Mary
Magdalene
Luke
8:1-3
John 20:1-18
For
years my heart has kept time with Mary Magdalene's.
She and I "resonate," as we say today; she and I are
"on the same page." Now
when you hear this don't go looking for psychosexual subtleties in me;
don't ask yourself, "Why is Victor so 'taken' with a woman who was
a harlot?" The truth
is, she wasn't a harlot. For
centuries the myth in the church at large has been that she was.
Charles Wesley, the finest hymn writer in English and a man of
uncommon biblical sophistication, nevertheless penned a hymn
(unfortunately) with the line, "Ye Magdalens of lust," as if
Mary's problem had been nymphomania.
Charles Wesley was wrong. There
is nothing in scripture to support this or anything like it.
Therefore you can put aside all your speculations about me.
I resonate with Mary for different reasons, many reasons.
Before I tell you why, however, I want to acquaint you with Mary
herself.
She came from Magdala. Magdala
was a prosperous city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee,
halfway between
Capernaum
and Tiberias. The city
flourished, thanks to the fishing, fish-curing, and shipbuilding
industries, not to mention trading.
The city was populated almost exclusively by Gentiles; almost,
but not quite, for Mary was Jewish.
Jesus, we know, rarely ventured into Gentile territory.
Then how did he and Mary meet?
We don't know for certain just how or where or when.
Most likely Mary, a prosperous businesswoman, met Jesus as she
travelled about on business. We
know she was prosperous, since she was one of the well-to-do women, Luke
tells us, who financed the band of disciples and supported our Lord
himself.
She has always spoken to my heart.
I:
-- In the first place I have always
been intrigued by the fact that seven
devils had been cast out of
her. "Seven" is
the biblical symbol for wholeness or completeness or entirety.
To say that she had been possessed of seven devils is not to say that she was a harlot; it is to say, however, that
the evil which riddled her was serious, persistent, and systemic.
It infected her wholly, like blood poisoning.
Mary would have had no difficulty believing
the Reformation doctrine of Total Depravity.
I too have no difficulty believing that doctrine which my
Reformation foreparents insisted the gospel of redemption presupposes as
surely as surgical heart-transplant presupposes cardiac crisis.
Many people, however, repudiate the doctrine because they think
it humanly demeaning or grossly
exaggerated or simply untrue. Then
let's recall what our foreparents meant by it and what they didn't.
When our Reformation ancestors spoke of
total depravity they didn't mean that people are worthless, vile, scum
to be cast off as quickly as possible.
On the contrary they knew that all humankind has been created in
the image and likeness of God and can never obliterate that image, never
forfeit it, never efface it however much we manage to deface it. It
isn't in our power to forfeit a worth, a dignity that is inalienable
just because God has stamped every last one of us with it.
And
so far from believing that human beings, fallen human beings that we most certainly are, are
capable of no good whatsoever, those who said most about Total Depravity
(the Calvinists and all their theological cousins) did
the most good everywhere in the world.
Calvinists, more than any other group of Christians, were
ceaselessly active in education, politics and culture.
When our theological foreparents insisted
that all humankind suffers from "total depravity" they never
meant that we are all as thoroughly rotten as it's possible to be.
(Myself, I'm convinced that if you and I put our minds to it and
tried hard, we could behave worse, much worse, than we do already.)
Our foreparents knew that if we all behaved as wretchedly as we
could then social existence would be impossible and the world
uninhabitable. They never
meant that we are morally "rotten to the core;" that the good
we do is merely seeming good, only apparent good, only a disguise.
When our foreparents spoke of total
depravity they did mean that there is no single area or aspect of my
life that remains unaffected by sin.
My parenting my children isn't sin-free; my marriage isn't
sin-free; neither is my daily work; neither is my interaction with other
people.
Our foreparents meant too that there is no single dimension of
the individual herself which remains unaffected by sin.
My reasoning is warped. (We
call it rationalization.) My
affections are warped. (I
persistently love what I ought to loathe, and loathe what I ought to
love.) My will is
corrupted. (Even when I know
what I should do, I find that I can't do it.)
Since scripture speaks of the individual’s "control
centre," what gathers up thinking, feeling, willing, discerning, as
the "heart," our foreparents meant by total depravity that
everyone suffers from the gravest heart-defect.
The prophet Jeremiah cries, "The heart is deceitful above
all things. Who can
understand it?" The
psalmist laments, "Everyone has gone astray; everyone without
exception." Our
Reformation foreparents simply meant that every last person needs now
and will always need God's pardon, God's gift of new life, God's
restoration and recovery and reorientation.
