Apostle to the Apostles (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Apostle to the Apostles

July 22, 2020

Today is the feast day of Mary Magdalene.  She is mentioned frequently in the Gospels, all four of which agree that she is the one who first discovered Jesus’ Resurrection.  Luke 7 introduces her as one of the women disciples from Galilee who remained with Jesus throughout his ministry and death: “A woman from Magdala, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons.”  Just before introducing Mary of Magdala, Luke tells the story of a “sinful woman”, who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair, unbound in the style of a sex worker. 

She is often conflated with other disciples named Mary.  In John 12, Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus), just before Jesus’ arrest, soothes Jesus’ body with precious ointment from an alabster jar, “thus anointing his body for burial.”   Mark (14:3-9) and Matthew (26:6-13) also set the anointing story just days before Jesus’ death, and say that wherever the Gospel is preached, this story will be recounted ‘in memory of her.’  But the name of this loving woman is lost in the story, the result of later androcentric clerics tidying the stories to meet their ideas of the subordination of women.   

Some later, non-canonical Gnostic gospels suggest that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife.  But by the 7^th century,  Christians, “connecting the dots” of Luke’s juxtaposing his introducing Mary of Magdala with his story of the  “sinful woman” washing Jesus’ feet, picture her as a reformed prostitute (presumably, sex work was one of the seven demons from which Jesus had saved her), though this connection is not supported directly by scripture or any early writing. 

A later apocryphal story explaining the origin of Easter eggs has Mary Magdalene defending the Resurrection of Jesus before the Roman Emperor Tiberius.  She holds up an egg, and says the tomb with Christ’s corpse was like an egg with a chick about to be hatched.  Tiberius replies sarcastically, “That’s about as likely as that egg turning scarlet in your hand!”  The egg instantly turns red.    Originally, the coloring of eggs red probably stood for the martyrdom of Christ as a necessary precursor to his resurrection.  The icons of Mary Magdalene holding a scarlet egg reminded the devout that Mary had been freed of seven demons, with “sins as red as scarlet being made white as snow” (cf. Isa.  1:18). 

The Magdalene is a great example for us:  apostle to the apostles, first witness to the resurrection, great witness to those far off and those near.  For those who accept the link between her and the “sinful woman” of Luke 7, she also is a symbol of the great mercy of God, and how deep forgiveness and redemption go. 

Here is a sonnet about the Magdalene by Malcolm Guite, poet, theologian, and songwriter who serves as the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty.

Mary Magdalene

Men called you light so as to load you down,
And burden you with their own weight of sin,
A woman forced to cover and contain
Those seven devils sent by Everyman.
But one man set you free and took your part
One man knew and loved you to the core
The broken alabaster of your heart
Revealed to Him alone a hidden door,
Into a garden where the fountain sealed,
Could flow at last for him in healing tears,
Till, in another garden, he revealed
The perfect Love that cast out all your fears,
And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing,
As light and lovely as the news you bring.

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+