Mary Magdalene

Brixton Hill , 28 July 2019

Mary Magdalene

Last Monday, July the twenty-second, was the Feast of St Mary Magdalene,

in the part of the church that celebrates that sort of thing.

Which we aren't, of course, but nevertheless I can't resist having a look at Mary Magdalene today, because she is such an intriguing person.

We know very little about her for definite:

Firstly, that Jesus cast out seven demons from her, according to Luke chapter 8 verse 2, and Mark chapter 16 verse 9.

From then on, she appears in the lists of people who followed Jesus, and is one of the very few women mentioned by name all the time.

She was at the Cross, helping the Apostle John to support Jesus' mother Mary.

And, of course, she was the first witness to the Resurrection, and according to John's Gospel, she was actually the first person to see and to speak to the Risen Lord.

And that is basically all that we reliably know about her –

all that the Bible tells us, at any rate.

But, of course, that's not the end of the story.

Even the Bible isn't quite as clear as it might be,

and some Christians believe that she is the woman described as a “sinner” who disrupts the banquet given by Simon the Leper, or Simon the Pharisee or whoever he was by emptying a vial of ointment over his feet –

Jesus' feet, I mean, not Simon's –

and wiping it away with her hair.

Simon, you may recall, was furious, and Jesus said that the woman had done a lot more for him than he had –

he hadn't offered him any water to wash his feet, or made him feel at all welcome.

Anyway, that woman is often identified with Mary Magdalene,

although some say it is Mary of Bethany, sister to Martha and Lazarus.

Some even say they are all three one and the same woman!

So if even the Bible isn't clear whether there are one, two or three women involved, you can imagine what the extra-Biblical traditions are like!

Nobody seems to know where she was born, or when.

Arguably in Magdala, but there seem to have been a couple of places called that in Biblical times.

However, one of them, Magdala Nunayya, was on the shores of Lake Galilee, so it might well have been there.

But nobody knows for certain.

She wasn't called Mary, of course;

that is an Anglicisation of her name.

The name was Maryam or Miriam, which was very popular around then as it had royal family connections,

rather like people in my generation calling their daughters Anne,

or all the Dianas born in the 1980s or,

perhaps, today, the Catherines.

So she was really Maryam, not Mary –

as, indeed, were all the biblical Marys.

They don't know where she died, either.

One rather splendid legend has her, and the other two women called Mary, being shipwrecked in the Carmargue at the town now called Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer, and she is thought to have died in that area.

But then again, another legend has her accompanying Mary the mother of Jesus and the disciple John to Ephesus and dying there.

Nobody knows.

And there are so many other legends and rumours and stories about her –

even one that she was married to Jesus,

or that she was “the beloved disciple”, and those parts of John's gospel where she and the beloved disciple appear in the same scene were hastily edited later when it became clear that a woman disciple being called “Beloved” Simply Would Not Do.

But whoever she was, and whatever she did or did not do,

whether she was a former prostitute or a perfectly respectable woman who had become ill and Jesus had healed,

it is clear that she did have some kind of special place in the group of people surrounding Jesus.

And because she was the first witness to the Resurrection, and went to tell the other disciples about it, she has been called “The Apostle to the Apostles”.

So what can we learn from her?

Well, the first thing we really know about her is that Jesus had healed her.

She had allowed Jesus to heal her.

Now, healing, of course, is as much about forgiveness and making whole as it is about curing physical symptoms.

Mary allowed Jesus to make her whole.

This isn't something we find easy to do, is it?

We are often quite comfortable in our discomfort, if that makes sense.

If we allowed Jesus to heal us, to make us whole, whether in body, mind or spirit, we might have to do something in return.

We might have to give up our comfortable lifestyles and actually go and do something!

What Mary did, of course, was to give up her lifestyle,

whatever it might have been, and follow Jesus.

We don't know whether she was a prostitute, as many have thought down the years,

or whether she was a respectable woman,

but whichever she was, she gave it all up to follow Jesus.

She was the leader of the group of women who went around with Jesus and the disciples,

and who made sure that everybody had something to eat,

and everybody had a blanket to sleep under,

or shelter if it was a rough night, or whatever.

Mary gave up everything to follow Jesus.

Again, we quail at the thought of that, even though following Jesus may well mean staying exactly where we are, with our present job and our family.

But Mary didn't quail.

