Abstract
In her groundbreaking work, White Women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus, Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, Jacqueline Grant engages both Letty Russel and Rosemary Reuther in their feminist assessments of the liberating qualities and potential of Christology. Grant challenges Reuther's “suggestion that perhaps Mary Magdalene is a more adequate model for women than Mary the virgin mother of Jesus, and that the Christ can be conceived of as sister as well. " While Grant agrees with the emphasis on “women's experience as a primary source for doing theology, " she questions whether Reuther and other feminist scholars, “are able to understand the particularities of non- white women’s experience.' A reading of John 20: 11-18 from an expanded womanist perspective offers a new look at the relevance of gender, class and community in the story, in which Mary Magdalene encounters Jesus, through this exploration, I assert a recent lack of attention to this passage by womanist scholars who are interested in biblical and theological questions and their relevance and impactfor the Black Church, in general and Black women, in particular. Through a prismatic view that considers the relevance ofintersectionality in the text and the reader, a womanist reading can inform and reshape the way that the story is read and interpreted by Black women scholars, which can inform its message to the Black Church and its members. The notions of voice as manifest through witness and testimony to one's experience offer the appropriate womanist window through which this passage can be considered. Ultimately, John positions Mary Magdalene as “voice” of the Johannine community, ordained by Jesus as the first to affirm and reflect his transformative power. A “re-reading” emphasizing her role in community with others and relationship with Jesus can help womanist scholars identify meaning, relevance and power in the most important story about the greatest news in Christianity. This re-reading of Mary Magdalene as the voice in the Johannine community proposes a reclamation of Mary Magdalene and offers a portal for re-inserting the African American voice into the extensive discourse about Biblical relevance, women, identity, power, justice and [the Johannine] community. It also offers a reading of Mary Magdalene that affirms women's voice and power as community leaders and proclaimers of the word.