Pent 15, 2018: It's about cleansing our hearts

Lectionary: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

I’d like to begin today by sharing with you the wise words of an under-employed theologian: Calvin, from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Waterson. Calvin says, “You know what’s weird? Day by day, nothing changes, but pretty soon, everything is different.” Calvin is right in that it feels like we are who we’ve always been, but when we look back we realize God has been working in us and actually a lot has changed.

It's always been thus and it’s in community where we see this best. Our Judeo-Christian history shows us that the movement of the Spirit of God within us has led to an ongoing process of change and we can infer from our history that this will continue beyond us into the future.

An example of this is in today’s gospel from Mark. The topic is ritual hand-washing, but that isn’t the point of this story. The point is: how we respond to the difficulty of honoring what is tradition while allowing for the free movement of the Spirit in the world of the moment.

A word about ritual handwashing. It was not about germs but about humility. We must remember that in this moment of history there was no awareness of germs (that wasn’t until 1500 years later). The Torah requires only priests to do the ritual handwashing, but the tradition had developed over time to include everyone (male) to do it. The amount of water used wouldn’t have been enough to clean their hands as it was meant to cleanse their hearts.

It was ritual action, one we have kept and still use as part of our Eucharist. You may notice that the acolyte pours water over my hands before the consecration of our bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. As my hands are washed I offer up a prayer for our assembly taken from Psalm 51: Lord wash away our iniquities and cleanse us from our sins. Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us.”

The word “heart” in Hebrew refers to the womb, the interior of a person where new life is conceived and nourished. This is why when the Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples don’t wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders Jesus calls them hypocrites and using tradition fires back: “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah)

Then turning away from the guardians of the tradition, Jesus addresses the whole crowd assembled and teaches them about the importance of the condition of their hearts. Evil, he says, doesn’t come from outside us but from within us. Evil is that which causes sorrow, pain, or harder labor/work. Remember Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”

Evil comes from within and it can be thoughts or actions. Then Jesus names a few:

• lasciviousness – a thought: disrespecting another using sex as the means
• fornication – disrespecting another and one’s self using sex as the means

• covetousness – a thought: to want something that doesn’t belong to you
• theft – taking something that doesn’t belong to you
• adultery – taking someone that doesn’t belong to you
• murder – taking a life that doesn’t belong to you (since all life belongs to God)

• slander – making false or damaging statements about someone in order to harm their reputation
• blasphemy – doing the same thing about God and sacred things

• pride – a thought: giving ‘self’ priority over other, even over God. Pride is the opposite of humility, which characterized Jesus, his ministry, and one of the main purposes of our rituals – the cultivation of our humility. Pride leads to…
• folly. When we think unwisely, we tend to act unwisely.

These are the things that defile, Jesus says. We disrespect and violate ourselves, others, and God when we do these things so we must cleanse our hearts when any of these is present.

Jesus demonstrated by his life and ministry that while tradition has value, and the elders have wisdom to share, God is at work doing a new thing, because God is working out God’s plan of redemption for the whole world: all people, in all times and places. Continually examining the condition of our hearts is important if we are to participate with God in this.

Our whole tradition, the Christian tradition, is a new thing God worked through Jesus and the Jews in that time. It’s no wonder the leadership of his time resisted the changes.

Change is difficult, especially for the guardians of tradition. What if important traditions are lost? I’m sure the Pharisees worried about that when Jesus’ disciples dropped the handwashing tradition. Yet, here we are, still ritually washing our hands more than two millennia later.

God is the true keeper of tradition. No leader, no historian, no theologian decides which traditions will live and which must be let go for a time or forever. God decides this because only God knows the full plan of redemption.

As for us, Jesus teaches us to notice the condition of our hearts, the deep interior of our beings, where new life is conceived and nourished by God. When we find the presence of those things that defile within us, we are to repent – to ask God to cleanse our hearts and renew a right spirit within us.

Anglican theologian Evelyn Underhill says this about God’s re-creative work: “The coming of the Kingdom is perpetual. Again and again, freshness, novelty, power from beyond the world break in by unexpected paths bringing unexpected change. Those who cling to tradition and fear all novelty in God's relation to the world deny the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and forget that what is now tradition was once innovation; that the real Christian is always a revolutionary, belongs to a new race, and has been given a new name and a new song.”

