Yesterday was the annual Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, an occasion which is not exactly a high priority for Protestants, not to mention that it's tucked away in the heat of summer. Some of the Roman Catholics I follow noted it, but that wasn't enough to get me writing.
Last evening I read a sermon (something I almost never do) by Diana Butler Bass at the recent Wild Goose Festival in the United States. It was entitled All the Mary's and drew on the scholarly explorations of Elizabeth Schrader who have been devoted to unravelling the confusion over Marys in the Gospels. Butler Bass looks at Luke 10:38-42 and John 11. In the intro to the sermon Diana concludes with: "I invite you to imagine with me --What would Christianity [have] been like if we'd known about Mary the Tower the entire time? What does it mean for us going forward?"
The sermon deserves a thorough reading or hearing but I was struck by Butler Bass's invitation to consider Mary of Magdala as a "towering" figure in the New Testament. Magdala was a fishing community whose name meant tower, hence Mary Magdalene. While in the history of the church this Mary was mythologized as a woman of ill repute, there is no evidence for that conclusion -- one more example of the demeaning and sexualization of women?
Using Schrader's exploration of texts in the original languages Butler Bass posits that the Martha in John 11, the story of the raising of Lazarus is actually Mary and that her "yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God" is a Christological statement on par with Peter's "you are the Messiah" in Mark 8. If Peter is the Rock, why don't we recognize Martha/Mary as the Tower.
Have you dozed off yet? While this scholarly premise is above my pay grade I really like the notion of Mary the Tower. Beyond Schrader's premise, which is worth considering, Mary Magdalene was faithfully present as Jesus died an agonizing death on the cross. She was the grieving and astonished first witness of the Risen Christ outside the empty tomb on Easter morning. And she was the first evangelist, sharing the Good News with the disciples who were hidden away in sorry and bewilderment.
How did it become all about Peter as the go-to guy for the genesis of the Christian church and that whole papacy thing? Um, was it because he was a guy?
I encourage you to ponder this, and maybe give a listen to Diana Butler Bass's sermon. Mary the Tower...I could get used to that moniker.
https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/all-the-marys#details
https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/mary-the-tower (text)
Here is another link to a blog entry about Mary by Rachel Held Evans who died an untimely death in 2019
https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/mary-magdalene-the-witness
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