A “master story,” or a linear story of Jesus, is captured in the canon. However, according to Dr. Karen King, it’s poor history: “First of all, the story is incomplete and noticeably slanted. The roles of women, for example, are almost completely submerged from view.”6 In what has become the “master story” that the canon in the bible relates, the male Jesus selects male disciples who pass on the tradition, and authority to male bishops. Yet, King argues, “We know that in the early centuries and throughout Christian history, women played prominent roles as apostles, deacons, preachers, and prophets.”7
In 325, Constantine called for the Council of Nicaea, where it was decided which scripture would become a part of the canon and which would then become suppressed (and subsequently destroyed).8 This is also when the church hammered out it’s official creed, the Nicene Creed, which goes something like this: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance of the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man . . .”
The various scriptures that didn’t make the cut to be a part of the canonical bible all had a common theme: the confirmation of the presence of women in Christ’s ministry and his exceptional relationship with Mary Magdalene. For example, the Gospels of Thomas and Philip, among others, confirm that there were three who were always with Jesus: Mary, his mother; Mary, her sister; and Mary of Magdala, who was called his companion.9 One of the most prominent issues that the orthodox church wanted to solve was how to define the role that women would play, especially when it came to apostolic authority: Would women get to be apostles too, and have an equal role in the church?
Aside from funerals and baptisms, the only time of year I went to church after leaving it was to attend the midnight service on Christmas Eve at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland. This is when my mom would never fail to sob during “Silent Night.” They would pass around a box of little white taper candles with tiny paper skirts to catch the wax once they were lit. And then the lights in the sanctuary would be turned off. And we’d slowly, in silence, one by one, light each of our candles by passing the flame around the room from wick to wick.
Grandma Betty would shelter the flame as her candle was being lit and then the tremor in her hand would force her candle’s little skirt to work overtime. Wax would fly this way and that. My little sister Elizabeth and I would laugh with thick love in our eyes seeing her struggle to not get little beads of wax on her hand. And when she did, she’d make the sweetest little shocked “oh!” sound.
It’s not that the idea of god the father was so upsetting to me, it was that it was so incomplete. God as the father and Jesus as his only son made zero sense. It just felt like one side of a far more inclusive and radical love story. We have the masculine, the male, and the divine; but there is also the feminine, the female, and the human.
Here I was wedged next to my Grandma Betty, a being who had actually, physically “begotten” a son with her own body. A being who radiates and exudes the kind of light these tiny lights can only symbolize. And yet there is no word of her in the story. There’s no goddess, no sister, no mother (who births with her actual body in a very human, non-immaculate way). I wonder, and I wonder why more people don’t wonder, what god would be if god was also a She? Or even better, what if god was referred to as the love that most profess god actually is?
If we hadn’t silenced women and asked them to leave the altar from the start, I wonder what the world would be like now. And I wonder how girls and women would be treated if we would have been able, all along, to hear who Christ was, who Christ is according to women, to mothers, to daughters, to the souls in a human body that can actually create life inside them. Or, to put it another way, I’m excited to see how the world might change once we do.
Over the years, I have kindly, respectfully, with curiosity and also with suppressed rage, asked so many priests, ministers, and pastors (and rabbis and imams), if god is not a man, a human, flesh-and-blood man, why is it theologically accurate to use the masculine, gendered noun father?
How is it not irresponsible to refer to god as a he, when we are all—male, female, intersex, transsexual, nonbinary—made equally in the image of the Divine? How can we not see the misleading hierarchy this re-creates every day?
The responses vary when it comes to this deeply held and coveted idea that god is male. There’s aversion: “God the father is an expression of protection and love.” This is usually given with a glance that makes me feel like a freak: Why doesn’t she feel the fatherly vibes? There’s diversion: “What was your relationship to your father?” And there’s deflection: “Well, you know, of course god isn’t really a father; god is simply love.” And this last one is often said with a condescension, as if I’m the one calling god the father and have gotten it all wrong, as if the priest is patting my head. There, there, silly child. We all say father, but we don’t really mean it.
Here’s how I can best explain what it’s like for me sitting in the pew when only god the Father is preached. Remember how in the 1980s, we still thought it was okay to smoke on planes? The statistics had already been reported about the harmful effects of smoking, and even secondhand smoke, but there we were picking our seats in the smoking or nonsmoking section.
And here we are in the 21st century rife with all the statistics on the status of women the world over. The statistics of sexual assault, and abuse, and unequal work wages, and lack of opportunity or education, and forced marriage. Here we are in an age of information about the psychological impact on a girl who only ever hears god referred to as male and as the father. Here we are in a world that practices (or reinforces) within its culture what is preached in its places of worship.
This is what it’s like for me to sit in a church that’s filled with only “god the fathers.” It’s like sitting in the smoking section of an airplane in the 1980s. Everyone around me thinks we’re golden. And I’m sitting there choking on the fumes.
