"Forgiven" by Greg Olsen. Used with Permission. www.GregOlsen.com
Mary went to the tomb in the middle of the night and found it empty. She went back to the disciples, and brought Peter (and probably John) to the tomb. They went in. They confirmed it was empty. They left. Mary remained. Mary wept. Then a voice from outside. ‘Why are you weeping?’
‘They’ve taken my lord. If you know where he is, tell me and I will look after his body.’ She thinks he is the gardener. ‘Mary,’ he says, and her heart leaps. It’s him.
I always thought of Mary Magdalene’s discovery of Jesus’ resurrection as a ‘right place, right time’ kind of thing. That she just happened to be the one to discover that he had risen, because she happened to be the one going to the tomb to do the ‘women’s work’ of washing his body and preparing it for burial. That if Peter and the disciple Jesus loved (who I’ve always thought of as John), had rocked up to pray over the body, they would have been the one to whom Jesus revealed himself.
But he chose her. Peter and John were there. They were in the tomb. And Jesus was there. Watching. Waiting. He could have revealed himself to them then and there. ‘My brothers,’ he would have said, ‘stand not your Shiva for I am here’. And then it would have been Peter and John’s mourning that was turned into dancing.
I get now why Pope Gregory performed the character assassination on Mary Magdalene in 581, and why the Catholic Church maintained that fiction for so long afterwards. Because how could you continue to suppress and oppress women when Jesus, your lord and saviour, chose her - a woman - to reveal himself to. The single most important moment in the history of Christianity, and it’s a woman who gets the starring role.
Not only is she the one that Jesus chooses to reveal himself to, but he gives her an important job - proclaim. To go forth and proclaim to his followers that he is risen. Be the one to bring the message to the world that he is alive.
By 581 there’s already Christian narrative that excludes women from positions of leadership and authority. It’s one of a few different Christian ‘sects’ - the other most relevant being the one that includes Mary’s gospel, allowing Mary herself to be a disciple to the disciples and a teacher and leader in her own right.
So of course Pope Gregory calls her morals into question. Her sexuality. Her ‘sinfulness’. Apparently forgetting everything that Jesus ever said about sins being forgiven, he expunges her legacy using shock tactics, for who would follow a woman with such a sordid past.
(I note here that scholars are pretty certain that Mary Magdalane was not, in fact, a sex worker. That said, in my view, whether or not she was makes absolutely no difference to her role in the gospel. And I believe that it would have made no difference to Jesus either.)
Weird how he can’t explain why Jesus chose Mary as his messenger notwithstanding this ‘terrible’ past. He’s literally making it up as he goes along, this idea that Mary is a former sex-worker, to try to downplay her authority. And it works, to a certain extent.
But you can’t take her out of the story completely. Sex worker or not, she was the one that Jesus chose to appear to. Chose as his messenger. He chose her.