Mark 1:29-39
F.O.X.P.2.
According to researchers at the University of Maryland, F.O.X.P.2. is the “language protein” responsible for why we women talk so darn much.
The study found that the average woman speaks around 20,000 words a day while the average man only 7,000.
Of course, there has to be some “sciencey explanation” for this phenomenon. God forbid we acknowledge the fact that we women simply have a lot to say and the less-chatty sex would do well to listen to us.
Can I get an ‘Amen’, ladies?
Make that 20,000 and 1.
And because I have a hard time believing that the brain chemistry of men and women has changed so drastically over the last 2,000 years, it baffles me that only 1.1% of all words spoken in the Bible are spoken by women.
1.1%: that amounts to roughly 14,000 words total--shoot, most women have clocked that many words by 3 p.m.!
So…considering how few words in the Bible are spoken by women, it should come as little surprise to us that the unnamed woman in today’s account—whom we know only as Simon Peter’s mother-in-law—has absolutely nothing to say about her remarkable recovery.
Yet…in spite of her saying nothing, she nevertheless manages to make a statement.
In vs. 31 we’re told that Jesus took her by the hand, lifted her up, and without skipping a beat, she was on her feet, serving them.
“Serving them.” Really?!
Joanna Adams, former pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, once remarked in a sermon that verse 31 was one of the funniest verses in the Bible: “Talk about ‘Get up and go!” she said. “Straight from the sickbed to the cook stove!”
And the Greek supports this. The Greek word for “served” is “diakonia”, the same word from which we get “diaconate” and “deacon.” It literally means “to wait on” like a waiter or waitress would do. And that’s exactly what she did: she waited on them.
The only thing in the text separating the fever leaving her and her serving the guests in her home is a comma. Apparently, no period was required; no stopping necessary; no pausing to recuperate; no lingering symptoms or residual fatigue from the fever; no heating up a quick bowl of chicken noodle for herself before beginning the task of feeding a dozen hungry men.
Wow. What a recovery…
Adams is right: it is funny to think of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law leaping from her sickbed and running straight for the stove, especially since most 21st century women would have used 3 of their 20,000 words to say, “Make it yourself.”
But what’s not funny is to deny the statement about gender made by the words to the right of the comma in verse 31: “and she served them.”
In John’s gospel, after Lazarus has been raised from the dead, guess what happens? Lazarus is hungry! We would be too if we’d been dead for four days! So his sister, Martha, serves him. And I’m sure she’s grateful to do so, because it means he’s at her table again, alive and well.
But who’s feeding Peter’s mother-in-law?
Of course, we know things were different in 1st century Palestine. Women weren't second-class citizens, they were the property of men: their fathers, their husbands; their employers; their brothers; even their own male children outranked them. And so we don’t spend too much time wondering as to why so little of what they had to say was ever recorded.
While language proteins maybe haven’t evolved much over the past 2,000 years, fortunately for women, our status in society has.
A woman’s place is no longer in the home; it’s also in the House…the Senate, and hopefully one day, the Oval Office. Pulpits aren't just for men anymore. For over two decades now more college degrees have been awarded to women than men. Women serve alongside men in the Armed Forces and in a few short months will finally have permission to fight the enemy hand-to-hand on the front lines. And I guarantee you it won’t look anything like this: [make “girl fighting” gesture.]
Women. Are. Amazing. We always have been; whether history has chosen to acknowledge it or not.
Speaking of women and history, did you see the controversial #LikeAGirl Super Bowl ad last Sunday? Surprisingly, the controversy was not sparked by the fact that this ad marked the first occasion ever that an “ad for pads” ran during the Super Bowl. No. Unfortunately, this ad was controversial because it promoted gender equality.
This “Like a Girl” ad featured people being asked to run, throw, and fight “like a girl.” And instead of simply doing these actions, each person weakly reenacted them, by accidentally dropping the ball or slapping instead of punching. But when the same questions were asked of young girls, they threw, ran and fought aggressively—like anyone would.
The implication: To do something "like a girl" is to do it badly.
But the redeeming aspect to the commercial was this: the negative connotation of doing something “like a girl” is something that’s learned over time, and, therefore, something we can change.
And let’s not kid ourselves, we still need the change, because gender equality simply does not exist.
The phrase "like a girl" is similar to saying something is "so gay"—both are used in a derogatory manner. The terms "gay" and "girl" are not synonymous with being weak or stupid, these are identities.
