In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt discusses her insights on Mary Magdalene from her book, The Mary We Forgot.
Dr. McNutt describes her own faith journey leading her to the dual ministry of Church historian and Presbyterian minister, and then delves into the historical mischaracterization and significance of Mary Magdalene, and what “the apostle to the apostles” can teach us today: from the importance of her healing from demons to her financial support of Jesus’ ministry, being the first witness and messenger of the resurrection, and as a missionary to France in her later life.
Dr. McNutt and her husband, Rev. Dr. David McNutt, have a ministry called McNuttshell Ministries, a teaching, preaching, and writing ministry that serves both the church and the academy by sharing the Christian faith “in a nutshell.”
You can find Dr. McNutt on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Substack, and more! Find today’s episode notes and transcript on The Beautiful Kingdom Builders blog.
In our conversation, Sandra Glahn’s book, Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible comes up, and Dr. McNutt encourages us to read all the books in her bibliography.
I was really excited to speak with Dr. McNutt after reading her beautiful, pastoral book, which was gifted to me from my brother, Rev. Dr. Matthew McNutt. It’s always fun to meet another McNutt doing good work out in the world! Here’s that adorable picture of my family with our nut shell sign my dad made; I’m guessing this is 1983 or 1984:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ruth Perry (00:16)
Well, Welcome to the Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt. I’m so honored to have you here today.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (00:20)
Yay! Thank you so much for having me. What a delight.
Ruth Perry (00:25)
I feel like, like you talk about in your book, our sibling relationship in Christ, and then we have that added layer of the last name.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (00:30)
haha McNutt. I know we are definitely related. Well, by marriage. yeah. Yes.
Ruth Perry (00:38)
Absolutely. I’m married out of it, so I’m Perry now, but growing up McNutt was very special, and so I thought that I should have my brother Matthew on so we have extra McNutts to join the fun. I wanted to show you this cool picture of my family. My dad made this sign with a bunch of different nuts, and I thought of this picture when I read the name of your ministry, McNuttshell Ministries. Very cute.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (00:46)
I love it. Can’t have enough McNutts. Lean into it, you know? Just embrace it.
Matthew McNutt (01:04)
I always just, yup, I always called my stuff the Nutt house, cause it’s like, we’re…
Jennifer Powell McNutt (01:09)
Oh yeah. When I started teaching there was the McNutty professor, that movie or whatever had come out, know, so there’s that too. I was like, oh no.
Ruth Perry (01:19)
I appreciate you bringing a lot of nobility and dignity to the name, you’re doing us well.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (01:23)
Good, I’m glad I’m accepted. I’m earning my stripes. That’s good.
Ruth Perry (01:29)
Yeah! My brother actually bought me your book for Christmas last year. And so that’s another reason why I wanted to have him in on this conversation, because he’s an avid reader and he loved your book. And I loved your book. I’m very excited to talk with you today about Mary Magdalene. But first, I want to talk to you about you. I’d love to hear about your personal faith journey, your testimony and just a little bit more about your background before we get into the book.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (02:02)
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, my faith journey just begins with my family and the ministry that my parents led and as pastors, co-pastors even in our denomination, we’re Presbyterian and having met in seminary and all of that and just knowing Jesus from the beginning and loving Christ and wanting to follow Him and feeling like a part of my parents’ ministry in a very powerful, compelling, persuasive way. And those church communities, you know, just really embracing us too. In California and Texas. But also churches that they had after I went to college in Pennsylvania, San Diego, and now they live here with us, retired, mostly retired.
And so for me, there isn’t a time that I don’t remember loving Jesus and wanting to follow Him. But there were many particular moments where the Lord has directed me in my life and calling and desire to be equipped for this vocation that I’m in as a professor at Wheaton College, but then also as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church and hoping to bridge that church and academy, that work, that it will enrich students and also churches. So for me, it just came from really as a child being called into ministry and that was like a pivot for my whole life. I was 10 years old and I was like, I’m going to seminary. yeah, it’s just been so interesting to see how I’ve been directed, in terms of my discipline too, and then just loving, especially the life of the classroom and know, adult education in the church and kind of the preaching parts came a little bit later for me. And I enjoy that as well so much, but my primary call is to the classroom. And so, you know, just how you go through life and make your decisions and do the best you can to be faithful and somehow the Lord directs you in the right path. So that’s been my hope at least.
