God's Women

"Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming 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 Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.” (Luke 8:1-3, ESV)
You've got to love Luke for all of his attention to detail. As a good doctor would, he carefully researched all that he had heard from others who were eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus ministry and death and resurrection and then took the effort to write things down in order, something that not all writers do. Luke pays attention to the little facts that many assume are unimportant, but which, in fact, give us the little touches that make the stories come to life. Here, we not only learn that Jesus went from town to town and village to village, but that he had many along with Him. One point that Luke makes that other writers of the period would not make, is the place of the women in all that was going on. Let's take a look at the list given here.
First off, after mentioning that the twelve were with Jesus, Luke tells us about some of the women that also attended the group. He says that some of these women had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses or infirmities. Here is where a traditional lie can be found in the myriad of books and movies made about the life of Christ: Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Not so. Luke says that she was one who had been healed of seven demons. In the King James these demons are called unclean spirits. Nothing is mentioned of Mary being a fallen women. It is true that Jesus ate with tax collectors and “sinners,” a term used to describe the women involved in prostitution during that time. But nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that Mary was such a person. In Luke chapter 4 it says that Jesus healed a man in Capernaum who had unclean spirits. It seems that unclean spirits would vex a person but there is no indication that this was in any way connected to specific sin on the part of the individual who was infested with these spirits. Mary was vexed, but there is no indication of immorality on her part.
We learn that one of the women was the wife of the household manager for King Herod. Not a low position in Jesus' day, to be sure. God is so wonderful. He manages to get people in high positions to believe in Him as well as those of humble circumstances. Another woman, Susanna, is mentioned, but we know nothing more about her. And then Luke says there were many other women and these were the people who were supporting Jesus and the twelve and their ministry.
We know that God told Satan that through woman, the Messiah would come, who would crush the head of Satan. Perhaps what we didn't know was the prominence of their position, not just in Mary as the mother of Jesus, but of women down through the ages who have actively been a part of Jesus' ongoing ministry of bringing the good news to the world. God made Eve a helper to stand equal with Adam. Jesus' Kingdom is filled with women who are equal to the men in the Kingdom, men and women each carrying out different tasks, but shoulder to shoulder, giving liberally, praying much, loving the lost. That's what makes being a Christian so wonderful. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ.”(Galatians 3:28, ESV) Luke didn't have a point to make, a position to define, nor a hobby to ride. He just simply lets us know that women, too, lived their lives incarnadine, covered by the blood of Jesus, because of thankfulness to Him for healing them. He heals us, too, of sin sickness and things that vex our lives. Shouldn't we also live our lives under the blood of Jesus?