Did Jesus have a wife?

You may have seen the news reports about the discovery of a fragment of Egyptian papyrus from the 4th century. The papyrus, written Coptic, mentions Jesus's "wife."

Does that mean Jesus had a wife? Maybe, maybe not.

It does mean that Egyptian Coptic Christians, living 300 to 400 years after the time of Jesus, knew of the idea that Jesus had a wife, though it is unclear what is meant by "wife." Is the term "wife"  a reference to marriage between a man and woman, or is it a metaphorical term? The Church was sometimes referred to as the "bride of Christ."

The Washington Post has a very good column by a Fordham University professor on the topic, and I re-post here for you:

Posted at 01:02 PM ET, 09/21/2012

“Jesus’ wife”: Nothing to fear, something to learn

By Michael Peppard

Trying to do ancient history is like assembling an enormous jigsaw puzzle—but we only have a small percentage of the pieces, these are mostly middle pieces, and there is no box lid to provide a model of the completed puzzle. Every once in a while, a new piece comes along with such a clear, vivid picture that we are able to reorient the puzzle and gain a new perspective on the whole.

This is not one of those moments.

The newly published Coptic papyrus does not fundamentally change what we historians of early Christianity are doing. So let’s not overestimate it.

But let’s not underestimate it either. When trying to complete the puzzle of early Christian history, every new piece is a godsend. The international guild of papyrologists, of which I am a part, hones its linguistic skills and sifts through bins and bins of cartonnage (small scraps of reused papyrus) in order to prepare for moments such as these. The Coptic papyrus is especially welcome because it’s a connector piece in our puzzle: its content shares enough similarities with existing pieces that we know roughly where on the table to put it. But it also offers a new detail: “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife…’”

In this Sept. 5, 2012 photo released by Harvard University, divinity professor Karen L. King holds a fourth century fragment of papyrus that she says is the only existing ancient text that quotes Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife. (AP)Professor Karen King, who will be publishing the papyrus, has been abundantly clear that this text does not mean Jesus was married; rather, it tells us a bit about some Christians in the second or third century who either thought Jesus was married or used the symbol of Jesus’ wife for some other meaning. Her forthcoming article speaks well and clearly to its intended audience of historians.

I would like to offer a complementary viewpoint: Christians have nothing to fear from this text, but always something to learn.

Some contemporary Christians have been outright dismissive of non-canonical texts from early Christianity, as if their very existence is dangerous or even diabolical. Many early Christian leaders from the beginning, though, did not maintain such a strong canonical boundary. Even Athanasius of Alexandria, the fourth-century bishop and champion of orthodoxy, encouraged Christians to engage with a wide range of scriptures, including those from outside the emerging New Testament.

In the present day, Pope Benedict XVI—no wild-eyed liberal—quotes favorably from the non-canonical Didache and the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings preserved most thoroughly in Coptic, in his books about Jesus. At last year’s Easter Vigil service in St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope even included in his homily a non-canonical saying of Jesus, which is preserved in the Gospel of Thomas.

Some of the most dismissive opinions toward non-canonical literature come from traditional, conservative Catholics. This is deeply ironic: an exalted view of the Virgin Mary and a profound veneration for her perpetual virginity are features found in the early non-canonical traditions. Most key Marian stories and dogmas are not found in the Bible, but in other early traditions. For example, the Infancy Gospel of James, likely a second-century text, is the primary textual repository of Mary’s biography and the doctrine about her perpetual virginity.

In short, Christians should approach new discoveries not in fear, but with a spirit of inquiry. When we do, we find that this new Coptic papyrus provides corroborating evidence, however miniscule, about what were some “live debates” in the second-fourth centuries. For instance, the new text is concerned with the worthiness of a woman to be a disciple. This is something historians have already seen in the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas. The popularity of Mary Magdalene as the apostola apostolorum (“apostle to the apostles”) is well known from late antiquity. In addition, with the rise of asceticism in the third and fourth centuries of Christianity, especially in Egypt where monasticism began, many women sought a spiritual discipleship of sexual renunciation as a means of liberating themselves from submissive roles.

