Two Marys at the Cross: The Body Keeps the Score

Like most Midwesterners, I have a spidey sense about storms. We watched the Joplin tornado descend on our city in 2011, then rode it out in our basement as it slowly churned and chewed over the top of us like a giant weed eater. Today I can sense an upper-level disturbance forming in the atmosphere long before the sirens sound. I feel the clash of warm and cold air, the change in barometric pressure, in my physical being. The body keeps the score.

The Witnesses

That thought is on my mind this Good Friday, as I think about the unspeakable trauma experienced by those who loved Jesus as they witnessed his gruesome death. Reading parallel passages in the gospels, we get a list of some of the witnesses, divided into two camps. The mocker camp included the religious leaders in their robes, hurling invectives, no doubt performing for an audience of rabble-rousers. It also included the centurion and his soldiers, just there to do a job, but caught up in the frenzy, casting lots for his robe. Even one of the robbers crucified with Jesus joined the mocking.

In the other camp, we find Simon the Cyrene, Joseph of Arimathea, the apostle John, and “many women.” The women included Jesus’ mother Mary and her sister, the mother of James and John, Mary the wife of Clopas, Salome, and Mary Magdalene. Many of Jesus’ followers, presumably including the disciples, watched from a distance. Over the hours of his suffering, only the women and John are described as standing near the cross.

As death approached, the physical world responded to the clash of good and evil playing out on the cross, like the terrible clash of warm air and cold air colliding in the sky before a storm. An unnatural darkness descended over the scene at the sixth hour. No doubt the jeering died down as the mockers realized something supernatural was happening. Three hours later, Jesus breathed his last breath and the physical world upended in response to the spiritual battle waging in the heavens. The temple veil ripped from top to bottom, the earth quaked, and rocks split asunder. Such a fierce phenomenon caused the centurion to declare in awe, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

The Body Keeps the Score

But a quieter battle of good and evil was also playing out in the very bodies of two Marys who clung to each other in horror at the foot of the cross.

Mary the mother of Jesus had cradled the God of the universe in her womb. Her tender young body had cocooned the incarnate savior of the world. The Messiah. It was a secret she and Joseph shared, for who would believe such an outrageous claim? Every mother remembers the first flutter of life within her body, the wonder of a new life growing within her. But Mary alone among women felt the quickening of eternity in her womb. She alone had been a sanctuary for pure light, pure goodness. What wonder had she guarded in her heart, as her hands protectively wrapped around her swollen belly? And now, the man child she had loved before birth hung dying in agony. How her arms must have ached to wrap around him, to protect him. What torture for any mother, but especially this mother.

At the same time, her friend Mary Magdalene was also feeling the death of her beloved Jesus in her physical body. You see, Mary Magdalene’s body had once been home to seven demons. Her bodily experience of good and evil had been the opposite of Jesus’ mother. One Mary’s body had been a sanctuary for pure goodness; the other Mary’s body had been occupied as a temple of evil. As the sky darkened and thunder rolled, every fiber of Mary Magdalene’s body reacted to the evil force of the spiritual struggle. She knew that force intimately.

Scripture does not give us details of Mary’s demon possession, but we know from other accounts that the experience was one of exquisite torture. Luke 8:26-39 describes the terrors experienced by a man from Gerasenes who was possessed of a legion of demons. He lived among the tombs, naked, cutting himself and crying out in torment. Chains could not hold him. Was Mary’s experience similar? How long had these demons tormented her? We don’t know what she suffered, but we know it was so horrific that after Jesus delivered her, she devoted her life to him, traveling with him as one of his most ardent disciples.

These two Marys stayed with Jesus to the bitter end that day. They watched him breathe his last breath. Watched the soldiers remove his lifeless body from the cross. Watched them lay the body in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. Watched them roll the stone in front of the cave to seal it.

Friday’s Grief

From our vantage point, we can’t fully put ourselves in the disciples’ shoes. We know Resurrection Sunday is coming. But those who loved Jesus did not understand his promise of resurrection. They could not anticipate that Sunday would bring joy and hope and celebration.

No, on Friday they could only sit with their grief. And the two Marys who had held good and evil in their own flesh, experienced the cross more profoundly than any of the others. What depths of grief they shared.

For these two Marys, the death of Jesus was not a political, religious, or historic event. It was deeply, deeply personal. As you reflect this holy week, I hope it will be for you as well.

My thanks to Jennifer Powell McNutt for enriching my love for Mary Magdalene through her amazing book, The Mary We Forgot.

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