Judith 9:1, 11-14
Psalm 42:1-7
2 Corinthians 5:14-18
John 20:11-18
The
figure of Mary Magdalene with which many of us are immediately familiar is one
created through years of overlaid tradition, and most usually a composite of
many un-named characters in the gospel narratives. Therefore, her identity is complex and complicated. At the most fundamental level of the gospel
text she appears in the Gospel of Luke as one, along with with other women who
provided for Jesus and his disciples “out of their resources” (8:3) – we rarely
think the extent to which the Jesus movement was subsidised by women – and she
is specfically indentified as “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven spirits
had gone out”. (Luke 8:2). But, it is in
the passion narratives – the oldest parts of the Jesus tradition – in which
Mary comes to the fore. Only in the Gospel
of Luke is she not specfically named as present at the crucifixion. In both Mark (15:47) and Matthew (27:61) she is
present at Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea; and again, only in Luke is she
is not among the first witnesses of the resurrection – all of them women. In the Gospel of John, as we heard this
morning, she is the first to see the risen Lord, privileged with the first of
his post-resurrection appearances; and she is the first to carry the news to
the disciples: “I have seen the Lord”. For this reason she is referred to from the
10th century as the “apostle to the apostles”, a title which became
commonplace by 13th.
At
the same time, the figure of Mary – her identity, and her place in the life of
the Jesus –seems to have sparked an almost limitless curiosity and
reflection. Several Gnostic gospels –
including the Gospel of Mary, named after her – depict her as one of the most
important of Jesus’ followers. In the
western Church at least, the gospel figure of Mary Magdalene has been conflated
with another Mary from the gospels – Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, but
also with the nameless woman who anoints Jesus’ feet shortly before his
passion, and with the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus rescues from stoning
and who, while not condemning her, sends her off saying, “from now on do not
sin again”. (John 8:11) This latter
association has cast Mary Magdalene in the Western Church as a prostitute and
adultress. Depictions in art abound of
her in her long luxurious hair lamenting her wicked past. She is the archetypal penitent, and western
tradition tells us she spent the last years of the her life as a hermit in
France where she is buried.
So
the Gospel accounts of Mary Magdalene taken together with the traditions which
grew up around her, present us with a complicated figure. In the accretions made to the Mary Magdalene
of the gospels, there seems almost an attempt to the diminish her power and
primacy as apostle to the apostles by casting her in the role of the temptress,
the adultress and whore who although she repents still maintains the sexy
symbol of her seductive powers – her hair.
In this regard, she presents in the western tradition a figure far more complex
than even the Virgin Mary. To a Church
which was in many misogynist and gynophobic, Mary the mother of Jesus was safe,
fulfilling – while undisputably in an extraordinary way – the traditional role
of woman, that of wife and mother. Now,
Mary Magdalene’s role and importance in the Christian tradition come by nature
of her being a woman also, but certainly an unconventional one. She doesn’t appear to be married, and so is
free to follow Jesus as she will; not being married she must have had her own
source of income, since as we know she provided for him out of her own
resources. This particular kind of
independence would certainly have made her suspect in a patriarchal society
with clearly defined social ranks and distinctions. At the same time, her “suspect” character
gave her an odd sort of freedom – she could risk standing at the foot of the cross
of a convicted criminal and insurrectionist, an act of love and solidarity
which none of his male followers were willing to commit. After Jesus’ death she witnesses his
resurrection not by virtue of her purity, but of her impurity. It is because she is a woman and through
menstruation often ritually unclean, that she comes to perform a ritually
unclean act – anointing, touching a dead body.
What the Mary of the gospels exemplifies is a kind of independent
courage, and her depiction witnesses to the upside-down world in which it is
the impure who are granted sight of real life, granted intimate knowledge of
the resurrection, who literally, see God.
Little wonder that the Fathers of the Church cast her in the role of a
prostitute early on. As early at AD 591
Gregory the Great preached: “She whom
Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be Mary from
whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not
all the vices?...It is clear…that the woman previously used the unguent to
perfume her body in forbidden acts.” So
there we have one way of undermining her power both as a wild, independent
woman as and an apostle. The fact that
she drops out of the early Church narratives after her encounter with the
resurrected Christ, seems to hint that her presence and significance were too
hot to handle. Somehow her wild independence
did not fit into the wider context, the wider construct. Finally, her wild spirit, the Church
relegates to the wilds. As I mentioned,
legend tells us she lived out her years in cave as a hermit.
The
figure of Mary Magdalene challenges the Church with the question as to how we
incorporate the wild spirits among us, but also within us. She calls the Church to ask, how we discern a
wild spirit, or an evil for that matter.
Mary Magdalene had seven demons – evil spirits – cast out of her, but
that made her no less wild, crazy – if you will – in her courageness, in her commitment
to follow and to do all she could for Jesus, in her boldness to carry the good
news of his resurrection The Scriptures
are filled with wild people, wild spirits – Elijah, Judith, John the Baptist,
Jesus, among many others. And it’s the
wild ones we remember, regardless of the fact that if they were around among us
today we might just have them committed.
How do we incorporate the wild, the really wild without sanitizing it or
demonising it, without making it safe, without neutering it so that we can
dominate it? How do we listen to its
promptings in the voices and actions of those who are risk-takers and who hold
out to the world and the Church an upside-down vision, which looks a lot like
God’s vision? In one of his late night
conversations with Nicodemus, Jesus says “The wind blows
where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it
comes from or where it goes. So it is
with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) The Church would be a better place, a
healthier place, more honest and effective if we were more wild, if we really
listened to the wild spirit in each other, and cultivated a real – a real –
awareness of it in ourselves. If were
crazy enough, we might be more willing to stand at the crosses of our world’s suffering;
and if we were wild enough, we might shout out in our lives the truth of
resurrection. Mary is complicated, yet
in her complexity and without apology, she holds up a mirror to the Church and
calls us to the walk on the wild side.
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