Beloved ones, this isn’t just an interim-time task. It’s an all-the-time task. As followers of Jesus we intentionally open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit within us, trusting that our loving and merciful God is steadily working out a plan of redemption for the whole world – all people, in all times and places. Our only concern is faithfully participating in that plan as it is revealed to us in this moment of our collective history.

The church is supposed to be a place where the condition of our hearts can be examined safely within a community where love is practiced. When we find that we have gone astray, as individuals or as a community, we are supported in our repentance by a community that continually cultivates humility through our ritual practices. In this way, over time, we are able restore the priority of God’s will for us over our own.

Each time we review our history, as we will later this month in our first parish summit, we will see how God has worked in us, day by day, changing us, forming us, preparing us to participate in God’s plan of redemption in this moment of history, in this place in God’s kingdom.

I close with a prayer from another of my favorite Bishop Steven Charleston, the retired bishop of Alaska, retired Dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and a member of the Choctaw nation: “Give your heart to love today, not to old thoughts of who you were, but to the new idea that your kindness could change another life. Give your mind to hope today, not to the usual list of impossibilities, but to a single faith that goodness is the purpose of history. Give your spirit to peace today, not to the anger of the moment, but to the welcoming road of grace that leads to the home for which you have longed. Give your hands to the work of justice today, not in resignation but in certainty, knowing that what you do will make an enormous difference.”

Amen.

Pentecost 14: Children's sermon on Holy Communion & Blessing of Backpacks and Briefcases

Lectionary: 1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11], 22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20;John 6:56-69

We concude our weeks from the gospel of John on Holy Communion with a conversational Children's sermon on Holy Communion followed by a Blessing of Backpacks and Briefcases.


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Pent 13-B, 2018: Eucharistic living

Lectionary: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58



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En el nombre del Dios, Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

We haven’t spent much time on the Old Testament story of King David in our lectionary the last few weeks, but with the Eucharistic focus in the gospel of John, we can only cover so much. I like the story of David, though, so let’s take a minute to review the broad strokes.

David, the Shepherd King, was the golden boy of his time, restoring Israel to a stable period of peace and prosperity – until he fell in love with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, his good friend and military leader. David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle so that he could marry the widowed Bathsheba.

This was a pretty big mistake, and when confronted with it by Nathan (the story we heard two weeks ago), David owned up to it saying: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Unlike many of today’s people in power, David did not divert, or gaslight. He owned his sin and lived out the consequences his own poor choices had set in motion; including the death of his son, Absalom, who had been conspiring to overthrow his father, David, as we heard last week.

This week, we hear of David’s death and the transfer of kingly power to David’s other son, Solomon. For his first regnant choice, Solomon seeks wisdom from God who grants him that and much more.

The story of King David raises up two important points for us to consider:

1) Even the great King David sinned, that is, he stepped out of the will of God and into a path of his own making; and 2) the difference between David and Solomon, in this point of the larger story anyway, is the direction of their attention. King David’s focus had shifted from using his power to serve God and God’s people to using his power to serve his own desires.

The first point is eternally important because our Christian journey doesn’t ever lead us beyond our human propensity to sin. At some point we will all lose our focus and make mistakes. To his credit, David modeled how faithful believers respond when confronted with our sin: by owning it, trusting in the mercy of God to reconcile us back into harmony with God and others.

The second point has been reflected in our readings from the letter to the Ephesians these last few weeks. Last week we heard, “let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin.” In other words, don’t let anger justify a choice to break communion.

Today we heard, “Be careful then how you live…” This also translates as: be aware, be intentional about how you live, the choices you make.

Which brings us to our gospel from John. Over and over these last three weeks we hear Jesus teaching the same lesson (which indicates that we’d be well served to pay attention to it): I am the bread of life…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven… not like the manna Moses gave. No, it is my own flesh I give and my flesh gives life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Today Jesus adds to this teaching one of the most comforting truths of our faith: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. “By partaking of the bread and wine of communion we live eternally (that is, without beginning and without end) in Jesus who is the Christ. We also live eternally with everyone else who also abides in him.

