Wanna see Jesus? Look where he's looking: at the pain of the marginalized ones. For their own reasons, Mark, Luke, and John use Jairus, Nicodemus, and an unnamed lawyer to help us focus on the fringes.

Confessions of an English major

If any of you are considering starting a Bible and the English Major podcast, I advise you not to.  Sometimes this job sucks. I frequently find myself learning things at the same time I’m supposed to be writing about them.  Perspective shifting takes time, but I have deadlines I’m trying to meet, so sometimes you get my thoughts completely uncooked.  Today is one of those times.

This is supposed to be a fascinating article about the existence of 3 different privileged male religious authorities in the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John.  I had planned to easily share with you how their existence illustrates the upside-down kingdom Jesus ushers in. In the kingdom of God, the inside is outside. The first shall be last.  For real.  But here’s my crisis:  in many ways, I am both inside and first.  When I could just stick to relating to the women, I loved these stories, even if Martha’s was confusing.  I could be comfy knowing Jesus loves me and validates women who are bold and feisty. I get to be me!

But if these stories were only about how Jesus sees and loves the women, there would be no Jairus, no Nicodemus, and no unnamed lawyer.  These stories are also about privilege. They’re about how the desire to avoid discomfort and retain power gets in the way of seeing God.  Sure, I’m like the women, but I’m also like the privileged ones. This isn’t news to me, but when you have to write about it, you don’t get to choose to look away.  And if I’m like the privileged ones, I’ve got some things to learn.  That’s uncomfortable.

Privilege isn’t a recent idea.

From a literary perspective, the function of these cool-crowd Jesus-resisting privileged characters is location, location, location.  I mean that literally-their stories are placed near enough to the women’s that if we’re reading like English majors we can’t miss them.  I also mean it figuratively.  The social location of these powerful men magnifies the marginalized characters’ social locations, both the women and the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable. Jesus spends time with both the privileged and the marginalized.  He tries to communicate with all of them in ways that will lead to faith.  His love is inclusive and welcoming to all.  That’s the message I feel like I’ve always embraced, what the white churches I’ve been part of have preached.  Sadly, even that message feels progressive sometimes.  But I’m learning we’re called to go further than proclaiming universal welcome. I’m learning that love for everyone means an intentionally turned gaze toward the ones in pain.  That’s what love does.  Privilege means having the option of looking away from another’s pain, especially pain that we don’t understand or that we may somehow benefit from.  Loving like Jesus means we choose not to look away.  To make everyone truly, fully included, there needs to be an intentional focus on the ones who’ve always been excluded. That’s why the hemorrhaging woman is in the middle of Mark’s sandwich, that’s why the Samaritan woman is brilliant while Nicodemus doesn’t have a clue, and that’s why Jesus makes the compassionate Samaritan in his parable the example for the lawyer.

It’s fascinating to me that each of these Gospel writers employs this juxtaposition of the privileged and the marginalized, and that they do it independently.  Though you can find Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman in three of the gospels, Mark wrote it first and best.  Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman are only in John.  The parable of the compassionate Samaritan in context with the unnamed lawyer and Martha’s story only appears in Luke.  It seems that each author has something to say about privilege.  Let’s dive in further to find out what that is.

Writing from the margins

First, let’s uncover something the gospel writers had in common.  Jennifer Garcia Bashaw points out, “Early Christians were victims in their context, members of a religious group persecuted by the Roman Empire and often cast in the role of social scapegoat” (p. 15).  Bashaw continues,  the Gospel authors “wrote and interpreted from this fringe position” about a Jesus who continually showed mercy to the ones others marginalized (p. 15). 

Now, let’s get specific, starting with Mark’s story of Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman.  Perhaps you remember that Mark juxtaposes Jairus and the woman, as well as the characters located just before and after their story to show that Jesus has both come for all of Israel and for those outside of Israel, too.  I stand by this analysis, but at the center of the people Jesus comes to save is still a woman who is so outcast, so marginalized, she’s considered untouchable.  Jesus pauses privileged Jairus’ story for hers.  Like Jairus, we are forced to look at her, and if we’re brave enough, we’re also forced to look at our privilege.  Mark’s “good news of Jesus Messiah” means not only that everyone is included.   It also means like he tells us straight up in verse 10:31: “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

Next, let’s consider Luke.  Remember how Ines Velasquez McBryde raved about Luke and his inclusion of women?  Dr. Esau McCauley agrees that Luke is especially inclusive, this time along lines of race and ethnicity.  He says, “Luke’s Gospel argues that God always intended to create an international, multiethnic community for his own glory,” McCaulley (p. 75).  In Luke’s context, that meant Jews and non-Jews alike were part of the community of believers. Luke, most likely a Gentile, or non-Jew, addresses his gospel in verse 3 to “most excellent Theophilus” who is also a Gentile.  They’re both on the fringes of the Jewish group who follow Jesus (Mcaulley 74). Green et al claim the Theophilus Luke writes to “is undergoing doubt whether in fact he really belongs in this racially mixed and heavily persecuted community.  The Gospel openly includes Theophilus in the new community…even in the midst of intense Jewish rejection” (498).

