The Expansionist Podcast
Shelly Shepherd and Heather Drake invite you to listen in on a continuing conversation about expanding spirituality, the Divine Feminine, and the transforming impact of living attuned to Wisdom, Spirit and Love.
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The Expansionist Podcast
Eve Reimagined: Mary Magdalene as the New Hope
Imagine stepping into a story that has been told for generations, only to discover there's another way of seeing it entirely. Shelley and Heather invite us to reconsider the foundation stories that have shaped women's spiritual identity for centuries. Beginning with a delightful childhood tale of "stealing" Mary Magdalene from the Sunday school flannel graph, they explore how limiting narratives about Eve have been used to constrain women's spiritual authority and leadership throughout history.
The magic happens when they reframe Mary Magdalene's garden encounter with the risen Christ as a powerful counternarrative to Eve's garden story. Where Eve was cast out, Mary is commissioned. Where Eve brought "sin" into the world, Mary brings resurrection news. This reframing offers women a spiritual lineage of power, authority, and divine calling rather than shame and limitation.
Through thoughtful scriptural analysis and personal reflection, Shelley and Heather show how the Gospel of John deliberately positions Mary Magdalene as a new Eve figure – the "apostle of the new and greatest hope" as Pope Francis called her when establishing her feast day in 2016. They invite listeners to practice what they call "holy imagination" – the ability to see beyond limited interpretations to uncover buried truths about women's place in the divine story.
This conversation isn't just theology – it's liberation. By reclaiming Mary Magdalene's position as first witness to resurrection and commissioned messenger, women can find a spiritual ancestor who represents their full humanity and divine calling. The hosts challenge all listeners to "make the beautiful the story" by focusing on the original blessing of being made in God's image rather than narratives of curse and shame.
What would change in your spiritual life if you embraced Mary Magdalene as your spiritual ancestor rather than a "fallen" Eve? Listen and discover how resurrection stories can transform your relationship with sacred texts and spiritual authority.
Welcome to the Expansionist Podcast with Shelley Shepard and Heather Drake. In each episode, we dive deep into conversations that challenge conventional thinking, amplify diverse voices and foster a community grounded in wisdom, spirit and love.
Speaker 2:Hello Heather Drake. Good afternoon to you.
Speaker 1:Hello Shelley Shepard, I'm excited to talk with you today.
Speaker 2:Oh, I, know you are, I know you are, I can see it on your face.
Speaker 1:I'm already wound up. It's a great topic and so again, it's Eastertide for us, when we're making this particular podcast recording, and that's already a joyous time. But then you asked a question the other day. You're like, what's up with eve? And we started talking about mary magdalene and eve and there was a lot of good conversation but also good questions, and so we thought we're gonna podcast about this, we're gonna expand our views about this and we're gonna pull back the curtain and ask a question is this really how it started? Is this really the story? Is there another way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that we are interrogating the text here in this podcast, particularly because it has been such a wow I don't even know if I would call it a bandwidth but the foundation of the world, the story of creation for many people, has Eve at the apex of that story, delivering some things into the world that perhaps you and I accepted willingly at a very young age. I would love for you to tell the flannel graph story at some point in this podcast, because it was just rich and it gets to show you a little bit about who I am, and you were talking about that too.
Speaker 1:Like maybe we should tell a little bit about who I am, and you were talking about that too. Like maybe we should tell a little bit of our stories for listeners who are there going? Why does it matter? That was just one off the top of my head, shelley. I'm sure that if we spent time digging up those stories we could actually tell some marvelous ones. But one of the things that you and I were talking about was about Mary Magdalene in the garden, this beautiful person who is an apostle to the apostles, who is first commissioned by the resurrected Christ to go and give the good news. Tell, tell, tell, tell about this. And so I look at the story again.
Speaker 1:In John's gospel in particular, there is like this retelling of the Genesis story. I mean, that's kind of everything that John does. And so when John's version is also retelling of the garden story, the story that happened in the garden, the story where a woman waits for God, and I think this is such a beautiful retelling of the story of Eve, and so that's how you and I kind of started on this conversation. But we have you and I have both heard the story of the Genesis creation account. Since we were tiny girls. This was handed to us by Sunday school teachers, by our mothers, by our aunts, by cousins, in all of the things. Here was your template for being a woman, here is how women came into the world and here is how you are now, and here are the pains and the shackles and the terror that you will be scripted with because you are a woman. And so we looked at that and, in passing, the other day, when we were talking about it, I said, oh, you know, I believe in Eve, but I looked at something, at myself, and I have always loved stories and I have considered myself a storyteller since I was very little. I would tell myself stories, I would make my brother listen to my stories, but I have essentially, I think, been a preacher since I was a tiny person. But one of the things that I noticed about myself was I would claim a better way. Perhaps it was childhood arrogance, I don't know. I think maybe it was the Holy Spirit. I think I have been hearing the Spirit tell a different story since I was tiny, but I remember one particular time.