Ruth Perry (04:20)
That’s really beautiful that you have the academic and the pastoral dual calling. I’m curious to know, what do you see as the, greatest benefits of your church history background and expertise in your church ministry?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (04:35)
Yeah, I just love to make that knowledge accessible that I really feel the importance of that to come in and to help deepen those roots and a sense of confidence in the faith and growth in the faith and also inviting those questions to that faith seeking understanding I think is so important.
To be able to grapple with the places where we’re uncomfortable, where we feel a tension, where we find a disconnect or a dissonance with our context and what Scripture’s saying or how we understand things. Those are all opportunities for going deeper, for the Lord using that in deeper ways. And so I love that part of it.
I’ve been doing a lot more just with all different denominations, churches all over the country and even outside of the US that come from their own history and their own context and the value of knowing the fullness of church history to the best of my abilities. Obviously there’s more than I could ever fully grasp, but nonetheless that you can speak
to people in their local spaces, in their local context in a way that maintains that larger story and helps them to see how they fit into God’s particular story and that universal story. So I’d to distill a richer perspective and connection that Christians have with one another today and with the past. So that’s my hope.
Matthew McNutt (06:14)
Is there something about Wheaton College in particular that drew you or that you’ve particularly enjoyed serving there?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (06:22)
Yeah, thank you. So I did go to Westmont College. It was Christian, liberal arts education. That was where I was really nurtured and knew about Wheaton. I never really expected to be at Wheaton. California girl going to the Midwest wasn’t exactly in my bingo card. yeah, but having taught as a doctoral preceptor in the university settings, I did long for the kind of relationship that you can have with your students, the mentoring relationship that you can have with your students at a Christian school and being able to like care about them as whole people and not just about their grades, or just about their minds, but about their whole life and who they are and kind of shepherding them through this time that we have together. And I found that there was kind of more of a distance at some of the university settings. We were required to have quite a distance. And so it’s just really wonderful to be at a school where you can just like pray with the student and they can share more about who they are and their sense of calling or vocational purpose. And yeah, you can just support them in a holistic way.
And so that’s the thing I’ve loved the most. And I think you would get that at other Christian schools too. But Wheaton does that really well, that integration of faith and learning, the connection between Scripture, theology, and context and just seeing how all those pieces fit together. And a lot of it too is how they valued me and supported me and made a place for my expertise and a place for me to thrive. So I’m very grateful for that. It’s been 18 years, so there’s definitely been ups and downs. Nothing is perfect, but on the whole, I would say, yeah, I think it’s been a really good experience.
Ruth Perry (08:28)
Another follow-up question I have about your background is thinking about the Presbyterian denomination with their theology and their tradition and their history. What do you feel like the Presbyterian church has to offer to the broader Christian family that is of particular value and beauty?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (08:45)
Well, I love that question. Thank you. We don’t always get to answer that. You know, like so many traditions, the Presbyterian Church is pretty fragmented, you know, in terms of so many different branches, certain branches that wouldn’t allow me to do ministry in as a woman. Other branches that don’t necessarily align with my own theological convictions fully.
So it’s always complex to navigate. And then there’s perception too, you know, of like a dominant voice in the tradition or majority voice in the tradition. So I always want to be very generous in my Reformed perspective. And the things that I love are the elements of humility that come into play for the tradition. I think it’s really important to remember, and I’ve spoken on this many times in different venues about that if we go back to our origins, our inception points, like in the 16th century, in the Reformation with John Calvin in Geneva, that so much of his ministry was dedicated to people who were displaced and living in exile and suffering from persecution. And so the theology that he emphasizes is God’s power and ability to be present with us, to save us even through the most devastating, catastrophic moments in our lives and that God’s goodness and God’s ability to save us is never diminished by those circumstances. And really trust in God’s loving, fatherly activity in our lives.
