My Life in Marys or the Marys and Me

 I am reading my way through John for Everyone by N. T. Wright.  You may or may not remember that I spent much of 2020 reading my way through the gospel of John one chapter per morning, chapter after chapter, starting over when I got to the end.  You may or may not remember that I began to wonder how Christianity had caught on, since the Jesus in John was so . . . irritating and offputting.

One of my spiritual direction certificate small group friends recommended that I find a good study guide, and when I came across this one, I knew that N. T. Wright would present the material in a way that made sense to me.  So for much of 2020, I've begun the day by reading a portion of a chapter of John in Wright's translation followed by a few pages of wonderful analysis.  Then I read a chapter of Luke.

This morning, I noticed that the next chapter has Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb.  I felt so happy that I would soon be in her company again.  I thought of the Marys in the Bible, and how they've spoken to me--in ways much more so than any of the male disciples.  And lately, Mary Magdalene feels most important.

My life in Marys began with the Virgin Mary, mainly the version of her that I knew in childhood Christmas pageants.  I always wanted to play the Virgin Mary, the plum role for a girl in my childhood church.  But I was always too much:  too tall, too blond, too much.  I didn't blend in.  The pageant needed a demure girl who could gaze lovingly at the baby doll Jesus and not be distracted by the rest of the pageant.  I could be an angel in the choir, in the back of the choir with the tall kids.

As a young feminist, I wanted to love the Virgin Mary, but I was irked by the constant offering up of her as proof that the historic Church had not been patriarchal.  As a young feminist, I wanted more ways to see myself than as a vessel for the Holy or a container of demons or a temptress that would lead men astray.  And the temptress idea wasn't even part of the Jesus narrative.  Jesus and his disciples didn't seem to expand to include women at all.  They might have healed women, but they didn't invite them to dinner.

As a woman heading into the last part of midlife, I now pay attention to the shadowed corners of the stories in the Bible.  Women get the briefest mention, which make me want to know more.  One of the healed women is Simon Peter's mother-in-law, which implies a wife.  Where is that wife?  What does she do while Simon Peter tramps around with Jesus?  In the gospels and in the book of Acts, there's a sentence here and there that makes me infer that women are part of the the ways that the bills get paid.

And I've written this before, but it bears repeating--we give credit to the disciples and the others, like Paul, who take the Good News out to the furthest stretches of the empire, for the success of Christianity.  But we don't spend much time at all talking about the communities left behind, the ones given the seeds to cultivate, the ones who nurtured this new plant and made it grow and rooted it securely for generations coming later.

In the last year or two, I've come across scholarship that suggests that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus (the one raised from the dead) might have been one of the ones who was instrumental in the success of the early church, that she was one of the evangelists.  I haven't bookmarked any of that information, and I will confess that when I read about her, I don't see it.  But if I had knowledge of Greek, and I read the stories, some of the words might leap out at me as important, and the words used in discussing the work she was doing might suggest that she was doing more than simply absorbing the teaching of Jesus while Martha bustled around the kitchen.

But I confess that it's hard for me to even perceive Mary when Martha is so central in those stories.  Lately, I am much more intrigued with Mary Magdalene, intrigued in a new way.

Even in my young feminist days, I was intrigued by Mary Magdalene.  Was she really possessed by demons or was that code for something else?  Was she a prostitute or was that a way to undercut the idea that she was influential?  I sat through many Easter sermons, and it was late in my life that anyone pointed out that Mary is central to the resurrection story.  It was later still that Mary was mentioned as the evangelist to the disciples, the first one to tell the Good News of the empty tomb.

I realize as a reader that I tend to cast about a story as I look for a person who's dealing with similar circumstances as I am.  Lately, I'm wondering about the age of Mary Magdalene.  Could she be a woman at the far edge of midlife?

It's hard to tell, especially since the lifespan of a woman was so different then.  But in some of her actions, I see a fellow traveler in Mary Magdalene.  In some of the gospels, she's the one who anoints Jesus, much to the displeasure of the disciples.  Even though in my early years, I might have agreed with the disciples, especially in terms of the cost, lately, I find myself admiring her gutsy determination to do her own thing, to stay true to the behavior that makes sense to her.  And it's this dedication to her own self, especially in the face of criticism, that I perceive a woman moving to the end of her midlife years.

And yet, she's not acting with reckless, destructive abandon, even as she ignores the judgment of those around her.  She's not partying with demons while her community collapses out from under her.  She knows what the priorities need to be, and by the reactions of Jesus, we see that her intuition is correct.

In fact, we see her commitment to community as we think about her role in the Easter story.  She stays put, a witness to the horror, a witness to the resurrection.  The crucifixion seems like the ultimate metaphor for life.  We will find ourselves the witness to life in all its gruesome grittiness, and all we can do is be present.  We will suffer grievous losses when all that we can do is tend to the housekeeping types of tasks, like Mary was prepared to do on Easter morning, when she arrived with spices.  By our communal commitment, we may be the first witnesses to a new way of life.

I realize that I'm spinning a back story out of very little.  And yet, I do think I'm staying true to the truth of what we're given.  And I realize that I'm spinning what I need to hear.  We have stories of young women and stories of older women that have informed our Christian spirituality.  But there's very little about women who have moved beyond the societal roles they've been offered, and we know that many women headed out of midlife have faced this dilemma.

I want more stories of women who dream a different vision and have the courage to move in that direction.  I believe that Mary Magdalene gives us that example.