La Magdalena

Speaking Index

Delivered 21 July 2007, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene

Good Evening. Welcome to our worship this evening.

Once again we gather here at the foot of the cross, we gather here around this font, we gather to hear and contemplate the stories of the Christ and of those who have followed him in times past. This is the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, and we will be talking more of her a little later.

Ruth 1:6-18
Acts 13:26-33a
John 20:1-2, 11-1

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from his son Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Amen

"I have seen the Lord!" These are the first words of the Christian church, the first proclamation of the resurrection. The tomb stands empty; the Lord is not dead. The words are simple and few: "I have seen the Lord!". These are the words of the apostola apostolorum, the apostle to the apostles. These are the words of Mary Magdalene.

Ever since those words were spoken, Mary Magdalene has challenged the church, but she clearly never challenged the Lord. She may have challenged Peter, but never the Lord. She may have challenged Roman concepts of the value of women, but never the Lord. She certainly challenged medieval concepts of the role of women, but never the Lord. "I have seen the Lord!" cries Mary Magdalene, and we need to shed a lot of nonsense we've been told so we can hear her.

There are several interpretations of her name. One is that it comes from the Hebrew "migdal", which means tower or fortress and suggests that she was a woman of unusual strength of character. There are also explanations from numerology that somehow calculate the value of her name as 153, which is supposedly also the perfect female number. Others claim that it involves a reference to hairdressers, literally "curling women's hair", which is somehow supposed to suggest adultery. Most scholars believe that it simply means that she came from a village called Magdala, which was once on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee. I'm partial to the Celtic form, Magdalena, which comes directly from the French, who refer to her as La Magdalena.

When Mary first meets Christ, she has been afflicted with seven demons, which Jesus promptly dispatches as related in Mark's gospel. He was good about things like that.

We know from Luke that she was among those that "ministered to Jesus of their substance". In other words, she was a significant financial supportter of the early ministry of Jesus.

She stood with Mary, our Lord's mother, and John, the beloved disciple, at the foot of the cross when he was crucified. The group that had the courage to publicly stand by Jesus on that bitter day was very small, and Magdalena was among them.

She was the first of the Myrrhbearers, as she is identified by the eastern church. Icons show her carrying a flask of ointment, ready to prepare her beloved rabbi's body on that first Easter morning. Finding the tomb empty she demands the gardener tell her where the body was taken, and then dissolves in tears when she recognizes the master's voice.

Beyond that, the canonical Gospels are silent, although it's likely that she was among the women with the Apostles in the Upper Room after the ascension, as related in Acts.

There is a second century Gospel of Mary, in which Jesus appears to this Mary in a vision. The men were despairing of the possibility of preaching the good news to the Gentiles when Jesus himself had been crucified, but Mary says "Let us rather praise his greatness, for he prepared and made us into men." Peter, among others, was apparently disgusted at the idea that his Lord would have appeared to a woman rather than to one of the men, but that's hardly a surprise given the way the church Peter built has reacted to women of strength and conviction.

There is a legend in France that Mary, Lazarus, and a disciple named Maximinus traveled in a boat with neither oars nor sail and landed at Marseilles, from whence La Magdalena converted all of Provence to Christianity. A couple of medieval abbots, mindful of the value of the tourist trade from pilgrims, expanded the legend and claimed to have her earthly remains in their cathedrals. Although there isn't any direct biblical basis for it, the more widely held view is that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus retired to Ephesus and lived quietly until their deaths.

One consistent element in Roman Catholic tradition is that Mary Magdalene is the same person as Mary of Bethany and "the sinful woman" who anointed Jesus' feet with oil and wiped it off with her hair. This is unlikely, these are probably three different women. Mary of Bethany is the Mary of the Mary and Martha parable, and thus thousands of Mary and Martha Circles that were prevalent in churches during my youth, and Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, was the brother of Mary and Martha. Somewhere the idea grew that Mary Magdalene, from whom the demons were cast and who clearly had money from somewhere, was the sinful woman who brought the extravagant ointment Nard to anoint the Lord's feet. The Eastern Church has never suffered from this confusion, and modern theologians don't give it credence, but it was widely spread and seems to color our understanding of Mary Magdalene to this day.

The idea that Jesus actually married Magdalena is recent nonsense, even if millions of people read The DaVinci Code or saw the movie.

There is a charming legend of this disciple that may be the origin of our tradition of dyed Easter eggs. In this account, Mary Magdalene used her position to get into a banquet hosted by Tiberius Caesar, at which she held a plain egg in her outstretched hand and proclaimed "Christ is risen." Tiberius supposedly replied that the likelihood of that happening was as small as that the egg in her hand would turn red, at which point, according to pius tradition, the egg did exactly that.

