Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’

“I Have Seen the Lord”

April 7, 2012

Today is Saturday, the day before Easter, and I’m wondering what Saturday was like for the women disciples of Jesus two thousand years ago who had just experienced the unthinkable.

Sunday's coming

Their Lord, this amazing teacher whom they believed was the Messiah (Christ), the Son of God, the Hope of Israel—this man who had healed them, taught them, forgiven them, accepted them, who had treated them as valuable members of his ministry, who had inspired their love and devotion—had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to the cross. Everything they understood about him, all the things they had hoped for because of him, now made no sense. He was gone. How could this have happened?

The Gospel of Luke simply tells us that these women “rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). I bet you can imagine how miserable that Saturday was for them.

The female disciples of Jesus had been deeply affected by the crucifixion of Jesus. Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Salome, the mother of James and John, Mary the mother of Jesus and her sister were all there. The Gospel of Matthew tells that many women who had followed Jesus from Galilee were there with him in Jerusalem that fateful Friday (Matthew 26:55), and they followed him every step of the way:

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Risky Business

March 31, 2012

What do the following have in common?

– Reaching out in a crowd to touch a rabbi’s robe, even though it will make him ceremonially unclean.

– Waltzing into a house full of hostile religious leaders who all know about your immoral past.

– Sacrificing a year’s worth of wages to a man who didn’t ask for it.

– Speaking up first to a Jewish man who knows you only as an assertive Gentile woman.

Risk is what these actions share. For women in first century Palestine, these actions were each inherently risky.  (Read More)

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All the Single Ladies

March 17, 2012

Despite all our best efforts, the number of single adults  in the U.S.  now nearly equals the number of married adults. Just under half of those single people are women.

Women today are single for a variety of reasons. Some are completing their education and getting established in a career before getting married. Some are taking advantage of their freedom to engage in ministry and mission work. The average age of first marriage is closing in on 30, although women are not necessarily waiting that long to co-habitate. This twenty-something group also, of course, includes women who would like to be married but are waiting to find the elusive “Mr. Right.” Not to be disregarded are those women who are uninterested in ever being married, some of whom commendably choose to devote their lives to the service of God and his people.  (Read More)

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Mexico, Samaria, and Some Honest Self-Reflection

September 17, 2011

Read an excerpt from the Bible study lesson on the Samaritan woman at the well.

Sisters in Ensenada

My Mexican and American sisters.

This summer once again I found myself halfway up a mountainside overlooking the beautiful Bahía Todos Santos—the Bayof All Saints—enjoying a view many Americans would pay a premium for. 

I wasn’t staying at a seaside resort, however. I was working on a dry, dusty, trash-strewn rural neighborhood situated outside Ensenada in Mexico’s Baja California. The hillside is covered with homes but not the kind most Americans could live in. Many of them are pieced together from scrap wood and tarpaper, with nothing but a thin sheet of fabric for a door. Next to these heartbreaking hovels, the 12 x 16-foot dwellings our mission teams built seem luxurious—even though they still lacked insulation and plumbing. 

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An Outrageously Extravagant Gift for Jesus

September 14, 2011

Welcome to the first entry of The Gentle Savior blog!
About once a week I’ll be posting reflections and musings here about the interactions between Jesus and women described in the Gospels. I hope this blog will be a place where we can ask questions of each other and of scripture. I won’t pretend to know and understand everything about God or about difficult issues raised in the Bible. We’ll just be honest about our questions and try to help each other understand Jesus a little better.

Lynn Bell

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While [Jesus] was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly. (Mark 14:3-5)

Why in the world would a woman do something like this?  What would compel you to take a year’s worth of earnings, buy a ridiculously expensive bottle of perfume, and then pour out its entire contents on one person?

To some of the men in the room, this act was an unfathomable mystery. All they could perceive was the frittering away of valuable resources by an irrational female. Anointing is one thing, but did she have to break the jar and use it all?

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