Who can relate to having their authority and experience doubted and dismissed out of prejudice, simply because of who they are, with no respect for what they know or what they can do?

Who can relate to having their authority and experience about God and about spiritual and moral matters doubted and dismissed out of prejudice, simply because of who they are, with no respect for what they know or what they can do? Who can relate to it being religious authorities doing that doubting and dismissing, out of prejudice and disrespect?

Well, you may have a patron saint in Mary Magdalene. And she may have some good news for you.

“If the Savior Made Her Worthy, Who Are You to Reject Her?” – Let us consider the witness of Mary Magdalene.

What do we know about Mary Magdalene?

In the New Testament we know her as the leader of the women who were Jesus’ disciples, and as a patron of the Jesus movement.

It’s significant that Mary Magdalene in the gospels is never referred to as so-an-so’s wife or mother or sister – which is unusual for a woman, to not be referred to in relation to a man. For this reason, historians say she probably was an independent woman of some financial means. This was indeed possible for some women at the time. In fact, the bible and early Christian writings make it clear that there were wealthy independent women who were key patrons of the early church. There were also prominent women spiritual leaders who served as deacons, apostles, and missionaries. Specific women leaders named in the bible and early Christian writings are Lydia, Priscilla, Phoebe, and Thecla, in addition to Mary Magdalene.

         Contrary to popular belief, Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute – that’s an invention from centuries later. The gospels say that Jesus healed Mary of spirits that possessed her, seven spirits, to be specific. But what those spirits were, what that meant, isn’t clear. It’s a fabrication that those seven spirits have something to do with Mary having previously lived a life of sexual immorality. It’s fine if she had, but there’s no evidence that this was her story. We know that Jesus did break bread with women who were sex workers, which caused quite a scandal – Jesus offered them grace rather than judgment, and many of them did come to be part of the Jesus movement. But Mary was not one of them. The gospel writers had lots of opportunities to be clear if she was, because they did mention her a lot by name.

Mary is named as the leader of the other female disciples, and had key roles at critical times. When Jesus was arrested, the male disciples all spooked and fled. But the female disciples, led by Mary Magdalene, stayed and bore witness to Christ’s suffering.

And Mary was the first person to bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection and then go and tell the others. That’s why the early Christians called her the “apostle to the apostles.”

And now we know that Mary Magdalene had her own gospel account written down, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, her own account of Jesus and his teachings. We now have three surviving fragments of that ancient text. This means almost certainly that Mary had her own school of followers in the years after Jesus, as the apostles traveled far and wide to the corners of the known world to share the good news. Mary had her own school, her own movement of communities of Jesus followers, who learned from her what it means to experience God through the way of Jesus, who remembered the stories she told, the teachings she gave, who repeated her words and wrote them out and passed them down.

Until … something happened and they were erased almost entirely from history. Almost.

For how clear Jesus’ example was of honoring the voices and experiences of the women he encountered, in ways that were radical at the time, pretty soon after he departed there were efforts to silence and suppress the power and witness of the women who quickly rose to influence in the early church. You see this tension in the New Testament letters.

The Gospel of Mary itself speaks to this. It tells how Andrew and Peter, central leaders of the early church, scoff at what she shared with them about what Jesus taught her, as being the bizarre hysterics of a woman. But Levi stands up to them and defends Mary. “Peter,” he says, “you have always been an angry person.” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would agree. “If the Savior made her worthy,” Levi says, “who are you, then, to reject her?”

Okay, then, out with it: What is it that Mary shared with the disciples about what Jesus taught her, comforting them and reminding them in their fear and confusion after Jesus’ death that Jesus’ “grace will be with you and shelter you … let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us Humans.”

         A lot of her words are missing from the manuscripts we have. But here’s my way of summarizing what we do have.

One note, in the translation I’m using, “Child of Humanity” is the same phrase we find in the New Testament that’s often translated as the “Son of Man.” In the New Testament, it’s the only way that Jesus ever refers to himself. “Realm” is what’s usually translated as “Kingdom,” basileia, which Jesus uses in the sense both of social relationships and a spiritual realm, with God at its center – the Realm of God, Realm of Heaven, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

         One more note: there may be some anxiety that I am committing heresy here. For the record, I’m pretty sure that most of what I do is commit orthodoxy, God help me. But more than that, I feel I have a responsibility to share with you all that the world of faithful Jesus followers is much broader than anxious church authorities want us to know about. And when it comes to heresy, I for one agree with William Shakespeare who said, “It is the heretic who builds the fire, not she who burns in it.” What the Gospel of Mary offers can be a refreshing new angle on the Gospel.

         So here we go.

The Good News according to Mary Magdalene:

The Savior came as the perfect human, the Child of Humanity, in union with God, an embodiment of the Good.

The Savior taught that our alienation from God – sin – is not real in and of itself. Rather, sin is the consequence of us forgetting our true nature, which is a spiritual nature, our true selves, true souls of God, by God, from God, for God, which in its true state is free of the powers and passions of this limited, material world.

This true nature is called the Child of Humanity. We won’t find this Child of Humanity by looking outside of ourselves.

Rather the Jesus, as the Savior, guides us to find it from within ourselves.

Jesus gave certain laws or precepts about how to live in alignment with God alive within us, as true Children of Humanity, how to have our hearts turned to the Good, how to act in ways that are free of the delusions of sin, the powers and passions of this world. But he cautions the disciples not to make any more rules than what he set down because rulemaking itself can dominate us, can be a trap that gets us stuck in those powers and passions.

Now, what we have of the Gospel of Mary does not spell out the laws that Jesus gave.

But Mary does at some point invoke, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” And I’d say that what she teaches is totally in the same spirit of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and his capstone commandment to love one another.

What’s most unique about the Gospel of Mary is that it tells the story of the resurrected Savior guiding Mary’s soul in using these principles and insights in a journey to union with God as a true Child of Humanity.

This journey involves the soul ascending through stages of development. And at each stage a power of the fallen world tries to block the soul and entice her or trick her into believing that the soul belongs to that power and not to God. But remember, sin is not ultimately real. So when the Soul is tested, it needs to remember what is ultimately real, and that its true identity is with God.

There are seven powers, called the Seven Powers of Wrath. Perhaps these are the seven false spirits that the other gospels refer to, from which Jesus healed Mary.

The Gospel of Mary names these seven Powers of Wrath as Darkness, Desire, Ignorance, Eagerness for Death, the Realm of the Flesh, the Foolish Wisdom of the Flesh, Wrathful Wisdom.

Mary recounts the Soul encountering each of these powers in turn, facing their temptation, and responding with poise and peace and freedom centered in the insight she received from the Savior.

This insight, this knowledge is that she is a Soul who belong to God alone, not to any other power: her Soul’s true home is in a Realm that is free and that is Good, and that here, with us, within us.

Soul can therefore say, “What rules me has been slain, and what turns me has been destroyed, and my desire has been filled, and ignorance has died … From this hour on, at the time of the season of the generations, I will rest in silence.”

The good news according to Mary Magdalene.

Thanks be to God.

(For more about the Gospel of Mary, see “A New New Testament” by Hal Taussig, or “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala,” by Karen King”)