[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
Well, I was just telling our guest that I'm. Not only am I thrilled to talk with her, but I was really excited, surprised, and ready to share this book. The moment that I opened it, Jennifer, I was so excited.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Thank you. That's amazing.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: I'm with Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, who teaches at Wheaton, and I'm. I'm honestly feeling a little bit like we might be feeling a little bit like Chicago today here in Houston. We woke up, my kids were like, it's cold. It was. I want to say it was probably 65 this morning.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: We were 35.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Okay, so we're not feeling like Chicago right now in October. I should have known better.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: It's all about your perspective.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: It is, right? You know, I'm like, okay, we've got leggings on. I've got kids with hoodies. People are complaining that it's cold. I'm like. Like, okay, It's. It's like 65. It feels real nice. Let's leave that patio door open. Anyway, I do love. I do love it when we get to connect with folks in different parts of the country.
So the book that you most recently wrote is called the Mary. We Forgot what the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the church today. And this is about. I feel like we should. Drum roll. Who is this about?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: This is about Mary Magdalene.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I just almost want to sit, you know, almost have, like, this moment of silence to call Mary Magdalene the apostle to the apostles.
This is such a title for her.
I mean, this. This is. This is pretty magnificent.
I'll let you know, pre record that I have a dear friend who loves Mary Magdalene and has studied her. She keeps getting drawn back to her. This friend of mine is a contemplative, and she just, you know, loves this character of. Of Mary Magdalene. And I wanted to. So I'm. I'm familiar with this. With this endearing, you know, this endearment of Mary. But I wanted to ask you, what was it for you as a scholar, for you as a professor? Who drew you. What drew you to Mary Magdalene? You know, to the point that you would write this book. And then if you want, elaborate a little bit on that subtitle of the Apostle to the Apostles.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Okay, great. Well, I do think it's helpful for people maybe to understand just a little bit about my background because it's. It's unusual, to say the least, in. In. So, as you know, my parents met in seminary.
We often hear, you know, you can't be what you can't see. But actually, my mom had never seen a woman pastor, and she experienced a call. She was a widow. She moved almost the whole country away to go to California to seminary with her, my brothers. And she and my dad, you know, met and got married. And so anyway, the women of the Bible were not a mystery to me. They were, you know, growing up, that wasn't something that was. Was held back or, you know, underappreciated.
But except for Mary Magdalene, I think there was so much. Still so much confusion and a lack of clarity and even ambiguity that it wasn't clear if she could really be a model for discipleship. Is she someone to aspire to?
It's a little bit difficult to have that conversation. And so I think that was a missing piece. Even though I knew Phoebe and, you know, Priscilla and, you know, these other women who are named in the Bible. So that's. That's been an interesting part of my work then, as a scholar. You know, my work is at the convergence of theology and Scripture and church history and understanding how all those pieces intersect and interact in the history of Christianity. And so. And I work on the Reformation. And, you know, in part, it was through the women of the Reformation and their attention and retrieval of Mary Magdalene as a faithful model for legitimating and validating their sense of call to proclaim Christ in their context and in the, you know, the limits of the. The situations where they were. Were living and even taking risks to, you know, to live into that. And so that really has struck me as well in my work.
But I'm also a pastor. I'm also an ordained minister. And there was a special moment where I. I talk about it in my book where I was reading a children's. A Bible children's story to my. And we got to the tomb and there were no women depicted.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Which is wild, right? Because in all four Gospels, there are women.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yes. I couldn't believe it. And then getting to the end, it was like. And then Jesus's friends celebrating him, and it was all these men just putting Jesus on top of their shoulders, sort of like he just won the baseball game or something. And I just thought this is so sad that the church does not know what it has, you know, in, in what scripture has pointed us to about Mary Magdalene. Very often you'll see, I think, culture, these cultural messages or whatever that will say even that there's not very much about Mary Magdalene in the Bible which really undervalues what is actually happening in scripture. And, and what the gospels are, are, are telling us about her. And we just, we need to pay more attention to it. And I think we need to claim her as Christians as part of our story, as the one who points to Jesus. So, so that's one aspect. I, I talk a little bit more about seeing Jesus Christ superstar and my reflections as a high schooler thinking about that and you know, other parts of my story are in there. But it's been so exciting just to see how I think this project, there's such a need for clarity and for retrieval of her faithful story and also the remembrance in the church's traditions across all the branches of her as apostle to the apostles.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, thank you so much. I have, I have, I'm, I'm excited because some of that kind of led into where I want to go next. But I have an off, off topic question. Yeah, I'm just curious, so you don't have to answer. I'm curious about where your parents went to seminary.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: They went to Fuller seminary in the 70s. My mom was one of those pioneers. And you know, I, so I'll often say, you'll probably hear me say I went. The first time I went to seminary was in the womb.
