Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is from Judges Chapter 4, verses 4 through 10

At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was a judge in Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgement. She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, ‘The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, “Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.” ’ Barak said to her, ‘If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.’ And she said, ‘I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will give Sisera into the hand of a woman.’ Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh. Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and ten thousand warriors went up behind him; and Deborah went up with him.

SECOND LESSON

The second lesson is from the Gospel of John, Chapter 20, verses 1 through 18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look* into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,* ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

THIRD LESSON

The third lesson is from the Gospel of Mary, Chapter 9, verses 1 through 10

1) When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her.

2) But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, Say what you wish to say about what she has said. I at least do not
believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas.

3) Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things.

4) He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we
to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?

5) Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

6) Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered.

7) Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries.

8) But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.

9) That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said.

10) And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to preach.

This Week's Sermon

Date: SUNDAY, September 14, 2008

Title: Mary Magdalene: Apostle to the Apostles

Message Delivered By: Sheri Lohr

In 1896 a codex was found in Akhmim, Egypt which contained The Gospel of Mary and three other Gnostic texts. The translation was finally completed more than half a century later, after the 1945 discovery of a much larger collection of second century Christian texts at Nag Hamadi. Many of these books were previously known to us only from references by early Church Fathers denouncing them as heresies. What they demonstrate is that the very first Christians were not a unanimous group. They were radicals, following the teaching of a radical Leader, and they disagreed in their understanding about much of what He taught, including the role of women as leaders and teachers. This disagreement is exemplified in the conflicting traditions about the identity and role of Mary of Magdala.

Who was she, and perhaps more importantly, who wasn’t she? The four canonical gospels all name Mary Magdalene, but assign to her differing roles in the story of Jesus’ ministry. Mark and Luke describe her as one of the women who provided for Jesus and the disciples from their own resources. John and Mark identify her as the first witness to the resurrection. Mark, Matthew and John place her at the crucifixion, even when the male disciples flee in fear. All four gospels place her at the empty tomb, though accounts vary about whether she spoke with Jesus or received a commission to tell the others. In the Gnostic gospels and other non-canonical early Christian texts she also figures prominently. Because she first delivers the good news of the resurrection she is sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles. These sources show her to be a person of influence and authority, and a highly intelligent woman befriended by Jesus.

So where do we get the part about the penitent whore? In the year 591 Pope Gregory I delivered a sermon about the value of repentance, and he used Mary as his example by fudging the story a bit. He assumed that the unnamed “sinful woman” in Luke, who brings ointment and washes Jesus’ feet with tears and dries them with her hair is Mary. In a convoluted way, he has connected her to Mary of Bethany, Martha and Lazarus’ sister, of whom John says she is the one who washed his feet, and with an unnamed woman with an alabaster jar of expensive ointment in Matthew and Mark. Though the Greek Orthodox church never accepted this conflation of at least 3 different women, it persists in the Roman tradition today. In the 60’s the Vatican backed off on calling her a prostitute, but it continues to define her as a useful example of repentance rather than as a leader and teacher. There is in fact no particular evidence that the “sinful woman” was a prostitute or adulterer; for all we know she didn’t keep careful Kosher in her kitchen, or she talked back to the men in her household, or maybe she was a shoplifter or even a camel thief. Gregory goes on to assume that the seven demons cast out of Mary, as mentioned in Luke and Mark, were the seven deadly sins of the flesh. Others have thought she was particularly sick and needed repeated healings, or that the possession was a personality disorder. There is however an interesting passage in the Gospel of Mary where she is explaining a Gnostic understanding of the progress of the soul through four stages to enlightenment and salvation.

18) When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms.

19) The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.

20) They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?

21) The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome,

22) and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died.

Perhaps those seven demons represent some lurking Gnosticism that the orthodox church failed to entirely root out.

However, even if we discover that the historical Mary was not the woman so often portrayed, we should not entirely discount the figure in art and literature. The legendary Mary has an importance of her own and a place in our understanding of feminine power in the context of Christianity, ancient and modern. As the orthodox church developed from the third century onward, women’s voices were increasingly suppressed. References to women, especially as leaders, teachers and disciples, were censored from canon. The ideal woman was Mary, Mother of Jesus, whose only speaking part in any gospel is to accept the will of God. She is a pure vessel to carry the Christ and her virtue is one of obedience. Yet through all this, Mary of Magdala won’t go away. Her character is too strong, and her association with the early church is too pervasive. They can change her story, try to replace her with a more docile figure, but she remains as the potent symbol of a woman with a mind of her own who comes to understand Christ’s message and devote herself to his truth. She preserves the cult of goddess in the context of Christianity. Art historian Diane Apostolos-Cappadona says

“Mary Magdalene has connections with Inanna, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus and other such goddesses. What do they represent? Love, Passion, and feminine sensuality as well as domestic skills and other domestic arts with which the Magdalene becomes connected during certain periods in Christian history.”