As for the headline-grabbing statement about Jesus’ “wife,” historiansalso can situate this alongside preexisting evidence. The Gospel of Philip, another non-canonical text probably from the second or third century, famously presents Mary Magdalene as the “partner” or “companion” of Jesus. Yet some scholars would argue that the Gospel of Philip overall disavows carnal marriage and instead endorses a kind of celibate, spiritual marriage between believers (as brides) and Christ (as groom). Such nuptial imagery is rooted in the canonical New Testament texts, in which salvation is imagined as a wedding feast. The Gospel of Philip expands on this imagery and describes Christian conversion and initiation as a sacramental marriage in a “bridal chamber.” Many other mainstream texts offered variations on that theme.

It is likely that, whatever words completed the sentence about Jesus’ “wife,” the new fragment came from a text that engaged some of the central questions of its day for Christians: Were sex and procreation blessings God wished for everyone? Or was some spiritual value to be sought in renunciation and celibacy? If Jesus spoke in figurative language of weddings, brides, and grooms, what and whom specifically was he talking about? The transmitter of this ancient text was likely trying to understand these legitimate questions, along with how Jesus’ singleness (or not) was to be understood as a model of Christian holiness.

Christians need not fear such timeless questions. We keep learning and striving to understand the issues that generated our past—even when its pieces are puzzling.

Michael Peppard is assistant professor of theology at Fordham University, where he teaches Bible, early Christianity, and ancient languages (including Coptic). His book, “The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context,” is available in paperback.

Mary Magdalene: The first to understand

This is my sermon from Easter Sunday, based on: John 20:1-18 .

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

At first she thinks he is the gardener.

Mary – they sometimes call her “the Magdalene,” a name that simply means she was from the town of Magdala – is the first to see who he really was, the first to understand.

She had followed him all the way to end, she loved him, and she could not bear to leave him now.
Jesus had died a horrific death on the Cross, executed by the Romans as another trouble-making Jew, a threat to public order.

There was so much chaos and noise, anguish and violence on that day we now call Good Friday but which must have felt anything but good that day.
And then there was quiet.

Mary goes to his tomb early while it is still dark. No one else is there. She finds the tomb empty. Completely and astonishingly and utterly empty. The body of Jesus is gone, vanished into thin air, only a few rags left behind.

Mary has no idea to make of this, so she goes back to tell the others.

Peter and the others run to the tomb to see for themselves. They are dumbfounded, so they go home.

But not Mary. She stays.

And then some very strange things begin to happen.

Mary goes inside the tomb, and sees two angels dressed in white. She turned around and sees a man standing there.

At first she thinks he is the gardener.

Then she understands. Jesus is standing there, and he looks the same only different.

He brings life and wholeness and healing to Mary. The line between life and death is erased in that moment. He is the gardener, the bringer of life.

Life for Mary will never ever be the same again – or the same for us.

So it was on that first Easter morning: The ugliness of death was swept away, and Mary Magdalene was the first to see the Risen Christ, the first to really understand what Jesus was getting at in all that he lived and taught.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus proclaimed; blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the kind and the merciful. Blessed are the many, blessed are you.

Those are not ideals to aspire to, but established facts.

Mary Magdalene is the first to understand these blessings.

Sometimes preachers say, “Jesus died for your sins” as if the meaning of that shop-worn phrase is self-evident.

But this is not about paying off God.

As theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar points out, “the suffering Christ is not…a magical event through which an angry, justice-demanding God would be changed into a gracious one…”
Rather, we are the ones changed.

Jesus went to the Cross to take upon himself the blows of hatred and death precisely because that is where much of the world dwells.

He went there as a human being to be with us in the worst moments of our life, to take our pain upon himself as a human being.

He took his divinity to break the bonds of hatred and death, to show us a different place, to bring us to healing, hope and wholeness.

He died and lived again to show us how to live again.

This ancient story of Easter is our story. We continue to write the story of the Risen Christ by how we live our lives.