In the holy food of communion, we become one with the ultimate community: the body of Christ which includes all who ever were, are, or will be members of that body.

Jesus is God, the 2nd person in the community of the Divine Trinity. As we proclaim in our Creed, Jesus is the one through whom all things are made. All things, all people, all time, all activities, all of creation, all resources– everything comes from and belongs to God. And since we have been reconciled to God through Jesus, we are the current locations of the coexistence of the human and the divine. Jesus abides in us and we abide in him.

Recognizing this and living accordingly is how we live an Eucharistic life – a life of thanks and grace; a life that reflects our gratitude for all God has given us and demonstrates our commitment to using those gifts not for our own desires, but to serve God and God’ people.

Using the gifts God has given us for the purpose God has given them is what stewardship is. In church circles we tend to talk about stewardship as a fall fund drive to feed the budget, and it is that, but not only that. Stewardship is being aware of the many gifts God has given us, and managing them responsibly and faithfully, so that they can be employed in our sacred work: reconciling the world to God.

The focus of stewardship is on God and God’s people, not on us. In so many churches, the fear of institutional survival hijacks the ministry of stewardship and narrows the focus to finances; but focusing on survival is a path of our own making and if we’re worried about that then we have shifted our attention in the wrong direction.

As I say so often, I believe that every church is an intentional action of the Holy Spirit. God chooses for us to live and we respond by living a Eucharistic life: a life of thanks and grace, a life that reflects our gratitude for all God has given us and demonstrates our commitment to using those gifts to serve God and all God’s people.

A while back I preached about the five things our Presiding Bishop said Episcopalians need to get busy doing to make the world look more like God’s dream and less like our nightmare. To review quickly, those five things were:

1.forming disciples;
2.evangelism as invitation and welcome to the church
3.witnessing – which he described as getting out into the public sphere and being a voice for those who have no voice;
4.relationship, particularly ecumenical efforts; and finally,
5.creating institutional structures that enable us to serve (Source: The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry on Vimeo)

That is what we’ve been working on together this first half-year of our interim time.

1.forming disciples: a children-youth task force has formed to discern and plan our course for Christian formation of our younger members for the coming year.
2.evangelism: two vestry members have already met a couple of times with people at WCU and with our sisters and brothers in Episcopal campus ministry; and I have met with the Lutheran, and Baptist campus ministers in order to discern how we might be called to jointly serve the students, faculty, and staff at WCU.
3.witnessing: individual members of St. David’s are already doing so much of this, but we are also looking currently at how to organize a stronger church ministry to Vecinos and Hispanics in our area. Just recently a member of St. David’s brought up a desire to discern the possibility of becoming a sanctuary church, something any Episcopal Church can consider now that resolution C009 passed at our recent general convention. Prayer and listening on this has only just begun. Your thoughts are is welcome.
4.relationship: In addition to serving ecumenically in campus ministry, I have recently begun discussions with Cullowhee Baptist about the possibility of joining our children and youth formation efforts - here and there - to benefit all of us.
5.creating institutional structures that enable us to serve: your vestry and treasurer have been hard at work creating or updating policies and procedures, centralizing information in a functional church office, coming into compliance with Safeguarding God’s Children and People trainings (if you wonder about the importance of that, look up what happened with 300 Catholic priests in PA this week), and pondering the personnel needs of this institution in order to support the sacred work God is calling us to in this chapter of our ongoing story.

They have also spent time in retreat focusing on servant leadership and stewardship as a year-long ministry, not just a fall campaign to feed the annual budget.

One fruit of your vestry’s work is the Vestry Stewardship Covenant you’ve been seeing as an insert in your bulletins the last few weeks. Their three statements: “We believe… We commit… We invite…” frame our focus for the coming year.

As part of the ultimate community, the body of Christ, we are called to be aware and intentional about living Eucharistic lives - thankful, grace-filled live; lives reflective of our gratitude for all God has given us, and committed to faithful stewardship of all those gifts in order to accomplish our sacred work.

Like King David, we’ll sin along the way. We’ll make mistakes, break communion, even manipulate to get our way. But our comfort lies in knowing the truth that God is always with us, abiding in us as we abide in God. So, no matter how far astray the path of our own making may lead us, we know we’ll always find our way back into the will of God.