In the thirteenth century a Dominican friar named Jacobus de Voraigne wrote a book called The Golden Legend which included the story of Magdalene. He accepts that she is the “sinner” who anoints Jesus and is forgiven her sins, and that she is the sister of Lazarus and Martha. He says that the family was wealthy and that Mary led a sensuous life before her conversion. He goes on to recount the story that she and others were set adrift in a boat without steering which eventually landed on the French coast at Marseilles, where she began to evangelize. Eventually she became a holy hermit living in a cave. The region of Provence to this day considers her one of their own. The story of her ascetic retreat may derive in part from the life of another saint, Mary of Egypt, who lived in 4th century Alexandria, and who turned from a dissolute life to become a hermit after a conversion experience in Jerusalem. Yet another Mary is blended into the identity of the legendary figure.

Many of the Gnostic texts feature Mary in an important role. In the Dialog of the Savior she is calleds “the woman who knew all” regarding her understanding of Jesus’ teaching.

In the Pistis Sophia, (Faith of Wisdom) Jesus engages in a long dialog with Mary, beginning

"Mariam, thou blessed one, whom I will complete in all the mysteries of the height, speak openly, thou art she whose heart is more directed to the Kingdom of Heaven than all thy brothers".

Since the release of The DaVinci Code, another version of Mary’s legend has received new attention. Namely that Mary was the wife of Jesus, and bore him at least one child. Dan Brown refers to the now famous passage in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip

And the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [He] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples [...]. They said to him "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness."

I contend that this doesn’t refer to a marriage with Jesus, but to Mary’s superior intelligence and understanding.

I doubt the likelihood of a marriage because Philip and other Gnostic documents that supposedly support it are circumstantial at best and have no better claim to historical accuracy than the canonical books. Also most (though by no means all) the Gnostic groups were ascetic in practice and condemned all material things, including sex, even within marriage. But I particularly object to the idea because it still denies her individuality and her leadership. Whether she is a reformed prostitute, or a wife or lover of Jesus, she is defined by her relationship and not by herself. It implies that her power derives from ‘sleeping with the boss.’ Yet all the literature suggests that in fact she was every bit as deserving of the title of Apostle as Peter or Paul. So how did she come to be so misrepresented?

We often think of the first century Christian church as being a homogeneous collection of congregations with a common understanding of the teaching of Jesus as handed down by twelve apostles who traveled with him during his ministry. Reformers like Luther have often supposed that if we could return to this pure Christianity all conflict would be resolved and the church would be free of error and corruption. That’s pretty much all wrong. Even a study of the 27 canonical books that we call the New Testament refutes this idea. The four Gospels differ significantly on the history of Jesus’ life and ministry. The Epistles and Acts talk about disagreements in the churches planted by the first apostles. Studying the texts that were excluded from the canon, we begin to understand that the earliest followers of The Way, as they styled themselves, had many new and radical ways of understanding both theology and social order. Many who considered themselves followers of Jesus interpreted both the teaching and the history in highly individualized ways. There were differences between those familiar with the ministry in Galilee and those in Jerusalem. There were many different groups who were called Gnostics, (from the Greek work gnosis meaning wisdom or hidden knowledge), who emphasized a spiritual and intellectual path to salvation. There were those, such as the Ebionites, who adhered to Jewish traditions, and those like the Marcionites who spread the word among the gentiles, especially the Greeks and Romans. Some favored a hierarchical church, based on bishops, deacons and priests, while others favored a charismatic organization based on the revelation to individuals. Some thought that only those named in apostolic succession could interpret the truth or perform sacraments; others thought that the Word of God could be revealed to anyone of spiritual understanding and maturity. Some did not even believe that the actual physical resurrection of Jesus was necessary for salvation, but rather an enlightened comprehension of His teaching. Some recognized and revered the leadership of women as teachers and prophets and some were threatened by this radical idea. It was an alien concept in the Roman empire of the time but as we see from the OT story of Deborah, not entirely unprecedented in Jewish tradition. Much conflict came down to the definition of who can be an apostle.

