It’s ok to admit it
this morning: Reunion Weekend is
overwhelming. It is dizzying and
confusing, wonderful, and sometimes terrifying.
Some people are so confused they
didn’t even make it to chapel. You
would not believe the signs of disorder and chaos that I have seen on this
campus on Sunday morning at the end of Reunion Weekend, as I make the slow walk
up to St. Joseph’s Chapel. For those of
you who did make it to the Memorial Eucharist, congratulations (you get extra
credit): and I hope to speak to the confusion this morning. My own vantage point is mostly
stationary. I work here, I live here;
this is my home. I don’t have a plane to
catch, a suitcase to pack, or a dormitory room to vacate. But the emotions that are stirred up by this
weekend for me are always significant, and deserve theological
consideration. Where is God in all of
this? Right in the middle of it--ok, but
where is the middle? What does the
sacred center look like?
It doesn’t matter what
year you graduated, there is a feeling of many times in your life coming
together right now. Many people and
storylines are regathering, and reconnecting.
Different times in your life are coming up to greet you. Do you remember who you used to be? Things that had grown old are being made
new. How will Kent shape you again? From a theological perspective, it were as
if our arms were so full of memories, that something must give way. What should we hold onto? What is it now ok to let go of?
Several years ago, as
I was preparing for this very service, I received some visitors. Three monks from the Order of the Holy Cross
came to pay me a visit. Brother Robert,
Brother Julian, and Brother Daniel came to visit the school founded by Father
Frederick Sill, a monk from the same order, one hundred and eleven years
ago. Walt Disney, who is one of my
personal heroes, was fond of summing up all of his movies and theme parks and
lives touched with the simple statement: It
all started with a mouse. Somehow
this simple phrase centered him, and humbled him as his work went in surprising
directions. It gave him the right
perspective to take it all in. Well, at
Kent School, it all started with a monk. I thought of our history as the three monks
and I said a prayer at the grave of Father Sill, just outside this chapel in
the garden. The three monks and I toured
the campus on a rainy day with something like this simple phrase in mind. It all
started with a monk. A monk who certainly
had no vision of his school eventually having a campus for girls, or a
consolidated campus with boys and girls together. God help us.
Yet it has all come to pass. The
entire history of Kent is an exercise in faith, and we’re all part of it. The occasion of the monks’ visit was the
founding of another school by the monks of Holy Cross: this time in
Grahamstown, South Africa: Holy Cross School.
As Kent was once founded for young men of modest or slender means, Holy
Cross is attended by some of the poorest children on the Eastern Cape of South
Africa, in a region ravaged by AIDS, and poverty. The most pressing needs for these children
are medical care and education, and the school is adding a new grade each
year. As we walked the campus of Kent
School under school umbrellas, Brother Robert Sevensky, the Superior of Holy
Cross, remarked: “Just look at this place. Imagine
what Holy Cross School will be like in a hundred years.” With Grahamstown and its little school in
mind, the complicated feelings and experience of this weekend became incredibly
simple: education is the best way to
change the world, one person at a time.
And the quickest way to change the world is to change your own
heart. It all started with a monk. And it is happening again.
Sometimes the lessons
on Sunday can also help to simplify things on Reunion Weekend. Like the weekend itself, the story of an
unnamed woman anointing Jesus can be incredibly complex and overwhelming. So how should we approach this story from
Luke? In our shared history of Kent, it
all started with a monk. In the lesson
from Luke, it all started with a woman. It is a story that combines overwhelming
gratitude, forgiveness, and healing, with a scandalous intimacy at a dinner
party. Jesus is anointed with holy oil,
but, more importantly, with the tears and hair of the woman. Jewish men and women who did not know each
other generally didn’t speak in public at this time; they certainly didn’t
touch each other. In the anointing, the
oil and tears mingle on the feet of Jesus, and she wipes his feet tenderly with
her hair. Everyone is scandalized by
this woman. Everyone except Jesus. He is
touched, literally, emotionally, and spiritually. It is easily the most loving thing that is
done to Jesus in his recorded ministry.
Jesus is usually the one giving love, even unto the cross. Here he receives love, without shame. It all started with a woman. The woman is unnamed by Luke; or is she? Many scholars, including me, believe that
Luke is presenting the anointing tradition of Mary Magdalene, who is introduced
immediately following the scandalous dinner party. Who was this remarkable woman?
