Biography
The Rev. Dr. Renita Weems is the William and Camille Cosby Visiting Professor of Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a teacher, a writer, a preacher and a scholar. For fifteen years she was a professor of Hebrew Bible in the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt, and writes a regular column for the website, beliefnet.com. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Gospel of Mary" 
There is so much talk these days about the importance of differentiating one’s career from one’s vocation, about finding one’s passion, about knowing one’s purpose in life, about listening for and following one’s inner voice. Calling. Vocation. Passion. Purpose.

But what happens when you are subject to systems, belong to a culture, or part of organizations that render you invisible, inferior, less than, other? How can you follow your passion or discover your true purpose when you are subject to powers that take away your voice, make you feel invisible, and refuse you opportunities that can help you to explore your gifts?

Take for example, the story of the Apostle’s decision, in Acts 1:15-26, to replace Judas. It is the time between Jesus' Ascension and the week of Pentecost. Reading the first chapter of Acts, one gets the impression that elevating a woman to leadership in the post-resurrection movement was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. That despite her faithful service, her leadership among the women, her contribution to the ministry, and her witness to Jesus’s resurrection, Mary Magdalene’s name never came up. Mary’s name was never brought up as a possible candidate. But then neither did any other woman’s name come up, for that matter. But can this be the full story? Were those whom Jesus had left in charge of his church so hopelessly provincial and bigoted that not a one of them could bring himself to imagine having a woman as a colleague.

How different history might have been if Peter and the other apostles that week leading up to the festival of Pentecost had the courage and vision to elect a woman as the apostle to replace Judas. Had the disciples such courage and vision to elect Mary perhaps those of us with leadership gifts would not have been forced, as women have for centuries, to defend our right to preach, teach, and hold leadership positions in the church (or in our culture).

Just imagine how many women might have been spared burning at the stake, been spared being branded a witch or heretic, escaped depression and madness, rescued from feeling maladjusted spiritually, and been saved from the pain of ridicule and ostracization for being born a gifted female instead of a gifted male.

If only Peter had stepped forward and defended Mary’s candidacy, reminding the audience of her leadership and contribution to Jesus’ ministry and that, as one of the first to witness Jesus' resurrection, she was especially qualified for the job, the church today would probably be a radically different place for both its male and female followers.

How much more peace, justice, love, compassion, and reconciliation might the church have been able to champion in the world had the apostles spared it; having to spin its wheels, century after century, asserting the putative natural order of creation in particular the alleged superiority of some whom God created and alleged inferiority of others whom God created. Thank God, there are men who have imagined women as colleagues.

Although it’s not always the case, nor even often the case, experience has taught me that there are times one self-confident, courageous, clear-thinking man around the table who’s willing to break ranks and argue in defense of a woman colleague for the vacant seat around the table. You can bet—despite his success and his present insider status—that he’s a man who knows first hand and recalls easily what being an outsider, a long shot, the least likely to succeed, the one not chosen for the team, feels like.

How could Matthew, himself, a previously despised tax collector and outcast within the group, or Simon the Canaanite who, because of his militant political leanings, was a pariah among a group made up of mostly humble fishermen not notice the omission of Mary’s name. It was the English philosopher Edmund Burke who said: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Mass murder, burning, looting, rape, disasters, and so-called ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile, citizens of the world turn a blind eye, remain silent, or argue about budgets and what’s expedient, while more people die and even more become refugees.

And so, they proposed the names of two anonymous men, Barsabbas and Matthias, over Mary. And in so doing, they chose what was expedient over what was prophetic. The safe thing over the just thing.

Sadly, Mary Magdalene fades off the scene after the Gospel writers are done telling of her encounter with Jesus at the tomb and her testimony to the disciples about what Jesus proclaimed to her. You would think from the record that Mary quietly receded into the background and without a murmur gave the spotlight over to the men. You would think that Mary, and the other women (Joanna, Susanna, and others) were content with being invisible. But I wonder.

