Dear Friends,
On Friday, July 22, we keep the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. In addition to the lunchtime service, there will be a Solemn Eucharist with the Gentlemen of the Choir at 5:30 p.m. followed by cheese, wine, and soft drinks in the Narthex. We have a visiting preacher – Father Graham Buckle from St. Stephen and St. John, Westminster, in England. Incidentally, he was in the news recently because he and his swim buddies swam the English Channel, and while they were swimming there was a dangerous shoal of jelly fish and a Force 7 storm!
If you have not yet attended one of our summer feasts, please come – they are very, very special, with beautiful music, last just about an hour, and the buzz in the narthex afterwards is delightful. Some folks go out for an early dinner afterwards.
Mary Magdalene has had bad press in the history of the Church since Pope Gregory I at the end of the 6th century misread the Gospels, and portrayed her in his Easter Sermon in 591 as the ‘woman with the bad reputation’ who bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, drying them with her hair, at the home of Simon the Pharisee when Jesus attended a dinner there (See Luke 7:36-47). He also thought that she and Mary of Bethany were one and the same person! I have heard many people describe Mary Magdalene as ‘the sinner’ or a former prostitute. The Roman Catholic Church did not correct this officially until 1969 when Pope Paul VI set the record straight. However, popular culture is hard to resist and, in the 1970s, this was further compounded by the song “I don’t know how to love him” in the rock opera ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. As an aside, I remember the evangelical church that I attended being very dismissive of that particular musical because it ended with the crucifixion and the entombment but no resurrection appearance! That aside is actually quite significant as we shall see shortly.
Anyway, the idea that Mary Magdalene was a ‘sinful woman’ is unfortunately entrenched in many peoples’ minds. I remember once preaching a sermon explaining she was never a prostitute, only to have the person leading the Prayers of the People start the prayers, “Oh Lord, we know that you hate the sin but love the sinner!” So, if she was not the nameless woman with the bad reputation in Luke’s Gospel, who is this woman and why do we celebrate her feast with the same solemnity as St. Peter and St. Paul? Put simply, she shares a role that they had – she witnessed the Resurrection and told others about it. In fact, Mary Magdalene is the first witness to the Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels. Some have described her as the ‘Apostle to the Apostles’ because of her wonderful phrase “I have seen the Lord!”
Mary of Magdala is mentioned numerous times in the Gospels – the same number of times as our own Saint Thomas – and she was one of the women who accompanied Jesus in his ministry who helped him and the other disciples financially. That means that she must have been a wealthy woman; but what we certainly know is that she was a faithful woman, and one who stood by the Lord when the other disciples fled. We are also told that Jesus healed her:
“Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.” (Luke 8:1-3)
There have been many fanciful stories about Mary Magdalene from the earliest days of the Church through to Dan Brown’s novel ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ However, there is nothing fanciful about her true vocation – to be the witness to the Resurrection!
On our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we visited Magdala. I have to admit, that I was not particularly looking forward to that visit, thinking that the Gospels never said that Jesus visited that town. However, as we approached, our guide explained the huge cliff that stretched along one side of the Wadi Hammam, leading to Magdala. Jesus would have walked along the Wadi from Nazareth to Capernaum, the center of his ministry in Galilee. It then dawned on me that the wonderful, almost throw-away line, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23) meant that he was likely to have visited the place. Then, of course, there is the mention of Mary of Magdala!
When we arrived at Magdala, we were astonished by the recent archeological excavations which have revealed a thriving town with running water and a fish market, the town being on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The excavations have also revealed a very grand synagogue that predates the time of Jesus. So, since the ministry of Jesus began in Galilee, and he travelled extensively throughout Galilee, and his first disciples worked on the Sea of Galilee, it is extremely likely that he visited Magdala. Perhaps that is where Mary herself heard him preach and where Jesus led her to follow him.
There is a beautiful Roman Catholic Church built at Magdala, with an extraordinary hotel, retreat center, and museum that contains the fossilized remains of a boat that has been carbon-dated to the time of Jesus! The Church has beautiful frescos all over the walls, but the altar is remarkable in the shape of a boat, sitting on water.
As we sat contemplating all that we had seen, I imagined Jesus meeting Mary of Magdala, and healing her, and her commitment to him that was rewarded by his appearance to her first after his Resurrection.
Carl,
Your pastor and priest