Speaker 1:We were in Sunday school class and the teacher was explaining the story, and then next week she was saying that she was going to tell the story of Mary, and we had the flannel graphs and these were huge, like dividing room wall type of flannel graphs. So we're not talking about a 12 by 12. We're talking about enormous one. And then she said the girl that she would appoint to tell the story of Mary, and that just meant the teacher told the story, and then you were the person who was putting the little picture up so that the children could watch this. Now, remember, this would have been in the early 1970s, so flannel graphs were amazing and so it certainly wouldn't fly in today's world. But this was a big deal.
Speaker 1:And when she announced this girl's name, that who would be telling the story, I thought to myself I can't let that happen. And I didn't say anything because it was no use to talk with this teacher. I knew already that she didn't count my opinion as valid when who should be telling the story. But as people were putting things away, I took Mary, the little flannel graph of Mary, and I slipped her into my purse because I didn't want her being told in a way that I felt like was less than I knew how this girl would tell it and I was protecting Mary. So I took Mary, I claimed her as my own and I slipped her into my little white patent leather purse and she disappeared. And so the next week when we were all there, no one knew where Mary was, so we couldn't tell that part of the story. The following week, when it was my turn to tell it, mary showed up so we could go back around, and I feel like I have been doing that my whole life.
Speaker 1:Somehow I have been saying I'm going to claim that story here and I'm going to tell it better. I'm going to tell it with a twist, I'm going to see it with a slant. Here is a better story and I'm inviting all of us today to consider maybe taking away the flannel graph Mary's and saying I wonder if we told it better.
Speaker 2:That is such a beautiful story of divine intervention, in my opinion, how you just casually walked out with Mary Magdalene in your purse.
Speaker 2:And look at you, you're still walking around with Mary Magdalene now in your heart, in your body, still walking around with Mary Magdalene now in your heart, in your body, in your spirit. And one of the reasons I love that story is, you know, and some people could say, well, it's just a story, it's her childhood experience of that moment. Is this deeper, knowing that you had within your bones that Mary Magdalene has a place in this story, even though there are only 14 scriptural references given to her in the entire Second Testament that give us insight into this mystery and magic of Mary Magdalene. And so you putting her in your purse, I think, was a precursor to you delivering her To how I was going to live my life.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would take her from the hands of you didn't take things, yes, keep her from the hands of untrained women to tell the story, and I think that the invitation is for all of us to be better storytellers. I think this is how we co-create with the Spirit. This has been the invitation since the very beginning, since the Spirit was hovering over the waters. Spirit was hovering over the waters when we look at Mary and we look at Eve and we look at our place in what God is doing or, hopefully, the hope in what the Spirit is up to, even as we look around at the world, to be able to practice and be able to say God is still love and what I see happening is not the will of God For us to all be able to go. How do we allow ourselves to ascend in our thoughts and to be able to read the scripture or listen to the witness of testimony, or to listen to how the story is being told and do it with authenticity in the nature of God, who describes God's self as love? And so I love the idea of going back to Genesis and saying what does it look like for us to remember when people are told that you are woman, that you are made in the image of God and God says it is very good. This is the end of the story. You know, like this is as far as we got with the truth.
Speaker 1:Now, afterwards, there were lots of things, lots of speculations. There's lots of things that were handed to us as women. You know, now you'll have for the rest of time you'll have, pain in childbirth. Well, that feels like an unjust punishment, I'm just telling you. And there's so many things that have been a part of our culture, gifted to us as women. You know, just even a part of even a monthly menstrual cycle. People will be like that's the curse of Eve, like really it's not. It's a beautiful way that our body makes you know and gives us the ability to create life, and we are magic and wonder and beautyment. And we forgot that because someone told us to focus on the wrong part of the story.
