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In 1999 I traveled in North Africa. Early one morning I found myself in a village center where a Muslim cleric was holding court on local civic matters.

It seems an Islamic man, angry with his wife, desired to divorce her, for her general failure to satisfy him.

The woman asked him for a chance to speak, and made quite an impassioned plea in Arabic, to which the great crowd of men responded with prolonged laughter.

I asked my Arabic-speaking host, "What are they laughing about?" He told me, "They are laughing because she insists on her rights, but in their religion she doesn't have any."

Indeed, in Islam the man rules supreme, while the woman is little more than a family slave who can be run off with nothing but the clothes on her back.

One forward-thinking Muslim cleric recently mused, "The nations of Islam will never become a great and lasting power because we are like a person paralyzed on one half of our body." What he referred to was Islam's poor treatment of women.

The World Belittles Women

Sadly, it is not just Muhammadanism that denigrates femininity. The Judeo-Christian faith has much to answer for itself.

For instance, Orthodox Jewish men pray daily thanking God he did not make them women. And if you read the Tenth Commandment in Exodus 20, a woman is reduced to chattel. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house ... wife ... servant ... donkey." In fact, by Jesus' day, the rabbis had a saying: "It's better to burn the Torah than teach it to a woman." So it was that women were kept back from the center of things in the Jerusalem temple. They had their own isolated porch from which they could peer down upon the proceedings.

One can see some of this negative attitude toward women in the text. Jesus is in the village of Bethany visiting the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They were a wealthy family and opened their home to Christ for rest.

In fact, the very name "Bethany" means in Hebrew house of rest. Theirs was a place Christ could sleep late, meditate in their shade-adorned garden, eat a good meal, and bathe at leisure.

So, the text says, "Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying."

Evidently Martha decided Jesus needed a good meal, so she fussed over him and busied herself in the kitchen. She wasn't so much meeting his needs for food as she was meeting her needs for being the perfect hostess.

But Christ, knowing his time is short, gets up from his nap, I imagine, and finding a crowd of teachable men waiting around, begins to teach more of the scriptures. And Mary slips in quietly to listen.

Now watch what happens! The Bible says, "Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.' "

Typically we think of Martha's complaint as that of one left alone to wait on all these men while her sister quietly sat out her part. But look closer and you shall see it is not so!

The text says Mary "sat at the Lord's feet and listened" to his teaching. The phrase "sat at the Lord's feet" is a discipleship term. The Apostle Paul testifies that he grew up "seated at the feet of Gamaliel," the Jewish scholar. In those days, you see, a band of male students attached themselves to a scholar and followed him around watching his behavior, listening to his words, questioning him for insights. So, what Martha is really complaining about is, "Look, Jesus, I know my place is here in the kitchen, but there's my sister sitting at your feet, acting like a man! Bid her get up and go to her rightful place."

Here is a woman who has been denied a wider role in temple and society who not only believes it for herself, but is trying to invoke those restrictions on her sister. It is as Tolstoy said of fellow Russian novelist Dostoevsky, "He was sick. And he wanted the whole world to be sick with him."

Christ Ennobled Women

So, what is Jesus going to do? How will he answer Martha's complaint? Will he brusquely shoo Mary into the kitchen? The great surprise of the text is that Jesus gently rebukes the pot-and-pan-wielding Martha while affirming the spiritually-hungry and studious Mary.

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."

Jesus went against the grain of his time and refused to denigrate women. Rather, he ennobled them.

Why? If you look at the original creation story in Genesis 1:27, it says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (RSV). Do you see here how God's image is not contained in the masculine image alone? God's image is revealed in both the masculine and feminine genders together.

So, it cannot be that the church, the very body of Christ, can effectively show forth the nature of God and be an exclusive men's club. The church must ennoble women. She must embrace the best of male and female.

But you say, "Did not Jesus teach us in the Lord's Prayer to refer to God as 'Our Father'?" Absolutely! But elsewhere, when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he said, "I was a hen [not a rooster] and would have gathered you under my wings as a mother does her chicks."

Jesus is the groom. We are his bride. Together we comprise the body. Male and female. Not in competition, but complementing one the other. Completeness in both genders.

The story of Mary and Martha is not an aberration that I have cleverly interpreted. Check it out for yourself. Women were the last to leave Christ's side at the cross, and they were the first at the empty tomb. In fact, it was a woman who first proclaimed the risen Christ! Yet sadly, too true to form, the men thought her to be hysterical, and refused to believe her witness.

What I am striving for you to see with all the might the Spirit inspires within me from the authority of the text is that women count! Why, they comprise over fifty percent of church membership. And with all the things that need doing in and out of the church, how can we expect to succeed if we paralyze half our body, half our labor force, half the image of God by our obdurate behavior?

I challenge you to do some homework! Read Hurley's book, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective. Better still, read the Bible. Read the book of Acts, the record of the early church, and each time a woman is mentioned, mark the place with an orange pen. Then go back and get the big picture by seeing just what a vital part women played in the early church. You'll be surprised at how much orange is there! Why, women were there in the upper room when the fires of Pentecost fell. The woman Lydia was the first convert in Europe. Philip had seven daughters who prophesied. And Priscilla, along with her husband Aquilla, was an important minister in Rome.

Conclusion

On a certain remote Pacific island before World War II, women followed their men at a humble ten paces behind. After the war they were allowed to walk ten paces ahead. You see, the Japanese had mined the island, so women were used as mine sweepers.

What place do women have in the gospel?

I tell you, much Bible study needs to be done here to find the proper balance in the church. And the time to begin is now, lest any woman be held back by our benighted ungraciousness.