She even accompanied Jesus to the foot of the Cross,

and stood by him in his final hours.

And then, early in the morning of the third day after he was killed,

she goes to the tomb to finish off the embalming she hadn't been able to do during the Sabbath Day.

And we know what happened –

how she found the tomb empty, and raced back to tell Peter and John about it, and how they came and looked and saw and realised something had happened and dashed off, leaving her weeping in the garden –

and then the beloved voice saying “Mary!” and with a cry of joy, she flings herself into his arms.

We’re not told how long they spent hugging, talking, explaining and weeping in each other’s arms,

but eventually Jesus gently explains that,

although he’s perfectly alive, and that this is a really real body one can hug,

he won’t be around on earth forever, but will ascend to the Father.

He can’t stop with Mary for now,

but she should go back and tell the others all about it.

And so, we are told, she does.

She tells the rest of the disciples how she has seen Jesus.

She is the first witness to the Resurrection, although you will note that St Paul leaves her out of his list of people who saw the Risen Lord.

That was mostly because the word of a woman, i

n that day and age, was considered unreliable;

women were not considered capable of rational judgement.

At least Jesus was different!

So Mary allowed Jesus to heal her, she gave up everything and followed him, she went with him even to the foot of the Cross,

even when most of the male disciples, except John, had run away,

and she bore witness to the risen Christ.

The question is, of course, do we do any of these things?

We don't find them comfortable things to do, do we?

It was all very well for Mary, we say, she knew Jesus,

she knew what he looked like and what he liked to eat, and so on.

But we don't have to do these things in our own strength.

The Jesus who loved Mary Magdalene, in whatever way,

he will come to us and fill us with His Holy Spirit and enable us, too,

to be healed,

to follow Him, even to the foot of the Cross,

and to bear witness to His resurrection.

The question is, are we going to let him?

Amen.

Thirsting for the Word

After all that, I discovered that the sermon had recorded, after all!


I forget who it was who, when asked whether he preferred Martha or Mary, said:

“After dinner, Mary.
But before dinner, definitely Marthat!”

Me, I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Martha.
There she was, desperate to get all these men fed,

and her sister isn’t helping.
And when she asks Jesus to send her in,

she just gets told that Mary has “chosen the better part”.

Yet it was Martha who, on another occasion, caused Jesus to declare:
“I am the resurrection and the life.

Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
And Martha herself gave us that wonderful statement of faith:
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,

the Son of God,

the one coming into the world.”
Martha was seriously a woman of faith.
And she wanted to show her love to the Lord by providing him and his disciples with a really good meal.
Maybe she overdid it –
the Lord might have preferred Martha’s company,

even if it did mean dining on bread and cheese, and perhaps a few olives.

The family at Bethany has many links in the Bible.
Some people have identified Mary as the woman who poured ointment all over Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper –
and because he lived in Bethany –

Simon the Leper, that is, not Jesus –

some people have also said that he was married to Martha.
We don’t know.

At that, some people have said that Jesus was married to Mary;

again, we don’t know.
What we do know is that Martha and Mary were sisters,

and that they had a beloved brother, called Lazarus.
We do know that on one occasion Mary poured her expensive perfume all over the feet of the Lord –
whether this was the same Mary as in the other accounts or a different one isn’t quite clear.
But whatever, they seem to have been a family that Jesus knew well,

a home where he knew he was welcome,

and dear friends whose grief he shared when Lazarus died,

even though he knew that God would raise him.
Lazarus, I mean, not Jesus, this time!

In some ways the story “works” better if the woman who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet in the house of Simon the Leper and this Mary

are one and the same person,

as we know that the woman in Simon’s house was, or had been,

some kind of loose woman that a pious Jew wouldn’t normally associate with.
Now she has repented and been forgiven,

and simply adores Jesus, who made that possible for her.
And she seems to have been taken back into her sister’s household, possibly rather on sufferance.

But then she does nothing but sit at Jesus’ feet, listening to him.
Back then, this simply was Not Done.
Only men were thought to be able to learn,

women were supposed not to be capable.
Actually, I have a feeling that the Jews thought that only Jewish free men were able to learn.
They would thank God each morning that they had not been made a woman, a slave or a Gentile.
And even though St Paul had sufficient insight to be able to write that “In Christ, there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile”,

thus at a stroke disposing of the prayer he’d been taught to make daily, it’s taken us all a very long time to work that out,

and recent events would show we haven’t really worked it out yet!

