Sunday 5 January 2014

JESUS & WOMEN

'...it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and the last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind an uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.' 
Dorothy L Sayers, 'The Human-Not-Quite-Human' in Are Women Human?p.68.