Getting to know Mary
Magdalene is like jumping into one of the most mysterious rivers of our
tradition. And the church has been
little help in finding, let alone navigating, this river--because the current
is so strong. Let’s begin with
background on the Marys we think we know, but haven’t ever really met. As Mary his mother gave birth to Jesus’s
life, Mary Magdalene was the mid-wife of his death: the one who anointed Jesus
before his crucifixion. However, this
would be following solely Luke’s gospel, and only by a logical leap: “And
behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was at
table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and
standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her
tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and
anointed them with the ointment.” The
woman is unnamed in Luke, but, as mentioned, Mary Magdalene is introduced at
the beginning of the next chapter (which the church specifically includes in
today’s gospel text). Mary is described
as a woman of means, a wealthy woman and patron, not as a prostitute, or even
as a sinner. In no biblical tradition is
she described as a prostitute.
The proximity of the
woman who is a sinner (still not necessarily a prostitute) to Mary Magdalene in
the text of Luke provides the connection; they
must be the same woman. Mary
Magdalene, the woman who is a sinner, is then the one anointing Jesus so
intimately. This connection was first
made official by Pope Gregory in the sixth century; there is no proof for
it. But, lost in the sound and fury of
Mary Magdalene’s alleged status as the woman who is a sinner, is the fact that
Matthew, Mark, and John all agree that Jesus was anointed by Mary before his
death. But she was not Mary Magdalene.
It was more likely Mary of Bethany because the anointings all take place
at Bethany. This is the sister of Martha
and Lazarus; she has a few stories. Only
John’s woman is explicitly Mary of Bethany in his anointing at Bethany. A logical assumption would then be that
Luke’s unnamed woman is also Mary of Bethany because it follows the same
structure of the anointing scenes of the other three gospels; it just doesn’t
locate it specifically at Bethany.
Despite the overwhelming agreement of three gospels, and the anonymity of
Luke’s woman, the anointing tradition is most often associated with Mary
Magdalene. What is happening here?
The tradition of
anointing the human body was not embraced by the early church, and there is a
great deal of mystery surrounding Mary Magdalene as a result. Bruce Chilton, a Religion professor at Bard
College, and also an Episcopal priest, attempts to rectify the repression of
this remarkable woman in his biography of Mary Magdalene.
“Mary and her nameless
colleague in chapter 7 of Luke’s Gospel both show what other ancient documents
demonstrate: Women in Jewish antiquity, particularly within the folk wisdom
practiced in Galilee, exercised a prominent role as anointers. Their domain extended far beyond the
conventional household, and there is evidence that significant groups of
practitioners looked to these women to guide them in their quest to leave this
world behind them and experience the divine world.”
Mary Magdalene’s
suppression as an early leader in the church, which she was, as well as the
first apostle—the first witness to Easter resurrection in the gospels, which
she was, is likely the result of the early church’s discomfort with physical
anointing. There is an unhidden element
of eros in all four gospel traditions with the woman anointing Jesus with oil
from the alabaster jar, not to mention the unseemly tears. And the hair.
For his part, Jesus is not embarrassed by it; he is instead deeply moved
by the woman’s love and tender devotion.
But the male witnesses are quite alarmed. In all but one case, they are too disturbed to
even name the woman directly. They knew
exactly who she was. The four
evangelists share the taboo panic with the witnesses; or rather they project it on to them.
The scenes with the
anointing woman show that the evangelists and the early church were uncomfortable
with powerful women anointing others as a spiritual practice of the church, yet
it was too important for them to fully cover it up. So it’s there, but very confusing. Jesus also approved of it; all the gospels
agree on that point, however reluctantly.
Despite this institutional discomfort, the church has retained the
remnant of the anointing tradition in four of its seven sacraments: Baptism
(with the chrism, the oil anointing the forehead), Confirmation, Holy Orders,
and Last Rites, with the laying on of hands.
The hidden history is actually in front of our eyes, hiding in plain
sight, in the sacraments of the church.
What a strange way for an institution to continue its past while
repressing the mystical female tradition of Judaism and the early church, and
completely forgetting its first priestly practitioners. This is a mighty river with no name. It deserves one.
We often think of the
love of God, the wisdom of the divine, coming directly from Jesus into the
world. In this moment of time, Jesus
stops in his ordinary rounds to receive God’s love from someone else. There is no moment quite like it anywhere in
the gospels. Jesus received the
anointing tradition, a priestly ritual, from a woman, but it was no dry
formula. It is a personal religion,
overflowing with love, with appreciation, with gratitude. With tears.
The God in Mary Magdalene meets the God in Jesus Christ. When we live in gratitude, to our school or
to our families, we are capable of giving God’s love to each other--even giving
it back to Jesus, with our names, our lives, our tears. We are
not passively receiving God’s love, we can also give it back. We were all given the gift of life. How we live it is the gift we give back to
God. Your life is a sacred story.
May God bless you,
your families, and all the lives you touch with your own.
