September 01, 2024 | Barbara Turner DeLisle
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” 4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Incredibly, by combining real readings from just three of the world's most important Gospel manuscripts, John 11:1-5 can be fully and sensibly reconstructed without Martha:
There was a certain sick man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary his sister. Now this was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore, Mary sent to him, saying, "Lord, behold, the one you love is sick." But when Jesus heard he said to her, "The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son may be glorified through it." Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sister.
We are in an historic time. We are witnesses of history in the making… and I am not just talking about putting a biracial, black and Indian/Asian woman in the White House… although that sure does qualify!
I’m talking about something even bigger than that… a true time of transformation, for our church, for leadership of women and ultimately for our society. I’m talking about taking the sullied reputation of a woman and not only correcting it, calling out the error and erasing that bad girl rep, but giving her rightful honor for her ability to 1) recognize and name Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and to go even further, to teach the others --- to be the Apostle to the Apostles. A transformation of her reputation from bad girl of the Bible to honored confessor of Christ and leader of the movement of the early church. The “bad girl” I’m talking about is Mary the Magdalene.
Let me tell you a story. There was this young woman named Libbie Schrader. About 11-12 years ago, while living in Brooklyn, NY, she walked to the garden of the Holy Virgin Mother to pray and this is what she heard… “Follow Mary Magdalene” … Huh, curious she thought! As she walked back home a song began composing in her mind about Mary Magdalene. Being a singer/songwriter, she wrote this beautiful song about Mary called simply “Magdalene.” (For those of you interested in hearing it we will play it after the service.) She did some more research, found some original texts that mentioned Mary and noticed some alterations in the fragments. Curiouser and curiouser, …. after speaking to New Testament Professor Diedre Good at General Theological Seminary she enrolled into a New Testament studies program. While there she learned Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew languages and history from early church days, so that she would be able to read and understand the intention of early church writings. Approaching her final year, she asked if she could focus on the Gospel of John and the scriptures about Mary Magdalene for her graduate thesis. Her adviser said yes, as long as she investigated using source materials… original writings of the day. This meant she would be reading and analyzing the fragments and manuscripts in their original languages of Greek, Aramaic, Latin etc.
As luck would have it the Gospels had recently been saved in digital format which meant she would not have to travel to the foreign countries where the original manuscripts are stored in an underground vaults. She could do her research from home by accessing the digital copies by computer. She focused on an original writing in Greek for the gospel of John called papyrus 66, the oldest known copy in existence dating to around 200AD.
Now she had her source material, and she could work at home. (Clue…this is classic Mary at work! Always present in the background, leading, and sometimes pushing you into discoveries that bring more light into the world.) As she began to read through John, she noticed something that didn’t look quite right. She enlarged the copy and low and behold there was a word crossed out and another word inserted. These inconsistencies were repeated throughout the book of John however, the focus for her thesis was on chapter 11. She checked with hundreds of other scholars about this (over 280 to date) and although they acknowledged there were alterations to the text, they were not interested in discovering why. Undeterred, Libbie kept on digging. What you heard in this morning’s reading of the corrected John 11:1-5 is the result of what she found.
The name Mary had been scratched out and changed to Martha by the scribe who copied the gospel of John. And, where the original copy once said sister, it had now been changed to sisters, plural. This instability of the text around Mary and Martha was consistent through all the documents she researched.
Her theory, that Mary Magdalene was the only one present with Jesus and Lazarus, that there was no Martha present in Bethany, and in fact that Lazarus did not even have a sister named Martha, only one named Mary has changed everything. Her thesis was written, accepted, and she graduated but was not done yet. This was too important. This information countered the narrative that has been weighing Mary down since 591 and the day Pope Gregory named her a prostitute in his homily 33.
I’m willing to bet that most of you know of Mary Magdalene’s reputation in the bible as a prostitute. Remember she is the one who Jesus removed 7 demons from? And she is the one who was criticized for washing Jesus’ feet with expensive oil of nard. She has always been thought of as the quintessential “bad girl” of the Bible. This fiction solved 2 problems for the Patriarchy of the Church. According to Libbie, “It undermined both the teachings associated with Mary as well as women’s capacity to take on leadership roles.” This negative interpretation was retracted by the Church in 1969, but the stigma and idea still hang on today.