Also, I would say, that, as I mentioned, the humility, but that, the transcendence between, like, us humans and God, I think those are good reminders, too, as well that he’s capable to save and willing. Those are parts that I love, also love about Scripture, you know, Scripture as like, glasses that we put on to understand, to see the world clearly and to understand the world around us. I really strongly affirm that I believe that and experience that just at many different levels. So of God’s activity through that. Those are two things. I’ll add one third one. And that is something called, a little lesson here, duplex gratia, double grace.
I love the duplex gratia, which is that we are, just as we’re justified, that that is linked to our sanctification, that the Holy Spirit is at work in uniting us to Christ, in transforming our lives and sanctifying us, that we might be holy and righteous. So, those are three things I think that are sometimes missed in perceptions of the Reformed tradition, that context can give us some gratitude and appreciation for.
Ruth Perry (11:34)
Beautiful, praise God.
Matthew McNutt (11:35)
You wrote later in the book that Mary Magdalene’s place in the biblical story has been buried in the cellars and attics of our churches.” What drew you to study and write about Mary Magdalene?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (11:43)
Yeah, thank you so much. There are a lot of layers to the story. So I’ll just say kind of one thing and then maybe you want to follow up. But one thing that I have been struck by is in coming out of a tradition in the branch of the Presbyterian Church that I was in, they were very attentive to women in the Bible. And there was a place to talk about that and to think about, I would say, kind of a Galatians 3.28 like, you know, church experience so that you could be called, you have gifts from the Holy Spirit that are not gendered and you know, that God could call you to serve anyone.
But even in that space and even in that context, there was still kind of a separation between some of the focus on the women in the Bible, in the pulpit, and the focus on the women of the Bible in the women’s ministry. So we still had that. And then in addition to that, in another layer, I don’t think anybody wanted to touch Mary Magdalene. So I grew up knowing Lydia and Deborah and Phoebe and those names before I was ever taught how to understand, think about Mary Magdalene.
And I think that’s a much larger problem. It’s not just in certain types of Protestant churches. It’s not just in the Protestant tradition. It’s in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s much broader than this. It’s kind of a Christian issue of how to interpret and understand Mary Magdalene. And so when, as a professor with many years in my research, I began to notice more and more in my classrooms and discussion theology I was doing references to women in the Bible and the Reformation and seeing how they are talking about Mary Magdalene kind of brought it to the surface of this is really different than what we see in our culture because there’s a cultural discussion and also what we’re seeing in our churches.
Kind of seeing the need. And for me, first, I only saw it as for women. Like, let’s talk about Mary Magdalene for women. And I was invited to have those opportunities to share that kind of perspective. But through the process of getting the book to be accepted and published, I began to realize, this is for the whole church. It’s not just for women. And that’s because the gospel writers invite the whole church to see Mary Magdalene’s presence and her witness and her calling by Christ to proclaim. So that’s been great. So it’s kind of like a growth process, I would say like over time, you know how the Lord plants a seed, you know, I was a doctoral student when the Da Vinci code took off, I was in Scotland, everybody was talking about it. It was in every bookstore window. There were bookstores back then. you know, every bookstore window, everybody’s talking about it. And now when I look back at that time, I realized that the church was so susceptible to that cultural moment and the confusion that erupted from that cultural moment because there had been no clarity about her, you know, before that.
So I bring also that to the writing of the book, that experience as well. Did you guys experience that? I don’t know. Like when, you know, when the DaVinci code came out and.
Matthew McNutt (15:16)
I remember when it came out.
Ruth Perry (15:16)
I felt like reading, one of the things I loved about your book is that all of the references you made were a part of my life. I just felt like we would be friends if we knew each other. And I really enjoyed that aspect of reading your book too. I was thinking about when I first started, so Matthew and I grew up conservative Baptist. And so we were definitely of a mind that, spiritual authority belonged to men in the church and the home and read the Bible through that lens. And when I started rethinking that, because I had received a call from God when I was 30 years old, so I was way behind you in that process.