So when someone uses these identifiers—whether it's sexual orientation, ethnicity or gender—as an insult, it becomes very problematic.
According to Huffington Post, when the commercial originally aired back in June it received a lot of positive attention, but it wasn't until Sunday’s Super Bowl—which approximately 115 million people watched—that the verbal backlash really began--most of it on social media.
Within minutes of the ad airing women took to twitter to describe what they do “like a girl” and how their gender doesn’t stop them from being strong and powerful:
“I serve my country #LikeAGirl”
“Engineering #LikeAGirl”
“Setting high jump records #LikeAGirl”
But you know what they say, “Haters gonna hate.”
So in no time at all, critics and self-proclaimed “meninists” (that’s the opposite of feminists, in case you were wondering) also took to social media to gripe that it was unfair that the Always ad pertained only to women.
And soon, a new hashtag popped up: LikeABoy. And tweets like these started appearing:
“#LikeABoy because equality matters.”
“All players male. All coaches male. All refs male. All announcers male. #LikeABoy”
But the women of twitter and the men who support them wouldn’t allow these “meninists” to have the final word and responded with tweets like these:
“I am a girl. My gender is not an insult, and should never be an insult. #LikeAGirl”
“First one in my family to get a college education. Plus, I’m paying for all of it. #LikeAGirl”
“My wife hits #LikeAGirl. I don’t ever want to be on the receiving end. She’s a 2nd degree black belt in karate, and it would hurt like..._.”
And my personal favorite:
“To all the boys making fun of the #LikeAGirl commercial: I hope God blesses you with a baby girl and I wanna see you tell her what she’s incapable of.”
But here’s the thing: as much as I want to bask in the positivity of this ad campaign and the empowering effect it’s having on our society, I refuse to do so wholeheartedly because even the LikeAGirl hashtag itself is proof that sexism is still a very real part of our everyday culture. And in spite of how far we’ve come, we’ve still got further to go.
Until we have just as many women as men in public office, we still have further to go.
Until gender pay gaps are a thing of the past, we still have further to go.
Until women can walk down the sidewalk in any city without street harassment, catcalls, or horn-honking, we still have further to go.
Until women aren’t afraid to speak up more during meetings because they’re afraid they’ll either be interrupted by a man or have their idea stolen by a man, we still have further to go. (Want to know more about this? Read the New York Times OpEd piece from a couple weeks ago entitled “Speaking While Female.”)
Until pornography, sex-trafficking, and prostitution is eradicated, we still have further to go.
Until we don’t need ad campaigns and hashtags to empower women because we know we’re fierce and strong, important and capable, we still have further to go.
Until voiceless, nameless women aren’t remembered for their service to men, but for their service to God and Country and Society, we still have further to go.
So how do we get there?
Remember verse 31? We laughed at what was to the right of the comma, but what about what’s to the left of it?
“[Jesus] came, took her by the hand, and lifted her up…and the fever left her, comma, and she began to serve them.”
“He lifted her up.”
He didn’t heal her. At least that’s not what the Greek says. The Greek says that he “resurrected” her. He restored her to Life with a capital L. He brought her back to the place where she belonged—not so that she could serve them—but so that she could be her true self again. Whole. Beloved. Perfect, just the way she is.
Have you ever been brought back from the brink? Has someone ever touched you and brought you back to yourself, reminded you of who you really are: a person of value, a person with purpose and promise, a person who is loved, not with a comma, but completely loved, period.
Jesus doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t announce that her faith has made her well or that she is forgiven. He simply touches her, and as voiceless as the woman herself, he restores her from something contagious and threatening to someone strong and capable of service.
I’d like to think of Jesus’s voiceless healing as an act of solidarity with a voiceless woman; and we’d do well to pay attention.
We DO have voices; and whether we speak 20,000 or 7,000 words a day doesn’t matter. What does matter is remembering that not using our voices is an insult to the voiceless; and that using our voices—male and female alike—for good, to uplift and empower and strengthen, is the only way we’ll make “further to go” just a little bit closer.
So…while the nameless-mother-in-law’s response to her recovery may have been lost to history, were she to have tweeted about this experience, perhaps this is what she would have said:
“You might think it’s a miracle that I was able to jump out of bed for hungry men, but the real miracle is that without a word, I was resurrected and served God #LikeAGirl.”
