Mary and Martha” over the years, and they have all had the same tenor: Strive to be more like Mary and less like Martha. Martha has come to represent the influence of the world (with her distraction and busyness) and Mary seems to represent the ideal Christian woman, sitting at Jesus’ feet, at least, in the eyes of many Christians I’ve heard speak.

Just over a year ago, I was captured by the story of Martha. It was a season of recovery for me. I was having trouble finding the strength to “do” my faith the way I’d been taught through my formative years. Have you ever had a Biblical person reach out and grab you, asking to be noticed? That is what happened with Martha. I haven’t been able to stop reading her story since, over and over.

Filed Under: Jesus and women, Women and the Bible, women in the new testament Tagged With: Bethany in the Bible, Martha in the bible, Mary in the bible

The Many Female Followers of Jesus

July 10, 2014 by Margaret Mowczko

I read Matthew 27:55-56 recently and saw something I had not noticed before. There were many female followers at Jesus’ crucifixion – many. I had previously imagined that only a few women had accompanied Jesus and made the trip all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem – usually a journey of several days.

These women had travelled to be with Jesus and to minister to him by taking care of his needs. From this group of many, Matthew identified just three of the women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the unnamed mother of the sons of Zebedee. Mark, in his parallel account, also lists just three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Salome[1], but he adds that many other women from Galilee were near the cross with them (Mark 15:40-41 cf Mark 16:1).

Filed Under: General, Jesus and women, Women and the Bible, women in the new testament Tagged With: Bethany in the Bible, Joanna in the Bible, Mary and Martha in the bible, Mary in the bible, Mary Magdalene, Matthew 27, Salome in the bible, Susanna in the bible

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