Women in the Margins of Ministry

“Dear Woman…” John 19:26

I recently had the opportunity to preach from this text. It is part of the publicly proclaimed words of Jesus that he speaks with profound power - as he is dying on the cross. And because this message is associated solely with Good Friday, Easter/Resurrection Sunday, these words are often left there until the season rolls around the next year. It's as if Jesus' final words are only deemed important once a year. I think that sometimes we miss the message for the masses because we assign  a seasonal value to this particular message. But hear this Good News:  Jesus' words are good in every season. Including these. 

"Dear woman, here is your son." I want to explore these six words spoken by Jesus and the implied implications that his impending death means for his mother. I want to invite you to consider that behind these words, is a potential non-verbal suggestion of another six words, specifically to the patriarchal powers that be who are before him, and those words are: “not even over my dead body.” 

Dear woman, here is your son. Within those six words Jesus spoke to the social economy of her worth and value. This dear woman, his mother, she was the word bearer, the one through whom the word became flesh, who birthed the incarnate God. God chose to be delivered through her. A woman. This dear woman. Man had no role in it. Maybe because God knew emphatically that a woman could be trusted with something so valuable, so powerful, and yet so burdensome. Women in the margins of ministry also wrestle with the Word and give it life anew each time they share it - whether it is from the acrylic pulpit or the asphalt pavement. 

Mary, a dear woman, who in her own right was in the margins of ministry. Who not just bore the word but bore the ridicule and shame impressed upon her by those whose allegiance was to laws and patriarchy and less about the emotional labor that gave birth to Jesus. She labored and wrestled with the word. First. She raised and cultivated the word. First.  And now the unimaginable and the unthinkable was happening. This God-given gift was now being taken from her, and the prophecy spoken just after Jesus was born that “a sword will pierce your own soul,” was now being fulfilled. Her own life was inextricably linked to Jesus’, and as his body grew weak, so did hers. Mary, like the dear women in our midst, is standing flat-footed at the cross, in a place where women traditionally were not allowed. She has broken down the barrier and crossed the border by being there. She was being womanish. There, at the foot of the cross.

Women in the margins of ministry are often in precarious situations where their God-given gift is at stake. It is unconscionable to even think that someone will attempt to bargain with and belittle the gift that God has given to the women in the margins of ministry.  

I invite you to further consider that, Christ was, in essence, admonishing each of us to break down those barriers and care for women who should have never been marginalized. Never been side-lined. Never been man-lined in the throes of a society that devalues the worth of women. In the last few breaths that he had remaining, Jesus was adamant that she, his mother, would not be left to fend for herself –not even over his dead body.

 Her worth is not to be negotiated just because Jesus’ black and dark-skinned body was being transacted in the marketplace, for all to see, reminiscent of the stained memory that we have of our brothers, uncles, grandfathers, like strange fruit, hung from trees, because our black and dark-skinned sons, fathers and brothers were nothing more than a business deal for the economic benefit of the powers that be, and when they rendered our black and dark-skinned useless, they strung us up, but in this historical moment, Jesus is saying “not over my dead body,” will the agency of this dear woman, be denigrated.

When Jesus intentionally spoke to her, he was also intentionally speaking to us. The fact that Jesus assigned someone to take care of her, to protect and provide for her, meant something greater than perhaps we understand.

This woman’s worth was announced and defined in the intersectionality of her class, race and gender. She was not just some woman in Christ’s periphery view. She was a dear woman of worth, like the other women standing at the foot of the cross. This was final and not some argument of political accoutrements to be debated from that day onward. It was captured and chronicled within Christ’s seven last sayings as he was being crucified. To those who bore witness to that pain and to that truth. Through oral history and written history this edict is to be unchanged. Jesus knew that there would be collusion within the collision of the preferences of patriarchy and the narratives of naysayers who would refute this woman’s worth. Her agency. Yet, in this moment, he was declaring “not even over my dead body.”

He saw her. He saw with a visceral reaction. He saw her as the wind was knocked out of her while the air was escaping his own body. He saw her, standing in the middle of brokenness, a mother broken by this brutal act against her black and dark-skinned son. A woman broken, her family torn apart, the nucleus of her family, strung up there on the cross, a spectacle for the naysayers. He saw her pain, he saw her anguish, he saw all that she had treasured in her heart from the moment of his immaculate conception til this moment of this immeasurable and inconceivable beating. He saw her. And he spoke to her.  

And as we all know in the Black faith community, if its spoken from the pulpit then it must be important. This open marketplace, I submit to you, is Jesus’ pulpit where he is proclaiming this woman’s worth. The emotional identification coupled with the embodied communication gives rise to the words, intent and content in these six preached words: dear woman, here is your son. And though I am leaving, you will not be left alone, not even over my dead body.

Because in that moment, Jesus knew. He knew that the powers that be just “ghettotized” this family of this black, dark-skinned man who was the Messiah, the word made flesh, by ensuring that Mary, the mother of this dark-skinned black man, and her other children were labeled broken home, single mother, welfare bound, because after all there had already been this presumptuous proclamation as to whether or not anything good could come out of Nazareth. And Jesus, the Good News, the Good Lord, dark-skinned and black, looked and saw this dear woman, his own flesh and blood, standing near, and was determined that she would not become a statistic. Not even over his temporary dead body.

Hear Jesus saying, “not even over my dead body,” because for too long, women have been chronically deprived of our capacity for greatness. We have been marginalized and man-lined and never welcomed into the mainline. This is also true of women in ministry.  We can do something great: We can choose to either repair the marginalization of the woman’s experience and restore her to the Imageo Dei instead of continuing to resist the power of the Holy Spirit that is at work within her. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and dare I say it comes upon other dear women, mothers of black, dark-skinned sons and daughters, so there is no question that this divine power rests, rules and abides within her, and in us.

Here at the apex of the cross, Jesus’ words are a healing balm. For the spiritually wounded woman, these words are an affirmation. For the scars and newly formed injuries imposed upon us by the institutions, the church, the academy and the administration, by the social constructs of society, these are words of resolve and restoration.

And finally: “dear woman, here is your son,” with those six words, Jesus is quelling and squashing any attempts for the dear women in our midst who are in the precarious position of being devalued, dehumanized and degraded through the mantle of misogyny where sexual harassment, sexual assault and any unwanted sexual advances seek to rob us of our worth. Yes, it is unimaginable that still today, as we stand at the foot of the cross, that dear women still pose a threat to the Pharisees of our society. And for those who think they can benefit from the collective pain of Mary and the Messiah, then and now, and for those in positions of power who seem to always be bartering off our pain and trying to negotiate a woman’s worth in the transaction, Jesus is non-verbally suggesting these six words: “not even over my dead body.”