Sermon for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene / Seventh Sunday after Trinity
“Go to my brethren, and say unto them,
I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God.”
It is part of the remarkable exchange between Mary Magdalene and Jesus at the garden tomb after the horrifying events of the Crucifixion. She came full of grief and sorrow in the quiet of the early morning. She came looking for a corpse, the body of Jesus. She encounters the utterly unexpected reality of the Resurrection.
Jesus meets her at the empty tomb with the question of the angels, “Woman, why weepest thou?” and adds, “Whom seekest thou?” Mistaking him for the gardener, she repeats her request for the body of Jesus. Jesus’ response is to call her by name, “Mary,” to which she replies with a simple word of recognition, “Rabboni,” meaning master or teacher. This leads to the first command to her by the Risen Christ, a most curious command, “Touch me not,” he says, followed by the second command, her mission and his message. “I am not yet ascended to my Father,” Jesus prefaces his direction to her, “but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
Occasionally, a major saints’ day, meaning in our Anglican understanding, a New Testament figure or event, coincides with a Sunday. Every Sunday is by definition a celebration of the Resurrection in relation to which particular themes or teachings of Christ are set before us. The major saints’ day serve to complement this fundamental emphasis, even more so with Mary Magdalene who is the first witness to the Resurrection and the first to proclaim the Resurrection. She is “the apostle to the apostles,” as the Fathers of the early church put it, the one who is sent by Jesus to those whom Jesus will send out into the world as the emissaries of his word and will of human redemption. The Church is nothing if not apostolic; that is to say, rooted and grounded in the word and will of Jesus authoritatively passed on to the apostles by the author of our redemption, Jesus himself. Mary cannot be ignored in relation to that idea.
