Sermon: Mary Magdalene

Poor Mary Magdalen!  Was ever a saint more maligned?  Confusion began to surround her very early on.  It was clear from the New Testament that she was a woman whom Jesus had delivered from evil spirits and who came to love and follow him.  She was present at the crucifixion, and was the first to find the empty tomb and meet the risen Christ on Easter morning.  But then came the questions.  Was she the notorious prostitute who washed the feet of Jesus with her hair and anointed him for his passion, or Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus at Bethany?  And beyond the New Testament there were further mysteries. Early legends had her in Ephesus with St John, dying in Constantinople; but it was also said that Mary with several others sailed from Palestine across the Mediterranean to France and landed at the place called Les Saintes Maries de la Mer.  She went into holy seclusion in Provence and died there. So where were her relics?  This was the subject of one of the most celebrated rows in medieval France. Provence claimed them; but then, miraculously, they popped up in Burgundy several hundred miles to the north, at Vézelay, where they built the wondrous Basilica of the Madeleine in her honour at precisely the same time as this cathedral was going up.

In modern times, her story continues to intrigue and fascinate.  In Scorsese's film of Nikos Kazantzakis' book The Last Temptation of Christ, she is the power of the flesh Jesus must resist if he is to be true to his divinity.  That has more to be said for it than the nonsense that has her as the woman with whom Jesus had sex and who carried his blood-line into history, a secret folded into the story of the Holy Grail - san graal or sang réal -the fantasy millions have fallen for through The Da Vinci Code.  More thoughtfully, Tim Rice in Jesus Christ Superstar artfully portrays her as the conflicted woman perplexed by the passionate feelings Jesus arouses in her, part spiritual, part erotic. ‘I don't know how to love him' she sings in one of the best songs in the show:  ‘I've had so many men before'.  When Judas tries to remonstrate with Jesus, ‘What does a man like you want with a woman like that', he replies intriguingly, that Mary is giving him what he needs ‘right here and now'.  To some interpreters, she is the archetype of the fallen woman at its most threatening to men: libidinous, teasing, seductive, dangerous.  To feminists, she is the symbol of the liberated woman who courageously found her own voice and challenged patriarchy.  In the spiritual tradition she is the model penitent and contemplative.  She crosses so many boundaries: theology, literature, gender studies, cultural history, social anthropology, psychoanalysis.  Of the making of books about her there is no end.

We might ask on her feast day why this is.  I think we can point to a number of reasons.  For one thing, she stands out in the gospels as a woman in a world of men, not uniquely by any means, but more sharply drawn than any of the others, even the Blessed Virgin herself.  You imagine her wearing red and purple, like she does in Caravaggio, striding across the gospel story saying ‘notice me!.  For another, her obvious closeness to Jesus raises questions about his emotional life and the part normal human affect played in his psyche.  An age absorbed by sex is bound to be obsessed by such matters and even if we reply that whatever we say is mere speculation, the tide of speculation will still be unstoppable.  That may not be a bad thing, because what it tells us is the continuing power of Jesus himself to fascinate and intrigue us even in the 21^st century.  And finally, she is the woman with an altogether unique role in Christian history.  She loved Jesus, though not perhaps more than others loved him, especially John.  But she was given a privilege denied even to him, to be the first witness of the resurrection and to take the news of Easter to the other disciples. For many theologians, her role as ‘apostle to the apostles' is a powerful argument for the ordination of women as priests and bishops. 

So who is she to us?  What makes her so memorable is her colourful unconventionality.  She doesn't fit the image of the subservient woman in the ancient world.  Her relationships were unorthodox, her lifestyle unapproved.  She would have struggled to say dutifully, as the other Mary did, ‘behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word'.  She seems to subvert all the norms, challenge all the stereotypes.  And what is most astonishing, perhaps, is that Jesus seems to affirm her subversive personality.  Not once does he criticise Mary as he did others of his inner circle: Peter, James, John and even his own mother.   And she is one of the two women who, in today's reading from St Mark, finds the tomb empty, and to whom the announcement of the resurrection is entrusted - and this when one of the other Easter narratives specifically anticipates how the resurrection message will be ridiculed as just so much idle gossip, exactly the kind of thing women are prone to.  In Mark's spare, understated resurrection story, no-one else, and specifically, no man, sees the empty tomb.  Why put the story of the resurrection at such risk?  Why not suppress the awkward fact of her being the key witness of the resurrection when the story would have been much more credible had it been Peter or John?  Above all, why have of all people have her sent to tell the others about the resurrection in a role that is nothing short of apostolic? 

Maybe because the whole project of redemption is God's risk.  Will it be believed, received, acted upon?  Maybe God himself cannot know the answer; but in faith he sends Jesus because that is all he can do to win the human race.  It begins with wayward Mary the first witness to the resurrection.  That word ‘witness' can sound passive, the onlooker who sees or observes, but is disengaged, doesn't get involved.  Yet the Easter story portrays her as the exact opposite of this.  She is the passionately committed witness for whom seeing, believing, acclaiming, loving and following all merge in one great ‘yes' that transforms her entire life.  In Greek, a witness is a ‘martyr', that is, someone who is so totally at one with the story they tell that they are willing to pay the price of suffering and death.  The willingness is all.  When Jesus calls her by name in the garden, Mariam, she knows that she is alive again, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.  Rabbouni! she cries - and in that moment, a lifetime of passion and pain, search and longing, hunger, fear and hope, is gathered up.  It's perhaps the greatest recognition scene in human history, for she recognises him on behalf of the human race, on behalf of us.

How shall we in our day bear witness to Christ?  I doubt if the reticent, fearful, colourless character of so much organised religion will cut much ice.  Why don't we try being passionate for once, as if we believed that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything?  This isn't a matter of formulaic answers, rather, it's about giving a reason for the hope that is within us, as the New Testament says.  Hope is everything.  To say yes to Jesus and yes to life is where hope began for Mary.  It is where it can begin again for us.