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“In Memory of Her”
Matthew 26:6-13
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Here we are on the second Sunday in Lent. During this season, we are looking at the temptations of Christianity. Last week, you might remember, we spoke about how the first temptation of Christianity is the temptation to control belief. We are a church that welcomes questions as they help us to define and refine our own beliefs. It’s great to be a part of a community where speaking of what some have called heresy is not a threat to our faith. One of the ways Christianity has controlled belief is to forget some central parts of its history, its story that might be threatening. Today’s scripture story is a case in point. Since the second temptation of Christianity can be the temptation to forget, today I want us to recover our memory of this story and of the person who is the focal point.
The story of the woman with the Alabaster jar appears in all four gospels. And in each of the Gospels, Jesus says to remember her. “What she has done will be told in memory of her.” But we don’t really remember her. We don’t even know her. What we know is that a woman anointed Jesus with oil, breaking an alabaster jar of pure nard. We also know that Judas and others didn’t like what they saw. They thought Jesus could have used the money better than the anointing. But this ignores the central point: “What she has done will be told in memory of her.”
Who is this woman? It depends on which Gospel you read and which commentators you listen to. Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t tell us who this is. It’s simply a woman. John calls her Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. But many artists, and popular culture has called this Mary Magdalene. That is certainly the thesis of Margaret Starbird’s book, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Since many of us are looking at the themes brought up in Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code during this Lenten season and the supposed heresies locked inside it, I thought this was an important book.
The thesis of DaVinci Code is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who herself holding the bloodline of Jesus, was the real Holy Grail. The quest for the Holy Grail is therefore the quest for the reintroduction of the feminine into our devotion of the holy family.
Let’s look at the symbolism in the story.
First of all, a king received his mantle of leadership when someone anointed his head with oil. The woman seems to be the only one who sees this and she takes the role of the high priest who should do this. No one objects to her anointing Jesus and declaring him king. Mary Magdalene was said to be of the line of Benjamin, another royal line and therefore had the right to join the two lines together which would ensure the messiahship and the uniting of David’s line with Benjamin’s line. We remember from Genesis that Benjamin was the one who had the silver cup in his bag. As heir, Mary was the one with the right to anoint Jesus and declare him King. Says Starbird, “The anointing of the sacred king was the unique privilege of a royal bride”(p.30)
The name Magdalen, says Starbird, may not be a designation of the town she was from, but of her station. Magdala means “tower”, or “magnificent”. Mary Magdalene could therefore refer to Mary the Great and thus be the same person as Mary of Bethany who was of the tribe of Benjamin.
Second of all, the disciples object to her anointing Jesus because of the cost of the nard. They don’t take issue with her anointing of him. They also never object to her being so intimate with Jesus. It must have been normal for Jesus and Mary to have been intimate. The Gnostic Gospel of Phillip calls Mary Magdalene Jesus’ “companion” and the Gospel of Thomas mentions how he continually kisses her on the mouth.
The third thing to look at requires knowing a bit about a custom known as the hieros gamos. The royal priestess who represented the Goddess anointed the head of the king with oil. This was called the sacred marriage or hieros gamos. As a part of the fertility rites of many Palestinian religions, the wife pours the ointment on the head or “feet” of the groom as a representative of the consummating of the relationship.
Marriage is a big topic in Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus talks about wedding feasts, about the bridegroom, the wedding guests and whom to invite to the great feasts of our lives. The Jesus disco is even a wedding feast, metaphorically.
Starbird
even suggests that the marriage at
The fourth thing we need to look at is the flask of nard. This costly ointment is usually part of a dowry that a bride gives to her husband on their wedding night. This whole ritual is very similar to the sacred marriage imagery in the Song of Songs. You have the nard, the anointing, the explicit sexual overtones as well as the kingly pieces too. In the second century, the church father Origen recognized Mary Magdalen as the bride in the Song of Songs. This is an early tradition—one that we have forgotten.
Judas Iscariot who was a Zealot, saw this happening to Jesus and him letting it happen and perhaps he realized that Jesus was not going to lead a revolution to overthrow Roman rule. Rather, he was interested in restoring the balance in the world, partly through the reintegration of the masculine and feminine. Judas might have also been zealous for the law and as such could not take Jesus’ apparent blasphemy of embracing a ritual that stood in the way of his understanding of the Jewish law.
Now, this might be a bit out there for some of you. I have to admit my own skepticism, but then I have to wonder what Jesus wanted us to remember Mary for. Why did we need to remember her and her actions?
Margaret Starbird says: “The denial of the feminine as partner and friend has robbed us of ecstasy and reduced our male-female relationships to a distorted shadow of the joy shared by the archetypal couple in the Garden. The wounded male, often overindulged and deeply frustrated, seeks his lost ecstasy in all the wrong places—violence, power, materialism, and the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure—not understanding that it is to be found only in relationship with the feminine.” (pp. 157,8)
What do we need to remember about
her and about us? This anointing
happened on the
I invite you to remember the ministry of Jesus through the sharing of the elements of communion in a few minutes.
But I invite you to share in the ministry of women through another ritual.
In honor of the woman with the alabaster jar, I invite you to remember women who have turned the world upside down.
I invite you to remember the women who have been important in your life.
I invite you to remember even the supposed sacred bride of Jesus and what she could mean for our understanding and experience of faith in our Christian walk.
I invite you to remember or long for a new world image, a new body image, a new image of the holy that is in you.
As
Sisters and brothers, Jesus said at the last supper, “do this in memory of me.”
I invite you to anoint yourselves and each other, “in memory of her.”
We might need to remember that when we take this oil upon ourselves in the center of this place where the masculine and feminine meet, we are not only remembering Jesus’ death, but we are also remembering the great gift that Mary gave to him.
We remember the pain and the weeping.
We remember the hope and promise that lies in the ones who follow this holy line.
But we resist the temptation to forget.
At communion, we eat and drink in memory of him.
As we anoint each other oil from these little alabaster jars, we do this in memory of her.
All quotes come from the Bible and The Woman With the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail by Margaret Starbird, 1993, Bear & Company