I felt this quixotic mix of rage and devotion, sitting beside Grandma Betty, listening to the congregation sing “Silent Night” slightly off-key, and trying to stomach the constant reference to god as a father, and a father only. I found myself staring at Betty, smiling at her high-pitched “oh!” when the hot wax made it through the paper skirt of her candle, just grateful to be reading the scripture that was glowing right there for me in the creases of her radiant face.
The Angriest Christian I’ve Ever Met
Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, “Look over here!” or “Look over there!” For the child of true Humanity exists within you. Follow it! Those who search for it will find it.
— MARY 4:3–7
He had sandwiched himself between two boards the length of his torso. They were covered with verses from the bible that clearly, in his interpretation, condemned same-sex relationships as sinful. From a distance, I just felt sorry for him. He could barely move. He looked all red and overheated and hurting from carrying around his body-billboards.
And he emanated that kind of lonely sadness that only the truly depressed can emit. I imagined the smell of empty cans of cat food, a scary cross above his bed, and the most terrifying floral pattern on his comforter. He was a small man with a high voice, and I expected to toss a wary yet sympathetic glance his way as I passed. But as I got closer, and his words became more audible, I got offended. And then I felt a blood-curdling rage.
He was calling himself a true Christian, moved by Christ to convert the “sinners” of the world. My women’s college was well known as a safe space for the LGBTQ community, and was located in a small town referred to as the lesbian capital of the world. The veins in his neck were bulging. He was screaming about the wretched people, presumably us, who would burn in hell for their sins. I could
n’t believe the amount of hate and rage that he contained. Nearing him felt like trying to work my way past a human time bomb.
I’ve never identified as straight. The poet Adrienne Rich describes sexuality as a continuum rather than a fixed point. This I identify with.
What feels real is that I fall in love with an aspect of a person that can’t be seen with the eyes, only sensed. I remember lighting up the first time I heard a woman in one of my retreats describe herself as a “sapiosexual.” She was attracted to a person’s intellect. So, I borrowed that for a while. But it’s not the mind that makes me swoon; it’s the heart, the soul of a person. So, maybe I’m a “cardiosexual”? I doubt I would actually ever say that out loud. But for the sake of truth telling here: I fall in love with hearts, with a person’s wild (usually broken), open heart.
“Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, ‘Look over here!’ or ‘Look over there!’” This is a crucial passage from Mary’s gospel, because it directs us to the source of our own truth “within.” And we need to be careful, wary of those who might suggest that they possess a truth we do not. Or that we need to be like them or think like them in order to acquire it for ourselves. We do not need to give away any of our power to anyone, ever.
Let me say that again. We do not need to give away any of our power to anyone, ever.
Because, according to Mary’s gospel, we will find “the child of true humanity” if we search for it “within.” We don’t have to compromise, ever, and settle for an “almost” version of who we are. We do not have to conform to some external truth, some version of what someone else is telling us is better, or more right, more holy, more human. We don’t have to fit in. Isn’t that the most blessed thing we could ever be told, or could ever remember? We don’t have to fit in. We don’t have to contort who we are in order to fit a mold that was never meant for us.
When I was standing close to angry-billboard-man, listening to him condemn us to hell for being “sinners,” I was upset in a way I hadn’t felt since I first read the bible as a little girl and broke out in hives. Or since wanting to confront Mrs. Van Klompenburg from the back seat of her car. If I had hackles, they would have been poofed up, sticking straight out as I came face-to-face with him. Or face to chest—he was really small.
I tried to speak to angry-billboard-man and found that my voice was tripping over itself. I could barely manage to say each next word. The weight of knowing how wrong he was and how right I felt made it impossible to speak calmly or even with much chance of comprehension.
In the moment, I could barely stay in my body, much less convince him of why his hate is so not Christian. I wanted to say something like, “Christians try to love like Christ, not to hate and judge people.” As if I was an expert. But I was too busy having an out-of-body experience. I just screamed that he had no right to condemn us and then I stormed off crying and had a meltdown at campus security.
I was so offended by the fact that he was calling himself a Christian. That he was justifying his homophobia through his faith. And he was so convicted that he was right. It took me months and months to figure out that what really set me off the most about him was the fact that deep down, I was just as convicted about what it means to be a Christian. And it was nothing like his version of hell and damnation and the oppressive laundry list of who you have to be (and not have sex with) in order to get saved, and then admitted into some future, distant “kingdom.”
I was just as convicted of my vision of Christ as angry-billboard-man. Maybe even more.
I just hadn’t found the scripture yet that justified my faith.
The Buddha Tara’s Badass Vow
Go then, preach the good news about the Realm. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I determined for you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it.
