Sarah isn’t naive. She knows that the laws that govern her way of life aren’t perfect, but she submits to them willingly, with her eyes open, because she believes they are good for her and her family. You might say she embodies the spirit of Gelassenheit, a German word that the Amish use to speak of yieldedness and peace, a willingness to let things be.
As Janet had observed, there’s no typical Amish woman. As in any culture, there are some women who wrestle with the rules, some who uncritically accept the rules, and some who thrive within the rules. There are those who flourish under the creative constraints of tradition, and those who struggle to find their voice. There are women for whom the bonnets and aprons foster humility and women for whom the same things foster pride.
That’s because true modesty has little to do with clothing or jewelry or makeup. The virtue that is celebrated in Scripture is so elusive we struggle to find words to capture its spirit—humility, self-control, plainness, tznuit, Gelassenheit.
And so we codify. We legislate. We pull little girls to the front of the class and slap rulers against their bare legs and try to measure modesty in inches. Then we grow so attached to our rules that they long outlive their purpose, and the next thing we know, we’re adding leaves to our tables and cutting the ends off our roasts. We cling to the letter because the spirit is so much harder to master.
More often than not, this backfires, and our attempts to be different result in uniformity, our attempts to be plain draw attention to ourselves, our attempts to temper sexuality inadvertently exploit it, and our attempts to avoid offense accidentally create it.
Perhaps this is why Paul encouraged women to “adorn themselves” with good deeds, why he instructed all Christians, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ,” and why the valorous woman of Proverbs 31 is praised because she “clothes herself in strength and dignity.”
It’s not what we wear but how we wear it.
And like clothing, modesty fits each woman a little differently.
MARY MAGDALENE, THE WITNESS
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!”
—JOHN 20:18
The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one. One of six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the Sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, (a backstory infinitely more complicated and mysterious than prostitution, if you ask me), after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the Twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry.
In 597 Pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the message. A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as Equal to the Apostles.
Although she appears to have been a critical part of Jesus’ early ministry, Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary faithfulness shines most brightly in the story of the Passion. After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him. Judas delivered him over to the authorities for a bribe. Peter denied him three times. And only John, described as “the apostle whom Jesus loved,” was present at the crucifixion.
But Mary Magdalene and the band of women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry are described by all four gospel writers as being present during the Savior’s darkest hours. Even after Jesus took his last breath, and all hope of redemption seemed lost, the women stayed by their teacher and their friend and prepared his body for burial. It is precisely because they were present, loyal even through failure, that the women who followed Jesus were the first to witness the event that would define Christianity: the resurrection.
Gospel accounts vary, but all four identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. According to the Synoptic Gospels, she and a group of women rose early that fateful morning, three days after Jesus had died, to anoint the body with spices and perfumes. When they arrived at the tomb, they were met by divine messengers guarding the entrance, who declared that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would. The women immediately left the tomb behind and, “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), ran to tell the other disciples. Luke notes that on their way, they remembered what Jesus had taught them about resurrection, confirmation of the fact that these women had been present for some of Christ’s most important and intimate revelations and that they took these teachings to heart.
But when the breathless women arrived at the home where the disciples had gathered, the men did not believe them. Women were considered unreliable witnesses at the time (a fact that perhaps explains why the apostle Paul omitted the women from the resurrection account entirely in his letter to the Corinthian church), so their proclamation of the good news was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” the type of silly gossip typical of uneducated women. Perhaps the men invoked the widely held belief that, just like their sister Eve, women were easily duped.
A few, however, were curious enough to take a look at the tomb, and so, according to John’s account, Mary returned with Peter and another disciple to the place she had encountered the messengers. The men saw for themselves an empty grave and a pile of linen wrappings folded neatly within it, and conceded to the women that the tomb was indeed empty. However, John 20:9 notes, “they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
The men returned to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind. Perhaps disciples posited the theory that Jesus’ body had been stolen, for John wrote that Mary, once so full of breathless excitement and impassioned belief, now stood outside the tomb, crying.
Angels appeared and asked her what was wrong.
“They have taken my Lord away,” she told them, fully accepting the disciple’s dismissal of her “idle tale” of resurrection, “and I don’t know where they have put him” (V. 13).
The angels were then joined by a mysterious man, whom Mary assumed to be the gardener. He, too, asked why she was crying.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him,” she pleaded (V. 15).
