This week the police officer Wayne Couzens was given a life sentence for the planned murder, rape and mutilation of Sarah Everard. Last week Sabeena Nessa was murdered on her way to join friends. Neither Sarah or Sabeena knew or provoked their attackers.

Three women every week are murdered by men. Many more suffer gender based violence.

Violence against women is on the increase. The police and home secretary are being pressed to do something about it as women no longer feel safe on the streets.

Women are not safe in their homes either. Honour killings and forced marriages take place within many families. Female genital mutilation or circumcision continues to take place illegally here and abroad.

Many Westernised women live in constant fear. Controlled and beaten they have nowhere to run to.

Churches have a responsibility to interpret scripture in a way which brings honour to both men and women. Christians have interpreted the scriptures in a way which emphasised differences between men and women instead of similarities. Male dominance, leadership and control and female submission, silence and obedience has been supported from the Bible, particularly from the creation passages and from some of Paul’s letters.

These were written in a culture which gave far less power to women than ours does, one in which women needed male protection because they didn’t have rights of their own.

The culture in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia today is similar to the culture of Palestine in the time of Jesus. Women were not educated, they sat and ate separately from men; they were veiled and had no role in formal worship outside the home.

It wasn’t as bad as it is in some countries today. Some had independent means and were allowed out without males accompanying them.

Unlike the religious authorities of his time Jesus fought for more equality between men and women. He treated both with respect spending time in the company of both.

The Pharisees tested Jesus on the Jewish law’s position on divorce asking if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife.

Jesus said that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

For Jesus there was no get out clause from marriage other than adultery and remarriage wasn’t an option. Jesus knew that the best and safest relationships were ones which were lifelong, stable, committed and faithful.

However, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and divorce her.” Their law was heavily biased in favour of men. Women were at the complete disposal of the male head of the household. Men could divorce wives on a number of petty grounds whether she agreed or not while she could only obtain a divorce if he was willing, or if he became a leper, a tanner, ravished a virgin or falsely accused her of pre nuptial sin.

All the man had to do was write the certificate of dismissal. He could do it if his wife was a bad cook, if she was loud, if he found someone better in his eyes or for any number of trivial reasons.

Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus treated men and women in marriage in the same way. Marriage was sacrosanct for both and neither were permitted to divorce except on the grounds of adultery.

Jesus said Moses only allowed divorce because men were hard of heart. If men no longer wanted their wives they could be cruel and they were better off within their parental homes without them.

He then emphasised how we are alike. We are both created by God in his image.

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we look at the Trinity we see equality and mutuality. We see one God who is relational and of one heart and mind.

We see in Genesis that it is not good that humans should be alone; we are designed to relate to others.

The second reason given for God creating marriage is that we all need a helper.

When I was a teenager, I was told that as a wife I was created to be the helpmeet of my husband and was therefore inferior. The word, help in the Genesis passage is elsewhere used to describe the way God helps us.

In marriage and in society we are all called, male and female, to help and serve one another. We are not complete human beings otherwise.

We are called in marriage into the closest possible relationship with another human being, a relationship in which we become one flesh and one in body, soul and spirit.

The human needed more than a helper, the human needed a partner, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man,; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

The woman unlike the first human and the animals was not formed from the dust of the ground but taken from the rib, the substance and bone of the first human. The similarity of men and women is emphasised here, not their differences. She was taken from the side of the first human, not to be dominated or subdued but to be loved.

The man speaks in poetic verse as a sign of the ecstasy and joy that accompanies this discovery, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”. The imagery speaks of a bond between so strong that to sever it would be like ripping out a physical part of one's own body. It is a bond so intimate that the two "become one flesh," naked, open to each another, vulnerable, trusting, passionate, loving, and "not ashamed." Two lonely human beings yearning for community find it in each other.

Sadly, the happy union was quickly marred in the story of Adam and Eve's disobedience and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Mutual trust, partnership, support, freedom from shame, and equality of relationship are all threatened by human disobedience.

Both Jesus and the writer of the Genesis story had the highest possible picture of marriage, a picture of mutuality, equality and unity.

Unlike my predecessor, I conduct weddings of divorcees, particularly if the couple have been together for a long time and their first marriages have irretrievably broken down. We live in a broken world in which few of our marriages come anywhere near to the unity of heart, mind and flesh depicted as the ideal in scripture.

Marriage is the foundation of family life and strengthens community for those outside the marriage as well as those in it. None of us need feel alone, abandoned and without help.

In marriage we see God’s ideal for each of us. As human beings in marriage are designed to have the closest possible relationship with each other, so we are called to be united with Christ, our heavenly bridegroom.

If men saw women as “bone of their bones and flesh of their flesh,” they might stop hurting and killing them.

Jesus is not hard like the Pharisees. He forgives us our sin and draws us into an intimate relationship with himself and each other.