News from Sophia Christi

Easter is two weeks ago now, but it is still Easter in today’s Gospel. Just before the passage we read a moment ago, two disciples are walking home from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It’s afternoon and it’s been a painful, confusing day. Some women in the group had reported seeing a vision of angels who told them Jesus was alive. Afterwards others had rushed to the tomb and came back confirming that Jesus’ body was gone. These two don’t know what to believe. They are in shock. As they walk along, sharing their experiences, they are joined by someone who doesn’t seem to know what happened three days ago. So they tell him. He listens, then shows them how Scripture foretold these events they are describing. They clearly want to hear more, so when they reach home, they invite him to spend the night. As they sit down to share a meal, he blesses and breaks bread then gives it to them. Suddenly they recognize who this stranger is, and he vanishes from their sight. Not losing a minute, they get up and rush back to Jerusalem. They find the other disciples and tell them what happened to them on the road. This is where today’s Gospel begins. (more…)

It is still Easter as the Gospel opens today. The disciples are huddled in a room behind locked doors fearing the Roman authorities who executed Jesus just three days ago. Suddenly, there he is, standing in the room with them, showing them his wounds, speaking to them, breathing on them, proving he has risen and is somehow physically alive! Until now Mary of Magdala is the only one who has seen him. Now they all do, all except Thomas, that is. He isn’t there. Because he needs the same tangible experience of the risen Jesus the others have had, he will forever be known as “doubting Thomas.” It’s interesting no one seems to recognize the other disciples also needed ‘proof,’ or that Jesus appeared to all of them for precisely that reason! Thomas wasn’t satisfied with simply going along with what others reported, even though they were presumably his circle of friends. He needed to see for himself and to ground his faith in personal experience. When you think about it, he isn’t asking for anything unusual. It is our personal experience of Spirit, of Divine energy, of Mystery, that is the source of our spiritual lives. So when Jesus returns a week later to speak with Thomas he doesn’t criticize. He simply says “Touch me.” “Believe what your hands tell you, and what you see.” Jesus respects Thomas’ need for a relational, numinous experience.

Our physical senses are doorways to faith. This is why we have sacraments. When mysterious claims are made it is only natural to want evidence. We can’t always trust what we are told, nor should we. What we can trust is what we ourselves experience as we live into the deepest questions of our lives. Those of you around my age may remember bumper stickers in the 60’s and 70’s that advised us to “Question Authority.” In the West we’ve come a long way in that department, to the point that almost every iteration of authority is either suspect or actively refuted. How do we discern what’s true? Who and what do we trust? How can we build a just and caring society, the reign of God, if we trust no one and, at the same time, can’t trust ourselves or our own experience? The Spirit within us calls us home, requiring that we be faithful to our inner truth. Call this conscience. Call it integrity. We know what it is. Thomas directs our attention there. (more…)

There are at least seven different Marys mentioned in the four Gospels. In an earlier chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus visited with his friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany. This was six days before Passover, just hours before he rode into Jerusalem that fateful day seated on a donkey. While at their house Mary anointed his feet with perfumed oil and dried them with her hair. It was an action foreshadowing his death by symbolically preparing his body for burial. In Luke’s Gospel, a Pharisee invites Jesus to his home for a meal. An unnamed woman enters the house carrying an alabaster flask of ointment. She stands behind Jesus, weeping, and bathes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, then anoints them with the ointment. She is referred to only as ‘a sinful woman.’ At the end of the 6^th Century in the year 597, Pope Gregory I gave a sermon in which he combined these separate stories to create a single narrative that identified Mary of Magdala as the sinful woman in Luke and as Lazarus’ sister, Mary of Bethany. The idea took root in the artistic and literary imagination of the Middle Ages and Mary Magdalene came to be seen as a prostitute. This is the image we’ve inherited, and it persists to this day, despite scholarship to the contrary. In churches throughout the world she continues to be portrayed as a weeping, penitent sinner. That sermon of Gregory’s and all that followed undermined her status as a recognized and highly respected leader of the early church. Mary was, in fact, a prophetic visionary, an esteemed spiritual teacher and a leading apostle in her own right. And she was viewed as such by early church fathers such as St. Augustine who called her “the apostle to the apostles.” Up until the 4^th Century when male church leaders spoke of her it was in a generally positive way. It wasn’t until 1969 that the Church finally refuted Gregory’s mistaken view of her by distinguishing between Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany and the penitent woman in chapter 7 of Luke’s Gospel and declared these were three separate women. This came out of the Vatican Council’s renewed appreciation for biblical scholarship. (more…)