You know, I love it.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: I was, I was curious. I was curious. I'm at Fuller right now, my MDF and Fuller. I'm in the PhD program at Fuller. Oh, and I was just, I was curious when you said California. I thought, okay, we kind of, even if it's not full, it's like that it could be Fuller. But even if it's not, like, let's give a shout out to whatever seminary was like in this, in those decades, saying, yes, we're welcoming women, we're affirming, you know, their gifts in the church and things like that. So that's great. There are others out there besides Fuller, 100% who were doing that then, who are doing this now. But it is, Even now in 2024, it is not the absolute norm, you know, in seminaries across the country that that would be that way. So.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: That's right. I like to say that I'm alive because of Fuller Seminary.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: I love it. I love it so much.
So. So that's. Yeah. So that's one thing. Thanks for answering that. It was kind of impromptu, but when you talk about bringing, you know, kind of bringing Mary out and these.
You talk in the book about her not being a surprising character, meaning. And you name these other men, Right. You've got Moses. Right. And Abraham. And we're not, like, surprised or shocked necessarily by their stories being such a part of our history.
It reminded me of a conversation I had. I don't remember when it's going to air in relationship to yours, but I had a conversation with Tiffany Bloom. We were talking about women as well, and she was talking about someone. Now I'm forgetting who it was, maybe Rahab. But you know how she said, you know, the church isn't used to, you know, bringing these messy characters in, you know, as heroes. And. And I kind of stopped and I was like. Except for, like, one of their men, right? Like, you know, David and Abraham and Moses. These guys are all messy. And, yeah, we'll bring them in and say, these are heroes of the faith. But when it comes to women particularly, I think, you know, you talk about Mary Magdalene and kind of this reputation that she's had. We'll talk about whether or not it's founded. Right. But the reputation that she's had. And it's like, I think it was just good for me to kind of center at the beginning of the book and say, okay, we.
When Even. Even in the subtitle, apostle to the Apostles, like, slow my own role there for a second, and let me not be shocked or surprised that someone would call her that. Right. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be surprised if someone called Peter the apostle to the apostles. Right, Right. And he was. You want to talk about faithfulness at the end, right? Like, Mary's there and Peter's lying on Jesus, you know, and so anyway. But I wouldn't be shocked. And that's, you know, my. I think my own bias, but I think it's. It's representative of kind of Christian culture, maybe evangelical culture, where the men were like, yeah, yeah, they're, you know, oh, well, he messed up. Or, oh, well, he has kind of an iffy background or, oh, yeah, well, whatever. But he. He made it through. He pioneered or whatever. But we start to talk about women in that same space, and it's like, yeah, I don't know about that. That feels iffy.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Right. Well. And I love the work by Janine Brown, biblical scholar, who highlights, you know, in Jesus's genealogy that are named there. I mean, first of all, it's just surprising that there are women there at all.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Right?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: But then that it's. There's also Gentile women, you know, for gentile women are named, and then also Mary is named. And there's also ethnic diversity as well. And so there's a lot of ways, actually, that scripture is. Should be surprising us as readers.
But I want to talk about it in different layers because on the one hand, there's, you know, our own reading today in our context and how we read scripture. And some of what we might be surprised by is. Is just so dependent on what we already know or how deeply, you know, how deeply we can dive into that, the historical context. There's, there's. That part of being surprised by scripture is a wonderful thing.
