Follow the Women who Followed Jesus

What all of us can learn from the courage and conviction of the women in the Gospels

Humans are storytellers. We resonate with people’s experiences when we hear their stories. We introduce ourselves and give our testimony by telling our story. To understand an event that takes place, we try to piece together the story of how one thing led to another. I would argue that we learn best when the things we are learning are woven into the form of story.

I don’t think it’s by accident that God would choose to communicate the most important truths about who he is and what he is doing in the world through the Story of Scripture. It starts in Genesis 1 and continues to the end of Revelation. And the fulcrum – the moment that changes the trajectory of the human story from the brokenness and fallout of sin toward the harmony and healing of grace – is the story of Jesus. Four gospels, but one Gospel. Four witnesses telling their version of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection with one goal: to share the good news of salvation to all people.

One of the distinctive features of storytelling is the invitation given to the audience. We are invited to join in the world the storyteller has created. In the process of that immersion, the audience is compelled to learn by example. Which characters should we emulate? Which actions are admirable? What lessons should we learn from what we have seen and heard? What should we do? What should we not do?

Given the unique ability for stories to shape us, it’s no wonder that in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we are given an example of what it means to follow God in the person of Jesus. But Jesus isn’t the only one who functions as an exemplar in these stories. The gospel writers also give us examples of what it means to follow God in the people who followed Jesus during his ministry – his disciples.

If you’re like me, the default image that comes to mind when you hear the word “disciples” is the apostles – the twelve men who were called by Jesus and who are found in several formal lists of names in the gospels. Historically, the apostles become the outward-facing leaders of the early church, at least in the first years before most of them are martyred for their faith. But in the gospels, the apostles aren’t the only disciples. There are many people who follow Jesus faithfully. Jesus wasn’t surrounded by a mini, 12-person entourage. He had a whole ministerial operation!

Among these faithful followers were a remarkable number of women. Some of these women were committed to Jesus for the long haul. They traveled around with him from region to region as he taught and healed. They were there from the beginning of his ministry to the end of his life. They witnessed his resurrection and ascension. A group of these female disciples bankrolled his ministry while being in the trenches, aiding him in his good work. Other women popped into his life for a moment or two, but the ripple effects of their stories were profound. Often, these women’s stories are told because they represented the kinds of actions that Jesus expected of his followers. Most women in the gospels are presented as role models for the audience.

So, when we think of disciples and discipleship, we should try to expand our vision of who that entails to include the very people the gospel writers identify as faithful followers of Jesus. Because we learn by example from the stories we encounter, we should learn something from these women that can help us on our own journey of discipleship.

To help get us started, I’ve observed some character traits that female disciples have in common in the gospels. These are traits that we would all do well to emulate.

Resiliency and Perseverance

Life was not easy in the first century, and especially not for a woman. Barring exceptional circumstances, women were powerless in that time. They were unable to own property, subject to the rule of the paterfamilias (father of the family), rarely allowed to make decisions for themselves (those were made by their father or their husband), and denied formal education. As a result, women were often used as pawns in the games of men who sought power and social stability. Being a woman meant that you were already fighting an uphill battle, made even more difficult by the reality of high mortality rates in childbearing for mother and baby, the existence of social stigma surrounding women’s health, and the impact of pervasive stereotypes that presented women as persons who lacked virtue and were incapable of reason. With the deck stacked against them, women had to be resilient to make an impact in their communities. Jesus deliberately chooses examples of women in his parables to demonstrate the type of resiliency all his followers should display.

In the parable of the persistent widow, the protagonist is relentless in pursuit of justice for herself, fighting both the one who seeks to take advantage of her vulnerability and the corrupt judge who presides over her case (Luke 18:1-8). In another parable, the woman who has lost one of her ten coins demonstrates the sense of urgency Jesus’s disciples should have when it comes to the Kingdom of God (Luke 15:8-10). The gospel writers also tell several stories of the tenacity of women who faced difficult circumstances and braced themselves against outright rejection. Women like the Syrophoenician who chases after Jesus and insists on his help for her daughter (Mark 7:24-30) and the hemorrhaging woman who navigates the crowd despite the danger of being exposed (Mark 5:24-34) risk rejection, shame and disappointment. Yet they seek his help anyway. And at the end of his life, it is his female disciples who stick with him – both at the cross and at his tomb to care for his body. Because they are there (while the apostles have fled and hidden), they are also blessed to be the first witnesses to his resurrection and the first to see his resurrected and glorified body. It is Mary Magdalene, for instance, who has the honor of receiving the mandate to go and tell the others that he has risen from the dead (John 20:11-18)!