But it was when I was 30, so I started trying to read the Bible through a new lens. And I was frequently told I was reading the Bible through a flawed hermeneutic because most of the people I knew were still conservative. So they were being critical of my questions and the new things I was discovering in the Bible. And I just love that you describe it as a hermeneutic of surprise. Just seeing how God elevates women in the Bible. I don’t know that everybody listening to my podcast knows what the word hermeneutic means, so maybe explain the word hermeneutic and then also just talk more about that hermeneutic as a surprise.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (16:32)
Sure, absolutely. Thank you. So hermeneutic means basically just interpretation. And so when you study hermeneutics, you’re studying different ways of interpreting. So there’s different approaches or methods for interpreting Scripture. Of course, hermeneutics can be used for other sources as well. But there are those critical lenses that are used to understand the text and methods to get at the meaning of the text in its context or how it, you know, the different, they would say, percopes or like portions of Scripture, how they are placed intentionally side by side and what the meaning is for that. There’s all different approaches.
So I was coming from a context that was kind of more like saying, there’s not enough women in the Bible. It’s not enough and it’s not empowering to women because they’re not really present enough in the gospels or in the texts. And so as a historian, it’s important that we understand literature in its context, you know, what were the practices and approaches that you would expect in that time period for how they would write about it. And the thing is, is that they wouldn’t reference women at all.
And so when we say like 200 named women isn’t enough, we’re kind of coming at it from, I think, the wrong side. We need to turn around and go the opposite direction about what does it mean to add 200 women into the text and to highlight their names. Or just to leave them unnamed even, but still present in the story is really interesting. So the hermeneutic of surprise is intended to challenge the hermeneutic of suspicion to an extent, to say that suspicion isn’t always the best disposition of a reader of Scripture because we can miss all the surprising ways that the text in its context is telling the story. So we can be surprised ourselves from our own context, we don’t expect, you know, gentleness to be emphasized or whatever it might be.
And that’s like us growing in how the text relates to our place today as Christians. But the text itself already has embedded moments of surprise within the text that we miss if we only read it from our context. We have to try to read it from the space in that time to see what is being highlighted. So I just have a few different examples that I try to show, but I think once you approach it that way, you’ll begin to see the whole of Scripture, so many surprising parts of Scripture that just sometimes requires to sit a little bit more with, to seek to learn and to study and to, sit under a, knowledgeable teacher to help you to read Scripture with more insight and perspective. I think that can be very useful. All of us can benefit from that at different points, including myself.
Matthew McNutt (19:52)
I mean, you’ve already touched on this a little bit, right? That Mary Magdala’s story has been muddled and obscured throughout history. And even just talking about how the church is not very familiar with her. How do you disentangle her from the other Marys in the Gospels, from the unnamed women that she gets lumped in with?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (20:13)
Right, yes. Well, I think the first thing, my first question was how did this happen? So again, coming in as a historian and trying to go back to some of the original interpretations of Mary Magdalene. So especially looking at Irenaeus of Lyon is a father for the church in the West and the East. So it’s a really interesting starting point to see a trajectory that’s established there and to understand how the early church especially was engaging with Mary Magdalene because the church can’t ignore her because she is the only one who is named by all four gospels as present at the empty tomb and then as first witness by both John’s gospel and Matthew’s gospel.
And so there’s no Easter sermon without Mary Magdalene. And that means that she is someone that we can kind of track in the history of interpretation and see some of the shifts that took place. The thing that I became alert to was how, and I talk about in the book, so with charts, which I think are really helpful because it gets complicated. But what I noticed was especially the importance of Augustine’s voice for the Western branch of the church in his readings of the women that anointed Jesus, that there’s a story of a woman anointing Jesus in each of the four gospels, and that three of the women mentioned are anonymous, but that one woman is noted as Mary, who’s coming from Bethany.
