There's Something About Mary (Magdalene Edition): A Homily for the Feast of S. Mary Magdalene

Acts 13:27-31
Psalm 30.1-5
John 20:11-18

St. Thomas’s Anglican Church
Toronto, ON (Preached over Zoom)

+In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Mary Magdalene from James C. Lewis's
Icons of the Bible project.

Mary Magdalene is a figure who inspires much of our imagination. Her constant, but often silent presence in the Bible has inspired many stories and legends, works of art, and theological discourses and debates. She is mentioned twelve times in the Bible by name, more than any of the apostles, she financed Jesus’s ministry (though the gospels are silent as to how), she is said to have carried seven demons and was healed by Jesus, and here in the Gospel of John she is the first to encounter the risen Christ and is instructed to tell the apostles of the resurrection, earning her the title of the Apostle to the Apostles and Equal to the Apostles.

Mary is indeed important, but many often approach her with a particular theological project in mind without often considering the person presented in the Bible. We know so little about her, and because outside of this one scene in the Gospel of John, she does not speak. Therefore, people often put words into her mouth. The theologian Martín Hugo Córdova Quero notes that Mary is often cast in binary roles within the classical, the so-called gnostic, and the modern interpretations of her. In the traditional western view of the Latin church, Mary is a prostitute who becomes a penitent saint who quietly waits at the feet of Jesus seeking lifelong absolution for her supposedly sinful career choice. In the so-called gnostic tradition, Mary is a woman who has to be defeminized to become a virtuous and masculine member of the spiritual community. And in the modern and twentieth century interpretation, Mary is no longer a sex worker but is now a proto-capitalist entrepreneur and businessperson who becomes a leader in the early church. These depictions are often held as mutually exclusive to one another, and some are considered more positive than others. Indeed, the modern interpretation is in many ways a liberating interpretation because Mary is an active agent and leader in the early church and in the early Jesus movement.

"Jesus appears to Mary" from Douglas Blanchard's
Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision series

Nevertheless, all of these depictions are often tied to the idea of what different communities (often the men in those communities) want Mary to be, and in turn they (again, usually men) can use Mary to be a guide for what they want women to be. However, many criticize these interpretations as being dehumanizing towards women and for not being properly concerned with the real life experiences women, particularly women in marginalized communities, encounter in their day-to-day lives. Even the modern interpretation is criticized by some contemporary theologians because it often implicitly excludes women who experience poverty, women and people whose gender and sexuality do not conform to societal norms, or women who work in stigmatized careers like sex work and treats them as not being worthy of acceptance in the Church and worthy of love from Christ.

Jesus however has a way of troubling those waters of normalcy that we desire in our lives by challenging the binaries that we impose on ourselves and others. Jesus makes the indecent decent and the decent indecent, and Jesus helps us to look beyond the roles we impose on ourselves and others to see the human being in front of us for who they truly are, someone beloved by God and someone who is vital to the sharing of God’s Kingdom as an active agent. This is why Jesus associated himself with the poor, the oppressed, and even with sex workers, because they are the ones who will inherit the Kingdom of God, and therefore they are the ones who share the Good News with the rest of us.

With Mary we can look beyond the binary roles that were established for us and for others to see what a true follower of Jesus looks like. Through Mary, we see the person who loved Jesus, who listened and accepted his teachings, who was there through the entirety of his passion and death, and then after his resurrection shared his message with the apostles and the world. In turn we see the Son of God who was also clearly close to Mary, who welcomed her into his closest ranks, and tasked her to be the herald of his resurrection. Here in the Gospel of John, we hear Mary speak for the one and only time in the New Testament, and it is here that she alone receives a personal Christophany or manifestation of the risen Christ from Jesus. The other apostles see the risen Christ, often in groups, but Mary alone receives this personal appearance. Mary has agency and makes requests of Jesus. Jesus responds with care and affection to the genuine human needs of Mary. It is in the close and interpersonal relationship between Christ and Mary that we see how the Kingdom of God is made manifest in our lives, through the love we share with one another. Therefore, in our personal love and close affection with Jesus, we are tasked like Mary to go out and tell the world of Christ’s resurrection irrespective of who we are or the roles society places and imposes on us.

In this way, we too become apostles to other apostles.

Amen