So we have a few references to this devoted follower of Jesus, and a host of confusion. What is the root of this? Why is the confusion so great? Some of you may know that my baptismal name is Gregory, although I haven't used the name for over thirty years. I was named after Saint Gregory, Pope Gregory I, the bishop of Rome who rewrote much of the Latin Mass and introduced plainsong to that service, which we commonly refer to as Gregorian Chant. You see, my father was studying Gregorian Chant as part of his Masters' thesis at Cornell when I was born. Alas, not everything Gregory did was good.

Specifically, in 591 my namesake gave a sermon in which he said "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark." In that reference he used the term peccatrix, a sinful woman, rather than meretrix, a prostitute. But he also identifies her as the adulteress brought before Jesus in John's gospel. As a result of this sermon, Magdalena is generally shown in European art as having long red hair, falling over her shoulders, while most other women in the same paintings are shown with black or dark hair chastely covered by a scarf. In the medieval mind, red was sinful, even though the variation in hair color among Jewish women is very small and certainly doesn't extend to the bright red often used for Mary's hair.

Let's say there are a number of terms that could be used to refer to this. Codswallop comes to mind as one that can be safely used from a pulpit. The story of this woman is simple and beautiful, and even if the tale of facing the emperor armed only with her faith and an egg is enchanting, the actual story is already compelling.

She suffered from something that manifested itself as seven demons. She was cured by the intervention of this new Rabbi Jesus. She accepted his words and faithfully supported his mission. She stood by him at his crucifiction, when the guys were cowering behind closed doors. She was first to honor him by going to attend his dead body in the tomb. She was first to see the risen Lord, and the first to proclaim Him. I don't claim that the Gospel of Mary is reliable, but it's completely credible that when the guys were daunted by their commission to go into the world to tell the story of this crucified carpenter, it was Mary that spurred them on.

The historical record doesn't say anything about miracles that she did. It doesn't tell of great works she performed, missions she started, letters she wrote. We're left with a glowing testament to how a person should live. In Mary Magdalene's life we're shown that we are to accept our failings and shortcomings, we are to turn to Jesus Christ for help, we are to support Christ's mission in this world, and we are to remain true to Christ's word even at the darkest hour.

In the Old Testament lesson we heard the eloquent story of Ruth. Naomi had lived in Moab for years. Her sons had married, and her sons had died. Her husband had died. Now Naomi was returning to her home in Judea, her daughters-in-law started to go with her, and she wanted them not to come. She wanted Ruth and Orpah to remain in Moab and find new husbands and continue their lives among their own people. Perhaps Orpah found a new husband, bore children, and lived happily ever after. But not Ruth. Ruth's response stands today as a pinnacle of steadfastness. "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people; and your God my God."

Somehow, the western catholic church got confused by these messages, incredibly confused. Some apparently got defensive. On the one hand it seems that church wanted nothing to do with the idea that there could be a powerful woman of faith, a woman who could lead the church, and they trashed Mary Magdalene viciously. Was it intentional? I can't say, but I can hardly refute those who think it was. Somehow the steadfastness of Ruth is shown as a womanly trait, almost to the point of saying that it's as good as a woman can be, but not to expect great things. More Codswallop.

The stories of Magdalena and Ruth are not stories of greatness in women, they are stories of greatness. There is a time to turn away from your life, a time to walk away from the nets you are tending and follow Christ, a time to repent, a time to leave your mother and father and cleave to another, and there is a time to hold steadfast to your life and your work. Both are honored in scripture, both are demanded by scripture, both are expected of men and women alike.

To turn away from sin, to steadfastly follow Messiah, these are great and good things, and they are as great and good for men as they are for women. Despite the efforts of some to disparage Mary Magdalene for her past, in fact to invent a scandalous past for her, and efforts to make her and Mary of Bethany and Ruth of Moab into examples of womanly deference to the men, scripture means these women to be examples for all of us.

Mary Magdalene's name may not have come from migdal, the Hebrew word for tower, but her example is like a tower that we can see over the ages, a tower that we can see over the confusion around us.

And what does this towering example say to us? Say it with me: "I have seen the Lord!". And what must we now go and say, both in words and in the example of our lives? "I have seen the Lord!" We who are faithful to the risen Christ, what shall we say? "I have seen the Lord!"

"I have seen the Lord!" This is what we call Good News. This is the Gospel of the Lord. Amen.