Luke's Women

Hungry Widow, Spicy Queen, and Salty Wife

April 8,2015

There are some things that everybody knows as the Geico commercials constantly remind us.  One of those things that everybody knows is that the role of women in the modern world has occupied center stage since the 1960's.  The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men has been front and center now for a half century in America--much more if we go back to the women's suffrage movements of the early 1900's.  Part of this movement has played out in the pews.  Mainstream Protestant denominations including our own have seen women's rights to serve in the roles of pastor and bishop become a major issue.

Women As Biblical Scholars
But did you know that one result of the attention to the role of women in the larger society has been in biblical studies.  In the last half-century more and more women have felt and responded to a call to ministry that has led them to do advanced academic study in seminaries and universities.  We have seen some of the fruits of that response on the part of women even in our own Baptist circles.  In our city, Sarah Shelton, has become a widely respected pastor to the congregation of the Baptist Church of the Covenant.  David Hull's wife, Jane, has begun a ministry as pastor of  the Union Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Watkinsville, Ga.  And just  a few days ago a news release announced that David and Jane's daughter, Emily Hull McGee, has been called as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Winston Salem, NC.
But wait--there is more.  As women responded to a call to prepare for ministry over the past decades, some of them found their role not only in the pulpit but also in seminary and university classrooms as biblical scholars.   It is this development in New Testament scholarship which has encouraged this series of studies on Luke's  women.   Over this past fifty years,  there has been a general consensus among biblical scholars (who have been mostly men) that Luke's Gospel gives a larger place to women than any of the other Gospels.  Mark tells us that women travelled with Jesus in Galilee (Mark 15:41), but Luke tells us who the women besides Mary Magdalene were who travelled with Jesus and the disciples in Galilee:

Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Mag′dalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Jo-an′na, the wife of Chu′za, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them[  out of their means.  (Luke 8:1-3)

In addition to the consensus that Luke exhibits a special interest in women along with his interest in the poor, there has been agreement among scholars (mostly men) that Luke's treatment of women is generally positive.  In the Book of Acts Luke has made it very clear that women of wealth became Christians and played a significant role in the early Christian church.  Several such women hosted meetings of Christians in their homes (Prisicilla, Acts 18, I Cor 16:19; Marks' Mother, Acts 12:12).
Into this world of male consensus about Luke's treatment of women the last few years have seen the emergence of studies by Lukan scholars who are women, and as we might expect they tend to see things that men might miss or, at the least, they see things from a different perspective than male scholars.  One small example from the book of Acts may help us understand the kind of difference perspective can make.  When Judas had to be replaced to keep the group of apostles at twelve, Luke recorded the event this way:

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,  beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.”  And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsab′bas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthi′as.    (Acts 1:21-23)

That may sound perfectly normal and correct to us--particularly to us men--but let me share with you the insights of the Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo, Norway--a woman, Dr. Turid Seim.

" The Lukan criteria for an apostle are listed in Acts 1.21-2 when a twelfth apostle is to be elected to take the place of Judas (1.15-26}.  It is presupposed that more than the eleven fulfill these criteria, which require personal experience of the history of Jesus from the early time in Galilee onwards  until the separation at the ascension. In the course of the gospel, the presence of women is emphasised, and in the narratives about the cross and the tomb they represented the followers of Jesus from Galilee. In other words, they ought to be obvious candidates. But an initial demand of maleness already excludes them from this possibility: .. , the candidates must be men.  The women from Galilee are ineligible; interest is concentrated on the Galilean men... .  When women in Acts are excluded from becoming apostles or from being leaders in other ways, this is a consequence of Luke's restricted and special concept of apostleship and acceptance of the public sphere as a man's world. So the public act of witness has to be carried out by men. This is nowhere justified in theological terms, and women are never explicitly adjured to keep silent or to be subordinate. What is demonstrated is a structure imposing silence."

We don't know how the women among Jesus' disciples felt about the election of Matthias.  Did they feel the sting of being qualified as witnesses but not allowed to testify, or did they simply accept their rejection as the way it should be? Obviously in both Testaments, patriarchal worlds are assumed.  In our day of heightened awareness of discrimination and our sense of fairness it is only to be expected that women who study the New Testament as scholars call our attention to a passage like this.  There is, however, one sentence in Dr. Seim's interpretation that needs to be addressed.  It is her assertion that " this [circumstance] is a consequence of Luke's restricted and special concept of apostleship and acceptance of the public sphere as a man's world."

For most of us, the Bible has been viewed all our lives as "God's Word."  We have assumed that the Bible was God's doing and that Luke's (or the other biblical writers) beliefs, intelligence and view of women did not play a role in the writing of a biblical book.  When we give some thought to the matter, it should be fairly obvious that God produced four different Gospels at least partly because he used the special knowledge and skills of four different authors.  In all likelihood each of the Gospels was produced in a different country with vastly different audiences.  But when all this is said and factored in, it remains to be demonstrated that Luke's description of the election of Matthias was significantly colored by his "acceptance of the public sphere as a man's world."  Whether Dr. Seim is correct or not, her assumption that Luke and other authors wrote in the light of their own circumstances and to their own communities under the inspiration of God is common to nearly all biblical scholars today and plays a role in the interpretations offered by these scholars.

