resurrection was delivered into the hands of a single woman like. before anyone else, jesus and his wildfire blood came to her to tell her that yes, these miracles do happen, this future isn’t empty, you are saved, you are saved now and forever.
and who was she? mary, from a village by the sea. a girl who grew up singing saltwater hymns while sickness burned in her body. when the messy-haired, sunlight-boned wanderer burst into town with his pack of young rebels, she looked god right in his human eyes and said, “i’m not afraid. heal me.” she watched the romans kill him slowly, and she wept, and she ached, and she spent two nights sitting in the dirt outside the tomb, whispering prayers to the stars like it might be worth something, anything, everything. and it was.
and we couldn’t believe that christ would want to trust a woman before anyone else, so we wrote her down as a sinner and a person of bad character, even though she was neither. we made her name synonymous with prostitution, even though there’s no biblical evidence to support that. history likes to pretend she had little power but without her there would be no witness to the news.
a young woman is the mortal catalyst for one of the biggest turning points in christian theology! a young woman who runs to other women first! that’s who christ placed his trust in above everyone else to bear the sight of the resurrection. isn’t that spectacular?
One of my favorite bits in the Gospel of Thomas is when Peter goes “Lord, why do you keep telling Mary, a Mere Woman, all your secrets when you don’t tell them to us?” and Jesus looks him dead in the eye and says “because she’s cooler than you. Stop being such a whiny putz and be more like her and maybe I’ll tell you secrets too.”
Kimchi and Justice 