Koinonia on Mary of Egypt

The entire article is wonderful, but I was most drawn to ponder this section.

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What this "other" Mary challenges is not simply social and culture structures of power, but the human hearts out of which those structures grow. She is a woman of great obedience who has learned to love much because she was forgiven much. It is easy to look at her life, and the life of the woman in the Gospel read on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast and think, "Well, I'm not that bad." And, in one sense, I'm not.

But in another sense, and here is the great surprise of this "other" Mary, how much of the sin in her life was made possible by those who weren't all that bad? And without reference to this other Mary, how was it that Jesus was crucified except through the passive collusion of those of us who weren't all that bad? Looking back at the Mary's who proceed Mary of Egypt, which of these women didn't suffer at the hands of those who weren't all that bad, whose sins weren't all that serious, and who were respected by their contemporaries?

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On rereading this section I was reminded of this passage from Matthew:

15 “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.

16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.'

17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.

18 “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

19 “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.

20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

In the modern age where the cities stretch for miles and people move often our sense of oneness is weakened. It is easy to "write people off" and say "but that is just the way she is" and wash your hands of another person. I have been guilty of this with not only friends but also family. Christ gives us an explicit order of operation for helping others. There is no room for tergiversation; no nuanced reading of the text. Rarely is it that the person who has fallen did so in one Herculean leap. The trip is a slow circumambulation ever downward until one looks up and can no longer see the light.