A Salty Wife

In this series I want to look at some of the women in Luke's gospel in the light of interpretations made by women scholars--specifically Mary the mother of Jesus; Joanna, one of the women who supported Jesus financially, and the sisters, Martha and Mary.  Tonight some time has been spent setting the stage so we will take only a quick look at one of three foreign women that Luke mentions very briefly.  The three women are the widow of Zarephath (Luke 4:25-26)--the Hungry Widow,  the Queen of Sheba (Luke 11:31)--the Spicy Queen, and Lot's Wife (Luke 17:32)--the Salty Wife.  Each of these three women appears very briefly.  Each is mentioned by Jesus in a context of judgment on his generation and one might wonder what can be learned about Luke's treatment of women when the comment comes from Jesus.  The answer is that two of these comments about women in the sayings of Jesus are only recorded by Luke; they do not appear in the other Gospels.   Apparently Luke thought them important.  Since time is short, let's concentrate just on Lot's Wife who appears in one sentence, "Remember Lot's wife."
The title for this section, Salty Wife, obviously refers to Lot's wife who looked back to Sodom and became a pillar of salt (Genesis 19) and comes from a fairly new book by F. Scott Spencer, Salty Wives, Spirited Mothers, and Savvy Widows: Capable Women Of Purpose And Persistence In Luke’s Gospel (2012).  Dr. Spencer is Professor of New Testament and Preaching at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.   He has helped me by surveying a wide range of interpretations by women scholars and, thus, introducing me to many scholars whose works I had not seen.  Admittedly, Dr. Spencer is a male and, thus, somewhat suspect as a judge of women's scholarship and as a matter of full disclosure, he says his purpose in the book is “pull the pendulum back a tad from the feminist-critical pole toward the center.”  The range of views is as wide among women scholars as it is among men.   On the one hand are those who see the Gospel of Luke as "an extremely dangerous text, perhaps the most dangerous in the Bible.”  On the other hand are women who think Luke "manages the extraordinary feat of preserving strong traditions about women and attributing a positive function to them" even though Luke reveals a strong "masculine preferences" in his treatment of the early church in Acts.   What do women see about Lot's wife that men may be blind to.

Typical treatments of Lot's wife by male pastors  make it easy to understand the need for a woman's insight.  The first sermon that came up on my computer in a Google search for sermons on Lot's wife gives us this judgment on the Lot's wife:

"Why did the Master relate Mrs. Lot to our day? Jesus used her as a fearful warning. That woman became cold, careless, and disobedient. Finally the judgments of God fell upon her, and she became a pillar of salt on the plains of Sodom. ... Why did God deal with her so severely? Was it not the smallest offense of all just to move the head slightly? The Word of God has a name for that type of action: sin. She disobeyed the commandment of the Lord, and her judgment underlines the urgency of obedience. God means what He says. There is no excuse for sin, and God cannot overlook it."

By way of contrast, hear the softer voice of a woman describing this woman of Sodom:

While Lot, the conscience of a nation,
struggles with the Lord,
she struggles with the housework.
The City of Sin is where she raises the children.
...
It is easy for eyes that have always turned to heaven
not to look back;
those that have been -by necessity- drawn to earth
cannot forget that life is lived from day to day.
Good, to a God, and good in human terms
are two different things.
On the breast of the hill, she chooses to be human,
and turns, in farewell -
and never regrets the sacrifice.

The poet sees a woman whose heart is broken by the devastation that has engulfed everyone she knows and cares about.  While Lot's family got the warning, Lot's wife's father, mother, brothers and sisters presumably did not.   How could she not look back at the tragedy engulfing Sodom.  "Such was the tragic fate of Lot’s wife: looking back on — and longing to reconnect with — her besieged family and friends, house and furnishings, food and clothing, she forfeits everything. Her womanly devotion to daily realities does her in."
   It is interesting that Jesus' sermon does not stress the sexual evil rampant in Sodom (as the Genesis story does) but rather centers on the obsession with the routines of life that prevented the people of Sodom from hearing the word of warning given them: "Likewise as it was in the days of Lot—they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built..." (Luke 17: 28).  In other words, they were so consumed with being human they could not detect the in-break of God in their world.  Lot's wife was no different.  Everything she and her husband had bought, sold, planted and built was gone in the explosion of Sodom.  How hard would it be not to look.
Women who deal with this sentence in Luke not only look upon Lot's wife with empathy, feeling the agony that would have overwhelmed her obedience, they also question the fitness of the husband to have escaped.  Lot is pictured in Genesis as more concerned about his duty to protect the visitor in his home than to shelter his own family.  While these priorities may have been supremely important in ancient Israel, they are clearly repugnant today. No one could defend such a father today.  So "feminist writers and activists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards size up the jarring juxtaposition of Lot and his wife in rather salty language, querying why "Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt when her husband was busy offering up their virgin daughters to the marauders. (And why ...she didn’t have a name.)” The juxtaposition involved a man who could hand over daughters to a mob of men and leave some of his family behind without ever looking back on the one hand and a wife who loved home and family so much she could not bear to leave without looking back.

Conclusion
"...what we must “remember” about Lot’s wife is her deep attachment to embodied life, to everyday pursuits of eating/ drinking, buying/ selling, planting/ building that she cannot bear to lose. But on an evaluative level, Jesus regards such attachments as lethal impediments to productive discipleship and keen alertness to God’s rule. He audaciously summons any would-be disciples to “deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow [him]” — that is, leave their daily lives behind to attend fully to his urgent kingdom business. And he does not brook any excuses, even for seemingly worthy family duties, like burying dead fathers or bidding farewell to those at home (Luke 9: 57-61). One must shake the dust even from one’s hometown and get going. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit (euthetos) for the kingdom of God” (9: 62): such is the kingdom motto, and such is precisely what Lot’s backward-looking wife must be remembered as violating as a disqualified, unfit disciple. ...Such is the high cost of following God’s kingdom way (cf. 14: 25-33) — a price Lot’s wife was not willing to pay."