Speaker 1:And so I think the invitation is or I'm hoping the invitation is for all of us to go deep within ourselves and to hear the Spirit tell us a much better story than the one that we begin.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is the hope, and I think for myself, growing up in the church I was thinking about this, maybe out loud with you a few weeks ago is Eve. Eve was positioned in my growing up as a woman. We talked about Eve more than any other woman in scripture Like. Eve was the model right, and every woman in scripture that came after Eve, almost all the other women that came after in the biblical story, um, were somehow connected to Eve, our mother, and so that thread became things like Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. You know that thread became um, someone like Mary Magdalene, having seven demons instead of being recognized to having these seven powers that Jesus saw in her. And so when the beginning of the story is the curse instead of the blessing or instead of wisdom, like she reached for wisdom so that she could give every other female the understanding of what wisdom looked like, we were given the story that she gave every other woman that followed her.
Speaker 2:You know this laborious process of childbearing and I think for me I don't know, maybe that's why I never had children, heather it just was like wow, the story of Eve was just so overwhelming to me and maybe they intended that Maybe they wanted us to understand as girls and young adults and young women and then wives, that this is your place, this is where you stand, this is what you caused and because of that, xyz, you're not allowed to be here, you're not allowed to lead, you're not allowed to offer communion, you're not allowed to speak in a room where it's all men, like.
Speaker 2:All of these things seem to be connected to that root and I think today if we could sever that root somehow in this conversation, if we could take an ax to that particular tree and just kind of lay it down and give it a formal burial in our minds and in our practices and look towards post-resurrection with Mary Magdalene. And what Jesus was trying to get everybody to see was I'm not here to talk about sin, jesus said. I'm here to talk about life and to give it more abundantly. And I'm going to talk with Mary about this. I'm talking with Mary Magdalene about it and I think Mary understood it. You and I believe Mary understood this conversation, this relationship between them that ultimately led to her being the first at the tomb and the first to go and tell. That is a powerful new creation story, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Lori Beth Jones told us to make the beautiful the story. Yes, lori Beth Jones told us to make the beautiful the story, and I think that that has been an endeavor, although not with that direct kind of very clear, very clarion call make the beautiful the story. But I think that's what Jesus was saying, even to the disciples, when he said every time my story is told, her story will be told as a memorial to her. This is not a memorial to me, although what she was doing was for the love for Christ, but he said this is going to be a memorial for her and for me. The idea of a memorial is this also invitation? Come this way. Is this also invitation? Come this way, follow this. And there is a hope for us in recognizing the beauty, in retelling the story. And Jesus said this then, as Mary meets him in the garden, go and tell the others, tell them. And then she says I have seen the Lord, yes, and that to me, is so incredibly powerful, especially during this season of Eastertide. But this idea of resurrection, of a new life and I am of the firm belief, as are you, that Jesus was about life, was about freedom, was about love. In fact, jesus said I've come, that you would have life and have it to the fullest. And so not just for the freedom for women, but for the freedom of all people, in releasing women from our part in a story that doesn't fit us and that is not even a story worth repeating, I think so often we tell stories that are again should just be forgotten. Let's tell a better story. Let's all of us listen to the story within us that inspires, that says to us how can we love the world better? That says to us how can we love the world better? How can we allow an illusion of separation that we know is sin? How can that be the story? That can't be the story. Again, let's talk about what truth is. Jesus said I am truth, this full Christ consciousness that comes to us and be able to say the way of Jesus is a way to God. And then I also see Mary and I say Jesus says to her follow like this person, listen to what she's saying. And Mary says I've seen the Lord. So how do we tell our own stories of how we've seen the Lord? You know, jesus didn't give Mary Magdalene a script and say say these specific words. You tell it.
Speaker 1:And so the invitation to us is to tell how we have seen a resurrection, and what this resurrection requires of us is forgiveness. Forgiveness for the old stories, forgiveness for the confinement that people offered to us and feeling like they were keeping us safe, or from something I love again in the way of Mary. She's breaking open jars and I think there has got to be some places where we just break open the goodness, let the beauty seep out everywhere. I mean, let it get into the cracks in the floor, let all of the goodness out. And I think very often what has been given to us as women is keep it all together, like make sure that this bottle looks like everyone else's bottle. And I'm like there is fragrance in us that is so unique and so beautiful. It needs to be offered in the world.
Speaker 1:And I think the way of Mary and also the way of Eve is breaking. It is in the choosing of the fruit, it is in breaking the jargon. It all gets out. And I think that goodness and that understanding and that hope, I think that at least I'm hopeful that in telling these stories we will inspire people to go. This story is bigger than we even thought, that there is more hope, there is more love, there is more creativity. There is more joy than any of us could possibly use up. We want to pause and take a moment and let you know how glad we are that you've joined us. If you're enjoying this podcast, consider sharing it with a friend, and if you found the conversation intriguing and want to know more about what we're learning or how you can join our online community, visit our website at expansionistheologycom.
