SERMON 18 July 2004 : (Mary Magdalene)

 Readings:    Song of Songs 3: 1-4a        Psalm 63        2 Corinthians 5:14-21     John 20:1-18

 In the name of Jesus, who calls us to follow and to serve.

 Mary Magdalene, repentant prostitute, healed of seven demons by Jesus – a woman who, along with Joanna, Susanna and a number of other women, served and supported Jesus and the community of disciples gathered around him.

 Or perhaps not. This picture of Mary Magdalene, once strong in the Western Christian tradition, has never been shared by Eastern Christianity and has recently been strongly challenged in the west.

 Who was Mary of Magdala and what was her role in Jesus’ life?

 The idea that she had been a prostitute comes from a long tradition that Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and the unnamed sinful woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet and then wiped it away with her hair were one and the same woman.  This persistent idea has shaped much of western Christianity’s view of these three characters in the Gospels. And yet there is no scriptural basis to it. Indeed, much argues against such a merging of the three into one.

 Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, is always identified as the sister of Martha and/or Lazarus. If she were identified by place, then surely she would have been Mary of Bethany, not Mary of Magdala.

 The sinful woman who bathed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume remains unnamed in the gospels of Mark and Luke (Mk 14:3ff; Lk 7:37ff). In John’s gospel the same story is told but the woman concerned is not described as sinful and is identified as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (John 12:3). It is from the conflation of the two different versions in the Gospels that we get the tradition that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the woman who had been a prostitute were one and the same.

 But this kind of conflation, of trying to harmonise differing accounts, doesn’t work. The gospels are notoriously variable in their accounts of all sorts of episodes. The same stories appear in two or more of the gospels but with slight variations which reflect different oral traditions, different emphases and, indeed, culturally different views of the importance of factual truth.  Attempts at harmonisation of stories to try to work out what really happened are doomed to failure. Did Jesus feed 4,000 or 5,000? Or were there two separate events? Were 70 disciples sent out or 72? There are 2 different versions of the two great commandments – which did Jesus really say? Was it an unnamed prostitute or Mary of Bethany who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet?

 The one thing that seems clear is that it was not Mary Magdalene, despite the persistent tradition. She was well known to them all and it is hard to imagine that if someone as central to the whole story as Mary Magdalene had been involved in this amazingly powerful and symbolic moment, her name would not have been recorded.

 So, let us abandon the notion that Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus and the prostitute are one and the same.

 Which leaves us with the question, who was Mary of Magdalene and what was her role? Luke’s Gospel tells us that she was one of the many women who followed Jesus and ministered to him (Luke 8: 37-50). She was present at his crucifixion; with two others she went to his tomb and found it empty. Mark and John tell us she was the first to see him risen. John’s formulation ‘I have seen the Lord’ is reminiscent of Paul’s language when he is claiming apostolic status. Here we see Mary as the apostle to the apostles – the first witness to the resurrection and the one given the responsibility of giving the news to the other disciples.

 This suggests that Mary’s role in the community was an important one – both before the crucifixion and after the resurrection. The image that is sometimes given of the supportive but somewhat peripheral women around Jesus may need a little revision.

 The gospels do not tell us much at all. In the first 14 of the 16 chapters of Mark’s gospel, he tells of Jesus and those who accompanied him. Although there are women aplenty in the stories (Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, the woman with a haemorrhage), they do not appear as disciples and we get the impression this is a purely male movement. But then comes the thunderclap: not a single male disciple accompanies Jesus to his death – but there are women disciples at the cross.

 Women are described in chapter 15 of Mark’s gospel as following and serving Jesus. In Mark these two terms are used consistently as technical terms for the right relationship of the disciples to Jesus. They are descriptions of the life of the disciple that are mutually enhancing and explanatory. ‘Following’ does not simply mean wandering after Jesus, and ‘serving’ does not simply mean lending a helping hand or caring for bodily needs. ‘Following’ in the sense of discipleship involves a change of living situation: those who travelled with Jesus abandoned home, family, property and security. ‘Service’, was the surrender of time, strength and abilities for the proclamation of the reign of God, including preaching, healing the sick and the offer of divine peace. The women, along with the men, followed and served.

 Even though the gospels have generally obliterated the memory of women, we can still follow their traces. In trying to follow these trails we are constantly hampered by translators and commentators who bring their own baggage to the task. Why, for instance, would you translate the same word in different ways simply because it was describing action by a man in one case and a woman in another? And yet this is what has happened time after time. For example, ‘diakonos’ has been translated as ‘deacon’ (ie an official position) when describing a man, and as ‘servant’ when describing a woman.

 Once we strip away these biases, it seems most likely that from the beginning the charismatic community inspired by Jesus included men and women, all of whom were part of Jesus’  mission and contributing as best they might. Mary Magdalene’s prominence in the lists of female disciples in Mark, Matthew and Luke is analogous to the primacy of Simon Peter in the lists of male disciples and suggests she occupied a central role in the community.

 Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a couple – either married or not. This is purely speculative and not a particularly useful path to go down.

But what I would like to say today is that the history of the way in which Mary Magdalene has been remembered throughout the centuries is a cautionary tale. The great 20^th century scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza exhorted us all to practise a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ – or, put somewhat less elegantly, ‘don’t believe everything you are told’.

 The scriptures and the traditions that have built up over 2000 years offer us extraordinary insights into the nature of God and of God’s relationship with humanity. But they are not infallible and we are called, as people of faith, to learn from them, to engage with them, to wrestle with them and constantly to bring new insights to them, knowing that in doing this we are drawing ever closer to the God who loves us and calls us to follow and to serve as Mary Magdalene followed and served.  Amen.

  Sarah Macneil