Mary Magdalene and the Gardener

Women Leaders in the Church

Brian Lennon

• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788123174
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Mary Magdalene might be the most understood person in the story of Jesus. Yet, Mary was also the first person to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. It was Mary who first took the good news of his world-changing resurrection to the apostles. What can the story of Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Jesus, the 'Gardener', tell us about the future of women in the Church? Examining the spiritual significance of Mary's relationship to Jesus, the trans-historical significance of the resurrection and the contemporary question of the role of women in the Church, Mary Magdalene and the Gardener is a meditation on a world changed by one word; the word that made the resurrection real was 'Mary'.

PART 1

MARY’S STORY

On the surface the encounter of Mary with the Gardener seems to be a simple resurrection story, but of course that is a contradiction. There are no simple resurrection stories, since resurrections do not happen.

That at least is the way it appears to millions, and that certainly is the way it appeared to Mary early that morning when she went to the place where they had buried her murdered rabbi. She saw that the stone in front of the grave had been moved.

She knew immediately what this meant: the grave had been robbed.

As a Jew she knew that resurrections do not happen. She probably believed that there would be a resurrection from the dead for those faithful to God’s law. But this would only take place at the end of the world, whenever that would be. She knew what they had done to her rabbi. She had seen it, from afar.

The Crucifixion and the Empty Tomb

She had seen plenty of other crucifixions. They were one of the means used by the Roman occupiers of Palestine to keep order. Normally it involved scourging, probably administered by two soldiers with a whip with fairly short cords on it. Sharp pieces of bone were tied to the end of each cord, and these flayed the back of the prisoner, often until the bones of the spine were showing. The soldiers had to be careful not to overdo it: they did not want the prisoner to become unconscious, or to die. They had more in store for him.

They then pulled the prisoner out of the barracks and made him carry one large piece of wood on his back. If he didn’t, he got kicked, and was whipped again. Usually there was no trouble with onlookers: in the case of the rabbi most were too busy preparing for the Sabbath, which was a special one. For the onlookers, there was nothing remarkable about yet one more crucifixion. After all, this rabbi was a troublemaker: he must have known what he was bringing on himself.

When they got to Golgotha – part of a rubbish dump just outside the walls of the city – they stripped him naked, nailed his wrists to the plank he had carried, hauled it onto an upright plank left standing from the last victim, and then nailed his feet to the upright.

Pilate, the Roman governor, had told them to nail a notice to the top of the cross: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, and this they did. Crucifixions were done to teach people: this is what will happen to you if you get ideas above your station.

Often people took a while to die: sometimes even a few days. But the rabbi died comparatively quickly. The victim could hold himself up by his nailed feet for only so long. As he grew weaker his body began to slump. He could no longer lift his head to breathe, so he began to choke. After a few moments he would make another effort and lift his head again to breathe. But the longer this went on the more difficult it became. In the end he choked slowly to death.

All this Mary had observed from afar. When she saw the rabbi butchered, despite the agony that this caused her, she did not turn away. Instead, after they had taken the body down from the cross, she watched as they put it in an empty tomb and rolled a great big stone across the entrance.

Early on the morning following the Sabbath, when Jewish law required her to stay at home, she came with spices to anoint the body.

Some Gospel accounts suggest that she was with some other women, some that she was on her own. At no point do the women seem to have asked how they would roll back the heavy stone in front of the grave: they certainly could not have done this on their own. As it happened, when Mary got to the grave it was already open.

As we have seen, her immediate reaction was that the grave had been robbed. Indeed, the rabbi, while alive, had said some strange things about rising from the dead. He had said a lot of strange things. It was not surprising that some of those who had wanted to kill him had robbed the body.

She ran back to the other disciples. They were locked in a house because they were afraid for their lives. She told them what had happened. Peter and the ‘beloved disciple’ ran back to the tomb with her, saw that she had been telling the truth, and then went back to their safe house.

While standing at the tomb, weeping, Mary saw two angels. She knew the stories of angels in her Jewish Scriptures. She was deeply upset, so seeing visions of angels might not be unexpected.

They asked her, ‘Why are you crying?’ The answer seems obvious. Why would anyone be crying outside a grave? – because he or she has lost someone. Nonetheless, she answered them, ‘They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him’.

Meeting the Gardener

At that point she turned around and saw the Gardener standing behind her. He asked the same question: ‘Why are you crying?’ Since no one else was around Mary came to the obvious conclusion that it was he who had robbed the body. She said, ‘If you took him away, sir, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him’. Then she turned back to look into the empty grave.

Mary’s response was coloured by her grief: if the Gardener had taken the body he was not likely to tell her where he had put it. Even if he did tell her, how could she carry the dead weight of a thirtyyear-old man?

At that point a single word was spoken. It was spoken by the Gardener, and was addressed to Mary’s back.

It was a single word that has exploded into the world like a nuclear bomb, because if this story is true then the speaking of that word has changed everything.

It changed Mary’s own life totally. It changed the lives of his followers, but it also changed the lives of those who killed him, and the lives of you and of me.

The one word spoken was her name.

There was only one person in the world who could speak Mary’s name in the way the Gardener did, but he was dead. Yet he had spoken her name.

This is where letters on a page cannot help us: we have to hear the word spoken. Perhaps the best analogy is from a phone call: ‘Hello, it’s me’. There are a lot of people answering to ‘me’ in the world. Indeed, as a write, I am just off the phone from my one-and-a-half-year-old grand-nephew who tells me he’s ‘me’. We never ask them who they are. We know who they are as soon as we hear their voice.

The word was spoken. She knew him then. Four words, but, short as they are, they point to the change that went on within Mary. However many words we use ourselves we can only point to intimations of what happened inside Mary. Her rabbi had been butchered. He had been ripped away from her. All his talk – dream talk – about making a new world, about forgiving and understanding, respect and freedom, and all the rest of that stuff was gone. The dream was over. His presence had been replaced with emptiness and pain. The light had gone out.

Yet the word had been spoken, the word that shattered every obvious reality. It meant that the Gardener was alive, that he had overcome death. The butchery had not been the end of the story. Of course, all this was impossible, because the resurrection of a man before the last day was impossible. Clearly the Gardener was a ghost, except that he did not look like a ghost. When Mary flung herself at his feet, they seemed real, when she looked he was there, and she had heard her name spoken in the way only one person in the world could speak it.

The word spoken was her name. For Jews, one’s name is a symbol, a pointer to the person’s full reality. In speaking it, the Gardener was entering into her history, her pain, her vulnerability, her hopes and fears, her dreams, her joys: all the utterly complex reality that is a human person; all summed up in that one word.

We don’t know when Mary had first come across the Gardener. The gospels tell us that he ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Foreword: Ruth Patterson
• Part 1 Mary’s Story
• Part 2 Understanding Mary’s Story
• Part 3 The Significance of Mary’s Story
• Part 4 Mary, the Gardener, and Today