Speaker 2:And I think it's an intentional posture. It's an intentional step to move away from a story of shame that was once positioned to me as wow, you better do right and follow this or you're going to end up in a really bad place. You're going to end up like Eve. You're going to end up in a really bad place. You're going to end up like Eve. We're going to cast you out of the church or the garden or the family for crying out loud. You know how many people struggle with being even cast out of their own family. Can you imagine this notion that God would just cast people to the side, you know, turn them away. That whole theology and thinking is just. It doesn't make what's beautiful the story.
Speaker 2:And so one of the things that I noticed this past weekend on Saturday, I was walking along a shoreline and of course it was Holy Saturday, right Right before Easter, and I had taken some intentional time to recognize what Mary Magdalene might have been feeling on the day after the crucifixion. And as I walked the shoreline and intentionally felt like I was communicating with her, I realized that the story of Eve was easily transferred to the story of Mary Magdalene. And in that moment did Mary Magdalene become the new Eve for me? Perhaps, maybe, but I think this greater understanding of the absence that she felt from her beloved friend Jesus was a profound visual that I had not felt before. In all the ways that I have read about or heard about or understood Mary Magdalene, it was just this profound loss and absence. And then it moved me to understand that this relationship that Jesus wants with us has very little to do with the cross, has very little to do with heaven or hell, and has everything to do with understanding that we have never been separated from God's love. And it was just this powerful, powerful moment. And maybe I needed that that day, obviously needed that that day, obviously.
Speaker 2:But, heather, I was just so moved by these two bookends of Eve and Mary Magdalene, and now Jesus pouring into Mary Magdalene this new idea of a new creation, a new way of being in the world, because of this expansive love that she had demonstrated with Jesus while he was with her. It was just a profound shift that I could easily say okay, I don't believe the Eve story anymore. What I just experienced right there moved Eve somewhere to this moment with Mary Magdalene as well. This is divine. This is divine connection. This is where my heart is, and so maybe we believe in things that we don't believe anymore. Something shifts, something changes, something's altered in the way that we have limited we've pretty much limited God in ways that we believe.
Speaker 1:The invitation into belief, I think, is a beautiful, hopeful, inspiring path, but I think very quickly it is offered to us in ways that choke us and confine us and limit us.
Speaker 1:And so I think that changing or offering to change, an invitation to the Holy Spirit anyway to say allow my mind to change.
Speaker 1:In fact, this is what Jesus offered to us a life of repentance meaning change my mind. I changed my mind about something. Marks of maturity that I no longer think the same way. Tell us that we have moved out of childhood and into a further maturity but we talked about this last night in a conversation that we have moved out of childhood and into a further maturity, but we talked about this last night in a conversation that we had.
Speaker 1:Somehow, people have also thought that once you are an adult, you have already made up your mind about everything and you should hold fast to ideas or stories that you were given one time On a regular basis. I think that we should be wrestling with concepts and ideas and stories and making them livable and good and holy and something that can be offered at the table of the Lord. Jesus was very much about a table. In fact, right around this resurrection event, there is a table before the meal and we have looked at this. Dinah Butler-Bast does a beautiful job of reminding us that the table is always what Jesus was about, and when we sit around the table and we eat delicious food and we feel nourished and we've taken off our masks and our hunger has brought us there and we've been satiated, it ends up. It always ends up.
Speaker 1:We tell stories, and the stories about where we've been and where we're going matter. They matter to the world around us, they matter to the collective consciousness around us, they matter to how we view the world and how we go out and move among the world, that we remember that we're all fed at the table of the Lord, every single one of us. There is goodness, that there is abundance, that it is heaped up. Jesus told us the story of the shepherd who goes after the sheep, of the woman who looks at a coin and a father who does not stop looking after the son and the son who stays and the son who leaves. The father is still watching, and that's a very different story than the Genesis story that says out of here, you've screwed up, out of here.
Speaker 1:And so the invitation then is a loving parent who ever wants us to come home and join the party is inviting us to tell a different part of the story, emerging spirituality, but also in an engaging, healthy, life-giving, something that we can offer the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:There is hope because of this new story. There is grace because Mary showed us the way. There is an invitation to pour out the fragrance of our own lives unique, heady with intoxication of a joy and a love that's to be offered to everyone. And to be able to say we brought it ourselves to be able to have told the story, to be able to have used our holy imagination and say what is love up to in the world? And what does it mean for me to practice a resurrection life? I love the idea of resurrection being for those who grieve, and I think many of us, particularly as women, have grief in our life that we are regularly dealing with, regularly aware of, regularly witnessing. And this power of telling a different story, telling a better story, asking for another way, invites us into more.
