Jesus' Many Female Disciples

Luke 8:2-3

Besides the famous Twelve, there were many other disciples of Jesus in his traveling entourage, including, surprisingly, quite a few women. Luke mentions three of these women by name. Mary from Magdala near Galilee Lake, is to modern readers the most well-known of them all as Mary Magdalene. She who had been cured of seven demons seems to have been among the closest to Jesus, being right there at the foot of his Cross and being the first person to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection. Johanna was the wife of a man named Cuza, whom Luke records was manager of Herod's household. Besides having a position of prestige in the Galilean aristocracy, Cuza was a man of financial means. There was also Suzanna, referred to only by name.

As I've already mentioned, there were many such women. Mark in his gospel also includes in this group Mary the mother of James the "Younger" (one of the Twelve) and of Joses, and also Salome. Matthew mentions the mother of Zebedee's sons, James and John. Luke later mentions that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna and other unnamed women were the ones who went to Jesus' tomb on the morning of the resurrection, though Mary Magdalene is the only one to whom Jesus seems to have appeared at the tomb.

These women who were well known to have followed Jesus from Galilee were also with the Apostles and other disciples in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. They were very qualified to act as witnesses of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection, a noteworthy badge of recognition in the New Testament church.

All these women played significant roles in Jesus' ministry, not the least of which was that they supported Jesus and the rest of his entourage out of their own means. As has always been the case throughout the history of the Church, most of Jesus' followers were extremely poor. For while the rich always have so much to lose by publicly following Jesus, the poor receive his good news gladly. "Means" can mean a whole range of things, but the clear implication here is that these women bankrolled Jesus' ministry, covering the cost, for example of basic necessities such as food and shelter.

They were women who had themselves been outcasts, even those who were high on the social ladder, for they had either been sick with some most likely incurable disease or they had been demon possessed. Compare these women with Betty Ford, widow of the former United States President, Gerald Ford, a woman of obvious social and political status, who went through alcohol and medication abuse rehabilitation. As a result of such well-publicized healing, she did much to help others in similar condition. So, too, these women who followed Jesus enhanced Jesus' ministry to others like them.

It is amazing that Jesus willingly attracted people of such questionable reputation. To us more enlightened moderns, physical sickness is not a stigma on the level of drug abuse or demon possession. But keep in mind that, not all that long ago, people with chronic diseases, disabilities and depression were set aside and even denied positions of honor and leadership in our society. Think of Senator Tom Eagleton who was considered unfit to run for Vice President because of previously being clinically diagnosed with depression. Or of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose paralyzed legs were a condition to be hidden lest they become a political liability. While supposedly more open-minded people today would not discredit a child born out of wedlock, a child who suffers abuse as a kid can still grow up to find that there is an air of suspicion attached to such a "record," even one made healthy by Jesus himself.

Jesus welcomed people with such checkered pasts, one and all, and even included them in his inner circle. In fact, it was obvious to a relative outsider like Luke that Jesus purposefully chose people who had struggled with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disabilities. As Jesus said elsewhere, he came not for the healthy but for the unhealthy.

Even healthy women without histories of sickness, disabilities or such were not usually included in follower bands of religious teachers, especially not by name. Here Jesus certainly broke the social code of the day, surprising even his own disciples by relating directly to women. Jesus was all about tearing down access barriers to God's love and grace, regardless of gender and any other human-imposed restrictions.

The term Mark uses in his gospel to describe the work these women did for Jesus is the same term the Early Church later used for what it called "deacons" (cf. Mark 15:41). These women, rescued from lives of pain, oppression and ostracism, weren't just along for the ride. They joined to serve and to make possible the rescue of many others like themselves. In so doing, they to whom Jesus came to minister also became an integral part of Jesus' ministry to others.