More About Mary Magdalene

Scripture: Gospel of Mary Magdalene: Dialogue One
FCCSR Sabbaticval Replacement - June 28, 2014

The scripture reading from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene brings the reality of that text into our worship space. Recent scholarship and the examination of that text have opened my eyes about Christianity in ways I never dreamed possible 30 years ago. I’m going to preach today like they tell us to NEVER preach. We are going to go galloping along through some history of the Gospel, politics of the time it was written, Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus, non-dual being, personal transformation, scriptural deconstruction, and my mother’s underwear.

It is an intimate journey to delve into the new Mary Magdalene scholarship so I want to use an intimate metaphor to make my point about what this has been like for me and what I want to communicate to you. As a child I was deeply attuned to my mother and the things that made her happy and the things that caused her suffering. Playing at her feet and being near her body I absorbed many intimate details of her emotional states. I loved hearing her cries of joy when she scored huge points in a game of Canasta. And I felt her relief from suffering when I watched her take her girdle off at the end of the day. She would sigh with a sigh that went inside me and allowed me to relax too. Then she would put on her red wool bathrobe and hold me on her lap. I hated that girdle becauseI knew it bound her up, gave her a stomach ache and made her inaccessible to me in some way.

When I read the Mary Magdalene scholarship I’m going to share with you today I felt like I was taking a girdle off my head which has been binding me up for 35 years since seminary, and I didn’t even know I had it on. The Gospel has enabled me to sigh and relax and it has deepened and completed me in my faith, like having a cuddle on my momma’s lap. Maybe today’s sermon will help you take a girdle of perception off your heads regarding the Bible. I hope you can settle in for a cuddle. Those with ears to hear this, let them hear.

This Gospel was not discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi trove. It first came to light before that in 1896, discovered by a German collector in an antiquities market in Cairo. There is a tendency to hide and hoard this kind of information so the first German scholarly edition did not appear until 1955.

It is a 5th century Coptic/Egyptian version and two earlier 3rd century Greek versions have also been found which confirm it was a common text copied and circulated widely in early Christianity. Check that off your list, it is for real.

Only about half of the Gospel exists in four dialogues or scenes with Jesus covering metaphysical teachings. In stark contrast with the four cannon Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke John) the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary Magdalene highlight how we haven't been given much of Jesus’ metaphysical teachings…so it’s an exciting next step into knowing him better. We have read the first dialogue of Mary today.

There is much to explore in this first Dialogue: 1) The interweaving of all reality, 2) attachment to matter, 3) the question of sin, 4) the indwelling of the “Son of Humanity” and 5) not making too many rules or laws that will dominate our spiritual journey.

That’s it! It’s those unwritten rules and laws about scripture that have felt like a girdle on my head. For example, the unwritten rule in Bible study that Mary Magdalene is a prostitute, that Jesus was not married and that women were not disciples. I don’t believe any of that any more.

So I’m going to resist exploring the text and instead tell you about Mary’s role in teaching us about resurrection.

There are some things to understand before we willy nilly tear the girdle off our heads. I need to prepare you so we can take this journey into more of Cynthia Bourgeault’s scholarship from her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: I’ll transmit some of what Bourgeault teaches and you can read the book and decide for yourself how it fits into your faith perspective.

1) Overwhelming scholarship to debunk the myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. If you want convincing there stacks of books at this point to prove there were political reasons to discredit her. I’ll name one later.

2) Jesus taught the path of personal transformation which was the slow and persistent overcoming of the ego through a lifelong practice of surrender and non-attachment. His methodology was gradual, conscious and sober. Not much of this came through the New Testament as we received it.

3) The late arriving non-cannonical (didn’t make it into the Bible) gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Philip belong to the tradition of universal wisdom with its core teaching being this personal transformation.

4) There was a powerful clash of perspectives in Christianity from the very beginning between Peter’s perspective and Mary Magdalene’s perspective.

5) Matthew, Mark, Luke and John emphasize Peter’s perspective of “right belief” , Mary’s perspective emphasizes deep personal metabolizing of the ego and transformative personal change.

6) So we’ve got the “Transformation” followers and the “Right Belief” followers in early Christianity. When the “Transformation” followers saw that the “Right Belief” gospels were winning, so to speak, they buried the Transformation texts in jars in the desert. The Right Belief followers had a good reason to discredit Mary Magdalene and call her a whore because it helped them discredit the “transformation school.”

7) We have vestiges of the teachings of transformation when Jesus frequently said “you guys don’t get it” he was talking about his message of personal transformation. He had an inner circle of people who were on the same page with him about surrender and non-attachment.

 SIDEBAR: Speaking for myself and perhaps for our Buddhist practicing pastor I can say that because this metaphysical and transformation piece are missing in the Christian teaching we have serious spiritual seekers today combining Christianity with other paths like Buddhism so they can find transformation teaching or they leave Christianity completely.

8) Mary was definitely in Jesus’s inner circle, in fact she was called “first among the disciples.” Of all the disciples she is the one who fully understands his message and reproduces it in her own life. FIRST on the scene at the resurrection is the giant clue written in invisible ink right before our eyes the whole time.

OK. Are you with me so far? This is a lot of heady stuff but now I’m going to tell you the good part about taking off the girdle.