We are an intentional choice by God. And that’s our good news. Amen.

Pentecost 12-B, 2018: Bread that unifies #HolyCommunion

Lectionary: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51



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I remember the first time I realized something powerful was happening at Communion. I was five years old and had just started first grade at my Catholic school, so I had begun to learn the Catechism. One Sunday, during the prayers of consecration of the elements, I saw my Dad lift his gaze up to the altar. A strange look came over his face. You have to understand - my dad was a high-strung, easily angered, type-A Irishman. Yet in this moment, his face practically glowed with what I can only call a mix of peace and joy. It was so unusual, I remember it to this day.

I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. The priest was elevating the bread, then the wine as he prayed the Eucharistic Prayer. I don’t remember hearing the words as much as noticing the action happening. I kept looking back and forth from the altar to my Dad’s face, and I knew deep within me that this thing that was happening up there was so important, so unusual because it could have this effect on my father.

Communion remains the only time I have ever seen my father truly humble himself. It’s the only time I ever saw him willingly surrendering his strength of personality to anything. Not even at his AA anniversaries (which I attended as his AA baby). Not even at the deaths or births of his family members. Only at Communion.

I invite you to think about and remember the first time you realized that something powerful was happening at Holy Communion and let’s share those stories – at coffee hour, or in a Formation event. These stories are inspiring and can be transforming.

Some people are put off by the language of Communion: eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, so it’s important for us to remember that the language used by Jesus, bread as flesh and wine as blood, is the language of ritual. Jesus was, after all, a rabbi, who presided over many ritual meals. In his book, Doors to the Sacred, Orthodox theologian Joseph Martos says ritual meals, “affirm and intensify the bond of unity among the participants.” (Doors to the Sacred, Joseph Martos, 213)

Martos affirms that those of us who come to this sacred meal ought to reflect on what we’re doing, why we’re coming to receive this holy food. What is it that we are inviting into ourselves – our bodies and our lives? Because in the sharing of the bread of life and cup of salvation, “we are being united into a body – the body of Christ.” (Martos, 215)

That means things are different for us because, as St. Paul says, “we are members of one another.” (Eph 4:25) We can be angry, but we must not let that anger cause us to sin, that is, to break our communion with one another or with God.

When we speak, we are to say only that which will give grace to those who hear us, remembering that when we tear another member down or speak ill of them, or when we cling to bitterness and anger, we grieve the Holy Spirit. So, it’s important that we think about this meal and our choice to receive it knowing its power over us – the power to unite us to God and to one another in love.

Martos says that in ritual meals, like the Jewish Passover and our Holy Eucharist, those events we remember “become real and present to the people who share it.” (Martos, 213) Episcopal theology affirms that: this isn’t just a memorial for us as it is for many Protestants. It’s a present reality. Christ is truly present, and we don’t just remember this, we live it.

When we hear the words, “do this for the remembrance of me” I hope we hear the voice of our Savior inviting us to come back into unity with him. Remember. Re-member… Be a member again… be one with me again…

It’s a full-body, full sensory experience for us. We walk our bodies up to the communion rail and kneeling or standing by someone we may or may not know, someone we may or may not like, we reach out our hands and take the bread of Holy Communion into our mouths. As we do we remember that we are one in the body of Christ with the one on our left and the one on our right.

We taste the bread of communion as it melts on our tongues and that too becomes a signal to our bodies that something holy is happening and we are choosing for it happen within us. We chew the bread and swallow it and its substance literally becomes part of us.

Then smell of the wine greets us as the cup is raised to our mouths and the sharp flavor of the consecrated wine stimulates our glands. Our saliva mixes with the wine in our mouths, water and wine mixing within us, making manifest the union of our bodies to Christ.

When we eat the bread of life and drink the cup of salvation, we are giving our bodies to God who enters us, becomes one with us, and makes us one with God and each other. It is a mystical moment, a moment of pure joy as we remember, even for just this moment, that our sins have been forgiven. It is a moment of deep peace as we remember that by this spiritual food we are renewed, strengthened, and made whole again.

Our daily lives can drain us. Our Christian life should drain us. We should be giving out love and prayer and offering words of hope to someone every day, all the time. There are so many who need it. We should give it until it’s gone because we believe, we know there is always more.