Only when he called her by her name did she recognize the man as Jesus.
“Mary,” he said.
“Rabboni!” she cried.
“Do not hold on to me,” Jesus urged as she fell before his feet, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (VV. 16–17 UPDATED NIV).
And so again, Mary Magdalene ran to the house where the disciples were staying and told them she had seen the risen savior face-to-face. “I have seen the Lord!” she declared. But it was not until Jesus appeared to the men in person, allowing them to touch the wounds in his hands and side, that they finally believed. Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from Scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in
twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles.
That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. And yet too many Easter services begin with a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “He is risen!” to a chorused response of “He is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman.
April: Purity
* * *
The Worst Time of the Month to Go Camping
“When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.”
—LEVITICUS 15:19
TO DO THIS MONTH:
□ Observe the Levitical Purity Laws by undergoing twelve days of ritual impurity during menstruation (Leviticus 15:19–31)
□ Camp out in the front yard for first three days of impurity (Leviticus 15:19)
□ Eat only pure (kosher) food
□ Eliminate every trace of leavened bread from the house for Passover (Exodus 13:6–10)
□Host a Passover Seder (Exodus 12:17)
□ Take a true Sabbath (see supplemental material)
Laban was pretty much the worst father-in-law of all time.
When Jacob fell in love with Laban’s beautiful daughter Rachel, Jacob promised seven years of work on Laban’s land in Paddan Aram in exchange for her hand.
“So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel,” says Genesis 29:20, “but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.”
Finally, the wedding day arrived. Laban held a feast, friends and family gathered, wine flowed with abundance . . . and somehow, amid all the revelry, Laban switched out his younger daughter, Rachel, for his older daughter, Leah, and Jacob consummated the marriage with the wrong girl.
Must have been a lot of wine.
“When morning came,” the Bible says, “there was Leah!” (V. 25).
Jacob demanded an explanation. Laban said he simply wanted to marry off his older daughter first, but if Jacob would pledge to work for him another seven years, he would give him Rachel within the week. Jacob agreed, married Rachel, and spent another seven years working Laban’s land. All told, Jacob ended up with four women—Leah; Leah’s servant, Zilpah; Rachel; and Rachel’s servant, Bilhah—whose twelve sons would become the ancestors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
After more than fourteen years, Jacob asked to be released from Laban’s charge, so he could return with his wives and children to his homeland. Jacob argued that while his expertise had dramatically increased Laban’s livestock and wealth, he had nothing of his own to show for it. But Laban refused to let Jacob go, saying he had “learned by divination” that Jacob had a special way with animals that would continue to increase the family’s wealth (30:27). He told Jacob to name his price.
So Jacob, who was apparently Paddan Aram’s goat-whisperer, made a deal in which he divided the family’s livestock, allowing Laban and his sons the keep the animals with solid fleeces, while keeping the animals with spotted or irregular fleeces for himself. Laban probably thought he was getting the better end of this deal, as the solid-colored animals were more numerous and valuable at the time, but he forgot to take into account Jacob’s mad breeding skills. Within six years, Jacob’s flocks were flourishing while Laban’s were feeble.
This ticked Laban off big-time. Sensing his father-in-law’s anger, Jacob called together Leah and Rachel and told them to prepare for a secret departure. Leah and Rachel had little affection for their father, noting that they themselves had been treated as mere currency by him. “Surely all the wealth that God took away from our father belongs to us and our children,” they said. “Do whatever God has told you” (31:16).
So Jacob’s sprawling family gathered together their livestock and goods and left Paddan Aram by a camel train, crossing the Euphrates River and heading for the hill country of Gilead . . . But not before Rachel could sneak onto Laban’s property and steal his precious household idols.
No one really knows what motivated Rachel’s crime. Rabbinical literature contends she was merely trying to save Laban from his idolatry, while other sources suggest she may have wanted the idols for herself, as fertility charms, having struggled for so long to conceive a child. Or maybe she just wanted to stick it to the guy who’d snuck her sister into her marriage bed on her wedding day.
