Complementarians and Egalitarians both agree that Jesus humanized women, especially in light of his Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. But humanizing women is one thing; ascribing leadership roles is another. In this paper, I will scrutinize the assertion that the gospel writers considered women to be leaders through three lenses.
First, I will survey several passages where Jesus humanized women, such as Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman (John 4), his instruction of Mary while she sat at his feet (Luke 10:38-42), and Luke’s presentation of “many women” who financially supported Jesus’s ministry (Luke 8:2-3). While these events certain humanize women, they do not demand that women were necessarily leaders.
Second, I will examine instances where the gospel writers contrast the faithfulness of women with the faithlessness of men. Mark in particular records four such instances at key points in his narrative: the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:24-34), the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), the sacrificial widow (Mark 12:41-44), and the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive perfume (Mark 14:3-9). I will explore the possibility that such faithfulness of women might suggest that they should be viewed as leaders, since emulation is one of the key markers of leadership in the ancient world. However, I will conclude that these gospel portraits of faithful women are suggestive but not determinative of women occupying leadership roles in the early church.
Finally, I will explore what I believe is the strongest, and the most neglected, case for women occupying leadership roles in the ministry of Jesus: the women who serve (diakoneō). While “service” sounds like menial labor or typical “women’s work” to secular ears, Jesus turns the nature of authority and leadership on its head in Mark 10:42-45, where he defines leadership as service (cf. John 13:1-12). According to Mark, women—and only women (aside from angels, Mark 1:13)—are ones who emulate the Mark 10 vision of leadership-as-service. In fact, Mark bookends his gospel with stories of women who “serve” (Mark 1:31; 15:41). From a narrative perspective, this might provide a subtle yet powerful glimpse into how Mark viewed women in relation to Jesus’s most explicit statement about Christian leadership (Mark 10:42-45)—one which also shapes Paul’s view of his apostolic leadership as diakonia (1 Cor 3:5; 2 Cor 3:6; 6:4; 11:23; Eph 3:7).