Kristen Johnson Ingram:
      Good News for Modern Women:
           The Gospel of John

 

Put down and upon by centuries of male might and law, women in John's Gospel find in Jesus an irresistibly divine summons to become free, whole, and fearless.

Kristen Johnson Ingram lives with her husband, Don, in Springfield, Oregon. She teaches adult education, leads retreats, and gives spiritual direction at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Eugene. She has written eight books and 700 articles. Next June she will preach at Magdalen College chapel, Oxford.

WOMEN speak from the outer edge of ministry to the Church, and someone recites a few verses in the Pauline epistles that command women to be silent. Women speak out of pain, in great despair, to the Church, and the Church sighs, wondering what to do, pointing to the traditions of the apostles. But those who focus on tradition alone, or on the Pauline portions of the New Testament ignore what is, paradoxically, the most widely disseminated of all Christian writings: the Gospel of John.

From beginning to end, John shows that the Good News of Jesus Christ is given to, and transmitted through, women. In fact, in John's gospel, women receive the truth along with -- or often even before -- men. They evangelize, teach, perform priestly duties, and set Jesus up for miracles. Some of the strongest elements in the Johannine story seem to be told through the feminine. And this gospel, this Good News, can only be heard by those in whom the Feminine is freed enough to listen.

THE WORD MADE FLESH: JOHN 1:13

At the outset, John overrides traditional misogynistic Judaism when he describes the "hearers of the Word" as those "who were born, not of blood nor of the will of flesh nor the will of man, but of God" (1:13). Greek scholars tell me that this "will of the flesh or the will of a man (thelematos sarkos, thelematos andros) is couched in terms akin to rape, or sexual insistence. It reminds the reader that a first-century woman's usual position was supine, and used at the whim of male will.

But, says John, although this is how the rest of you were born, although your fathers may have arrogantly willed you into and through into mother's flesh, now Someone has come through a different system. In the Incarnation, man's will has no power, and woman is not brought down. The life in Christ comes not through force or seduction: Jesus came into life, into our lives, through love. This new way of life was prophesied more than five hundred years before Christ: "'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit!' says the Lord of hosts" (Zechariah 4:6). When the Holy Spirit procreates, it is in and through and by and because of Love.

WATER TO WINE: JOHN 2;1-12

Soon after Jesus is baptized and the Spirit soars downward upon him like a dove, we come to the matter of his first miracle. He goes to a wedding with his mother and his friends; and his mother, unnamed by John, says, "They are out of wine." There follows a conversation which theologians have paternalistically tried to sugar-coat, out of manly respect for Mary and all the Ladies, but which remains essentially this: Jesus, in a rather sharp-tongued retort, cries out, "Oh, Woman, why bring me into it? I'm not ready for this sort of thing yet" (3:4).

But does he, as God Incarnate, take the opportunity to remind her of her position as a female? Does he say, "Keep your place, lady?" He does not. Neither does he limit her scope of ministry by calling her "Mother," because in that incident, he lifted her to equality. "Do whatever he tells you;" she tells the servants, ignoring Jesus' strong words. And Jesus for some reason does what she asks, responds to her need, and turns water into wine.

In that wine-changing, Jesus "manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him" (2:11). The splendor, the heavenly position of Christ, was manifested because a woman wanted a miracle done. We don't know his mother's reasons for insisting, and we certainly don't know Jesus' reasons for complying. We only know that they argued like two adults, and then she set him up to be elevated to glory in his disciples' eyes.

BORN AGAIN: JOHN 3:1-12

After a Passover in Jerusalem, during which he upset the tables of the money-changers and drove the temple menagerie into the streets, Jesus is approached in the dark of night by a devout Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin. "We know you're a teacher come from God," Nicodemus tells Jesus. "Nobody does what you do without God's presence in him."

"Unless one is born again, one can't see the kingdom of God," says Jesus in one of his enigmatic, koan-like answers that has nothing to do with Nicodemus' scared flattery.

"Born again?" whispers the Pharisee. He's a Jewish boy from a long line of well-mothered Jewish boys. Suggest that he change his ways, and he reaches back through time for his mother. "Can an old man go back to his mother's womb?" he asks hopefully. Maybe old age and death won't be so bad, after all!