This journey is too much for us unless we are continually nourished and renewed by our spiritual food: the bread and wine of Holy Communion. This journey is too much for us to travel alone, and so we must continually affirm our bond of unity to God and one another. This journey is too much for us unless we stop the world, come into the presence of God, and remember that our sins are forgiven and we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit, that is, we are made holy, unified to Christ in whom we are all made whole as a body, and individually as members of it.

Remembering that gives us strength to go out to the world, again and again, as living locations of the love of Christ in the world. That is the gift of the power of Holy Communion. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Pentecost 11-B & Baptism of Emerson P Chase

Lectionary: 2 Samuel 11:26-12, 13a; Psalm 51: 1-13; Ephesians 4: 1-16; John 6:24-35



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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

What a grand day we get to share together! Today we welcome a new member of the body of Christ by the sacrament of Baptism: my grandson, Emerson Patrick Chase.

I am especially thankful that this branch of the family tree of God has been chosen to welcome him. I’m grateful that Emerson will begin his Christian journey drenched in your love and I will always tell him about you as he grows, connecting him to your gifts of kindness, deep spirituality, and commitment to relationship (to name just a few) as he comes into contact with a world that may not always radiate with the light of Christian virtues.

But Emerson will because today he will be baptized and the glory of God will live in him all the days of his life. He may forget that here and there, but we will always remember; and we’ll remind him, because that’s what the family of God does.

We celebrate the radiance of the glory of God that dwells within each of us, within all of us, and it dwells there for a purpose: to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ as it says in our Catechism. (BCP, 855) That is the calling to which we’ve been called, as St Paul says in his epistle to the church in Ephesus, and it can only be accomplished by choosing to be made one with God who accomplishes it though us.

By making that choice, as we do in Baptism, then affirm in Confirmation, we commit to living with “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Living in that way can be challenging because it makes us noticeably different from the world in which we live – and that’s why we do it in community. As Bp. Tom Wright says, there are no individual Christians. By definition, a Christian is a member of a body – the body of Christ. St. Paul says it like this: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Within this body, the body of Christ, we are very diverse, each of us uniquely gifted to live the life to which we’ve been called. All of our gifts are necessary and as messy as it sometimes gets having such variety of perspectives in one body, the truth is we are, as a whole, greater than the sum of our parts because the wholeness in which we dwell is Christ himself.

What our individual gifts are will be revealed within our faith community where they will be nourished and formed to maturity so that God can use them to accomplish God’s purpose which is: reconciling the whole world to God’s self through Jesus Christ. As St. Paul says, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.”

One of the most important and effective ways we build ourselves up in love is by gathering in community to be nourished by Word and Sacrament – joining our humanity to Christ’s divinity through the holy food of Communion.

This is what Jesus is talking about in the gospel lesson from John. Having just fed the 5000, the people find Jesus again and they hunger for what he has to offer. Knowing their stomachs are full, Jesus targets their true hunger – their spiritual alienation.

Jesus references a story they all know – the story of their salvation in the wilderness from Exodus where God sends manna from heaven - food that keeps them alive, food that comes from no effort on their part but as a gift from God.

Then Jesus claims himself to be that manna in his stunning concluding statement: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus is openly proclaiming himself as the Incarnate Word. Jesus, who is the firstborn of this is, as our Creed says, fully human and fully divine. If we believe that, and if we eat and drink of his nature, then he abides in us and we in him.

We then, are the next-born of this. We aren’t born this way, as Lady Gaga would say. We are re-born into it through our Baptism.

That is why today is such an important day in the life of Emerson Patrick, all of us who know and love him, and all will come to know him as he lives his life. We are not the living bread - we are where it dwells. Each time we eat and drink in the nature of our Savior in this holy meal we strengthen our union with him and with one another. This is what prepares us as a church, and individually as members of it, to go into the world with strength and courage carrying God’s love to all with gladness and singleness of heart. (BCP, 365)As poet Marianne Williamson says, “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.” (from the poem: Our Greatest Fear)

That is something that Emerson does right now just by being. The glory of God is evident in looking at the miracle he is, the potential his life promises. It gets harder to keep doing that as life happens, as fears and hurts tarnish our experience of ourselves and the glory of God that dwells within us.

