Rabouni

  

REFLECTIONS  ON THE FEAST OF St MARY MAGDALENE

 July 22 1989
HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST

 

 (REPRESENTATIVE) READINGS

Judith 9:1, 11–14
Psalm 42:1–7
2 Corinthians 5:14–18
John 20:11–18

 

Few characters within the New Testament drama, within the history of Christianity, have been more distorted and abused by tradition than the woman we have come to know as Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene. Perhaps only Jesus himself has been more distorted, more removed from the historical, more re-created in whatever image the Church deems appropriate.

Mary.

Immediately, because of her name, she is doomed to live in the shadow of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Messiah’s mother had very little to do with his ministry, being rather more a bemused onlooker than an active supporter. John alone records her as being present at the crucifixion.

Yet the gospel-records  are unanimous in giving Mary of Magdala a key role in the unfolding of Jesus’ pronouncement of love, of salvation, of the Kingdom.

She is doomed also to be confused with that other Mary, Mary the sister of Martha, the one who in John’s account anoints Jesus’ feet with costly ointment. Mary and Martha of Bethany are the sisters of Lazarus, who Jesus had earlier raised from death. Her overflowing gratitude can be imagined, and the outpouring of the oils intended for her brother’s body is a symbol of that gratitude.

That symbol in turn fuses with Luke’s record, at Luke 7:36–50, of a similar incident in which a woman bursts into a dinner attended by Jesus, and anoints his feet with tears and ointment. She is not identified by Luke, depicted only as one who “had a bad name” in her community. She does not appear to be Mary of Bethany, for Jesus is far from Bethany in the preceding scenes. She is clearly not Mary of Magdala, for though Jesus is close to Magdala at the time, Mary of Magdala is introduced  by Luke in the following scene (Luke 8).

Nevertheless the Church has traditionally mixed these three in a theological blender and produced the tradition of Mary Magdalene.

The great sinner.

It is unfair to Mary, and unfair to women.

The Church has also traditionally upheld “Mary “ – this blended and mythical Mary – as the example par excellence of the sins of the flesh. The redeemed, lusty, professional prostitute, who plied her trade on would-be righteous males. She attains salvation only in her failure to seduce the Messiah, and in her resultant dramatic rejection of her former wayward life.

She becomes the fallen woman picked up by Christ, the woman who stands as a warning to every Christian’s daughter. She stands in this tradition as a condemner of sexuality, or more specifically of female sexuality. Her love for Jesus is acceptable only when body and spirit are compartmentalised.

When her love is carnal it is evil, but when spiritual it is an example to us all.

Though common, these are falsified images of Mary. They have done enormous damage to Christianity – to the Church’s attitude towards women, and to our attitudes towards salvation. We have found it all but impossible to incorporate our bodies into our love of God. Protestants in particular have fervently denied the place of the body in worship, indeed in all of life. Art, dance, even the symbolic actions of genuflection and the sign of the cross as offerings of love, are largely absent from Protestant worship.

It is not coincidental that in the 1980s, as society searches for wholistic existence, the Church that Christ loved into being has been marginalised.

Who, then was Mary? Who can she be for us at the close of the 1980s?

Luke introduces her to us.

Soon afterward he went on through one town and village after another, 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 …

 

The reference to demons is almost certainly a reference to mental illness. The fact that Mary had been delivered of seven demons indicates that she was suffering chronic mental illness. Her deliverance is not recorded, but we might guess that she was afflicted by recurring epilepsy or manic depression. The patterns of Jesus’ exorcisms suggest that he would have physically touched this ostracised woman, perhaps embraced her, helped her to her feet.

He allowed her to be herself, to choose to follow him, to love him. She left the wealthy town of Magdala and became one of the leaders amongst his followers. Her name always heads the list of women, and it is to her, not Peter, that Jesus entrusts the Good News of Resurrection.

But with what pain? The woman, whose life is so attuned to Jesus, remains with him to the end. Unlike the twelve men, she does not desert him, and is with him at the Cross. She continues to love even the dead body, and her calm is broken only when she sees that to have been taken from her.

Not for her the foolish rivalry of the race between Peter and John. For her only the sacrifice of tears. Her words to the gardener are words of stern command, words of a woman not to be taken lightly.

“Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.”

Only then is the tenderness of Jesus’ love for her revealed.

“Mary.”

She replies,

“Rabouni.” My teacher.

But it is in the firmness of his next words, and her acceptance of them, that his strength is revealed.

“Do not cling to me … but go tell the brethren …”

The apostleship of Mary is birthed before that of Peter, of the others. It is birthed in the pain a woman knows best, the pain of being torn from one who is loved. It is birthed in obedience. It is birthed in misunderstanding, for Luke’s account tells us, “This story seemed to the apostles pure nonsense.”

This story of the woman who was sent by Jesus is still largely being ignored: an apostleship born of love.

In the light of The Last Temptation of Christ, of Superstar, of Michelle Roberts’ The Wild Girl, we might ask the question, “what was the nature of Mary’s relationship to Jesus?”

The answer is that we do not know and need not know. But we must be sure that we are not afraid to think of Jesus as a sexual being. For if Jesus is not a sexual being then he is not fully human. God created us as whole beings, and gave to us the gift of sexuality, with all the gifts of life.

In all of our being we are redeemed by Christ. To learn about the responsibilities of having been redeemed we could do worse than reflect on the truth and on the abuses of the Mary Magdalene tradition.

Mary tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

 

The Lord be with you.