You know, the Holy Spirit is at work in that is pointing us to things that we didn't know and didn't see and, you know, in transforming our hearts and our minds, renewing our lives. So that's a, that's a thing to celebrate. There's also surprise, I think, embedded in the text. And I talk about a hermeneutic of surprise, which is that the people in their time would be surprised by what scripture is doing. And, you know, anytime a woman is named, especially an ordinary woman like Mary Magdalene, is unusual for what the other sort literary examples were doing at the time. And so that's. That's exciting to discover.
So I have to say I think that there is this thread of surprise throughout Scripture of both men and women, of who God calls to be a voice, to proclaim, to go, to be faithful. And, you know, we can see. So on the one hand, we can be surprised about Mary Magdalene because she's a woman. And this is such an incredible honor that she's received. And her time, her voice, her. And the fact that she cries, you know, all of these things would invalidate her testimony. And yet this is what God has chosen to do. So there's that part of it. But on the other hand, she's also the perfect person to be called insofar as she was demon possessed. And when she points to Christ, she proclaims something very powerful about who Jesus is, not only as savior and Messiah, but as king.
And so that speaks to the power of God. So there's that in the same way we could see like someone like Moses, you know, it's. It's. On the one hand, you know, he is. He is the perfect person to, to call because he is an Israelite, and he's also part of Pharaoh's household. And so he has this perspective and these links that have. But on the other hand, he is surprised that he is called because he's not a public speaker and it doesn't seem like he should be the one to be the voice. So there's a lot of those kinds of dynamics, I think, as we look from the Old to the New Testament in how God is at work.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you, you talked about Mary being named, which was not in accordance with literary custom at the time. So I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that a little bit and even maybe a little taste into the Magdalene portion.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: I like that conversation as well, because that's something that. It's kind of like depending upon who you've read or things like that, you might get a little different taste of that.
We see her and couple of other women, you know, a few other women named in the gospel. Some, some women who are prominent who are not named. Yeah, but why is it, why do you feel like it's important that Mary is named?
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. So I think, you know, one of the examples I use in the, in the book is the example of Rhoda in Acts. I think that's such a great, helpful text because there is really no reason why the servant woman that we should know her name. You know, it's incredible that we know her name. And so, you know, biblical scholars in this time period really highlight the fact that ordinary people, both men and women, would not typically be highlighted in the historical kind of records. It's, you know, maybe the Queen of Sheba gets a shout out, but certainly not Rhoda. And, you know, also even other ordinary men. And scripture does talk about Peter as an ordinary, uneducated man. So, so, you know, so the, the Bible's doing something different in its time. There's, there's about 200 women who are named in scripture, so it's still more men than women, but again, by the very fact that they are included. I think what scripture is doing there is, is seeking to highlight their importance and their significance because it would be so easy to leave them out and to just sort of pass over that part of the, the, the, the fact too, that, that Mary Magdalene is, is named more than some of the 12 disciples or most of the 12 disciples. You know, we think about the 12 as sort of the, the, the apex of the, the Gospel accounts. But, you know, we, we know more about Mary Magdalene than most of them.
That's really surprising. It's really interesting. What is the Gospel? What are the Gospels trying to tell us in. By doing that, there's another few surprises about Mary Magdalene as well. In part that she is identified by her location, by coming from Magdala. So she's from Magdala. Typically, women would be identified with their male relative, so a father or, you know, their son or their husband. And so this also signifies some of her independence, probably financial independence, especially when we read Luke 8 and how it highlights that she is the first of many women who are contributing financially to Jesus's ministry. So she seems to be the single most important contributor according to that list of women in Luke 8. And so all of these things are telling us. And then. Then the repetition of her name across the four Gospels, too, are telling us, hey, we need to pay attention to her. She is significant.
