"The Other Mary"

I just noticed something intriguing while working on my sermon for Sunday:

St. Matthew, telling the resurrection story, reports that it was "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary" who went to the tomb early that first day of the week after Jesus was crucified.

St. Mark and St. Luke say it was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James who went, as well as other female disciples, named and unnamed.

"Mary" (or Miriam) was a very popular girl's name at the time, so to identify this second disciple as "Mary the mother of James" meant that everyone in the church knew who "James" was and would think, "Oh, yes, that Mary. James' mother!"

But which James? James the brother of John? I don't think so. Every time the Gospels refer to her, she's always "the mother of Zebedee's sons." In fact, in chapter 27, Matthew mentions Mrs. Zebedee as standing "at a distance" along with "the mother of James and Joses" as Jesus died on Calvary.

Could she be the mother of James the Less, one of the Twelve?

Probably not. His career wasn't prominent enough to make him someone to be identified by.

Unless James the Less is the same as James the Just, the writer of the Epistle of James and leader of the Jerusalem Church for many, many years?

But I'd argue against that. Because James the Less was one of Jesus' disciples-- and James the Just (pace my Roman Catholic readers, if any) was the half-brother of our Lord. St. Mark in chapter 6 of his gospel records the murmuring of the crowd against Jesus: "'Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph [ Greek Joses, a variant of Joseph], Judas [i.e., Jude] and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?'"

Hmmm. And St. John tells us in chapter 7 that Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him. Their eyes weren't opened till after the resurrection. (Which may explain why Jesus commended his mother to John, and not to one of them!).

But Jesus' half-brother James did come to faith in him after he rose from the grave, and became known as James the Just, the renowned bishop of the Jerusalem church.

So who is this "other" Mary, the mother of the famous James and his brother Joses? It looks to me as if it were Mary, the blessed mother of our Lord!

So why don't the gospel writers come out and say so? Why all the understatement?

I could argue that they didn't want the pathos of a mother's sorrow to upstage the drama of God played out in the resurrection.

But I think it's more likely that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all pointing up the fact that with the resurrection, Jesus transcends his blood relationships with any one human being. No individual can now claim special identity from being his kin after the flesh.

For now Christ is united in holy and spiritual relationship to all who believe in him. Now that he is risen, the blood relationship that matters is the one forged by the blood of his cross. It is entered into not by sharing his DNA, but by faith when we accept the atonement won for us in his blood. This blood relationship is birthed in us by the Holy Spirit and nurtured every time we partake in the cup at Holy Communion.

Since the resurrection, Mary of Nazareth no longer has a special human claim on her Son; she is one with all her brothers and sisters, falling joyfully at the feet of the One who is her Savior and ours.

"The other Mary," indeed! Are there any legends of her pulling rank or demanding special treatment in the church because the Christ was born of her womb? I've never heard of any!

That's humility worth emulating!