John 20:18 - Women in ministry?

20:18

So Mary went to announce these things to the disciples. She told them she had seen the Lord and passed on the things Jesus had told her to say. Now consider the enormity of this. A woman is instructing men, passing on words from the Lord to men. There is disagreement in the church over the role of women, egalitarians and complementarians being the two “camps”. In very broad terms the first say women can do all, or most, roles that men do, ie pastoring, teaching, preaching etc. The second group say that men and women are equal but have different roles. The Biblical support for the latter are based on things that Paul says in the pastoral epistles, and one or two other places as well. I have some sympathy for this view and for their wish to stick to Biblical principles, but verses like this show that the matter is not that simple. Now men and women are different, and we certainly need to respect that difference, and to rejoice in it (unlike societies increasingly crazy views on gender). It is interesting that the Biblical grounds for the complementarian view come largely from the New Testament, there is little support for it from the Old. Indeed, Micah 6:4 talks of Moses, Aaron and Miriam leading the nation. On a practical point of view, I know some very good women preachers. On the other hand, in some churches there are women ministers who are widely off-beam (but of course there are many men who haven’t got a clue as well!). Anyway, whatever your view, this verse is very interesting in this context. I would far rather listen to a woman who was dedicated to Christ and to the word of God than to a man who wasn’t.