Women in Mark

Mark's gospel does not give women the same kind of speaking parts that Luke or John do. There is no Mary singing the Magnificat, no Martha and Mary in their kitchen, no Samaritan woman at the well. Mark's women are quieter on the page. But they are there in numbers that surprise the careful reader, and they do the work of the gospel at several of its most important moments.

A walk through the thread

Simon's mother-in-law (1v29–31). The first healed person in Mark whose name we cannot quite get to, but whose response we are told plainly: she gets up and serves. The word for served in Greek is diakonein, the verb that gives us deacon. The first deacon in Mark is a woman.

The haemorrhaging woman (5v25–34). Twelve years of bleeding, beyond the reach of the medical system that has impoverished her, ritually unclean in her own community. She reaches for the hem of Jesus' cloak in the crowd — and the touch goes the wrong way through ritual law, because uncleanness should pollute Jesus rather than power flowing the other way. Jesus calls her daughter and tells her her faith has saved her. The story is sandwiched inside Jairus's daughter (5v21–24, 35–43), and the two together carry one argument about faith reaching from the margin.

The Syrophoenician woman (7v24–30). The only person in Mark who wins an argument with Jesus. She comes to him for her daughter; he refuses, calling her people dogs; she replies with the line about crumbs and dogs under the table; he relents. The pericope sits at a hinge of the gospel — Jesus is in Gentile territory, and a Gentile woman draws him out of the boundaries he had been working inside. Mark gives her the dialogue and Mark gives her the win.

The widow at the temple (12v41–44). Two small copper coins put into the temple treasury. Jesus sits down opposite the offering box, watches her, and names her gift in front of his disciples. The widow is the closing image of Mark's teaching before the apocalyptic discourse and the passion narrative; the temple economy has consumed her, and her gift is also her livelihood. Myers reads this story as a lament rather than a commendation; the temple has taken everything she had.

The woman who anoints Jesus at Bethany (14v3–9). The unnamed woman, in the house of Simon the leper, with a jar of expensive nard. She breaks the jar and pours it over Jesus' head. The disciples object. Jesus defends her: Wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. The promise is striking, given that the name does not survive even in Mark itself. Her anointing is the only kingly anointing the messiah receives in this gospel. A woman does it.

The women at the cross (15v40–41). When the male disciples have fled and Peter has denied, the women are there. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, Salome, and many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem. They watch from a distance. They have been with him through Galilee, ministering to him; they are with him at the end.

The women at the tomb (16v1–8). Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come to the tomb at dawn to anoint the body. They find the stone rolled away, a young man in white, and an announcement: He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you. They are the first witnesses of the resurrection. The gospel ends with their fear — they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid — and so the gospel hands the resurrection witness to women whose voices have been quietly central all along.

Where the thread lands

Three readings worth holding together.

First, the political-pastoral reading. The women in Mark are consistently the people the social order has marginalised — a widow, a foreigner, an unclean woman, a serving woman, anonymous women at the cross. That they do the gospel's most important work is part of Mark's argument about who the kingdom belongs to. The system has put them at the edge; the kingdom puts them at the centre.

Second, the discipleship reading. The women are the model the men fail to be. The male disciples ask for thrones; the women anoint and serve. The men flee at the cross; the women stay. The men do not return to the tomb; the women come at dawn. Mark's argument about what discipleship looks like is partly carried by the women he places at every point where it matters.

Third, the pastoral reading. Mark's women are not given long speeches. The gospel does not need them to give long speeches; their presence and their actions do the work. For a contemporary church that has often expected women to do their theology by speaking, Mark offers a different picture: discipleship sometimes looks like the touch in the crowd, the broken jar, the steady watching from a distance, the dawn walk to anoint a body. The Markan women teach the church what to honour in the women who follow Jesus today.

A note for the facilitator

When this thread comes up — and it will, especially in Sessions 6, 7, 14, 15, and 16 — name the women's names where Mark gives them. Mary Magdalene. Mary the mother of James. Salome. The Syrophoenician woman whose name we lost. The widow whose two coins were her life. The anointer at Bethany who was promised remembrance and has not always been remembered. The naming is part of the pastoral work.

Further reading

Joanna Dewey, "Women in the Gospel of Mark", Word & World 26 (2006), pp. 22–29 — a short and accessible academic essay.

Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (Crossroad, 1983) — the foundational feminist-historical-critical study of women in early Christianity; the title is taken from Mark 14v9.

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, the chapters on Mark 5, 7, and 14.