"What is born of flesh is flesh," Jesus answers. "What is born of the Spirit is spirit." Grow up, Nicodemus, he is saying. Stand on your own two feet, spiritually, and forget the importance of worldly and childish attachments. Give your mother a rest, fix your own shabbos meal. Be like the wind, the Spirit, which goes where it wills, not where it is used to going every Friday evening.

According to the Revised Standard Version, Nicodemus says, "How can this be?" but in my inner ear, I only hear "Wha-at!"

"You logician!" the Master sighs. "You can't grasp even earthly things. How can I explain anything heavenly to you?" You need to have your feminine side awakened, Nicodemus, to receive the truth of Christ and his kingdom, because the kingdom defies rationalism and can only be apprehended intuitively.

Later in his career, Nicodemus defended Jesus' right to be heard, but there is still something equivocal in his speech. Some men need a second touch from God. But at the end, in John 19:39 and 40, this member of the Sanhedrin, with Joseph of Arimathea, prepares Jesus' body for burial: a task usually assigned to women in that society. Nicodemus, whose name means "innocent blood," was born again, and took on a humble role to honor his lord.

THE BAPTISTS' DISCIPLES: JOHN 3:22-36

Now Jesus, the newcomer across the Jordan, was winning disciples. Crowds were flocking to him, and word was spreading that this, perhaps, was the Anointed One.

"The bride belongs to the bridegroom;" John the Baptist tells his troubled followers. He had to reassure them, and the Johannine version is unique in using the "bride" analogy so early in Christ's ministry. It is only the female within people, men or women, that can and must respond to Jesus, the eager Bridegroom, who can say with John Donne, "Nor chaste, until you ravish me."

"I must decrease, he must increase," says John. My era of repentance and purification, of calling up the Law and the Prophets for your memory, is ending: replaced by love. The time of patriarchy and legalism and of linear logic, is over. It wasn't Moses, the Lawgiver, who took the people over the Jordan: it was Joshua (Y'shua, Jesus, whose name means "Savior") who did it. The irrational season is upon us.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL: JOHN 4:7-43

And soon Jesus goes directly to that irrational truth of heaven. This time, he speaks not to a logical Pharisee, but to someone who can respond without understanding. The Spirit overcomes the law; intuition can overwhelm theology any day.

"Give me a drink;" he asks an astonished woman at the well of Sychar, and then he tells her the secrets of heaven. In answer to her questions about Jews drinking Samaritan water, he speaks of living water, and notes that those who drink this water will have eternal life, nor thirst any more.

"Oh, give me some of that water;" she cries.

"Go get your husband," he says, almost teasing, almost making fun of tradition; and then makes it clear that he knows she has no real husband, knows she has been living in either fornication or adultery with a series of men. He makes no comment about that, because he knows what she has been looking for all these years. Instead, like a Zen master who dashes tea into his student's face in answer to a simple question, Jesus dashes fact into her astounded brain.

"I am he, I am the Messiah;" he tells her, a woman; words that, in John's record, he hasn't yet said to the disciples.

When his followers arrive, they "marvel that he is talking to a woman," but they have the good sense to keep still (4:27), and the Samaritan woman becomes the first Christian missionary. She leaves her water jar -- the symbol everywhere of women's traditional ministry through service -- and runs about the city, crying, "Come, see a man who told me everything .... Can this be the Christ?"

"Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony" (4:42). And they came to listen and stayed to believe, because they saw the same man who offered her living water and told her everything she ever did.

THE CAPITAL CASE: JOHN 7:53-8:11

Jesus has given his remarkable discourse about eating flesh and drinking blood, and devout Jews, chilled to the bone by these terms and by his obvious audacity, began to argue. The wheels of his death are set in motion. At the Feast of Tabernacles, he again offers living water. And one day soon after, on the Mount of Olives, he shows what a trial should be: not a cold set of facts and accusations, but an opportunity to renew life. (Scholars have often discarded this story in John 7:53-8:11. It might be noted that most biblical scholars have been men, who were perfectly happy to excise the account.)