Amen.
F.O.X.P.2.
According to researchers at the University of Maryland, F.O.X.P.2. is the “language protein” responsible for why we women talk so darn much.
The study found that the average woman speaks around 20,000 words a day while the average man only 7,000.
Of course, there has to be some “sciencey explanation” for this phenomenon. God forbid we acknowledge the fact that we women simply have a lot to say and the less-chatty sex would do well to listen to us.
Can I get an ‘Amen’, ladies?
Make that 20,000 and 1.
And because I have a hard time believing that the brain chemistry of men and women has changed so drastically over the last 2,000 years, it baffles me that only 1.1% of all words spoken in the Bible are spoken by women.
1.1%: that amounts to roughly 14,000 words total--shoot, most women have clocked that many words by 3 p.m.!
So…considering how few words in the Bible are spoken by women, it should come as little surprise to us that the unnamed woman in today’s account—whom we know only as Simon Peter’s mother-in-law—has absolutely nothing to say about her remarkable recovery.
Yet…in spite of her saying nothing, she nevertheless manages to make a statement.
In vs. 31 we’re told that Jesus took her by the hand, lifted her up, and without skipping a beat, she was on her feet, serving them.
“Serving them.” Really?!
Joanna Adams, former pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, once remarked in a sermon that verse 31 was one of the funniest verses in the Bible: “Talk about ‘Get up and go!” she said. “Straight from the sickbed to the cook stove!”
And the Greek supports this. The Greek word for “served” is “diakonia”, the same word from which we get “diaconate” and “deacon.” It literally means “to wait on” like a waiter or waitress would do. And that’s exactly what she did: she waited on them.
The only thing in the text separating the fever leaving her and her serving the guests in her home is a comma. Apparently, no period was required; no stopping necessary; no pausing to recuperate; no lingering symptoms or residual fatigue from the fever; no heating up a quick bowl of chicken noodle for herself before beginning the task of feeding a dozen hungry men.
Wow. What a recovery…
Adams is right: it is funny to think of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law leaping from her sickbed and running straight for the stove, especially since most 21st century women would have used 3 of their 20,000 words to say, “Make it yourself.”
But what’s not funny is to deny the statement about gender made by the words to the right of the comma in verse 31: “and she served them.”
In John’s gospel, after Lazarus has been raised from the dead, guess what happens? Lazarus is hungry! We would be too if we’d been dead for four days! So his sister, Martha, serves him. And I’m sure she’s grateful to do so, because it means he’s at her table again, alive and well.
But who’s feeding Peter’s mother-in-law?
Of course, we know things were different in 1st century Palestine. Women weren't second-class citizens, they were the property of men: their fathers, their husbands; their employers; their brothers; even their own male children outranked them. And so we don’t spend too much time wondering as to why so little of what they had to say was ever recorded.
While language proteins maybe haven’t evolved much over the past 2,000 years, fortunately for women, our status in society has.
A woman’s place is no longer in the home; it’s also in the House…the Senate, and hopefully one day, the Oval Office. Pulpits aren't just for men anymore. For over two decades now more college degrees have been awarded to women than men. Women serve alongside men in the Armed Forces and in a few short months will finally have permission to fight the enemy hand-to-hand on the front lines. And I guarantee you it won’t look anything like this: [make “girl fighting” gesture.]
Women. Are. Amazing. We always have been; whether history has chosen to acknowledge it or not.
Speaking of women and history, did you see the controversial #LikeAGirl Super Bowl ad last Sunday? Surprisingly, the controversy was not sparked by the fact that this ad marked the first occasion ever that an “ad for pads” ran during the Super Bowl. No. Unfortunately, this ad was controversial because it promoted gender equality.
This “Like a Girl” ad featured people being asked to run, throw, and fight “like a girl.” And instead of simply doing these actions, each person weakly reenacted them, by accidentally dropping the ball or slapping instead of punching. But when the same questions were asked of young girls, they threw, ran and fought aggressively—like anyone would.
The implication: To do something "like a girl" is to do it badly.
But the redeeming aspect to the commercial was this: the negative connotation of doing something “like a girl” is something that’s learned over time, and, therefore, something we can change.
And let’s not kid ourselves, we still need the change, because gender equality simply does not exist.
The phrase "like a girl" is similar to saying something is "so gay"—both are used in a derogatory manner. The terms "gay" and "girl" are not synonymous with being weak or stupid, these are identities.