When we see Luke’s motivation to encourage the Gentile believers, new light is shown on his telling of the parable of the Compassionate Samaritan.  First, Jesus himself, who tells the parable, makes the Samaritan a hero, the one who in the Jewish context has always been the enemy.  It’s the Samaritan, the Gentile in the story who loves like a true neighbor.  Second, when Luke adds the framework of the lawyer who knows Jewish law but struggles to accept who his neighbors are, we begin to understand a pretty subversive message.  It’s like Luke is saying, “Most excellent Gentile Theophilus, when you live in love, you belong in this Jesus-following community more than the Bible-thumping scribes do.”  Luke writes in this intentionally inclusive way to help counteract all the intentional exclusion Theophilus is experiencing.  

What if that’s the same message Luke gives to the women in the early church?  In contrast to Jairus and Nicodemus, it’s the privileged lawyer who remains anonymous and the women, Martha and Mary, who are named in the next passage.  What if Luke’s whole point of Martha’s confusing and frustrating story is to provide another contrasting example to the lawyer with named, female disciples?  Inside is outside.  First is last.

“Luke was a Gentile who wanted other Gentiles to know they, too, had a place in the new community. John was a Jewish believer who didn’t want to see his siblings abandon their new faith because they were shoved out of the synagogues. I’m a privileged white woman who’s tired of her sisters feeling unloved by God because the church limits them to roles that don’t fit.”

Finally, we get to John, where we find the stories of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well.   John’s concern is preventing Jewish believers from abandoning their faith in Jesus out of fear.  There was Roman persecution, of course, but there was also identity-shaking exclusion from the Jewish community they no longer agreed with. The dividing factor among these people of God was the opposing responses of belief and unbelief in Jesus.   It’s a major theme of John’s Gospel where the eleventh verse says, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God (Achtemeier 179).  John’s characters embody this verse. Nicodemus, leader of the Jews, cannot recognize Jesus’ identity.  Jesus is rejected by his own people and is made an outsider.  He takes off for Samaria where he meets the quintessential outsider, the Samaritan woman.   Before Jesus meets with her, he hasn’t yet trusted anyone with his identity as Messiah, but when the woman hints at it, Jesus confirms, “I am.” Jennifer Garcia Bashaw suggests that perhaps Jesus is willing to confirm that identity for the first time with her “because for that moment, …they were both just outsiders longing for acceptance and hopeful for unity” (233).  She goes on, “This episode confirms the nature of the Jesus movement for its followers-it was a movement that privileged outsiders over insiders, one that had begun with and would always be characterized by radical inclusion and boundary-breaking community” (234). 

What a powerful message for John’s readers struggling with their identity as Jewish believers in Jesus.  By telling the story of Nicodemus, John shows that Jesus himself is also “rejected by his own” but he finds belonging with another outsider. Perhaps the Samaritan woman is even the kind of outsider John’s readers were called to build a new boundary-breaking community with. Boundaries don’t break without effort, though.  Jesus has to go to Samaria.  He has to engage with the woman’s direct naming of their differences.  He has to intentionally decide that those historical boundaries need tearing down.  They have to talk about the things they don’t agree on.  But they do these things joyfully, which leads to each of them being fully seen and accepted.  Bashaw sums it up,  “This reciprocal acceptance among enemies is a picture of how kingdom reconciliation becomes a reality.  A Samaritan-Jewish reconciliation that was centuries in the making had finally happened-all because of an unlikely conversation between outsiders”  (234).

Luke was a Gentile who wanted other Gentiles to know they, too, had a place in the new community.  John was a Jewish believer who didn’t want to see his siblings abandon their new faith because they were shoved out of the synagogues. I’m a privileged white woman who’s tired of her sisters feeling unloved by God because the church limits them to roles that don’t fit.  We all write from our own pain, and Jesus sees all of it.  His love requires that we do the same. Fortunately, Mark has written us a success story.  Next time we’ll watch Jairus take the path to healing by laying down his privilege.  I hope you’ll join me in the discomfort.

Works Cited

Achtemeier, Paul J., et al.  Introducing the New Testament, Its Literature and Theology.  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001.

Bashaw, Jennifer Garcia. Scapegoats. Fortress Press, 2022.

Green, Joel B., et al., editors. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels.  Intervarsity Press, 1992. 

McCaulley, Esau. Reading While Black, African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. InterVarsity Press, 2020.