The Pharisees drag a half-clad, tousle-haired woman, bruised-lipped woman, guilty of a capital offense, in front of Jesus. "Teacher, we caught her in the act!" they cry, rubbing their hands together, their memories still fresh with this rosy-skinned woman, found naked in a man's bed. We have you too, you wily Galilean; how can you possibly adjudicate this case without showing whether you are for the Law or for anarchy?

"Adultery, hmmm?" says the young rabbi. He scribbles in the dust awhile, listening. The woman says nothing: her mute plea is eloquent, and there is no mention of her partner, a man who also should have been stoned, according to Leviticus 20:10.

They continue to press their charge, and finally, he sits back and looks at the men, who are panting and slavering for the woman's death like beasts waiting for meat. She has to die: otherwise, how can they put to death their own guilt?

"All right. You have your rights under the Law of Moses. Then let the one who hasn't ever committed any sin against that Law begin the stoning," he said, and began scribbling again. Men of Israel, grow up. Quit hiding behind women and let them grow, too: so long as you hobble them, cripple them by blaming the whole history of the nation on Eve, neither you nor they will be free.

Jesus looks up, finally, feigning surprise. She was still standing before him, but now alone. "What? Is there nobody here to execute judgment?"

"Nobody, Sir," she says, wondering what this One will do, now. Will he take advantage of her, use her, rape her, knowing that nobody would blame him for it when she was a known slut? Well, she did owe it to him, since he had saved her life.

"Neither do I condemn you," says Jesus. "Now, look: don't go back to the same madness that brought you here." He sends her home astonished, free for the first time in her life. In this short, disputed incident, Jesus put women forever in charge of their own identities. You are not defined by men any longer, woman; whether you are sinful or not is between you and me, and you don't have to take a man for your covering, or be uncovered by his defection.

I BELIEVE YOU ARE CHRIST: JOHN 11:1-44

By now, Jesus is famous. They say he heals the lame and makes the blind see. At the Hanukkah festival (10:22-39), he so inflames the crowd that they split into groups and some even want to stone him. He removes himself and goes to the fork of the Jabbok, and stays a few days. And then, he sets his face toward Bethany, to raise his friend Lazarus.

Jesus had known for days that Lazarus was sick. He could have journeyed the two miles from Jerusalem to Bethany in less than an hour, but he put the trip off until he knew the man was dead, and that his sisters were mourning. And Jesus "Loved Martha, and her sister and Lazarus" (11:5).

Martha is not one to sit around, as we know. She rushes to the edge of the village, and watches the dusty road when she hears Jesus was coming. "If you had been here, Lazarus would be too," she sobs when he is in earshot, adding, "and I know that if you ask God, even now ...."

Is it true that God will grant Jesus anything he asks? she wonders. Dare she ask?

Her faith is pure: Jesus hears it. "Your brother will rise again," he says.

"In the Resurrection, yes," murmurs Martha, perhaps glancing round and wondering if the Pharisees and Sadducees are going to start up again about it.

"I am the Resurrection, and Life," says Jesus. Ego eime, I am I am: a supernatural redundancy, this. Before Abraham was, ego eime, I am I AM, he is saying. "Do you believe that?"

"I believe that you -" She might have stopped a moment before she said, "I believe that you are Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." Not only has she recognized Jesus as Christ or Messiah, but she is the first besides himself and Nathaniel to call him God's Son. She follows with the unique, hitherto unstated fact of his eternal entrance into our lives. Her's is the good news, the Best News According to John: this is the Christ, God's Son, and he is eternal, and this news comes from the mouth of a woman.

"The Teacher is here, and he is asking for you," she whispers to Mary when she gets home; and these two Women go, and their friends follow them, to see Jesus weep, and pray, and to witness that he brings his friend from death to life.

A POUND OF NARD: JOHN 12:1-8

After raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus hides awhile in Ephraim, a desert town. But Passover is coming around again, and the chief priests and the Pharisees began to watch around Jerusalem for him.

He goes, of course; a prophet or a Son of God could hardly be murdered anywhere except in Jerusalem. But he waits awhile in Bethany, with these same friends: Martha, who recited her faith, serves; Lazarus, who was raised from death, sits at table with Jesus and some friends; and Mary, the quiet one, kneels, as usual, at his feet. She breaks open a container of pure nard, and anoints his feet, and wipes them with her hair; and the whole house is filled with the fragrance of the ointment (12:3).

