1 Timothy 2: Seek Equality
Friday, November 1, 2024
This letter contains some clear restrictions for women – they are to be silent and not speak out. Men are put in charge of prayer and liturgy. Women are meant to be on the sidelines in this ancient world. Some men today wish women to remain so – as unequal partners. Other men today are wise enough to understand that women have equal worth before God and it is indeed a woman who brings Christ into the world. We can allow ourselves to be contained by these sentiments or we can rise above them. Modern commentary points out that these injunctions against women are a sign that the Holy Spirit was clearly in motion, encouraging the oppressed half of humankind to speak up and speak out. The oppressing half of humanity responds in the way it knows best – it calls for silence. Equality, in the end, will be gained. Women, as the oppressed gender, have the opportunity to understand and to know that as a part of the marginalized in society they hold a special place.
In the Gospels, Jesus pays attention to women – the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the woman (and we notice that the man is not brought forward) whom the men wish to stone for adultery (John 8), women suffering, women grieving, and his own mother at the time of his crucifixion (John 19). Jesus makes wine of water at his Mother’s request. Jesus includes women as his apostles. Jesus values women as equal to men.
In Thursday’s MAGNIFICAT Meditation, Father Bede Jarrett writes: When we say God is everywhere, we mean that he is in all things because he made all things. Not only does the whole world lie outstretched before his eye and is governed by his power, but he himself lurks at the heart of everything. By him things have come into existence . . . Wholly is God everywhere, not as some immense being that with its hugeness fills the world, but as something that is within every creature he has made.
We believe this to be so and when we do, we believe that women and men are created as equals in a glorious, mysterious dance of opposites that resist and yet attract. This marvelous tension draws us in to ponder the inscrutability of life. This equality that is rejected by many is actually the foundation of life itself. This union of contrasts is stronger than the binds which hold together like beings.
When the age-old conflicts of gender and sexuality surface, we might remember this: Wholly is God everywhere, not as some immense being that with its hugeness fills the world, but as something that is within every creature he has made.
Do we reject this different-ness from ourselves? Or do we take it in, and in so doing, welcome a Jesus we have yet to meet?
Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 13.11 (2009). Print.
Adapted from a reflection written on November 13, 2009.
Images from: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/october/was-samaritan-woman-really-adulteress.html and https://thealternatepath.org/category/woman-caught-in-adultery/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_from_the_Cross_%28van_der_Weyden%29
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