A True Friend Of Jesus

In the church calendar, today marks the feast of Mary Magdalene. Much has been said and written about Mary, but here are the basic facts: 

• Jesus cleansed her of seven demons (as found in Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9)
• She was one of the women who accompanied and aided Jesus in Galilee (Luke 8:1–2) and supported him (and likely his disciples) out of their own means.
• She directly witnessed Jesus crucifixion and burial in the gospel accounts
• Given this, she knew where Jesus was buried and went there on Easter morning and was the first witness to the resurrection (Mark 15:47). She then goes on to tell the apostles who don’t believe her.

Just pause for a moment and take all that in.

Yet how much do we hear about Mary Magdalene?

A lot of Mary’s are mentioned in the gospels (I think there are at least six!). Through the years some have been assumed to be the same person. Some of this historical confusion was almost singlehandedly accomplished by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 CE when he delivered a now famous homily suggesting that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the so-called “sinful woman” mentioned in Luke 7 were the same person. Of course, in the limited imagination of Pope Gregory, he assumed that the “seven demons” exorcised from Mary were related to her sexual sin, and thus it became assumed that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or adulterous woman.

There is no historical or scriptural evidence to support that claim. None. In fact, many scholars throughout history – and especially feminist scholars – would argue that the sexual sin that was attached to Mary Magdalene was done to discredit and delegitimize the incredible role that she played in the life and ministry of Jesus (greater than any of the other male apostles). 

Sr. Joan Chittister, in her book The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible, says this of Mary Magdalene (and I utilize an extensive quote because I find it such a beautiful description):

Mary Magdalene is the woman whom scripture calls by name in a time when women were seldom named in public documents at all. She is, in fact, named fourteen times—more than any other woman in the New Testament except Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, herself. She is clearly a very important, and apparently a very wealthy woman. Most of all, she understood who Jesus was long before anyone else did and she supported him in his wild, free ranging, revolutionary approach to life and state and synagogue. She was, it seems, the leader of a group of women who “supported Jesus out of their own resources.” And she never left his side for the rest of his life.

She was there at the beginning of the ministry. And she was there at the end. She was there when they were following him in cheering throngs…She tended his grave and shouted his dying glory and clung to his soul. She knew him and she did not flinch from the knowing.

The Magdalene factor in friendship is the ability to know everything there is to know about a person, to celebrate their fortunes, to weather their straits, to chance their enemies, to accompany them in their pain and to be faithful to the end, whatever its glory, whatever its grief. The Magdalene factor is intimacy, that unshakeable immersion in the life of the other to the peak of ecstasy, to the depths of hell.

Just sit with those words for a minute and reflect on Mary as the friend of Jesus.

What might it have meant to Jesus to have a friend like that?

What does it mean in our lives to have a friend like that?

Mary Magdalene is, perhaps, one of the greatest models of faith and friendship that we have in our scriptural tradition and yet has been widely ignored or cast aside in favor of her male counterparts (the apostles) who denied, abandoned, doubted and feared. She was the one who was healed by Jesus and NEVER LOOKED BACK.

In the Greek Orthodox tradition, however, Mary Magdalene is considered equal to the apostles and is known as the “apostle to the apostles.” She and the other women were the ones who saw Jesus through it all, supported him out of their own pockets and made his ministry possible. And his appearing to her and the other women after his resurrection could not be a bolder affirmation of the equality of women in the church and in this world.

Theologian Rachel Held Evans notes that so many Easter services begin with “a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “he is risen!” to a chorused response of “he is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman.”

As we move forward in our faith journey, may we study and learn from the witness of Mary – letting her lead us deeper into friendship with Jesus and each other. And may we honor her memory by working for the equality, authority and respect of women wherever we find ourselves.