Shawna R. B. Atteberry

“Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the younger and of Joseph), and Salome. They had been followers of Jesus and had cared for him while he was in Galilee. Then they and many other women had come with him to Jerusalem. . ..Joseph [of Arimathea] bought a long sheet of linen cloth, and taking Jesus’ body down from the cross, he wrapped it in the cloth and laid it in a tomb that had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone in front of the entrance. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where Jesus’ body was laid” (Mark 15:40-41, 46-47).

At sunset the Sabbath began; the first Vigil Saturday. What did they do that Sabbath? How did the mother of God, who had just watched her son die and these other women who had followed him right up to the cross spend that Saturday? Did they go to synagogue? Did they say the prayers? Did they take part in the joy of the Exodus? Would they go to the Temple? Would they worship side-by-side with the people who had condemned and cheered her Son and their Savior to death? Would they too pray Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do?” Or was their grief and anger too great? Did they just stay inside, holding on to each other, comforting each other as best they could? They saw where Joseph buried Jesus. They knew he did not have the time to properly anoint and wrap the body of their Beloved. They knew what they would do the first thing Sunday morning. But what did they do that long, long Saturday?

I know the Resurrection happened. I know tomorrow I will celebrate the Resurrection with my brothers and sisters in Christ. And this day is a long day for me. The waiting. Living an entire day between the last breath of death and the first breath of resurrection. It is hard. It is long. My first reminder is during morning prayers when I see there is no Gospel reading. There will be no Gospel reading tonight when I pray Compline. This is the only day of the year, we do not read the Gospel. The Gospel is in the grave, and we feel that loss, that void. Today the Church lives between life and death. And we long for, anticipate, and hope for Sunday morning. We live in anticipation and expectation of waking up Sunday morning to the creedal cry of the Church: “HE IS RISEN!” “HE IS RISEN INDEED!” I long for tomorrow when the silence of death will be broken. When I will walk into the sanctuary and see the cross draped in the victorious white of the Resurrection. We will shout our creedal cry. We will sing. We will hear the word. We will renew our baptismal vows. We will take communion. We will pass the peace. We will worship our risen Lord and Savior. But today is one of silence and waiting—vigil.

I will always wonder what the women who watched Joseph place Jesus’ body in the tomb did on that first Saturday. They didn’t have our hope. They thought Jesus was dead, and the kingdom he proclaimed was destroyed with him. What did they do on that day between death and life?

Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.
That we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross
so that he might draw the whole world to himself.
Grant that we, who glory in this death for our salvation,
may also glory in his call to take up our cross and follow him;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(From The United Methodist Book of Worship. Painting by Paul Heussenstamm.)

The Passover Seder was not a community religious event. It was a family meal. The family along with friends remembered and celebrated God redeeming them out of slavery in Egypt. As Sally points out in most traditional paintings and pictures of The Last Supper, we see Jesus with the 12 disciples. But we know that Mary, Mary Magdalene, and other women followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they were at the foot of the cross the next day. This means that they were at this Passover meal as well. Bohdan Piasecki painted this picture to show what the scene probably looked like. He added six women and two children along with Jesus and his male disciples. The men are also wearing prayer shawls.

As we remember the last meal Jesus had with his disciples, let’s not forget how Jesus redefined family. In Luke 8:19-21 says:

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.’ But he said to them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’

On this night Jesus gave a new commandment to his new family:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35).

As we gather with both our biological and spiritual families this season, let us find new ways to show them our love and the love of Christ.

Before Jesus ascended to the Father, he told his followers to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came empowering them to continue building the kingdom of God on earth. They obeyed him. Acts 1:14 tells us the disciples and “certain women” including Mary, the mother of Jesus, waited in the upper room and prayed. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit fell on both men and women, and both genders were empowered to proclaim the word of God on the day of Pentecost. Peter confirmed this when he quoted Joel in his sermon that day: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). As we have seen throughout this series, Career Women of the Bible God has never discriminated between calling and empowering both men and women to lead God’s people and accomplish God’s plans on earth. This will not change with the coming of the new age. Now God’s Spirit would not be for the called few, but for everyone–all flesh, and both sons and daughters would prophesy, only now in greater numbers.

