In thinking about Lydia’s story, five divisions seemed to emerge.
Lydia’s destiny, 
Lydia’s career as a dye merchant
Lydia’s desire to establish her own household
The dream God gave Paul to evangelize in Macedonia
And the dignity God settled on women in first century Palestine, and on Lydia, and the dignity the Apostle Paul also conferred on women and on Lydia

I   Destiny, Acts 16:14
II  Dye Merchant, Acts 16:14
III Desire, Acts 16:14
IV Dream, Acts 16:6-12
V  Dignity, Acts 16:13-15

And through Lydia we learn that mature faith accepts God's crossing up of conventions--I first heard that taught in a BSF class, years ago, and I was struck with the simple wisdom in that statement.

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Tabitha’s story begins in Joppa, an ancient seaport along the Mediterranean. This is harbor city as the place Jonah fled to when he heard God’s call to Nineveh. Joppa’s international anchorage so well represented, Jonah knew he could board a ship to the farthest reaches of the west—in the opposite direction of Assyria—as soon as he arrived. Further back in its history, Joppa represented the territory allotted to the tribe of Dan in the book of Joshua.

Centuries afterward, when Solomon built his palace and the temple, the massive cedar logs he conscripted had to come through Joppa’s port, the only natural harbor between Egypt to the south and Akko to the north. Again, a thousand years later at the rebuilding of the temple, the lumber needed to come through Joppa.

Imagine a bustling metropolis, with thriving import-export trade, merchant families living in impressive homes, the sounds of creaking ships, gulls, languages from around the world, temples and houses of worship representing dozens of religions, wine bars and inns with an overflowing clientele of travelers and seafarers, an easy place to get lost in, to start over, to begin an adventure. Joppa also represented the meeting of many cultures, for though it was one Palestine’s most important port cities, and certainly Jerusalem’s most important, Joppa also bordered Samaria and occupied the Phoenician region.

Which brings us to the unique and intriguing story of a woman with dual citizenship, as it were, a woman known for her good deeds, the only woman who was actually called disciple in the entire Christian Testament, whose death rocked her Christian community to its core, and her deliverance by being raised back to life generated widespread belief in the Lord.

I Tabitha the Disciple, Acts 9:36
The Kingdom of God about the goodness of God that brings life to all who believe.

II Tabitha’s Death, Acts 9:37-39
The Kingdom of God is about hope in the kindness, goodness, and power of God.

III Tabitha’s Deliverance, Acts 9:40-42
The Kingdom of God is for all people.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Tabitha (Dorcas)"

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Martha, Lazarus, and Mary were all disciples of Jesus, people who loved and followed Jesus, opened their home to Him, shared their table with Jesus in fellowship and enjoyed Jesus’ friendship as well as lived by Jesus’ teaching. Each had their own unique relationship with the Lord, yet together, as a family, they displayed all the aspects of a church.

Especially the sisters, Martha and Mary, teach you and me about blessing God as a whole body of believers.

Studying the Bible, learning the doctrines of the Christian faith, do not make a person wise, or strong in the faith. In fact, wisdom is not about knowing. Wisdom is about using what you know. In spiritual terms, the wise person is the one who lives out the truths they know, not necessarily the Bible scholar and theologian.

We might say Martha brought in the importance of right doing in her service to the Lord, and in right thinking as Jesus’ developed her faith in knowing the truth about His divinity.

Now enter Mary, who said few words, but whose passion and practice made a deep and lasting impact on Jesus’ heart and our understanding of discipleship.

We see her first sitting at the feet of Jesus, then kneeling at His feet, and finally anointing his feet.

I Sitting at Jesus’ Feet, Luke 10:38–42

II Kneeling at Jesus’ Feet, John 11:1–46

III Anointing Jesus’ Feet, Matthew 26:6–13, Mark 14:3–9, John 12:1-8

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Mary of Bethany"

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Years and years ago, when I was in a high school writing class, we were asked to write our own obituary. I remember us all laughing nervously, it sounded so macabre! But it was the teacher’s sideways device to get us to write about our hopes and dreams. What would we want to be remembered for someday?

