Christmas is a time of miracles. Luke tells us the angel Gabriel appeared to a young woman named Mary and told her she would be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. In that patriarchal day, Gabriel bypassed Mary’s father and the man who was to become her husband. We’ve read that passage so many times we miss this first instance of Jesus’ revelation to women.
Women at the tomb after Jesus' resurrection.
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This can be a time to reflect upon those other times when Jesus honored women by allowing them to be first for the good news.
• First, of course, was the revelation to his mother, Mary, that she would birth Jesus.
• We find Jesus telling the woman at the well first, before he told anybody else, he was the Messiah.
• In all four gospels, we find the story of Jesus’ anointing by a woman at Bethany, and in two of those, he says, “I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” This is the first and only time he honored anyone this way. The next time Jesus would use those words was the night before he was crucified, when he told the disciples to drink of the cup and to eat of the bread in memory of him.
• The Canaanite woman came to him, and even though he told her Israel was his first concern, he gave in to the faith of this Gentile woman and granted her plea, thus showing her first that Gentiles no longer would be separated from Israel.
• And who can forget Jesus’ friend Mary, who came to the tomb on Easter morning and was the first to be told by the risen Savior he was alive?
Something happened, and the honor Jesus gave women was taken away from them, hidden behind words of submission and admonition that their husbands had authority over them.
This year, I heard two sermons on 1 Peter 3. Both were by pastors of Southern Baptist churches. One was a Texas Baptist church, and the other was a Southern Baptist Convention of Texas church. Both churches are in my local association. The SBTC pastor laughed as he told the women: “If you don’t like it, take it up with St. Peter when you get to heaven. He said it. I didn’t.” The Texas Baptist pastor was preaching a Father’s Day message when he said, “Husbands, you must let them submit, because they have to submit to you to honor God.”
Both these pastors distorted the word of God and denied the women in their congregation the freedom through Jesus (1 Corinthians 7:22-23) by slipping their husbands in-between them. As men of God, and as educated pastors, they know better. But they do it because it is so much fun to tell a woman she must submit. They chose to preach wifely submission instead of the intent of that Scripture.
Read 1 Peter 3:1 this way: “Wives, now that you are Christians, don’t divorce your husbands who have not yet become Christians. Continue on in your marriage as you have always done. Maybe your husband will be so influenced by your faith and behavior that he will become a Christian.”
Paul said it that same way in 1 Corinthians 7:13, 16: “And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. … How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
1 Peter 3:1 immediately follows 1 Peter 2:18, which tells slaves to submit to their masters. Paul says the same thing to slaves in 1 Corinthians 7:20, which is the whole crux of what both Peter and Paul were saying in these passages: “Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.” Meaning, circumcised or not, married or not, a slave or not. This shows beyond a doubt that 1 Peter 3 has absolutely nothing to do with “you must let them submit, because they have to submit to you to honor God.”
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My Christmas desire is to tell these pastors their message to women bears no resemblance to the message Jesus gave to women.
Christmas is a time for miracles.
–Shirley Taylor is founder of Baptist Women for Equality. She lives in Conroe.
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