Sermon: What About Mary Magdalene?

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What About Mary Magdalene?

By Charles Rush

October 5, 2003

ry Magdalene is such a rich figure in the history of Western art in the Christian tradition that I was tempted to show a few slides of her for this sermon, but three weeks in a row of visual aids was just too much. This week, the New Yorker had a cartoon that featured Satan in a meeting with one of his principal demons, scratching his chin. Satan says, “Actually I was thinking of something new, heinous, and devious… say do you know PowerPoint?”

Mary Magdalene is one of the two most depicted women in the Catholic Church, the other being Mary the mother of Jesus. Tradition holds that the former is a reformed prostitute, and certainly that is the way that she is portrayed in art, and the later tradition holds was perpetually a virgin. Standing in a small church in a wayside town in Sicily looking at a mosaic of these two women, the reformed prostitute and the virgin, it occurred to me that neither of these are very healthy feminine images for pious reflection for either for our girls or our boys. Yet, these have been the main staples of 2000 years of pious history. I want to say something about both of them and conclude with a third option that was not taken.

“Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” That line, repeated over and over after confession. I've heard it so often in my life that even I say it quietly in the face of death.

As my friend, Leanne Tintori Wells, pointed out last week, growing up Catholic, young girls did have many strong women to look up to. There was St. Theresa and St. Claire, and many other saints that were matched by, at least a few of the Nuns that demonstrated what independent feminine leadership could look like. It is a good point.

Likewise, she said, that as a child, obviously you had Jesus who got all the cudoos and was worshipped, etc.. But really, on a day in day out basis, when it came to actually getting things done, she was sure that Mary actually ran heaven.

Certainly Mary is depicted that way by the time of the late middle ages. In iconography, in mosaics and in oil on wood paintings, she is regularly depicted as the co-regent with Jesus. You most often see the two of them, both on thrones, both with halos around their heads, both with a distant, impassive demeanor that symbolizes peace and salvation. From 1000-1300, this tradition grew in scope and breadth, to the point that Mary was on an equal footing in popular piety. I suspect that she was the one people went to most regularly with their problems. She got it done.

Like our mothers, she listens to us. Even in the renaissance, this dimension of her is developed. She is compassionate and humane. If you think about the Pieta by Michaelangelo that sits in the first prayer alcove of St. Peter's Cathedral, Mary is holding the dying body of Jesus. Interestingly, they are both the same age in the sculpture. She remains ever young, tender, compassionate, full of love. Unquestionably, this is a pillar tradition that she represents.

But she is not an uncomplicated figure either. In the wider theological tradition, she remains an underdeveloped figure. We don't actually know much about her, other than what she did. “She was obedient and virginal. Humanity's salvation through grace was transacted through her virginal body.”[i]

In the Orthodox tradition, Eve, the woman had fallen from grace and had taken man with her through her sexuality. [I would remind you that this is not in the story in the Bible, but this is what was popularly understood in early Christian tradition].

Mary reversed that fall through birthing the savior and she did it abstaining from sexuality. She elevates celibacy to a previously unknown virtue. And she does it, concurrently in a way that highlights humility and submission. In the gospel of Luke, she says, in response to the Angel's announcement of her choseness, “Do unto me according to your will”.

So she comes down to us, on the one hand, as compassionate, understanding, hearing our needs. On the other hand, she almost has no ego of her own, unlike us. Since tradition is completely silent on her own desires, she appears to us as someone who has no sensual hormonal drive, unlike us. Regardless, she is depicted as someone that has mastered themselves completely, quite unlike us. She sets a very high bar, a bar so high in fact that she is daunting, even somewhat distant. Indeed, her personality as such, almost disappears because what she does for us is objective and transactional. She incubates. But of her as an individual, we know almost nothing. In scripture, we are only told that she took Jesus to the Temple, that at one point she was concerned Jesus might be a little mental, that when he died, she watched him in grief and that she went to the tomb.

Given the strident asceticism and the repressed anger that was a regular feature of certain Nuns that were singularly devoted to the adoration of Mary, it is not by accident that many of us here also feel a vague guilt and discomfort conjuring up the image of Mary as well. She may be able to get things done, she may run heaven, but, like an overbearing, overearnest relative, we can't ever live up to their expectations and frankly, we don't really want to spend much time with them, however pious they may be.

And then we have Mary Magdelene, the reformed prostitute. There is actually no scriptural record to suggest that she was a reformed prostitute. The reason that we make that association is that Pope Gregory the Great made the pronouncement in 591 a.d. that the unnamed woman in Luke 7 that is a prostitute and washes Jesus feet with her tears, was actually Mary Magdalene.

If you were here last week, you know that the novel The da Vinci Code suggests that the real reason that the Catholic Church made that connection was to cover up a secret that Mary Magdalene was actually beloved of Jesus, that the two of them were secretly married, had children, and that the Catholic Church has been trying to suppress this for 2000 years.

As I said previously, that is a possible explanation. But never look to conspiracy when simple human stupidity and incompetence would also account for the same conclusion. I suspect that Gregory the Great made the connection that he did, simply because Mary Magdalene is mentioned at the beginning of the next chapter of Luke. Probably in his mind, a forgiven prostitute that becomes devoted and a supporter of Jesus is a kind of converted Eve, a spiritual symbol of the forgiveness of God that implicitly lifts up the virtue of a repentance towards celibacy from a former life. It would have been a convenient model to use for women that were seeking a mid-life religious commitment to the monastery.

Both of these figures of popular piety carry with them a strong, implicit sex negative ethic. Since they both were developed in relationship to Eve, the woman who first fell and brought down men with her sexual temptation, women could not help but interiorize an onerous responsibility for chastity and a vague guilt over their normal, otherwise healthy sensual expressions. Whatever virtues the two Mary's had, they were also deforming for women. The power of this tradition of piety lies precisely in the fact that it is this complicated all at the same time.

