Mars, Venus, and Jesus (Part 2)

"The Spirit of the LORD is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor." Luke 4:18-19

This is the first of Jesus' mission statements in the Gospel of Luke. In this author's portrait of Jesus, Christ comes to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. In Africa and around the world, women continue to rank high, if not the highest, among the most oppressed people groups. Does Jesus come to women? The author of Luke answers this question overwhelmingly in the affirmative, and the manner in which Jesus comes to women is shown most clearly in the Gospel of Luke. And women respond to Jesus.

Throughout the book, women are set alongside men in the narrative; however, the most striking contrasts occur at the beginning and end of the story. In chapters 1 and 24 we see women responding in faith to some seemingly impossible news. As a man, I am both humbled and enlightened as I consider the disbelief of the men in the face of the believing women. Let's observe...

Second, Luke 24 opens with some pretty glum disciples, both men and women. And why shouldn't they be? Jesus, their Messiah, is dead. The women disciples who had followed him (Luke 8:1-4) came to the tomb early Sunday morning in order to embalm the body of Jesus. They arrive at the tomb, but Jesus is gone! As the women stood there wondering what had happened, two men in dazzling clothes (presumably angels) appeared to them, asking why they sought the dead among the living - "He is risen! Remember how he told you, while he was will with you in Galilee, ...." The angels reminded the women that Jesus had predicted that he would die and rise again. "Then [the women] remembered his words."

The assumption is that the women believed then and there, on the spot, right away. The very next verse tells us that they went back to the Eleven disciples and all the others and told them everything that had happened. "But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed like nonsense" (NIV). Sound familiar? The New American Standard Bible speaks even more harshly of the disciples - "they would not believe." What's worse, Jesus had spoken of his death, burial, and resurrection on 3 different occasions to his disciples!!! The women believed; they did not.

Well, Peter did better than the others, it seems. He "got up and ran to the tomb." If you understand John 20 to be describing the same events as Luke 24, then perhaps John went with Peter on this trip (but this doesn't seem likely to me - read the two stories carefully). Anyway, the text in Luke says that even when Peter saw the empty tomb, he went away "wondering to himself what had happened." This was the same response as the women had before the angels appeared to them. In other words, in took both the women's report and the empty tomb to bring Peter to the same place mentally as the women when they first saw Jesus' empty burial clothes.

In fact, we are not given any indication of belief by any of the Eleven disciples until verse 34, where the text tells us after the fact that "the Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." So it would seem that neither Peter nor the other Eleven believed until Jesus had personally appeared to Peter (although I admit this is an inference). How slow we are to believe the words of Jesus.

"Father, give us grace to believe what You tell us in Your Word. Thank you for the example of godly women of faith as recorded in Luke's Gospel. Please make us malleable to Your Spirit and hungry for Your Son, the true bread from heaven."