Who is this Jesus who blames her body, who suggests that she is not a good fit for his ministry because of the way that God created her? Who is this Jesus who fills us with the Spirit and then restricts us based on our flesh? Who is this Jesus who wouldn’t be caught dead or alive with a woman next to him?
He is the Jesus of our patriarchal imaginations, of our machismo, of our male ego. Because both the message of his arrival and his departure are given to women. Her mouth, her body was good enough for Jesus; why, then, is it not good enough for us?