She Was Standing Right There

We have worked through the hard verses, the Old Testament record, the promise of the Spirit, and the women in Paul's own ministry. Now we go to the center — to Jesus Himself. Because if you want to know what Jesus thinks about women carrying His message, do not go to Paul's contested verses. Go to the empty tomb. Go to the well at noon. Watch who He trusted with the most important message in human history.

Read Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20 together. Every gospel tells the same story: women came to the tomb first. Women found the stone rolled away. Women heard the angel's words: "He is not here; He is risen." Women were the first to see the risen Christ. And women were the first ones told — by an angel AND by Jesus Himself — to go and tell.

This is staggering when you think about it. In that world, a woman's testimony was not admissible in court. If you were fabricating a resurrection story in the first century, you would never make women the first witnesses. You would have Peter find the empty tomb. You would have John be the first to see the risen Lord. The fact that the gospels record women as the first witnesses is one of the strongest evidences that the resurrection accounts are not fabricated — because no one making it up would have done it that way.

And Jesus — the risen Lord, holding the keys of death and Hades — could have appeared to anyone first. He could have appeared to Peter, who denied Him. He could have appeared to John, the beloved disciple. He could have appeared to Caiaphas, to Pilate, to Rome itself. He appeared to Mary Magdalene. Then to the other women. Then to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The first evangelists — the first people to carry the good news that death had been defeated — were women. Jesus Himself gave them the message and told them to go.

If Jesus did not want women to deliver His word, He picked a strange way to show it. On the most important morning in history, He handed the message to women and told them to run.

John 4. Jesus is traveling through Samaria. He is tired; He sits down at Jacob's well. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water at noon — the hottest part of the day, when no one else would be there. She has had five husbands and the man she is with now is not her husband. She is a woman, a Samaritan, and socially marginalized — three strikes in that culture. And Jesus has the longest recorded theological conversation in the gospels with her.

He reveals Himself to her plainly — more plainly than He has to almost anyone else in John's gospel up to that point: "I who speak to you am He." He tells her He is the Messiah. And what does she do? She leaves her water jar — the very thing she came for — and goes back to the town and tells everyone. "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"

And they come. The whole town comes. And many Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman's testimony. She was not a pastor. She was not credentialed. She was not even considered respectable. And Jesus used her voice to bring an entire town to faith. That is evangelism. That is witness. That is a woman preaching — and Jesus is the one who set it up.

The early church had a name for Mary Magdalene: apostola apostolorum — the apostle to the apostles. They understood exactly what had happened. Jesus sent her to tell the men who would become the Twelve. She carried the resurrection to them before they believed it. She was not merely a witness; she was sent. And the one who sent her was Jesus.

This is not a minor detail. In every gospel, the women are the bridge between the crucifixion and the apostles' belief. Without Mary Magdalene's word, the apostles do not go to the tomb. Without the women's testimony, the resurrection story does not reach the men who will write the epistles. If Jesus had a problem with women delivering authoritative spiritual truth, He hid it very badly — because He made them the first carriers of the gospel itself.