[Vision2020] An Easter Message from the Palouse Pundit

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

I just got back from three weeks in Cabo San Lucas, and while I was there, I bagged a weekly column with the "Los Cabos Daily News," the other Daily News, with two full pages of op eds.  It's quite nice to see my column along with those from the Wash. Post and the LA Times.

There are several thousands ex-pats there, as well as upwards of 10,000 Americans and Canadians there during high season. Even though I try hard, I have yet to become a Town Crier here, but now I suppose I can call myself "The San Lucas Crier."

I have dedicated the Easter essay below to Keely for two reason: (1) She embodies the spirit of Christ better than any Christian I know on the Palouse; and (2) I think that a previous Keely incarnation must have been the model for Leonardo's Mary Magdalene.

See what you think by viewing the image that I've embedded in the full length version of the essay at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/MaryM.htm.

MARY MAGDALENE: APOSTLE TO THE APOSTLES

By Nick Gier

The great success of "The Davinci Code" has focused the spotlight on Mary Magdalene, one of the most remarkable women in the Bible.  She is described as an independent woman, who "provided for [Jesus and the disciples] out of their means" (Lk. 8:2-3). 

The sometimes prurient speculation about her being Jesus' secret lover and wife has obscured the fact that, first and foremost, Mary was the "apostle to the apostles," an honorific that Augustine, one of the greatest orthodox theologians, actually gave her.  After all, Paul defined apostleship as any person who had seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1).

It took two millennia for the Catholic Church to dispose of the long standing myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. In 1969 the Church indirectly removed the stain of her alleged sins by assigning new scriptural readings for her saint's day on July 22. 

Passages from the erotic Song of Songs are no longer read, and the passage from Luke 7:37-38 about "a woman from the city, who was a sinner" is also deleted.  Catholics now read the poignant passages from the Book of John (20:1-2, 11-18), in which Mary is the first to see and talk with the risen Christ.

The story of Magdalene as a prostitute was the result of mistakenly identifying Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (John 12:1) and an unknown woman "who was a sinner" (Luke 7:37-38), both of whom took oil and bathed Jesus' feet with their hair. 

This conflation of New Testament women was made official in a famous sermon by Pope Gregory I in 591, and was imprinted in millions of Christian minds with paintings of the penitent Mary Magdalene with loose red hair carrying an alabaster jar of ointment. 

Gregory's claim that Mary had "turned the mass of her crimes to virtues"  presents to all Christians, as Susan Haskins explains, "the redeemed whore and Christianity's model of repentance, a manageable, controllable figure, and effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own sex."

In the Jewish tradition anointing someone with oil is a ritual for making that person a messiah (an "anointed one"), and the priests of Israel and even King Cyrus were messiahs (Is. 45:1). So perhaps it is Luke's unnamed woman who officially makes Jesus the Messiah.  In Matthew's account of this story, the woman is not a sinner, and Jesus praises her by predicting that "wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her" (26:13).

Matthew and John see the woman's anointment not as messiahship but as preparation of Jesus' body for burial, an equally important sacred ritual.  Bruce Chilton, professor of religion at Bard College, observes that anointing with oil was a priestess's job in the ancient Near East, and it is not surprising that New Testament women play this significant role.

Women in the early church played significant roles.  Single women traveled and preached with Paul as equals; and Priscilla, who was later martyred and canonized, had a church in her home.  John Mark's mother also hosted some of the earliest Christian worship in her home.  In her book "When Women Were Priests," Karen Torjesen offers strong evidence that women officiated at the Eucharist in these early Christian services. 

Returning to Mary Magdalene, we need to address the question of why so many women and men are now identifying so fervently with her. Diane Apostolos- Cappadona may have the answer: "[Mary] was an independent woman . . . . she didn't need a child, she didn't need a husband. . . . She becomes the preacher, the missionary, the evangelist, the healer, the miracle worker. . . . These are the things that attract people to her." 

As we celebrate Easter this year, let's think of Mary Magdalene, a woman of means and spiritual achievement, the first witness to the Resurrection, and the apostle to the apostles.