Richard Mallory

The story
Many women were also there…
          they had followed Jesus from Galilee, 
          ministering to him. 
                       —Matthew 27.55

Powerful forces, aligned with a tyrant,
seem to crush the bugs of love.
But the women, though overpowered,
are not overwhelmed. 
They take action. They minister. 
They do not expect to win,
but they stay faithful 
to their outlaw sovereign,
the king of love.

There is no triumph,
only tragedy and sorrow.
This story will end badly.
But they have seen that death, 
as of a grain of wheat, is transformation.
Even in their deepest loss,
their own kind of death,
they stay faithful, stay present.
For somehow, even here 
in the face of evil, so does love.
Standing with them in this story
we know what they are about to discover:
this is not a story of victory,
but of resurrection.

Dear Friends in Christ,

In the poem concerning the women who gathered near Jesus while he was being crucified, we simply learn of their presence. In all three Synoptic Gospels, a group of women “watches from the distance.” In Matthew, named women include Mary, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.  Mark and Luke suggest different configurations of women and In John, Jesus speaks from the cross to his mother specifying that “the disciple whom he loved” would now be her son.

For the first time in my life, I am seeing the explicit statement that there are other unnamed women present. They all know that they are overpowered but they are not overwhelmed like the male disciples who split and ran the night before. They were last seen in the garden. Since this data puts the apostles in a negative light, historicity is underscored. There is no whitewashing over decisions to run and hide.

I saw an interesting article in the magazine Sojourners (oriented to Christian social justice issues) with the title, “There’s No Church Without Women.” Literally speaking, there’s no church without men either, but the point of the article is that many new women have emerged in leadership positions previously denied them. This past Wednesday’s “enthronement” of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, is a case in point.   The unheard of just happened. A place of power reserved for men for thirteen  centuries was redefined and overthrown. Throughout the church, women are coming into their own whether as leaders, theologians, activists, teachers, scholars, garden-tenders, mothers, artists or clergy. They are claiming their voices and are grounded in confidence and faith.   They bring what was once downplayed out into the open with their boldness.

What is this ancient account about the men’s disappearance saying about the male gender? I sense a mirror here for all of us males to ponder. I sense a collective response from women, ” Well, it’s about time.”

—Richard