Women in the Bible: Mary Magdalene, the Faithful

John 20: 1-18

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. 2So 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.’ 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and 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. 13They 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.’ 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus 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.’ 16Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). 17Jesus 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.” ’ 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.


Poor Mary Magdalene.

I suspect she spent most of her life wondering: what would it have been like to be one of the 12? Obviously in those days it wouldn’t have been possible or even proper for her to have been one of the guys, and she certainly did not make it into the lists of Jesus’ disciples given in all 4 of our gospels. But she is mentioned as a companion of Jesus in Luke’s gospel, after the twelve, of course, and along with 2 other women from whom Jesus had cast our evil spirits or demons—not a very impressive introduction to this woman who would become the very first person to whom the risen Christ would reveal himself.

The church has perpetrated Mary Magdalene for centuries as a prostitute, linking her with the story in John 7 and 8 of the woman caught in the act of adultery, but that woman is never named. The references in the gospels to Jesus casting seven demons out of Mary Magdalene is another reason that ancient scholars and church officials tried to make a sexual sinner out of Mary. But Mary’s friends and admirers through out the ages of church history have kept the faith and now found no proof that she ever sold herself or was caught in any kind of inappropriate act that would deem her deserving of such a derogatory identification. So, rather than speculate on what we don’t know for sure about her, let’s talk about what we do know.

Mary was from the town of Magdala. It was a small place on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee. So, you could say she was a hometown girl. Most of the other disciples were found at Galilee’s shore; so was she, apparently. Most of the other guys were just regular guys, fishing and making a living. Then they were called and they followed. We don’t know how Mary became a part of the group, but we know she was faithful.

Do you remember that it was Mary who was at the cross with the other women? We have accounts in the gospels of the events that took place surrounding Jesus’ death: Judas turning Jesus in for money, Peter denying that he knew him, and no record whatsoever of the 12 being present with Jesus in the last hours of his life except for John, the one to whom Jesus gave his mother. But there is Mary—standing, praying, weeping, experiencing the death of one whose life had transformed her own. For a long time she had been witness to his teaching, his healing, his forgiving, his very life. We suspect that the women were the ones taking care of the needs of Jesus and the 12 as they traveled. Mary had been supporting the ministry of Jesus for some time, and she wasn’t about to give that up now.

It’s almost like she knew that something extraordinary was going on. She was faithful to Jesus to the very end and beyond. When the disciples were nowhere to be found at the cross, she was there. When they were hiding behind closed doors, she was scurrying to the tomb early in the morning on the third day to be sure that Jesus’ body was properly prepared for death since he had died so close to the Sabbath day. When the ones she called to come and see the tomb ran away, she stayed around, unsure of what was happening but I imagine with some sense that there was more to be experienced there than the emptiness of the place where they had buried her Lord. She was faithful; she was there.

There were a million reasons for her not to be there. She was, after all, a girl. Being considered of delicate existence and second-class citizenship, women were not to be part of the team. They could cook for the team, but they would not play a role in helping the team do their work. I suspect she might have been a little aggressive since she actually did make it into the gospels—all 4!—and was the one that was sent to tell the others that Jesus had risen from the tomb and overcome death. And while we’re on the subject, Peter and the beloved disciple came to the tomb, saw that Jesus wasn’t there, and went back home. We are not told that they looked for Jesus, that they stopped off anywhere to tell anyone what they had seen. Mary is the one given the charge by Jesus to go and tell the guys what has happened. Mary is the first witness to encounter the risen Christ.

That is quite an honor.

I have to wonder what that conversation was like. We know what she said: “I have seen the Lord.” What we know as we read further in John 20 is that when Jesus appeared to the disciples, they were huddled together behind closed doors “for fear of the Jews.” And when they saw him and heard him, they rejoiced. What did they do when Mary appeared and told them what she had seen? Perhaps we should let Thomas off the proverbial doubting hook since apparently his brothers also came to believe the risen Christ when they saw him. I would love to have been a fly on the inside of the closed up room when Mary gave the password, came in, and told them what she saw.

