Her testimony is True

I quite deliberately chose all the poems for Holy Week from women poets.(Did anyone notice?) The passion story and its aftermath in the resurrection accounts is populated by women whose intervention at different times is as decisive as that of the men. In a story too often read as if Pilate, Judas, Peter and Caiaphas were the key actors, there is a need to hear those other voices. Like those of the woman who anointed Jesus, of the serving girl in the courtyard, of his mother, the women who stood and stayed on Calvary when the men were hiding, Mary Magdalene, and those practical love driven women who gathered the spices together, along with the anointing and binding cloths, and trudged out to do what no one else was ready to do.

I have a very special book, gifted to me by its author Robert Gordon Maccini (Bob is rightly proud of his middle name, which is only one of the connections between us that keeps us close friends with the Atlantic between us). Bob’s PhD was supervised by Dr Ruth Edwards at the University of Aberdeen, and under the rigorous and reverent scholarship that characterises all Ruth’s own work, it developed into a close and authoritative study of the role of women as witnesses in John’s Gospel – in its published form its title is Her Testimony is True. Over the years I’ve read a pile of books on John’s Gospel, and this one is amongst the most significant, because of its meticulous re appropriation of texts too often sidelined by the claim that the testimony of women was inadmissible in Jewish courts.

As a reassertion of the role of women as credible witnesses in the life of Jesus, their original and pivotal role in the story of the Gospel, and as an eloquent questioning of the marginalising of women in the ministry of the Church, Her Testimony is True is a book of continuing significance. Bob doesn’t force biblical texts to say what he might want them to say, given that he is a passionate advocate of women’s ministry – Becky supported Bob’s studies by working in ministry in Aberdeen, and has gone on to develop and focus her own vocation in a pastoral and preaching ministry. No, the texts should speak for themselves, when content and context are carefully and honestly examined. Tomorrow I’ll post the last couple of paragraphs which both sum up Bob’s research, and explain why during Holy Week this blog insisted we hear the voices of women – whose testimony is true.