by Eric Elnes
I. DNA, Clay, and the Scots
So I had this really strange experience just as I sat down to write this blog on Friday. I noticed my mother had sent me an email with a link to a DNA test I took months ago when I was in Arizona. She has been studying our ancestry, and as part of her research, she signed up for a DNA test through Ancestry.com. The test promised to reveal my deep ancestral roots from hundreds or even thousands of years ago based on genetic markers linked to various populations of people as they moved throughout the globe. They swabbed the inside of my cheek, placed the swab in a vial, and sent it off to the land of DNA testing.
I’ve always known the broad outlines of my heritage. My father is half Swedish and half Norwegian. This explains why I love Swedish meatballs, Lefsa, and anything having to do with salmon. My mother is half Irish and half Scottish. That makes sense to me. Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved Guinness Stout, and I look really great in a kilt. Kidding. About the kilt. In any case, given the historical friction and warfare between Norwegians and Swedes, and between the Irish and the Scots, I’ve always considered myself as either the progeny of people who have seen past their differences in the name of peace, love, and understanding, or of a lot of rape and pillage.
Celtic Christian poet and philosopher John O’Donohue once observed that we human beings have a natural resonance with the places of our ancestry. As human beings, we are made from the clay of the earth. When we travel to the places of our ancestors, he says, it’s like the clay of the earth calls to the clay of our bodies and we feel at home. A couple summers ago I had one of those clay-calling-to-clay experiences while hiking with another poet – David Whyte – in the Lake district of Northern England. On top of a high hill David stopped and pointed to the north where he noted we could see into Scotland. He said that the region we were hiking in was frequently raided by the Scots who had a habit of crossing boundaries in order to engage in the finer art of raping and pillaging. “Ah, I thought to myself,” feeling my Scottish blood race within me. “So this is why this whole area feels so much like home to me.” (Not the raping and pillaging part, but clay calling to clay!) It felt like I’d glimpsed the lie of the hills and the gentle arc of the lake shores before.
Well, maybe.
I hit the link on Ancestry.com that took my to my personal DNA results. My whole world turned on its head. According to the genetic markers, I do indeed have a lot of Scandinavian blood. I’m 60% Viking! (I could be in a Capital One commercial!) But my DNA shows no trace of Irish or Scots blood! Of my non-Viking ancestors, 21% of me comes from southern Europe – from Spain, Portugal, and Italy. (I guess this explains my love of paella, sardines, and pizza.). The final 19% hails from Finland, the region of the Volga River Valley and Ural Mountains. (Explaining my love of saunas and, well, who-knows-what from the Volga-Ural …)
I realize that genetic and ancestral lines don’t necessarily match up precisely. You only inherit about 50% of either parent’s DNA, so it’s quite easy for any generation to lose some of its genetic heritage. My mother may, in fact, have the raging blood of the Celts within her … but I don’t! (Insert sob.) And genetic markers reflect where your ancestors were many centuries ago – even as much as a thousand years ago. It does not account for more recent ancestry, say, in the last couple hundred years. So it’s entirely plausible that my mother has ancestors from Ireland even without Celtic blood because they may have been Vikings. The Vikings are well known for raiding Ireland and establishing the city of Dublin. So my taste for Guinness beer may have been gained honestly.
Still, it was hard not to be disappointed with the revelation that not a Celt, and that none of my cells that dance secretly to Scottish bagpipes. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I had suddenly been orphaned; like part of who I think I am has been based on a big fat lie. I could feel all the excitement I had for visiting Ireland and Scotland some day drain out of my system.
I think the way I was feeling over being orphaned from my heritage is somewhat similar to reactions I sometimes get from people when I preach. We’ll go over a passage, or discuss a biblical figure from the standpoint of biblical scholarship, and some people get a look on their faces much like the one I had when my DNA betrayed that my origins were different than I had believed. “What do you mean such-and-such may not have happened that way, or what I learned in Sunday School may not be exactly right?”
Jesus once observed that in faith we shall come to know the truth, and the truth shall set us free. Sometimes being set free feels a bit more like being made homeless, at least at first. A person may lose all interest in exploring their faith further. “Why would I want to know anything more if every time I learn something, I’m going to feel like my roots have just been pulled up and shaken?”
