What's Up, Mary Magdalene?

In her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, the contemporary mystic and writer Cynthia Bourgeault writes of a profound experience she had at a French monastery during Holy Week. The sisters and brothers in that monastery provided a deep ritual of the crucified Christ.

As she was taking communion and the liturgy was being read in French, the sun was setting and the light was just so in the stone cathedral. The reading involved the laying to rest of Jesus, the wrapping of his body in linen and the placing of his body in the tomb.

And then she heard: And Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained outside the tomb, silently keeping vigil.

Cynthia Bourgeault says as an Episcopal Priest she had heard this passion week story over and over. She had sung it. She had read it. She had preached it. 

But somehow the role of Mary Magdalene keeping silent vigil outside Jesus tomb had escaped her. No wonder, she says, Mary Magdalene was able to go to the tomb on Sunday morning so easily. She had been there all along.

So it is with Mary Magdalene, who is having a moment right now. There is a lot of energy around Mary: Who is this woman, beloved of Jesus, and what does she mean? She’s been around all this time, and we keep missing her. How is it that we’ve missed her over and over again?

I’ve never thought much about Mary Magdalene, one way or the other. The only time I’ve thought about her truly is when I first encountered Marie Howe’s Poem: Magdalene, the Seven Devils. I love Marie Howe and she wrote a series of poems based on Mary Magdalene when her brother was dying of AIDS. She is a contemplative poet, and a powerful voice.

Her poem begins: 

The first was that I was very busy.

The second—I was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that.

The third—I worried.

The fourth—envy, disguised as compassion.

The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid, The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The mosquito too—its face. And the ant—its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.

The second that I might make the wrong choice,

 And it goes on and on. She lists her seven demons that live in her and that she’d like to have extracted by someone, anyone. If your goal is to remain humble and self-aware, which the mystics say is the path into the souls’ journey toward unity with God, then you could do worse than to create a list of seven demons that live inside you.

Humility and self awareness are the two big hymns in the contemplative’s prayerbook. Just ask Teresa of Avila. Mine begins and ends with defensiveness and guardedness and the constant fear that I’m doing it all wrong. Which is to say an anxiety that I’m the wrong person for the job at the wrong place at the wrong time. And so on it goes. On one level I know it isn’t true. The demons are liars. And on one level I know I can hand it all to God, the great act of surrender, after all, the great act of letting go, after all is the other big hymn in the contemplative’s prayerbook.

For some of us, Mary Magdalene is the woman, well, the prostitute, that had seven demons cast out of her by Jesus. For others, Mary Magdalene is Jesus’s wife, the mother of his children. Part of the fascination is a result of the Davinci Code. Part of the fascination with this idea is a  result of the peculiar line in the Gospel of Phillip: Jesus used to walk with her and kissed her frequently upon the mouth.

For me, Mary Magdalene emerges as the image of steadfast love. As a hospital chaplain, and as a hospice chaplain, I have over and over witnessed the simple and profound power of standing vigil. Who would not weep at the image of a spouse of 45 years sitting with their beloved, hand in hand. The deepest silence imaginable. No words necessary. Nothing left to say. Just love and the act of presence. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained standing there in front of the tomb.

Maybe for you Mary is the woman who stood by the tomb and then on Easter morning went to the tomb and encountered Jesus and was told by the risen Jesus to go and tell the others that Jesus was risen and that further instruction was coming.

I love that the first thing, in the Gospel of Matthew, that Jesus says to her upon greeting her is Peace. The second: Do not be afraid. It is upon this commission to go and tell the others that Jesus is risen that we get the idea that Mary Magdalene is the apostle to the apostle. (And it is this scene that encouraged Jurgen Moltmann the great German theologian who died earlier this year to write: Without women preachers there’d be no record of the risen Jesus.)

In the telling of the Easter event, every year, most of us focus on the disciples who flee the scene in fear, or who betray Jesus. While all the others are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run. She does not betray. She does not lie about her commitment. She witnesses. Hers is the stillness of that deep human love, that steadfast love. Hers is evidence that she deeply understood Jesus’ teaching, absorbed them, and lived her life out of them.

How would the church look different if we emphasized Mary Magdalene and her way during Holy Week? Instead of Peter and his three fold denial, what if we lifted up the steady, unwavering witness of Mary?

What if, instead of emphasizing that  Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? How would the emotion of the day differ? And what would change about the role of women in the church? 

