Women Liberation may sound modern, ungodly and feminist. But did you know that it is as old as Christianity and it was at the center of Jesus Ministry? When Jesus walked the earth, He did not only confront the culture, heal the sick and raise the dead but also liberated the oppressed and set the captives free. Women were at the top of his list!Consider the story of Lazarus, where Jesus had an encounter with Mary and Martha as reported by John in the apostles. When Jesus received the report that Lazarus, the brother to Mary and Martha, was deathly ill He purposely delays His visit two more days so that Lazarus would die (John 11:6). When He (Jesus) finally shows up Martha is upset with His delayed response and says so (John 11:21). Mary on the other hand is weeping, broken with despair and full of emotion. In anguish she falls down at His feet, and through her tears she utters, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died”(John 11:32). In response Jesus embraces Mary in the midst of her grief and weeps with her, ‘Jesus wept’. Note that mourning was women’s work; it exposed weakness and was not the macho thing to do. Still, Jesus wept. His weeping sent a message to Mary, to women everywhere and to the watching crowd. He was saying, ‘I value emotion, I feel your pain and I understand your sorrow” Finally, deeply moved within, Jesus arrives at the tomb and says, “Remove the stone”…The rest is History.
What about the story of Mary stepping into a room with perfume worth a year’s wages? With all the disciples watching she gets down on the floor and began to pour this expensive perfume over Jesus feet, wiping them with her hair. The men begin to complain about the poor stewardship of wasting expensive perfume… and Jesus responds, “…Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her” (Mathew 26: 10-11, 13). Does it begin to make sense? When the Pharisee’s brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus but did not bring the man, they were not only upset about Jesus forgiving the guilty; they were angry that He was honoring and empowering women.
I can go on and on how Jesus protected the feelings of women, valued their passions and validated their actions. In all this Jesus was sending a clear message that it takes both the femininity of women, whom they oppressed and the masculinity of men to represent God. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). It is no doubt that by empowering and according full recognition to women we are embracing the full scale of the nature of God.
“Isn’t it amazing that the first person who designed us equal was God? We certainly are different in many ways – physically, emotionally and many other areas – but we are definitely equal in value. Embracing our femininity doesn’t mean we are weak. On the contrary it means we are exercising our God-given differences in the best way he designed us!” Ann Thuo, Communication Expert & MoliveS Team Member[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”835″ label=””][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Mary Kamore is the Founder and Lead Consultant, M_OliveS Mentors[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]