This morning as I make my daily review of my favorite internet news web sites, I noticed a brief reference to an incident that, to me, highlights a central issue surrounding not only the political upheavals in South Asia the world over.

 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/22/pakistan.taliban.girls.school/?iref=hpmostpop. 

 http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/06/22/watson.iran.women.protesters.cnn

These current news stories and many more indicate a quiet, but very important human rights controversy that needs the attention of Christians around the world.  These articles and others over the past several years, tell a shocking account of years of atrocities against women not just in Islamic cultures, but all over the world.  They indicate a continuing thread of violence that never should be tolerated.

Sunday June 28th, 2009 the lectionary scriptures really target these issues.  And Jesus’ message to this human injustice is uncompromising.  In the Mark 5:21-43 passage, Jesus is summoned to home of a synagogue leader by the name of Jairus.  Jairus had a teenage daughter who was gravely ill.  On the way, surrounded by a crowd, a woman who suffered from hemorrhaging touched his garment.  What could have been dismissed as an arbitrary incident to ignore, Jesus made an issue of.  In that day, a woman suffering from vaginal hemorrhaging was considered ritually unclean.  Any person making physical contact with such a person also became ritually unclean.  If Jesus had not called the crowd’s attention to what had happened, the whole incident could have been ignored.  But that is not what Jesus chose to do.

Jesus’ actions triggered a radical cultural change among all humanity.  Jesus did not condemn the woman, but rather healed her.  He did not get angry.  He did not beat her.  He did not bring the crowd’s anger against her.  Instead, he deliberately ignored the mores of the time and addressed her as he would anyone else.  He showed all humanity that women had a place alongside men.  Think about it.  On the way to cure a teenage girl, Jesus heals a woman of a female illness.  It is not possible to ignore the fact that Jesus broke the rules of his society. 

Today, in the city of Peshawar, obviously, there are people who have a view that women are of a lower station in human society than men.  They believe that women should not be educated and that women should be little more than beasts of labor, or at best, domestics.   They believe that these mothers of their children do not have the right to stand beside any man.  They believe that women can be beaten, and even killed at the whim of their husbands and fathers.

Some, even in this country, under the guise of being sympathetic to the plight of women, would have this subject categorized as “women’s rights issues.”  I say, that these are not “women’s rights issues,” but rather “human rights issues.”  This is not a women’s problem.  Women are the subject of the problem, but not the cause.  The cause is in the minds of all persons who hold that women are somehow an inferior sub group of humanity. That is not true at all.  Women are the ones who brought us into this world.  They are the ones who nourish us and care for us through our most vulnerable years.  They protect us, and teach us.   To suggest that persons, that play such an integral part in human development, are somehow second class citizens of humanity is ridiculous. 

Just as Jesus did not blame the hemorrhaging woman for infringing on his cleanliness by seeking healing, we should not blame women for the problems they are having in our world and time.  It is not their problem, but ours. 

I suggest we, like Jesus, take an uncompromising stance against this terrible injustice to humanity.  We should prayerfully consider our own feelings and views in contrast to Jesus’ action, and act accordingly.

 What do you think?  Share your views and let us dialogue this important subject.