Sermon for the 21st of July - Feast of Mary Magdalene

MARY MAGDALENE: fallen woman, feminist icon and so much more

I wonder if anyone – most likely among the female members of the congregation here today – can remember a girl’s comic, published between from 1958-2001, called Bunty? In it, there was a long-running story called The Four Marys. It was about four school girls, who were all called Mary but who had quite distinct personalities. While I was writing this sermon I suddenly wondered if the writer of this children’s comic strip had taken inspiration from reading about the many Marys who appear in the Gospels!
Let me remind you who some of them they are:

• Mary, the mother of Jesus

• Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus

• Mary, the mother of James and Joseph (who is probably the same person as ‘the other Mary’ and Mary, wife of Cleopas)

• Mary Magdalene.

Confusing, isn’t it? And so you won’t be surprised to hear that Mary (Mariam or Myriam) was the most common woman’s name in the Middle East in the 1st century AD? So, there were at least four Marys.

But let us return to Mary Magdalene, whose feast day is celebrated tomorrow 22 July – although even a 100 years ago we would not have been doing so. Her story is one of confusion, conflation, condemnation and, finally, re-constitution.

Confusion: because she was identified as the nameless ‘sinful woman’, who anointed Christ’s feet with myrrh and dried them with her hair in Luke 7. We can thank Pope Gregory I (circa 540-604) for this conflation and it gets worse for, in his Easter sermon of 591, he declared: ‘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 And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices?’ (More of those devils later.)

Condemnation: from this time onwards, Mary Magdalene was seen as a prostitute, who repented of her ways, a fallen woman who fell at the feet of Jesus begging for forgiveness – and she has been portrayed as such by artists, writers and theologians down the ages.

In her fascinating book, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, published in 1993, Susan Haskins describes the perpetuation of this case of mistaken identity:

‘The predominant image we have of her is of a beautiful woman with long golden hair, weeping for her sins, the very incarnation of the age-old equation between feminine beauty, sexuality and sin. For nearly 2000 years, the traditional conception of Mary Magdalene has been that of the prostitute who, hearing the words of Jesus Christ, repented of her sinful past and henceforth devoted her life and love to him. She appears in countless devotional images, scarlet-cloaked and with loose hair, kneeling below the cross, or seated at Christ’s feet in the house of Mary and Martha of Bethany, or as the beauteous prostitute herself sprawled at his feet, unguent jar by her side in the house of the Pharisee. Her very name evokes images of beauty and sensuality, yet when we look for this creature in the New Testament, we look for her in vain…’

So, in this respect at least, Pope Gregory the Great proved not to be infallible! Nevertheless, despite the best efforts of theologians and feminists, Mary’s image of bad-girl-made-good-girl still persists and this tarnishes her reputation and robs her of the very important role she played.

Ever since her conflation with the fallen woman numerous tales have been spun around her in an erotically charged web. Let me give you a few examples: she was the beloved apostle closest to and specially chosen by Jesus, or even that she was the sexual partner or wife of Jesus. You might recall the 1970 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, in which the Mary Magdalene character sings I don’t know how to love him? And in the Da Vinci Code, published in 2003, she marries Jesus, they have children and the Holy Grail is revealed to be, not a chalice, but a sarcophagus containing the bones of Mary. In the later Gnostic gospels, including one attributed to Mary Magdalene herself, it is stated that she was secretly given an esoteric teaching not shared with the other disciples – this was used as the basis of the plot of the 2018 film, Mary Magdalene, where the apostles are jealous of her special relationship with Jesus. But, enough of modern depictions, what do we really know about Mary?

First, she was most likely from Magdala (meaning ‘tower’) a fishing village on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee, between Tiberias and Capernaum. In recent years, archaeologists excavating this area have found that it was once a prosperous place with a 1st-century synagogue (the only early one in the Galilee), a religious school, ritual baths, a market place and harbour. So, Mary did not come from a poor background, which is confirmed by Luke when he tells us that she supported the ministry of Jesus ‘from her resources’.

Luke and Mark both tell us that after Jesus had cast seven demons out from Mary, she joined a group of women who travelled with him and the disciples. I told you we would return to those demons. Now, here are many theories about what they might, or might not, have been – perhaps they were symptoms of a nervous ailment or a psychiatric illness, for example, or perhaps they refer to the Seven Deadly Sins. But whatever they were, Mary Magdalene was cleansed of all seven of them by Jesus, himself. She was a clean slate. And, after that, she was his devoted follower: Mary sought the one whom her soul loved and, once she found him, she did not leave his side. From then on, she was with Jesus, a witness to all the key events in his life, including the Crucifixion, his death and burial and, most importantly, as we have just heard in John’s Gospel, it was Mary Magdalene who discovered the empty tomb and was the first person to see the resurrected Christ. To begin with, she does not recognise him. Then he says her name: ‘Mary’ and she replies simply ‘Rabboni’, meaning ‘teacher’, and she runs to tell the disciples the good news.

This is why she is known as the ‘Apostle to the apostles’, a title bestowed upon her by Pope Francis in 2016, who also designated 22 July as her feast day. Which is why I am standing here trying to pay homage to the mysterious Mary Magdalene who has finally been restored to her true place not only in the Church’s calendar but, perhaps, also in our hearts and minds. The woman once thought fallen has now risen to stand alongside the highest.