As I said last week, it reflects more the attitudes and convictions of the late Roman empire towards women; it reflects more the attitudes and convictions of the Middle Ages towards women, than it does a biblical view. But it is very important because popular piety is the theology that we actually live day in and day out.

When you turn to the bible itself, just in the passages we read today, there are some subtle, but loud undercurrents that upend the theological assumptions about Mary Magdalene that popular tradition attributes to her.

In the first place, she is only mentioned directly as one of the women that supported Jesus. That is, she was a woman of considerable means. In Jesus day, like today, prostitutes are not women of considerable means and it is very unlikely that she should be in any way associated with the unnamed woman in the story we read earlier.

Even in that story, it is very interesting what transpires there. Jesus is at the home of the religiously righteous of his day. They would regularly have segregated themselves from women on an occasion like that, so it would have been something of a scandal to those gathered that Jesus would have let a woman approach him.

To boot, she is a prostitute. But this does not put him off. Traditional piety would have avoided such people as one avoids temptation. I recall a rabbinical saying where a pious Rabbi is extolling his bloody nose, a condition he got while walking down the street with his eyes closed rather than look at the women around him. A small price to pay for avoiding temptation.

And she bathes his feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair. If you could see the movie version, there would be some patting of the brow and fanning of the face during this scene. Any way you cut this cake, it is very sensual. However much Jesus stood in the ascetical tradition, he was not put off by this woman, nor this sensual expression. There would be no question in the minds of those around him that there would have been something going on between them that was more than just spiritual forgiveness. But Jesus doesn't appear to be too worried about that. It is an undercurrent that at least swims against the stream of the tradition of monastic asceticism that developed centuries after Jesus died.

About Mary Magdalene herself. Apart from scripture telling us that she and some other women supported Jesus and the disciples with money, she shows up at the end of his life in a significant way.

In all four gospels, we are told that she was with Mary to watch Jesus die on the cross. This small cadre of women stand in symbolic juxtaposition with the disciples, all of whom flee out of fear after Jesus is arrested. They remain faithful, devoted, living out of their compassion and basic maternal nurture. The disciples flee into the dark. Peter denies that he ever knew Jesus and lies about who he is. You have character in the women and worthlessness among the disciples.

Then in the Gospel of John, we have this very important symbolic story. After Jesus dies and is buried and put in the tomb, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb. In John, she comes by herself. That is significant. She sees the stone rolled away and goes to tell Peter and the other disciples. She is, symbolically speaking, the first witness to the resurrection. She is, in effect, the first ambassador of the Christian cause.

The disciples come back, see the evidence that something has happened and are simply dumbfounded and don't know what to think. They leave.

Mary is still standing there and has this encounter with the risen Christ. She is the first person to encounter the risen Christ. He calls her by name. She responds by saying, ‘Rabbi'. There is a familiarity and an intimacy to this exchange that would normally be reserved for two men alone in that culture, in that era. It is a more intimate relationship than men and women of proper standing would have.

So, she very much does have a beloved relationship with Jesus. And the Church actually has glossed over her role. Typically, we read the stories in John 21 during the Sundays following Easter, the story where Jesus singles out Peter, where Jesus forgives his faithlessness and tells him to feed my sheep. The story about Mary Magdalene, of at least equal importance, is never read on Sunday, but is assigned to Wednesday Mass, that no one attends.

Last week, Nancy Galietti said, “Chuck, when you talk about women and then you turn to sensuality, you forget about the equally important subject of power.” She is right. It is not an either/or but a both/and. Power is important.

As I said at the beginning of this sermon, Catholic Church tradition developed two principal women for pious adoration, a Virgin and a repentant prostitute. But there is another tradition of women in the scriptures that we hear from, a group that is never developed in traditional piety that would have served the Church even better. They are the women who were the leaders in the early Church, who supported the community of the Church with their time, their service, their money, and their leadership.

We have the real Mary Magdalene in that group. As well as Euodia and Synteche that were the leaders of the church at Phillipi that St. Paul addresses his letter to. There would be Phoebe, the deacon, that Paul addresses in Romans 16. Likewise Prisca and another Mary, and Junias and Tryphaena and Typhosa, Julia, and Olympas. In fact, there are more women mentioned in that greeting to the Church in Rome than there are men who are leaders. And then there is Lydia, who is mentioned in Acts that helped Paul establish a mission church. Or Dorcas, a Church leader that Peter healed when she was very ill that developed a Church in Joppa. There is Apphia, one of the Church leaders that Paul address his short little letter to, named for the first man mentioned in it Philemon.

There is this chorus of women leaders that are mentioned in the New Testament, about whom, almost nothing is known. We get their names, no traditions develop around them, and they fade away from memory. And you get the feeling, truth be told, that there were probably even many more that don't get mentioned so that Paul can name some of the men. Knowing what we know, it is quite likely that the women actually did most of the work even as the men got most of the mention.

It reminds me of a quote that Emma York had on her refrigerator until she died. It said, “Women have to be twice as good as men to be thought half as worthy.” And then at the end, she added this. “Fortunately, this is not difficult.”

It is also about the power or shall we say more positively. It is about leadership. The lens on the early Christian church is not in good focus. But it appears that women, early on, had significantly more leadership in their church than they had in the surrounding society and this derived from the fact that there was something about what Jesus was doing that made a significant place for women that other religious movements did not.

Amen

[i] This quote and the ideas that follow come from Patricia Lynn Reilly, A God Who Looks Like Me (Ballantine Books: 1995), p. 163 and ff.