Some people seem to have always known their vocation. Others of us back up into our vocations, stumble upon our vocations, are shoved into our vocations by unwanted, unforseen circumstances. Sometimes the worst thing that could have happened to us becomes the best thing to have happened to us. We find our voice. We lock into a vision.
We want our vote. Because we are no longer willing to be treated as though we are invisible.

Records from the second century of gospels that never attained the same status of our Protestant scriptures suggest that Mary Magdalene went on to become an important teacher during those early years of the church.

Extrabiblical documents, one of them the "Gospel of Mary" written in Greek dating back to the second century, exalt Mary Magdalene over the male disciples of Jesus and provide important information about the role of women in the early church.

After years of being at the mercy of systems of which you are not a participating part, you find in yourself the reason to change it – for others. After having to stand silently by while others make the decisions that will most affect your life. Mary represents every woman, man, minority, who knows what it feels like to be shut out of every economic, political and ecclesiastical institution in the world, begging for voice, begging for vote, begging for visibility.

If vocation means to follow the voice within, I want to believe that Mary perhaps did not retreat into invisibility but went on to claim the voice within that says, “you are the one you have been waiting for.”

Reading the biographies of men and women who were previously marginalized, who stepped out and ran for leadership positions in their churches, those who won and those who lost, it makes you wonder: what makes a woman throw her name in the ring for a job she knows she doesn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting? What makes a woman seek out a job where she will be subject to ridicule, criticism, suspicion, and all out disdain. What makes a woman campaign for an office no one wants to see her in?

“I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo," the late Shirley Chisholm wrote in her 1973 book, The Good Fight.

Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress (1968) and the first to campaign for the presidency (1972), was known for her incisive debating style and uncompromising integrity. “The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office,” wrote the congresswoman from New York, “I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start." Thirty years ago Chisholm’s bids for the U.S. Congress and eventually for the presidency were controversial at best, laughable was more like it. Thirty years later Condoleeza Rice, an African American woman, may be Secretary of State.

Clearly the word of God in the story of Mary is that you either grow or allow yourself to be diminished by the decision of others. You figure out what you’re supposed to learn from your experience and make up your mind to reinvent yourself. You learn to differentiate what's happening to you from what's happening within you. Losing is the risk you take for stepping out. But it’s also the feedback you need to understand how to take pain and use it for growth.

I recently took part in a ceremony given by the denomination that ordained me, where they elevated its first female prelate to the office of president of the Council of AME Bishops. She became that evening not only the first woman bishop in a mainline black denomination, but the first woman to preside over the Council of Bishops. Her elevation to the post brought shouts of praise and peels of joy to everyone in the audience. Lay women in the banquet hall waved their white napkins in victory.

Clergy women like myself wiped tears from our eyes, recalling all the times we’d been barred from a seat on the pulpit next to the male clergy, or the times we’d been introduced as “sister” instead of “reverend.” the men in the audience applauded loudly, no doubt proud that theirs was the generation to begin the work of righting some of the wrongs done against black church women. Even the bishops of the church, especially those whose tenure dated back to the days when the notion of a female bishop was laughable– they too seemed pleased and prepared for this new inevitability.

Hopefully, as a result of the past two centuries of gains women have made in the church, both as lay and clergy women, it will be easier for our daughters, granddaughters, goddaughters, nieces and the students we teach. Prayerfully, they will not have to swallow their gifts, squelch their anointing, extinguish their passion, deny their worth, unthink their thoughts, and pretend not to know what they know just because they are female and not male, unmarried and not married, plain instead of beautiful, older instead of younger.

We will continue to raise our daughters to stand up and to speak up for themselves. And we will teach our sons and daughters to know that all of creation suffers when we silence others, keep them from taking their place around the table, or treat them as though they are invisible. To leave half the human race out of the discussion that determines the fate of the world is a sin.

The Gospel, or Good News, is that Jesus came that we might have life in its fullness—voice, vision, vote, and vocation—and have them to their abundance!

Amen.