We realize that the Gospels are written after the epistles. The Gospel writers know what they're doing when they are highlighting her. They know that she is absolutely critical to the proclamation of. Of Christ, of the risen Christ.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Yes. And you have charts in this book.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: I do, yes. You have charts in this book.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Because it's very hard. As much as you just talked about how Mary is named over and over again, and she's, you know, across all four Gospels and she's important. I was thinking as you were talking, I'm like, she's. We know more about her than some of the 12, as you mentioned.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: I'm like, yes, because here's the situation. I. Okay, this is not a reflection on Fuller. I just said that I was there and I got mad. I can't name all 12 disciples. Like, if you said right now, like, name the seven dwarfs, name the 12 disciples. I'm like, I can't do it. Like, I can't. I can't name the 12 disciples any more than I can. Than I can name Snow White's housemates. I just. I can't do it. But I think that's partially because we only hear about a few over and over again. And the rest of them, we just don't, you know, they don't make as much of an appearance as Mary Magdalene does. And so I think, you know, I. I'm. I'm nodding in agreement of, like, yes, that is significant.
But the charts. The charts are there because as much as Mary is named in and across all four Gospels, there has been, I will say, confusion and conflation of Mary Magdalene and. And then we can name all of these. Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene and Martha. Even you Point out Mary Magdalene and the sinner. This sinning woman. Yeah, you know, all of this. And so I would say maybe. I know the chapters are big and the charts are serious, and you may not be able to do it justice right now, but, I mean, help us with that a little bit. But also, not just. Not just so we can, like, fit the jigsaw pizzle together, but, like, why does it matter to us as Christians today in 2024? Why she's. There's been so much conflation and confusion.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much. That's a great question.
So, yeah, and I think it gets at the heart of what the book is trying to do, is. Is trying to unravel the confusion, the complexity, the conflation, and then also get at what her story actually is, I think, because again, we need to. We need clarity on that so we know what it means when she is pointing to Jesus. Us. What is it. What does it mean when she points to Christ?
The Church has struggled to understand that. And I think we can't actually let that go. We have to retrieve it. We have to claim it. It's actually part of our witness as followers of Christ. So, anyway, so all that to say, yeah, so it was really fun and complex, and I probably could have done it the rest of my life tracing all of the interpretation of Mary Magdalene across and across the different traditions. Because I'm also looking at the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and understanding the Protestant tradition, too. I hope that that's a help also, because it's. I think it does highlight some of the similarities and some of the differences. It helps us to see where we are today. For those listening from the Western world, how do we get to where we are today and how we think about her? And history is just such a marvelous way to answer that question. So.
So I think the first dynamic that is at work that's really important has to do with the anointing passages. So each of the Gospel accounts has a story of a woman anointing Jesus. And three out of the four stories say that the woman is unnamed. She is. We don't know who she is. But in one of the accounts, in the John account, she's Mary of Bethany. And so what ends up really happening is that the. Those anointing stories become. They're combined into one. And because there's one name, then that becomes the name for all of the stories.
And we can understand, if we understand how the Church is reading scripture and how it is interpreting and sharing exegesis at the time, then we can see how this has happened. So I especially highlight Augustine because he's such an important voice for the Western church, but he is creating a harmonization of all four gospels as a way to understand how they fit together. And so, you know, that's when he puts those four women together as one woman, as Mary of Bethany.
The complexity of it is that in the Luke chapter seven story, which is the story right before Luke introduces Mary Magdalene in chapter eight as Mary Magdalene. But in Luke seven there is this anointing story and the woman is called a sinner woman. And that is, the Church reads that sinner as a euphemism for sexual sin. And so this, the woman of Luke 7 has been remembered as a prostitute.
So then her prostitution becomes identified with Mary of Bethany. And then we have the next kind of move, which is that Mary Bethany is actually Mary Magdalene. And we especially see this in the 6th century with Pope Gregory the Great, who is going to then combine Mary Magdalene with Mary Bethany and with the Luke 7 woman. And so now Mary Magdalene becomes a prostitute.
In fact, the reading of her as having seven demons is interpreted by Gregory as the seven deadly sins. So she becomes the absolute epitome of sin, not just she is the exemplar of sin. And now I always have to add this, you know, I think, and as a historian, my job is to understand what people are doing in their time and why. And in Gregory's case, he is really highlighting how remarkable the graciousness of God is and also her penance that it, she shows great love to Jesus. And so that's partly sort of by demoting her, he's elevating Christ and, and also highlighting her penance. So that's his, those are his purposes.
