The Gospel of Mary, Part 2

(DISCLAIMER: before you read this post you should read the previous post as part 2 will make more sense if you've read part 1 - obviously.)

(DISCLAIMER 2: I owe much of my understanding of the storyline to Karen King as relayed in her amazing book, “The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle”, which is linked below.)

The Gospel of Mary opens in the middle of a scene where the Risen Jesus is talking to his disciples and answering their questions about the end of the world and the nature of sin. He explains to them that although the material and spiritual worlds are currently all wrapped up into one, it won't always be this way for eventually each nature (material and spiritual) will return to its own root, to the place from which it came.

People sin, Jesus says, because they don't recognize their true spiritual nature that is all wrapped up and tied up in their material nature. Rather than love their spiritual nature they love their lower/material nature and are (as a result) deceived and led away to disease and death.

Eh?

In other words, their material or worldly or fleshy self deceives their spiritual or higher or true self and leads them away from being and living as they truly are, as the spiritual beings they were created to be.

Salvation, then, says Jesus, isn't about believing a certain thing so that we can go to heaven when we die, but it's about discovering within oneself their true spiritual nature and living their life from that place today and forevermore.

Finally, Jesus gives a stern warning against ANYONE ...

Teachers?

Pastors?

Podcasters?

... ANYONE who would cause the disciples to follow some "heroic leader" or "set of rules and laws". Instead, he says, they are to seek the "child of true Humanity" (the Christ, the breath of God, the energy of God, the Divine image) within themselves so that they can gain a deep, inner peace.

Sadly (the story says), all of the disciples except for Mary Magdalene fail to understand Jesus' teachings and so rather than tap into their inner peace, they are distraught, upset, worried, scared, and filled with fear as they wonder if they too will be crucified should they dare hit the streets with Jesus’ radical message.

They cower.

They shake.

They hide.

Next (almost as if to step into the shoes of Jesus) Mary begins to comfort the disciples and shares with them a teaching that was unknown to them because it came only to Mary … directly from the Risen Jesus.

WAIT.

PAUSE.

Don't miss how radical this is because (in other words) Mary begins to teach the disciples stuff that they didn't know because Jesus chose to leave Peter, Andrew, John, and the others OUT and share it only with Mary.

How's that going to go over? I’ll give you one guess!

Anyways, so Jesus, she said, explained to her how the soul would one day rise to its final resting place, describing how to win the battle against wicked powers that seek to keep the soul trapped in the material world and ignorant of it's true, spiritual self.

I imagine Mary preaching pretty hard.

Going on.

And on.

Really in the zone.

… When all of a sudden Andrew and Peter stand up to challenge her.

Andrew says he refuses to believe Mary because the teaching she's saying came from Jesus is super "strange" and doesn't seem to mix too well with things he had preciously taught them.

And Peter?

Oh Peter.

He refuses to believe that Jesus would give such advanced teachings to a woman and that Jesus would ever in a bazillion years prefer HER over HIM and the others.

Peter questions her.

He attacks her character.

He implies that she lied, that she made up the whole story so that she could increase her own presence among the other disciples.

Mary, then, begins to cry and Levi (another disciple) comes to her defense, calling Peter a hothead who is treating one of their own (Mary) like an enemy. He says that they should all be ashamed of themselves and that instead of arguing and making up new rules and laws (the very thing Jesus told them to be on guard against earlier in the story!) they should invest their energy in going out to preach the Gospel as Jesus commanded them to do.

... And that's it.

The last verse of one manuscript copy says that after Levi said those things they went out to preach while another says that Levi went out without mentioned anything about the others ... but ... yeah, that's it.

A short story, right? As I said in part 1, scholars believe that the first 6 pages of the manuscript are missing and so there are definitely some holes in the story. Even so, though, I think there's a lot here that we can reflect on.