The Woman

By

Reverend Litton Logan

April 8, 2007

Scriptures:

John 20:1--18 (NRSV)
¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,^£ “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “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.’” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Sermon:

The Gospel of John opens with a creation hymn not unlike the opening pages of Genesis.  John’s creation hymn tells its readers or hearers that God’s very reason or purpose for all creation, for all life in the universe, became incarnate and dwelt among us as truly human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The resurrection of Jesus is, if you will, the final stanza of John’s creation hymn where in God imposes God’s will on the last vestiges of chaos—death.

We may speculate all we want to about the “hows”, “whys” and “wherefores” of the resurrection event, as modern folks seem to want to do, but the fact remains that the resurrection event is the life giving and life sustaining fuel of Christianity that each one of us affirms in the depths of our being every time we proclaim Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Having said that, let us look at our scriptures for today.  In John’s Gospel, the resurrection event has two main characters—Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Typically, we focus on Jesus at the expense of Mary Magdalene. 

In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb alone.  In the other gospels, at least one other woman usually accompanies her.  Contrary to the male dominated account of the resurrection as given by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-7, women, or in our case today, a woman, are the first witnesses to the empty tomb of Christ in all four gospels.  Moreover, in two of the Gospels they are the first witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. 

          Let me point out that those women that  are explicitly named or alluded to in the Gospels generally fall into two categories—women who were healed by Jesus and those that tended to Jesus.  Mary Magdalene seems to fall into both categories—Jesus may have healed her as well as she tended to and supported Jesus. 

In today’s resurrection account, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb; she sees the tomb stone rolled away, and assumes that someone has stolen Jesus’ corpse.  She hurries to report this to the disciples. Peter and the beloved disciple are the first to enter the empty tomb but they do not see Jesus or the angels.  The beloved disciple sees the burial linens and believes Mary’s report that Jesus’ body has been taken. However, there is no mention of Peter believing Mary. It seems that for Peter Jesus’ body is just missing.  No one seems to take into account the fact that some would be grave robber has taken the time to unwrap the burial cloth from Jesus’ body.  After Peter and the other disciple leave, Mary lingers.

It seems that morbid curiosity finally gets the best of Mary, and she looked into the tomb for herself.  When she looks into the tomb, she encounters two angels or messengers setting in the tomb.  These messengers ask her why she is crying and she replies that someone has stolen the body of her Lord and she doesn’t know what they have done with his body.  Mary is so distraught that two men in white setting in Jesus’ empty tomb provoke no response.  Mary seems confused as she turns from the two angels and encounters a man. At first, she thinks he is the caretaker of the cemetery.  However, when the man asks why she is crying she accuses him of being a grave robber.  She implores him to tell her where he has put the remains of Jesus so she may fetch him.  Imagine Mary in her grief carrying the corpse of a full-grown man.

The man speaks Mary’s name and with the spoken word of her name, the resurrected Jesus becomes real in Mary’s life.  Mary cries out, “Rabboni”—the Semitic word for “My great one” as opposed to John’s weaker translation of rabbi or teacher.

Mary rushes toward Jesus and embraces him.  Jesus tells her to turn loose of him.  This is an incident ripe with speculation as we find in Dan Brown’s book, The De Vinci Code. There is no reliable, historical evidence to support Dan Brown’s position concerning Jesus and Mary Magdalene, just as there is no evidence to support Pope Gregory’s claims in 591 C.E. that Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute. Three decades ago the Catholic Church quietly admitted what biblical scholars had been saying for centuries—there is no evidence to support the idea that Mary Magdalene was an immoral woman.

We do not know when or where Jesus met Mary Magdalene or what her condition was when he met her.  We read in the “long ending” of Mark and in Luke (8:2) that Jesus cured Mary Magdalene of demonic possession.  Since demonic possession was at the time associated with physical, moral, and spiritual sickness, neither passages indict Mary Magdalene’s moral character.

