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I’m not much of a text-messager. I mostly use my mobile
phone’s text-messaging service to make sure my best
friend David (who works the late shift at a television
station) is awake before I call him. I’m all thumbs when
it comes to texting; it takes me about two minutes to
compose a single-sentence message.
There are, however, two text
messages in my out-box. Both were sent to David, and
both begin with the phrase “Guess who ...."
I don’t want to be overheard
spreading juicy tidbits about friends and acquaintances.
Nor do I want to wake up David just to tell him that I
saw so-and-so out with so-and-so. Rather, I’ll take two
minutes to write the message, then wait expectantly for
the “ping” that means David has received my message and
his curiosity is piqued.
Better yet, he’ll call and
start guessing to whom my juicy tidbit refers.
If I had good news to share,
I’d call. If I were sad, I’d call. But if I’m only
spreading gossip, well, that’s hardly worth a phone
call, right? I could wait until morning to call. But….
my news might not be quite so interesting in the
morning or I might not be feeling quite so scandalized. Or
vindicated. Or full of righteous anger.
By morning, I might have put
things in perspective.
These two bits of tasty
gossip — as far as I know — went only as far as David. He
lives 1,500 miles from me (and the subjects of my
messages). It’s unlikely my rumor-mongering will ever be
discovered by anyone who cares. Although, if for some
reason, my mobile phone is the only artifact uncovered
in a future century’s archeological dig, then all that
remains of so-and-so is that I saw him out with
so-and-so. It would be a pathetic addition to the
historic record.
Then again, quite a few of
our ancestors in the faith have found themselves the
victims of unfounded gossip.
Take Mary Magdalene, for
example.
A woman with a past
She was dead some 500 years
before unsavory rumors about her
even started. Yet today, reading her name fills us
with a little subversive thrill. Ah, yes, Mary
Magdalene. She’s an interesting character, we think.
During different periods of
church history, Mary has been pegged as a sort of lowest
common denominator. She ranked about as well as tax
collectors. Just a few pegs above Judas Iscariot.
What are the words that come
to mind when we hear her name? Saint? Apostle? Friend of
Jesus? Not likely. Those are the adjectives that come to
mind only after we’ve dispensed with "prostitute" and
"woman from whom seven demons had gone out"
(Luke 8).
Sometimes, to consider Mary
Magdalene as a less-than-virtuous figure has its merits.
In that context, Mary shares the status of the tax
collectors with whom Jesus shared a meal, showing that
he was a friend to unsavory types. When we’re feeling at
our worst, we might think, "Well, if Jesus welcomed her,
perhaps he’ll welcome me, too."
However, if we move beyond
the common misperceptions about Mary Magdalene, we
discover a woman who is a heroine of the faith.
When we hear her name, do we
remember that Mary Magdalene witnessed the crucifixion
of Jesus, or that she was diligently seeking his body to
anoint it with oil on the fateful Easter morning the
angel turned her away, saying “he is not here”?
Still something about
Mary
Regarded as the “apostle to the apostles” in the third
century, by the sixth century her story had been merged
with that of two other Marys of Jesus’ acquaintance.
This resulted in a “composite figure of the sexually
aberrant penitent” (Oxford Dictionary of the World’s
Religions, Oxford University Press, 1997, John Bowker,
ed.). “Mary Magdalene’s image became distorted when early
church leaders bundled into her story those of several
less distinguished women whom the Bible did not name or
referred to without a last name. One is the ‘sinner’ in
Luke who bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears, dries them
with her hair, kisses them and anoints them with
ointment,” writes David Van Biema in a March 11, 2003
Time
magazine article. Van Biema’s article puts forth two
possible explanations of why the compilers of the
gospels merged the Marys. One possibility is that the
merger simplified the cast of characters in the gospels
and provided a back-story for a major figure, Jesus.
A more sinister theory
suggests that compilers actively tarnished Mary
Magdalene’s image in an attempt to reduce her
significance in the gospel. She’s the woman who appears
with most regularity in the gospel. Yet, we tend to
paint her with broad strokes and remember her alleged
transgressions more than we remember her ministry.
There are positive legends attributed to Mary Magdalene.
In one story she is called to the palace to explain the
resurrection of Jesus to a very skeptical Tiberius
Caesar. The confrontation occurs during a meal, and
Caesar declares that Christ could no more have risen
from the tomb than
the egg in Mary’s hand turn red. It does.
Imagine how the rumor mill
must have cranked up after that momentous feast.
