by Paul Johnson
The woman, meanwhile, had left her pot and rushed back into the town, clamoring to all the men (we are told nothing about the women): “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” The men, of course, came and were fascinated by Jesus; they persuaded him to spend two days with them and believed his message. The woman was pushed into the background: “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves.” Perhaps she was notorious and unpopular among their wives. As with many other passages in the New Testament, we wish we had been told more. What was the explanation for her unusual marital arrangements, or lack of them? What more had Jesus told her about her life to explain her saying he “told me all things that ever I did”? It is strange that we know so much. For she did not talk to the evangelist John. Jesus must have given him the gist of his conversation with the woman, which John reproduces. And perhaps Jesus omitted much. As it is, she recedes into the darkness of history untold, to our regret; but we are left with the hope that she is saved, too, as this fascinating woman surely deserved to be.
The exotic woman we meet in Luke 7 : 31-48 is equally fascinating. Jesus’s convivial nature, his willingness to attend feasts and dinners with a wide variety of worldly people, had attracted comment and censure by the pious. Jesus answered them, the religious establishment whom he termed “the men of this generation,” through a curious metaphor: “They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.” He said that John the Baptist ate neither bread nor wine, but the religious men complained, “He hath a devil.” Jesus told them, “The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” He then added, mysteriously, “But wisdom is justified of all her children.” All the same, a prominent Pharisee called Simon asked him to dinner, and Jesus agreed to come. News of the feast got around. “And behold,” says Luke, “a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment. And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.”
This was an extraordinary scene, for to wash a man’s feet was a gesture of unusual humility in the ancient Near East, highly symbolic of submission and devotion. Jesus was to do it to his disciples shortly before his Crucifixion, provoking acute embarrassment on Peter’s part. There must have been embarrassment on this occasion, too. For to wash a man’s feet with tears, and dry them with your hair, was a supremely difficult feat, even if the tears were copious and the hair very long. Moreover, the woman was beautiful and notorious. The Pharisee Simon was mortified. How had the woman got in? And did Jesus know about her? He “spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him.”
Jesus read his thoughts and answered them: “Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee.” Simon replied, “Master, say on.” Whereupon Jesus characteristically asked him a question: If a man had two creditors, one of five hundred pence, one of fifty, and forgave both, which of them would love him more? Simon said, “I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most.” Exactly, said Jesus. Now he administered a rebuke: not angrily but in measured tones and careful words. “Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house. Thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.”
He then added, with some emphasis, “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.” To the woman he said, “Thy sins are forgiven.” We do not hear any more about the woman, who—like the much-married Samaritan lady—disappears into unrecorded history, but not without Jesus’s blessing: “Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” The lesson was lost on Simon and his friends. All they could say was “Who is this that forgiveth sins also?” But the repentant woman saved by faith, sublime in her humility, remains one of the most touching figures in ancient literature. And, as often in the New Testament, the matter-of-fact account by Luke has the resounding ring of truth.
This episode is an example of the extraordinary effect Jesus had on women. He evoked not only their faith and devotion but also an added dimension of tenderness tinged with poetry of gesture and sometimes of speech. The pagan Canaanite woman described in Matthew 15:22-28, who wanted Jesus to cure her daughter, was treated rather brusquely—she seems to have been persistent and importunate and was no doubt making a great noise. Jesus said his mission in Tyre and Sidon was to recover “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and told her, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” Unabashed by this uncompromising reply, she was inspired to say, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master’s table.” Instantly moved by this brilliant riposte, Jesus gave in: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” The daughter “was made whole from that very hour.”
Jesus was conspicuous for gentleness, patience, and forbearance. He was hugely intuitive. He disliked any kind of legalism or ponderous logic, preferring the flashes of instant perception and poetry which illuminated his speech and turned his sayings into strings of sparkling jewels. These were not masculine characteristics. He relied more on emotions than reason to get across a point, a more feminine trait than what women expected from a preacher of doctrine. But then he was not a preacher: that was one thing women liked about him. He taught: he explained in an interesting, luminous way difficult things by using images from everyday life and work. He was a moralist but a poetical one. And Jesus was glad to make them interested and happy. He loved the two sisters of Lazarus who lived in Bethany, Martha and Mary, and clearly spent many precious hours there on the rare occasions when he rested. He knew well the sterling virtues of Martha and the staunchness of her faith—did she not make a declaration of it in terms which equaled in robustness the splendid confession of St. Peter? (Jn 11 : 27). But he liked Mary to sit at his feet and listen, and would not have her pleasure and instruction interrupted by household drudgery—“Mary hath chosen that good part,” he freely admitted (Lk 10 : 42). “Let her alone,” he said, when Judas Iscariot wanted to take away the alabaster jar of spikenard which she poured over his feet, “and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment” (Jn 12 :2-8).