Of course, it’s not just biblical scholarship, but the whole enterprise of modern science that has had this effect on us. In the last several years alone we’ve discovered that the universe is far larger – and stranger – than we ever thought possible. Even its smallest particles – like the Higgs Boson, or “God Particle” whose existence was plausibly proved two weeks ago on July 4th – make us feel like we have less of a grasp of reality even as we plunge deeper into the heart of reality. It’s hard for even the most grounded among us not to feel a bit pulled up and shaken on a daily basis.
Yet if knowing the truth was important to Jesus – Jesus, our model for what it means to live into our fullest humanity – then I’m guessing the search for truth is important for our own human journey. Deep down, don’t you sense the freedom lurking behind any honest search for truth? The truths that faith and science point to lead ultimately to healing, wholeness, and fullness of life.
II. There’s Something About Mary
So what does all this about truth and genealogy have to do with Mary Magdalene, our subject? Well, did you know that Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of hairstylists? She is also the patron saint of glove makers, tanners, perfumers and perfumeries, those who struggle against sexual temptation, and reformed prostitutes. (I don’t know who the saint of unreformed ones are.)
Why is Mary the patron saint of such persons and professions? Well, as a prostitute, who better to watch over the sexually tempted and the people who make things to arouse sexual temptation?
But was Mary really a prostitute? Is that part of her historical DNA? As we just found with respect to my DNA “background check,” sometimes a person’s background isn’t what it appears to be. In fact, there is as much evidence proving that Mary was a prostitute as there is proving that I’m genetically Irish and Scotch. Mary is a victim of mistaken identity.
This may seem like an audacious claim. After all, preachers and theologians have labeled Mary Magdalene a prostitute for 1,400 years. There is literally over a millennium worth of church art that depicts her as being a prostitute as well. That’s a pretty long tradition to be based on thin air.
But it is. There is not a shred of evidence in the Bible that Mary was a prostitute. We don’t even know if she wore high heels.
The first time anyone is known to have claimed that Mary was a prostitute comes quite late in Christian history. In September of 591, Pope Gregory the Great preached a sermon linking Mary Magdalene to Mary of Bethany who anointed Jesus’ head with costly ointment, and the “sinful woman” in Luke 7 whom we studied last week who anointed Jesus feet with oil and tears. Never mind the fact that Mary of Bethany was from Bethany, not Magdala. And never mind the fact that the woman in Luke 7 is unnamed. The clincher for Pope Gregory was that Jesus is said to have drawn seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2). To Gregory, those seven demons stood for the Seven Deadly Sins. And because one of those sins is Lust, Mary must surely have been a prostitute.
Airtight case, right?
From 591 on, the people’s imagination was, shall we say, titillated. Especially artists. Artists found her the one woman besides Eve whom they could get away with painting nude and still get paid by the Church. So they had a field day. It wasn’t until 1969 and the Second Vatican Council that an official proclamation would be made by the Catholic Church that Gregory was wrong about Mary. Too little too late. By then, all of us “knew” Mary was a prostitute.
III. Patient Saint of the Uprooted
I would like to propose that we make Mary the Patient Saint of the Uprooted. I call her a Patient saint instead of a Patron saint because I think that anyone who has had to put up with being so misrepresented for so many centuries has got to be really, really patient. I call her a saint for the uprooted thinking especially of those of us who feel uprooted by scientific or other advances that lead to greater truth. If your assumptions get turned on their head now and again, perhaps you can pray to her – or at least remember how she can help you.
Here’s one way she can help: Mary reminds us that when our assumptions are uprooted, part of setting our feet back down again has to do with turning our attention to truth that may be staring us in the face but that we’ve been too distracted to see.
