According to Mary Magdalene (16 page)

M
ary had just begun to write down her memories of Jericho and her meeting in Jerusalem when she heard the gate open and Leonidas calling out to her. He was back early today.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's take a walk and see Simon Peter laying the foundation stone of the first church.”

Mary knew the new Christian congregation had been given land next to the town wall where the old synagogue had once been. That had burned down many years ago and the site had been cleared over the summer.

So the time to lay the cornerstone had come.

She drew the veil over her face and threw her black cloak over her shoulders.

There were a lot of people at the site where Peter was reading the simple prayer Jesus had taught them, blessing the site and asking the Master to protect the new church building. Paul was standing next to Simon, also sunk in prayer.

Rabbi Amasya was on the edge of the crowd, so Leonidas pulled Mary with him and they went over to him.

“I think we need to talk to you, Rabbi.”

She was pleased. This was what she wanted. And Rabbi Amasya said he would come to their house after the evening meal.

They waited for the rabbi in the library. Mary lit the two big oil lamps and put fruit on the table. She was having doubts
now. She no longer wanted to talk to anyone about the events of those last few days. When the rabbi sat down in the guest chair, her resistance was so great, she pressed her lips together so that her mouth became a thin line.

Rabbi Amasya was not put off. He was worried.

“It was incautious of you to go to the Gnostic service,” he said. “Rumors are buzzing around now—who was the mysterious woman and what did she want of them? The fanciful maintain she was the angel of darkness sent there to spy on them. But some whisper about the apostle surpassing all others, the woman who according to the Gnostics ‘was given the knowledge of the Universe.' A man came to me today and asked me straight out whether the merchant Leonidas was married to Mary Magdalene.”

“I know it was incautious,” said Mary, but her voice was curt and very firm as she went on. “I have no regrets. It was good to hear them and see their order of service. A woman was preaching and said that Gnosis is to come to insight of the true source, namely the depths in everything that is. All those who learned of this source have done so by themselves. I recognized it. The words were not Jesus’, but the meaning…”

Rabbi Amasya shook his head. “I'm not talking about their teaching. There's a lot of good in it. What I'm trying to warn you about is what happens if you come forward. You'll be surrounded by zealots and worshipped as the apostle who has the only truth. That is a difficult role not suited to you, Mary. You have constantly distanced yourself from authorities, and you might become one yourself.”

It was quite quiet in the library now, and they could hear the wind going through the high trees in the garden.

“It's true, Rabbi,” Leonidas said finally. “Mary wouldn't have a quiet moment if it became known who she was. She is making her contribution here in the library. And her writings will still be here when the bickering between the various Christian sects has long been forgotten.”

They were right, Mary thought, but she also felt defiant. Not even Leonidas understood that sometimes she seemed to be living in a vacuum.

I was chosen, after all, she thought.

But she said nothing.

Amasya and Leonidas went on talking about the Gnostics. The rabbi said the multiplicity of Gnostic faith was so great that there was nothing secure and proven to hold on to.

“The individual's inner route to God has many pitfalls,” he went on. “So, for instance, Gnostics were unable to tell the difference between visions and reality. Anyone can have a revelation and then incorporate it into his teaching, adding to it and taking away as he wishes. Peter is right in that in the same way as Judaism, Christianity has to have a firm faith with definite doctrines so people all over the world can always go back to one and the same truth.”

Mary said nothing. So multiplicity was to be a bad thing, she thought. Jesus himself had said to her: “Write no laws.…”

But that was only in a vision.

The two men went on talking and Mary stopped listening. Not until Rabbi Amasya rose to leave did she ask a question. “Why don't you join Christianity?”

He flushed and she realized she had gone too far. But he was an honest man, so sat down again as he sought for an honest answer. “It's because I'm so firmly anchored in the Jewish faith. Like all orthodox Jews, I am awaiting the Messiah, the king who is to come to power and glory and free the Jewish people.”

He was speaking to Leonidas, although Mary had asked the question. The Greek looked surprised and disappointed and Rabbi Amasya flung out his hands, suddenly voluble, “You must understand that I cannot reconcile that dream with a barefoot preacher from Galilee who allows himself to be executed as a criminal.”

Mary wanted to say that Jesus wore sandals, but she restrained herself, and said instead: “How is he then to come?
On clouds from the Jewish god of hosts to destroy all other peoples?”

