Jesus Speaks to Women: An Introduction

Meditations for the weary, wounded, and wondering

This study started with a question: “What would Jesus say to women?”

One day, scrolling through social media, I saw a video clip of a well-known pastor asked what he would say to a beloved Bible teacher, a woman close in age to the pastor himself and experienced in long years of ministry. “Go home,” he said to rippling laughter through the crowd and scattered clapping.

I like being at home and I’ve spent much of my adulthood caring for my children in my home, so that’s not the issue I had with the pastor’s words. What irritated me was that he seemed to be claiming to speak for Jesus about what Jesus would want for this woman’s life and how he’d use her spiritual gifts and abilities. It spoke to his general understanding of a woman’s role in the Kingdom of God.

As I thought about this, I realized that the Bible was full of accounts of times that Jesus did speak to women. I wondered what those words revealed about what Jesus thought about women, how he treated them, and the place he held for them in His kingdom.

So I searched through my Bible and recorded every time Jesus addressed a woman in particular. Of course, many of Jesus words were spoken in crowds of mixed-gender and most of his teaching addresses both men and women, but I looking for the words spoken just to women.

I found at least 20 times in the Gospels that Jesus talks directly to a woman. What would they reveal and what would that mean for you and me?

In general, I’m not a big fan of picking up a Bible story apart from its context. I’m currently going through the book of Luke with a group of women from my church and we are learning so much as follow Luke’s intentions as an author and try to track with what he was saying. I owe a lot to John Walton’s book, Wisdom for Faithful Reading for helping me understand this principle of Bible study.

That said, while I try to pick up the context of each story, I don’t dig deep into each author’s purpose. Rather, I am searching through the Scriptures looking for specific stories, and then like a museum curator with a prized collection of artifacts, I’m laying them all out for display (with commentary) so we can examine the collection together to see what we can learn from them as both individual stories and a collection.

When you think about the women of the Bible, how do you picture them? Are they fuzzy background characters, fetching water or making meals for the men, playing passive roles in the bigger story of Jesus and his male disciples? Are they untouchable and statuesque, haloed and holy?

In fact, they were all kinds of women: a widow, a “sinner,” a foreigner, Jesus’ own mother, a female disciple, a dear friend, a disabled women, a grieving women, confused women, desperate women, abused women, headstrong women, smart women, brave women, and questioning women. But they were also more than these single identifiers. They were smart, argumentative, distracted, anxious, traumatized, faith-filled, courageous. They were real, complex people. And Jesus saw them.

My hope is that we too begin to see these women as the complex humans they were. Some of them we will get to know better than others based on the information provided. With others, we’ll have to use our imaginations.

I see parts of myself in each of them, and I think you will too as we study together. And just as Jesus had things to say to these women, I believe he has something to say to us, too.

The Gospel writer records these words of Jesus to the religious people opposing him: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). I’m afraid that we’re just as liable to make the same mistakes, to diligently study the Scriptures, but miss the person they’re all about—Jesus.

The Scriptures are meant to introduce us to a person. And our friendship with that person is meant to change everything.

Missing Jesus would be comparable to buying all the ingredients for a delicious sushi dinner—the Nori seaweed wrap, the sushi rice, the shrimp or crab, and the veggies—and then just deciding to eat the plastic wrapping all the food came in. That wasn’t the point, and it definitely isn’t filling!

Of the thousands of stories the Gospel writers could have recorded, they chose to include these women’s stories. Would you step into them with me? I hope to help you activate you imagination and wonder with me what their world was like and what they may have thought of felt. How might they have experienced Jesus?

What to expect from this study:

This isn’t meant to be an in-depth study of the text. They are lots of good resources out there for that kind of study (I love N.T. Wright’s New Testament for Everyone series). I will refer to some of these reference works to help me understand and make sense of parts of the text, but my goal is to help us think about these women and Jesus words to them in deeper ways, and for that experience to shape our own relationship with Jesus.

Each chapter starts with a poem based on the Scripture reading. These poems have their roots in the story, but are embellished from my imagination.

Next, I will share a little about how I see myself in this woman’s story and my thoughts on the meaning of the story. At the end I will include questions for personal reflection or group study. I think there’s no better way to grow in the faith than to sit down with a group of fellow believers and seekers and wrestle with the Scriptures.

I will be offering the meditations here on Substack free for readers, but will also offer the printable outlines and coloring pages for paid subscribers. The paid subscriptions help me continue to write and help support my family!

Your thoughts, corrections, and suggestions are valued and welcomed in the process of writing these studies. I consider you part of my writing team, and I appreciate you joining me.

What would Jesus say to women? Let’s find out.

Your thoughts, corrections, and suggestions are valued and welcomed in the process of writing these studies. I consider you part of my writing team, and I appreciate you joining me. If you have time and would like to, let me know your thoughts in the comments!

All writing and images copyright Marydean Draws 2025.

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