And then in the medieval Church there is a practice of, of naming others of the names of saints and then sort of reading your story through the history of all of those, those people. So, so the Mary's become combined. The Church goes beyond that, though. The Church will identify the bleeding woman who's unnamed as Martha. That's her backstory. The, the woman who is married at Cana Cana is identified with Mary Magdalene. And all of that is happening in the medieval Church until the Reformation comes and is with its attention to grammar and to language and to text, begins to say, wait a second, are these women actually the same person or are they different people and different stories? And that's where the Western world begins that conversation again of sort of detaching these stories from one another. So I'll let you continue because I've spoken for a little while.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: No, you're. No, it's great. Again, I'm reminded Amy Jill Levine, Jewish New Testament scholar, often says something like this, you don't have to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. That, that quote came into my head when you were talking about Mary Magdalene.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Like, yeah, we don't have to make her look bad in order to make Jesus look good, you know, and, and that's, you know, one of the, like, we don't have to, you know, make, make her into something that she wasn't and demote her, as you said, you know, in order to make Jesus or God's mercy look, look good.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Right. I hear what you're saying. I think that it's interesting now when we add the demon possession element, let's talk about that.
There is a moralizing. There is a moralizing that happens with that. And you know, there's a tendency as humans to think like, well, what did she do? Yes, the letter to attract. You know, we immediately go to that question.
And so I want to interrupt you.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: When you say this because this demon possession. I was going to ask you about this, so I want you to, I want you to go on. But you, you have this quote that I starred.
But you said rather than regard Mary Magdalene as the epitome of sin due to false claims of prostitution and allegorical readings of the number seven, and then this is what I underlined in starred we would do better to understand her story as one in which evil has accosted her. Yeah, that was so powerful and meaningful to me.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: That we would do better to understand her story as one in which evil had accosted her. So go ahead. Because you're saying, like, what did she do? Do? Right. Like what? Yeah, what did she do? You know, she must have done something. But did she? Are we thinking about this? You know, how are we thinking about this?
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Well, I think that there are points again, if we understand the Gospels as selecting stories out of an abundance of, of events that have happened, because that's what John and others invite us to think about. The Gospels, you know, in John 20 says, you know, what has been selected here is that you might see that Jesus is the Messiah. So there's, there is kind of a filtering going on. But one of the things and that the Gospel writers are highlighting for us is that, you know, the, these things are, are not always the consequence of a person's actions, of a person's moral failure, but actually opportunity for the glory of God to be seen. I mean, we can think about, It's a, this, a really important concept too in, in disability theology too, that the, that part of the, the Gospel accounts. So, so here I think, you know, reading other healing stories that, that are included in the Gospels can give us some insight into possibly what Mary Magdalene experienced. We know that it was extreme because in Matthew 12, Jesus says that seven demons is an extreme case. So Jesus himself explains that to her. That particular story really highlights for me that perhaps she had a failed exorcism.
And so what we're being told is that Jesus is powerful enough to conquer evil. Right? That's, that's actually what's, what's being, being highlighted through her story. And the Gospels don't invite us to remember her in that moment, but to remember her as healed. I think that's really important as well. We can kind of get lost into speculation. But again, one of my approaches was to use other stories like the Garrison man in Luke 8, again, Matthew 12, where Jesus talks about the seven demons. And then also there's a boy who is, you know, blind and mute and brought to Jesus by his Father. And that really makes me think, you know, she could not have even known what was happening to her. You know, she could have been so gripped by the enemy that she, she could. So there's this graciousness of God coming in, conquering the evil that has accosted her, that has gripped her life, pulling her out of that and into a brand new life, right. Where her whole life becomes centered around Christ. She is literally walking in the footsteps of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem to be a witness at those key moments of the Christian faith and then to be given that commission by Christ in the garden to proclaim and to be the first. So all of that, I think if we are thinking about her as a penitent prostitute, we are missing the story of. It's not that there are no stories of penitent prostitutes, but that, that is not Mary Magdalene's story. And, and so that's what I, I really want readers to, to discover and to see for the Church today.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Right, right. So I, yes, so I should probably, I should probably clarify because you're right, there are, there are these, these other stories, but I think even in stories of prostitution, I think it's our lens where we say this woman is bad kind of. Right. And not the lens of what is actually like her reality, like what's actually happening. Right. So just to, just to clarify that, when I was saying you know, we don't have to make Jud look bad to make Jesus look good. We're making Mary look bad. But it's because we have. We have this cultural lens of like, prostitution equals bad equals sinful equals whatever, and not really maybe what's going on in the life of the woman.