And it made me wonder what Martha would have wanted to be remembered for?

Most of us remember the Martha depicted in Luke’s Gospel, the busy beaver who is reprimanded by Jesus, and chastened to be more like her spiritual sister Mary.

But I don’t think that’s the Martha Jesus knew, and knows to this today.

The Gospels tell three stories about Martha. In the first story she opened her home to the Lord Jesus and his disciples who were with him.

The next place we see Martha and Mary is at their brother’s funeral. Both sisters were deeply hurt and disappointed that Jesus had delayed in coming.

In Martha’s final appearance, she was once again serving dinner at a large celebration in Simon the Leper’s home, thrown in honor of Jesus and her brother Lazarus, so recently raised from the dead.

I think the way Martha would have liked to be remembered was as a woman of bold faith and blessed service, who was able to leave the conventions of her old life and enter into the grace and freedom Jesus offers, who opened the doors of her home and her heart to Jesus and all who come with him, who is bonded in love and faith to God through Christ.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Martha of Bethany"

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The story of the woman at the well comes right after Jesus made a blockbuster statement to the Pharisee and Sanhedrin member Nicodemus: God loves not just Pharisees, not even just Judeans, but the whole world. And, to illustrate this very point, Jesus made his way to some of the most despised people in the region, the Samaritans.

Now, as Jesus and his disciples arrived at Jacob’s famous well, they decided to take a break. Jesus sat down to rest, and the disciples went into the nearest town to buy food, most likely a very unsettling prospect for them as Judeans.

They may even have passed by this woman with her water jug as they walked into the town of Sychar. Archaeologists show there was another well in town, but she was walking the extra half-mile out of town to Jacob’s well, possibly because of her reputation within the community.

The Lord Jesus loved this mixed-race, mixed-religion woman of questionable reputation, and he respected and honored her with his own humility and vulnerability. He was thirsty for water, and knew she was thirsty for eternal life.

But.

There is so . . . much . . . more to this story.

You may be surprised by what the Greek reveals.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Woman at the Well"

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke acknowledge the women who traveled with Jesus. Matthew and Mark do not mention these female disciples until they are found at Jesus’s cross. Luke gives more details about them, describing them as ministering to Jesus, and along with Jesus, from their own resources and ability. These women received teaching and revelation from Jesus along with his other disciples and were given Jesus’s call to proclaim the truth they received. 

The Gospel of John’s less formal and more detailed portrayal provides an organic view of Jesus’s call to discipleship and apostleship, supplementing rather than duplicating the Synoptic Gospels’ accounts. John took great care in showing a direct corollary between Jesus’s calling of two different women, and the calling of Jesus’s first disciples. 

The high view of Christ and of the Scriptures will lead modern Christians to hearken to John’s portrayal of women and men in Jesus’s apostolic mission, and therefore support Christ’s work today in calling women and men to every level of leadership in the church. 

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Women Disciples, Conclusion"

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Though Mary of Magdala is a well-known figure in the gospels, she is not introduced by name until Jesus’s crucifixion in John’s Gospel (John 19:25). John doesn’t explain who she is, or what her relationship is to Jesus or his family, but there she is, with John and Mary, Jesus’s mother. That alone says how important she was to Jesus’s inner circle.

In fact, Mary of Magdala is the only other woman besides Jesus’s mother who is identified in all four Gospels. In total, she is mentioned twelve times, with her name almost always placed first, underscoring her prominence and importance among Jesus’s followers.

Luke’s Gospel identifies Mary’s hometown as Magdala, an affluent Hellenistic city in the Galilee, where Josephus also lived for a time. According to Luke, there were certain women who had been healed of “evil spirits and infirmities,” among whom was

“Mary who is called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone forth.”
Luke 8:2 (YLT)

Evidently, Mary’s earliest encounter with Jesus was as a deeply afflicted woman with a little-understood ailment.