One reason Mary listened so intently was that the religion he outlined was quite different from Mosaic Judaism. Women were put right at the center of it alongside men, sharing equally in its duties and consolations. His mother, Mary, was an indispensable part of his Incarnation—his mission would have been impossible without her. The Holy Family to which he and she and his foster father Joseph belonged was, to him, the ideal image of the unit of society. To protect the family, he changed Mosaic law in one important particular: he placed marriage on an altogether higher plane of sanctity and made it indissoluble (Mt 19 : 5-6). A married couple were “one flesh”: “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” Jesus’s object in this unqualified condemnation of divorce was not merely to strengthen marriage but to protect women. Their inferior legal position in the ancient Near East was enhanced immeasurably by the ease with which men—but men only—could get a divorce. This applied everywhere in varying degrees. The penal code of Babylon laid down: “If a husband say unto his wife, Thou art not my wife, he shall pay half a mina and be free. But if a woman repudiate her husband, she shall be drowned in the river.” Judaic law was less oppressive, but the school of Hillel declared it a sufficient ground for divorce if the wife had spoiled her husband’s dinner. Other systems in Greece, Persia, an
d Rome, for instance, were not essentially different in treating the woman as inferior and a species of property. Even today, easy divorce bears harder on the wife than on the husband, and in upholding marriage, Jesus was the first teacher in world history to show his anxiety to put women on an equal footing with men.
It is true that Jesus selected only men for his apostolate. That was inevitable in the social conditions of the time, for his apostles were expected to go on independent missions, often alone, and to direct the disciples as part of the organization Jesus set up to spread his Gospel. Moreover, Jesus needed men to protect him from the hysteria of crowds and the physical threats of his enemies—not that they proved effective when it came to the end. It is one of the lessons of the life of Jesus that women often show more physical courage than men. He also expected his apostles to devote themselves full-time to his service. As Luke says, “they forsook all and followed him” (5:11). Peter states emphatically, “Lo, we have left all and have followed thee” (Mk 10:28). Virtually all women were not in a position to do this, at least formally, though it is clear some women contrived to manage it in practice. Jesus did not make a particular virtue of celibacy, though there is a passage in Matthew in which, contrary to traditional Jewish teaching, he showed it was lawful (19:10-12). He indicated it was a special calling: “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” What Jesus did stress, time and again, was that devotion to God came before any family tie—father, mother, brother, sister. This applied equally to men and women. The notion of celibate monks or nuns living in communities is not incompatible with anything Jesus says in the Gospel. Nor is an all-male priesthood. But, equally, there is nothing in Jesus’s teaching which rules out women priests.
What Jesus taught, essentially, is that friendship with God meant participation in a heavenly family which superseded all human ties, while not necessarily excluding them. Luke records a woman shouting out to Jesus from the crowd, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” Jesus agreed with her, but pointed to the higher value: “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it” (11 : 27-29). There is an important passage in Matthew in which Jesus indicated that for the purpose of his mission on earth he was creating an apostolic family which necessarily had first place in his attention and affection. While he was teaching, his entourage told him that his mother and other members of his family, probably cousins, were waiting to speak to him. He answered, characteristically, with a question: “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” He answered it himself by a gesture toward his disciples: “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother” (12:46-50). The most common word Jesus applies to God is “Father” and to himself is “Son.” Human beings were first, and primarily, “children of God.” That was the eternal relationship, outside time. Marriage, progeny, and human love within the family were all-important in worldly terms. Still, they were of this world: it was membership in God’s family which mattered in the end.
