July 22, 2007 – The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
John 20:1-2, 11-18
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
A little over a year ago Newsweek magazine published an article that was subtitled, “The Search for the Real Mary Magdalene.” It was a good article, covering all of the Biblical references to Mary and much of the legendary material surrounding her. But, ultimately, the search was unsuccessful: Newsweek couldn’t find her either. In fact, Mary Magdalene has been largely a mystery to us ever since the closing chapters of John’s Gospel, where Mary is depicted as the first apostle, “apostle” meaning “one who is sent.” Mary was the first one to whom the Resurrected Jesus appeared, the first one who was told to go and tell others, the first one following the Resurrection to be able to speak the words, “I have seen the Lord.”
We know what happened to the other apostles, Peter, Stephen and the rest – they were all executed eventually, all except St. John, who apparently lived to a ripe old age and who wrote The Revelation, the last book in the Bible. But Mary Magdalene simply disappears from the pages of the New Testament.
Through the centuries, though, the Church has afforded Mary a unique status, honoring her as a model of how faith in the Resurrected Jesus comes to be. It’s my hope that by learning a bit about Mary and observing her, we might spot some relevant faith connections with our own life; we might be able to see how and where her story intersects with ours.
What the Bible has to say about Mary’s life is rather sketchy. The writer of John’s Gospel introduces her at Chapter 19, saying simply that she was one of the witnesses of the Crucifixion. She reappears here, in Chapter 20, at the empty tomb. Other Gospel writers contribute other bits of information. Luke, for example, reports that Mary was one of several women who accompanied Jesus and the disciples in their ministry and provided for them out of their financial resources. Both Mark and Luke write that seven demons had been driven out of Mary. But we don’t know precisely what that means. We do know that in the Bible the number seven was often used symbolically, to represent fullness or completeness; and demon possession often referred to a combination of physical and spiritual illnesses. So “seven demons” could refer to the seriousness of Mary’s condition or its recurring nature. In any case, the implication is that Jesus performed an exorcism on Mary to free her, and afterward Mary began following Jesus.
That’s it; that’s what the Bible says about Mary Magdalene – nothing about her experiences growing up in her hometown of Madgala; nothing about her extended family, if she had one; no indication that she was ever married.
But what the Bible doesn’t tell us, legend is quick to supply. There circulated in the First and Second Centuries a body of literature that was widely read but never accepted as authoritative, as Scripture. That body of literature was called the Gnostic Gospels, and they stressed salvation through study and self-knowledge instead of through faith. In those gospels, Mary is often seen not as a bystander around the outskirts of the Jesus story but rather as an insider; in fact, one of Jesus’ favorite disciples. And, among the Gnostic Gospels, Mary has her own, in which she is depicted as strong, resolute, purposeful.
In our own day, Hollywood couldn’t keep its hands off the mystery. Dan Brown’s novel, The DaVinci Code, and the movie that it inspired portray Jesus and Mary and husband and wife, who have a child, who grows up and moves to France.
But with all the fiction and all the supposition, our attention is drawn to this very compact, 10-verse scene near the end of John’s Gospel, because it is here that we find some relevance for our own faith lives. It’s here that we see the evolution of Mary’s faith – who she is at the end of this scene is a very different person than the one we see crying at the empty tomb.
It is the third day after Jesus’ execution. Mary comes to the tomb, only to find it open and empty. She runs to wherever Peter and the other disciple are hiding, tell them, they run to the cemetery to check out her story, then they simply leave. But it’s all too much for Mary. She stands outside the tomb, in despair, weeping.
Two angels show up, but they’re not impressive enough to break through her grief. She bumps into Jesus himself, but she can’t perceive him through her sorrow either. She is overwhelmed: she can see, but she can’t perceive.
Medical experts tell us that when we’re confronted with an emergency or a desperate situation of some kind, our physical “fight or flight” response takes over. Our central nervous system shifts into high gear, our heart rate increases, our muscles tense – all our physical resources are marshaled together to combat this new situation. And when that happens, we cannot step back and gain some perspective, take a longer view, because we’re caught up in the immediacy of the moment.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been so caught up in the moment that you can’t see the forest for the trees? Have you ever been so consumed by anger that you can’t even imagine the possibility of a peaceful resolution? Even been so stuck in your own stubbornness that you can’t even imagine the idea of compromise? (By the way, if you have trouble identifying times like that, check with your spouse or your loved one; they’ll be happy to help you remember.) Ever been so overwhelmed by grief that you can’t even imagine the idea of hope, of healing? That’s where Mary was, overwhelmed. She could see, but she couldn’t perceive.
The same experience repeats itself a few verses later, with Thomas. Thomas was not with the other disciples the first time the Resurrected Jesus appeared to them. So they told Thomas all about that evening, how they saw him, talked with him, saw the marks in his hands and in his side. But Thomas wasn’t buying it. He had all the information he needed, but he needed his own proof. He could see, but he couldn’t perceive.
It was exactly in the depths of Mary’s condition of being overwhelmed that Jesus came to her. It is productive for us to at times to revisit those occasions in our lives when we’ve been so caught up in the desperation of a situation that we feel overwhelmed. It could just be that God uses those times – doesn’t cause them but uses them – to make his appeal to us, calling us to shift, to come closer in our faith lives, to rely more on him and less on ourselves.
That’s what was happening with Mary; he came to her in a way that at first she didn’t understand. Isn’t it interesting that initially she thought he was the gardener? In this cemetery, this place of death, she encounters a gardener, a cultivator of life. Mary is able to turn a corner in her faith life because this gardener, this Jesus, calls her by name, makes his approach personal. And because he does, Mary is finally able to see and perceive.
I was interested to read recently that there appears to be a bit of a resurgence in the Christian movement in Europe. For many generations now it appeared that the German philosopher Nietsche was right, that God was dead, at least in Europe. Church attendance had dwindled there to the point that in the Scandinavian countries fewer than four percent of the people attended worship regularly. That compared with 44 percent in the United States.
But it looks like there is a revival taking place in Europe. And it’s happening not in the massive and largely empty state-funded and state-controlled cathedrals but among small groups of excited Christians who are turned off by church-as-usual and turned on by a Jesus who comes to them personally, who invites them personally, who seems to know their very names.
When Jesus calls Mary by name, she realizes two things, and I believe that God intends these for us as well. First, she realizes that it’s all true: this Jewish peasant, who had been condemned by his own religious institution, who had been essentially tortured to death by the empire, this failure in the eyes of the world – was God. Do you realize that Christians are the only people in the world who believe this?
The second thing she realizes is that she can’t cling to him, she can’t hold onto him anymore. Now, his life is a life that she can know no longer by touching it, but only by living it herself, by allowing this gardener, this Jesus to live his life inside of her and through her, raising her up from all of the bad decisions and brokenness and wreckage that was in her.
And so it is for us. We cannot possess this Jesus either, we can’t use him. We can’t use him to endorse our political campaigns, we can’t use him to justify our own social programs, we can’t use him to bless our nation’s agenda in the world. The only thing was can do is surrender to him, to let this gardener, this Jesus live his life inside of us and through us, raising us up from whatever bad decisions and brokenness and wreckage that might be inside of us, so that we can live lives that make a very simple but profound statement: “I have seen the Lord.”
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.