"Jesus, what is this?" cries Judas, a thief who pretends to ascetic piety. "She should have sold the nard and given the money to the poor." It's easy to imagine his black eyes, darting around the room, seeking approval for his statement.

"Judas, stay out of it!" Jesus retorts. "There will always be plenty of poor around. You can strut your benevolence in front of them after I am gone" (12:8).

Meanwhile, Mary's worship and adoration have filled the whole house with strange and exotic thoughts, so nobody speaks. Judas can only stand there, his masculine reasoning defeated by the simple intuitive act of a woman who has, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not, anointed Jesus for burial.

For months, Jesus has warned his disciples that he will be betrayed and killed, but they are unable to fit that into their mental scheme of a Messiah. It takes an act of passion, expressed in terms of love freely given, of uncommanded servant-hood, to acknowledge his impending death, and Jesus salutes the correctness of this passion.

Anointing a dead body was a duty performed by women; but the anointing of a live man was solely the duty of priest or prophet. Moses anointed Aaron. Samuel anointed the kings of Israel. Today, bishops anointed by bishops anoint priests; priests anoint the newly baptized. This isn't a light, meaningless act: the Lord's anointed are untouchably holy (see 2 Samuel 1:13-16; 2 Chronicles 16:22).

Anointing is also usually a fairly stingy act. At baptisms, priests touch fingers into the blessed oil, a hardened cake of chrism, and lightly signs the baby or catechumen with it. But Mary uses a whole pound of nard -- a rare, costly, perfumed oil -- and anoints Jesus in a lavish sacerdotal gesture. Soon his feet and her hands and hair and the whole room are overshadowed by the power of the nard's perfume.

And only a few days later, knowing that betrayal and death are outside his door, Jesus washes the disciples' feet, showing them how perfect was his love (13:1b, Jerusalem Bible). Mary of Bethany was already blessed in the kingdom of love, because she emulated his act before it was done. She had "remembered forward;" as a true disciple might.

A SERVING MAID: JOHN 18:1-18

She speaks only a few words in John's story. John and Peter follow Jesus as he is dragged to the house of Caiphus. John knows the high priest, and so is allowed to enter and listen. Peter, his power spent, lurks outside the door like a beggar. A serving-maid, perhaps wondering if Peter didn't want to accompany Jesus, too, says, "Aren't you one of this man's disciples?"

It took a woman to confront Peter's faithlessness. The Johannine story allows women to stand up to men, to question, accuse, and inform. It is this same attitude of confrontation that we find in Deborah, who says to the army captain in Judges 4:9, "All right, Barak, I'll go with you -- but you'll get no glory this way, and a woman will kill the enemy."

Soon after the serving maid boldly insists on his discipleship, Peter is asked by others; and then the cock crows, and he knows a woman has confronted and named the evil in him, the evil he could not face in himself.

BEHOLD YOUR SON: JOHN 19:25-30

He is on the cross, now. The disciples have all run away, it seems, unable to watch the death of God -- all, that is, except for four women and John. Jesus looks down from the gibbet, sees this faithful handful and focuses his fading sight on his mother, standing with the beloved disciple.

"Mother;" he whispers hoarsely through cracked lips, "behold your son." And each woman in the world, past or present, born or yet unborn, whether she has borne earthly children or not, is immediately linked to Christ's ministry by her own ability to love him. I once imagined my own thirty-year-old son on the cross, speaking these words to me: and in my mind, I went mad, tried to tear the spikes out of his feet, shrieked curses at the weak-willed men who stood by with open, helpless palms, shouted up at my son to live... to live....

And Jesus gives his mother to John.