In Jesus’s family on earth, which he carefully composed and instructed, women were as numerous, though not perhaps as prominent, as men. His mother and other female members of her family were often present, and she was with him at the end, by the cross. Luke refers to a group of fallen women, whom Jesus had cured of their “devils”—that is, their licentiousness—and recruited for his entourage (8:2). The most important of them was Mary Magdalene, and Luke emphasizes the sinfulness of her former life by saying “out of whom went seven devils.” Then there were Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. But Luke also mentions a group of well-to-do women, which included Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’s steward Chuza, and Susanna. These are the only two he names, but he says there were “many others.” They “ministered unto him of their substance” (8 : 3). Jesus’s traveling mission needed financial support as well as servicing, and this was primarily supplied by women. The first echelon, the apostles, were all men. But the second group, responsible for housing and meals and traveling expenses, were women, usually of ample means. Jesus had the ability, partly because of his character, partly through the appeal of his teaching, to attract intelligent, educated, cultured, and sensitive women, who found in his words a kind of religion infinitely more moving and satisfying than anything they could get in the synagogue or Temple. This appeal to affluent women was not confined to Jewish or Samaritan circles. The wife of Pilate, the governor of Judaea, was also fascinated with Jesus. She could not join his entourage, of course, but she had dreams about him and tried to persuade her husband to save him: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him” (Mt 27 : 19). The other affluent ladies were also prevented by their situation from going on missionary work, but they provided the means to sustain it and came to help when Jesus and his disciples were within range of their homes. The widows could work with him full-time. These women foreshadowed the Roman ladies who, in the early days of Christianity, flocked to the catacombs and the first churches and were, in great part, responsible for its spread and success. Jesus’s teaching was such that a woman could identify herself with it absolutely, and the higher her rank and the more independent minded she was, the stronger the bonds with the Master. Prostitutes, whose profession itself was a form of emancipation, were also violently attracted the moment they forsook their degrading way of life.
That Jesus loved the society of women, felt at home with them, and knew how to talk to and respond to them is clear from the Gospel. But he also loved children. It was one of his most marked and powerful characteristics. He saw in children uncorrupted innocence before the material attractions of the sinful world distorted the instinct of purity and love. He liked children of all ages. Young mothers sensed his love of babies and handed their own to him to caress. There is a striking passage in Mark which illustrates Jesus’s ability to be comfortable with the very young, which makes him unique (so far as I know) in the literature of the ancient world: “[T]hey brought young children to him, that he should touch them.” The disciples, more typical of their times, did not like this and rebuked the mothers. “But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” He often compared children with the sinless and now, inspired by this attempt to deny him their company, summed up his feelings: “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” To emphasize his point, he “took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (10:13-16). Matthew 19 : 13-14 recounts the same incident, adding, “[O]f such is the kingdom of heaven.”
The theme that a certain childish innocence was required even of grown men and women to fit souls for salvation was one which recurred frequently in Jesus’s teaching. It was linked to his image of being “born again” and to his love of humility. But Jesus loved the child not just as an image but as a reality. He was fascinated by every aspect of the way in which a baby comes into the world and then grows and becomes a delightful child. He brought them into his teaching constantly. He was very observant. He noted how the delight of a mother in her baby obliterated the pains of childbirth (Jn 16:21), how the father cuddled his child in bed (Lk 11 : 7), and how parents listened to what children said and granted their requests, but only when unharmful (Mt 7 : 9; Lk 11 : 11-13). The impulses of children at play interested him (Mt 11 : 16) and so did their sorrows (Mt 18:25). He regarded as the supreme test of loyalty the willingness of a disciple to leave his children for his, and God’s, sake (Lk 14:26, 18:29; Mt 19:29). For Jesus, the love of husband and wife for each other and their shared love of their children are inextricably intermingled, and part of the intimate way in which human love can imitate and foreshadow the love which is the sustaining principle of God’s Kingdom.
Unwilling as Jesus was to perform miracl
es for show, he invariably acted when begged by a parent to heal a sick child. It is notable how large a proportion of his cures benefited children. The little child of the nobleman at Capernaum (Jn 4 : 49); the distressed boy (Mt 17 : 18), “the only child of his father,” whom Jesus healed while descending from the mountain; Jairus’s “little daughter” (Mk 5:23), whom Jesus raised from death; the “daughter” of the Canaanite woman (Mk 7 : 30); and the only son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7:11-18) are only some of the cases where Jesus hastened to the aid of a sorrowing parent. Life was cheap in first-century Palestine. Children died all around him of neglect and poverty as well as disease. But when a particular case of a suffering child was placed before him, he always acted. He preached not only “Feed my sheep” but also, markedly, “Feed my lambs.”