And so we know her as Mary Bethany. And that was really the beginning of the shift to see her as a prostitute because of Luke 7. So just go back and read Luke 7 and then notice too that Luke 8 is where Mary Magdalene is named and identified with Magdala. so the church kind of gets into seeing her as the sinner woman and so there’s first the conflation of the anointings and then there’s a conflation with the Marys and that’s formalized in the seventh century and that continues to be the tradition. But what I loved about the history of it too is that it’s not a very simple story, it’s not so consistent.
And there are many other layers to how the church has also remembered her because there’s other parts of her story because she’s so prominent in so many elements of Christ’s ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem, all the way to the empty tomb. So she’s there, you know, for all these things. And so sometimes when the church is emphasizing, evangelism and preaching, they focus more on her as a preacher and as an evangelist and as an apostle to the apostles. And so I was able in that research and in that tracking also to correct some of the confusion around the history of her reception, as well as to confirm, that this has been very complex. Like, it’s not surprising that we’ve been confused about it for so long.
And then I think because of that confusion, the church has been uncertain about what it means when we point to her. What does it mean when we point to Mary Magdalene? I never had anyone say to me, you should be like Mary Magdalene. You know, as a young Christian woman, like that would be like, is that an insult? Like, what are you saying to me right now? And so I think the church has been a little bit maybe afraid even to point to her because of the, you know, lack of clarity in that message. And so my hope is that the book can kind of give her back to the church in a clearer way to say, we actually really need to grapple with this because she’s pointing us to the risen Christ and she has such an important role in the gospels. It’s not something you can set aside. It’s actually really critical to our understanding of Jesus. And it’s okay, you know, to point to her because this is what she means according to the Bible.
Ruth Perry (24:37)
Yeah, you use the language of the church playing telephone with Mary Magdalene, which I thought was really appropriate. And then you also talk about our collective memory loss about her. But it was very fascinating for me to read about Mary beyond the Bible. I had never heard anything about her history past the Bible. I’ve heard about the apostles. And so that was really fascinating. Would you tell us more about where Mary went after the biblical text?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (25:07)
I mean, we don’t know for sure, so I’ll just start there. But it is pretty remarkable that the church has held on to the remembrance of her, her accepting Christ’s call to proclaim that he’s risen and also the words that he gave to her and that he doesn’t that she doesn’t stop doing that. I like to it’s not like she’s just like passing a note to the remaining disciples, and then goes on her way. the church has remembered her as living out that call for the rest of her life. And that makes so much sense to me as someone who, as Mary Magdalene was someone who was welcomed into his ministry from Galilee, who was a benefactor and disciple, was a student of Jesus’s.
Then was the cross and at the tomb and all these places. So I like to highlight that she’s there for everything and the Gospels mention that to us. So then the church remembers that she continues in her ministry and that she actually travels to France and that she evangelizes France, which by the way is the beginning of Christianity in the western side of the Roman Empire.
So for her to go from Jerusalem to France is absolutely possible. And the fact that all of the followers of Jesus are really scattered or missional in their work after Pentecost and even kind before that or in the Jerusalem area, but Pentecost really is like moving people outside of Jerusalem into these other locations and places. And then the dangers that were present for Christians in this time. We know that from a second century Greek philosopher who was an opponent of Christianity, that he knew about Mary Magdalene.
He knew that the Christian faith was based upon her testimony of Christ’s resurrection. That was like a widespread thing that was known. And he is very critical of her because she was weeping and she’s a woman and you’re not supposed to have those things as the basis of your truth. Which is surprising, by the way, the hermeneutic is a surprise.
So we know that she was known at the time and so her life could have, very likely would have been in danger as a result. so, yes, there’s lots that is possible about that. And we as Christians in the West, though in France they remember this, but outside of France, a lot of people don’t know this part of our Western story that it’s rooted in Mary Magdalene’s claim and witness to Christ, the apostolicity comes through her for the Western Church. And so, and that’s not just a Roman Catholic tradition, but that’s also evident in recognized in the Reformation among some of the Protestant traditions that are emerging in the Reformation. yeah, so that’s very exciting, I think, to highlight and feature.
