St Andrew's

Sermons

22nd July 2007 - The Feast of St Mary Magdalene

A woman who was living an immoral life in the town…. had brought oil of myrrh in a small flask. She took her place behind him…weeping. His feet were wetted with her tears and she wiped them with her hair, kissing them and anointing them with the myrrh.

It is good to be here with you on this the feast of St Mary Magdalene or Mary of Magdala and, by Father Martin’s kind invitation, to be your preacher this morning. St Andrew’s is the birthplace of my own faith journey and pilgrimage starting back in the early years of the war – the second that is – when I began my time at St Andrew’s first in the Sunday school and then in the choir and finally graduating to being one of the servers at the Altar. All this was in the time of a Father Hepher who was my main spiritual mentor who eventually directed me towards training for ordination at the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham near Newark on Trent. Eventually I was ordained in 1964 and began my curacy and ministry in the Diocese of Birmingham and then on to the Diocese of Bristol where I served from 1980 until my retirement two years ago moving to Monmouth. Here of course I met Father Gavin – chaplain to the Monmouth Boys School and Father Martin’s predecessor - who wishes me obviously to send you and give you his love, blessings and prayers.

It was Easter this year that he and I along with the Churches Together in Monmouth shared in a joint churches project ‘The Easter Experience’. This was a presentation in dramatic and interactive format of four events of Holy Week and Easter for the top year juniors in the five primary schools in the area. In four church venues, the Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Baptist Church and Anglican Parish Church we presented respectively the Last Supper, the events in the Garden of Gethsemane and Peter’s betrayal, the Crucifixion and finally at the Parish church the Resurrection. Gavin and I were involved in presenting the events around the tomb involving Peter and John and Mary Magdalene. I acted the part of Peter and Gavin the part of the Risen Christ. An amusing aside to this was when Gavin was running to arrive at St Mary’s in time for our presentation when someone rushed out of the Roman Catholic Church looking for one of the participants and shouting to Gavin ‘Are you one of our bystanders?’ to which he replied ‘No I’m the Risen Christ and I’m late!’

Mary has often been referred to as the Apostle to the Apostles. She was the very first to meet and encounter the Risen Jesus, the Risen Christ, and the first to be sent with the Good News to the disciples that Jesus had Risen from the dead. But why Mary? Why not Peter James or John who had been with him at the Transfiguration and Gethsemane or for example why not the mother of our Lord? So who was she?

The Gospels gives little biographical information on any of those appearing in the Gospel accounts. Indeed this was never the intent of the Gospel writers anyway – not even when it came to the person of Jesus. We have so little personal information. There was a book published in the 60’s called the Historical Jesus, which attempted – vainly I think - to get back to the historical Jesus. But such attempts miss the point of the purpose behind writing the Gospels or the Good News. It was not to give biographical accounts of those appearing in the Gospels but to witness to God entering our world in Jesus – the Son of God and in part to give an account of the impact that Jesus had upon those whom he encountered and their response. For Mary that encounter turned her life upside down and inside out and to give her a new start as never conceived in all her dreams and experience.

In St Luke’s Gospel – Ch 8 - she is mentioned as one of several women who were healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Indeed Mary is identified as having been delivered of seven evil spirits – a way of saying that she was beyond redemption and humanly speaking could not have descended much lower if at all. Because of this some have associated Mary with the unnamed woman recorded in St John’s Gospel as having been taken in the act of adultery. Elsewhere Mary is also identified by some with the Mary sister of Martha and Lazarus as well as being at the cross throughout Jesus’ last dying hours. Finally she is identified with the woman in our Gospel reading for this morning with the woman paying lavish respect and honour to Jesus at meal in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

So we have here a picture of a woman whose life had been turned around dramatically by Jesus from one of complete lostness, degradation, loss of self-value and respect to one where Jesus has given her a way of discovering her true self and personal value and purposes and release from her past; true love and forgiveness, which before was beyond her reach and for which she could never have had any real hope let alone dream of. A Resurrection indeed and a gift of a new life. This is why she was found at the tomb. Following the devastating and shattering arrest and death of Jesus she was inevitably drawn to him even during his dying moments - and at the tomb - as the only one that gave her new life. Thus it was Mary who was the one to have her experience of Jesus confirmed by Jesus’ Resurrection. In experiencing Jesus’ love and forgiveness Mary was indeed the first to experience what discipleship is about which Peter and the other disciples were yet to experience for themselves. It is no wonder that in the cameo of Mary and Martha entertaining Jesus she is the one sitting at his feet listening and digesting what Jesus had to say. She needed it and thirst for it. She had at that moment in Jesus’ words chosen the best part. There are times when we need to set aside all activity and material concerns and considerations and in the silence of our hearts, our mediations and prayer time to think and learn again what God has for us and where we are going and the way forward. To also rediscover that first love we had for our Lord which - as St John warned the Christians at Ephesus in the Book of Revelations - we so easily lose. This is often the purpose of retreats and time away - to rediscover God’s direction in our lives. A good example of this is seen in the Franciscan Order where the novice monks become the ‘Marys’ in an extended retreat in guided and private meditation and prayer while the senior monks are the ‘Marthas’ serving the needs of the younger brothers while in retreat.

