Untitled

April 14, 2024
by Sara Baron

“The Tower” based on Psalm 148 and John 20:1-28

You know that saying about how people need to hear things seven times before it sinks in? This is a sermon that I’ve preached before – kinda. I’ve preached the main idea of it, but it is a BIG HUGE IDEA, and it turns out that one time through it didn’t manage to get it to sink in – not even for the nerdiest among you. Truthfully, I’m still working on letting it sink in for ME. So, I’m going to go over the idea of “Mary the Tower” again. It fits: our scripture, the We Cry Justice Reading today, our values as a church, the needs we have to see hope in the world, and the need for changes within the church at large.

Recent scholarship reveals that there is an textual error in John 11 and 12. John 11 is the story of the rising of Lazarus, which we have known in in our Bibles as the story of the sisters Mary and Martha and their grief over their brother Lazarus. The scholarship shows that there is not, in fact, a Martha. Someone changed the text.1

The relevant parts are now known to read:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and HIS sister MARY. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved MARY and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

… then Jesus debates with his disciples and finally shows up…

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to MARY console HER about HER brother. When MARY heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. MARY said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ MARY said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

… Jesus raises Lazarus, and the plot to kill Jesus strengthens…

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. MARY served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Great, now you’ve heard the story as it is believed to have been written. All Mary. One sister of Lazarus, who is the one who claims Jesus as Messiah. She is the first one to say so in John. And then she prepares him for his burial.

Now, it is NOT clear for sure if Mary of John 11 and 12 is Mary Magdalene of John 20, but it has long been assumed to be, especially now that scholarship has figured out something about the name Mary Magdalene. Namely, it isn’t that Mary is from Magdala, because such a place doesn’t exist. Instead, Magdalene is a title. Magdala means “tower” in Araemic. So, kinda like Peter becomes “the rock” after he says Jesus is the Messiah in the other gospels, Mary gets a title change after she says he is the Messiah in John. She becomes Mary the Tower. Mary Magdalene. Mary the Tower.

So then, Mary the TOWER is back again in John 20. Now you may remember that the Gospel of John is associated with the disciple John, who is throughout the book of John called “the beloved disciple.” And in John there is some tension between John and Peter that sounds a whole lot like later communities of faith arguing over who was better. This culminates in the Easter morning footrace between them, the one John wins but shows that Peter is braver? Yes, that ridiculous footrace.

But, the funny thing is, that given the rest of this information it seems like John and Peter were racing for second. Mary already say that Jesus was the Messiah. She saw him as he was. Mary already saw the stone had been removed. She saw. And the first appearance of the post-resurrection Christ was to Mary. She saw. She who came to know his resurrection because she heard her name on his lips. She who then was the first to tell the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” She saw.

ONE person. The one who saw him raise Lazarus and saw him raised. The witness to the power of God over even death itself.

And, friends, a WOMAN.

We are not simply the recipients of tradition built on the power of men, even if this information has been obscured since 200 CE. Peter and Mary. Mary and Peter. The tower and the rock.

The stories of women, which are the stories of Easter, are certainly worth hearing. They are the stories we struggle to make sense of because there is too much hope and goodness in them. We’re tempted to turn away.

But, Mary the Tower keeps us both grounded and able to see beyond the walls that hold us in. The church founded by Jesus is a radical one where the least, the last, and the lost – the orphans, the widows, and the children have always been center stage. We know because it was the women who are rarely believed – the women who are often DENIGRATED AND DISMISSED (Mary Magdalene prostitution rumors anyone?) who are the ones to tell us the key stories.