But in later periods as the Roman Catholic Church was moving towards a hermetic monasticism, in kind of isolated living in caves, that kind of thing, her story takes on a lot of hagiographical elements. It too easily lines up with the way that you’re supposed to be devoted to the church in that time. Like she suddenly seems like a medieval woman. She’s definitely not a medieval woman. So that’s when you’re like, that’s, that’s pretty ridiculous. You know, that’s, that didn’t happen. But, did she come initially to France? She certainly could have. And so that’s something to know, I think, and, to allow for the possibility of.
And yeah, in the book, I’ll just say our family went there, I share about our journey going to those churches and those locations where she is remembered and just kind of sorting that part of the story out and thinking through it. yeah.
Ruth Perry (29:19)
And possibly seeing her skull. That’s quite something. Yeah.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (29:22)
Yes, we saw a skull that is attributed to Mary Magdalene. That was shocking.
Ruth Perry (29:33)
I was also thinking in your answer about the danger that she was in in France, the danger that you point out that she was in at the foot of the cross, bearing witness to Jesus’ crucifixion. I had never thought about that before.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (29:37)
Yeah, just the Roman Empire. Yes, it’s so interesting to think too about how the Gospels do give us all the pieces, even though we don’t get the fullness of the story. But we have to remember that there is a selectivity for all of the people in the biblical stories. You know, we don’t get to hear very much about Joseph, you know, but we know he was so important and that he had this, you know, what is highlighted about him is what we are invited to remember.
And, you know, we love to see more about Jesus’s mother. There’s a few glimpses. And then the last time we see her is in the upper room waiting for Pentecost to take place. So that also allows us to see that she was present in other ways. so we want to value the ways in which Scripture reveals portions of the story to us, even as we recognize that the full, all of the elements are not always revealed to us. And I don’t think we need every element in order to appreciate the pieces that Scripture does reveal.
Matthew McNutt (30:50)
You talk about the importance of correcting mischaracterizations of Mary Magdalene, and there’s a part of it, as a youth pastor for 25 years, I’m kind of dancing around my head, man, what would it look like to more intentionally teach about Mary? You know, when there’s time looking at the calendar to teach and do all of this, why should Christians care about teaching about her, about correcting these mischaracterizations, about taking time to invest in knowing Mary’s story.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (31:26)
Thank you so much. I love that question. I’m going to have a hard time keeping this tight. So I can talk about this a lot. Okay. So the first thing I would say is we need to expand our imagination for how we can see her as theologically and biblically significant in our ministries.
There are many pieces to her story, but oftentimes it becomes reduced to was she a prostitute or not? It’s an easy answer. She wasn’t. Okay, so now we have to move on. Who was she? Okay, so this is where I think actually churches could and should emphasize her as an example for stewardship, right? What is she doing? She is a patron of Jesus’s ministry. Luke chapter eight highlights her and other women that are financially supporting Jesus’s ministry and traveling with him. And when we realized that not everybody was allowed to go with Jesus, not everybody was invited to be with him in that kind of intimate way.
We can say, this is really significant. Their presence there is significant. So it actually completely transforms. And I would say that I was writing this before The Chosen was kind of starting to do this, but The Chosen is such a helpful step forward in allowing us to reimagine beyond the 12, right? So there are the 12 men that are invited to be part of Jesus’ ministry, but there are many women, that’s what Luke chapter eight says, many women, and then certain women who have key roles that are with Jesus and traveling with him and receiving teaching and being part of his ministry and probably were part of the 70 that were sent out because many times these were male and female, like married couples, according to some of the best scholarship on the topic. So we just need to expand the ministry to, and we need to be clear when we say disciples, we actually mean men and women. We say the 12 we are talking about these men. And those are not exactly the same.
So we need to change the way we talk about it so that people don’t associate disciples with male exclusive participation. So that’s one part of it. It transforms the way we see Jesus’s ministry. We can see how stewardship is involved, right? How we’re using finances to support him. And then we can also expand our understanding of the importance of the empty tomb. My experience has been, and again, even in a tradition that has been alert to women’s call to ministry that we don’t know anything about the women of Luke eight. And then all of a sudden on Easter morning, we’re like, we hear that there are women there and we think that they’re just any women, but they aren’t. They have been there the whole time. And so their witness is so much greater actually than just that they happen to be there at the empty tomb in that moment. But it’s everything that Jesus has done for them up until that moment.
