Mary Magdalene 2008
Tuesday is the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene. This is obviously a special day in this Parish as we have a Church dedicated to her. It is a time for giving thanks for the worship that has taken place in Mawdlam over the past 750 years, and to pray for the future. But this morning I want to think about Mary Magdalene’s example and lesson for the wider Church today, and for the wider Church of tomorrow.
Mary Magdalene it seems never fitted in with the idea that many people had of what a disciple of Jesus should be like or even look like. We start with the obvious fact that she was a woman, and in the time of Jesus the fact that he treated her so well, and on an equal par with men, was enough to cause scandal – through the years since, that rumour of scandalous behaviour has been developed without even the slightest shred of evidence.
And then there was of course this suggestion that Mary Magdalene had had some kind of a shady past. Again, this has caused some sort of debate as it did when Jesus was here on earth – he meets with sinners, he eats with them, and they are his friends. Scandalous ! And yet actually that is the heart of the gospel – Jesus spending time with sinners, and helping them to get their lives more closely aligned with his…
So from these 2 points alone we have some great lessons about how we, as a Church today, must try to live. Primarily it is to be welcoming to all. In the current climate of Church politics throughout the world that is a difficult concept – for example, some think the idea of female Priests is not acceptable, let alone the prospect of female Bishops – an idea recently rejected by the Governing Body of the Church in Wales.
But Jesus it seems welcomed and gave opportunities to all. The qualifications to be his disciple were not gender, they were not academic, they were based on a person’s willingness to give their lives over to Jesus to be changed. In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians (5:14-17), we heard, ‘… if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: everything old has passed away…’
Transformation and new life is at the centre of the good news of Jesus, and it is transformation and new life that we continually seek and receive if we really allow God to penetrate our lives. Jesus spent time with Mary Magdalene and she was accepted by his other disciples as part of the family. She was accepted because every member of that family of Jesus, his first disciples, knew that whatever she had done in the past was in the past, just as whatever sin they had committed was also in the past.
They were sinners united together by their love for Jesus, and his incredible love for them, seeking to add more members to their family, and to welcome them in with joy... And that is, or should be, a picture of the Church today. Sinners, united together, forgiven together, living and serving Jesus, loving Jesus, and loving one another.
But of course human nature rarely works like that – the world outside doesn’t and sadly often the Church doesn’t either. The concept of welcome and encouragement for all, the idea of going out of our way to encourage new people to do new things in our Churches, is one that is so often dismissed in favour of the ‘I or we have done it this way for years, why should we change’ mentality.
Jesus welcomed all who came to him, and his followers were expected to do the same. Mary Magdalene may not have been everybody’s idea of a disciple of Jesus, but he didn’t care. As she came to him, he welcomed her, he gave her responsibility, not based on anything she’d done or been in the past, but on her willingness to be changed by him… Every one of us must come to Jesus in that way, and welcome others who are doing the same.
And as Jesus welcomed Mary Magdalene into his family, and asked others to do the same, he also refused to judge her. I love the story of a man called Bishop Potter which I have mentioned before. "He was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean liners. When he went on board, he found that another passenger was to share the cabin with him. After going to see the accommodation, he came up to the purser's desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship's safe.
He explained that usually he never availed himself of that privilege, but he had been to his cabin and had met the man who was to occupy the other berth. Judging from his appearance, he was afraid that he might not be a very trustworthy person. The purser accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, 'It's all right, bishop, I'll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has been up here and left his for the same reason!'"
Billy Graham, the American Evangelist, was speaking at Harvard Law School, about the text, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me’. He was asked by one of the listeners if this meant followers of other religions would therefore be condemned to hell, and he replied, ‘I am glad that it is God who judges, and not me.’
It is God who judges, not us, and yet, every one of us will have heard talk about somebody and how they behave, and perhaps we’ve even been the ones doing the talking… It is God alone who judges. We can only do what we think and believe right. We can discuss it with others, we can encourage others to follow the path we’re on if we think it’s the right path, but we have no business judging people.
This month the Lambeth Conference is being held – a meeting of Bishops from the Anglican Communion throughout the world which is held every 10 years. This year though, as many of you will have heard and read, something like a quarter of Bishops in the world have refused to attend. They don’t want to sit at the same table as others who they believe are wrong.
The average Anglican in the world today is a black woman in Africa, under the age of thirty, who supports three children on a salary equivalent to £1 per a day and who finds the story of her life written in the pages of the Old Testament. The tragedy is that the average Anglican represented at Lambeth is more likely a white man in his late 50’s or 60’s from a Western City with a three-car garage.
After the christening of his baby brother in church, a little boy sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied, 'That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you.'
The sad part of that joke is that many don’t see the Church as very Christian. They so often see a family divided – the family of God torn apart by human failings – people failing to welcome others, people judging, people gossiping, people making decisions against the wishes of so many of the family, and others judging them and condemning them for doing so…
We have a duty to work together for the extension of God’s kingdom. We have a duty, a command of Jesus, to love one another. It’s not negotiable ! And in love there is no place for a failure to welcome. In love there is no place for jealousy about someone doing something we want to do, or think we should do. In love there is no place for rumours to be spread, or judgements to be made about others…
Mary Magdalene was welcomed, she was not judged, and Mary Magdalene was faithful, faithful enough to stand at the foot of the cross, as other followers of Jesus ran and hid, and she saw the risen Jesus, and she ran to tell the others…
‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation’. May our lives always be witnesses for the love of Christ which has changed, and is continuing to change us. AMEN
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