Four Sundays in November - First November Sunday - All Saints Day

The refrain of Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man is on my mind. It has been for a month. "Something is happening but you don't know what it is." Someone reminded me that I am not the same person I was at the beginning of the month. A profound, fundamental truth I learned through the four Sundays this November.

The first Sunday was All Saints Sunday where the Gospels for the month were alternating between Mark and John. The Gospel reading in this cycle was the story of Lazarus. And, for me, this year I was focused on Mary. 

Mary Magdalene, of course, is mentioned in all four gospels as a witness of the crucifixion and empty tomb. In Matthew and John, she also encounters the resurrected Jesus. Yet only in Luke is Mary mentioned earlier in Luke's narrative. Luke 8 refers to Mary, called Magdalene, as one of several women who traveled with Jesus and the disciples in Galilee.

There is a Biblical scholar from Duke University, a woman who looked at the oldest Papyrus that exists of the 11th Chapter of John, the Gospel reading for this All Saints Day. She found unusual corrections that were troubling. Basically it looked like there were two different sources that were being used. One talked about Mary alone and the other added a sister, Martha, to the story of Lazarus. As the scholar explored, she found more corrections in multiple papyruses that corrected their texts to add Martha.

She ended up with a complete text of Codexis before corrections. The impact of this was shattering. The Bible is often thought of as a closed canon. With the text referring to only Mary, new resonances opened up together with new parallels between Lazarus and the empty tomb, between Mary declaring her belief in Jesus as messiah and Peter's declaration. Christian faith is about lived commitment, not simply right belief and Mary's understanding of Jesus as the messiah when compared to Peter's shows this dynamic at work.

 “Yes, Lord,” Mary, rather than Martha says, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world” (John 11:27) Both Peter and Mary in the restored narrative declare belief in Jesus as messiah.   Mary, however, actually anoints Jesus (and, interestingly his feet not his head).  Peter is warned not to tell anyone and then rebuked for having human concerns rather than God’s.  Peter, from his understanding, finally betrays Jesus.  Mary, finally, learns from Jesus particularly at the empty tomb.

Jesus asks Mary "Why are you weeping?" Too often this reads as Jesus criticizing Mary, implying her weeping is not necessary. In this scholar's text that takes out the corrections, his weeping at the tomb of Lazarus frames the question in another way. It is not an accusation that weeping does not need to be done but an invitation, a holy question, to explore her sadness at death and not to bypass that sadness.

When does Easter start? For many Easter starts with the lilies of Easter morning? Perhaps Easter really starts in the darkness of the tomb, before the lilies have bloomed. When the disciples look into the darkness of the tomb they see only the discarded linen. Mary looked into the same tomb and sees angels because she was not unfamiliar with the darkness.

Mary also looks at the resurrected Jesus and she sees a gardener. This is not a mistake but rather a holy insight. Jesus is bringing new life from the ground. When he says her name she recognizes his as teacher rabboni, an important moment that the scripture feels must be preserved and does not translate into the English teacher without the quoting the original word first.

When Judas criticizes Mary for spending money on the expensive ointment Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”  This has so much resonance with the knowledge Mary was there on the day of his burial.

This challenged much of my perspective prior to November. Before my perspective was making the Bible closed canon was sensible. Following this scholarship sheds a very different light on the idea of closed canon.

The other was the ointment. Mary became an active participant when she understood Jesus was the messiah. She physically anointed him in a very particular way.

Also this is the Sunday where I received an invitation to an introductory Ifá and ancestral practice class.