All this is revealed in our reading for this morning in the graphic scene taking place in the house of Simon the Pharisee. This custom in our Lord’s day when someone is hosting a guest in their house, particularly for a meal was to first welcome the guest with an embrace and a kiss, an everyday occurrence in the Arab world and culture even of today. The guest's sandals would then be removed and the feet washed and refreshed from the effects of walking the hot and sandy terrains common in Palestine and the streets of their cities and towns. Finally the welcome was sealed with the anointing of aromatic oil on the head. In Jesus’ case the host showed a complete lack of respect and recognition by ignoring the whole ritual for welcoming Jesus into his house and meal. The likely interpretation of this lack of courtesy was that Jesus – a popular itinerant preacher - and been invited out of pure patronising curiosity on the part of Simon and his friends.

Nevertheless this opened the way for Mary to make a statement of what Jesus meant to her in her life and at the same time make up for what Simon had ignored. Her act was not merely out of courtesy but from a deep heart felt sense of love and gratitude for this man who had given her a new life and a new start. This scene was prayer in action. She performed the traditional act of welcome by embracing and kissing his feet. This was an act of pure loving adoration and thanksgiving and a humble invitation for Jesus to occupy the centre of her life. Her tears were of sorrow for what had been her past and tears of joy for what she had discovered and been given by Jesus, forgiveness and acceptance of her.

All prayer must start from a sense of our unworthiness but also from a sense of gratitude for what God has done and given us in and through his Son. The Eucharist is the true expression of this as we approach with empty hands the altar to receive God's gift of himself in the sacrament - underserved and unmerited but 'given for you.' (If you attend the AA as an alcoholic every meeting begins by each acknowledging before one another that ‘I am an alcoholic’ that is I can’t beat my alcoholism on my own but by acknowledging our need for each other. In the Eucharist we remind ourselves of our need for God and that we are still sinners – Blessed are those who are poor in spirit – know their need of God – for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven) Discipleship begins with repentance. In St Luke’s Gospel at his ascension Jesus tells the disciples to go out and preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. In this sense Mary had discovered what the other disciples had yet to discover, her need for forgiveness and Jesus’ gift of life to be lived to the full. She was the first to experience what being a disciple involves.

Mary then performs the next and final act of courtesy – to anoint Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. This was the act of someone who was reckless and without regard to herself or the value of what she was using on Jesus. Indeed Mary was quite oblivious to what people thought or what was being said. The fact that she had thrown aside all thought of what people were thinking was indicated by letting her hair hang loose – a sign both of immodesty and even promiscuity in the eyes of others. Such were Mary’s thoughts for Jesus. She could not do or give enough to express what he meant to her. Jesus occupied the whole of her world and she was ready to follow whatever the cost. All discipleship in the end amounts to this. Everything whatever we have or own or aspire to has only value insofar that it enables us to give ourselves to God and one another in love in response to the command to ‘Love God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbour as yourself’. We will have to surrender all one day whether we will so or not. Self sufficiency can never stand side by side with faith and trust in God as Bishop James Jones of Liverpool reminds us in his book on another subject of our responsibility for God’s creation in ‘Jesus and the Earth’ ‘We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave the Lord has taken away blessed be the name of the Lord’ says Job in self abandonment to God.

As we look at this scene the strange thing that comes out of this is that the more we become aware of being a disciple of our Lord the more we feel the need of God and our state of separation. In his letters St Paul is constantly aware that of all sinners he is the foremost and it was St Francis of Assisi that uttered the following words to be found in it varying forms on the lips of all the Saints ‘There is nowhere a more wretched sinner than I’ Yet their lives also spoke of the joy and strength of receiving and achieving more than what they could have conceived or imagined and of what God had in store for them.

So as we approach the Altar in our Eucharist once again this morning let us receive with joy and gratitude this gift of Himself by which we are made acceptable to Him and that with Christ in us and we in Him we become partakers in the work of Christ’s salvation for the world.