In Galatians 3:28 Paul proclaimed that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In Christ every human erected barrier comes down. Because Christ died for all, and all are saved through grace, there can no longer be superficial hierarchies of race, class, or gender. In Ephesians 4:8 Paul tells the church that Christ has given them gifts, and in verse 11 he tells us the gifts are “that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” These gifts are given “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Paul never says that some or all of these gifts are for men only. In fact, the New Testament goes on to describe women in these places of leadership within the Early Church.

Apostles

The literal meaning of apostolos is someone who has been sent with orders (Spencer, 100). The basic meaning is “messenger.” In the New Testament an apostle could refer to one of the Twelve. It could also refer to all of those “who had accompanied the original twelve from the time that John baptized until Jesus ascended (Acts 1:21-22; ibid).” This would include Barnabas, James the brother of the Lord, and Silvanus who were not among the Twelve. It would also include the women we have seen in previous articles who followed Jesus: Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James; Mary, mother of Jesus; Joanna, and Salome.

There is a woman in the New Testament specifically named as an apostle: Junia. In Paul’s personal greetings to the believers in Rome he tells them to “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was” (Rom. 16:7). In the Roman world, Junia was a common name for women. Junia was assumed to be a woman by the early church fathers such as Origen and Jerome. In the fourth century John Chrysostorm said of her: “Oh! how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!” Up until the thirteenth century when Aegidus of Rome referred to both Adronicus and Junia as “men” (he translated Junia as “Julian”), most commentators assumed Junia was a woman (the male form “Junias” is completely unknown in the Roman world). Since then there have been many textual variations trying to turn Junia’s name into a male form (Spencer 101-2, Grenz 94-5).

Another way that Junia’s role as an apostle has been marginalized is by watering down the translation of “prominent among the apostles.” Opponents of women in leadership positions have suggested Junia was only admired by the apostles, or she was well known to them. She was not one of their number. The word normally translated “prominent” is episeimos. Its proper meaning is “a sign or mark upon,” and is used to describe an inscription on money; “it implies selection from a group” (Spencer, 102). Coupled with the preposition en, which means “within” or “among” in the plural, it is clear that Adronicus and Junia are prominent or notable “from among the apostles” (ibid).

As apostles in Rome they were Paul’s counterparts. They apparently had witnessed part of Jesus’ ministry and his resurrection, and were sent by God and the church to proclaim this news in Rome. These two apostles “apparently laid the foundation for the churches” in Rome, just as Paul had planted and laid the foundation for churches in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe (ibid). They would have done this through preaching the gospel and teaching the way of Christ. It is possible they were married and operated as a ministerial team like Priscilla and Aquila (Grenz, 96-7). This does not change the fact that Junia was named as an apostle. Since there is no mention of any of the apostle’s wives being named “apostle” simply by being married to one, it is safe to assume that Junia was an apostle because she functioned as one in the early church.

Prophets

As we saw in previous chapters female prophets who spoke God’s word and led in worship were part of Israel’s history and theology. The tradition continued through Anna in Luke 2 and Philip’s four unmarried daughters in Acts 21:9. From Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthian church we find that women praying and prophesying during services was an accepted part of the worship service in the early church. Paul does not condemn the women for taking an active part in the service, which would have included authoritative prophetic utterance of God’s word. He only exhorts the women to do so in a manner that will not be scandalous to outsiders. If they are married, they are to keep their symbol of marriage on–their head was to be covered with a veil or worn up as was the custom for married women in that day. This way they would not be confused with the temple prostitutes that were numerous in Corinth due to the temple of Aphrodite-Melainis. The temple prostitutes were identified by wearing their hair loose or shaving it off. Christian women were not to bring shame onto their husbands by looking like prostitutes, but were to keep their “wedding rings” on, and prophesy and pray in a socially acceptable manner.

Whether widowed as Anna, never married as Philip’s daughters or married as some of the Corinthian women were, Christian women continued the ancient tradition of speaking God’s word to his people.

Sources

Shawna Renee Bound, Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: A Biblical Theology of Single Women in Ministry, unpublished thesis, (© by Shawna Renee Bound 2002), “Women in the Early Church.”

Stanley J. Grenz with Denise Muir Kjesbo, Women in the Church: A Biblical
Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995).

Aída Besançon Spencer, Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1985), 43-63.

All biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.