Dying is the Opposite of Leaving ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
Easter Sunday April 5, 2026
Today is a day of stories. We enter into this day, that we call Easter Sunday, thinking we know the story. But there are many stories, many layers, many interpretations, new and old. We enter into the story looking for facts, but today is not a day for facts, but instead, a day to search for ancient wisdom and understanding. We are called into a garden, to peer into a tomb, and to try to see into the dim light, beyond the emptiness.
Today we tell the story of a woman, poorly understood, her role in history silenced by centuries of patriarchy. Today we tell the story of great love, and of spiritual enlightenment.
Today we encounter and hold many mysteries and we will encounter more questions than answers.
After Jesus told Mary Magdalene at the tomb to go tell the other disciples that he would be ascending to God, we never hear of her again. Although she is mentioned earlier in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ ministry, her final act is to be the first witness to the resurrection, and to bring the good news to the others. She was present throughout, known to all, and deeply trusted. And then she disappeared.
Or did she?
What little we know of Mary of Magdala is that in the course of Jesus’ healing ministry, it was said that he healed her; “freed her of seven demons”. This brief mention was all that Pope Gregory the Great needed in 594 of the Common Era to preach that those demons were in fact vices, perhaps the seven deadly sins, and that she was thought of after that time as sinful, as unclean, a prostitute, and to get to the point, not someone stable or chaste who should be listened to. It wasn’t until 1969 that the Catholic Church renounced the teaching that named Mary as a prostitute. (Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, p. 21)
It was a profound effort to marginalize a woman who had been trusted by the followers of Jesus. She was silenced, her reputation destroyed. The parallels with contemporary efforts to silence women are inescapable: these days, the Epstein Files. A few years ago, the MeToo movement. One of the mysteries we confront today, of course, is why there is still such a concerted effort to silence women, to not believe what we have to say.
Today is a day of stories, and one thing we know about stories is that they often have many chapters, and are often not finished. Today, our story jumps ahead to 1896. It was then that a German collector discovered an ancient manuscript in Cairo. It was written in fifth-century Coptic, translated from a much earlier Greek or Syrian text. It was named the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Due to two world wars and multiple disruptions, this text was not made widely available until much later in the 20th century.
Meanwhile, in 1945, there was another discovery of ancient scrolls buried in Nag Hammadi in Egypt. These also dated from the earliest days of Christianity, and had probably been hidden away during the fourth century when the church began to decide exactly what texts should be included in the New Testament. These discoveries included the Gospel of Thomas, now considered to be as old as the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Philip.
One of the stories most people believe today is that what we call the Bible existed in its current form from the beginning of the first century. But in those earliest centuries, until Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity and made it the official religion of the Roman Empire, there were many Christianities. As scholar Cynthia Bourgeault put it, “…early Christianity was a riot of pluralism, as different in ethnicity and temperament as the Mediterranean lands themselves…Each community struggled within the terms of its own frame of understanding…to make sense of the Jesus event, and within each community that vision looked a little different.” (Ibid., p.35) The newly discovered texts were much more Eastern in tone; much more focused on the spiritual goals of what we would call ‘enlightenment.’ Once the Romans accumulated power, their version of the Bible took hold. The accounts of a more spiritual Christianity, of teachings of wholeness and oneness with God, were either destroyed or hidden away.
But as a result of 20th century discoveries, Mary Magdalene is no longer silent. We hear her voice and her teaching in a short gospel named for her. She is mentioned in both Thomas’ and Philip’s gospels, clearly present among the others, asking questions, and offering her wisdom. We see challenges to her authority, especially from the apostle Peter. The Gospel of Thomas recorded this: “Simon Peter said to them all, Mary should leave us, for women are not worthy of this Life.” And the text went on to say that Jesus rebuked him. (Ibid., p. 77.)
Included in both Thomas’ and Philip’s gospels are references to the relationship between Jesus and Mary. Here the story becomes speculative, but very rich and deep. Of course, we want answers to the question about any possible romantic relationship. The Gospel of Philip mentioned that “Jesus used to walk with her and kissed her frequently upon the mouth.” She was recognized as beloved.
Cynthia Bourgeault suggests that of all the disciples, Mary was the most spiritually advanced; she grasped what Jesus was trying to teach of what we would today call ‘wholeness’, of what was meant by ‘entering the kingdom’, and of being with God.
Let’s ask this question, then: What if the so-called ‘healing from the seven demons’ was in fact a renunciation of all those human conditions that create suffering: greed, lust, desire, etc.? What if Mary was Jesus’ closest companion – not necessarily a consort, but a spiritual equal, a spiritual companion?
The voices of Empire, who sought celibacy and abstinence, could not have tolerated such a companionship.
What does it mean to truly be a soul mate? Might it mean that together, Jesus and Mary, male and female, represented the Anthropos, a fully realized human being?
In the Gospel of Thomas, when Peter suggests that Mary be excluded, Jesus said, “Then I myself will lead her, making her male if she must become worthy like you males! I will transform her into a living spirit because any woman changed in this way will enter the divine realm.” (Ibid., p. 78.). Cynthia Bourgeault interprets this statement as saying that Mary would not need to actually become male, but rather, that Jesus would lead her to become fully enlightened, a fully-realized human being beyond gender, whole, a ‘living spirit’.
Soul mates. Two people able to connect in ways that others cannot see or hear.
Which brings us back to the familiar story, of the encounter between Mary and Jesus outside the tomb on that first Easter morning. She did not at first recognize him, until he addressed her. I had always interpreted this as a story about the impact of being called by name as a way to break through great distress, and an inability to see. But what if it was something else?
What if these spiritual companions were able to unite in that moment on some other plane?
Theologian Walter Wink wrote, “It is a prejudice of modern thought that events happen only in the outer world.” (in Bourgeault, p. 166.) What if a love so deep, two spirits so aligned, could meet somewhere else, if only fleetingly, when one called out to the other? What in that moment, if Mary had gone to Jesus?
Is the Easter story, then, not a story of triumph over death, but a story of the triumph of love over everything?
“My love, I was so wrong.
Dying is the opposite of leaving.
When I left my body, I did not go away.
That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here.
I am more here than I ever was before.
I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.
So close you look past me when wondering where I am.
It’s Ok….” (Love Letter from the Afterlife, by Andrea Gibson)
Today is a day of stories and mysteries. And we close by pondering the two greatest mysteries:
What is eternal life?
In what ways do we rise?
“My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones,
Dying is the opposite of leaving.
I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples,
I am more with you than I ever was before.
Do you understand?). (Ibid.)
Alleluia.
