John 20:1-18
The Easter narrative in John’s gospel begins, happens, and continues through Mary Magdalene.
She finds the empty tomb.
She tells the disciples.
(Then after they focus on a foot race, who did and saw what, how the clothes were lying in the tomb, they leave).
She stays.
She weeps over Jesus.
She meets the angels.
She hears Jesus call her name.
She holds on to Jesus.
She receives instruction from Jesus.
She goes and shares the good news.
In my daughter’s freshman year of high school, the theatre department selected Sister Act for its winter musical. As with any musical she is in, this meant we spent countless hours listening to the soundtrack of Sister Act. And I’ll never forget my reaction when I heard these lines from “Sunday Morning Fever”:
Feel the flow, dig the scene.
Shake it like you’re Mary Magdalene.
Come and let that Sunday morning fever…
make your footsies fly!
What?! Is this what Mary Magdalene’s reputation has been reduced to?!
Now don’t hear me wrong, I think feeling the flow, shaking it, and making your footsies fly on the dance floor (or in church) are great things to do.
But this is the woman who stayed. This is the woman who first saw the risen Christ. This is the woman who is the first to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. And the best we can come up with is to “shake it” like her?!
I regularly registered my dissent with this line in the musical to my poor daughter…and still do from time to time. By this point in her life, she has learned to expect oddly specific, strong opinions from me on certain religious matters; and the history of interpretation’s act in obscuring the legacy of Mary Magdalene is definitely worth vehement opposition.
No where in the New Testament is Mary Magdalene called a prostitute.
She is mentioned in Luke 8:1-3 and Mark 16:9 as a woman disciple who followed Jesus from whom seven demons were driven, as well as featured prominently in the resurrection narratives of all four gospels.
However, somewhere along the way, people decided that the woman mentioned in Luke 7:36-50 was also Mary Magdalene. In that passage, a woman in the city who was a sinner (Luke 7:37) uninvitedly joins a dinner party at the home of a Pharisee where she anoints Jesus’ feet with tears and perfume. Jesus heralds this woman as an exemplar of discipleship.
But the woman in that passage is not named Mary Magdalene. Further, the woman in Luke 7 is also not called a prostitute. She is a sinner who lived in that city. But so is everyone else who lived in that city. As a matter of fact, Peter also calls himself “a sinful man” just two chapters earlier in Luke 5:8, but we don’t assume that he is a prostitute or that his sin is sexual.
Somewhere between the first Easter morning and the musical Sister Act being written, interpreters, theologians, church leaders, and even modern-day preachers have found it necessary to undeservedly denigrated the character of this first evangelist.
Church historians and scholars in the history of biblical interpretation propose academic reasons for why this has happened, but the bottom line is that men in power created (create) ways to make sure they stay in power.
I can only imagine how many women who were and are also called by God to share the good news of Christ also had their characters unfairly maligned as divisive, agenda-driven, power-hungry, corrupting the minds and lusts of men, and unfaithful to scripture and the gospel itself.
May the undeserved and unfair slandering of women die this Easter, giving way to resurrection resurrected in the form of celebrating the call of women to share the good news of Christ.
May this Easter be the resurrection of Mary Magdalene.
And in the revised spirit of the musical Sister Act, this Easter may women in ministry everywhere, “…preach it like you’re Mary Magdalene, make the good news fly!”
Meredith Stone is Executive Director for Baptist Women in Ministry.
This blog series made possible in part by a gift from Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC.