John 11:1-44
The raising of Lazarus is the final story in our series on Mary Magdalene. The women in this story are identified as Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus of Bethany. We are used to reading about them. Usually, we understand them to be different people from Mary Magdalene, Mary being a common name at the time. We’re reading this story in our series because like those stories which specifically refer to the Magdalene, it shows us something important about the role of women as disciples of Jesus.
Notice that the disciples are slow to understand what Jesus is doing in this story – intentionally letting Lazarus die so he can raise him from the dead. Instead, they are trying to dissuade him from going back so near Jerusalem where he’s in danger. (One of my favorite verses is the statement by Thomas – who later is criticized for doubting resurrection – “Let us go with him so we can die with him.” That’s commitment.
But Martha and Mary name Jesus as Messiah, the messenger of God, and even in their grief, they trust Jesus to support them. At the very least to mourn with them. Although they chastise him for not coming earlier to save him, they stick with Jesus as he performs a miracle, maybe less surprising to them than to the others. They believed he could do it all along.
The second reason we’re reading this story is because of some recent scholarship that suggests this story is the reason Mary and Martha have become confused with Mary Magdalene. Without going into the minutiae of biblical scholarship that compares oldest and other manuscripts, talks about copying errors that change letters and so words, and pay attention to verb forms – simply say that some scholars have made such a convincing point that there was originally only one woman in this story and that she was Mary of Magdala that they’ve earned a footnote in the master translation of New Testament scriptures. Maybe this is Mary. And why would it have been changed? Because Mary was a key disciple, apostle to the apostles, and as over the first centuries of the church women became marginalized, it was important for translators to minimize the role Mary played.
Which gives me an excuse to talk with you about how scripture works and why it’s important. There is an assumption among some Christians that the Bible was dictated by God. Every word is God’s direct communication to humans. There’s a difference between dictation and inspiration. Great hymn writers are inspired to write the words that continue to inspire us. But the creative process that comes up with memorable lines isn’t identical to dictation. There are some scriptures that are dictated – that’s the story of the Q’ran, which reportedly was dictated by the angel Gabriel directly to Mohammed. After meditating for long days in a holy cave, Mohammed could recite whole books of the Q’ran. That story is more recent than any of our scriptures and is more amazing because Mohammed was illiterate. There are also eye witnesses to his recitations.
Most of the books or partial books of our Bibles are much older. The Hebrew scriptures were oral traditions for centuries before they were written down. What we think of as the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, show evidence that they were written by many different authors over time. Scholars trace at least four main strands woven into those books which show variations in vocabulary and place names indicating that the stories were recited over time, connected with similar stories, various fragments becoming a new whole. Most often stories that had been recited at the Temple were written down after a battle or exile of the people. There was danger of the oral tradition being lost and forgotten, so it was committed to writing.
The New Testament books were also written over time. Some of them share common stories which indicate they may have been copying from older texts now lost to us. The four Gospels show significant differences in theme. The collected letters purport to be written by Paul or the apostles. But in those times, it was common to put a famous person’s name on a writing to give it more weight. The actual authors of many of the books are lost to history.
So how did these books become our Bibles? The Hebrew scriptures were gathered a certified into a “finished” product about 1000 years ago. The Christian scriptures started as lists of writings that church leaders found helpful for house churches to read, if they happened to have a copy. About the time Christianity became official as the Roman religion, those lists gained consensus, although today Protestants and Catholics have different official lists of what belongs. We’ve been reading The Gospel of Mary, which didn’t make any list. There are perhaps hundreds of other writings also not on the list, many of which have been lost through time.
When leaders were making lists of books they preferred, they left many out. Some deserved to be excluded. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was very popular because it has fantastic stories, but it’s not official. One story tells how the parents of Nazareth complained to Mary and Joseph because young Jesus was frightening the other children by killing animals and bringing them back to life. We can agree that was best omitted.
So if our Bibles show evidence of many human hands in the writing and collecting of these books, why should they matter to us. Not because they record accurate history or were chosen by divine intervention, but because they are the record of humanity over centuries who valued their relationship to God. People reflected on what was happening to them as a nation or as individuals and saw the presence of God, the intervention of God, the love of God. They told these stories and later wrote these stories because they spoke to them of what it meant to be human and what it meant to know God’s love. The stories give guidance to the best way to live. They make sense of how the world works. They encourage people to make commitments to believing in God and following God’s way.
You may have had the experience of reading a passage of scripture and finding that it speaks directly to something that was happening in your life. It may have given you comfort when you were grieving or helped you make an important decision. The words an ancient ancestor wrote about their relationship with God inform the ways we understand our own relationship with what is holy.
Our relationship with Bible stories changes over our lifetime. We have favorites as children that become less important to us as adults. The fall of the walls of Jericho is a great kids’ story, but we rarely read it now. In history people have read the Bible to prove that women have no place in leadership or that love must be heterosexual. We have come to read other passages to encourage equality among all people and to affirm that love is love, no matter the gender. Changing what we hear from scripture is possible because we’re listening for God’s presence through the words, not in the literal writing. If we’re honest, we can’t read scripture without the lens of our experience, our values, our dreams. Just as people were once inspired to tell these stories or to write them down, we are inspired to understand them in ever more mature ways as we grow in faith. That’s because faith is alive and growing. Not something that could be written down once forever. But living words that inform us in complex situations. Words that can help us grow toward being God’s people over a lifetime.
Some say that seeing the Bible in this way diminishes its importance. If it’s not God’s literal word, it has no value. I want to suggest that God is happy to work with us, to inspire us, to encourage us to think together about what these words mean and how they inform our choices. A Bible that can change with us as we change is more important. A God that helps us change and grow is most important of all.