The recent publicity around
Dan Brown’s book and now film, The Da Vinci Code, has done
little for
Mary’s image. The Mary we meet in the gospel is an
example of an independent woman, one who used her own
financial resources to support the ministry of Jesus and
his disciples. The Mary we meet in The Da Vinci Code is
significant only because of her alleged romantic ties to
Jesus.
In the past few decades,
women have struggled to achieve great things and to be
recognized in our own right for our successes.
Gone are
the days when women were referred to in news articles as
the “wife of so-and-so.” Our gospels clearly recognize
Mary Magdalene as a great woman, an apostle and a saint.
The Mary Magdalene of the gospel is a strong (and as
far as we know, single) woman who puts Jesus first in
her life. She makes a choice.
Yet our most popular
contemporary work of fiction insists that her most
important achievement may have been as the wife of
Jesus. Would it obscure Mary Magdalene’s greatness if
she were the spouse of Jesus? Absolutely not. But is
speculation about such a relationship necessary for us
to admire and respect our sister in faith?
Absolutely not.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge
Those of us who maintain cross-gender friendships know
how
difficult it is to avoid rumors. Imagine how
difficult it must have been in Jesus’ time, especially
as Jesus became a bit of a celebrity. Anyone associated
with him was surely subjected to the
first-century
equivalent of paparazzi.
Sex sells. Surely, by the
third century, it became more interesting to mention not
only that Jesus’ apostles included women, but that some
of them were women of questionable character. Perhaps it
was an easy way to illustrate Jesus’ radical acceptance.
But in the long run, the rumor mill has not served us
well. It has deprived us of the example of a woman whom
we should respect for her ministry to Jesus and his
apostles.
Nor do we serve our sisters and brothers in faith when we spread rumors or
gossip about each other — or harbor judgment in our
hearts against our fellow believers. During worship, at
the time of silence for self-reflection, how many of us
enumerate those things which separate us from God but and
then reflexively add the postscript “Well, at least I’m
not as bad off as so-and-so”?
One of my favorite
interpretations of the commandment “You shall not kill”
is one that expands the law to not only prohibit taking
life
but to prohibit all the little “murders” we commit
each day. Whether we mutter under our breath about a
co-worker’s visible panty line or table manners, or
question how an average student might have convinced her
teacher to give her an above-average grade, or speculate
about a friend’s relationship with her spouse, or try to
guess the amount so-and-so spent on those new shoes (or
sofa, or SUV), we injure their reputations. We don’t
physically “kill” them,
but we do kill their character.
We often form alliances
woven of petty information against those
who live and
act differently than we do, because they live and act
differently than we do. Because they make choices in
ways that we would not. Because their priorities about
having a family, saving and spending, and using their
time are different than ours. Every difference becomes a
potential point of criticism. Everything they do becomes
evidence that we use to support our prevailing opinion
of them.
Gossip sells
It’s difficult not to gossip. We read magazines devoted
to rumors about celebrities. We get excited about rumors
of a favorable trade for our sports teams, or about a
good review of this summer’s popcorn flick we’re dying
to see.
For me, it’s hard to avoid
sharing news about my friends. I assume that because I
love them and have great concern for what happens in
their lives, others will, too. Occasionally, I have to
bite my tongue from telling even good news, or giving
away too many details. Certain friends have taught me
that some areas in my life that I would consider an
“open book” are topics they’re uncomfortable discussing
or having discussed. I’m usually quite surprised to
learn that someone is reluctant to share information
about something in his or her life, because knowing
about it makes absolutely no difference to me.
It’s hard to temper our
enthusiasm about being in-the-know when it comes to
information about our friends, fellow students, and
colleagues. We live in what is called the “information
age.” Having moved from the industrial era, to the
service-based economy, we are now in an economic model
that runs on popular knowledge and the technology that
distributes it. We’re taught that in order to succeed we
need to know how to collect and disseminate information
efficiently. We need to be good storytellers.
Good storytellers know their
characters inside-out. The stories we read over and over
again are the ones that feature many-layered characters.
We project ourselves into those characters with whom we
sympathize, and sometimes, those with whom we don’t.
The good writers are the
ones that present not only the characters’ actions, but
their motivations. We don’t simply know that the
antagonist hates the protagonist, but we know why. We
know that Job’s sufferings were all the more
inexplicable because he had led a good and faithful
life. We know that Judas betrayed Jesus partly for a
payoff. We know that Mary Magdalene was much, much more
than our culture’s flawed memory would have us believe.
If only we could apply the
same understanding to our friends, fellow students, and
colleagues.
Amber Leberman is web
manager & associate art director for
The Lutheran
magazine.
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