As deeply as she was afflicted so profoundly was she freed by Jesus. Imagine the gratitude and love Mary must have had for her Savior.   Mary, along with two other named women, and “many others,” left their homes and traveled with Jesus and the Twelve, as Jesus

“was going through every city and village, preaching and proclaiming good news of the reign of God.”
Luke 8:1 (YLT)

Like the five men called to be disciples at the beginning of John's Gospel, and the woman at the well in Samaria in Chapter 4, Mary of Magdala's story includes all twelve elements unique to Jesus's call.

John has put it on record that Jesus called women as his disciples and commissioned them to apostolic ministry just as he did with men, and we can do no less today.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Mary of Magdala, a Disciple of Jesus"

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This is a six-part series, and this is the fourth installment, exploring how the calling narrative found in the Gospel of John, chapter 1 is repeated in the story of the Samaritan Woman in John chapter 4, and in Mary of Magdala's story at the end of John's Gospel, chapter 20.

There are twelve calling elements to Jesus's call to discipleship and apostolic mission portrayed in the calling of Jesus's first five disciples: Andrew, John, Peter, Phillip, and Nathanael. The synoptic gospels key in on twelve men, eleven of whom became apostles. But there were many more disciples than that, all told 120 women and men who received Jesus's Great Commission and watched him ascend to heaven.

This podcast takes a close look at another woman, one who may not have been there for Christ's ascension (but, then again, she may have been, as Luke 8:3 indicates many women traveled with Jesus), who said yes to Jesus's call.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "The Samaritan Woman, a Disciple of Jesus"

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We don’t often think of Jesus gathering disciples together as a rabbi starting a school, but the shape of what Jesus did very much is the shape of a school. Jesus did depart from the traditional rabbinical model of his day in a few significant ways. For instance, unlike other schools, Jesus kept his table fellowship open to everyone, people in every stratum and sphere of life.

And, Jesus chose as his disciples some unexpected people. Apart from the Twelve, there is evidence Jesus had women disciples, some of whom also traveled with him and ministered alongside him and the other disciples.

Though evidence for female disciples is found in all four Gospels, it is John's Gospel which provides the most dramatic evidence for Jesus calling women to discipleship and apostolic ministry.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "The Twelve Marks of Jesus' Call to Discipleship"

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Biblical exegesis from an equalitarian point of view

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Did Jesus call women into discipleship in the same way Jesus called men?

Or did women simply start following Jesus of their own accord, with no formal call?

Can we say, for instance, that Mary of Bethany was actually a disciple, or was she simply acting like a disciple when she sat at Jesus’s feet?

In the same way, was Mary of Magdala only acting like an apostle to the apostles, as she is sometimes called, or was she actually sent by Jesus as an apostle?

Three years ago, as I sat down to read the Gospel of John in Greek, I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew that I had always loved this Gospel, and the Greek employed in all of John’s works is at a level I could read. But as I read, the seeds of understanding about Jesus and women began to grow. I found myself often mulling over the words themselves, and the way they are phrased. I also found myself reading as a Bible student, taking note of the way the writer had arranged his material.

The more I read, the more I saw something truly amazing!

And that has now become a four-part video series, beginning with this one. So stay tuned, I think this is going to be pretty exciting.

To view the original YouTube presentation, click on "Did Jesus Call Women to be Disciples"

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Grace and Peace Joanne on YouTube
Each podcast is designed to offer background scholarship on the topic, including setting, culture, original language, and archaeology, as well as a theological study.

Grace and Peace, Joanne Website
Biblical exegesis from an equalitarian point of view

Books by Joanne
"Broken, Searching, Trusted, Powerful"
"Love Feast"

Forty Freebies
If you would like a set of forty Bible studies on Women in the Bible, complete with fifteen study questions, commentary, a bibliograp...