And so in Mary Magdalene’s case, now we have to grapple with demon oppression, right? We have to, and that is something our churches definitely don’t want to talk about in my experience, right? How do we talk about this part of her story? So these are women who have been healed from the grip of basically the greatest evil that they could experience. In Mary Magdalene’s case, seven demons, Jesus talks about how significant seven demons are in Matthew chapter 12, he highlights that for us, what could happen with seven demons, and that’s what she has. And so that’s where we have to say, what does it mean when the gospels are highlighting for us that Jesus conquers demons, right? What does that tell us about who Christ is and about the power of the Lord and about God’s kingdom and the kingdom come?
And Mary Magdalene’s witness then, if we are so wrapped up in thinking about her as a prostitute and unwilling or afraid to talk about her as a woman who has been delivered from demonic presence, she is the witness at the tomb, then we are going to miss the fullness of what it means when she points us to the risen Christ. We’re going to think it’s one thing when it’s actually another.
So there are many women, there’s different groups of women that are there, but the particularity of Mary Magdalene’s presence is highlighting for us that Jesus is King, that he has conquered evil for us and that God’s kingdom has arrived. And so that’s how Jesus invites us to understand this part of his ministry.
And when we do that, we can also embrace the texts that are outside of Scripture that recognize and identify Jesus as exorcist, that this is widely known at the time that he is a very successful exorcist. So that brings us also into their context, into that time and what that means for us today. Then pastorally, I would just say it means that whatever the thing is that has gripped you, right? In that, you know, I like to talk about a sheep that is, you know, at the bottom of that pit.
Jesus talks about this in Matthew 12, you know, the sheep that’s at the bottom of the pit, it’s the Sabbath and no one can save this sheep. And yet the Son of God can, right? The Son of God comes in and can save the sheep, pull it out of the pit. And that’s us. That’s a proclamation of God’s power in our lives and the possibility of his work in our lives. So that’s a message that the church needs to hear, I think, it’s exciting to hear that and when we receive her, we can receive that kind of biblical theological message. Does that answer the question? Okay.
Matthew McNutt (37:14)
That’s good. That’s good. And it’s funny. I was even kind of reacting to, know, when you talk about people’s aversion to talking about her because they think she was a prostitute, which she was not. But then I was also sitting here, but it’s funny. We have no aversion to talking about Paul, who was a murderer and a blasphemer before he started preaching. We have no aversion to talking about Matthew, who was a tax collector, which was, you know, a traitor to the people. And, such a horrible practice that they would separate sinners and then you had tax. It’s like we don’t have that same aversion for the men with complicated pasts as we do for her.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (37:53)
Yeah, exactly. That’s so true. Or we make all the women former prostitutes, right? That’s the other thing that we end up doing is saying this is the only story that a woman in Scripture can have. And so we miss, you know, these other stories.
Matthew McNutt (38:08)
I love the book, Vindicating the Vixens, which is just a collection of stories of how we’ve sexualized and vixenized all these different women whose stories were not actually like that. It a really cool book.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (38:11)
Yes! I love that book too, thank you for highlighting that. It’s really important book.
Matthew McNutt (38:24)
Except we’re talking about yours.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (38:26)
That’s okay. I tried to fill up my book with footnotes, with citations, so people can go. You’ll see that book is in there and referenced, and many other wonderful books. I was kind of bringing those biblical voices together, seeing a need even in biblical scholarship and commentaries, to try to piece together the story of Mary Magdalene. So I’m bringing the church history, but also some of the best biblical scholarship out there to help us to see the story. So yeah, please use those footnotes and read these other books, because they help me too. That’s how I was able to do my work.
Ruth Perry (39:03)
You say, “In an era of de-churching and faith deconstruction, Mary Magdalene can serve as a model of steady faith in Christ, even when our churches fail us and hurt us.”
