Resurrection, atonement,
and Mary Magdalene

Based on John 20:11-18

I recently learned about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. She was an astronomer and astrophysicist, whose major achievement was discovering what stars were made of. Today’s science textbooks tell us hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. But they rarely, if ever, tell us who discovered this. Cecilia’s work on variable stars helped lay the foundations for modern astrophysics. And she has also been credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the science department at Harvard University.

I am not going to run through her life story tonight or tell you about the rest of her illustrious career. But I do want to highlight the fact that she does not have the recognition she deserves. And a major reason for this seems to be that she was a woman undertaking pioneering research in a male dominated world.

I thought of Cecilia while I was reflecting on another remarkable woman, Mary Magdalene, whose encounter with the risen Jesus is described in the reading from the Gospel According to St John we heard this evening. All four canonical gospels acknowledge she is the first to meet him. In this evening’s reading, she is on her own; in the synoptic gospels, she has one or two other women with her.

But while Mary Magdalene is the first person to person to see the risen Jesus, either alone or with other women, and women play vital roles in Jesus’ ministry and in the early Church, as the Church became institutionalised, the place of women in the narrative was watered down, and their significance was downplayed. Some Gnostic Christian writings even portray Mary Magdalene as Jesus' closest and most beloved disciple and the only one who truly understood his teachings, and suggest that this led to tension with St Peter, who was jealous of her closeness to Jesus.

What is true though is that Mary Magdalene has been the subject of vicious slander. This seems to have begun in the year 591 CE, when Pope Gregory I preached a sermon that conflated her with the so-called sinful woman who had anointed Jesus’ feet, and this led to the widespread belief she was a prostitute or at least a promiscuous woman. This belief has persisted in popular culture ever since, even though Mary Magdalene is recognised as a saint by most of the Church. And the lies that have been perpetrated about her are finally being laid to rest.

Now let us go back to that morning in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago. Something is different about Jesus. Mary Magdalene does not recognise him at first. She thinks he is the gardener. Neither will the two who met him on the road to Emmaus this evening realise who he is at first.  And Jesus will later suddenly appear amongst his disciples, startling them somewhat.

Jesus had told his friends many times that he would be put to death and rise again on the third day, but it would seem they did not really seem to understand the dying part, let alone the rising again and right now they probably feel like they are a lost cause.

There are various perspectives on the exact nature of the resurrection. Some take the literal view, which is that Jesus came back to life in the same physical body, which had been mutilated during his flogging and crucifixion. But others say that there was no bodily resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection was all symbolic, and his bones lie somewhere in Palestine. If this last phrase sounds familiar, it may be because my former religious studies lecturer, the Reverend Sir Lloyd Geering, got himself in trouble back in the 1960s for saying that, and found himself on trial for "doctrinal error" and "disturbing the peace and unity of the church."

So, what do I believe? I say there is definitely a resurrection of some sort. But Jesus has been somehow transformed. Mary Magdalene and others do not recognise him at first. And he appears and disappears without warning, including in locked rooms. St Paul sheds some light on this mystery in his First Letter to the Corinthians, in which he writes at length about how our frail and perishable physical bodies will be replaced with spiritual bodies that will not wear out and die.

I do not bother myself with the precise mechanics of things I am not going to understand in this life. What matters to me is that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again in some form, and his resurrection brings us hope that we may share in it too. I believe humankind had become estranged from God, and there was only one way for us to be reconciled. And that was for God to become fully human, even though this meant experiencing the joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain and high hopes and broken dreams that are part of human life. Including dying. And he was killed by the religious and political powers of the day for a being a threat to the established social order and their comfortable existence which depended on it. But Jesus triumphs over death with his resurrection, which brings hope for us all.

So how does this work in practice? There are various theological constructs to explain why this was happened, which vary between different denominations of the Church, and I am going to offer you the briefest of overviews. They are called theories of atonement, which literally means becoming at-one with God.

The earliest one to gain popularity was the ransom theory of atonement, which essentially proposed that that Adam and Eve sold the souls of humankind to the devil as a result of the fall, and God had to pay a ransom to the devil to redeem us. 

I do not accept this theory. I do not believe an almighty God could be in a position of having to pay a ransom to anybody. And we have now all but completely moved away from the concept of atonement via ransom, but remnants of its legacy still linger in some places; next time you sing the hymn Praise my soul, the king of heaven, listen out for the words “Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.”

Another, which is pretty much the default position in evangelical Protestant churches, is penal substitutionary atonement. This is a development of an earlier doctrine, the satisfaction theory of atonement, which proposed that our sins create a debt to God that needs to be repaid. Penal substitutionary atonement takes this further and articulates that not only does Jesus directly bear the penalty of the sins of humankind, but we have to undergo individual personal conversion experiences to benefit from this.

I do not accept this theory either. I do not believe in a punitive God, who requires a human sacrifice to enable our forgiveness, and I believe this is proven throughout the gospels, where Jesus forgives people, when he has not yet died. Penal substitutionary atonement teaches retributive justice instead of the restorative justice that is so clearly modelled in the gospels. It is incompatible with the principle of grace, through which we receive forgiveness when we do not deserve it. Its emphasis on a moment of conversion is at odds with the reality that our lives are transformative journeys. And I am one of a growing number of followers of Jesus who do not accept that atonement can be achieved through violence.

Another is the recapitulation theory of atonement. This is more or less  the Eastern Orthodox Church’s understanding of atonement. Essentially, this proposes that Jesus is seen as a new Adam, who succeeded where the first Adam had failed, undoing his wrongdoing, and through his union with humankind, Jesus leads us to eternal life and moral perfection.

I see some merit in this.

And then there is the Christus Victor, or Christ the Victor, theory of atonement. In this, Jesus achieves victory over the powers of darkness. Every healing and every deliverance he performed diminished a little bit more of the hold evil had on the world, until Jesus was ultimately victorious. The Christus Victor theory has gained in popularity in recent years, largely because of its subversive nature; the death of Jesus exposes the cruelty and evil in the powers of the world, and he triumphs over them, and it is the theory of atonement that sits most comfortably with me.

This is also the theory of atonement that is most compatible with the ongoing transformation that comes from following Jesus. If I look at my life to date, there has been nearly twenty years of active membership of the Church, followed by twenty years in the wilderness, and now not quite twenty years back in the Church. When I look back to who I was when I first walked into this church almost twenty years ago, I can see I have changed a lot. Even though I still have a long way to go, I can see how far I have come.

So, today, let us celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and the hope that it brings us all.

But let us also remember women of science like Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who have helped reveal to us much of what makes up our physical universe, but many of whose stories have been suppressed.

And let us also remember those women of the early Church, like Mary Magdalene, who were the first encounter the risen Jesus and reveal him to the world and discover the new life he offers to us all.

Darryl Ward
Easter Day Sunday 9 April 2023