Thankfully, Jesus gave us a way to continually restore that glory to its original brilliance: Holy Communion. Each time we take that spiritual nourishment, Christ’s divinity is manifestly joined to our humanity and he literally dwells within us.

When we baptize Emerson, we anticipate that the light of God’s glory within him will shine in the world all the days of his life, and we promise to be with him as a community to support him as he accomplishes the purpose God has for him. We promise to do that for one another as well.

So, are you ready? Let’s do this. Let’s baptize this glorious child of God and welcome him into the body of Christ.

Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, 2018

Lectionary: Judith 9:1,11-14; Psalm 42:1-7; 2 Corinthians 5:14-18; John 20:11-18


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En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.

Today we mark our first 5th Sunday Saints Day! How lovely that the first one we celebrate is the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene (transferred from July 22).

In the Episcopal Church we celebrate our sisters and brothers who are among the communion of saints. We study their lives, noting their gifts as well as their very human weaknesses, remembering that it was their reception of God’s strength that perfected (that is, completed) their weakness allowing them to press on toward the fulfilling of their divine purpose on earth.

Much as we would ask a friend to pray with us for something, the saints are available to us too, offering their gifts, spiritual companionship, and prayerful support in moments of our lives where we need that.

For example, if we feel the need to deepen our relationship with Jesus, we might ask Mary of Bethany to share her gift of choosing to sit at the feet of the Master over the other tasks/duties of life that distract us.

Or we may ask Thomas to pray with us as we move through the moments of doubt that are part of every journey of faith.

Persons through whom sacred poetry seeks to emerge may call upon Caedmon, T.S. Eliot, or John Donne for their inspiration and poetic skill.

Today, we remember and ponder the life and gifts of Mary Magdalene, whose story is one of healing, courage, perseverance, and ultimately – of faithful witness.

A little background first: aside from the Biblical record that Jesus healed her of seven demons (a word which as a radically differnt meaning today), we don’t know much about Mary Magdalene. We do notice, however, as Heidi Schlumpf points out: that “Unlike other women in the Bible, Mary of Madgala is not identified in relation to another person; she is not anyone’s mother, wife, or sister. Instead, she is called Mary of Magdala, a title that implies some prominence...” i.

Here’s what we do know: Mary Magdalene left her home, a fishing city on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, to follow Jesus, whose ministry she financially supported. (Mk 15:41)

We know that she is mentioned by name 12 times in the Gospels, more than any other woman except for Jesus’ mother. We know that all four gospels tell us Mary Magdalene was present at Jesus’ crucifixion and burial; and was the first witness of the resurrection.

We know that scripture shows us a woman who was a devoted follower and supporter of Jesus, a woman who believed when she saw the impossible reality of the resurrection, a woman who courageously obeyed Jesus who sent her to tell the men about it - fully aware that as a woman, her testimony would be considered unreliable according to their law.

As scripture scholar, Mary Thompson, SSMN says, it’s “remarkable that all four gospels have the same story. ‘You can be sure that if it had been possible to eliminate those women…[as] the primary witnesses to the most important event of Christianity… the [gospel writers] would have done it,’ because of the prevailing attitude toward women in those times.” ii.

Well, over time the church did the next best thing – they defamed her. It was Pope Gregory, at the end of the 6th century, who preached that Mary Magdalene, the unnamed sinner who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, and the woman caught in adultery whose stoning Jesus forestalled, were not three different women, but one and the same person. “From this conflation, now rejected by scholars as well as the church, there came about the popular representation of Mary Magdalene as a penitent… prostitute.”iii.

I should mention that this was true only in the Western Church. “The Eastern Church has always honored her as an apostle, noting her as the ‘apostle to the apostles’ based on the account of the Gospel of John” iv. which we read today.

It wasn’t until 1969 that the Catholic Church acknowledged that Pope Gregory was wrong. That means for about 1400 years, Mary Magdalene, the faithful follower of Jesus, the apostle to the apostles, was categorically slandered as a prostitute. That she was also described as penitent does not mitigate this denigration of her.

