[Vision2020] An Easter Message from the Palouse Pundit

[Sue Hovey]

Great essay and wonderful dedication,  Nick.  With Keely as model and 
minister, Christian theology becomes a woman's strength and not her 
oppressor.  Of course she has formidable enemies:  the Pope, the President 
of the Southern Baptist Convention, James Dobson and his ilk, and our own 
Doug Wilson.

Sue Hovey


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 9:00 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] An Easter Message from the Palouse Pundit


> Greetings:
>
> I just got back from three weeks in Cabo San Lucas, and while I was there, 
> I bagged a weekly column with the "Los Cabos Daily News," the other Daily 
> News, with two full pages of op eds.  It's quite nice to see my column 
> along with those from the Wash. Post and the LA Times.
>
> There are several thousands ex-pats there, as well as upwards of 10,000 
> Americans and Canadians there during high season. Even though I try hard, 
> I have yet to become a Town Crier here, but now I suppose I can call 
> myself "The San Lucas Crier."
>
> I have dedicated the Easter essay below to Keely for two reason: (1) She 
> embodies the spirit of Christ better than any Christian I know on the 
> Palouse; and (2) I think that a previous Keely incarnation must have been 
> the model for Leonardo's Mary Magdalene.
>
> See what you think by viewing the image that I've embedded in the full 
> length version of the essay at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/MaryM.htm.
>
> MARY MAGDALENE: APOSTLE TO THE APOSTLES
>
> By Nick Gier
>
> The great success of "The Davinci Code" has focused the spotlight on Mary 
> Magdalene, one of the most remarkable women in the Bible.  She is 
> described as an independent woman, who "provided for [Jesus and the 
> disciples] out of their means" (Lk. 8:2-3).
>
> The sometimes prurient speculation about her being Jesus' secret lover and 
> wife has obscured the fact that, first and foremost, Mary was the "apostle 
> to the apostles," an honorific that Augustine, one of the greatest 
> orthodox theologians, actually gave her.  After all, Paul defined 
> apostleship as any person who had seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1).
>
> It took two millennia for the Catholic Church to dispose of the long 
> standing myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. In 1969 the Church 
> indirectly removed the stain of her alleged sins by assigning new 
> scriptural readings for her saint's day on July 22.
>
> Passages from the erotic Song of Songs are no longer read, and the passage 
> from Luke 7:37-38 about "a woman from the city, who was a sinner" is also 
> deleted.  Catholics now read the poignant passages from the Book of John 
> (20:1-2, 11-18), in which Mary is the first to see and talk with the risen 
> Christ.
>
> The story of Magdalene as a prostitute was the result of mistakenly 
> identifying Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (John 12:1) and an unknown 
> woman "who was a sinner" (Luke 7:37-38), both of whom took oil and bathed 
> Jesus' feet with their hair.
>
> This conflation of New Testament women was made official in a famous 
> sermon by Pope Gregory I in 591, and was imprinted in millions of 
> Christian minds with paintings of the penitent Mary Magdalene with loose 
> red hair carrying an alabaster jar of ointment.
>
> Gregory's claim that Mary had "turned the mass of her crimes to virtues" 
> presents to all Christians, as Susan Haskins explains, "the redeemed whore 
> and Christianity's model of repentance, a manageable, controllable figure, 
> and effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own sex."
>
> In the Jewish tradition anointing someone with oil is a ritual for making 
> that person a messiah (an "anointed one"), and the priests of Israel and 
> even King Cyrus were messiahs (Is. 45:1). So perhaps it is Luke's unnamed 
> woman who officially makes Jesus the Messiah.  In Matthew's account of 
> this story, the woman is not a sinner, and Jesus praises her by predicting 
> that "wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has 
> done will be told in memory of her" (26:13).
>
> Matthew and John see the woman's anointment not as messiahship but as 
> preparation of Jesus' body for burial, an equally important sacred ritual. 
> Bruce Chilton, professor of religion at Bard College, observes that 
> anointing with oil was a priestess's job in the ancient Near East, and it 
> is not surprising that New Testament women play this significant role.
>
> Women in the early church played significant roles.  Single women traveled 
> and preached with Paul as equals; and Priscilla, who was later martyred 
> and canonized, had a church in her home.  John Mark's mother also hosted 
> some of the earliest Christian worship in her home.  In her book "When 
> Women Were Priests," Karen Torjesen offers strong evidence that women 
> officiated at the Eucharist in these early Christian services.
>
> Returning to Mary Magdalene, we need to address the question of why so 
> many women and men are now identifying so fervently with her. Diane 
> Apostolos- Cappadona may have the answer: "[Mary] was an independent woman 
> . . . . she didn't need a child, she didn't need a husband. . . . She 
> becomes the preacher, the missionary, the evangelist, the healer, the 
> miracle worker. . . . These are the things that attract people to her."
>
> As we celebrate Easter this year, let's think of Mary Magdalene, a woman 
> of means and spiritual achievement, the first witness to the Resurrection, 
> and the apostle to the apostles.
>
>
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>               http://www.fsr.net
>          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.24/742 - Release Date: 4/1/2007 
> 8:49 PM
>
>