By the way, if you are looking to blame someone for the whole Mary as Prostitute deal, look to Luke, who undercuts her position in subtle ways in his Gospel (while still unable to fully extract her status as apostle to the apostles and as one of the truly inner circle), but mostly look at Pope Gregory.

It is clear brothers, he writes, that this woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts. Cynthia Boudreault is convinced that this goes beyond just the need for misogyny to have its way in the life of the church. Clearly, there are forces that want to deny that there were an equal group of disciples, men and women, and that Mary was a part of the innermost circle of disciples, so that only men could be seen as true disciples and perpetuate a male dominated system. But she says something even more interesting:

I see the portrait of Mary Magdalene as penitent who as primarily the work of the early church’s collective unconscious, the inevitable shadow side of its increasing obsession with celibacy and sexual purity. Gregory’s leap from ‘seven demons’ to the seven deadly sins to lust is, in my mind, characteristic of subconscious mental processing. And here is the clincher: In all eras, the church remains the faithful mirror of its times—what cannot be faced openly will find its way to the surface in the only way it can.

Let’s pause here for a moment. What cannot be faced openly will find its way to the surface in the only way it can, when it comes to individuals and the church.

I’ve preached all over the place in the last few years. Texas, North Carolina, the midwest, up and down the front range. In all eras the church remains the faithful mirror of its times. The times right now are exhausting. Frustrating. Scary. We are divided. Violent. And what I hear over and over from progressives is the grief and heart ache that comes from thinking about the loss of certain rights—reproductive, marriage  equality. The violence done by rhetoric against immigrants, against foreigners, against neighbors. The actual violence of guns, abundant and ubiquitous. We must face those things, but even the facing of those things bring us dread and more exhaustion.

But that is the calling right now. And I believe, more than ever, that the mainline and progressive congregations across faith traditions, are invited to start where we are. To start small. To be little laboratories of spiritual wildness, where we are known as joyful and liberating spots in a fractured, bruised, demented world. We are called to dismantle the “isms”, sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc.

But we are also called to embody and build the beloved community we proclaim. What would the church look like with this kind of animating spirit?

I remember at a UCC congregation, on Palm Sunday, the parade of misfits and outcasts marching up the aisle as if to Jerusalem, with Jesus by their side. Queer folks, folks without proper documentation, a person with a felony. Joyfully marching together, painting a picture of radical hospitality, radical belonging.

I remember at a UU congregation, on Epiphany Sunday, three drag queens in a theatrical performance searching for a place to belong.

We are now called more than ever to paint a beautiful radical picture of what we so casually proclaim week in and week out: The kingdom is among us. The kingdom of love is within you. You are the keeper, the holder of the wisdom that will save you.

In the book of Mary, Jesus talks first about the material world and how the world is good and beautiful, so good and beautiful that the ultimate Good, love, came to reside here. There is one heart, one being, one will, one god, all in all.

And then Jesus talks about how sin is living out of alignment with our true selves. And how all things will be reconciled to the good at the end of the day. It is very mystical and very different in some ways than the Jesus of the four gospels. 

But what is the same is that Jesus offers a great commissioning. But it sounds a little different. He says: Peace be with you. May my peace reside within you. Guard carefully that no one mislead you saying: “Look, he is here,” or “He’s over there,” for the Son of Humanity already exists within you. Follow him, for those who seek will find. Go forth now and proclaim the good news.

After this, Jesus departs, and Peter (at least) freaks out. He turns to Mary Magdalene and says: You were his beloved, what can you tell us about the teachings? Or in other words, what’s up Mary Magdalene?

And the big reveal, the big truth, that she shares with them is this: He has prepared us so that we might become fully human. Our religious institutes exist to help form human beings, people who are complete persons. This is our work and our duty, to the human race as well as to God. Our monasteries should be producing people who are fully developed human beings I thought that being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was, in other words, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness. . . . 

She does one more thing that is remarkable. In the midst of their freaking out, how shall we go and proclaim the good news? They rejected him. They’ll reject us too. They are in full fledge panic mode.

And what does she do? The one who we noticed earlier at the death of Jesus stood steadfast in love, does the same again, but this time with the disciples. She reminds them of their own internal resources that will help them face the grief and panic they feel. She re-orients them to the good.

Do not weep and grieve nor let your hearts remain in doubt, for his grace is with you, all of you, sustaining and protecting you. Rather let us give praise to his greatness which has prepared us so that we might become fully human.

She shows them who they are and what they are about in their of disorientation and grief and panic. And their hearts opened toward the Good.