A commentary on the Sabbath School Lesson for May 9: “Women in the Ministry of Jesus”
It is the exuberance of the women in Jesus’life that I find so refreshing. After being visited by an angel and being told that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and that she will give birth to a child, Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. “I’m bursting with God-news;”she says. “I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened—I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!”(Luke 1:46-47 Message)
May I add, Bonnie, the women who showed “Leadership” - well knowing that this is a hot potato : The wife and the daughter of our Union President of the past ( a very distinguished gentleman) , who guided us into the Bible , with a sandbox and some plaster figures (no, they were not to be ordered at the book .- center, they just were found somewhere by those two women dedicated to their mission of leading children into the Bible) : Once it was Moses on Sinai, then it was Peter on the lake, or Braham - - Ms Rollett, rather a “bluestocking”, secretary of the Union, the one daughter (out of wedlock) of an actress to be classified as “grand dame” - - who preached, wrote, and was called to help by the Union President in difficult matters of theology and policy and pastoral ministry - - -and who in 1945 carried a little girl - after her mothers early death and her father a minister and now a PW in some GB camp - for six miles on her back on a straight and hot road without any possibilities to hide away from the “international” zone of Vienna into the safe ( ! ) Russian zone outside ? - - -
what a wonderful commentary just before Mother’s Day. One of the final acts if Jesus prior to His death was asking John to care for His mother. It should be instructive to every son born. Tom Z
Both, the lesson (“Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the ‘Gospel of Women’…”) as well as this essay made me aware of a richness of Luke I hadn’t realized before. So many “incidents” of empowerment in the best and most modern sense of the word. Personally my favourite story of empowerment hasn’t even been mentioned (except for the beautiful term “daughter of Abraham”) - so there is more to discover (Luke 13).
Jesus straightening out a woman - quite literally - in the middle of a Jewish worship, by laying on of hands and empowering her to praise God from the pulpit, right there and then — --- bringing us back to the exuberance Bonnie so delightfully described.
i sometimes wonder what would have happened for our church had one of the men god initially approached accepted the commission eventually bestowed on egw…would something like “desire of ages”, which is so attentive to feeling and minute, intuitive detail and context, been possible…that egw was enormously artistically gifted is beyond dispute…but i tend to think her gender may also explain why her meta narrative of a loving father god who goes to the nth degree to rescue even one of his erring children is so compelling…