At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn’t say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,” a disciple who has listened to and followed Jesus at a great distance. None of these have been apparent before Jesus’ death. They have been in the background, or hidden, or actively opposed to Jesus. By His death, Jesus brings things into the open – dead bodies, Gentile believers, Sanhedrin members who are secret followers, women disciples.
Women become especially prominent at the cross and the tomb. Women have been in the background of Matthew’s gospel (14:21; 15:38; but cf. 9:20-22; 15:21-28; 26:6-13), but now they come to the forefront. Through most of the gospel, we haven’t heard about these women at all. We know that there have been crowds following Jesus in Galilee and from Galilee, and we know from a couple of references that there were women in the crowds. When Matthew has mentioned women before, they have been almost an afterthought. He calculates the number of men fed in the wilderness at 5000, and then adds, as an afterthought, “besides women and children.” The women are associated with the children, off to the side, on the margins. In the inner circle are the Twelve, then the 5000 men, and later the 4000 men, whom Jesus feeds, and then out on the outer edges of the crowd are women and children.
Though virtually invisible in the gospel, the women do what disciples are supposed to do. As Matthew says, they have been “following” Jesus from Galilee, all the way to the cross. They’ve followed Jesus further than the Twelve. After Jesus is buried, they still follow Him, sitting opposite the tomb (v. 61). They follow Jesus all the way to the grave, and are there again on the day after the Sabbath to hear the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection from the angel. Women pass through His entire Passion with Jesus. While they have been following Jesus, they have been serving Him.
Importantly, the mother of the sons of Zebedee is among them. The first and last time we met her in the gospel story, she was asking Jesus to give her sons prominent positions in His kingdom. At that time, Jesus said that they would instead have to suffer with Him and Jesus emphasized that the “great” in the kingdom would not be lords but servants: “whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave” (20:26-27). The sons of Zebedee are not there at the cross, but their mother is, among the women who have done what Jesus said, who have “served” Jesus while following Him.
Even the earlier references to the women, the ones that seem to be demeaning, are in fact complimentary. The women are almost invisible in the earlier part of the story, in the background with the children. But Jesus has told His disciples to become like children. At one point, he pulled a child from the back and set him in front of the disciples, saying: “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (18:3-4). And later “Let the children alone . . . for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (19:14). That the women are with the children shows that they are where all disciples should be, not proudly putting themselves forward but humbly serving.
Jesus came to renew Israel, to form a new Israel in which there is no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. At His death, He begins to do just that.
Two of the women are named “Mary.” One is Mary Magdalene, who suddenly appears here for the first time in the gospel. There is another Mary, identified as the “mother of James and Joseph.” Earlier in the gospel, people marvel at Jesus’ teaching and ask, “Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas” (13:55). I think the “other Mary” in Matthew 27-28 is Mary the mother of Jesus. Even if that’s not the case, you have the name Mary twice, and the name Joseph twice – Joseph the son of Mary and Joseph of Arimathea.
That immediately puts us back to the early part of the gospel, where the names Mary and Joseph are used repeatedly. At the end of his gospel, Matthew takes us back to the birth narrative, and if the “other Mary” is indeed Jesus’ mother, the association between death and birth is even stronger. Mary, who bore Jesus in her womb, is there with Jesus at His tomb. She is there because this tomb is going to become a womb, as Jesus will emerge as the “firstborn of the dead” on the third day. It is a new tomb, a virgin tomb. Once Jesus the Seed of Abraham is planted in it, He will burst out and produce much fruit.
The women watch the cross from a distance. When Jesus is buried, they sit opposite the grave, and they return to the tomb on the first day of the week. They are watching, as the soldiers did at the cross, but they are also waiting, perhaps knowing that Jesus promised to come back on the third day. They form the nucleus of the new community established by the death of Jesus. The women at the cross and the grave become models for every disciple, male or female.
Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House.