Dear Friend,
Have you voted yet?
There was a time years ago when my husband and I had to do "2-for-1" voting. He was a permanent resident but not yet a citizen, so I voted for both of us. We would sit down with the election materials and go candidate by candidate, measure by measure, proposition by proposition, until we agreed. In the years since he got his citizenship, we still sit down to go over our ballots, but now we don't have to come to consensus. He can vote the way he wants, and I can do the same. Usually we cast two votes on the same side, but sometimes our votes cancel each other out. Ironic. But that's the way democracy is supposed to work: one person, one vote.
There was a time in U.S. history when 2-for-1 voting was the norm--i.e. when the white male head of household was the only one who got to vote. That man's vote was supposed to express the will of his entire family. Clearly not representative democracy. Then in 1920, after decades of marching in the streets, Suffragettes won the right for women to vote when the 19th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. (It still would be many more decades before women of color could begin to exercise the same right.)
Women's voices are important. World cultures—including our own—have a long history of ignoring women's voices.
But do you know who did not ignore women's voices? Jesus.
Sisters Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, were among Jesus’ best friends. Though the writers of the biographies of Jesus were influenced by the male-dominated culture from which they came—and therefore focused on the 12 male disciples—Jesus clearly had many female disciples who followed him and worked in his ministry.
I didn’t realize how remarkable this was for middle eastern culture until I started making friends with people who had grown up in Iran, UAE, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They told me Mohammad had taken wives as young as nine. Women and girls were property. To be used and dishonored.
In contrast, Jesus treated women as equal, as created and valued by the Father, as people. The woman at the well (John 4:1-26). The woman who would have been stoned (John 8:1-11). The 12-year-old girl who should have stayed dead (Mark 5:35-43). The woman who’d bled for 12 years (Mark 5:21-34). The mother at her wit’s end (Mark 7:30). The women Jesus depended on (Luke 8:1-3). The women who came to Jesus’ tomb (Luke 24). Jesus cared about these women. While other historical figures had exploited and used women and girls, here is Jesus putting females in a place of honor.
The clincher for me was when I began to really understand what it meant when Jesus revealed his resurrection to women first. After Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb, his followers could not perform the full burial rights on his body because it was the Sabbath. At the very first chance they got, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women (Luke 24:10) went in the early morning to put spices on Jesus’ dead body. Instead, they found him very much alive: “Suddenly, Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. The women came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers” (Matthew 28:9-10). Why was this so remarkable? He told the very best news the world has ever heard—death has been defeated—to women. It would have been more advantageous, according to his culture, for him to tell men. After all, at that time, women couldn’t testify in a court of law about anything. Their testimony was simply not considered trustworthy. Yet here is Jesus saying, “Go. Tell my brothers I am alive. Use your voice. Testify about me.” In telling women first, in commissioning them as witnesses, he honored them. He honored women’s voices.
How will you use your honored voice today?
Love,
Your Friend Melana