The story of the most famous man in history begins with two women.
I just noticed this for the first time while doing my advent reading tonight. The story of Jesus starts off in Luke with a focus on an old barren woman (Elizabeth, my first daughter will have her name) and a naive teenage girl. Not the picture of womamhood we're used to. Modern media teaches us that success looks like a fit woman in her late twenties who waited to have kids and is unfulfilled if she's not working and making her husband into an accessory. Modern feminism teaches us to shy away from motherhood and to see everything as a patriarchal attack. And while the struggle for equality has been a long one (its almost as if there's some force in world working to destroy the sacred feminine), sometimes what we are fed in our society is not a true picture of the value of womanhood.
In Galatians, Paul (you know, the misogynist) writes that in Christ there is no differentiation of value between male and female. We're equally loved, valued, and saved. In the birth story in Luke, God announces the birth of his son by blessing Elizabeth with a baby. God uses little teenage country girl Mary to fix the fracture of the universe. Mary, before anyone else, is the perfect example of faith in the new testament. And then, the first person Jesus shows himself to after he is resurrected is a chick (whose testimony would not have even been accepted in the courts of the day). Hundreds of women were part of Jesus' entourage as he traveled around Israel. And God picked women to endow with his creative power. (I can grow a person-an image bearer of God!)
Its easy to forget that Christianity is a faith that deeply values women. Its also easy to forget that women can be just as unjust as men. And its especially easy to forget that we women can be successful modern women, but that can just as easily mean executive as it can mean being a stay at home mom.
