APOSTLE TO THE APOSTLES--MARY MAGDALENE
An Excerpt from Lost Women of the Bible

Carolyn Custis James

An Enemy Outpost

Mary started out on the wrong side of the war. She was an Enemy stronghold, providing food and shelter for the Devil’s troops—seven of them in all. According to one scholar, she suffered from “a possession of extraordinary malignity.”¹ The Bible offers no particulars about how Mary became demon possessed, how long she lived in that desperate state, or the circumstances surrounding her encounter with Jesus when he delivered her. From what we know of other demoniacs in the Bible, we can safely assume that until she met Jesus, she lived a deranged existence that pushed her to the fringes of society. There may have been erratic episodes when, driven by the dark powers within, she screamed, foamed at the mouth, convulsed, and thrashed on the ground. Normal people tend to avoid someone like that. Perhaps, like the infamous Gerasene demoniac, she lived naked among the tombs or possessed abnormal strength that frightened her neighbors and made futile any attempt to restrain her. Such strength, however, was powerless to break the grip of the seven demons who held her captive. She needed Jesus to set her free.

We also know that no demon-possessed person ever went to Jesus for help. The sick desperately wanted his help. They traveled for miles, disrupted his work, pulled up roofs, badgered him, and generally made nuisances of themselves just to get to him. But no demoniac ever sought him out. Usually someone else—a desperate parent or a compassionate friend—went to Jesus on their behalf. Sometimes, without being asked, Jesus simply intervened. Around Jesus, the demon possessed were defiant and resistant. Mostly they wanted him to go away.

Mary wasn’t seeking Jesus. Her story isn’t about the lost lamb who found the Shepherd, but of the Shepherd who searched and rescued this lost lamb despite her determination to avoid him. It is possible she had no family or friends—no one on their knees pleading for God to deliver her. Jesus’ strong arm reached into the black darkness that engulfed her and pulled her out to safety anyway.

What a powerful encouragement for those of us with loved ones who have no time for God, who resist the gospel and simply want to be left alone. Most people hold out little hope for someone like Mary, but Jesus doesn’t give up on hopeless cases, and neither should we. There’s no telling what he will do. Mary’s lostness ended the day she met Jesus. He brought an abrupt end to her savage bondage, restored her to her right mind, and freed her to follow him. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined where that road would lead.

A Follower of Jesus

It’s amazing how many times we can read a passage of the Bible before the words actually sink in. That happened to a friend of mine who told me she read her Bible through many times before noticing that Anna was a prophetess (Luke 2:36). I have to admit that it was a long time before it dawned on me that there were actually women who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve. I always envisioned a party of thirteen. But there it was in the Bible for all to see:

Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means. (Luke 8:1–3, emphasis added)

Mary is best known for her leading role in the events surrounding Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Luke’s reference to her here is another often overlooked piece of information that is necessary to make sense of her story. After Jesus delivered her, instead of sending her on her way, he brought her into the fellowship of his followers. She became part of a privileged group of women from Galilee² who, along with the twelve disciples, accompanied Jesus as he traveled and ministered from town to town. Ensconced within this inner circle of disciples, Mary had a front row seat for Jesus’ ministry and teaching.

From here, the once ostracized and isolated Mary discovered the meaning of belonging and relationship. Mary’s real story is found by looking more closely at her relationships with Jesus and with the twelve apostles. Her relationship with Jesus resulted in the transformation of a useless, self-destructing life into a masterpiece of his grace. She became a key contributor to the advancement of his kingdom and someone to whom all Christians are indebted. Mary and the other women from Galilee were not incidental to the stories of Jesus’ male disciples either. These women had a profound, life-changing impact on the Twelve.

“Rabboni!”

Mary wasn’t the sinful woman who anointed Jesus, but she had just as much reason to weep tears of gratitude at his feet. Instead of weeping, Mary and the other women from Galilee turned their gratitude into action. They found a vital way to minister to Jesus and his apostles by supporting them out of their personal resources. Who knows how many more lives were touched, how many more people were exposed to the teachings of Jesus, how often a weary Jesus and his fatigued disciples were refreshed and revived because of the kindness of these women? In the process of caring for Jesus, they soaked up his teaching and were on the scene to witness his character, ministry, and miracles.

Our twenty-first-century perspective makes it harder to detect the drastic changes Jesus was introducing to women’s lives. Within the first-century patriarchal culture, women led more sheltered lives and moved in a separate, more confined sphere than men. In Mary’s world, men and women didn’t freely associate together as we do today. Men tended to avoid public encounters with women, which explains why Jesus’ disciples were dumbfounded when they found him talking with the Samaritan woman (John 4). Also, education was a male privilege. A woman could pick up a lot from synagogue teachings and from her father, if he chose to teach her. But women never studied under rabbis and, church historians tell us, “it would have been unheard of for women to travel with a rabbi.”³ Also, women didn’t have a voice in legal matters and were not accepted as credible witnesses in a court of law.

In these matters, and many others, Rabbi Jesus radically broke with tradition. He didn’t isolate himself from women like other rabbis. He taught them openly, engaged their minds, recruited them as his disciples, and counted on them in weighty matters. He gave his male disciples a lot to think about when they heard him teaching women the same deep theology he taught them. Furthermore, instead of dismissing women as legal witnesses, Jesus affirmed them as key witnesses to the most crucial events of human history—his own death, burial, and resurrection.

