Our adult Sunday School class is taking off the summer months and will resume in the fall. But yesterday morning, on the spur of the moment, I announced that if anyone wanted to get together to discuss the Bible lessons read during worship that day, I would meet with folks in the Mission Outreach Center between services. A few folks showed up and our discussion centered around Luke 10:25-37, yesterday’s Gospel lesson.
In our discussion, I mentioned that Luke, the writer of the Gospel bearing his name, had a habit of pairing women and men in his narration. He does this sometimes to show the faith of a woman in comparison to the skepticism of a man in similar situations. (Mary and Zechariah)
More commonly, he pairs men and women to affirm a truth observed or experienced by the people involved, underscoring God’s faithfulness and that, in God’s Kingdom brought into the world by Jesus, to borrow a phrase from Luke’s mentor, Paul, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Below are some of the male/female pairings found in the Gospel of Luke.
The conclusion I think we can draw from this is that God in Jesus, Who created both males and females in His image (Genesis 1:27), came to redeem us all, male and female.
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