Rabbi Amasya remained deep in thought for a while, then spoke again. “He had power, this Jesus, that appears from your descriptions. But what use did he put it to? Curing a few hundred suffering people of their diseases and torments. A few hundred out of the suffering millions of the world. What use was that? Reducing the suffering—did that do anything to the basic conditions? Isn't evil as great as ever? And injustices and suffering? That he spoke fair words is nothing new. Israel has had plenty of preachers who have made themselves into interpreters of what is largely the same message.”

They sat in silence.

“Why were his deeds so small?” the rabbi cried. “He had the power. He shouldn't have spent hours over a few individual people.”

“But that was where his greatness lay. Can't you see that it was in this meeting, person to person, that the new was born. A new vision, a new way. I have heard you say there is only one way of serving God and that is to see him in every beggar.”

Rabbi Amasya groaned and was about to protest, but Mary stopped him.

“Listen,” she said. “What would the Messiah achieve with mighty acts? New conditions for some and new suffering for others. A new rebellion, new wretchedness, new wars.”

She leaned forward and went on, emphasizing every word. “What Jesus taught us was to see and love and care for every single person. That was what was new.”

Rabbi Amasya again tried to explain, but Leonidas interrupted him. “I don't understand you. It is as Mary says. What would happen if your Messiah came and created a new Jewish realm on earth? Bloody slaughter of those you call heathens. And after a while, the conquered people would rise and take bloody revenge.”

“I'm talking about a kingdom of god.” said Rabbi Amasya, but his voice had lost its resonance.

“And what is that?”

“A kingdom that is not of this world.”

“Do you know who said those words?”

“No.”

“It was Jesus.”

“I didn't know that,” said Rabbi Amasya.

When Mary went to bed that night, she thought she had at last understood why Peter and the others had not listened when Jesus spoke of his degradation and death. The image of the Jewish Messiah was incompatible with the fate Jesus walked straight into with his eyes open and in great anguish.

Just as she was falling asleep, she heard the cry from Golgotha: “He saved others; himself he cannot save.”

And the mocking laughter.

She sat up, struck by a thought. Was that perhaps what he had wanted with the crucifixion? To show how whoever has power is able to decline to use it?

Other words appeared: “Take up your cross and follow me.”

The next morning she was back in Bethany outside Jerusalem.

T
hey were given an abundant evening meal in Bethany. Martha served them, pressing the food on them. Jesus smiled at her from the table where he lay with Mary Magdalene at his side.

Lazarus partook in the meal, but his gaze was far away and he ate practically nothing. Mary noticed that that worried Jesus.

Her own attention was on Martha's sister, the young Mary, whose hands shook so much she was unable to touch the food. She was staring, unseeing, across the table, her eyes dark and unnaturally large, then she suddenly got up and ran to her room in the inner part of the house and came back with a flask made of expensive glass. When she opened it, the air was filled with the fragrance of spikenard. She knelt down and began to anoint Jesus' feet with the precious oil.

When she was done, she dried his feet on her hair.

They could hear people gathering in the courtyard, people from Jerusalem who wanted to hear Jesus. But exhausted as he was, he shook his head. After saying grace, he took Mary Magdalene's hand and they went out into the garden at the back.

The flowers had all died and thistles and briars had taken over. Mary reckoned no one in the house had had the strength to weed or water since Lazarus had fallen ill.

They sat down on a bench by the wall. A piercing wind was whistling around the house, penetrating their clothes and even their skin. She had heard of these desert winds that blew through the body and drove all hope from people's souls.

He was still holding her hand, but his was cold and his grip feeble. “We are to say farewell to each other now,” he said.

She wanted to cry out no, that she was going to follow him all the long way to death, but her voice had gone. He smiled, a smile full of tenderness and despair.

Then he said that he did not want her and the other women to be with him during these last days. “What soldiers do to women is worse than death,” he said.

Then he told her about the man with the water jar who owned a house in Jerusalem. He would look after the women disciples, hide and protect them.

“As soon as possible, I shall come there to see you.”

Then he went on: “You're not safe even here in Bethany. The resurrected Lazarus is a dangerous witness.”

Mary did not understand the connection, but now she was able to whisper: “I suppose we can follow at a distance?”

“Yes, mix in the crowds that will be around me. But don't reveal yourselves.”

He was gazing into the thorny thicket in the neglected garden, and when he again looked into her face, she saw he was weeping.

“You know that I am with you always.”

With an effort, Mary Magdalene pushed away the memory of the neglected garden and that terrible wind. She rose from her chair in the pergola in Antioch, her voice now restored and trembling with anger.

“With me always! The truth is that you follow me only like a whisper in the wind. It blows where it likes, and like a presentiment in the air when things are at their hardest. But that's not enough, not enough.”

