There’s something about Mary – Mary
Magdalene that is – that has fascinated people for generations. She’s always
had something of an air of mystery about her. She has been at the centre of a
number of books and was a major character in the musicals about Jesus that came
out in the sixties. Perhaps one reason she is so popular with writers is simply
because we know so little about her. When there is so little information about
a person it is very easy to project all kinds of things onto them, and Mary
Magdalene has become a kind of patron saint of aggrieved women in the church.
Since it is Mother’s Day, and since there is a lot of interest in Mary
Magdalene because of The Da Vinci Code, I want to take the opportunity
to look at Mary’s story and what she can teach us.
In the late 19th century, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton put together a “Revising Committee” to change and comment upon the
Bible because they felt the Bible was against women. In the introduction to
their “Woman’s Bible” they wrote this:
“The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man’s bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire on the vital questions of the hour, she was commanded to ask her husband at home. Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up.”
Dan Brown, the writer of The Da Vinci
Code, apparently accepts this assessment. One of the main themes in his
book is an attempt to put women at the centre of Christianity. He does that in
a strange way though. He claims that Mary Magdalene was really Jesus’ wife and
that the Catholic Church launched a “smear campaign” against Mary Magdalene to
hide the fact that Jesus wanted the church to be led by Mary Magdalene when he
died. According to Brown, true Christianity requires us to worship Mary
Magdalene and the goddess religion that she represents.
One of Dan Brown’s main arguments is that
the church has changed the New Testament to keep women out of it and that we
need to look at the so-called “Gnostic Gospels” to find out what Jesus really
intended for the church.
I’ll deal with the “Gnostic Gospels” next
week when we talk about the way in which the New Testament came down to us. For
this week I want to look at the story of Mary Magdalene in the New Testament.
According to Dan Brown, and the scholars that he bases his work on, that should
be a really negative experience, because they claim that the gospels have been
altered to make it totally biased against women – especially Mary. Let’s see.
The first thing we need to figure out is
which Mary we are talking about. There are seven Marys in the New
Testament. Mary was a really common name in first century Palestine and since
people didn’t have surnames the different Marys are distinguished by
descriptions.
[When we worked with Afghans there were three
Steves on our team. Afghans don’t use surnames either, so Steve Forsyth,
Steve Balkam, and Steve Craig became; estIv-e chAk, estIv-e logar, and estIv-e
mAzAqI – Fat Steve, Skinny Steve and Steve the Joker.]
In the same way the New Testament writers
differentiate between the Marys by descriptions.
(1) Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:30—31); (2) Mary of Bethany (John 11:1); (3) Mary, the mother of the James who was not the Lord’s brother (Matt. 27:56); (4) Mary, the wife of Clopas (John 19:25); (5) Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12); (6) one otherwise unidentified Mary (Rom. 16:6); and (7) Mary Magdalene, (Luke 8:2 and the resurrection accounts). This is the Mary we’ll be talking about today.
One thing we don’t know is what
Mary’s occupation was. In his book, Dan Brown accuses Peter of resenting Mary
and smearing her as a prostitute, an idea Brown probably picked up from a book
called “The Gospel of Mary” which we’ll talk about next week when we talk about
those “Gnostic Gospels.” But, for this week, let’s see what the New Testament
says. Remember that Dan Brown and his scholars say the New Testament has been
altered to dishonour women in general and Mary in particular. Please turn to
Luke 8:
After this, Jesus traveled about from
one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of
God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women
who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from
whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of
Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women
were helping to support them out of their own means.
This is the first time we meet Mary
Magdalene, and it’s the only time she appears in any of the gospels except for
the crucifixion and resurrection. There is no mention here of her being a
prostitute. In fact she is apparently a woman of some wealth and status, since
it says that these women were helping support Jesus’ ministry out of their own
means, and the person named after Mary is the wife of a high ranking civil
servant.
So where does this story of Mary being a
prostitute come from? Dan Brown would have us believe that it comes from Peter.
