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 6th 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 4th 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.
As the Council opened wide the doors of scholarship, the students of Scripture ventured more deeply into the historical settings and linguistic challenges of both the Hebrew and Christian texts. They began to study the extra-canonical writings, those ancient documents that didn’t make it into the Bible but were read and used liturgically by widely diverse groups in the early church. During the first two centuries following Jesus’ death and resurrection, stories about him, his teachings and his followers proliferated. There were many gospels, all written for unrelated communities with dissimilar experiences, different religious influences and needs. There were also many women leaders in those early years. Cultural norms and understandings varied from one place to another. Different regions followed different teachers who passed along the stories they heard, and shared written materials that fell into their hands. Many of the books written in the early days were eliminated from consideration by those attempting to establish an official canon of Scripture. Many of those writings portray Mary as the foremost spiritual leader of the disciples, with an understanding of Jesus’ mission that differed from what would become the orthodox view. Diversity of belief and practice was the norm in those days and some of the writings indicate a strong rivalry between disciples who supported Peter and those who supported Mary. Theologically these two apostles seem not to have been on the same page. Origen, a third century theologian, once wrote that Mary had her own group of followers who were loyal to her understanding of Jesus’ mission and teachings.
According to Karen King in her book, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, though the early church fathers had a generally positive view of Mary, they seem to have had a problem with the fact “that Jesus appeared to her first, gave her private teachings, and sent her to instruct the other disciples.” This “seemed to elevate her status above the other disciples and give a woman authority to teach the male apostles,” says King. (p.150) From the 4th Century on, church men were constructing a dismal portrait of this woman who figured so prominently in early church writings. The construction of that portrait culminated in Pope Gregory’s ruinous sermon. It anchored a thoroughly misogynistic view of women in the Bible by subverting Mary’s prominence among Jesus’ disciples. It imprisoned her in the convenient mold of a ‘fallen woman’ whose leadership in the early church was buried and all-but-forgotten.
But now, in our time, her reputation as a beloved leader and spiritual guide in the early years of the Jesus movement is being restored. Her place in history, indeed her apostleship itself, is beginning to be recognized by the church. This is what resurrection looks like in movements toward inclusivity and equality. We have a long way to go in dismantling patriarchal structures, but there is evidence all around us that those walls are no longer solid. The stone that has kept women entombed, that has sealed the oppression of all who are marginalized and feared—that stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. The oppressed are moving about in the world with their own agency. We are learning, slowly learning, the difficult lesson of God’s all-inclusive plan. God shows no partiality and we, as a people, are struggling with this fact.
Don’t cling to what you see here, Jesus warns Mary. Don’t cling to the old way of living. Go tell the others what you have seen and what I have told you. And so she goes. They won’t believe her, a woman. She probably knows this. But she is steadfast in her love for him and spiritually attuned to his teachings. She accepts the mantle of leadership he hands her and embraces his earthly mission as her own. So, rising from the tomb of history she enters the church today with a challenge for us. On this glorious Easter day in 2018, can we step into her shoes and take it from here? Can we take on his mission to the poor and marginalized as our own? Do we have her steadfastness and her courage?
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