Faith

It is quite a common theme for women who encounter Jesus to display a level of faith that far surpasses that of the apostles (there is often deliberate juxtaposition of their lack of faith with the faith of these women). Several times, Jesus calls attention to their faith as models for his followers. Often, Jesus lauds the faith of these women because of the difficulties they must navigate to seek him. It is no coincidence, then, that the two women mentioned above – the Syrophoenician woman and the hemorrhaging woman – are proclaimed to have the kind of faith that Jesus will later claim can move mountains (Mark 11:22-25). Of all the disciples, it is a woman – Martha – who gives the most robust confession of faith (John 11:20-27). And in the early days of the church, other female disciples show great faith. Lydia hears the gospel, is moved as the Lord opens her heart, and demonstrates her faithfulness by showing hospitality to God’s missionaries (Acts 16:11-15, 40). Rhoda – a servant girl in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark – is the only disciple in the house who believes that Peter has been miraculously broken out of prison by God’s angel (Acts 12:6-19).

Listening and Learning

Too often, Jesus encounters people who believe they’ve got a handle on what God is doing – people who are seriously misinterpreting God’s priorities and who find themselves in opposition to him. The development of the theme of Jesus’s conflict with the religious authorities in the gospels is well known, but less obvious are the times when even the twelve apostles oppose or dismiss his claims (Mark 5:31; 8:14-21; 14:26-31). By contrast, no female disciple is presented in this way. Instead, the women who follow Jesus are committed to him, and in their commitment, they deliberately seek to listen and learn from him, even when what he says is challenging or unexpected. The sisters Mary and Martha show him hospitality, serve him, and sit at his feet – the posture of a disciple who is learning from the teacher (Luke 10:39). In John’s gospel, the Samaritan woman at the well willingly engages in extended conversation with Jesus (John 4:726). That conversation starts with the woman’s incredulity (“Why is a Jewish man asking a Samaritan woman for water?!?”) and ends with her enthusiastic witness to his identity as the Messiah, which leads to the conversion of many in her city. John deliberately contrasts this with two different responses to Jesus: Nicodemus, who starts off wanting to learn from Jesus, but only at night, in secret, and with no immediate outcome from that encounter (John 3:1-21); and the apostles, who leave for a Taco Bell run and return perplexed at Jesus’s actions in conversing with the woman, while being overly concerned that he eat his lunch (John 4:27-38)!

Selflessness over Self-Preservation

According to Jesus, a key feature of discipleship is the willingness to be selfless, rather than being consumed with our own self-preservation. We can see this most clearly in his claim that following him means “taking up your cross” (Mark 8:34) and in his corrections to those who think that they will somehow benefit from their relationship with him by receiving earthly power and privilege (Mark 10:35-45). Instead, Jesus calls his followers to – shockingly – follow him. The path that he walks is headed toward sacrificial death for the sake of others. Peppered throughout the gospel narratives are examples of women who seem to grasp this requirement better than some of their male peers. Jesus chooses a poor widow’s sacrificial offering of the very last of her money as an object lesson for the apostles (Mark 12:41-44). It is a group of women who use their status and financial means to fund his ministry, risking ostracization from their family and wealthy peers (Luke 8:1-3). And, most importantly, the ones who risk being captured as followers of Jesus upon his arrest are overwhelmingly the female disciples, who stand near the cross, follow his body to its burial, and come back to the tomb to care for it on the third day (Matthew 27:55-28:10). The women’s “nearness” to Jesus is deliberately contrasted with Peter’s response: to deny Jesus unequivocally when confronted and to hide behind locked doors in fear and despair (Matthew 26:69-75; John 20:19).

Women of Action

What do all these women (and so many more!) have in common? They are women of action. The women who encounter Jesus are changed by their encounter with him, and they respond appropriately – with acts of service and faith and selflessness and courage and conviction. Even when doubted, even when dismissed by their own fellow believers, they remain committed to Jesus’s commands and remain convinced in the truth of his identity. For these disciples, faith is not just a verbal declaration, but an outpouring of tangible practices in the world. In other words, what they believe leads them to live it out, just as Jesus did. Female discipleship in the gospels becomes, then, a model for us as believers. May we have the same courage and conviction that these women did – to follow Jesus and to demonstrate his love in our own lives. May we tell their stories alongside the stories of the apostles. Because this Story can change the world.