But the first time it was even suggested that Mary might have
been a prostitute was in a sermon by Pope Gregory in 591AD! (More than 500
years after the event.) He suggested that, perhaps, the “sinful woman”
in Luke 7 was Mary. There is absolutely no basis for that in the text. That woman
is not named and Mary is introduced as a brand new character in chapter 8,
along with Joanna and Susanna.
If there’s a lesson here it’s this: “If you are a person who has influence over others, like a Pope – or even a pastor – don’t do your “what if” thinking in public. People will take it as gospel truth. Stick to what the text says, and don’t hypothesise in the pulpit.”
What about the claim that Mary was Jesus’
wife and that their child founded a line of French kings? (That’s the claim of The
Da Vinci Code.) There is even less evidence for this than there is that she
was a prostitute. In fact there is no evidence at all! Even John Dominic
Crossan, who helped found the Jesus Seminar and is anything but a mainstream
Christian, agrees that it is absurd. In fact, this is one of the few things
that all the scholars agree on, something that almost never happens.
“But,” those of you who have read the book
will say, “Dan Brown says, ‘The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been
chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians.’” He does say that, and
then he gives the names of four books written by a total of six authors that,
one assumes, are his best sources from these “scores of historians.”
[If someone came to your door and offered to re-roof you house or
landscape your garden, would you let them go ahead and tear off your roof or
dig up your garden without some proof that they knew what they were doing –
some references or credentials? Of course not, but we often believe things in
books just because they’re in a book. We need to be skeptical about things
people write, and check up on them.]
Dan Brown is assuming that you won’t check the credentials of his
“historians.” If you did you’d find that none of the authors he cites are, in
fact, historians. One holds an M.A. in comparative literature and German.
Another has an undergraduate degree in psychology. A third is a novelist
and short story writer . The fourth is a television personality and
scriptwriter. And the last two are conspiracy theorists who focus
on occultism, the paranormal, and UFOs. Not a historian amongst them. These
are Brown’s “expert witnesses” whose testimony we’re supposed to just believe.
So what do we know about Mary? We
know she was from the town of Magdala in Galilee. That’s what “Magdalene”
means, in the same way that Jesus was called the “Nazarene” because he was from
Nazareth and people are called “Torontonians” because they come from Toronto.
We know she was single. How do we know
that? Because in a patriarchal society like first century Palestine women are
usually identified by their relation to a significant male: so we have Mary the
mother of James and Joanna the wife of Chuza. But Mary Magdalene is designated
by her place of birth, which means she was probably an independent woman of
means, like Lydia in Acts 16, possibly a widow or even a divorcee.
We also know that she had 7 demons cast out
of her and that she travelled with Jesus and his disciples as part of a group
of women who had been healed under his ministry. Luke often fills out
information about important people in the gospel story, especially those from
marginalized backgrounds – the poor, the sick, women. When we meet Mary in Luke
8 we meet her as a faithful disciple who disrupts her life to support the
ministering community and travel with them.
But Mary is more than this. She appears in
every gospel – that fact alone challenges the claim that the gospels dishonour
her – and she’s crucial to the gospel.
John19:25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s
sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Every gospel writer puts Mary Magdalene
amongst the women who stood at the foot of the cross as Jesus hung there and
died. Where were Jesus’ male followers? (They were in hiding, all except John,
who may have been too young to have been considered a threat. John’s presence
is only mentioned as an aside in his own gospel.) The gospel tradition makes
the women, and especially Mary Magdalene, the primary witnesses to
Jesus’ crucifixion.
Jewish law in the first century wasn’t very
keen on having women as witnesses and didn’t even recognize them as valid
witnesses unless there were at least two of them. But the gospel has the women
as the main witnesses to the crucifixion. If I were trying to dishonour women I
would have changed that. I would have had Peter there, witnessing the event,
instead of hiding somewhere behind locked doors. (BTW, that is exactly what some of the Gnostic Gospels do – they
put Peter at the crucifixion. Now who’s demeaning women?) One of the greatest
evidences of the truthfulness of the gospels is how brutally honest they are
about the failures of the apostles, especially Peter.
