by James Martin
But although maligned is not the norm for women disciples, ignored may be. One of the most helpful books on the topic is Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her, a study of how women’s place in the early church has been misunderstood. A professor at Harvard Divinity School, Schüssler Fiorenza begins her book by reminding readers that the woman who anointed Jesus’s head before his Passion goes unnamed in two of the Gospels.7 As she points out, in Luke’s Gospel, which moves the story to earlier in Jesus’s ministry, the woman is identified mainly as “a sinner.”
The author suggests that Luke, a man of his times, may have modified this story to fit the expectations of a male-dominated culture. No longer the one who foretells Jesus’s death and understands his role as the one who must suffer (more than do the male disciples), the woman who anoints Jesus is portrayed as a sinner. How odd this is when we consider what she did, and how disconcerting when we consider who else is afforded the privilege of a name—like Judas. Schüssler Fiorenza suggests, “The name of the betrayer is remembered, but the name of the faithful disciple is forgotten because she was a woman.”8
The notion of the women finally coming into the light at the end of the Gospels is also noticed by Schüssler Fiorenza:
Whereas according to Mark the leading male disciples do not understand this suffering messiahship of Jesus, reject it, and finally abandon him, the women disciples who have followed him from Galilee to Jerusalem suddenly emerge as the true disciples in the passion narrative. They are Jesus’s true followers (akolouthein) who have understood that his ministry was not rule and kingly glory but diakonia, “service” (Mark 15:41). Thus the women emerge as the true Christian ministers and witnesses. The unnamed woman who names Jesus with a prophetic sign-action in Mark’s Gospel is the paradigm for the true disciple. While Peter had confessed, without truly understanding it, “you are the anointed one,” the woman anointing Jesus recognizes clearly that Jesus’s messiahship means suffering and death.9
I’m not sure if I would agree that Peter doesn’t understand that Jesus needs to suffer. Perhaps he does, but cannot accept it. Schüssler Fiorenza’s larger point is that the women are depicted as more faithful to Jesus as his death approaches. It is the difference between saying and doing. So it may not be surprising that Jesus appears first to the women.
They are also the first to believe. “The Apostles and disciples find it harder to believe in the Risen Christ,” said Pope Francis early in his pontificate, “not the women, however!”10 Pope Francis grasped this, but it may have been an uncomfortable truth in the largely patriarchal culture of the early church. But the role of Mary Magdalene in Christian history is undeniable.
The day that George and I visited Magdala, only a few minutes’ drive from Capernaum on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, we were surprised by how modest the site was. The location of the town, whose name comes from the Aramaic Migdal Nunia (Fish Tower), has been in dispute, but until 1948 there had been a village called al-Majdal (Tower), which preserved the ancient name. Not long ago archaeologists unearthed remnants of a settlement from the time of Jesus, which included an ancient synagogue and, from a later date, a Byzantine monastery. Today in Jerusalem stands a great Russian Orthodox church dedicated to Magdala’s most famous daughter. But in Galilee today, where a large modern church is dedicated to Peter, all Mary can claim is a dusty archaeological site. That may change in the future, but it is notable that, at least in Galilee, the one who is more honored is not the one who immediately believed in the Resurrection, but the one who didn’t.
ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL of John, early on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, alone, and sees that the stone has been removed.11 She races to see Peter and “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.” (Again, many believe that this is the evangelist himself, who does not mention his name out of humility, or that the writer of the Gospel was a follower of John, who didn’t want his name in the story.)
Confused, Mary tells Peter that the body is gone. Peter and the other disciple race to the tomb. The other disciple arrives first, peers in, but does not enter. Peter arrives and, perhaps exercising his role as leader, enters the tomb and sees the burial cloths. Then the other disciple enters and “saw and believed.” (This account may reflect a subtle competition between two early Christian communities, one who followed Peter, the other John. Here John is depicted as the more believing disciple.) Then the disciples, oddly, return to their homes.
What about Mary? The Gospel of John tells us that she lingers outside the tomb, weeping. Some have pointed to this as a sign of her unwillingness to believe—as the Beloved Disciple had believed—but it may also betoken her great love for Jesus. John initially mentions her weeping twice: klaiousa (weeping), eklaien (as she wept). I am always reminded of Jesus’s weeping at Lazarus’s tomb. It is as if John wants to say, “See how much she loved him.”
As Mary weeps, she stoops into the tomb and sees two figures in white. Notice again that the angels have not appeared to Peter or the other disciple, who were just near the tomb, but to a woman. One angel asks her, “Woman, why are you weeping (klaieis)?” She answers, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Then Mary turns around. We can imagine her peering out of the darkness of the tomb into the dawn. She sees Jesus, but fails to recognize him. “Woman,” he says, “why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” The Risen One understands her grief and seeks to help her, gently. Then comes a mysterious line: “Supposing him to be the gardener,” she says, “Sir (kyrie, Lord), if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
How can Mary Magdalene not recognize the man she had followed for so long? Was she so blinded by grief that she could not think clearly? Perhaps. Were her eyes filled with tears? Perhaps. After all, we are told three times that she was weeping. Or perhaps the position of her body provides a simpler explanation. Mary has stooped inside the tomb and, at the sound of Jesus’s voice, peers out. So perhaps she is staring into the bright light of dawn, and Jesus’s body is silhouetted against the light, making him hard to recognize.
