Are you Martha or Mary? (Circle as appropriate)
1. The Minister calls one afternoon when your living room is in a state of considerable untidiness. Do you (A) ask him into the living room which, though untidy, is warm and comfortable or (B) show him into the “best room” which is tidy but decidedly chilly?
2. It is time to leave for church and there is a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Would you (A) rather leave the dishes where they are until your return or (B) stop and wash the dishes even though this will make you late for church?
3. An old friend whom you haven’t seen for a long time arrives unexpectedly. In the circumstances, you can either excuse yourself or go to prepare a meal and get the bed ready etc or you can sit with her and catch up with all the news of family and friends. Clearly, you cannot do both. Would you prefer to (A) see that she is fed and comfortable or (B) remain and chat with her and leave meals and beds until later?
4. If you are separated for a time from someone dear to you, perhaps by his/her going into hospital, are you (A) comforted by being told that it won’t be long until he/she is back with you again or (B) more upset because of the present loss?
5. You have invited a close friend over for lunch and a chin-wag on one o’clock one Friday when you know you have the house to yourself. Your friend turns up nearly an hour late; do you say (A) “Why didn’t you come in time?” or (B) “I wish you could have come on time.”
Suggested Scoring:
1. A = Mary, B = Martha
2. A = Mary, B = Martha
3. A = Martha, B = Mary
4. A = Mary, B = Martha
5. A = Martha, B = Mary
Addendum:
In recent years, due to the popularity of Dan Brown’s pot-boiler novel “The Da Vinci Code” and the subsequent film, a great deal of interest has been revived in the “European heresy” which suggests that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that there are descendants of Jesus alive today, especially in the royal lines of Europe. [31]
I personally tend to the view that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are one and the same person but it is not an issue on which anyone can really be dogmatic.
The French “underground” tradition is that Mary, her brother Lazarus, and Maximin, one of the Seventy Disciples and some companions, expelled from Palestine by persecution, crossed the Mediterranean in a frail boat with neither rudder nor mast and landed at the place now called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer near Arles, in the Provence region of southern France.
Mary Magdalene, it is said, then came to Marseille and converted the whole of Provence. She is said to have retired to a cave on a hill near Marseille, called La Sainte-Baume ("holy cave"), where she gave herself up to a life of penance for thirty years, never cutting her hair during that period. There is a body of writing on Mary Magdalene to be found in the New Testament Apocrypha Gnostic texts, especially the Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Thomas and Pistis Sophia. [32]
A group of modern scholars, the most notable of whom is the Princeton scholar Elaine Pagels, have suggested that Mary Magdalene was actually a leader of the early Church and that her contribution was suppressed, because she was a woman. These scholars have even suggested that Mary might even be the unidentified "Beloved Disciple" to whom the Gospel of John is ascribed. Scholars in the tradition of Rudolph Steiner’s (anthroposophy) teachings identify Lazarus of Bethany (her brother, if my perception is correct) as being the beloved disciple. Some strands of the tradition include Lazarus as one of the companions in the boat. The mysterious “Black Madonna” shrines that are found throughout Europe may represent Mary Magdalene, rather than the Virgin Mary, although that view is highly controversial.[33] Some familiar European fairy tales may even contain hidden references to Mary Magdalene.[34]
It is worth pointing out that, at the time of Jesus, it was unthinkable, possibly even impossible for a Jewish Rabbi, like himself, to be unmarried. It is true that the New Testament does not say that Jesus was married. Equally it does not say that he was unmarried. The latter would certainly have been noteworthy in the culture and tradition within which he lived.
The traditional understanding of the church presents a strangely sexless Jesus – born of a perpetual virgin, himself celibate and friendly with a bachelor Lazarus and his two spinster sisters. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church traditionally teaches that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were the children of Joseph by a previous marriage. This all has a strangely unconvincing ring to it. This celibate and male dominated interpretation has allowed men in the church to suppress or patronise the place of women. Indeed, I would be bold enough to suggest that the Christian tradition has been impeded by its lack of the Divine Feminine.
It does explain to some extent why the Roman church has such devotion to the Virgin Mary, borrowing from the ancient Isis tradition by naming her Queen of Heaven and Our Lady Star of the Sea. At one stage, Pope John Paul II seriously considered named the Virgin Mary as co-redemptrix with Jesus Christ. Fortunately, he did not do so but it is not difficult to see why he wished to.
I remember at one General Assembly (early 1980s?) when a representative of the Guild prayed in the name of “God our mother”. There was a predictable negative reaction (mainly, of course, from men).
In spite of the negative reaction of some in the traditional church to the notion that Jesus might have been married, most ordinary Christians seem unfazed at the prospect and do not regard it as in any way undermining their faith. Interestingly, the view that Jesus was married is believed to have been accepted by the Cathars of southern France, who were dreadfully persecuted and slaughtered at the hands of the Catholic Church in the guise of the so-called Albigensian Crusade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was a dreadful event and a blot on the history of the Christian church, part of that terrible period known popularly as “The Inquisition”.