Luke 23:55-56 The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed
Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it.
56 Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they
rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
Mark16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of
James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.
Thirty-six hours later, the disciples are
still in hiding and the women get up before dawn to go to the tomb to carry out
the necessary preparations for a proper burial. Mary Magdalene had dedicated
her life to serving Jesus and here she is, continuing to faithfully serve Jesus
in his death as she had in his life.
When they got to the tomb it was open and
the body was gone. If you put the various gospel accounts side by side you get
some sense of the confusion and despair that the disciples, both men and women,
experienced. People run back and forwards to the tomb. The guys look into the
empty tomb, see that Jesus’ body is gone, then go off home! But Mary stays,
weeping.
John 20:14 she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did
not realize that it was Jesus. 15 “Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is
it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you
have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16
Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic,
“Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
Far from being dishonoured in the gospels,
Mary Magdalene is the first person to see the risen Jesus! If I were Peter and
I wanted to make sure I had control of the church (which is Dan Brown’s claim)
I would have made sure that bit of the story got lost!
It gets better!
17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to
the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my
Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went to the
disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had
said these things to her.
Not only was Mary at the cross while Peter
and company were cowering in the shadows. Not only did she go to the tomb and
see the risen Lord before anyone else. Now Jesus sends her to give the news to
the guys! She was the first to proclaim the resurrection! And what did the guys
do? They told her to get a life! They didn’t believe her! But her role as the
first witness to the risen Christ is so important that one of the early church
leaders called her “an apostle to the apostles.”
Unfortunately, the church hasn’t lived up
to the model of Jesus in this area. There are lots of references to women in leading
positions in the New Testament, like Phoebe the deacon from Cenchrea who
carried the letter to the Romans and Junia the apostle mentioned at the end of
Romans. (The NIV changes that name to Junias – a male name that doesn’t even
exist in first century Greek – because somewhere along the line the church
decided that women can’t be apostles.)
By 200AD a church leader like Tertullian
could get away with writing something like this to women: “You are the
devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first
deserters of the divine law; you are she who persuades him whom the devil was
not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man… etc.”
I really can’t imagine Jesus saying that to
any woman, but Tertullian had allowed his culture’s attitude to women to
overwhelm Jesus’ attitude to women, and the church hasn’t done much better
since. It’s because of our record in the church that Dan Brown and
others can claim that Christianity is anti-woman, not because of Jesus, or the
New Testament church.
Brown’s response is typically male – call
women “expressions of the divine feminine” and make them sex objects. Return
them to their ancient role of temple prostitute! I can hear all my feminist
friends now, “Just another male plot to get women into bed!”
So, what does Mary’s story teach us?
Firstly, it teaches us that Jesus does not disappoint his faithful followers,
whether they are male or female. It doesn’t matter. Jesus looks at your heart,
not your gender. Mary Magdalene followed and served Jesus faithfully. She stuck
with him when most of the rest deserted him, and Jesus revealed himself to her
first because she was there. Faithfulness and availability – the qualifications
for serving Jesus.
Also, we wouldn’t be surprised by any of
Mary’s story if we took note of the way that Jesus related to other women in
the gospels. In a society that did dishonour women, Jesus bucked the trend.
He spoke with women as equals. He honoured them as individuals. He wasn’t
freaked out when women, even “sinful” women and “unclean” women, touched him.
And, even though the culture didn’t value the testimony of a woman, Jesus
revealed himself first to a woman – Mary Magdalene.
I’m not a woman, but I think Jesus’ option
beats Dan Brown’s any day. Jesus honoured women in a society that did not. His
focus was on people as people made in God’s image, not on gender roles. And I’m
sure that’s part of the reason why women like Mary Magdalene were so devoted to
him.
So this morning, let’s strive to be like
Jesus, honouring and respecting people as individuals, and let’s be like Mary
too, following Jesus faithfully through good times and bad – faithful and available
to his call.