Throughout her own life and throughout her life as a revered and sometimes reviled figure in the history of our faith, Mary Magdalene has been questioned about her faith. Was she a prostitute? Was she married to Jesus? What effect did the demons who possessed her have on her life? We have questioned her and questioned her, seemingly trying to beat the faithfulness out of her and get at the real reason why she always seemed to be around wherever Jesus was. We have put obstacles between her and our acknowledgement of her as a true disciple of Jesus, and we have missed until the recent past what I believe is the real story of Mary Magdalene: she was faithful. She attended to the needs of Jesus and the disciples as they traveled around offering the love of God in every place they went. She attended to the pain and suffering of Jesus as he stood up to the trials and tests of his spirit and his very life when he was crucified. And she got up early to get to his tomb as soon as she could so that his body would not have to go a moment longer than required in respect of the Sabbath without a proper burial. She even stayed around at the tomb, wondering what to do next when he was no where to be found and the others, having seen for themselves that he was not buried where he had once been, went home. She was there; she was faithful.

Mary probably didn’t have an easy life. None of us do who decide to follow Jesus and attend to his ministry in the world. But she never stopped being faithful to him. Even through the ages of our questioning of her character, she has remained faithful. She was a disciple of Jesus. She followed in the path of his ministry. She told his story. Even when she wasn’t sure what she was experiencing, she knew it was of God, and she gathered other people around it so that they could know God’s action, too. She was there; she was faithful.

These days the church doesn’t ask a lot of us. We are happy to be able to report good numbers in worship attendance and a month or two of operating in the financial black. And while these are good things that do indicate the level of health of the church, faithfulness is so much more than that. For us it is often measured in numbers. One of the problems I have at Annual Conference every year is that I over hear my clergy brothers and sisters greeting each other in the name of 150 or 200 people in worship, a $1,000,000 new building, or a great big ministry staff instead of offering to each other their own versions of Mary’s greeting to the disciples: “I have seen the Lord.” How our lives might be transformed if we chose to look upon our faithfulness to the church in ways that would measure how we are sharing Mary’s testimony with the world in our parish: “I have seen him, and it has changed my life.”

There are obstacles between us and our faithfulness. Summer Sunday mornings, when life seems to be more calm and relaxed, often call us to read the paper, sit on the porch, or go to brunch instead of coming to hear the Word of God and experience the support and encouragement of the gathered body of Christ. Our busy jobs and family lives pull us away from finding ways to serve the community, especially here in Grant Park where not everyone lives the kind of lives that we live with enough to eat, wear, and entertain ourselves. Our questions about things that the institution of the church does and doesn’t do sometimes separate us from the ministry of the gospel that is before us everywhere we look:
• in the lives of children who need something constructive to do during the summer or who need to know that someone cares about them year round,
• in the lives of senior adults who are wasting away in loneliness and who need to know that there are places where they can reach out to and be reached by other people who want to love them,
• at the “other schools” to which we don’t want to send our children but to which somebody’s kids have to go and whose students need a little extra help in tutoring or in mentoring.

There are obstacles to faithfulness, but our sister Mary did not heed those obstacles. Instead, her faithfulness gave her the gift of being the first to encounter the risen Christ and being the first to get to tell the good news.

What will your faithfulness bring to your life? Are there obstacles standing in the way of you living out your faith the way Jesus is calling you to do? Are there things that keep you from participating in the body of Christ and cause your faith to be shaken from time to time? Are there ways that you would like to practice your faith but you are afraid to do so? Let Mary be inspiration for you, for in a time when women were to be seen and not heard, she was the first to say “I have seen the Lord.” And in a time when women were to take their place in the back of the crowd, she was up front and center at the foot of the cross when others had found it too difficult to be there. And in time when women were mostly used to create a comfortable environment, she became a force to be reckoned with throughout the ages that would come after her, threatening the status quo with every century that passed.

And she was a girl.

Imagine all the things that your faithfulness could bring into being.