Yet the healing Jesus began when he freed her from the grip of seven demons continues to this day, still restoring Mary Magdalene’s reputation and her rightful place of honor in the Christian community.

The Church is now sharing the evidence found in a variety of ancient texts which shows “that [Mary Magdalene’s] status as an ‘apostle,’ in the years after Jesus’ death, rivaled even that of Peter.” v.

That’s how healing works. We know from the many stories of Jesus’ healings in Scripture, that whenever Jesus heals, he restores a person to wholeness of life.

For example, the lepers whom Jesus cleansed, were able to return immediately to their families and live in the communities from which they had been exiled due to their disease. Restoration took a bit longer for Mary Magdalene.

That’s the other thing about healing – it is for us, but not just for us. When we have been restored in body, mind, or spirit, we come away with a new awareness of God’s powerful love and mercy, and that is what we are called to share with others.

When Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds it empty, she cries. But in the most unexpected way, her tears are turned to joy as she hears her teacher and friend, call her by name. Suddenly there is nothing present but transforming love.

We don’t know how long they stayed together in that moment, but we do know that at some point Jesus tells Mary to go and tell the others, that they might be transformed too.

Mary doesn’t stop to ask Jesus to explain how he did it – she doesn’t ask to understand at all. She simply responds to the love of Christ that fills her and urges her on, and so she goes to tell the others, taking with her an unexpectedly new awareness of God’s reconciling love in Jesus. That which she had once known from a human point of view, Jesus her Rabboni, has been transformed, and because of that everything has become new (2 Cor 5:17).

When someone has been beaten down by the demons of fear, loneliness, or depression; when they have been oppressed by poverty, marginalization, or violence; when they have been forsaken by friends and family, it is as if they are living in exile – cut off from the reconciliation Jesus died and rose to give us all. And the longer someone lives in exile, the more their hope and sense of self-worth dwindle away.

It is to these beloved, thirsting ones that God sends us as witnesses, because as we hear in the book of Judith, God is the God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, protector of the forsaken, and the savior of those without hope. (Jud 9:11)

Faithful witnessing, like Mary Magdalene did, means carrying the life-giving waters of Baptism out to those who are athirst for the living God. (Ps 42:2) It means trusting God and God alone to judge them. It means inviting them into relationship just as they are and trusting God to take them and us where we need to go. Faithful witnessing means proclaiming by all we say and do the Good News of our redemption in God in Christ.

History did not treat Mary Magdalene well as a witness, and may not treat us well either – for a while anyway – but that isn’t what matters. What matters is that Mary loved Jesus so deeply that she was open to receive his Holy Spirit by which she was healed, forgiven, and renewed, then sent into the world to tell the Good News of his resurrection. Hers was truly a faithful witness and we are all beneficiaries of that.

As we seek to strengthen ourselves to be faithful witnesses, individually and as a church; as we seek to connect to our local community and serve the needs God leads us to there, we can count among our assets the friendship and availability of St. Mary Magdalene to support us.

All of heaven wants us to succeed. How wonderful to be so abundantly supported! Amen.

Sources:
i. US Catholic, Who Framed Mary Magdalene? (Vol. 65, No. 4, pages 12-16), April, 2000
ii. ibid.
iii. Robert Ellsberg, All Saints, Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for our Time (The Crossroad Publishing Co., NY, 2002), 312.
iv. Bible History Daily, Was Mary Magdalene Wife of Jesus? Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute? How did her reputation evolve “from saint to sinner”?, Birger A Pearson, 03/17/2018.
v. Smithsonian Magazine, Who Was Mary Magdalene?, James Carroll, June, 2006. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/

Pentecost 9B, 2018: Children's sermon on being apostles today

We, at St. David's, dedicate the sermon on the fourth Sunday of each month to the children. This week we discussed what it means to be an apostle sent by Jesus into the world and why Jesus sends us. We discuss Jesus' mother, Mary, as "theotokos" (God bearer) and how we are theotokos, God bearers today. We find our apostleship grounded in our Baptism, and our preparation for it marked by our Confirmation.


Lectionary: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

There is no written text for this sermon as it is a conversation with the children. The icon of Mary as theotokos we discussed is pictured here. It was written by me and it is called "The First Communion"© (please seek permission to reproduce this image)