Or is there a more theological explanation? The “glorified body,” never seen by human eyes before now, may be hard to comprehend, and even harder for the Gospels to describe. As Stanley Marrow, SJ, a New Testament scholar, aptly notes, “All the resurrection narratives necessarily share this strangeness, for what they recount is, strictly speaking, not of this world.”12 (More about that strangeness in the next chapter.) Whatever the explanation, Mary believes him to be the gardener.
Mary’s confusion has given rise to an artistic tradition of portraying Mary addressing a Jesus who is dressed like a gardener, or at least carrying gardening tools. There is also a line of preaching that traces its roots to the early centuries of the church in which theologians and preachers speak of Jesus as the “gardener of the soul.” Jesus weeds out all that is evil and harmful from our lives and instead plants, as St. Gregory the Great says, “the flourishing seeds of virtue.”13 It is, to turn a phrase, a fruitful metaphor. How might we allow Jesus to till the soil of our soul and plant within us his life-giving words?
Mary’s inability to recognize Jesus may stem from any of the reasons mentioned—grief, disbelief, or the more theological reason that his glorified body did not have the same appearance as did his earthly body. Or maybe she is just stunned by a dead man suddenly alive. Imagine one of your favorite relatives simply showing up at the grave. We can imagine her standing there motionless, waiting for an answer.
Then comes one of the tenderest passages in the whole Gospel: “Jesus said to her, ‘Mariam.’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’”
The two words are preserved in Aramaic, transliterated into Greek.14 Jesus calls her by name—Mariam. She responds with the Aramaic word for rabbi—Rabbouni. Aramaic words, you’ll remember, likely reach back to the lips of Jesus, and in this case, of Mary. Imagine her hea
ring that familiar voice speak her name. The experience would have been unforgettable, and she would have been sure to repeat those very words when she recounted the story, at first to the disciples, perhaps to the evangelist, and to anyone who would listen, probably until the day she died. Her own friends and circle of admirers would have treasured and preserved this Aramaic call and response: Mariam . . . Rabbouni.
Not until Jesus speaks her name does Mary know him. At first, Mary couldn’t recognize him, but she knew that distinctive voice with the Nazarean accent—the voice that called her into wholeness when it expelled whatever demons troubled her, the voice that welcomed her into his circle of friends, the voice that told her she was valued in the eyes of God, the voice that answered her questions, the voice that laughed over a meal, the voice that counseled her near the end of his earthly life, the voice that cried out in pain from the cross. Mary knew that voice because it was a voice that had spoken to her in love. Then she recognized who it was. Because sometimes seeing is not believing. Loving is.
We learn to recognize the voice of God in our lives, but often only gradually. St. Ignatius Loyola said that the voice of God can be recognized because it is uplifting, consoling, encouraging. In time we learn to listen for that voice in our hearts; it becomes easier to identify, and when we hear it clearly, it is easier to answer. It is the voice that calls us to be who we are meant to be. It is the voice that called Peter from the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Matthew from his tax collector’s booth, Bartimaeus from the side of the road, Zacchaeus from the sycamore tree, and Mary Magdalene from whatever had kept her unfree. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he calls his sheep by name and they know his voice.15
Mary apparently reaches out to embrace Jesus, for he says, “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.’”
That strange utterance must have further baffled an already baffled Mary. Jesus is referring to the Ascension, when he will “ascend” to the Father in full view of the disciples. Somehow Jesus is not in a state where he can be touched—something that changes when Jesus later appears to the disciples. Later Jesus will demonstrate that he is corporeal by eating a fish before his friends and by saying to them, “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”16 Jesus will even invite Thomas to probe the nail marks on his hands and his feet and the wound in his side, where a centurion thrust his lance during the Crucifixion. But not now.
“Do not hold on to me” may have another meaning. Jesus reminds the woman who loves him so much and who now wants only to embrace him that the more urgent task is to spread the Good News. As much as we want to cling, in a sense, to profound spiritual experiences, they are often given to us so that we might share them.
But Mary asks nothing about the Ascension. She has something else to do first. Jesus gives her a mission, and she immediately carries it out. She races to the disciples to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord” (Eōraka ton kyrion), and recounts all that she has seen. Thus my favorite title for Mary is not “prostitute” or “sinner” or even “female disciple,” but “Apostle to the Apostles.” She is the one sent to those who are sent. She announces the Good News to those who are to announce it.
Mary Magdalene reminds us that the most powerful tool for spreading the Good News is not knowledge, but experience. There is place for both in the Christian life, and scholarship and learning have provided inestimable riches for the faith. But the true disciple does not say simply, “I have studied Jesus,” but as Mary Magdalene did, “I have seen the Lord.”
THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES SHOW that the Risen Christ understood what each of the disciples needed in order to believe. Mary needed to hear her name. A few lines after Mary’s story, the Gospel of John recounts the story of the Apostle Thomas, who was not present when Mary announced Jesus’s resurrection to the other disciples.17 Thomas does not believe their reports and demands more tangible proof. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
For this statement, he is saddled with the unfortunate moniker Doubting Thomas, which seems unfair. Consider that his fellow disciple Peter not only doubted, but denied Jesus at a crucial juncture. Despite this lapse, he is called Prince of the Apostles and has a great basilica named after him in Rome. And Thomas had good reason to doubt. “Jesus come back from the dead? Are you kidding? Preposterous.” Thomas may have thought his friends labored under some mass delusion.
Sometimes I wonder if Jesus chose Thomas as an apostle specifically for his probing mind or his inability to be deceived, both important attributes for a disciple. Thomas may simply have been more demanding when it came to proof—moreover, he is asking for nothing more than what Jesus offered the others when he appeared to them in the Upper Room in John’s Gospel.18 On the other hand, perhaps Thomas should have believed what so many of his close friends, so many reliable witnesses, had told him.
Or conceivably Thomas was sad that he missed his chance to see Jesus. During a meditation on this passage, I once imagined Thomas not only feeling crushed after the Crucifixion, but also devastated that he wasn’t there to see the Risen Christ with the others. He missed out. Thomas may have felt hurt, wondering if Jesus considered him to be unworthy to witness an appearance.
We have to wonder if Thomas grew tired of hearing the story of his famous doubt. There is a tradition that Thomas eventually traveled to India, where he preached the Gospel. Maybe it was to get away from all those stories.
But if tradition is hard on Thomas, Jesus was not. When he appears to the group a week after Mary’s announcement, Thomas is present. But Jesus doesn’t castigate his friend, or say, “Get behind me, Satan,” as he had in the face of Peter’s misunderstanding. Jesus begins by saying to the assembled crowd, “Peace be with you.”
What does Jesus do then? Scold Thomas or condemn him? Cast him out of the community? No, he gives Thomas what he needs: physical proof. “Put your finger here and see my hands.”19 Then he reminds others about the value of faith. Without even putting his hands into Jesus’s wounds, Thomas exclaims: “My Lord and my God!” He is overcome with the person before him, and perhaps embarrassed.
The Risen Christ is gentle with doubters, with those who need reconciliation, and with those who are so confused that they cannot see him. This is especially important today when many Christians handle doubt and confusion with threats and expulsion. See how the Risen Christ responds to doubt. He calls someone’s name. He shows. He explains. He welcomes. He forgives. In such quiet ways are people invited to know the Risen One.
The Risen One shows us that God meets us where we are. God understands the variety of ways in which disciples live out their faith. So the Gospels tell us not simply about God, but also about ourselves. Are you confused, or do you sometimes even deny God, as Peter does? Do you need God to speak to you in a personal way, as Mary does? Are you like Thomas, who needs concrete evidence of God’s activity in your life? Or are you like the Beloved Disciple, who is so united with Jesus that, without evidence, he simply believes? However you come to your belief, God understands, just as the Risen One understood the disciples.
THE APPEARANCE STORIES ARE also a reminder that the Risen Christ is identifiable with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ of faith is identifiable with the Jesus of history. The idea that Jesus of Nazareth died and a new person was created is a misunderstanding of the miracle of the Resurrection. The Jesus who is risen from the tomb knows what the disciples need because he knew them. And they know him now because they knew him during his public ministry. Mary recognizes his voice because she had heard it before. The appearances beautifully link Jesus of Nazareth with the Risen Christ.
Stanley Marrow has a marvelous summation of this idea:
The risen Lord had to be recognizably and identifiably the Jesus of Nazareth, the ma
n whom the disciples knew and followed, whom they saw and heard, with whom they ate and because of whom they now cowered behind closed doors for “fear of the Jews.” For him to have risen as any other than the Jesus of Nazareth that they knew would void the resurrection of all its meaning. The one they had confessed as their risen Lord is the same Jesus of Nazareth that they had known and followed. Showing them “his hands and his side,” which bore the marks of the crucifixion and the pierce by the lance, was not a theatrical gesture, but the necessary credentials of the identity of the risen Lord, who stood before them, with the crucified Jesus of Nazareth whom they knew.20
The Risen One carries within himself the experiences of his humanity. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine.
THE RESURRECTION IS THE center of my faith. Other Christians may focus more on, say, the Incarnation—how God became human, how God understands us in the most intimate way possible. Or they may center their discipleship on the Beatitudes—as a template for the Christian life and a guideline for their actions. These are important aspects of the life of Christ. But the Resurrection is my own spiritual center. Every day I return to that theme—or more broadly, the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
What does the Resurrection have to do with us? After all, in all likelihood, we are not going to be crucified, though Christians are still persecuted around the world. And here’s another question we haven’t yet explored—because we couldn’t answer it without considering the Resurrection: What does Jesus mean when he says, in the Synoptics, “Take up your cross daily”? After that seemingly masochistic invitation, he says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”21 What does it all mean?