July 22nd, 2020

Wednesday Words             7-22-20

Psalm 119: 49 – 72      Joshua 8: 30 – 35       Romans 14: 13 – 2

Psalms 49, 53      Matthew 57 – 68        BCP pg. 977 top   

St. Mary Magdalene

The Apostle to the Apostles 

Most of us have a favorite saint or two among all the men and women honored in our faith.  Today is the Feast Day for St. Mary Magdalene, my absolute favorite saint.  She has been a favorite of artists and storytellers since the beginning of Christianity.  Artists have painted only Mary, the Mother of Jesus, more times than Mary Magdalene.

The first place we meet Mary Magdalene in the Gospels is in Luke, chapter 8, when the writer tells us two things about her.  The first is that Jesus had cured Mary of seven demons.  As stories grew and expanded over the years, the “seven demons” became the seven deadly sins of the Medieval Church.  In any list of sins where women are concerned, the onus of adultery, of sex always seems the most important.  This interpretation, of course, was the foundation of the tale that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute who changed her life after meeting Jesus.  But the next detail the writer of Luke gives us makes that charge less credible.

We are given a list of several women including Mary Magdalene who supported Jesus and the Apostles financially in their travels.  It is highly unlikely that a former prostitute would have been accepted into the circle of respectable, wealthy women who could afford to provide for Jesus and the twelve men who made up Jesus’s inner circle.  

Mary Magdalene is sometimes conflated with Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.  Sometimes with the unnamed woman with a bad reputation who poured perfumed oil over Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair.  Since Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany were both well known in the early church, I do not find it credible that the same person would be given two different names and three different identities by people who knew them.  Most scholarship today holds that these are three different women, with Mary Magdalene most likely a wealthy woman, possibly a widow.

The importance of Mary Magdalene for me lies in two things.  First, she was at the foot of the cross while Jesus died with His mother Mary and other women.  John was known in the Jewish court system so he could safely be with them.  The ten remaining Apostles had all gone into hiding in well-placed fear that they might also be arrested and killed.  Neither Jewish nor Roman authorities were likely to crucify women and so they stayed. They stayed and wept in grief and horror.  

On Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene was up before dawn going to the tomb which held Jesus’s body.  She brought with her all the fragrant oils and herbs that would traditionally used to prepare the body of a beloved family member for burial.  She found an empty tomb and angels who told her that Jesus was not there but was alive.

In her shock and grief, Mary did not recognize the Risen Jesus when He comes close to her.  When He calls her name, she knows!  With every cell of her body she KNOWS!  It was true!  What Jesus had said about Himself was true!  What a glorious Sunday morning after the devastation of Friday!

As the Risen Jesus talked to Mary, Jesus gave her a mission.  Jesus sent her back to the Apostles to tell the men to go to Galilee where Jesus would meet them.  Jesus sent Mary – a woman! – to give a message to men.  Jewish law did not allow a woman to testify in legal matters or act as a witness to contracts.  Women were not thought worthy of that trust.  But Jesus selected Mary Magdalene to be the first missionary of our faith, to be the Apostle of the Good news to the other Apostles.  

Jesus did not contest gender discrimination in His culture.  Jesus called twelve men to serve as His disciples.  But Jesus did not shrink from teaching women His message of truth and salvation.  Jesus accepted the support of women from their own means.  Jesus trusted a woman with the most important message in our faith – the Lord is Risen!

The Collect for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene is a prayer that we can pray together:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and of mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by your grace we may be healed from all our infirmities and know you in the power of his unending life; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever.          Amen.

Blessed be the name of the Lord 

and the witness of St. Mary Magdalene to us.