In the aftermath of World War II Albert
Speer, the economist who became chief economics architect of the Hitler
regime; Speer remarked, "If you think that the tragedy which
Germany
now is means that the German people are different from everyone else in
the world, then you haven't learned anything."
Speer was right. Before
we sanitize our reading of history we ought to understand that
concentration camps weren't a German invention.
The British invented concentration camps during the Boer War, and
in those camps more Dutch Afrikaaners died than perished under enemy
fire during combat.
I believe the doctrine of Total Depravity.
I have long been aware there's no "corner" of me that
can rescue the rest of me. I
can't think my way out of my sinnership, even though shallow
rationalists tell me I can. I
can't will myself out of it, even though the power-trippers and
control-"freaks" around me say it's possible.
I can't feel my way out of it, even though the romantics in our
midst think the corruption of the human heart can be romanticized away.
I am aware that I am wholly, totally, constantly in need of God's
pardon and God's renewal. When
the prophet Ezekiel hears God promising a new heart and a new spirit, I
know that God's promise is my only hope and I had better look to him.
Mary Magdalene isn't atypical with her
"seven devils." She
is unusual, however, in her self-perception.
She knows what she is before God.
And of course she knows what he did for her in the person of his
Son, the Nazarene whom she met and loved ever after.
II: -- I resonate with Mary Magdalene for another reason.
Her gratitude impelled her to love Jesus and follow him forever.
We should always remember that the one, substantive item which
the church has to offer the world isn't a complex theory or complicated
proposal or supposedly sure-fire "ism" of some sort; the
church's only substantive offer to the world is a person, the person of the living Lord Jesus Christ.
And this person all men and women everywhere are both
summoned and invited to meet, love, adore, follow and serve.
At Christmas time we read a dozen times over the glorious text
from the first chapter of John's gospel: "The Word (God's
living self-utterance and self-bestowal) became flesh, and dwelt among
us." This is what we
read; but what lurks within us is something very different: "The Word
became words, and because the Word became words, we have
all kinds of words to spew out, even though no one appears to find our
words particularly interesting."
The Word became flesh, in one man only, Jesus of Nazareth,
crucified under Pontius Pilate, resurrected to life by the Father, and
now the Father's gift to everyone everywhere.
Mary knew all of this ahead of us.
Her heart always swelled at the name of Jesus.
He, not a theory or a formula or a proposal; he alone had turned
her life around. Her
gratitude for that unspeakable gift which her Lord was for her; this
constrained her to love him, adore him, obey him, exalt him, and support
him and his work any way she could.
It wasn't difficult for her heart to go out
to him. After all she,
together with those like her won to the master, had found him winsome.
Jesus spoke of himself as "the good shepherd."
The Greek word he uses for "good" means
"good" plus "attractive, winsome, compelling, comely,
inviting." "I am
the fine shepherd."
The earliest Christians were attracted to Jesus as surely as they
were repelled by the religious authorities.
Why weren't the authorities attractive?
Jesus tells us why. "You
load people down with backbreaking burdens, and then you don't lift a
finger to help them."
Backbreaking burdens? Back
then? What about now?
Two generations ago religious backbreakers had to do chiefly with
crushing moralistic burdens. People
were told that they hadn't managed to achieve whatever it was they were
supposed to achieve in order to merit the designation
"Christian."
Today the perfectionistic burdens aren't
moralistic; they are psychological.
People are told that if they are truly devout, real Christians,
they will always have emotional tranquillity (did Jesus have
tranquillity in the Garden of Gethsemane?); not so much as one minute
(never mind forty days) of anxiety or confusion; never even a hint of
perplexity or depression or grief. I've
heard preachers tell people that "real" Christians are never
afraid, never distressed, never stunned.
Burdens are added when not a finger is lifted to help.
I understand why people found religious
spokespersons repellent and Jesus attractive.
Mary's gratitude impelled her to cherish forever the One whose
winsomeness left her unable to do anything else.
Once Mary became a disciple of Jesus, the
light which he is shone ever more brightly amidst the murkiness
surrounding her. Murkiness?
What murkiness surrounded her? Mary
was a close friend of Joanna; Joanna was the wife of Herod's chief
administrative officer. Herod
was corrupt. Joanna would
have known all about political intrigue and institutional corruption;
trade-offs between Herod and Pilate; collusion between the religious
institution and the state; under-the-table deals and favours and
blackmailings; all of this carried on behind closed doors in the dead of
the night. Joanna, Mary's
friend, wouldn't have failed to "spill" all this to Mary.