By standing at the empty tomb with Mary Magdalene, we are blessed by caring for the poor, and caring for each other.
We are blessed when we turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies. We are blessed when we forgive.

And we are especially blessed when we pray from the deepest longings of our hearts and to listen for the Holiness whispering within us.

What would the world be like if we really lived and prayed that way? What would be different? What would be blessed by us?

That is the challenge to us as Easter people, as it has always been since the morning Mary stood at the empty tomb.

This is our hope as Easter people: Every time we share in the bread and wine of our Holy Communion, Jesus is with us, lighting our path, giving us strength, feeding us with new life, renewing us with the promise of Easter.
We aren’t just remembering a meal long ago; we are bringing forth the future promise of Resurrection now.

The question is not how is the bread and wine changed at our communion table; but how are we changed by the bread and wine?

How are we changed?

And there is related question for each of us: If you are changed, how will the world change because of you?

Today is a good day to ask these questions, and personally take stock.

For some, you have been coming to this church your entire life. Or, perhaps you come here occasionally, once or twice a year. Maybe you are visiting from somewhere else.

Or, this is the first time you’ve been here, and maybe you’ve taken a long time to decide whether to come to church, or come back to church, and this is a big step for you today.

I am delighted all of you are here. Please let me invite you back.

This is a good place to ask the hardest questions of life, a good place to look for the answers with other people also seeking answers.

And this is a good place to work with others to change our community, to bring blessings to those the most in need. Why do this alone?

Please, don’t just sample the appetizer table. Come back for the feast every Sunday.
This Easter feast is not just about an afterlife that we cannot yet see.

This is also about how we live right now, here, today. The promise of salvation does not wait until the next life; salvation is meant to be lived right now.

Yet, make no mistake, this promise comes with challenges that are not always easy. Who needs your kindness and patience? Who needs your prayers? Who needs your forgiveness?

In a few moments we will renew our baptismal covenant, pledging once again how we will live out our faith.

We will pledge to gather regularly for prayer and the breaking of the bread, to respect the dignity of every human being and to work for justice and peace.

We get the gift of living these pledges together. We get the gift of standing with Mary Magdalene, perhaps like her a little astonished, yet discovering with her the promise of new life that is ours forever.

May this Easter bring you many blessings; may you be filled with the power of the Risen Christ, and may you live into the hope of the salvation that is yours forever. 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

We will always have the poor with us: Be extravagant

Today's sermon is based on John 12:1-8.

* * *

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

I did something extravagant on Thursday afternoon of this week, something I’ve dreamed about doing all winter long. I put my old pine rocker on the front porch.

And then I sat on my old pine rocker, and gazed out across the Ragged Mountains, and I basked in the wonderful warmth and sweet, sweet aroma of the afternoon, and I didn’t do any work at all, and no rich man could have been more extravagant than I.

Today we hear of the extravagance of Mary, and the nard she uses to anoint Jesus’ feet before his death. Let me tell you something about nard, or spikenard as it is also called. Spikenard is an herb that grows to be about 10 feet tall in northern India, in the deep woods at the foot of the Himalayas.

In the time of Jesus, a rich yellow oil was painstakingly

extracted from the spikenard plant and placed in alabaster boxes, then carefully transported by caravan through India and Persia and across the long flat desert of what is now Iraq and Jordan before it finally reached the markets of Jerusalem.

The oil of spikenard was much sought by kings and wealthy Romans throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The oil is said to cure migraines and bring calm to those who inhale its aroma.

Nard oil has a sweet fragrance similar to sandalwood, and, in fact, nard is one of the ingredients in sandalwood incense.

As you can well imagine, the oil of spikenard is expensive. As we just heard, it cost Mary 300 denari for one pound of nard oil. Let me translate that for you: it took a common laborer one day to earn one denari – so it cost nearly one year’s wages to purchase that pound of nard oil.

In our day, spikenard is still costly – a pound now runs about $480. There are many places on this globe today where that would be one year’s wages.