          What Scripture does tell us about Mary Magdalene is she was a Galilean woman of means and unencumbered.  She provided for Jesus’ ministry financially; she witnessed the crucifixion; she witnessed the entombment; she went to anoint Jesus body in the tomb; she witnessed angels and other signs at the tomb, and she was either the first or one of the first people to see the resurrected Jesus. In Matthew and John, she is commissioned and sent to tell the other disciples about the resurrected Jesus, and finally in Matthew and John she tells the disciples about the resurrection.

          Truth is--John in these passages of scripture wants us to focus on the relationship between Mary and Jesus as disciple and teacher not as a man and a woman.  This idea that a woman was a disciple and student of Jesus would have been scandalous enough without adding any boy-girl stuff.  Jesus tells Mary as she embraces him that their relationship cannot be as it once was—teacher to disciple.

          In this encounter with Mary, Jesus is in the process of becoming more than his follower’s teacher.  He is soon to be their Lord and Savior and as the disciple Thomas will later declare, “…my God.” Therefore, Jesus must and Mary must relinquish their former relationship in favor of an emerging, divine relationship.

          However, why is it that women play such a dominant role in the resurrection event and in the Gospels in general during a time when they held subordinate roles to men in every other way? 

          In John’s mind, no longer were people to be excluded from God’s salvation or service because they were classified as outcasts because of their race, gender, religious piety, or being religious outsiders.  I hasten to mention that some of the greatest theological conversations ever reported in Scripture occur between Jesus and social outcasts--women in John’s Gospel: 1) Jesus and the Samaritan woman. 2) Jesus’ conversation with Martha concerning the resurrection.  3) Jesus commissioning and sending the message of his resurrection to his disciples by Mary Magdalene. 

          Instead of seeing women primarily as outcasts in cultural stereotypes, Jesus sees women and speaks to them in terms of their relationship to God. Jesus treated women as people of worth and significance. Jesus allowed and encouraged women to transcend their cultural roles.  Women, as people, were a part of the kingdom norms for Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t avoid women as temptresses, he freely associates with them as friends, disciples, and Mary Magdalene is even commissioned and sent to proclaim Jesus resurrection.  In the New Testament, those who were commission and sent to proclaim the Good News are called apostles. [1]

          In John’s Gospel, why didn’t the angels appear to Peter and the beloved disciple when they peeked into the tomb?  Why didn’t Jesus appear to Peter and the beloved disciple while they were at the tomb? Either we have two different traditions of the resurrection event merged into one in John’s Gospel or there is another reason. 

In John’s Gospel, one cannot answer the questions I’ve posed with the response that it was the task of women to tend to the dead so they would naturally be the first to encounter the angels or the risen Lord.  In John’s Gospel, men are the first to peer into the empty tomb.

Was God rewarding those who had loved, served, and stood by Jesus during his life, his trial, and his crucifixion with the blessing of the first knowledge of the resurrected Jesus?  Were those whom Jesus lifted above culture, tradition, and oppression more needy of affirmation in their tenuous and newfound status? Alternatively and what I believe is the real answer, John is recalling events, words, and teachings of Jesus that addresses attempts at marginalizing women and their contributions in his Christian community?  John is addressing people in his Church who want to classify women as second class Christians in spite of the witness of Jesus’ life and teachings.

John portrays women as active, innovative ministers of the Kingdom and people not to be relegated to the margins, just to the kitchens, just to the nurseries, or just to the serving line.

In life, Jesus taught and lived a radical understanding of the kingdom of God—what God loves, God saves regardless of human cultural or religious perspectives.  In death, Jesus affirms his own faith in God.  In the resurrection, God affirms all that Jesus taught.  In the resurrection, Jesus becomes the new creature of God, the resurrected Christ--the true way to God and eternal life in God.  John 14:6 (NRSV)

 In conclusion, I share these words with you:

²³Jesus said to her [Martha on the occasion of her brother Lazarus’ death], “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Now hear what The Woman said:

²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” John 11:23--27 (NRSV)

Martha knew who Jesus was for her life; do you?