The Feast of Mary Magdalene July 22, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Judith 9:1, 11-14 + 2 Corinthians 5: 14-18 + John 20: 11-18
Beloved community, grace, mercy, and peace to you from the one you are looking for and the one who calls you by name, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
The neighbors to one side of us are a Korean family…mom, dad, and two kids and sometimes Grandma. Every morning and every night either dad or grandma steps out onto the deck and lights a stick of incense to honor the ancestors. This is such a lovely practice, taking time to honor those who came before us and shaped and formed us in an intentional way.
So I was thinking about my own ancestors and remembering in particular my great Uncle Martine. Uncle Martine was married to my grandmother’s sister, Florence. They had a farm in rural Illinois where my Uncle Martine and the farm hands tended pigs and cows and goats and some crops and my Aunt Florence baked bread on the wide wooden table in their kitchen. Uncle Martine would come in at lunch with the farmhands, and kiss my Aunt Florence as though she, with her apron and flour dusted hands were the most beautiful person on the planet. They would all gather at the table for a meal that sustained body and spirit before heading back into the fields for the afternoon. I remember Uncle Martine as short with a wide small and a slightly balding head and suspenders. But here’s what else I remember and you must not let this information leak to the FBI….but Uncle Martine was THE singular person in the United States of America who knew who really killed JFK. And he would tell you this…not who it was, of course….but that he was the only one with that knowledge…as easily as he would tell you it was time for lunch.
Today the Church remembers one of our spiritual ancestors. The first to know that Jesus was resurrected and the one he entrusted to tell the others. Mary Magdalene. Like my Uncle Martine, though, Mary and how she is known and remembered is, well, complicated.
Throughout the history of the institutional Church, Mary has been known as someone healed of seven demons and a former prostitute. But those titles have been thrust upon her unjustly and unfairly by an institution that did not have room for a woman in authority. Because you can be sure if one of Jesus’ male followers had been the first witness to the resurrection or the apostle to the apostle, we would not be having this conversation.
In recent years, though, the Church has repented of the sin it committed against Mary of Magdala and this year, in the Roman Catholic Church, marks the first time her feast day, today, is remembered as a feast on par with the other apostles. That didn’t take long, did it?
Let’s look at what we know, then, about Mary and Jesus. And then we can consider together why she matters to us today.
All four gospels, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John identify Mary Magdalene as the first witness to Jesus’s resurrection and they all single her out individually in this role. John’s account, which we heard a portion of today, is the most extensive and dramatic. Mary is the one Jesus sends to tell the other disciples, who, by the way, are hiding, that he is risen. Then he tells her to tell them that they are also to announce the good news of the resurrection.
The writers of Mark, Matthew, and Luke also specify that Mary Magdalene was a witness to the burial of Jesus. This is no small detail. For one, it means that she did not leave him after he died. It means that when Joseph of Arimathea took his body off of the cross and carried it to his family tomb, Mary of Magdala and the other women went along, too. It was how they knew where to find the tomb when they returned with their spices on Easter morning.
All four Gospels place Mary of Magdala at the crucifixion. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke she is placed with other women at a distance from the cross. But John writes that she stood at the foot of the cross, with Mary his Mother and Mary the wife of Cleophas.
These pieces of her story…that she was at Jesus’s side all the way to the cross. That she watched him die. That she followed his body to the tomb. That she returned there and found the tomb empty. That she encountered him in the garden….these are not minor details. These are major plot lines. How is it, then that the Church has spent thousands of years calling her a whore?
Well, let’s take a look at that. In Luke’s original manuscript and in an alternate, later addition to Mark, she is identified as having been healed from seven demons. It is a passing mention in Luke, in a portion of one sentence in one verse. It’s interesting that neither Mark or Matthew or John make mention of it. And even Luke doesn’t name prostitution as being one of the demons from which she was healed. He doesn’t even call her a sinner.
There are a lot of Mary’s in Scripture, just like there are more than a few in this congregation. So let’s look for a moment at whether or not Mary Magdalene was the Mary of Bethany who anointed Jesus’ feet. Because that seems to be a place where we run into trouble. In the anointing stories in Matthew and Mark the woman is unnamed and the event takes place in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper shortly before Jesus is crucified. In John’s account of the story, the anointing happens in Bethany, and Lazarus, Mary, and Martha are with him. That Mary anoints Jesus, but she is never identified as anything other than Mary. In Luke’s Gospel this story is set at the home of Lazarus and the woman is not named. However, Luke adds the presence of the Pharisee to the story, and it is the Pharisee in Luke who calls the woman a sinner. This was all it took for the patriarchy of the Church to infer that since the woman in the anointing incident in Luke was a sinner, and Mary Magdalene had seven demons cast out of her, so she must have been a sinner. And since Luke calls her Mary of Bethany, she must also be Mary Magdelene. And friends, this was the OFFICIAL position of the Church until 1969, when it finally officially repealed the teaching that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
I want us to let this sink into our spirits and our hearts and our heads for a minute. It was an inconvenient truth for the Church hierarchy that Jesus had called a woman to witness to the greatest news n the world. And so, the power structure of the Church re-wrote her story. They used sexuality against her which seems to be a lesson the Church has yet to learn. They called her a whore and a prostitute when she was the person who refused to leave her Lord as he hung dying on a cross. When she was the one who fiercely followed along as they went to the tomb. When she was the one who faithfully returned to anoint his body. When she was the person who begged the gardener, or who she supposed to be the gardener, to tell her where Jesus’s body had been taken. The faithfulness of this beloved disciple was stripped away by a patriarchy that could not bear it.
Many of you know that I was raised in the Lutheran church Missouri Synod. And for the entirety of my first eighteen years I was told that I was less than because of how God had made me. I was taught that I was perfectly and wonderfully made in God’s image, but in the same breath told that I was insufficient to serve in the same way men were. That God could not and would not call me to this office. But thirteen years ago today, on the Feast of Mary Magdalene, I stood in front of God and the Bishop and friends and family and was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.
Far too often we believe the stories that the world tells us, or the system tells us or our family tells us or maybe even the Church tells us about who we are. That we are not good enough or rich enough or smart enough or accomplished enough. And we believe it. We take it into our souls and we walk around wounded and hurting and never become who we were fully created to be.
Beloveds, you are made in the very image of God. Exactly how you are now. With every flaw and every grace and every wondrous thing that beams out of you into the world….imagio Dei. In the image of God you are created.
You are sufficient. You are good enough. You are enough. You are beloved.
The first thing people say about my Uncle Martine is usually that he had something going on that made him think he knew who killed JFK. But they forget his gentle smile, and his fertile farm, and the way he kissed my Aunt Florence when he came home for lunch each day.
Don’t let the world re-write the story that God has already crafted for you. You, dear ones, are new creations. Everything old is gone, passed away. In Christ, you have been made new. In Christ you are perfect.
Thanks be to God…and let the church say Amen.