— MARY 4:8–10
The Pistis Sophia, a 3rd-century text discovered in 1773, contains dialogues with the risen Christ and his closest disciples, especially Mary Magdalene, but also including his mother, Mary, and Martha of Bethany, Lazarus’s sister. The expression, Pistis Sophia, roughly translates as the Faith of Sophia, or the Faith of Wisdom. Jesus explains who she is by saying, “Son of Man consented with Sophia, his consort, and revealed a great androgynous light. Its male name is designated, ‘Saviour, begetter of all things.’ Its female name is designated, ‘All-begettress Sophia.’ Some call her ‘Pistis.’”
Right, I know. Not that clear. But what seems evident in this text is that there’s a male name and a female name for god, or what’s ultimate. There’s a begetter of all things, and an all-begettress.
In the Gospel of Philip, found in the 20th century among the Nag Hammadi scriptures in Egypt, it is explicitly confirmed that Mary and Christ had a relationship that distinguished her from the other disciples: “The companion [koinonos] of the Son is Miriam of Magdala. The Teacher loved her more than all the disciples; he often kissed her on the mouth.”10
If Christ could choose a woman, a being of the race just barely considered powerful or worthy enough to exist at all during his lifetime, as his koinonos,11 his spiritual companion, his equal, this was a fundamental shift in what it means to be a man and to be a woman.
In the Pistis Sophia, Mary says to Jesus: “My lord, my mind is understanding at all times that I should come forward and give the interpretation of the words which (wisdom) spoke, but I am afraid of Peter, for he threatens me and hates our race.”12
In the 1st century of the Roman Empire when Christ and Mary lived, the hierarchies of existence were entrenched, as it will continue to be for Thecla, and Perpetua in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The female sex, the “race” Mary Magdalene belonged to—the race of women—was considered property, more disposable, and less valuable than a man. Men, especially Roman men in power, were seated up there in the highest echelons of the hierarchical structure.
Christ’s love for and partnership with Mary Magdalene, virtually a slave in Peter’s eyes, the lowest of the lower levels of existence, caused Peter extreme distress, confusion, and threatened his world order. How could Christ love Mary more than him? How could Christ love Mary, a woman, more than him, a man? This was a breach in the structures of power that his own power depended on.
Clearly, the sexes are different physically. The male and female body both internally and externally have organs that are not the same; essential differences for reproduction. What we see, though, when we’re looking at a man or a woman is more than just a body. When we’re looking at the body, we’re also looking at what we ascribe to the male and female body. And that can crowd out the presence of who we are actually encountering.
There’s a whole spectrum of existence that goes unseen, then; the wide continuum of trans, and non-gender-conforming identity that is entirely lost if our vision is geared to only see the male and the female. And when we see things this way, when we project all of our acquired, and borrowed, and learned ideas of what it means to be “male” and what it means to be “female,” onto someone else, we fall into the most ancient illusion, and we forget the central teaching in Buddhism: form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Meaning, the male and the female form have no intrinsic meanings other than what we ascribe to them.
I had a girl crush in college on the Tibetan Green Tara, a female Buddha, because of a badass vow she makes to put an end to the illusion that a male body or a female body is more powerful or holy than the other. I was taking a course in Buddhism and learning to meditate, which led me to a Buddhist retreat where, oddly enough, I first learned the Christian prayer of the heart.
Tara, in Sanskrit, means “to cross over.” She is known as the mother of liberation. She will do anything to help us cross over from suffering to awareness.
I fell in love with her because of the Tara Tantra. In it, Tara incarnates as a king’s daughter. She loves spending her days talking spiritual truths with a group of monks. At one point, they become so sincerely impressed with her, and so
elevated by what she teaches them, that they tell her they will pray for her to reincarnate as a man so that she could become enlightened.
Tara paused for a moment, looked at them with astonishment, and then howled with laughter. No, she didn’t, but when I first read this story that’s what I imagined she did.
Realizing the monks are serious and deeply blinded by the illusion that the female body could inhibit enlightenment in any way, Tara then flips the prayer back on them. She vows right then and there to always reincarnate as a female Buddha until all beings are freed from the suffering that this illusion perpetuates. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
When Christ says, “Do not lay down any rule beyond what I have determined for you,” in the Gospel of Mary—a gospel that predates the exclusion of women from positions of power within the church, which happened in the 4th century—perhaps he’s referring to the illusion that a person can only be worthy of leading the church if they are born male.
It reminds me of a passage from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel A Handmaid’s Tale. Offred is forced to become a Handmaid, which means she must wear red, to symbolize her rank and the fact that she is fertile. Red also because it associates her to sex (and to her sex), though she herself as a Handmaid is forbidden to show passion. The Handmaids are assigned to a Commander and must produce children for him. In the world of Gilead, there are also Econowives, Marthas, and Unwomen, all depending on their usefulness as females to society.
So, in this world, Offred says that she tries to avoid looking down at her body, not out of shame, but because, she explains, “I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.”
The Gospel of Mary wants us to see that we are not just this body. We are also a soul. This human body is the soul’s chance to be here. And this human body, whether male or female, or anything in the spectrum between, does not delimit or determine what’s possible for us.
Mary Magdalene Revealed Page 6