THE SACRED FEMININE

The Sacred Feminine

a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine

on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 14, 2006

at The First Parish in Lincoln

“Blessed are you, that you did not waver at the sight of me.”

– Jesus to Mary Magdalene in The Gospel of Mary

“Women are going to reshape the planet during this century.

The only question is how quickly it will happen.”

– Judy Collins

READINGS:

1. Our first reading is from a book by Louise Hall Tharp called The Peabody Sisters of Salem. The Peabody sisters – Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia – lived during an intellectual Golden Age here in New England. Lizzie was an educator who ran a one-woman publishing house, counted Emerson and Channing as friends, and wrote transcendentalist and abolitionist essays of her own. Mary was the wittiest of the three and a teacher who married Horace Mann and went west to found Antioch College. Sophia, the artist among the sisters, was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s wife and his mainstay through thick and thin. Their mother was Betsey Hunt, and this excerpt is about her:

[Betsey Hunt’s father], John Hunt, had been a minister but had left the pulpit to become a distiller. The Lord had smiled upon his efforts and considerable wealth was his reward; so Betsey Hunt had been brought up in luxury. But it was John Hunt’s belief that “boys ought to be educated for the good of their country but that girls knew quite enough if they could make a shirt or a pudding.” Betsey Hunt had learned to read in secret, and had fallen in love with young Joseph Palmer, a Harvard undergraduate, because he brought her forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge in the form of books to read.

On November 2, 1772, when Betsey Hunt was “one month after seventeen,” she set out in a coach with her sister for Hampton, New Hampshire. She wore a riding habit “of silk calumet trimmed with silver lace and lapels of blue satin.” It was her wedding gown. Galloping alongside the coach were Joseph Palmer, Foster Candy, Israel Keith and Paul Revere. This whole gay, galloping wedding party was practically an elopement, since Betsey’s father had not been able to bring himself to approve of a young man who would let his wife read and write.

2. Our second reading is from The Gospel of Mary – as in Mary Magdalene. There were many gospels written after Jesus died, and most of them were either lost or suppressed, which is why only four actually show up in the bible. Fragments of The Gospel of Mary were found toward the end of the 19^th Century, and two years ago a new translation came out thanks to the work of Karen King at Harvard Divinity School. Mary’s gospel is just one scene. It takes place sometime after Jesus’ death when she and some of the male disciples got together to talk about what they should do:

Peter said to Mary, “Sister, we know that [he] loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words which you remember – which you know but we do not.” Mary said to them: “Do not grieve nor be irresolute, for his grace will be entirely with you and will protect you. What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.” And she began to speak to [them] these words: “I saw the Lord in a vision. He said to me, ‘Blessed are you, that you did not waver at the sight of me.’”

Mary gives them Jesus’ account of how the soul progresses through four stages to spiritual enlightenment. But the manuscript is fragmented, so we only have pieces of what she said. But the ending is intact: when she is finished, Peter looks at the other men and says:

“Did [Jesus] really speak with a woman without our knowledge and not openly. Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?”

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, “My brother, Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Levi answered and said, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. This is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us [do] as he commanded and preach the gospel...” And they began to go forth to proclaim and preach.

The most popular and controversial novel of our time comes to the screen this week.

In The Da Vinci Code, Tom Hanks is Robert Langdon

and the French actress, Audrey Tautou, is Sophie Neveu, and if you read the book,

you know that Sophie is the emotional core of the story –

all the puzzle pieces seem to point back to her.

And her name, like so much else in the novel, is no accident: sophia is the Greek word for wisdom.

The movie, like the book, is sure to get people talking,

and even the story’s harshest critics give it credit for sparking discussions

about evocative topics that have been kept way under the Christian rug for centuries.

Was Jesus ever in love?

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene lovers – even husband and wife?

Did they have a child?

There is no smoking gun in any credible source to answer those questions one way or the other.

But if it were true, would it hurt the way you think about Jesus and Mary Magdalene – or enhance it?

Does he become more real, more fully human, in your mind?

Or do you prefer the traditional picture of him as serenely unattached, even monastic?

And what about her?

Who was Mary Magdalene? – What do we know for sure about her and what is only guesswork?

We know for sure that she was a devoted disciple of Jesus, and she may well have been his favorite.

They met early in his ministry when she, suffering from some serious condition, sought him out.

A number of scholars believe she had epilepsy,

and people in those days thought an epileptic seizure meant that you had demons inside you,

which is why the gospel accounts say that “seven demons” left Mary when she met Jesus.

We know that she grew up in the town of Magdala, which was a sea-trading center on the Sea of Galilee,

so she was called Mary of Magdala – Magdalene was not her last name,

it was where she was from, and her family was probably well-to-do –

some think her father was a successful trader.

We know she had the resources to help pay the bills as Jesus and his disciples went from town to town.

We know for sure that she was not, and never was, a prostitute, as so many people wrongly assume.

It was Pope Gregory in 591 who marked her with that scarlet letter

because he confused her with another Mary in the gospels who may have been a prostitute;

the Roman Catholic church has since admitted his mistake and now regards her as a saint.

We also know that unlike his other disciples, Mary Magdalene was there when Jesus died on the cross.

And that she was the first of them to see him in a vision at the empty tomb.

But that’s the last we ever hear about her in the books and letters of the New Testament.

In the months and years after Jesus’ death, she simply disappears.

But the discovery of the “lost gospels,” including The Gospel of Mary, has given us the rest of the story.

A group of top scholars, including Elaine Pagels, who teaches religion at Princeton,

believe that Mary Magdalene was a leader of a group of early Christians,

and in TheGospel of Mary we see her in a light only hinted at in the biblical gospels:

she was first among the disciples

because she understood Jesus’ message better than any of the others.

