St. John’s Lutheran Church
21 July 2024 + Mary Magdalene, Apostle
John 20:1-2, 11-18
Rev. Josh Evans
If Jesus is “the reason for the [Christmas] season,”
then Mary Magdalene is the reason for the Easter season.
Mary Magdalene,
witness to the resurrection,
apostle to the apostles –
without whom no good news would have been proclaimed.
“Woman, weeping in the garden,
who has pushed the stone aside?
Who has taken Jesus’ body,
Jesus Christ the crucified?
“Woman, waiting in the garden,
after men have come and gone,
after angels give their witness,
silently you watch the dawn.”
(David Charles Damon, All Creation Sings #935)
Mary Magdalene alone
watches the dawn.
Mary Magdalene alone
stands at the empty tomb
that first Easter morning –
not knowing what to expect,
not knowing what was happening,
eyes clouded with tears,
weighed down by grief and fatigue.
Mary Magdalene,
often overlooked with a feast day in the middle of the week
(except for those rare occurrences when it falls on a Sunday).
Mary Magdalene,
a source of speculation,
even defamation:
Mary Magdalene the prostitute –
a claim with absolutely zero grounding in scripture,
only taking root in western Christianity,
thanks to Pope Gregory the Great,
in a sermon from the 6th century.
Mary Magdalene the secret lover of Jesus –
a theory popularized by Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code –
as though somehow a disciple who is a woman
must be sexualized and sensationalized –
which – even if it were true –
is somehow a “bad” and “scandalous” thing.
Poet and Rochester native Marie Howe,
in one poem from her 2017 collection Magdalene,
writes from the perspective of the mysterious biblical figure:
“Was he my husband, my lover, my teacher?
One book will say one thing. Another book another.”
(“The Teacher,” from New and Selected Poems, p. 159)
While resisting pinning down
exactly who Mary was,
and what was her relationship to Jesus,
Howe’s poems mix Mary’s voice with her own,
pulling the biblical figure into our own time –
not so much seeking to paint a historical portrait,
like some kind of literary archeological dig,
but exploring what Mary,
in all that is said and not said of her,
might have to teach us today.
Mary Magdalene,
witness to the resurrection,
apostle to the apostles.
What can we learn from this ancient apostle
about being disciples today?
What about Mary Magdalene
would compel us to pull a feast day from a Monday
and reassign it to its adjacent Sunday?
***
Truthfully,
what we do know of Mary Magdalene,
from the Bible,
is sparse.
Of her twelve mentions across all four gospels, many are repetitive:
placing Mary as an eyewitness to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
The only other concrete details we get come from Luke,
where Mary is explicitly named among “some women”
who followed Jesus through towns and villages,
“proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God,”
and who funded Jesus’ ministry “out of their own resources.”
Mary, Luke also tells us,
is the one “from whom seven demons had gone out.”
(Luke 8:1-3)
(Marie Howe has another fascinating poem about that.)
But as far as biographical details go,
that’s it.
The gnostic gospels –
the ones that didn’t make the cut in the New Testament –
offer a bit more:
placing Mary explicitly among Jesus’ disciples,
giving her extended and insightful dialogue,
even naming her as the “beloved disciple” –
naturally fueling the speculation around her relationship to Jesus,
as much as the other “beloved disciple” we speculate about in John.
For all we know and don’t know about Mary Magdalene,
it is clear that she was important –
whether in canonical Scripture,
or in sources outside of the Bible –
from the earliest Christian traditions to the present,
even elevated by Pope Francis, in 2016, to a full feast day,
alongside her fellow (male) apostles.
For all we know and don’t know about Mary Magdalene,
it is clear that she was important –
and she was present for the most pivotal moments of Jesus’ life –
and Jesus was there for at least one of hers.
***
Which brings us to the garden,
her most prominent story in all of Scripture.
Mary is weeping –
a detail mentioned four times in the span of just five verses.
Her grief is real and human –
anyone who’s experienced the death of a loved one knows Mary’s grief.
And when she arrives early that morning and his body is missing?
It’s like her grief is ripped open all over again.
And so she weeps.
Even when Jesus appears,
she can’t recognize him – at first –
that seems strange, doesn’t it? –
the person she once clung to when he was alive.
(Grief, of course, can do strange things like that.)
Until …
“Woman, walking in the garden,
Jesus takes you by surprise;
when the gard’ner calls you, ‘Mary!’
faith and joy meet in your eyes.”
Until he says her name – and all at once, she knows:
she cries out, and she clings to him!
No wonder she wanted to hold on to him.
She had already lost him and had to say goodbye once before.
And so she clings to him, as if to say:
No.
Not. Again.
Mary clings to Jesus.
She clings to the teacher who healed her,
who changed her life,
who recognized her “demons” and her struggles,
who saw her as a person worthy of love,
who invited her into a life of being a disciple.
Mary shows us what a disciple transformed looks like:
so changed by her relationship with her teacher,
so moved to an abundant expression of love
for the one who so abundantly loved her.
Mary clings to Jesus …
… but Jesus doesn’t exactly reciprocate:
“Do not touch me.”
Harsh.
“Do not cling to me.”
Because: “I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers [and sisters] and say to them,
‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Notice the sense of relationship here,
as John’s gospel has been teaching us all along:
Jesus is the Word of God who became flesh and lived among us,
the very God who became human for a time,
in order to show us what it means to be in relationship with God,
and God with us.
That promise of that abiding relationship didn’t die on the cross,
but is alive at the tomb –
the relationship of the Father with Jesus,
and Jesus with the Father,
and the Father with us,
and us with each other.
The relationship Jesus shares with God is meant
for Mary.
The relationship Jesus shares with God is meant
for you.
That is John’s Easter proclamation:
God is with us still, and not even death can get in the way.
That is a promise worth clinging to.
And Mary Magdalene gets it.
She doesn’t hesitate for a moment
to go tell the other disciples the good news:
“I have seen the Lord!”
God is with us still!
Mary shows us what a disciple in action looks like:
from those early days of following Jesus through towns and villages,
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God –
all leading up to this moment:
announcing the good news of the resurrection.
“Woman, weeping in the garden,
weep for joy, for you have seen
Jesus, the Messiah, risen;
Christ, of whom the prophets dream.
“Woman, dancing from the garden,
find the others and proclaim
Christ is risen as he promised;
tell the world he knew your name!”
Mary.
***
Mary Magdalene,
apostle to the apostles:
sent one to the sent ones,
witnessing resurrection,
sent to bear God’s creative, redeeming, and living love
to all the world.
Mary Magdalene,
ancient apostle,
teaching us still,
sending us still:
Go in joy!
Share the good news!