Mary knew how the world turned.
Murky as it all was and still is, however, Jesus Christ, the
light of the world, penetrated the murkiness and cheered her, subdued
the despair that lapped at her, sustained her in her conviction that the
light he
is will
ever be truth despite the corruption which cares nothing for
righteousness and cares nothing for the victims it leaves behind.
We know how the world turns.
We aren't naïve. But
neither are we overcome by the darkness and what happens in it.
Jesus Christ is
light. He is
always light enough to enlighten us as to the fact and nature of the
darkness (very important -- after all, if it weren't for the light we'd
never know that the darkness is dark.)
He is light enough to illumine our way so that we know how and
where and why we are to walk (more important.)
He is light enough to light us up like a lighthouse that helps
fetch others "home" (most important.)
It's our gratitude to Jesus Christ that
constrains us to love him and follow him.
As we do we are bathed in the light which he is even as we
reflect his light upon others. This
was Mary Magdalene's experience before it was ours.
III: -- Lastly, Mary was graced with a visitation and
ignited with a vocation. The
visitation occurred at the bleakest period of her life.
Bereaved of her Lord and grief-soaked as well, she had planned
only to deodorize a corpse -- when it happened: a visitation from the
One who called her by
name and
then commissioned her to a service from which she would never shrink and
of which she would never be ashamed.
I can't tell you how much this moves me.
I'm always moved upon learning of the visitations and vocations
of others, because it's our common experience here that keeps us going
when the way is rough and discouragements abound and bleakness settles
upon us like pea-soup fog.
For years I have pondered the martyrdom of
the first wave of Jesuits to die in
Japan
. Fired by the same Spirit
as Ignatius Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit
order, the young men of the order (125 of them) who went to Japan in the
17th century in order to reflect the
light into
the east found themselves set upon.
"Since you Christians are forever talking about the
cross," said their Japanese tormentors (the Japanese had never
heard of crucifixion as a means of execution until missionaries
acquainted them with the gospel story), "why don't you try on the
cross yourselves?" Whereupon
the missionaries were impaled on crosses planted in shallow water at
high tide. When they had
died their bodies were knocked off the cross; the receding tide carried
the bodies out to sea and spared their executioners the bother of having
to bury them. What happened
next? The Jesuit order sent
another 125 men to
Japan
, men who like Mary were constrained to say, "I have seen the
Lord."
Our visitation and vocation may be less
dramatic than that of those young men, and less dramatic again than
Mary's, yet
ours is assuredly no less real.
We persist in our Christian service despite the incomprehension
of people outside the church and the frustration awaiting us inside it.
Mary came back to the waiting disciples and
primed them with her five-word message: "I have seen the
Lord." She primed them
inasmuch as her visitation readied them for theirs when the risen One
appeared to them later.
Certainly I don't expect everyone's
visitation and vocation to be carbon copies of mine.
Nonetheless if I weren't convinced that mine readied you for
yours and helped you discern it and confirmed you in it; if I weren't
convinced of this then I wouldn’t be a minister of the gospel; I’d
be only be a wordsmith.
It all came upon Mary Magdalene at the
bleakest moment of her life. It
moved her past that dark moment and freed her from the chilling
paralysis that bleakness otherwise becomes.
Several years ago a young man who belonged
to a Roman Catholic order spoke with the late Mother Teresa of
Calcutta
, hoping to get a sympathetic hearing from her.
"My vocation is to work with lepers," he complained to
her, "but the superior of my order persists in obstructing my
vocation; he has rules and discipline and preparatory work and study and
training and exercises, together with a thousand silly tasks and no
fewer humiliations, all of which interfere with my vocation to spend
myself now for lepers."
Mother Teresa looked him in the eye for a few seconds and said,
"Brother, your vocation isn't to work with lepers; your vocation is
to belong to Jesus." She
was correct. Our vocation,
always, is first and last to belong to our Lord.
Within this meta-vocation, but only within it, it will be made
plain to us specifically what belonging to Jesus will have us do.
Mary
Magdalene. Someone whose
total existence the Master turned around.
Someone whose gratitude moved her to follow forever the One whose
winsomeness had melted her heart. Someone
for whom visitation and vocation left her running with good news --
"I have seen the Lord." Someone
whose good news has facilitated the calling to Christ of thousands like
us who have heard her story.
I have loved her for years.
Victor
Shepherd
Lake
Joseph
Community
Church
July 2010
