Do You Feel Like We're in a Marvel Movie?

Rev. Hannah Bartlett is the Next Generations Pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cornwall, PEI. She is passionate about investing in the Next Generation and raising disciples who follow Jesus. Hannah and her husband John live in Charlottetown and enjoy being with people, reading, drinking coffee, and walking their dog Launa.

Hannah Bartlett

“Do you feel like we’re in a Marvel Movie?” 

This was the question one of my travel companions asked as we entered the UN Headquarters in New York City - the ceilings vaulting up to the sky…the flurry of important people with different levels of security clearance…and was that Tony Stark I saw across the room? No, I was pretty sure the Avengers compound was somewhere else in New York. 

But, I understood what my friend was getting at. For those of us from Atlantic Canada attending the UN Commission on that Status of Women, there was that energy in the air throughout the building that exists when people are working towards common goals they believed in. (As a youth pastor I appreciated the momentary comparison to the Marvel Comics universe.)

As part of the Baptist World Alliance Delegation, we were able to be in New York for a week, attend sessions where several different organizations presented on the current status of women across a number of categories, including gender based violence, women’s healthcare, women in the media, women in leadership, and many more. 

While the United Nations is not a Christian organization, as a Christian attending, the question that I found myself thinking about is one that many of my own congregants and other people of faith ask me frequently as a female pastor: “How much does Jesus care about gender equality and the experience of women?”

It’s an important question; As Christians historically, we haven’t always been clear on the answer- and at our worst we have contributed to the injustice women face. Is gender equality something Christians can afford to see as a secondary issue? 

I would propose that the amount that Jesus cares is how much we should care as well. 

So, How much does Jesus care?

We could ask Mary whether she thought Jesus saw the value for a healthy mother and child in pregnancy - his chosen method of entering the world as a human being: Jesus unified with a woman from the very beginning of his earthly ministry. We could ask Jarius if Jesus values the experience of girls as children after seeing Jesus raise his daughter from the dead. 

We could ask the woman with the problem of bleeding whether Jesus cared about how period poverty and reproductive health issues affect not just the physical body but social dimensions as well.We could ask Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat at Jesus’ feet learning alongside the other disciples, whether Jesus valued education and training for women. 

We could ask Martha whether Jesus was the kind of man who only valued women so long as they could serve him. We could ask Simon’s mother in law whether she felt Jesus cared deeply about, and stopped to minister to even unnamed women in the narrative. 

We could ask the woman at the well whether Jesus judged women merely by their sexual history - much of which was not in their control in those days. We could ask the women caught in adultery what Jesus has to say about gender based violence. 

We could ask the women at the tomb - the first to be entrusted with the message that Jesus was alive - whether they think Jesus valued women’s voices or leadership.   

You can probably think of other examples I haven’t included, but this small sample seems to bring the answer to our question: Jesus cares deeply about the status, value and experience of women.

 If Jesus spent a significant portion of his ministry and attention addressing the value and experiences of women, so should we. We also see Jesus using His power to elevate and restore the dignity, humanity, and status of women. As image bearers, we too possess the ability to gain and exert power - but as sinful creatures we use our power to build ourselves up; typically at the cost of crushing those with less beneath the weight of construction. Jesus, being perfectly God and perfectly human, shows us the better way.

What does this look like for those of us living in 2025?

Statistics and data show that we live in a world where abuses of power have created systems that seek to elevate the status of men over women. If you’re like me, you may be thinking to yourself that women have made a great deal of progress in the past decades, and are wondering how bad it could be in 2025. Yet, a common theme that ran through our sessions and debriefs was the reality that women are seeing their progress in several key areas evaporate under the heat of a new wave of misogyny. 

This is not to say that there aren’t women who seek to elevate their power over men (we are equally sinful and broken), but at least in our cultural moment, entire systems are designed to actively oppress women at an exponentially greater rate than men.

Power dynamics between the genders were in play while Jesus was on earth, and they continue to be at play in 2025. And, though both men and women seek to abuse power by distancing the gap between each other (whether that is men believing they are better than women, or vice versa), Jesus uses His power to restore unity and equality for His image bearers. Instead of going on a power trip, Jesus takes a trip to earth to redefine what power is.

A Jesus-centered way to use our God-given ability to wield power is for men and women to use their power to serve each other. For the Jesus follower, the issue of gender inequality is not ultimately one about men versus women, but it’s about men and women versus injustice. 

Equality for women isn’t just good news for women; it’s good news for the whole community. And, it’s good news for the kingdom! 

For both men and women, this is good news that we can’t ignore, and we can’t get tired of sharing. In fact, the voices and actions of men are necessary to help educate and advocate for women in spaces where women’s voices will not be heard. Men can play a pivotal role in reversing the horrifying trends we are seeing globally that seek to devalue and dehumanize women. 

Today, as you read this, there are women who will choose death over being trapped in these dehumanizing circumstances. This is the outworking of sin on a level I find hard to process. But, Jesus chooses to die so that both men and women can experience the freedom that comes through breaking the power of sin. 

I see Jesus doing this through his words and actions. I see him willingly giving up power and status and humbling himself to speak for those who don’t have a voice, to give value to those culture considers worthless, and to bring the marginalized back to the center. He is the ultimate blueprint for how those who hold the most privileged positions should use their power. Being an ally is a crucial way that men can reflect who Jesus is to a broken and unjust world. We women can’t carry this responsibility on our own - it’s simply not how God has designed the kingdom to function. 

Like so many aspects of life following Jesus, this is hard work, and it requires sacrifice. But it is also good, joyful work! Moments when we see progress in the direction of gender equality are joy-filled glimpses of God’s coming kingdom, where men and women bear His image without oppressive power dynamics at play. 

Proverbs 21:15a: “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous.”