When the women aren’t believed

Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
~Luke 24:10-11, NRSVUE


In all four accounts of the Gospels, the women were the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, and therefore the first to share the Gospel—the Good News that Jesus was the Messiah foretold and that He had come to bring new and everlasting life. There was one little problem. They were women. Well, no, I guess that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that people didn’t believe women. Wait, that’s not quite right either. The problem is that people still don’t believe women. 

When the women ran to tell the disciples about the resurrection, Luke’s account says that the women’s “word seemed to [the disciples] an idle tale.” However, “idle tale” is a generous translation. It would be better translated as something like “BS”…but fully spelled out. This wasn’t a dubious response to equals, it was a scornful response to silly little women who, everyone knew thanks in large part to Aristotle, were just subservient beings to men. 

We may also look to the story of creation and the Fall, and how it has been interpreted over the years. Those who ascribe to complementarianism—the belief that women and men were created with distinct roles, with men in leadership positions in the church and home and women in lesser, supportive roles—believe that living into the divine order is to embody these gender-specific roles of power and subservience. However, let’s look at what the creation story really says.* 

In Genesis 2 when God casts a deep sleep on the adam (not a proper name, by the way, but rather the Hebrew word that means human, from the root word that means ruddy, like the ruddiness of the soil from which humanity was formed), God forms the woman from the adam’s side. Many translations use the English word “rib” here for the Hebrew word, sela; but in the forty-one times sela is used in the Old Testament, this is the only place where it is translated as “rib.” The other thirty-nine times this word appears in the Old Testament, it is translated in the context of architecture to describe a “side,” often one that is fundamental to the architectural integrity of the structure. There is a slight difference in translation from rib to side, but I believe it creates a distinction that speaks to the equality of the woman to the man. If she is taken from man’s side, she is equal, standing beside the man in dignity and worth. 

So, God created men and women as equals, and it isn’t until the Fall that we see this upended. When sin enters the world, the brokenness of humanity develops a gendered hierarchy that was not a part of God’s perfect creation. In Genesis 3 when God discovers the disobedience of the first humans, God says to the woman, 

“Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
(Genesis 3:16b)

The subservience of women is the result of brokenness, not the created order; and as long as we live into this complementarianism, we are choosing to live in that brokenness instead of working towards the Kingdom of God by reclaiming God’s created order that honors women and their voices. If we believe that Jesus put on flesh to walk among us and usher in a new creation, then I think we would do well to consider how He treated women, counting them among His followers, choosing them to be the first witnesses of His resurrection, and sending them out to tell the other disciples. 

God ordained women to be the first preachers. 

God created women to be believed. 

And yet, 2000 years later, women are still not believed. And it is literally killing us.The CDC reports that nearly half of women experience some form of contact sexual violence, intimate partner violence, or stalking in her lifetime; and even more shocking, “over half of female homicide victims are killed by a former or current male intimate partner” (CDC). 

Think of all the women you personally know; half of them have experienced violence  at the hands of someone who claimed to have cared about them. And before you scoff at this statistic that is being reported by a woman (me) from a trusted source (the CDC) and call it an “idle tale,” remember that society has programmed you not to believe women. And if half the women in your life have not told you they have been victimized, I guarantee it’s not because they haven’t been; it’s because women have learned that it is either useless or dangerous to tell their stories. 

We have got to do better. 

Believing women means listening to their stories with compassion. 
Believing women means not blaming them by asking what they were wearing or why they stayed in the relationship.
Believing women means holding accountable those who have harmed them, regardless of their power, prestige, reputation, or wealth.

Believing women means believing them even when their story sounds incredulous to you. 

It makes me wonder what would have happened if Jesus chose not to appear to the men after they refused to believe the women’s account. Would the news of Jesus’ resurrection have died with the first witnesses because they were not believed? 


*For further study on this reading of Genesis, please see these two sources from which I credit the theology in this blog: 

Rev. Dr. Wilda C. Gafney’s Womanist Midrash (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).

Dr. Susan Niditch’s commentary on Genesis in Women’s Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).