So a clarification there, Just. Just for my sake.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: But I think the other, the other side note. Okay, so you've got my brain going in all these places, Jennifer. But another side note that we don't really have time to talk about here. I just want to kind of throw it out and if, if it, if it sticks, you know, throw the spaghetti at the wall. And if it sticks for a listener who. This might affect them later, great, because it has certainly affected me.
But I have a friend who is also a professor, Biblical studies professor, who. I don't think we've ever had this conversation, he and I, but I, I've noted that he often, when he talks about Jesus, talks about his exorcism ministry.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: And so important. It strikes me every time. And I can. I can't shake it. It's like this pebble in my shoe now, because I'm like. Like Jesus. We think about him as a healer, right? We think about him as. As someone who was just and compassionate, you know, and all of these things. And, And I, I never. If someone's like, what name, name these things, aspects of Jesus and I'll be like, exorcist. Like, this wasn't. This is not ever at the tip of my tongue, but as you just described and all these examples that you brought into the book, like, like, this is a part of his ministry that we ought not ignore. It was a very significant part of his ministry in the Gospels.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Oh, I'm so glad that you said that so beautifully and brought attention to that, because it's so important. And I think, yeah, we don't know how to deal with this part of it in our Western world. The global church knows so much better than we do and in this aspect of our faith and in who Jesus is. Biblical scholarship, I did use a lot of Craig Keener, so appreciate his work.
But, you know, biblical scholarship recognizes and sees in the text that it was recognized that Jesus was a successful exorcist, really the most successful exorcist. And the reason why that needs to be part of how we understand Jesus is because it implicates our understanding of the kingdom, of the kingdom of God and the, The. The entra of the kingdom of God into our world.
And it is about Christology. It is about the identity of Christ as not only fully human, but fully divine. And you know that Christ differs from other exorcists in his time insofar as he actually defeats the demons. He doesn't just put them, you know, places. There's a whole thing about water and demons being sent to water and then being trapped there. He actually defeats, Defeats evil. And so when you, when you realize that when you come to grips with that part of Jesus and that part of Mary Magdalene's story, suddenly the fact that she is the witness of the resurrected Christ who has just defeated death, you know, it makes total sense that, that the two of them would be there together.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: I, I want to talk about that as we, as we kind of start to wrap up, because this is. I mean, there's, there's connections to the garden, but in my imagination. And you, you don't, you don't have to take this as fodder. I'm just throwing it out there. But in, in my imagination, as you were talking about the other stories of demon possession.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: And thinking about the descriptions, because we don't get a description of, of Mary's life in. In Possession. Like, we, we don't get. Yeah, we don't get the before picture of her, but we do get the before picture, as you mentioned, of a lot of these other characters who, who were participated in these exorcisms or Jesus, you know, did this and, and when you were talking about, like, it's possible that she may not have even had the wherewithal. She may not have even known what was going on. Like this. Her. The possession was extreme. We can see by the, by the number and the way that Jesus talks about that, as you said.