She had a raging headache and decided to rest for a while.
As she lay back on her bed, her head pressed into the pillow, she thought—God in heaven, why is it not enough for me?

She tried to sleep, but the images in her memory returned at full strength the moment she closed her eyes.

T
he sun was above Bethany as they assembled for morning prayers the next day. The fierce wind had subsided and Jesus prayed for them.

“Holy Father, keep through thine own name, those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are. I kept them in your name: those that you gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition.

“They do not belong in the world, just as I do not belong in the world. As thou hast sent me to the world, I have sent them.” As he went on, he seemed to turn directly to the women. “You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned to joy. A woman when she is in travail, because her hour has come: but as soon as she has been delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And you now have sorrow but I shall see you again and you shall rejoice and your joy no man shall take from you.”

The men prepared for the walk to the town. Jesus rode on a donkey and in the distance the women could see the people waiting for him. Thousands of people tore branches from the trees and strewed them in his path, others spread out their mantles. When the women came nearer, they could hear the cries from those ahead and those behind.

“Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

High above all the voices, they could hear Simon Peter's as he cried out:

“Blessed is our Father's Kingdom of David.”

Mary Magdalene covered her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Keep quiet. The other women were also frightened. This was a challenge and would not be forgiven.

When the women had reached the grove on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, they stopped to rest, sitting in the shade of the old trees and watching the jubilant procession of thousands disappearing through the city gate on its way toward the temple.

Mary told them what Jesus had said of the dangers that might threaten the women and the necessity to keep at a distance from him and everything that was now to happen.

Some of them looked relieved. They had known the risks. But Mary crumpled, Mary mother of Jacob and Joseph, her whole body trembling. Lydia sat down beside her, but had no words with which to console her.

In the end, slowly and heavily, they took the road toward the town wall and through the gateway. No one stopped them. They were only a few in the stream of Jewish women and men from all over the world, come to sacrifice a lamb in the holy city.

The alleys were seething with people and soldiers. Susanna said quietly that the Roman proconsul had brought a whole army with him to the Passover celebrations in Jerusalem.

“What for?” said Salome, who was frightened of all crowds and all Romans.

“They're afraid there'll be a riot,” whispered Susanna.

Then everything happened just as Jesus had said, a man with a water jar on his shoulder gave them an almost invisible sign and started walking slowly ahead of them.

His house was near the wall, large and well equipped, enclosed by heavy gates on to the street. He showed them up the
stairs to the first floor, where two rooms had been put in order. An elderly Greek servant by the name of Helena received them with warmth, bread, and cheese. She was voluble, in contrast to her husband, who had still not yet opened his mouth. When he finally did, it was to warn them. They were not to walk in a group as when they had come. Whenever they left the house, they must go in pairs and melt into the crowd as soon as possible.

They nodded. That they were in hostile country was clear.

That afternoon, the rumor flew around that Jesus had driven the moneylenders out of the temple. He had tipped over tables, been lashed with a scourge, and had cursed those who made the house of God into Mammon's.

“There may be something in it,” said Helena breathlessly. “But the pilgrims were waiting outside in long queues to exchange their money. And what are they to do when they can't buy a sacrificial lamb?”

The women cried out in dismay, and some just wept. Only Mary Magdalene stood mute and rigid, knowing that now there was no longer any return.

Toward evening, Helena came back with more terrible rumors. The Romans had crushed a riot in the temple, five zealots had been arrested and taken to Pontius Pilate.

“Zealots?” said Mary in surprise.

“Yes, that's what they call themselves. Others call them the knifemen because they have long knives hidden in their robes.”

Mary remembered one of the disciples, Simon the Zealot. He had come to Jesus after John the Baptist had been killed.

The next morning they went two by two, as the man with the water jar had told them to, out into the alleys toward the temple. They took careful note of the way, worried about not finding their way back—a fat greengrocer on one corner, an awkward stone pillar on another. Nor did they have any difficulty finding Jesus, for great crowds had surrounded him. They never got near him, for the human wall did not make way for latecomers.

Mary's view was blurred by her tears, for she had longed to see him. But then she heard a voice, a clear young voice that reached them all. “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”

Mary was uneasy; that was a dangerous question.

But Jesus' voice was calm, almost laughing, as he replied. “Show me a dinar. Whose image and name is on it?”

“Caesar's,” cried the people.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,” Jesus said.

The people laughed and Mary and Lydia smiled at each other.