Feminist biblical scholar, Ann Graham Brock, in her book Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle, examines the question as it was interpreted by early Christian writers. She quotes Hippolytus, a 3rd c. bishop of Rome, saying:

Lest the female apostles doubt the angels, Christ himself came to them so that the women would be apostles of Christ…Christ showed himself to the apostles and said to them “It is I who appeared to these women and I who wanted to send them to you as apostles”

showing that some early Christians understood the term to include both genders. The criteria for apostleship can include being witness to the resurrected Christ, receiving a commission to spread the word, being present during Jesus earthly ministry, and/or being one of the so-called “Twelve.” Mary qualifies on all but the last. Paul qualifies on only the first and possibly the second counts, yet he applies the title to himself and to others who share his ministry, including the woman Junia named in Romans 16.

Jesus uses the word when he is chastising the Pharisees, saying

“For this reason also the Wisdom (Sophia) of God said ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute.’” [Luke 11:49]

and he is not referring specifically to only twelve apostles who travel with him. Why did Mary not make the cut? Brock makes a compelling case that a significant division in the first century church was between followers of Mary and those of Peter.

She shows that in Matthew, Mark and John, Mary is a prominent witness to resurrection and receives a commission to announce the news. In Luke, it is Peter who receives the first exclusive appearance; Mary is present at the tomb, but sees only the two messengers, not Jesus Himself. Throughout Luke, Peter’s role is emphasized and the incidents where Peter is portrayed unfavorably, or rebuked by Jesus, are softened or omitted. Brock goes on to point out parallels to the story of the controversy with Peter, quoted in the reading from the Gospel of Mary, in other Gnostic gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Pistis Sophia.

In the last verse of the Gospel of Thomas, Simon Peter says to Jesus,

“Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

This has caused some ruffled feathers among feminists because of the implication that only men can enter the Kingdom. In the context of the time, however, I think Jesus is actually saying that women can be free of their gender-defined identity and pursue enlightenment and salvation. Gnostic philosophy often refers to putting off material restrictions and becoming spiritual beings. In this form there is no longer a difference between male and female.

Brock shows that in accounts that support Peter’s leadership, the role of Mary is reduced and the leadership of women discounted. Her contention is that the followers of Mary, including many of the Gnostic groups, were egalitarian in the participation of women and had a less rigidly structured organization, whereas the followers of Peter eventually succeeded in defining a church hierarchy that excluded women.

By the 4th c. the structure and dogma that has defined the church over the last 2000 years was more or less firmly in place. Bishops had selected the four canonical gospels, with 23 other new testament texts, as true and orthodox and defined all others as heresy. Church leaders believed and taught that the gospels were authored by the apostles for whom they are named: that is Matthew and John from among the original twelve, Luke a companion of Paul, and Mark a secretary to Peter. Actually they are anonymous books; the names were applied decades later. While the early church was a very diverse community, with many radical and innovative ideas, eventually an orthodoxy emerged that was stable because of its organization, but that had lost some of its original powerful message. In the year 312, Emperor Constantine converted to a Christianity that was by then compatible with the social order of Roman civilization. He convened the council of Nicea in 325 and the bishops of that time established what would be accepted as Truth and what was heresy. It has taken nearly 17 centuries for Christian believers to begin to re-examine that truth, especially in regard to the leadership of women.

What did Jesus teach? Jesus bucked the establishment. He argued with the priests and called them hypocrites. He reinterpreted law, teaching that it was not the letter of the law but the principle that represented the will of God. He said that the first principle was Love. He associated with outcasts. He preached to the disenfranchised. He taught that they were worthy in the sight of God. He acknowledged women, as well as slaves and others without power in the social system, as disciples. Jesus protected the woman taken in adultery from stoning, and he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, though custom would preclude speaking to a lone woman or to any Samaritan. He prophesied to her and because of her testimony many were converted. The Pharisees thought that he should have refused to be touched by that unnamed ‘sinful woman’ who anointed him and washed his feet with her tears; instead he blessed her and told her that her sins were forgiven. When Martha chided her sister Mary for sitting and listening to Jesus instead of helping with the housework, Jesus told her “only one thing is important,” meaning maybe she could take a break and listen too. Jesus welcomed Mary of Magdala as a supporter, companion and disciple, and eventually as a witness.

In spite of contention and suppression, in spite of misrepresentation and censorship, the weight of Christian tradition still recognizes Mary Magdalene as the original witness and messenger of salvation through Christ. She is the powerful feminine image in our understanding of our faith. She is the model of our love of Christ and our continual striving for truth and perfect rest in the power of Love.

Amen