So when someone uses these identifiers—whether it's sexual orientation, ethnicity or gender—as an insult, it becomes very problematic.
According to Huffington Post, when the commercial originally aired back in June it received a lot of positive attention, but it wasn't until Sunday’s Super Bowl—which approximately 115 million people watched—that the verbal backlash really began--most of it on social media.
Within minutes of the ad airing women took to twitter to describe what they do “like a girl” and how their gender doesn’t stop them from being strong and powerful:
“I serve my country #LikeAGirl”
“Engineering #LikeAGirl”
“Setting high jump records #LikeAGirl”
But you know what they say, “Haters gonna hate.”
So in no time at all, critics and self-proclaimed “meninists” (that’s the opposite of feminists, in case you were wondering) also took to social media to gripe that it was unfair that the Always ad pertained only to women.
And soon, a new hashtag popped up: LikeABoy. And tweets like these started appearing:
“#LikeABoy because equality matters.”
“All players male. All coaches male. All refs male. All announcers male. #LikeABoy”
But the women of twitter and the men who support them wouldn’t allow these “meninists” to have the final word and responded with tweets like these:
“I am a girl. My gender is not an insult, and should never be an insult. #LikeAGirl”
“First one in my family to get a college education. Plus, I’m paying for all of it. #LikeAGirl”
“My wife hits #LikeAGirl. I don’t ever want to be on the receiving end. She’s a 2nd degree black belt in karate, and it would hurt like..._.”
And my personal favorite:
“To all the boys making fun of the #LikeAGirl commercial: I hope God blesses you with a baby girl and I wanna see you tell her what she’s incapable of.”
But here’s the thing: as much as I want to bask in the positivity of this ad campaign and the empowering effect it’s having on our society, I refuse to do so wholeheartedly because even the LikeAGirl hashtag itself is proof that sexism is still a very real part of our everyday culture. And in spite of how far we’ve come, we’ve still got further to go.
Until we have just as many women as men in public office, we still have further to go.
Until gender pay gaps are a thing of the past, we still have further to go.
Until women can walk down the sidewalk in any city without street harassment, catcalls, or horn-honking, we still have further to go.
Until women aren’t afraid to speak up more during meetings because they’re afraid they’ll either be interrupted by a man or have their idea stolen by a man, we still have further to go. (Want to know more about this? Read the New York Times OpEd piece from a couple weeks ago entitled “Speaking While Female.”)
Until pornography, sex-trafficking, and prostitution is eradicated, we still have further to go.
Until we don’t need ad campaigns and hashtags to empower women because we know we’re fierce and strong, important and capable, we still have further to go.
Until voiceless, nameless women aren’t remembered for their service to men, but for their service to God and Country and Society, we still have further to go.
So how do we get there?
Remember verse 31? We laughed at what was to the right of the comma, but what about what’s to the left of it?
“[Jesus] came, took her by the hand, and lifted her up…and the fever left her, comma, and she began to serve them.”
“He lifted her up.”
He didn’t heal her. At least that’s not what the Greek says. The Greek says that he “resurrected” her. He restored her to Life with a capital L. He brought her back to the place where she belonged—not so that she could serve them—but so that she could be her true self again. Whole. Beloved. Perfect, just the way she is.
Have you ever been brought back from the brink? Has someone ever touched you and brought you back to yourself, reminded you of who you really are: a person of value, a person with purpose and promise, a person who is loved, not with a comma, but completely loved, period.
Jesus doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t announce that her faith has made her well or that she is forgiven. He simply touches her, and as voiceless as the woman herself, he restores her from something contagious and threatening to someone strong and capable of service.
I’d like to think of Jesus’s voiceless healing as an act of solidarity with a voiceless woman; and we’d do well to pay attention.
We DO have voices; and whether we speak 20,000 or 7,000 words a day doesn’t matter. What does matter is remembering that not using our voices is an insult to the voiceless; and that using our voices—male and female alike—for good, to uplift and empower and strengthen, is the only way we’ll make “further to go” just a little bit closer.
So…while the nameless-mother-in-law’s response to her recovery may have been lost to history, were she to have tweeted about this experience, perhaps this is what she would have said:
“You might think it’s a miracle that I was able to jump out of bed for hungry men, but the real miracle is that without a word, I was resurrected and served God #LikeAGirl.”
Amen.