In the case of Mary, our fixation on her being a prostitute has led most of us to overlook what may be the most remarkable thing of all about Mary. Mary is the only person we know of who became one of Jesus’ close disciples after being healed by him. Those “seven demons” were likely the ancient equivalent of a complex mental or physical illness. The fact that Mary is the only one to become a disciple is rather remarkable considering all the lepers, paralytics, blind and lame people, epileptics, and people “possessed by demons” Jesus is said to have healed. One might think they’d all become disciples after that. Mary reminds me therefore to turn gratitude into action. Most of us have many, very deep reasons to be grateful to God, yet few of us will ever act on our gratitude very deeply. Most people are horrified by the notion of even giving 10% back. Maybe another hat Mary could wear is being Patient Saint of Those Who Struggle To Act On Their Gratitude!
Something else we know about Mary is that she is one of a handful of people who supported Jesus financially in his ministry. Mary was one of “The 1%,” to draw on a modern term. The fact that this 1%-er was healed of a complex illness reminds me that money cannot solve our biggest problems even when we wish like crazy that it could. The fact that she is of the wealthiest 1% also reminds us that in Jesus’ ministry, there was neither 1% or 99%. There was only 100%. I wish that at least the Christians of our country could remember that. Maybe Mary should also be the Patient Saint of Those Who Struggle Not To Conceive of Society As “Us vs. Them.”
Finally, what we know of Mary from the Gospels is that she was with Jesus until the end when the other disciples had fled, and was the first to tell the world that Christ had risen from the dead. John’s telling of the resurrection story is my favorite. Mary’s the first to come to the tomb, she remains there long after the disciples have once again fled, and she’s the first to see Jesus. Only the way she sees Jesus makes her a Patient Saint in my book for an additional reason.
When Mary sees Jesus risen from the dead, she first mistakes him as the gardener! “Sir,” she says, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” She doesn’t recognize Jesus until he calls her by name. “Mary!” She turns to him and exclaims, “Rabbouni!” which means “My Teacher.” Curiously, the very next thing Jesus says to her is “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” This may seem like a strange thing to say until you read other cases of mistaken identity in the resurrection accounts – followers who talk with him on the road to Emmaus without recognizing him, disciples who mistake him for a fisherman. What Jesus seems to be saying not only to them but to us is “Don’t hold onto me! Don’t hold on to what you know, or think you know of me. My identity is far greater than can fit in your boxes. So let go. Don’t grasp me, or your concepts of me, too tightly. That way, I’ll never be too small for you.
So the Patient Saint of the Uprooted also had her own experience of being uprooted by a greater truth. Which leads to the final way she acts for me as a Patient Saint. She is the Patient Saint Of Those Who Struggle To Let Go Of A Truth That Has Become Too Small For Them.
Now that I know I’m not Irish or Scottish, but Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish, and Volga-Ural (!), Mary’s “patronage” (and patience) may be of use. As the Patient Saint of the Uprooted, Mary reminds me that just because everyone always said I was Irish and Scottish doesn’t make it so. Being uprooted allows me the freedom to explore my deeper roots in other areas of the globe that I’d never expected. And as the Patient Saint of Those Who Struggle To Let Go Of A Truth That Has Become Too Small For Them, Mary reminds me that my search for my own identity and my search for God’s identity are related. In each case, I am challenged to hold my certainties lightly – both about who I am and who God is. For in both cases, the truth may be more wonderful than it appears.
For Further Exploration:
If you would like to explore this theme further, you may watch the 7/10/12 episode of Darkwood Brew, featuring Emilie Townes, Academic Dean of Yale Divinity School as Skype Guest (www.darkwoodbrew.org/episodes). Small groups may wish to use the small group video resource from this episode. You may also wish to consider the following questions:
1. Have you ever experienced a loss of identity where you learned something about yourself that was different than you had assumed for years? How did the new information challenge you? How did you deal with the situation?
2. What has been the most significant new insight relating to your faith that has both challenged and freed you in recent years?
3. Mary Magdalene has been depicted not only as a prostitute, but as the holy bride of Christ (thanks in no small measure to Dan Brown’s Davinci Code), yet it is highly unlikely that she was either. What might society’s need to either conceive of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute or bride of Christ tell us about ourselves?
4. If Mary were to be renamed the “Patient Saint of …”, what would you name her? How is she meaningful to you? Feel free to use Dr. Elnes’ suggestions or think of your own.