And “Her readiness to run is the outworking of her readiness to follow and give of herself and her resources to Christ’s ministry.”
I thought those are two beautiful quotes about Mary Magdalene from your book, but I was also wondering, How does her faith challenge and inspire you and your discipleship in ministry? Dr. McNutt.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (39:33)
Thank you so much. I was really struck when I was kind of piecing together her story, how everything around her was really crumbling or changing rapidly, you know, in just a very short amount of time. The shock of, the betrayal that took place within their community, and her being elevated out of that in a very special way. There are so many surprising things going on and it did really strike me because working in church history, you will very quickly come to all the failures and problems that the church has faced, the mistakes, the blind spots, the failures.
They’re there. And of course, in our church today, we see those too. I think church history can help with that, to see there is an enduring struggle for the church to live in to sanctification and to keep repenting. Just as individuals, are called to live a life of repentance to continually turn back to Christ, so too are our churches, and to focus on Christ, to put Christ really at the center. And I think for me, Mary Magdalene has become such a powerful example of centering Christ in your life. I’m amazed.
Whatever it was she was doing before, we don’t really know what was going on exactly before that, except for her suffering. But we don’t know exactly what that looked like or anything. But the Gospels invite us to remember that she, her whole life becomes focused around Christ walking. I love this walking literally in his footsteps. The direction of her finances become focused on building Christ’s ministry, being a faithful witness, and she is faithful and doing something very hard that she’s called to do. And that does inspire me. It does remind me.
And so when I see the structure of the church, and I’m speaking as a Reformation scholar, so I talk about this all the time, right? The failures of the structure of the church to keep our focus and center on Christ and building Christ’s ministry. And I do think that that can be helpful. That doesn’t condone the mistakes or the pain or the importance of whatever actions might happen. But we don’t abandon Christ even when our churches fail us, and they certainly do. So that’s a hard reality as being saved by Christ and being transformed by Christ, but also being transformed by Christ at the same time and all the future that we look to in that transformation. yeah, so those are a few thoughts for how she’s inspired me.
She really has become such a central voice in my faith. And I would say I’ve gotten this question from other podcasts where they’re like, did you always love her, always feel drawn to her. And my honest answer is no. I wasn’t because I didn’t know what to think about her because my church also didn’t know what to think about her. So it’s been a delightful surprise to see how she can have a more prominent place in my own faith journey with Christ.
Ruth Perry (42:58)
And what do you think Mary would say to the church today?
Jennifer Powell McNutt (43:01)
What would she say? She would probably say the same thing. You have been, the words that Jesus gave to her, which is that Jesus is our brother and God is our father, and we are part of this family, and basically proclaim that he is risen, and keep it about the resurrection and all that that means for us today. But I’ve think she would have a lot of good insight beyond what the text can reveal to us. How are we using our money? There’s another one. Right.
Matthew McNutt (43:31)
This has been, I’ve really appreciated the insights and just hearing some of your heart and passion behind your work and what led you to this and expanding some of what we’ve read in your book. So thank you so much for that.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (43:31)
Thank you, Matthew. It was a wonderful conversation with you both. I’m so grateful for the invitation and I look forward to, yeah, I hope more conversations together and we’ll meet in person someday, I hope.
Ruth Perry (43:59)
Thank you for the gift that your life and testimony is to the church, Dr. McNutt. We appreciate you. Thank you for your time today.
Jennifer Powell McNutt (44:03)
I appreciate you. Thank you for having me. I was blessed by our conversation. Thank you.
Thanks for visiting The Beautiful Kingdom Builders! Here is the link again for Dr. McNutt’s book, The Mary We Forgot. It is an amazingly pastoral work that will give you so much food for thought and moments of surprise!
We’re excited about our new podcast and hope to bring light to the darkness through these conversations about gender, abuse, justice and healing in the Christian Faith. Follow along here (you can subscribe by email on the right-hand menu under our page description) or on your favorite podcast platform and social media: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Pinterest, and TikTok!
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