I must have some more memories of those days in the temple, Mary thought as she sat in her garden in Antioch. But a layer of black soot seemed to have settled over her senses there in Jerusalem. She could recall no clear memories.

Yes—one.

On one of those long days, she and Susanna happened to come across him as he sat speaking on a rock. It was early morning, but nevertheless people had gathered around him. Mary did not listen, simply looked at his face and saw how tired and despairing he was, and she realized at last that death was the only thing that could free him.

He was drawing in the sand.

Then a howling group of men suddenly pushed their way up to him, with them a woman who had been taken in adultery.

“The laws prescribe that such women be stoned to death,” they cried loudly. “What sayest thou?”

Jesus went on drawing in the sand, then after a long silence, looked up. “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

The enraged men dropped their hands and went away, one by one, and the crowd silently dispersed.

Only the adulteress was left, and Mary and Susanna hiding behind a pillar. They heard Jesus asking the woman: “Where did they go? Did no one condemn you?”

She whispered her reply. “No, Lord.”

“Neither do I condemn thee. Go now and sin no more.”

As Jesus rose to leave a little later, his eyes met Mary's. As he walked past the two women, he spoke. “I shall come to you tonight.”

For a moment she felt the joy almost shattering her. Her face flared, her heart thumped, and her feet ran down the temple steps. They returned to the house, two by two as they had learned, and the other women all brightened when they passed on the message.

Then the long wait for the night, the darkness. For the first time they noticed that the night was never really dark in the town. And never silent. People walked along the streets talking loudly. Roman soldiers marched, and for a long spell they had to listen to a quarrel between two women.

But in the darkest hour, he was there in the big hall. The women wept, silently and abandonedly. They could all see how weary he was. They had prepared a bath and a room with soft bolsters for him.

So they lay there. Her hands felt his body, every muscle of it tense, and her hands suddenly remembered an art she had learned long ago. Gently, she massaged him, his back, his shoulders, arms, and legs.

They did not speak, for there was no longer anything to say.

He slept, soundly and calmly. She must also have slept, but when she was awakened by Nicodemus knocking, her pillow was wet.

After the councilor had left, they could just make out the dawn over the mountains in the east. Jesus kissed her and they both knew it was for the last time. Then he vanished, as unnoticeably as he had come. Mary tried to sleep for a while, but could not.

At breakfast, which the women ate in their room, they started talking about the men, the disciples. Where were they? Susanna had heard that they had gone back to Galilee.
Salome said that they had gone up the mountains. Only John and Andrew, who had been with him that night, had stayed.

“How could they be so cowardly?” cried Mary Magdalene. But Mary, mother of Jacob and Joseph, said, “They say it's now dangerous even to have known him.”

The Greek woman came in while they were talking. “A woman has come to find you. She says she belongs with you. My husband isn't at home and I don't know what to do.”

They looked at each other.

A woman? Who? Who knew about the house? What did she want of them? Fear made it hard to breathe. Finally Mary Magdalene rose. “I'll go and see who it is,” she said.

And there she was, the mother of Jesus. “It is to be done, is it true?”

“Yes.”

Their eyes met in dark despair.

As so often for women, the daily chores provided relief in their anxiety. Mary of Nazareth had walked far that night and she had to wash, be given food, be allowed to sleep. She soon recovered and just said she had so much to ask them.

But one after another, they replied. “We have no answers.”

In the afternoon, the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene went to the temple. The crowd around Jesus was so great, they could only catch a glimpse of him in the distance. Mixing among them all were also councilors from the Sanhedrin, temple guards, and Roman soldiers.

Early next morning there was again a knocking on the door. The man with the water jar was now at home and went to open the door himself. This time it was John, the youngest of the disciples.

His gaze sought Mary Magdalene's. “They took him at dawn,” he said.

She seemed not to hear him, just stood there thinking about John, for whom she had never felt any sympathy. He
had been called Jesus' youngest disciple, was handsome in appearance, and he had a pleasant manner.

The next moment, her thoughts were shattered by the wailing of the women. Slowly, the meaning of John's message sank in. She found it difficult to walk steadily as she went to Mary of Nazareth and they embraced, holding on to each other, neither able to weep.

Mary of Nazareth finally broke the silence. “Where is he?”

“A captain from the temple guard was there when the Roman soldiers seized him. The temple guard requested that the prisoner first be taken to the Grand Council. So they took him there and Caiaphas interrogated him. No one may know what was said. Then he was led in shackles to Pontius Pilate.”

“What will happen to him?”

The silence was long and heavy.

In the end, Mary Magdalene said, “They will crucify him.”