Mary of Magdala
Easter Sunday, 8th April, 2007
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Mary Magdalene, Mary of Magdala, is surely one of the most misunderstood and mistreated women in Christian history – and the list of women mistreated by the Church is pretty long! Her erroneous reputation as a prostitute – there is no evidence. The erroneous suggestion that she was Jesus' girlfriend, or even his wife – once again, no evidence. And the almost total ignoring, until comparatively recently, of the fact that it was she – Mary Magdalene, a woman – to whom Jesus first appeared, and who was the first witness of the resurrection.
The stories of the empty tomb and of the resurrection appearances of Jesus vary from one gospel to the next – none of the writers was an eyewitness, and each of them employs different stories and story versions from the tradition to underline their particular theological take on the Resurrection. But on this one point all four Gospels agree – Mary was either the very first, or one of a small group of women who were the first, to enter the empty tomb, to see the risen Lord, and to be the one sent by Jesus, or at least by a man in dazzling white, to tell the male disciples the Good News. Not for nothing is she known by her supporters in the tradition as the Apostle to the Apostles.
On this Easter Day our primary focus, of course, is not on Mary, but on her friend and teacher, Jesus; on the risen Lord and Saviour; on the one who's tomb was empty, the one who sent Mary out.
Yet to try to explain exactly what happened to Jesus on that day is nigh-on impossible. The witnesses vary from Mark's stark story of the empty tomb in which Jesus does not appear, and with Mary and her friends leaving in fear, through to the extended version of the story we heard from John, where there are details of people and events, of resurrection appearances, and of the apostolic commission.
So I want this morning, just briefly, to approach the question of "Jesus' resurrection" through the lens of Mary Magdalene in John's Gospel, and to ask, what does her experience say to us? Because, let's face it, whilst following Christ is the task of the Christian, in practice most of us can only manage to follow the example of the greatest of those followers who have gone before. We cannot be like Jesus – we are not God – but we can be like his followers, like Mary of Magdala.
In John's story, Mary arrives at the tomb early, before sunrise, alone, and finds the stone rolled away from the entrance. She surmises that the body of Jesus has been removed, perhaps by the authorities, keen that he not become a martyr for his followers. She does not check. She runs, to two other of Jesus' friends – Simon Peter, and "the disciple whom Jesus loved", identified in the tradition as John.
Three things to note here: first, Mary's initial action is incredibly brave. How many of us would go to visit a tomb, with the body barely cold, before dawn? Her action is dutiful in the extreme – even one of devotion. Her love for Jesus overcomes her fear, or perhaps in her sleeplessness she decides that a little action is better than too much reflection. At any rate, unlike all the rest, she is there.
Second, when she finds the stone removed, she does not go in. Fear takes over, and she runs. Is this not a natural response, a human response? Mary's devotion is here tempered by her humanity, and her very natural terror at the prospect first, of being caught in a place she should perhaps not have been, and second, that the one whom she had served was still being mistreated and the subject of abuse, even after his death. "We do not know where they have laid him". The "they" is clearly a reference to officialdom, the Romans who had had him crucified, or the temple authorities who had sought that outcome. Lacking knowledge her response is fear; lacking knowledge, she does what we all do – she runs.
But third, to whom does she run? Her flight is not from reality into fantasy, from pain into oblivion, but into the hands of trusted friends. Where she might well have hidden, she chooses instead to bring her community, the community of her master, into play. Her help will come from those who loved him as she did. She need not face this new fear alone.
And if that were the end of her involvement, as Simon and John rush to the tomb and find it empty as she said, then her story would be a fine example, but not really that remarkable. What makes it truly extraordinary is the next bit. After Peter and John depart for their homes, she stays, and the Lord appears, for the first time, and to her alone. Her response is one of confusion – she does not recognise him. But in his voice, as he calls her by name, the scales fall from her eyes and she sees who it is that calls her: even her teacher of old, even the one by whose tomb she stands. When the exchange is over she leaves the tomb again, not running this time, not in fear, and she finds her friends again, and tells them her story.
Mary's witness is extraordinary. Her emotional range on that day incredibly broad – sleepless solitary agitation, devotion, fear, trust, trepidation, curiosity, stoicism, joy, and finally, authority, as she carries to the men she loves the news that the one they all love most is with them still.
Without Mary Magdalene, Jesus Christ would still be risen, but with her, this story of divine action almost overwhelming in its audacity is rendered accessible to human view. Through Mary we too can glimpse the risen Lord. We may not recognise him at first but, in the fear, the trepidation, the aloneness, we too are able to find strength. We too are able to see the one who calls us, and to recognise his voice as he calls our name. And we too are enabled, if we will, to tell our friends the Good News.
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