It took Laban three days to realize that Jacob and his family were gone. He gathered together an army of relatives and pursued the troupe for a week until he caught up with them in Gilead. Leah, Rachel, and their children must have been terrified, for Laban’s force outnumbered their own. Laban angrily confronted Jacob, crying, “What have you done? You’ve deceived me, and you’ve carried off my daughters like captives in war. . . . You didn’t even let me kiss my grandchildren and my daughters good-bye. . . . Why didn’t you tell me, so I could send you away with joy and singing to the music of tambourines and harps?” (VV. 26, 28, 27).
(Because Laban was all about sending Jacob away with music and dancing.)
Jacob pleaded his case, but Laban would not relent until he’d recovered his stolen idols. Unaware of what Rachel had done, Jacob declared, “If you find anyone who has your gods, that person shall not live. In the presence of our relatives, see for yourself whether there is anything of yours here with me; if so, take it” (V. 32 UPDATED NIV).
Furious, Laban stormed from tent to tent, turning each one inside out in pursuit of his idols, until he reached Rachel’s.
There he found his daughter sitting on a camel saddle and some blankets.
“Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise before you,” Rachel said demurely. “For the manner of women is with me” (V. 35 NKJV). In ancient Mesopotamia, “the manner of women” was a mysterious and frightening event and the subject of much regulation and superstition. So Laban did not protest, but went about searching her tent for his idols. When he turned up short once again, Jacob got angry and demanded, “What is my crime? How have I wronged you that you hunt me down? Now that you have searched through all my goods, what have you found that belongs to your household? Put it here in front of your relatives and mine, and let them judge between the two of us” (VV. 36–37 UPDATED NIV).
Laban finally relented, released Jacob from his charge, and the two made a covenant of peace together, marking the moment with a heap of stones.
It must have seemed to Rachel that her heart pounded louder than each clash of the altar rocks, for she had hidden the idols in her camel saddle.
Believe it or not, “the manner of women”—or, in case you still haven’t caught on, “that special time of the month,” “the visit from Aunt Flo”—is a popular topic in Scripture. The Torah repeatedly forbids men to have sexual relations with menstruating women with the penalty of being “cut off from their people” (Leviticus 20:18). The book of Leviticus relays specific instructions from God regarding what a woman must do during her monthly flow of blood. Most of these instructions appear in the context of ritual cleanliness, or purity, which should be distinguished from the modern concept of cleanliness as hygiene and understood instead as a ceremonial or ritualistic purity that allows full participation in religious life.
The Bible specifies several instances in which a person comes into a state of ritual impurity—skin diseases where the skin is broken or oozes any kind of fluid (Leviticus 13:1–45), the emission of semen (Leviticus 15:16), any abnormal discharge of bodily fluids (Leviticus 15:2), contact with a corpse (Numbers 19:11), childbirth (Leviticus 12:2), and menstruation (Leviticus 15:19).
Rabbi Wayne D. Dosik notes that “these circumstances all revolve around loss—loss of bodily fluid, loss of potent
ial life, loss of life itself. In a state of loss, a person was not considered whole, and thus was not able to participate in ritual observances (in those days, the bringing of sacrifices to the sanctuary) with a full and complete heart.”1 Interestingly, Leviticus 12 stipulates that when a woman gives birth to a boy, she is considered ceremonially impure for forty-one days, but when she gives birth to a girl, she is considered ceremonially impure for more than seventy days.
To reenter a state of ritual purity, a person must bathe in natural, flowing water as a symbolic act of purification. This is why Orthodox Jewish communities today always include a mikveh—a specially designed bathing pool for ritual immersion that looks a bit like a whirlpool but is connected to some kind of reservoir of natural water.
For ancient Israelite women and for modern-day Orthdox Jewish women, a ritualized bath marks the end of a monthly time of separation called niddah (literally, “separate”). When a woman is niddah, she is prohibited from having any physical contact whatsoever with men, including her husband. The time of separation varies from tradition to tradition, but most Orthodox Jews, like Ahava, observe it for a total of twelve days.
The restrictions surrounding niddah are outlined in Leviticus 15:
When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, they will be unclean till evening. If a man has sexual relations with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean. . . . When she is cleansed from her discharge, she must count off seven days, and after that she will be ceremonially clean. On the eighth day she must take two doves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting. The priest is to sacrifice one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way he will make atonement for her before the Lord for the uncleanness of her discharge. (VV. 19–24, 28–30 UPDATED NIV)
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 16