We remember all the scriptures that acknowledge Mary’s devotion to Jesus. She washed his feet with costly oil, she was there at the foot of the cross after the others had run away. Mary followed the small entourage that took Jesus’s body from the cross to place it in the tomb and she held vigil at the tomb after everyone else had gone home. She was there first thing in the morning to discover the empty tomb. Mary was the first one to see the Resurrected Christ and the one instructed to go and tell the others. She wasn’t just a devoted disciple.

No, there is powerful evidence to suggest that Mary and Jesus were partners. It doesn’t matter if they were married or lovers or spiritual partners in a plutonic relationship. Because we have been taught that Jesus was a celibate single male (created in the image of Catholic priests) it is fun to contemplate what it means if he was married like 100% of all men and women during this period of history. Everyone’s survival depended upon being married at an early age and there is stacks of scholarship to deconstruct the celibate Jesus myth too.

It is a provocative thought but I hope you can save this question about Jesus’ physical relationship with Mary to think about in the car on the way home and follow me to the most important point of my message today.

Jesus and Mary loved each other and had a deeply spiritual connection. There is much to say about the kind of love between Jesus and Mary. It is nothing like the romantic love so valued in our culture today. It is called conscious love and it is love in the service of inner transformation. Among esoteric and mystical Christians it is called the “Fifth Way.” It emphasizes the conscious and implicitly relational path of Christian love. It’s energy is always radiating outward and it is never self-defended or congealed…it is a fluid inner state of spiritual awakening in which two people together are aware and connected to the cosmic oneness of the universe.

They no longer believe in God which implies otherness….they participate in God so there is no separation between the beloveds and God. There is only ONE.

Joke: You remember what the Buddhist said to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.

As ONE in life when Mary and Jesus are separated by his death something extraordinary happens. Their quality of love created an energy field which I know many of us have experienced with those we deeply love. And with conscious love this energy field is so strong it has its own body with a subtle substantiality. Sacred wisdom traditions here in the West have called it the “subtle body,” the “Light Body,” the “resurrection body,” and the “wedding garment.” While they were both alive in the flesh this subtle body or soul of their love remained invisible.

But when Jesus died their hearts were stretched taut to accommodate the vast distance that had opened up between them. They weren’t separated but there was the cosmic chasm caused by death.

Over 35 years I have pastored to many widows who like Mary were feeling this cosmic chasm after their husband’s death. They continue to feel their beloved and they hold aspects of his being or his final suffering and they KNOW he is not gone because they feel his presence.

Right after I read this book I was invited to preach at the Cloverdale church where I had pastored for almost 12 years. I saw a dear church member whom I had not seen since the death of her much adored husband. “Oh Elaine,” I said, “I’m so sorry you have lost Bud.” “Oh Gayle”, she said with confidence and sparkling eyes, “I haven’t lost him, we have coffee together every morning in our rock collecting room.” I thought of Mary Magdalene and how she is the one who taught us about the resurrection. Elaine experiences resurrection every day when she has coffee with Bud. It gave me shivers and I deeply understood what she was saying because of just reading this book.

Here is the point I have been galloping toward with all my heart.

Mary is the one who taught us about resurrection because she is the one who was a sky walker with Jesus and her heart instantly soared across the divide between life and death searching for her beloved, following the curve of their mutual yearning for each other…like Elaine followed Bud and held the tether of his subtle body.

After Jesus died the conscious love of Mary and Jesus are one in time and one in eternity and they become what is called “pancosmic” and their love is a natural energetic bridge connecting heaven and earth.

This excites me because I have seen it myself happen over and over again between people who have a spiritual connection when one of them dies.

To read what Bourgeault has written about this connection during the first days after Jesus death when Mary was holding the tether of Jesus during the three days before he appeared to her is a spiritual feast. Let me commend the book to your reading list…and help you if your girdle is still stuck on your head.

Take off the idea that we know with certainty the things we claim to know about the Jesus story. Being able to use this current scholarship and my own imagination has deepened my faith. That the personal, human love between Mary and Jesus revealed the resurrection makes sense to me and makes me giddy.

Not long after reading this book I was called to the deathbed  of a former parishioner who had completely lost her faith. She didn’t want to hear about Jesus or God and she didn’t want a minister to attend her death. She felt a connection with me that made her feel safe. She felt she was dying into an pit of nothingness. I had buried her husband with whom she was very close so I used the cosmic energetic bridge of love to help her cross over.

“Margaret,” I said, “You can find the bridge to David. His love for you and your love for him is still alive and that love is a bridge that will help you cross over. Let your love for David guide you into the unknown.” Her health aide had known David too and she took up the loving mantra during Margaret’s final days. “Follow your love for David.” Margaret died a peaceful death with the photo of David as a young man in his WW II uniform at the foot of her hospital bed in her living room.

Resurrection is as tangible as the deepest love you have felt for a lover or a child or a pet. Many of us have felt the energy of a loved one after they have died. Our understanding of Jesus’ resurrection is because of Mary’s love for him and their connection after his death. A huge portion of our Christian story has grown out of the love between a man and a woman.

So here we are with the girdle removed. Who knew there was so much MORE ABOUT MARY MAGDALENE!

Amen.

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison