The gospels are not biography, neither are they history. They are spiritual documents designed to proclaim the early Christian faith as believed and practiced by four different church communities. They were probably written between about AD 60 – Mark’s gospel – and the end of the first century or even the early second – John’s gospel. Matthew’s and Luke’s date from somewhere in between, probably around AD 80. They are not contemporary with the events they claim to describe and their purpose is to reflect what those Christian communities believed and preached about Christ as their Saviour. This does not mean that they don’t have something true to say about the life and teaching of Jesus, or that they are not a source of knowledge about the man, the teacher, that he was, but we must always remember the nature of the gospels and not waste too much time arguing about their literal accuracy. To do so is to miss the point.
Having said that, though, there is at least one crucial event on which the gospels agree and that is the crucifixion. That Jesus was crucified for sedition in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, probably with the collusion of the Roman-appointed Temple hierarchy, is as close to being a definite historical fact – confirmed by non-Christian sources like the Roman historian, Tacitus – as you can get about an event in Judaea two thousand years ago. The gospels do present a surprisingly consistent account of the crucifixion, and although there are some differences, there can be little doubt that the account is credible. The gospel-writers may not have been there themselves, but they drew on the memories of people who were.
But if the gospel accounts of the crucifixion can be seen as being rooted in history, albeit with a theological – even mythological – spin, what about the event we remember and celebrate today – the resurrection? The gospels all proclaim the resurrection which, after all, is generally regarded as being at the very heart of Christianity, but what they say about it varies quite a lot. They all talk about the empty tomb and they all give women the central role of proclaiming that Jesus has been raised from the dead, but after that the so-called resurrection appearances go off in various – often contradictory – directions. But that doesn’t seem to devalue them spiritually. They all have something important to say. So what is going on?
It seems to me that after the profound and devastating shock of seeing Jesus put to death, his community of disciples underwent some remarkable experiences. Some, at least, of them were able to transcend their grief and to feel – to know – that despite his undoubted physical death, his spirit remained with them undimmed and undiminished. And this was particularly true for the women in his following, who then tried to bring the men to a similar understanding. We are told that the men were sceptical, doubting and unwilling to accept the witness of women. Maybe this was the beginning of those fractures in the Christian community which persisted for at least three-hundred years, until one dominant sect managed to prevail over the rest. And one result of this was the denial and suppression of the female witness, something which the Church – with a self-awarded capital ‘C’ – has only recently tried to correct.
The presence of women in the Jesus community was one of the most remarkable and revolutionary things about it, as was the leading role of women in the earliest Christian communities. Despite what is often, and unfairly, said about him, Saint Paul valued greatly the contribution of women as equal members in the Christian community. And we know from the canonical gospels that in the original Jesus community no woman was held in higher esteem than Mary Magdalen, and it is odd that we find no mention of her in Paul’s writings as we have them. But outside the canonical gospels, particularly in the alternative Christian tradition of Gnosticism, we find Mary Magdalen occupying a central role, something absent from what became ‘orthodox’ Christianity, where she was downgraded, without foundation, to the role of penitent prostitute. It would seem that in the conflict between ‘orthodoxy’ and its rivals, the status of Mary Magdalen was a contentious issue. In the New Testament as we have it today, Mary Magdalen disappears completely after the gospels.
But on Easter Day Mary Magdalen provides us with perhaps the most beautiful of the resurrection accounts, namely that in John’s gospel where the sorrowing Mary encounters the risen Christ in the garden. Only John’s gospel has this story, one that is quite consistent with the prominence that Mary was to achieve in the Gnostic Christian tradition. But what can it mean for us? As the woman closest to Jesus she must have been one who felt his death most keenly. She may have loved him as no-one else did. He was not just the promised Messiah, now cruelly put to death, he had touched her soul with his love and his message of love. And now he was dead. Laid in a dark, cold tomb – as Mary had witnessed herself – worse now followed. His body had disappeared and she had lost even that connection with him. He had brought hope to her and the rest of his disciples, but that hope had died in the darkness of the tomb, it had dissipated like a will’o’the wisp on that terrible morning. Nothing remained, not even his broken corpse. Hopelessness had snuffed out the bright promise he had seemed to offer.
In thinking about the resurrection it is too easy to forget Good Friday and fail to appreciate just how devastating it was for the disciples of Jesus, not least Mary Magdalen. And what misery must have oppressed them through the nights that followed! It must have been unbearable. What precisely happened then we don’t know, but something did which changed the world. Hope flooded back, and Mary Magdalen had a great deal to do with it. Out of the darkness of the tomb, so the narrative tells us, Jesus rose to restore hope. Out of the darkness of Mary Magdalen’s stricken soul, Jesus rose to greet her in the garden on Easter Day, and she went on to proclaim that hope.
What does that mean for us? Mary and her fellow disciples had no reason to hope when Jesus died on the cross. All was dark with no expectation of light. And yet the stone was rolled away, light came and a new hope. The Way of love taught by Jesus was still true, still bright. However dark and hopeless things may seem – and they often do for us as individuals, as communities, as nations and as a world – there is something beyond the darkness and that is hope. Hope doesn’t solve all problems, heal all ills, defeat all evils but hope is what raises us out of the darkness of the tomb and leads us into the garden. Deep in the human heart there is a Spirit that can rise unbidden, that same Spirit that transcended death in Jesus, to keep hope alive in a troubled world.
What Mary Magdalen felt on Easter morning, though, wasn’t hope, that had gone. Was it faith? Probably not. It was love. It was love mingled with profound sorrow. But she was puzzled and confused by this mysterious figure, this “gardener”, as she thought him to be. All she could say when he spoke her name and recognition dawned was the word “rabbuni”, “teacher”, the title she and the other disciples knew him by. When she tried to touch him, to hold him, he replied with words variously translated as “Do not touch me” or “Do not cling to me”, which seems the more likely. This was not rejection. It could simply mean that it was no longer possible to interact with him physically. She was encountering him in a new way. And it could mean that she must let him go. He wasn’t going to be there as he had once been. The relationship had moved on and she, and the rest of the community, must move on with it. He was going back to “my God and your God”, as he puts it, but to Mary he gives a new commission: not to follow him but to “go to my brothers, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father.” It was in the community that they would find him, now, and Mary – as the apostle to the apostles – must tell them so. And as John’s gospel puts it, Mary “went to tell the disciples”: “‘I have seen the Lord!’”, she said, and gave them his message.” They now had the commission of proclaiming his gospel of love, and in this lies hope in a world that so desperately needs it. As a prayer by A. Powell Davies has it, “…remind us, O Spirit Holy, that so much of God broke through the ruined plans of Jesus that two thousand years have seen no fading of its light.”
It is not a shallow thing, this hope. It is the hope that remains when more superficial hopes have gone. It is the hope that we don’t even know we have when life is hard and cruel. It is the hope that underpins our life and survives our death, carrying our love to those who are dear to us, to people we don’t even know, to generations yet unborn. It is the love-rooted hope that keeps alive the vision of a better world and strengthens us to build it. As Martin Luther King said on 3rd April 1968, the day before he was murdered, “I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”
This is the faith, the hope and the love that rises out of darkness on Easter Day. May we feel it, and live it too, sharing in the commission that Mary Magdalen received from her beloved “rabbuni” in the garden.