Mary the Tower sent us, and she said there is hope, there is life, there is a God who cares. We, too, can see. Thanks be to God. Amen

1The story of how this was found is AMAZING, came to my attention via Diana Bulter Bass’s Wilde Goose Festival Sermon which can be downloaded by clicking here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mary-the-Tower.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjGjMXKv7qFAxU6EFkFHcQdDb8QFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2qAIrS7kX87OxdrYJ1EDJB or watched here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/all-the-marys&ved=2ahUKEwjGjMXKv7qFAxU6EFkFHcQdDb8QFnoECAcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw24F4hwzT5F53i7I96ru9gi

April 14, 2024

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Uncategorized

Untitled

May 21, 2023
by Sara Baron

“The Tower” based on Deuteronomy 29:10-15 John 11:28-44

Last Summer Diana Butler Bass gave a sermon at the Wild Goose Festival that was shared and forwarded to me approximately 100 times, which was good because that’s how many times it took for me to read it. And once I read it, I participated in the sharing and forwarding too. Her sermon was entitled “All the Marys”1 and it shared one of the biggest breakthroughs in Biblical Scholarship in generations.

Which, I know, is THE SINGLE MOST EXCITING THING I COULD EVER SAY! Or, perhaps, maybe, it might not be?

Stick with me.

It’s worth it. This is a case where a huge break through in Biblical scholarship has pretty big implications for those of us who follow Jesus. I’m well aware they aren’t all like that.

What I find interesting is that I’ve now read her sermon several times over the course of 10 months, and I can’t seem to retain it. The implications are actually so big and require such an enormous re-framing of how I understand the early Christian story, that my brain keeps erasing it in favor of the familiar.

If you have spent less time in Gospel commentaries and/or seminary than I have, I suspect you are going to find it easier to accept these very simple truths than I do. Which is great! This is really awesome stuff, and I’d love for people to hear it, know it, and even retain it.

Diana Butler Bass tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader who felt moved to study Mary Magdalene, landed at General Theological Seminary in New York to work on a Masters of New Testament, and wrote her final paper on John 11. Her professor encouraged her to look at the newly digitized version of the oldest known text of John, Papyrus 66, from around 200 CE, and find something new in it.

I’m going to quote Diana Butler Bass here:

And so Libbie is in the library looking at the text and she sees this first sentence. And it’s in Greek, of course. “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Mary.” And Libbie said, “What? That’s not what my English Bible says. My English Bible says, ‘Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.’” But the Greek text, the oldest Greek text in the world doesn’t say that. The oldest Greek text in the world says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary.” There are two Marys in this verse. And Libbie went, “What the heck? What is going on here?” And she started digging into the text, zooming in on it to try to see what she could see over the digitized version in the internet. And lo and behold, Libbie noticed something that no New Testament scholar had ever noticed.

And that is, in the text where it had those two Marys, the village of Mary and his sister, Mary, and her sister, Mary, the text had actually been changed. In Greek, the word Mary, the name Mary, is basically spelled like Maria in English, M-A-R-I-A. And the I, the Greek letter I, is the letter Iota. And it looks basically like an English I. Libbie could see by doing this textual analysis that the Iota had been changed to the letter TH in Greek, Theta. That somebody at some point in time had gone in over the original handwriting and actually changed the second Mary to Martha. And not only had that person changed the second Mary to Martha, but that person had also changed the way it comes out in English. It says, “The village of Mary,” that would’ve stayed the same, “and her sister, Martha.” Someone had also changed that “his” to “her”; that “her” was originally a “his,” but they had changed it to a “her.”

Admittedly, the original text is a confused and not very good sentence. “Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary,” it’s almost like they’re heightening the fact that Lazarus has this sister, Mary. They lived in this village together, and Mary is Lazarus’ sister. Someone had changed it to read, “Mary and her sister, Martha.”

Libbie sat in the library with all of this, and it came thundering at her, the realization that sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha.

She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, “Mary.” The editor changed it all.

Now, that’s a pretty big deal, but I imagine that maybe you don’t… umm… I think the words might be “Care that much.” But let me say, “yet.” I haven’t gotten to the part where this MATTERS yet, that was a really important BACKGROUND. It also makes John 11 as we know it really hard to read and make sense of. But that’s OK too.

So the underlying question in this is “why?” Why would someone go through so much trouble to create the character Martha out of what was once Mary? The key may be in the part of John 11 we read last week,

25Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: the one that believes in me, though they may die, yet shall they live; 26and the one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord: I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one that comes into the world.

In the Bibles I have that “she” appears to be Martha but if she doesn’t exist, then the she is Mary. And now we’re getting to it. Christianity has long claimed that the first declaration that Jesus was the Messiah comes from Peter, the Rock, who is presented as having done so in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the “Synoptics”) and that answer kinda worked because Martha was a pretty minor character and even though she says so in John, it is easy enough to ignore because Peter is THE ROCK, and Martha is… well, kinda a nobody.

Back to Diana Bulter Bass:

But if it is Mary, the Mary who shows up in John 11 is not an unremembered Mary… This Mary has long been suspected of being the other Mary, Mary Magdalene. Is it really true that the other Christological confession of the New Testament comes from of the voice of Mary Magdalene? That the Gospel of John gives the most important statement in the entirety of the New Testament, not to a man, but to a woman, and to a really important woman who will show up later as the first witness to the resurrection.

You see how these two stories work together. In John 11, Lazarus is raised from the dead, and who is there but Mary Magdalene? And at that resurrection, she confesses that Jesus is indeed the son of God. And then you go just 10 chapters later and who is the person at the grave? She mistakes him, at first, thinks he’s the gardener. She turns around and he says, “Mary,” and she goes, “Lord.” It’s Mary Magdalene. It is Mary Magdalene.

Oh, and now I get to place for you the final piece. Do you remember learning that Christ wasn’t Jesus’ last name? I do. Christ is the English version of Christos which was the Greek translation of Messiah, which literally meant “smeared” as in “smeared with oil” as in “annointed as king” because the Greek didn’t have a Messiah concept like Hebrew did. So when we say Jesus Christ, we are actually saying “Jesus the Messiah.”

Well, a lot of people think Mary Magdalene was called that cause she was Mary, from Magdala. Except there was no village called Magdala. Diana Butler Bass summariezes it this way:

When we call her Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, is not Mary from Magdala. Instead, it’s a title.

The word magdala in Aramaic means tower. And so now you get the full picture. In the Synoptics, Jesus and Peter have a discussion. In that discussion, Peter utters the Christological confession. As a result of the Christological confession, Jesus says, “You are Peter the Rock.” In the gospel of John, Mary and Jesus have a conversation, and Mary utters the Christological confession. And she comes to be known as Mary the Tower.

Between these two confessions, are we looking at an argument in the early church? Peter the Rock or Mary the Tower?

But the John account was changed. The John story has been hidden from our view. All those years ago, Mary uttered those words, “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” …

Mary is indeed the tower of faith. That our faith is the faith of that woman who would become the first person to announce the resurrection. Mary the Witness, Mary the Tower, Mary the Great, and she has been obscured from us. She has been hidden from us and she been taken away from us for nearly 2,000 years. …

Or, or perhaps and, you can leave here with a question: What if the other story of Mary hadn’t been hidden? What if Mary in John 11 hadn’t been split into two women? What if we’d known about Mary the Tower all along? What kind of Christianity would we have if the faith hadn’t only been based upon, “Peter, you are the Rock and upon this Rock I will build my church”? But what if we’d always known, “Mary, you are the Tower, and by this Tower we shall all stand?”

OK, that’s it. That’s my big Biblical Studies breakthrough story. Perhaps you might want to laugh with me that the big breakthrough is simply another affirmation that God loves and cares about all people, JUST LIKE THE TEXT FROM DEUTERONOMY said in a lot fewer words.

But, dear ones, what if we’d gotten both stories? And maybe the even more important question: how can we live now that we have both stories? How can we be followers of Jesus who was seen clearly by Peter and by Mary? How can we be people of faith who both follow a leader who is a rock on which we are steadied and a tower who lifts us all up? What if masculine and feminine were allowed to stand together as holy to the deepest core of our faith? What if there is a whole lot of space for both/and in our tradition!?!?

Someone actually didn’t want that. Someone edited it out, and made Mary smaller. Dear ones, may we commit ourselves to the opposite. May we go out and make God, and each other, and all we meet BIGGER! Tower like, even. Amen

1 ALL THE MARYS Wild Goose Festival, Closing Sermon, July 17, 2022 by Diana Butler Bass https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/All-the-Marys-Sermon.pdf

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 21, 2023