The Tale of Two Marys
We have an extraordinary coincidence this Sunday: we commemorate St. Mary of Egypt on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, which this year for New Calendar Christians falls exactly on March 25, nine months before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know what happens nine months before a baby is born: it’s conceived! Yes, this Sunday we also celebrate the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to St. Mary the Mother of Christ our God. At the very instant Mary said to Gabriel, "Let it be unto me according to your word," the Word became flesh… God became incarnate… our salvation had begun! As St. Athanasius said – "Without the Incarnation there is no Salvation." Only when God partook of our humanity could we become partakers of His divinity (2 Peter 1:4). And the pure and sinless Virgin Mary's "yes" made it all possible.
But what about the other Mary? We can hardly identify with the Virgin Mary because of her purity and her not committing any personal sins. But we certainly can identify with St. Mary of Egypt who had yielded to temptation not just once or twice, but had relished and rollicked in her sin, dragging others along with her into the pit of debauchery. How many times have we repeated our favorite besetting sin – gluttony, gambling, porn, sexual, nicotine or alcohol addiction – over and over and over again? How did St. Mary of Egypt finally break free, and how can we?
In Joshua 24:1 & 14-28 we read Joshua's promises and warnings to the Israelites when they had entered the Promised Land and as he was about to die: "If you disobey the Lord, take foreign wives and worship their idols, the Lord will punish you!" And they replied, "We will worship only the Lord God!" But then they turned right around and did exactly what Joshua had warned them against. Mary of Egypt had boarded the ship to Jerusalem, going through the motions of a religious pilgrim while in her heart still being a harlot. Only when stopped by an Angel from entering the church in Jerusalem did she finally realize she must cease leading a two-faced life. Joshua told the Israelites, "Choose this day whom you will serve!" ...and they faked it. But Mary of Egypt finally realized that she couldn't fake it any longer, she must get real with God. Are we at that point where we realize that we need to stop faking our faith, and get real with God?
Why did the Church Fathers link St. Mary of Egypt with this Sunday's Scripture readings? The Epistle reading for this Sunday, Hebrews 9:11-14, tells us about this higher reality. The Israelites in the Old Testament had to repeatedly offer animal sacrifices, which were a mere shadow of things to come, but Christ offered His own Flesh and Blood as the once-for-all eternal reality that cleanses our guilty conscience from continuing in sin while faking our faith, and He enables us to get real with God.
In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Mark 10:32-45, we see the same sort of phony holiness and fake bravado among the disciples. Just after teaching about faithfulness in marriage (which the early Mary of Egypt would have nothing to do with), Jesus rebuked the rich young man who wanted to follow Christ but also wanted to hang onto his wealth (serving God and Mammon), then in this Scripture passage He detected the same double-minded thinking in James and John: nothing against these two disciples in particular – in the last chapter we saw that all twelve were jockeying for first place, "who would be the greatest in the coming Kingdom."
The reading for this Sunday begins with Christ telling His disciples for the third time now that the destination of their current trek, Jerusalem, would be what seemed to them the end of the road for Him: He will be betrayed, condemned to death, scourged, mocked and executed. But they couldn't grasp that He would rise again to conquer all evil, all banal and worldly thinking, all self-centered seeking after one's own advancement.
James and John addressed Jesus as "Teacher" or didaskalos in Greek, which can also be translated as master or doctor (KJV+). It appears that they still viewed Him as a master teacher or doctor of this new philosophy. They were dabbling in learning some new philosophical ideas, which the Greek-speaking world really loved to do. But the Gospel is more than learning philosophical or theological ideas!
St. John Chrysostom wrote that this text teaches we are not to ask for privilege in the kingdom without readiness to die for it. The sons of Zebedee were not mistaken in recognizing that they were special recipients of His love, but they were mistaken in imagining that this would be without cost (ACCS). We all want to be transformed and glorified, but few of us are willing to take up our cross and deny ourselves. This is precisely the point Jesus was getting at when He said – "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (v. 38). To "drink the cup that I drink" is a Jewish expression meaning to share the same fate (NIVSB).
That cup is His Blood and that baptism is His death, burial and resurrection. Do we fully comprehend that when we were baptized we joined ourselves to His death, burial and resurrection, that is, we really and truly died, our old self was buried and a new person was born again into newness of life? Is it really real to us that partaking of the Eucharist is taking His crucified Body and His shed Blood into us as our new life in Him and He in us? This is a life-and-death issue, not just learning some religious doctrines!
"And when the ten heard it, they began to be greatly displeased with James and John" (v.41). The New Oxford Annotated Bible puts it – "they began to be indignant at James and John." They were really ticked off! These two were trying to cut ahead in line! Nobody likes it when someone else cuts ahead in line or cuts you off in traffic. Beside that, as Matthew tells us, the two didn't have the nerve themselves to ask Jesus, they had their mother ask Him (Matthew 20:20-21). What a couple of wimps! But Jesus, being God incarnate, knew their future: James would be beheaded and John would die as a prisoner on the island of Patmos. They would indeed drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism. So He called the disciples together and taught them – "This isn't the way it works in My Kingdom: if you want to be great, you've got to become a servant, if you want to be first, become a slave" (v. 43-44).
Like the early Mary of Egypt, they still had their value system upside-down, but by the grace of God she rose up from the abyss of sin to the heights of holiness. They thought life was all about power, prestige and pleasure. Soon they would learn how fickle was their faith, as Jesus goes from being a hero in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to being executed as a rebel and a heretic the next Friday. Tune in next time to see how it all turns out: it just might turn your value system right-side-up!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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Sources:
ACCS = Ancient Christian Commentary on the Scriptures, on this passage (e-Sword add-in)
KJV+ = King James Version with Strong's Dictionaries and Concordance (e-Sword)
NIVSB = New International Version Study Bible
NOAB = New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
OSB = Orthodox Study Bible (used throughout except where otherwise noted)
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