Sermon for the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene / Seventh Sunday after Trinity
admin | 22 July 2012“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.
But there is an additional Anglican complexity and mystery about the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. Call it The Curious Incident of the Missing Saint! Present in Cranmer’s first Book of Common Prayer (1549) and provided with a Collect, Lesson and Gospel, it disappeared altogether in Cranmer’s second Book of Common Prayer (1552); re-appearing in 1662 only as a minor commemoration without any propers. The original readings appointed in 1549 comprised a lesson from Proverbs, the famous celebration of a good women – an odd choice, perhaps, especially in relation to the allusions and associations about Mary Magdalene! – and a Gospel reading from St. Luke about the woman who anoints Jesus’s feet and wipes them with her hair, an extravagant act of love and repentance, it seems. All of that quietly disappeared, though a number of Churches dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene continued to appear throughout the subsequent centuries of Anglican life and witness (except, oddly enough, in Nova Scotia, if I am not mistaken). Just no proper feast day for this New Testament woman for more than four centuries. Why?
No one really knows. Which has not prevented various conspiracy theories; speculation always rushes in to fill a void. There is something curious and compelling about Mary Magdalene.
And so, wonderful to say, fifty years ago, in the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, the forgotten feast of Mary Magdalene was restored but with a different Collect and different readings, namely, the ones we have heard today. This signals something of how the Common Prayer tradition is very much a living tradition. In my view, the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer readings strike the right balance and tone.
Of course, the once-named ‘new’ alternative liturgies of our brave, though no longer quite so new, Anglican world have gone one step further. All the Saints are missing from Sunday worship! What do we lose in ignoring the role of the Saints of the New Testament? Simply the ways in which our humanity participates in the communion of God through the transformations of individual character – our sanctification. That is what we are given to see in the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, found, not lost. No longer missing.
Jesus’ final word and command to Mary is theologically significant. It captures the depth and meaning of human redemption by locating our life with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus’ word here echoes another dramatic exchange found in the Old Testament in the story of Ruth who becomes the grandmother of King David. The Old Testament exchange is between Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, both widowed and alone. Ruth, who is a Moabitess and therefore from outside of Israel, insists on going with Naomi back to Naomi’s own people in Bethlehem with the words: “for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The insight here is that the God of Israel cannot be the possession of a particular tribe and people but the God of all.
Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene expand upon that fundamental insight and extend it profoundly. He signals clearly the fundamental orientation that defines his life and reality. “I ascend,” he says, “to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” Such is the radical meaning of the Resurrection and by extension the radical meaning of the apostolic church. We live in the full communion of the Trinity through the redemption of our humanity in Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ word to Mary here provides us with the meaning of his first command to her, his curious command, “touch me not.” What does it mean? She had come seeking his dead body. In the traditions of interpretation, Mary Magdalene is sometimes associated with the unnamed and silent woman who came to Jesus in the Pharisee’s house and who fell at his feet, anointing his feet and wiping them with her hair, an act which scandalizes those with whom Jesus is at meat. She is associated with a woman of the city, in short, a prostitute. That Jesus tolerates her action is viewed by the Pharisees as testimony against Jesus as someone who associates with the wrong sort of people or is ignorant of who she is and therefore not a true prophet. Jesus uses the occasion to convict the Pharisees and us of our hard hearts of judgment in contrast to the power of love and forgiveness. “Her sins which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much,” Jesus says to them. “Your sins are forgiven,” he says to her. This was the gospel reading originally used in the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549.
More tellingly, Luke explicitly identifies Mary Magdalene as being among the woman who were with him along with the twelve and, more explicitly, as the woman from whom he exorcised seven demons. She is par excellence a figure of redemption and love, the symbol of the transforming power of the Resurrection which is the very life of the Church.
The arresting command “touch me not” also belongs to that understanding. She came expecting one thing and encounters another. Beyond being “surprised by joy,” to use C.S. Lewis’ celebrated phrase, she is raised up to a new and deeper understanding of what it means to call Jesus, Lord. It is not about clinging to him physically or sensually. The Broadway Musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, for instance, portrays Mary as Jesus’ lover. The moving song, “He’s just a man” captures the ambiguity that points, perhaps, to the deeper reality of Christ as both God and man. I shall forbear to comment on The Da Vinci Code which claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married – itself a kind of conspiracy theory based upon the questionable ‘evidence’ of a later gnostic text and an accretion of medieval stories and legends.
The biblical account of the encounter is emphatically about her transformation. It complements and completes the interpretative suggestions about the love and forgiveness of Jesus which redeems her and us, about the Jesus who knows us better than we know ourselves. Such is the power and the meaning of the one who is more than just a man; he is man and God, and only so can he be Lord and Saviour.
Mary is set in motion to convey the word of Resurrection and new life to the Apostles who will be the founding figures of the Church. Her whole outlook is changed but in ways that make her more fully and truly herself. So too with us. We are more and more truly ourselves when we are in fellowship and communion with God. Such is our sanctification. Jesus’ charge to Mary is the good news of our spiritual fellowship and communion: his Father is our Father; his God, our God. Mary is the apostolic messenger of the heart of the Gospel. She “came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.” They are the things which belong to our life in the body of Christ, the living body of the one who speaks to Mary and to us.
“Go to my brethren, and say unto them,
I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God.”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of Mary Magdalene/Trinity Seven
July 22nd, 2012
Christ Church