There are a thousand theological implications to this story. Does it mean that Mary had no other sons to care for her? Does it mean that Jesus gave his mother to the world as intercessor? Whatever systematic theology chooses to do with this incident, it is one that, taken simply, speaks to the millions and millions of women who have always hung around Jesus. They swarm over the Bible; they come off the pages of the Gospel and fill the churches. They teach Sunday school and fry chicken, they raise their sons to be priests and preachers and whisper to their daughters that someday, God might will priesthood for them, too. They sit with their rosaries in empty chapels, they light a thousand candles a Sunday; they form Sodalities, Altar Societies, Legions of Mary, Ladies' Aids, Circles, and Guilds to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the prisoners -- usually because there isn't a man in sight to do it. They set the Table and wash the sacred dishes; they sing in choirs and listen to sermons and weep for the Wounds; and on Good Friday, when Jesus gives his mother to John, they nod, knowing.

Jesus gives his mother to John, which is only fitting: they belong together. This woman from the house of Judah who could not be dissuaded from being part of every moment of God's incarnated Love, even at its death, belonged with the one disciple who could also stand still and let Jesus love him. From that day, John took her into his own house -- a Jungian might say that he let the feminine enter his unconscious -- so that by the time he wrote his Gospel and his first Epistle he was completely overtaken by womanly, unconditional love. The kind mothers are supposed to have.

I HAVE SEEN THE LORD: JOHN 20:1-18

It was early in the morning when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb; the sun was just coming up, and she took a risk, walking about where Roman soldiers or any other man could assault her.

If John's were the only Gospel, we wouldn't have so many ideas -- correct and incorrect -- about the woman from Magdala. John names her first at the foot of the cross, standing with John and Jesus' mother, his aunt, and another Mary. Now the Magdalene turns up in the early morning, with spices and ointments. She is stubborn: there's no use anointing a body this late, in this climate, but she wanted to honor Jesus.

The stone was rolled away and the tomb empty; and she ran to find Peter and John.

"He... he isn't there," she pants. "They've taken his body somewhere" (20:2). A woman again confronts Peter, who is this time holed up with John, in fear and confusion. They were being sensible, safe, masculine: it takes the wild gambling instincts of a woman to go to a sealed tomb at dawn.

Faced with her news, the disciples rush to the tomb. John runs faster and gets there first. But when he arrives, for some reason he hesitates and doesn't go inside. Peter arrives and barges into the tomb, and sees the grave wrappings, and then John looks too. Comprehension rushes over them: until then, they haven't understood the scriptures which showed that Jesus must rise from the dead (20:9).

Peter and John go home. The literal Greek, pros autos, seems to say, "to themselves" -- wrapped, as it were, in their own thoughts, Peter's of facing Jesus again, John's perhaps already formulating the Story he will tell. But Mary is still outside the tomb, weeping. She hasn't read all the scriptures and doesn't understand the prophecies. She knew Jesus, not the sacred writings. Two messengers from God are sitting in the tomb, clothed in white, and she tells them she is seeking Jesus.

"They took my Lord (The Lord of me, kyrion mou) she says, offering herself, her ego, to Jesus even when she thinks he is gone. She turns back: and there is the risen Christ.

"Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?"

"If you took him, bring him back! I'll take care of him myself!" she cries (20;15), too caught by love to be afraid or to realize that she can't drag a dead body around Jerusalem, looking for a place to bury a condemned miscreant.

"Mary?"

It was in the speaking of her name that Mary knew, just as women always know Jesus. He alone grants us so much identity, offers so much life to us; he alone knows each woman as she longs to be known.

"My Master!" she cries and grabs him.

"Don't cling to me, Mary," he tells her gently. I am in the process of ascension, I am changed and changing, I am becoming that which I AM since before Abraham and until the end of time. -And you -- you can't be completely whole while you hang on my physical presence. I rose to set you free for ministry and joy. I have to go, to send the Holy Spirit, to plead your case at the right hand of God.

"Go tell my brothers," he says. This is the first great charge to the Church, which at this point consists of one woman. "Go tell my brothers," he tells her, and makes every woman in the created world a part of his ministry. Mary Magdalene is the first evangelist, the first post-resurrection missionary, the first with the sight to see the Risen Christ, the first to tell the news. Peter and John might have brushed past him as they raced through the cemetery, but they didn't see him, couldn't see him. Only a woman can tell them the truth, because she will speak with her heart, not her mouth.

Reluctantly, she leaves him; but by the time she reaches the disciples, she is filled with him. "I have seen the Lord," she tells them."

And the story begins.