Ps 121; Mk 14:3-9; Lk 8:1-3; Mk 15:33-41; Mk 16:1-8, 9; John 20:11-16

CBC, Nov. 22, 2009

This has been a week of important remembrances. People, men and women who have carried great pain in their lives for too long – pain of body and soul –have been recognised. We, the society into which they came and in which they live, have been made aware. Forgotten people have become remembered persons. People who have been ignored for too long, have entered our consciousness. We recognise and respond to their pain, and they feel acknowledged – their worth and dignity affirmed.

Today is the last Sunday on the church’s calendar. Next Sunday is the 1^st Advent when we celebrate the coming of God. But today, on the last Sunday of the church’s year, it is well for us, Christians and churches, to remember forgotten people!

Did you realise that in Mark’s Gospel the first person who understands the "gospel", the "good news"; the first person who understands what "believing in the good news" (Mk 1:15) is all about, is a nameless women; a women who breaks into a male gathering and blesses Jesus for the stony road ahead. Not Peter, not John – their names would have been remembered! No, a woman, whose name has been lost in the abyss of history. One modern theologian (John Dominic Crossan) calls her the "first Christian". But Jesus does not want her to be forgotten. He wants her to be remembered: "Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her" (Mk 14:9).

Let us remind ourselves at this last Sunday of the church’s year of another women. Her name has not been forgotten, but her influence on the church has been ignored and her empowerment of the church has been suppressed – Mary of Magdala. Indeed in the fourth century she began to be identified with the nameless woman who blessed Jesus for the passion ahead.

At the end of the Gospel of Mark, Mary Magdalene is named as the first Easter witness (Mk 16:9). And you know what that means! You know what Easter stands for! Transformation. Empowerment. Celebration. The celebration that life is stronger than death and that love is stronger than hate. Easter is the call to become servants of life.

Isn’t is ironic - ironic indeed, if it were not so tragic, that major churches – the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, the Anglican churches, the Lutheran churches and still too many Baptist churches – who all believe in the authority of Scripture; indeed some of them have made Mary from Magdala a saint, and celebrate her importance for faith on a sacred day in July (22^nd of July) – but they – we! – have suppressed her memory and ignored what God may want to say to us through her. It was too dangerous. And for many it still is too dangerous.

Every church that does not give full equality to women, every church that refuses women the right and privilege to be called to ministry – whether deacon, pastor, priest, bishop or pope – fails to recognise that the foundational event of the Christian faith, the birth hour of the Christian church, is related to the story of a woman who became a messenger of Easter to the other of the disciples. Mary of Magdala can be named an "apostle to the apostles".

Let us call Mary of Magdala into our midst and ask what her story might teach us today. As our brothers and sisters in the charismatic churches in Latin America do, let us invoke her: "Presenté Mary Magdalene". Emerge from "the cloud of witnesses that surround us" and help us to "lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely," so that we may "run with perseverance the race that is set before us."' (Heb 12:1)

The first thing that we notice as we look into the story of Mary Magdalene, is that she was a friend and follower of Jesus. She belonged to the inner circle. Jesus had healed her and liberated her for life's journey. In gratitude for the freedom and the power of life that she had received from the encounter with Jesus, she now became his friend, his follower, his disciple.

For the disciple, Jesus is not merely an example. He is a friend who inspires. A friends who gives himself without asking anything in return. Jesus transforms and empowers people. Faith in Him becomes the determining centre of life. There will be good times and there will be bad times. The disciple stays. Being a friend of Jesus means having an inner personal relationship to Jesus which empowers the believer to a life of meaning and joy.

A father and his child are caught in a snow storm in the alps. The snow beats on the face. The wind howls. The father says to the child: walk right behind me; I will take the brunt of the storm, but if you walk close to me, we will get through – together!

Mary from Magdala invites us today to entrust our lives to Jesus. Whatever the storms may be, he will not abandon us. He will walk us through.

Mary's friendship with Jesus was to be tested.

Jesus was opposed, betrayed, tortured and killed. He had not only healed Mary, but he had healed many others. Human life and human dignity was so important to him that he even broke the law in order to make human life human. The establishment rejected him, made him an outcast and removed him. Where do we find Mary when Jesus was sentenced and killed?

With some other women we find her at the Cross. Not Peter or any of the other males who a few days later were to take over the leadership of the church, but Mary and her women friends were there at the most sacred moment of the story of Christian faith.