With that in mind, we hear of Mary’s shocking extravagance in John’s gospel. In the story, Jesus comes to Bethany to see Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus, for what they all surely know is their farewell in the final hours before his death.

After this sad meal, Mary brings out this incredibly expense, wonderfully aromatic oil, and she anoints Jesus’ feet, and then wipes his feet with her hair. Mary lovingly prepares Jesus for his death.

Jesus, who ministered to so many, who raised her brother Lazarus from the dead, who fed the 5,000, who cured the sick and made the lame walk, who gave living water to the Samaritan woman, and who made the blind see – Jesus allows himself, finally, this one time, to be ministered to with expensive nard oil.

There is another reference to spikenard oil in the Bible – in the Song of Solomon, this great ode to human love. Perhaps Jesus thanks Mary with this verse from the Song of Solomon:

“How sweet is your love, my sister … how much better your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!”

The love of Jesus in these final hours fills the room like perfume, and those who are in this room embrace his love and hold it in their hearts through the crushing crisis that is about to come. And Mary returns his love by preparing him with the oil of kings.

Lest we forget, Judas is in that room, too. And the chain of events that is about to unfold will take Judas to a terrible end. But for now Judas asks a question, and it is not an unreasonable question:

“Why was this perfume not sold…and the money given to the poor?”

Why, Judas asks, is this extravagant oil being used to wipe the feet of Jesus? Couldn’t this money be better spent on the poor?

The gospel writer whispers to us that Judas is a thief and has no intention of spending the money on the poor. But that doesn’t really answer the question, and still the question lingers in the room at Bethany, and lingers in the air down through the ages to us:

Couldn’t that money be better spent on the poor?

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replies. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

When I hear these lines, I think of all of the loving hands of those who have prepared this space for worship Sunday after Sunday, year after year.

I think of the hands that have pressed the linens, and polished the silver used in our Holy Communion; and those who have baked the bread, filled the cruets with wine, and arranged the flowers that will soon adorn this sacred space at Easter.

And I think of those who clean up after the rest of us have gone for the day.

The poor are with us and there is much work for all of us. Today, though, Jesus reminds us there is love in this room, and he bids us to linger awhile because precisely because the poor are with us, and precisely because we have work to do tomorrow.

The poor are with us, and I want to tell you something of that today. In my nearly two years in Charlottesville, I have been struck by a population that remains largely invisible here: Latino immigrants.

They live in apartment buildings behind shopping centers, and in other out-of-the-way neighborhoods.

Many work in poorly-paid service jobs, and with limited English abilities, they are at a disadvantage when maneuvering through the legal, health and education systems, and that disadvantage that can become a cruel spiral leading to deeper poverty and isolation.

There is a serious shortage of translation services in Charlottesville, and it is not something most of us English-speakers think much about.

We are not talking about a huge government program.

We are not talking about huge handouts.

We are talking about providing a few translators in key places so that some poor people might have a chance in the labyrinth of our society.

IMPACT, a coalition of 33 congregations – Jews, Muslims, and Christians including St. Paul's – wants to do something about that issue this year. We may not agree on many things, but we can agree on this.

On top of that, the cornerstone issue from last year -- early childhood education -- remains on the burner. It all fits together.

Tomorrow evening we will gather at University Hall to hear proposals for solving these issues, and hear the reaction from public officials. Our strength is in our passion as people of faith, and our passion shows when we come together in unity with large numbers.

So, tomorrow evening, please come to University Hall. If you can give do something as simple as giving two hours of your time, you can change the lives of people who need to be heard.

Tomorrow we have work to do. Today, linger here awhile; Jesus is filling us with life and love, and the strength to leave this room to feed each other, and to feed the poor in body, mind and spirit.

So today, linger awhile. Be extravagant in your love for the living Christ dwelling with us, and be extravagant in your love for each other. Worship fully, pray earnestly, sing loudly, give generously, and share in the bread and wine of our Holy Communion.

Today, may each of us be strengthened and fed. The poor are with us; tomorrow there is work to be done. AMEN