When Mary recognized the resurrected Jesus, she cried out, “Rabboni!” or “my teacher” (John 20:16). When we put that piece of information together with the snippet from Luke’s gospel telling us that Mary was one of the women who traveled with Jesus, it is clear that Mary was a student in the school of Rabbi Jesus. She was blessed with more than the average opportunities to hear his word and to observe and interact with him.

Why Bring Her Along?

I can’t help wondering what the Twelve thought of this arrangement. If their response to Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman is any clue, it had to be unsettling to have women in their party. I must admit I’m a little stunned by it myself, perhaps because I’m in the habit of thinking Jesus focused exclusively on the twelve men. Why did Jesus include Mary and the other women? Was he just trying to be fair? Was this some early form of affirmative action? Why couldn’t the women just listen whenever a crowd gathered or when Jesus taught them occasionally in private, as he did with Mary of Bethany? Even that was a radical departure from tradition. Why did he have to bring them along?

When we come across information like this in the Bible, it’s easy for us to think we’ve uncovered more ammunition for the ongoing gender war. Maybe the women were being trained for the same leadership posts as the men. On the other hand, maybe they were only bringing hot meals to Jesus and his male disciples and making sure there were enough blankets to go around at night. This never-ending debate takes our eyes off Jesus and distracts us from noticing the deeper ways his actions were impacting the lives of the men and women who followed him.

Jesus was on a strategic mission. He had come to reveal his Father to his followers and to draw them into a real relationship with himself. He was creating a family and he had precious little time to work. For a brief three-year period, his followers enjoyed a face-to-face relationship with the Son of God. Their relationship with him involved far more than knowing more about him than everybody else. The call to follow Jesus carried the ultimate purpose of becoming like him. Discipleship entailed enormous responsibility. The rest of Christendom (including us) depended on Rabbi Jesus’ students. Their job was to pass on to us what they learned from him, by teaching us what he taught them and by loving one another as he loved them.

Their time with Jesus was intense. He filled their minds with more than they could possibly absorb. The apostle John wrote later that if they had written down everything Jesus did and said, “even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25). Jesus placed his disciples in situations where they were compelled to live out what they were learning—crises where they feared for their lives, perplexing situations where they didn’t know what to do next, and especially in relationships where he dismantled their prejudices and tore down long-established social, cultural, and ethnic barriers. Jesus’ ways were not the ways of the world. He was blazing a different path for those who follow him.

Occasional encounters with Jesus were not enough to prepare these men and women to carry his mission forward after he was gone. They needed prolonged, sustained exposure to Jesus. In short, they needed to live with him. There was far too much for one mind—or twelve—to absorb. His followers needed multiple perspectives—men and women from different walks of life and social classes. Jesus was forging them into a family, a body, a community, a church whose trademark was to be their love for one another. Mary was in the thick of it all, and Jesus had a vital role for her.

The People Jesus Called to Love One Another

Jesus couldn’t have chosen a group less likely to coalesce. His followers were a preview of the church—male and female, rich and poor, professional and working class, the right and the left—a motley crew who, without changed hearts, could never come together. Even among the Twelve there was enormous potential for friction and conflict. Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John away from their fishing boats to follow him. Then he put them with Matthew, where natural hostilities existed. Matthew boarded up his tax collector’s toll booth and left a lucrative (albeit dishonest) career to become a disciple. He had been overtaxing his own people, including the fishing industry, for the Romans and pocketing the excess to enrich himself. Simon the Zealot would have zero tolerance for a man like him, but Jesus called Simon too.

Jesus called twelve men to follow him. There is no getting around the fact that these men were a central part of Jesus’ strategy. They shouldered enormous responsibility when he was gone. But Jesus wasn’t starting up a male fraternity or a monastery for men. The church isn’t male only, and Jesus isn’t building his kingdom with only male help. What God said in the beginning held true for his disciples and is still true today in the church: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” The ezer is vital here too. And so Jesus chose women to follow him as well. Women like Mary—the lunatic Jesus rescued from the prison of demon possession. The Twelve no doubt saw the “before” and “after” Mary, never expecting her to become part of their company. But her involvement fit the blueprint God established in creation when he called his image bearers—male and female—to serve him and reflect his image together (Genesis 1:26–27). Before the story was over, these twelve men would discover their profound need for the women who followed Jesus.

<sup>1 Ben Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus: A Study of Jesus' Attitudes to Women and Their Roles as Reflected in His Earthly Life, Society for New Testament Studies, gen. ed. G.N. Stanton (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 117.

2 Several of these women were wives or mothers of male disciples, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of James and John, for example. At least occasionally and certainly at the last, Jesus' mother was with him. The Gospels offer us no hint of Mary Magdalene's age, physical appearance, or station in life. The default view is that she was young and beautiful, but the Bible does not give any evidence to support that view. She just as easily could have been older, past child-bearing years, and delivered from demon possession too late in life to be considered marriageable.

3 Ruth A. Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church: Women and Ministry from New Testament Times to the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1987), 29.</sup>

This excerpt is taken from Lost Women of the Bible, by Carolyn Custis James, copyright © 2005 by Zondervan. Used with permission from Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.

Carolyn Custis James (M.A., Biblical Studies) travels extensively as a popular speaker for women's conferences, churches, colleges, seminaries, and other Christian organizations. Her ministry organization, Whitby Forum, promotes thoughtful biblical discussion to help men and women join forces in serving God together. Carolyn lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband, Frank, and daughter, Allison.