And then my imagination flashed to the garden after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, the, the moment, and I can't remember which gospel where he tells her not to cling to him. And you, you elaborate on that in the book as well. But just thinking about if I put myself in Mary's place as, as much as I can in my imagination, this dramatic before and after, I, you know, it's like I can, I can barely imagine what that must have felt like, the humanity of that moment to just, you know, you're, you're with the person who made like, all the difference in the world between your, your previous life and, and the life that you have now. And you had. Only like you said, she's literally followed in his footsteps. She's Only been with him. Yeah, since that, you know, as far as she would tell from the gospels, yeah, she was healed. She's only been with him. And then we have this mom. Now he is gone and she is devastated and grieving as she would be, as she should be, as all of these other people are as well.
And then, and then she gets to interact with him again. It just feels even more like to let my imagination is kind of wander, you know, for a minute. For a minute. In that way it just feels, it's just powerful kind of in a, in a, in a different way, you know, thinking about Mary's before. But you talk about this as well in, in your own way about Mary going back to that children's Bible. She's there in all four Gospels. The women are there. They're all, they're there.
So, you know, let's not let the pictures fool us.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: She's there.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: But, but what can that, like her presence at the tomb kind of as her, her story begins to wrap. Like, what can, how can that teach us about how we interact with Mary? And as you point out, ultimately when she points to Jesus, then how we're interacting with him in that part of the story, she's.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah, she's pointing us to Christ in that story. Yeah, exactly. I loved writing that chapter. Just as you were saying, saying, putting, trying to put myself in her shoes and think about what that would be like based on, you know, all the build up to that point and her presence there. Thinking about the history of the church and how the church has never been able to ignore Mary Magdalene fully because she is there in the garden with Christ according to Matthew's gospel and John's Gospel. We have have insight into that encounter. So not just the empty tomb, but also the interaction that she has with Jesus and, and what a gift that is. But there have, there have been some difficulties with, with sorting it out. The Church has struggled to understand why a woman would be the first.
And that has been used as a way to shame the 12 for their lack of faithfulness. There have been questions about her weeping because that is, it is an interesting detail that the Gospels include because it doesn't help the Gospels to say that she was weeping. You know, that's going to be used against Christianity by Greek philosophers. And so that's another part of it. But the other is that translation of Jesus saying to her, you know, does he say do not touch me or do not, or stop clinging to me? And the, in the history of the church, there has been more emphasis on do not touch me. And the sense has been that she's not touching Jesus rather than that she's gripping him and clinging to him. And so I talk about that. I think there's a good reason in the grieving Greek to read it that way as clinging rather than do not touch. And, you know, so the, the touching of Mary Magdalene to Jesus matters for, for her apostolicity. So there's a few elements here that then will be seen as part of her apostolicity and I think can and should be seen in the Church as markers of her apostolicity. One is that that she's called by name in the text. We get that part of it where as soon as she hears her name called, she recognizes Jesus's voice. It's the. She's the good sheep knowing the, the voice of the good shepherd from John 10, I think, and then that he, you know, then that she touches him. We see in first John one talks about how we have received from those who have heard and seen, seen and touched Jesus Christ. And this is a claim against Gnosticism, this the earliest Christian heresy that would deny that Jesus had bodily existence, that he was a full human. So we usually think about it as a rejection of his divinity, but it was actually a rejection of his humanity. And so, you know, so Mary Magdalene touches Christ and then he commissions her and he sends her. An apostle means, means messenger. It means one who is sent. And that is what's happening here. He sends her and that's, that's where the Church has, you know, each of the branches of the church of, at some point, though not consistently recognized her as apostle to the apostles. And so it's something I think, that we, we can retrieve, we can recover and understand as part of her story.
To me, that. That has implications for how we think about women's ministry in our churches. The place for that, that Christ calls a woman to proclaim that he is risen. He also gives her his words. And I really want to emphasize the importance of that. It's not just that she, you know, says that she, you know, she has seen the risen Lord, but that he gives her these words that, that, that, that teach and proclaim the connection as brothers and sisters in Christ to one another and to our Father, God the Father through Jesus. So there's also this sibling relationship that is really affirmed there that she is proclaiming. So, so all of that, yeah, try to bring that to a head, to, to highlight, you know, the significance of that moment.
And then I think there are important implications. The cannot ignore, must Grapple with what is really happening here in.
