2 Corinthians 5.14-17, John 20.1-2, 11-18
St Mary Magdalene, 22 July 2018
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
Notice who features most often in John’s story of the resurrection, the character at the centre of the events. Jesus himself, the reinvigorated victim, the defeated one now risen from the dead, only features in a brief cameo, albeit a very important one. But the person at the heart of these extraordinary, world-changing events, is Mary Magdelene. The resurrection - it's all about Mary.
And this is astonishing, that Mary from Magdala should be the chief witness to the resurrection. This is not what we'd expect. We can assume that God could have chosen anyone at all to witness to Jesus Christ rising from the dead. A reliable witness, at least. But Mary, of all people: to a critically watching world she would seem the unlikeliest witness of all.
For one thing, Mary was a woman, and in that society women were thought of as unreliable witnesses - besides all the other subjugations inflicted on them, they couldn't testify in a court of law.
And for another thing, Mary was a woman with a history of mental illness. Luke said she had ‘seven demons’ in her. [1] Tradition tells us that she was known for her odd behaviour and for shouting strange, provocative messages, sometimes borderline rude or obscene. That would have been enough for people to avoid Mary, to laugh at her, to treat her like dirt. We can imagine that all her life the better-off people would have written her off. She would have got the message that she was no use, a menace to society. Care in the Community. Down there with the druggies and the Big Issue sellers. Crazy Mary, you can imagine them calling her.
We’ve all seen people like that, people avoided or mistreated or sidelined or condemned. Maybe we’ve had times when we’ve had that experience ourselves. Sometimes Christians are made to feel like that, misunderstood, misrepresented, our motives mistaken in today's society.
But the good news is this. God, through the gospel writers, put Crazy Mary at the heart of the resurrection story. When Jesus put death to bed by rising again he made sure that Mary was chief witness to the events of that morning.
What this tells us about Christ is that he is the Emancipator in Chief. He is in the business of setting people free from legal, social, or political restrictions; of liberation. Choosing Mary to be the channel of the greatest news ever told - that is the emancipation of women writ large. It took nineteen-hundred years for our society to catch up, two thousand years for the Church to catch up with what Jesus did that day - put women on equal footing with men in this world. More than equal footing, in Mary’s case. Elevated. [2]
Mary’s emancipation is good news for us because we can relate to Mary. We like her, the imperfect one. We are like her, in our imperfections. For those of us who feel put upon, constricted, desperate for emancipation… the good news is particularly for us.
God chooses to elevate people who, to others, look the unlikeliest ones. The good news is that, however unloveable or powerless others may have made us, God loves us more than everything. However unredeemable we might think we are, Jesus saves us. His coming into our world with his resurrection power means empowerment for anyone who believes; an abundance of life. You know that Mary didn’t stay possessed for long after she met Jesus - for the first thing Jesus did was cast those demons out.
But how did Mary know it was Jesus, talking to her there in the garden? What made her realise that it was her love, her Lord, alive and in front of her? She hadn't realised at first. It was specifically when he spoke her name. "Mary". Her heart missed a beat, because that was the voice of someone close to her. That was the voice of someone who loved her. That was the voice of someone who knew her name. "Mary".
And the good news extends to this - just as Jesus knew Mary by name, Jesus knows us by name too. And if we listen carefully, in prayer, in silence, in the middle of our busy days, we can hear him call us by our name just as he did Mary.
Mary went searching for Jesus, and she found him. If we go looking for Jesus, we will find him too. Even if at first, our search is tentative, unsure of who or what we will find, even if it takes a very long while: like Mary, if we are searching from our heart then we will find him.
If you want to find Jesus, if you want him in your life, then he will come to you. It may be when you are least expecting it, or it could be when you are most hoping it. However it happens - in a time of prayer, in a church service or on a country walk, through an unusual encounter or in conversation with someone you know very well, on a journey or in a familiar place - however it happens, you can hear Jesus calling you by name. It can happen every morning if you open the ears of your heart to him.
Jesus calls us by our names. Not the nasty names the world troubles us with; no, the name which Jesus calls you is the deepest, most intimate name which comes from God’s purest heart of love. Everyday people like you and me get caught up in God's life-giving story. We love the story of Crazy Mary, Mary crazy with God's good news. Mary who recognised Jesus when he spoke directly to her. We appreciate that because he chose her, means he chooses us too. He chooses us to understand that he is risen and alive; he chooses us to share that good news today.
So we ought never consider ourselves unreliable witnesses to his wonderful love. For in the garden of our hearts he speaks our name. Jesus has come back from the dead to liberate us from all the deadliness of the world. The joy of realising that impels us to spread the good news to others, just like Mary did.
Notes
A reworking of The Resurrection - it's all about Mary preached in Devon on Easter Day 2011, based on material from an earlier sermon, Mary - Easter Witness, Liverpool, Easter 2004. Both these Easter talks were preceded by a reading of the episode from Walter Wangerin, Jr, The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel.
[1] Luke 8.2.
[2] Written in the centenary year of women’s suffrage in the UK (see The Fawcett Society website) and when for the first time more women than men are reportedly entering clergy training (Church Times, 27 September 2017).
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