Rabbinic literature was filled with contempt for women.  They were not to be saluted, spoken to in the street, instructed in the law or receive an inheritance.  A woman was to walk six paces behind her husband, and if she uncovered her head in public, she was considered a harlot.  (Sounds a little barbaric, like Muslim women in the middle east today.)  First thing every morning , many Jewish men prayed, "Lord, I thank you that I was not born a slave, a Gentile, or a woman."

The third miracle involved a woman.  Peter's mother-in-law.  Christ healed her--and she got up from her sick bed and immediately went about her work. To Jesus, a leper, a Roman soldier, and a woman, were real people, in need of real help.   They were not second-class citizens.  The Jewish priests may have been biased against certain classes of people, but Jesus made no such distinction.

He must have infuriated the Jewish legalists.  At the same time Jesus was throwing convention to the wind, concerning certain classes of people, he was doing miracles that couldn't be explained.  No wonder that the Jewish legalists considered him to be a demon.   If he wasn't a demon, then He must have been from God.  And that was unacceptable.

"...the Pharisees said, He casts out devils through the prince of the devils."  Matthew 9:34   They couldn't explain it, so they condemned Him.  He had power that they couldn't explain.  But the people loved Him.  He gave the people something that they didn't have.  Hope.  You can't condemn hope.

Today, we make the same judgments that the Pharisees did back then.  We do not want to encounter the contagious sick, the destitute, or people who are different from us.  We build monuments to hide in called synagogues, temples, or churches.  And there is nothing wrong with meeting to worship in beautiful places, but perhaps we need to rethink how we are trying to reach the lost and disenfranchised.  They don't come to church.  We have to go to them.  With hope.