When He Calls Her Sister

After Mary demonstrates that she can turn the hearts of the other disciples back to the Good, to god, Peter says in the gospel of Mary, “Sister, we know the Savior loved you more than all other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.”

This passage marks the beginning of what for me is the heart of Mary’s gospel. The core teachings. Her secret teachings. For me, this passage and the way Peter addresses Mary is the start of some of the most radical and transformational spiritual truths we could ever hear.

First, let’s start with this. Peter calls Mary Magdalene “Sister.” It might be easy to overlook this. We might think, briefly, how nice, or that’s sweet, Peter thinks of Mary as his sister. Or even, it allows us to imagine that he might love her like family. But if we set this reference of Peter calling Mary his sister, back within the context of the 1st century–it represents much more. 

For a man to refer to a woman, considered his inferior in the 1st century, as his sister–this was a direct challenge to the structures of power that conferred unequal power to Peter and Mary as a man and woman in the 1st century. It’s a quiet, but resounding nod to their equality in the face of a system of power external to them that refuses to acknowledge their parity. 

When Peter calls Mary sister, he acknowledges the equality of the inherent worth they each possess. When he calls her sister, he is operating on a system of power that comes from within them both, equally. When he calls her sister, he refuses to see her as somehow less worthy than he is to speak or lead or teach on behalf of the Savior, or of the Good. When he calls her sister, Peter is practicing what the earliest Christians believed in the wake of Christ’s life; that we are to love one another.

Now, brace yourself. 

Peter says to Mary, “Sister, we know the Savior loved you more than all other women.” (Excuse me while I pass out for a minute over here.) The Savior loved her more than all other women. It’s a statement that’s said as if it’s a given, as if Peter’s just stating the obvious, what they all know and witness and believe. 

But for those us only ever exposed to the idea that Mary was the penitent prostitute, “loved much and forgiven much,” this pretty much blows the doors off of any sort of box we had put Mary in.

The Savior loved her more than all other women. 

For me, it stopped my heart when I first read it. It stopped my heart because I felt like I already knew this. I somehow already knew that Christ loved Mary more than all other women. 

This felt like the truest truth I could ever hear and that I had always already known.

Now it’s very significant that Peter acknowledges this singular love Christ had for Mary because of the request he makes right after it. He continues, “Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.”

Mary has received teachings, or has heard things from Christ, that the other disciples have not, precisely because she is a woman. Precisely because she is the woman Christ loved the most. 

What before had made her “inferior,” “less worthy,” or “less powerful” in the eyes of the Roman hierarchy that afforded her with just about as much rights as a slave, is the very aspect that made her the one disciple who could receive teachings from Christ that the other disciples could not. 

Mary inherited teachings from Christ through the extraordinary love he had for her. His love for her taught her something the other disciples could not learn without her. 

And this passage ends as provocatively as it began. Mary responds to Peter in Mary 6:3, “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.” 

The core of Mary’s gospel then follows, and it’s the truth that has been hidden from the other disciples. The truth that has also consequently been hidden from us. For nearly two millennia. And it comes from the mercy, the grace, and the utter devotion in the cathedral heart of a human woman. 

With only more love,
​M.