Yeah, I don't know. There's so much more I could say. Tell me.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think that's. No, I think that's good. I do. I want to, I want to land there on the implications for the church today.
As you were talking about Mary weeping and how this was kind of used against her testimony, and I was chuckling in my head, I'm like, yes. And even now an emotional woman is a problem. Right? I mean, yes, this is a problem. It's a problem in the secular world. Right. We can't have, you know, a CEO who might cry or, you know, become emotional. Although men are allotted some amount of freedom when it comes to expressing their emotions, you know, in similar settings. But, you know, in the, in the church, you know, even thinking about her, a testimony, shaming using, used as a, as a shaming of the apostles, I think this is, I grew up in the, in a. Congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention, and so what I often heard was, you know, thinking about, let's just talk about the story of Deborah right now. She was there because there weren't any men who could kind of step up to the mantle, you know, and so anytime we see a woman in a position where she has leadership or she has influence, it's because the men weren't worthy. And so this second class citizen had to come in and do the job that none of the, the men could do at the time. And so I'm, I'm hearing a lot of that in, you know, as you're describing Mary and her testimony after. Yeah, the, after the garden. And I think that this isn't just a historical lens. This is, is a continued legacy.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: And so I'm wondering, you know, even maybe to kind of wrap back around where you started, like your mom became something she hadn't seen. Yeah, but you saw it in your mom. And I would say that there are women who, we probably are different ends of the spectrum. Right. I grew up believing and, and, and having preached to me, I never really believed it because it was so hard for me to believe that a woman, women in a pulpit sharing the good news would be a sin. But this is what was preached to me.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: And then, and then you grew up on kind of the other end of the spectrum. Right. Where you see your mom, you know, doing this. That's a joyful, wonderful thing.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: But I think it is important to say we, we still have women who are growing up all over the spectrum who are being influenced all over the spectrum. And then, you know what, Mary and her interaction with Jesus. And Jesus interaction with her.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yes, yes. The dignity that he gives to her, the elevation of her voice. Because I, I think it's so interesting. It gives her a message that then he's actually going to share in person.
Right. And to me that's like, let me prove that what she says is true.
So you, you, you should listen to her.
But yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, we are instructing to see Mary Magdalene pointing to Christ because she reveals Jesus for, in, in the fullness of who he is, for his, as Messiah, as Savior, as King, as Lord, for his power and the new, new thing that he is doing.
This is where I think Luke's Luke 24 and Acts 1 can be really helpful because we can see that the women are in the upper room with the disciple with the remaining 12. Obviously, I think they are disciples, but with the remaining 12. And you know, Jesus appears and says, you are my witnesses. And then we move into the upper room before Pentecost and we know that the women are there. You know, they're named again in Acts chapter one, that they're named, that they're part of Pentecost, and then that Pentecost is the fulfillment of the Joel 2 prophecy and all that that means.
And so the, yeah, so the. Let that be, I think good news for women who are in just a multitude of different situations, as you say, across the spectrum, to be encouraged, to be faithful, to use the gifts that the Lord has used, used that has given them, and to, to proclaim in, in your spaces. All of it matters, you know, and I, I, I wish them well. I pray for the, the church and, and for the women of the church in, in this way that we might have a voice just as Mary Magdalene had a voice.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Jennifer, I'm grateful for your voice and I'm grateful for, for your work in bringing, in, bringing her forward. I just keep going back to that, especially as the apostle to the apostles. She was a, not just a preacher of the Good News. Arguably she was the first preacher of the Good News. And, and it's, and it's important how we see her does, as you say, influence, influence how we, how we interact with, with her and her, and how she points to Jesus really does interact. How matter how we interact with Jesus right now? Well, I'm tripping over my words, but anyway, I'm really grateful.
The book again is the Mary. We forgot what the Apostle to the Apostles teaches the Church today by Jennifer Powell McNutt and this will be out by the time this airs. And so I'll put a link to where where folks can grab it in the Show Notes. So thanks so much for being with me.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Thanks so much Alexis. It was a pleasure and a joy.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the Show Notes Music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit
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