Anyway, the point is that Mary, by sitting at Jesus’ feet like that,

was behaving in rather an outrageous fashion.
Totally blatant, like throwing herself at him.
He might have felt extremely uncomfortable,

and it’s quite possible that his disciples did.
Martha certainly did, which was one of the reasons why she asked Jesus to send Mary through to help in the kitchen.

But Jesus replied:
“Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Mary, with all her history, was now thirsty for the Word of God.
Jesus wanted to be able to give Mary what she needed,

the teaching that only he could provide.
He would have liked to have given it to Martha, too,

if only Martha could be persuaded that they’d be quite happy with bread and cheese.

But Martha wasn’t ready.
Not then.
Later on, yes, after Lazarus had died, but not then.

In many ways, Martha and Mary represent the two different sides of spirituality, perhaps even of Christianity.
Mary, wrapped up in sitting at the feet of her Lord, learning from him, listening to him,

was perhaps so heavenly-minded she was of no earthly use.
Martha, rather the reverse.
She was so wrapped up in doing something for Jesus

that she couldn’t see the importance of taking time out to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen.
Or if she could, it wasn’t something she wanted to do while there was work that needed to be done.
She expressed her love for Jesus by wanting to feed him,

wanting to work for him.

All of us, I think, are like either Martha or Mary in some ways.
Many of us are more or less integrated, of course,

finding time both to sit at Jesus’ feet in worship, adoration and learning, and time to serve Him in practical ways,

mostly through working either in the Church or in the Community.

Others of us are less balanced.
We spend our time doing one or the other, but not both.
Mind you, it usually balances out within the context of a church;
the people who do the praying and listening,

the people who do the practical jobs that need to be done around the place,

and the people who do both.
And perhaps in an area, too, it balances out,

with some churches doing far more in the way of work in the community than others,

but perhaps less in the way of prayer meetings,

Alpha, or similar courses

and other Bible studies.
And so it goes on.

Our Old Testament reading brings this need for balance very much to the fore-front.
The Lord, speaking through the prophet Amos,

expresses his disgust with those who have failed to be honest and upright in their dealings:

‘Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country.

You say to yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our grain.

When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again?

Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and fix the scales to cheat our customers.

We can sell worthless wheat at a high price.

We'll find someone poor who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him as a slave.”’

And then, after a paragraph of warning of physical misery, comes the terrible warning:

“The time is coming when I will send famine on the land.

People will be hungry, but not for bread;

they will be thirsty, but not for water.

They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord.

I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.

People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on around from the north to the east.

They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.”

“They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.”

The people started off with dishonest measures,

with forcing the poor into slavery,

and end up longing to hear from the Lord,

but the heavens have been closed off to them.

Why am I reminded of current events?

This whole mess in our country, everybody wondering what will happen next;

will we really have to leave the EU without a deal, or at all?

and what are the implications if we do?

I don’t want to go into detail about the causes of this whole disaster;

you know them as well as I do.

The road this country has chosen to take over the past 50 years hasn’t helped –

the erosion of our manufacturing base,

the disappearance of industries such as shipbuilding,

consumer electronics,

aircraft manufacture

and most of the vehicle construction industry. 

The fact that we were lied to, over and over again,

by politicians and by the Murdoch press....

you know all that as well as I do.

And I’m finding it incredibly difficult to work out what to say, anyway,

as I’m so aware that my experience as a White, middle-class, elderly British woman is so very different to so much of many of your experiences.

What, after all, do I know?

But whatever our experiences, however afraid of the future we might be, can we do anything about it?

None of us knows what is going to happen tomorrow;

we can’t see round the bend in the road.

But there is much we can do –

not least, to pray for our country, and for our leaders;

we may or may not care for whoever is elected leader of the Conservative Party tomorrow, but whoever he is, he will be our Prime Minister and will need our prayers.

Those of us whose Christianity is more like Martha’s will want to get involved in many different ways;

those of us who are like Mary will want to spend time in prayer and perhaps even fasting for this country we call home.

We don’t know the future;

but we do know the One who holds the future in his hands.

We may long and long for a word that doesn’t come, but we know that we have not been abandoned.

We know that we may sit at His feet and drink of His word, and we may, must and will trust Him for tomorrow.

Amen.