Can't make it to church - Sunday 22, July 2018: Mary Magdalene . . .

. . . Happy Hooker or faithful follower of Jesus?

In using the label 'Hooker' I'm not suggesting she played rugby but acknowledge the popular press she has, and has had for many centuries, regarding her being a bit of a wrong 'un!

I've never come across anything but nudges and knowing nods regarding this woman and her dodgy past and yet, despite searching, I've never found this directly supported anywhere in the Bible; which always rings alarm bells.

Today, as the Church remembers and celebrates Mary Magdalene, there will be some who continue to present her as a woman with a dodgy past and others who will seek to elevate her because of the modern passion for 'bigging up women' (a term used by a shaven-headed feminist theologian I encountered during my Westminster days who claimed that her subject was more than such things :-) ).

If we look to the Bible, which is always a good and most essential starting place, in Luke 8 we find this mention of her:
“After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.”

Nowhere do we find Magdalene associated with prostitution - but we do have her mentioned as being a follower and a financial supporter. But there are so many Marys in the Bible. They range from Mary (the theotokos - that is ‘godbearer’) to Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha - who poured oil over Jesus’ feet -  who helps the confusion as we find a woman assumed to be a prostitute doing the same thing elsewhere.

The confusion comes to a climax when on the 14th September 1591 the Pope, Gregory the Great, gave Mary Magdalene the prostitute label. Let’s look at Gregory’s words:

“She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark, and what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? ... It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts . . .”

So here we find our prostitute labelled and paraded, perhaps as am example of the Church’s inclusivity as found in the claim that ‘nothing separates us from the love of God‘. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time a bit of overzealous (yet inaccurate) preaching made an indelible mark, would it?

So here we have a woman about to be rehabilitated - not a bad thing from the point of us wanting to ensure that there is integrity in what we believe and proclaim as truth and, having seen the film, supports the modern feminist zeitgeist too. So its a win for Pope Francis as overturns the error of a previous incumbent and, completes a move began in the late sixties to accept her as someone of integrity and value, and proclaims a feast day in her honour a couple of years back (2016).

Scanning the media I found the Vatican magazine ‘Catholic Women Speak’ where the editor says of Magdalene’s rehabilitation:
“By doing this, he (Pope Francis) established the absolute equality of Mary Magdalene to the apostles, something that has never been done before and is also a point of no return” for women in the church!”

Take a look at John 20:
"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?

For whom are you looking?’

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).

Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her."

So the woman who meets the risen Christ is a good ‘un. Huzzah for that (never thought any different but then again I see Thomas as a hero not a doubting piece of cancerous work too!). To be honest I am, and always have been, more taken up with the fact that it was her who first met with the risen Christ. That it was a woman was neither a positive or a negative - it was what it was and the episode merely confers something special and life-changing on, and from, her. What is important (and I'll repeat it because it is important) is that we have integrity in our beliefs and correct our wrongs when they are recognised as such.

Undoubtedly there will be some who are saddened by this because there’s more value in the wayward coming to Jesus that the goody two-shoes characters (been there - was told I had no ‘real’ witness because I’d never done drugs or ‘seriously gone of the rails’!!).

She was a good inclusive role model, the inclusion being because of her past. But of course now she will be for some a talisman for those who wish to promote women’s rights and overcome misogyny past and present. For me she will be the hero of the faith she always was and I’ll merely continue to regard her as someone who walked with Jesus and is a sister in Christ with the additional joy that yet  another wrong has been righted.

The Collect
Almighty God, whose Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of mind and body and called her to be a witness to his resurrection: forgive our sins and heal us by your grace, that we may serve you in the power of his risen life; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Don't you long for the day when the whole Church celebrates the Virgin Mary and others as one of our heroes? we need to look to the example of others regardless of their colour, sex or life history. Isn't this what Church is all about?

And now one last contentious call:

Now that the desk has been cleared and this wrong has been righted, I wonder if some of the (many) other errors owned by the Church (universal) and by the Catholic Church in particular might not also be addressed now?

Just asking :-)