But that changed in the last 2-3 years and that’s the Good News I want to share with you today. With this new information, Mary, instead of being a woman of inconsequence, becomes a central figure in the gospel…. A woman of great authority and influence. And perhaps even more! Now, Mary Magdalen has credits to her name that actually reposition her place in history, possibly as high as Jesus’ female counterpart, equal in spiritual development and authority.
In biblical scholarship, where information is placed is significant. The first person named in a list of names holds more import than those who come after. The same goes for series of events. In John’s gospel … and John has the privilege of being known as the gospel of signs and the more spiritual of the four canonical gospels… In this gospel John leaves a trail of information that highlights Mary’s position as a spiritual leader of the time. Here is the chronology as outlined by Libbie Shrader Poltczer
John 11:27…Mary Confesses Jesus as Son of God
John 12:3… she anoints him with oil
John 12:7… she serves him
John 19:25-27 Mary Magdalene along with Mother Mary and her sister Mary stay with and witness Jesus’ crucifixion and death
John 20: 16-18 outside the tomb, Mary witnesses the risen Christ, and he sends, or commissions, her to go and tell the disciples
Some of these actions have previously been known and accepted. For instance, that Mary poured expensive oil of nard over Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair is a common scripture reading during Lent. Judas Iscariot complains that she shouldn’t be wasting such expensive oil and Jesus famously replies, “Leave her alone,” “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” He essentially tells Judas, “Settle down” she is just doing what is right (symbolically preparing him for his death).
We know that Jesus’ mother Mary, her sister Mary and Mary Magdalene all stayed at the foot of the cross as Jesus died. And we know that Mary was the first to witness Jesus as risen from the dead, crying out “Rabbouni “which means teacher in Aramaic when she recognizes him. Jesus then commissions her saying in John 20:17“Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her. For this she is known as Apostle to the Apostles
We have heard all of these things read and spoken of most years during the season of Lent. But they have never been put together in such a succinct way to tell the story of Mary the Magdalene. The new piece of the puzzle thanks to Libbie’s scholarship is critical … and that is that she confesses Jesus as Lord and Savior. Until now, Peter is the only one given that accolade as found in MT 16:16-18 where Simon Peter says to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus then blesses Peter, calls him a rock (Peter means rock in Aramaic) and says, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
Only two people in the New Testament are acknowledged to have made this confession… Peter and, now since this new research has emerged, Mary the Magdalene. Until now, until we had this corrected reading of the gospel of John from Libbie Schrader, Martha was the one to confess, “Yes, Lord,” … “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” And Martha is of little consequence. She did not take all the actions that Mary did. She does not have Mary’s authority. And this makes all the difference in the world.
By acknowledging Mary’s critical position, she can now assume the authority that is rightfully hers. She now is a THE central character in John’s gospel story, no longer just a “bad girl” of the bible. This means a world of difference for feminine leadership in the church and in the world. This means a world of difference for girls and women in the world. This means a world of difference for men in the world. This changes everything.
Can you imagine what life would have been like if we had been brought up in a church that had two leaders, one male, Jesus and one female, Mary the Magdalene? How would that have changed our outlook on life? How would that have changed the ability of women to navigate in the world both secular and religious?
By the way, a word about her title. It has always been thought that her name Mary of Magdala meant she came from a town named Magdala. In fact, to this day, you can go visit Jerusalem and be taken to a town named Magdala and be told that this is where Mary of Magdala lived. The thing is, in Libbie Schrader’s research she found that there was no town named Magdala at the time that Jesus and Mary were walking the earth. There were no towns named Magdala anywhere near where they were. As Libbie looked further into Mary’s name, she realized that Magdala did not refer to where she was from. Instead, it was an adjective referring to who she was. Magdala in Aramaic means tower or tower-ess. This was a title given to Mary much as rock was a title given to Peter. And so, it is more appropriate to say Mary the Magdalene rather than Mary of Magdala…. Mary the Tower referring to her very lofty and influential position.