When things became tough, when Jesus was opposed and captured and tortured and sentenced, the male disciples left. They fled! They went home to Galilee. Only his women friends remained behind.

If there is to be historical continuity to Jesus through persons you can't bypass Mary!

Is it not interesting! All churches today have put ecumenism on their agenda. We want to be one, because somehow, deep down, we think that Jesus may have been right when he said that the world would have difficulties to take us seriously if we are divided among ourselves. And divided we are! Not only at the margin, but at the centre.

One of the larger rocks that bar the way to reconciliation among the churches, is, what the experts call apostolic succession. Some churches insist that their priests and ministers and bishops and popes must be in historical continuity with Jesus. Not merely in continuity of content, of sharing the same vision of God and of life. No, in historical continuity. Going right back through Peter to Jesus. And since both Peter and Jesus were males, therefore – so some churches still argue – priests and ministers and bishops and popes must be male.

But Peter wasn't even there in the decisive hour at the cross. So if you take the argument of historical continuity seriously, you can't exclude women – Mary Magdalene provides the continuity from Jesus to us.

Anyhow, it would be better not to speak of "historical continuity", but of continuity of truth, of content; continuity in terms of being a friend of Jesus (discipleship) and being obedient and faithful to him (cross).

Mary was a friend of Jesus. (Luke 8:1-3). Mary Magdalene was at the Cross inviting us to a life of discipleship – that was the second station in the story. And now we come to the time and place where the mystery of the cross and the power for being a friend of Jesus is made known – the resurrection.

And the resurrection of Jesus becomes historically manifest through the appearances of Jesus. In these appearances Jesus becomes what he is, the man for others – God's man for others!

Now, the church has traditionally said that Jesus appeared first to Peter. But there is another word in Holy Scripture. A word that has been ignored and forgotten. A word that has proved to be too dangerous for a church led by men.

Indeed, having described Mary as a disciple and having witnessed her presence at the cross, she, Mary from Magdala, not Peter or James or John, no, Mary, is the major witness to the Resurrection. She sees where Jesus body was buried, she and some other women go to the tomb and perform burial rituals. There they discover that the tomb is empty and they, the women, are given the message to tell Peter and the others that God raised Jesus from the dead. Indeed in a later ending to the Gospel of Mark we have the summary statement: "… after Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene …" (Mk 16:9)

First!

The church has never really recognised that. We have repressed it! We have remembered her name, but we have forgotten what that name stands for. To the present day we have the patriarchal structures of the ancient world determine our way of being church. The churches – at least those churches which still quarrel about apostolic succession, women's ordination and whether women can be bishops – have still not understood it. We have preferred to follow Paul when he lists that Jesus

No Mary Magdalene in that list! But the Gospels speak of her, and they speak of her in relation to all the high points of the biblical story of Jesus:

• His life – when she became his friend and disciple.
• His death – where God showed that love is stronger than death.
• His resurrection – where his story became the grand story of faith.

So then, my friends, on the last Sunday of the church’s calendar let us tune into the memory of God. It may be a dangerous memory. But when God is involved it is always an invitation to life. God does not sleep. God comes. And God comes in unexpected ways. When Jesus was raised from the dead and when the risen Christ appeared to Mary of Magdala, God was seeking our attention. But we looked away and we have been looking away ever since.

But the story is still out there, seeking our attention. By remembering Mary Magdalene let us not only remember her name, but also what that name stands for. We may become pleasantly surprised by the ever new and living voice of the Gospel.

• Let the healing power of Jesus touch us and liberate us.
• Become a friend and a disciple of Jesus.
• Maintain a subversive memory that may be open for God in unexpected places.
• Repent that for so long we have conveniently overlooked what is clear in the biblical witness. That Mary from Magdala, a woman, plays a significant role in the foundational events of the Christian church – a role, just as important as the ones of Peter, James, John and Paul.

That was soon forgotten in a male dominated church.

Peter became the founding hero of Roman Catholicism; Paul of Protestantism; John of the charismatic wing. And where is Mary who started it all?

• Let's not worry too much about historical continuity, but concentrate on real continuity by following Jesus.
• If Jesus appeared to Mary first in a patriarchal society then there can be no reason to exclude any one from any office in the church for reasons of gender.
• God, my friends, is still good for a pleasant surprise and to meet us in unexpected places. All we need to do it to be open and aware.