Speaker 2:I wonder, maybe just for a few minutes, if we could think and maybe just talk out loud. We're just having a conversation anyhow, but the few references that are given in Scripture to the resurrection story of Mary Magdalene recognizing Jesus as the gardener and then Jesus calling her woman, these two references that some scholars and theologians have pointed to as Mary Magdalene as the new Eve, are those strong enough hooks for you in your spiritual life to say, wow, this is a different story. I can hang my hat on these hooks for a good long time, whereas others might talk those points down or put them in the basement and put the flannel graph away so that story cannot be retold. But just for you know, maybe just for us in this conversation, is that enough to hang our? Are those two hooks enough for us? For you, is it enough for you? It's plenty for me, yes.
Speaker 1:It's enough for me in this way, because I think the umbilical cord for me, the lifeline for me, is love, that it is easy to see how love would invite us to change our position in how we view things. I mean, if this entire story was set on a stage, we would maybe focus on one particular person playing a part, but if we moved to another part of the stage or if a light was shown on another part, then that could be the focus, and I think the invitation is to again, to use Eugene Peterson's words tell it with a slant, to go in stories that do not serve us. Let's look for a better way to tell the story that God intended to have relationship with us. Oh, that's so beautiful. We're made in the image. We're created for fellowship. We're created for divine friendship, and when God saw women, he said it was very good. That's the only part of the story that we need to really hold on to, and I think love tells us that, that it's very good.
Speaker 1:This is the whole story, not the accounting of how someone thought that. Now I mean, why do we have to come up with a story of why weeds are, why there are thorns there just are? Move on to another part of the story. I think that there have been things that people have handed us and said no, you really have to understand this, do you? Not to live a full and heavy life, not to enjoy and savor the richness and the goodness that is all around us, not to believe that there is abundance. I think that if we're not mindful, scarcity and lack and bad storytelling will cause us to retreat from the yeah. Oh well, you went there now, didn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did, I did yes yes, yes. Mystery is a beautiful hope. I just I think. My hope is that and I want to get this quote right that Pope Francis said of Mary Magdalene he called her the apostle of the new and greatest hope, and that is what I believe she is today for many people. I believe she is today for many people so in 2016, he made her feast day official in the Catholic Church. But our new and greatest hope is Mary Magdalene.
Speaker 1:Well, can we talk? About that for a quick second, because it can't be new.
Speaker 1:She's been already gone a long time, so I think a resurrecting yes, yes, a new in remembering a different way, a new in holding the spirit, the magic where it has been meant to be buried, now to be so. I just want to say this is not new and fandangled. What you and I are talking about this is a remembering, this is an uncovering of a truth or a hope that has been intentionally buried, and so we're returning, and that is the way of Mary Magdalene return to love as fast as you can, return, return, return. Remember who you are, remember whose you are, remember of what stuff you are made, of Beloveds we are made of God, and so this invitation into remembering, I think this is the elixir that the whole world needs right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I felt that when I read it, I felt it in my bones, this new and greatest hope along with you, not in the sense of, oh, this is make what's beautiful the story. Let's now make this transition from this story of shame to this story of love.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of boys, and not just the boys, but I have a whole gaggle of nerds in my house and I adore them and they have specific nerd stories and one of them is from Star Wars and it is called the New Hope, and it is this resistance and it is this intergalactic fight against the Empire, and to me sometimes it is so incredibly relevant. But this is our new hope. It is the fight against empire who intends to bury the goodness, that intends to bury the power, that intends to bury the image that is given to us by our maker, and it's an image that is given to us by our Maker, and it's an image that intends to keep us in an illusion of separation and that, you know, Jesus prays for us and says make them one, Make them one like you and I are one, and let them see. And so this is an invitation to really see, and you know what?
Speaker 2:And so this is an invitation to really see, and you know what I'm going to expand that and say that Mary Magdalene prays for us as well and says I believe that Make us one like you, and I are one. Yeah, what a beautiful invitation.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for this conversation and for this opportunity to put our thoughts out into the universe about Mary, magdalene and Eve. Look like to have spirit retell the story, to have spirit ignite our holy imagination and for us to allow thoughts to lift us from places where we feel stuck and give us an invitation to co-create the new world, the better kingdom, the kingdom that is so close, it can't be observed with our eyes, but it's right in our mouths. It was our joy to have you listen to our conversation today. If you would like further information or for more content, visit us at expansionisttheologycom.