They may never have had a romance,

but they did have a real connection: she “got” what he was about,

and she was resolute – she did not waver,

and he loved her for it.

So it’s no wonder that he confided in her – that she knew things the others did not.

The picture we have of her after his death is as a kind of coach to the men.

In our second reading, we hear them all talking about what they should do.

The men are, quite naturally, afraid: look what they did to him – that’s what they’ll do to us as well.

Mary Magdalene says: “Do not grieve or be irresolute – his grace will be entirely with you.”

When Peter asks her to tell them what she knows that they do not, she shares it freely.

And she is rewarded with Peter’s caustic rebuke –

he doesn’t believe Jesus would have spoken to her without their knowledge,

and he asks, sarcastically, “Did he prefer her to us?”

Mary, in tears, says:

“My brother, Peter, do you think that I thought this up myself, or that I am lying about [Jesus]?”

In response, one of the other men, Levi, reminds Peter that he’s always been a hot-head,

and Levi owns up to what everyone there knows: that Jesus did “love her more than us,”

so let’s listen to her and then get on with what he wanted us to do.

The last line in The Gospel of Mary is: “And they began to go forth to proclaim and preach.”

That exchange between Mary and Peter also appears in three of the other lost gospels.

As Harvard’s Karen King says, it reflects a tension in the early church

because women were denied the authority to go out and teach –

so Mary Magdalene did what she could: she coached the men,

and she helped lead a circle of early Christians.

She knew that her destiny was to be more background than foreground –

that if the life of Jesus was going to be told far and wide, the men were going to have to do it:

people would not listen seriously to a woman with such a fantastic story.

Finally, Mary Magdalene was very likely a mother –

eight different artists, including Simone Martini and Caravaggio, in their portraits of her,

depict her as pregnant.

Who was the father?

We will probably never know.

Flash forward to Mother’s Day, 2006.

In her column on Friday, Ellen Goodman bemoaned the fact that her own daughter,

who is now a mother, is caught up in a second-generation version

of “the mommy wars” – the debate between stay-at-home and go-to-work mothers.

The lines are drawn on one side by mothers like Caitlin Flanagan,

whose new book argues that anything less than full-time motherhood is unfair to children,

and on the other side, by working mothers who want to pursue a chosen career

without being guilted for it.

Not to mention that in many cases, they’re helping pay the bills.

As Ellen Goodman says, this is a no-win fight

because “the conflict keeps mothers facing inward, circling and shooting each other,

or searching for signs that the enemy’s children are not as smart or as secure as ours.”

Joan Blades, who is co-author of The Motherhood Manifesto and co-founder of MoveOn.org,

believes we’re all tired of this kind of polarization,

and that the strength mothers bring to the table “is that they have a long view.”

That is what Mary Magdalene embodied – a long view: “Do not grieve or be irresolute.”

There are teachings to pass on, there is work to be done.

And we are all tired of polarization – it’s a waste of good energy.

The strident voices keep us from seeing how much common ground we share.

The most valuable theme in The Da Vinci Code is its discussion of the sacred feminine.

The sacred feminine is an archetypal pattern with deep, cross-cultural roots.

It’s characteristics are a predisposition to inclusiveness, receptivity,

interdependence, cooperation, connection to Mother Earth, and community.

There is also a sacred masculine.

Its characteristics are reason, reserve, respect, risk, building things – and community.

We all have a mix of these two archetypes in us.

There are men with a strong sacred feminine and women with a strong sacred masculine.

The point is that these archetypes are not about women against men or men against women.

They are a way of seeing how much we share.

And when you let both patterns dance within you, you become more balanced, and more complete.

In his short public life, Jesus exemplified the quest for balance.

You can see a strong sacred feminine running through him:

he was inclusive – he spent time with rich and poor alike, with outcasts and priests;

he followed his heart, healing people on the Sabbath, which was forbidden by law,

and on those occasions he gave people credit for healing themselves –

he wanted them to know that they had it in themselves to get well and stay well;

he stood for grace over against get-even laws like “an eye for an eye” –

in effect, he replaced karma with grace.

You can also see the masculine energy in him:

he had a certain reserve – he needed time alone;

he was not interested in building things, like a church,

but he took big risks – he was willing to die for the values he believed in – and he did.

Mary Magdalene saw all of this in him – she “got” who he was.

She, too, was a mix of feminine and masculine characteristics.

She was full of grace, and she was unwavering.

In both of this morning’s readings, there are men who behave in unfortunate ways.

Betsey Hunt’s father forced her to learn to read in secret and refuse to bless the man she married.

Peter refused to believe that Jesus confided in Mary Magdalene and wanted to dismiss what she said.

But the man Betsey Hunt married that day was the man who had brought her books.

And among Jesus’ disciples, Levi put Peter in his place and reminded them all of their mission.

I chose the words by Judy Collins for the cover of today’s Order of Service

because we all need to be reminded of our mission on this Mother’s Day –

she spoke these words at the Million Mom March six years ago in Washington:

“Women are going to reshape the planet during this century.

The only question is how quickly it will happen.”

The Million Mom March, so full of hope, feels as if it happened in another era.

The violence and polarization of the years between then and now have taken a toll on everyone.

But I believe the sacred feminine is on the rise.

It’s not about women against men, though women are more likely to embody it.

And there are more women than men in college these days.

Our best divinity schools are right at 50-50.

Somewhere, Mary Magdalene is smiling.

Amen.

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Notes:

If you want to explore more of the “lost gospels,” a good place to start is a book entitled Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina.

Joan Blades has helped start a new website called MomsRising.org.