This exciting new information caught the attention of Harvard who, with Libbie's permission included it in their publication. Then Nestle-Aland New Testament Translations, the organization that approves what gets into the bible, heard and called her in for questioning. In the end, they admitted that her work had merit but are not sure how they are going to handle it. Scholars are still reviewing this information and trying to make sense of it. And yes, there are those that will try to dispute it, but the evidence of corruption of the text is clear.
Of course, the question still remains, why were these changes made by the scribes who copied the gospel on these fragments of papyrus? One theory that makes a lot of sense is that the scribe was confused. Possibly copying from two manuscripts that had different information and tried to reconcile the two. Another theory is that in order for the gospel to be accepted into the canon the scribe made a couple changes, diminishing Mary’s role so it wouldn’t be so threatening to the Patriarchal crew deciding which books would make the cut. They did not want Mary to threaten Peter’s position as first and only confessor and as the rock on which the church would be built.
This is a lot to take in I imagine. It certainly caught my attention. And there are many layers to it. But I want to add one more layer that Libbie has recently shared. This I heard in a podcast of a conversation in July 2024 between she and theologian and author Dianna Butler Bass. In it she shares her mystical thoughts on why this happened and why it is emerging now. She is totally perplexed as to why this came through her, but that story is for another time!
Libbie posits, what if the timing of this information coming to light now is just right? What if it couldn’t have been absorbed before now? Perhaps the time was right for the Holy Spirit to bring the power of the feminine forward into the world.
She has also suggested that the gospel laid its life down, just as Lazarus did in the text, so that God might be glorified. In considering the mystical way this information rolled forth Libbie has offered that possibly the sickness rather than referring to Lazarus is really a sickness residing in the text, waiting these millennia to be discovered… uncovered… As the text says, "The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son may be glorified through it."
And even more, that this is the work of the Holy Spirit weaving in and among us to reveal wholeness in the world, to bring healing to a world that has embraced division, a split between male and female, rather than the wholeness that is the true expression of God, male, female and all measures of gender in between… really genderless in the end… or beyond anything we can comprehend.
This information helps us to remember that the bible is a living document. In the summer of 2022 Dianna Butler Bass preached a sermon on the new Mary Magdalene at the Wild Goose Festival to about 700 clergy people in attendance. The information is so groundbreaking, so consequential in the world that within 4 hours her sermon had gone viral reaching 10,000 shares. Currently, as of July 20, 2024, it has now been shared nearly 1 million times. This is incredible… sermons just don’t garner so much attention no matter how good they are! Something different is happening here.
This is the Holy Spirit breaking through in real time. This is history being revealed. Once widely accepted and shared there is no going back. We cannot unsee this. We cannot unhear it. This is transformational. Women’s position in the world is changing. The glass ceiling is breaking. As a meme I have seen expresses… wear your shoes people, there is glass all over the ground! And this is the Good News come to us right here, right now!
Susan Campbell asks, “Can't we look to Mary Magdalene as simply an early church leader whose rightful place next to Christ should have been acknowledged? Now we can answer, a confident Yes, Susan! Mary Magdalene was an early church leader who, as all the scriptures note, was always near Jesus, learning and ministering with him. She has a rightful place next to Christ.
Catholic artist Janet McKenzie knew this and represented it in this beautiful icon of Jesus and Mary Magdalene sitting side by side. In Janet’s words, Mary Magdalene and Christ are seated side by side as visionaries and spiritual teachers with their hands open in the universal gesture of prayer – gifts offered and received – as icons of the sacred. Jesus, the Christ, sent to live among us as The Word Made Flesh and Mary Magdalene, the first one sent to proclaim the Resurrection, are models for the community of disciple-companions sent ‘to the ends of the earth’ to tell and become the Good News for all. Janet painted this before Libbie’s scholarship told us that Mary Magdalene also confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior. All the more fitting that they should be shown seated side by side given what has now been revealed about Mary’s highly developed station as a spiritual tower! Amen and Awomen