The Tower (Reflections on Mary Magdalene)
Luke 8:1-3, Matthew 15:32-39,
Psalm 1
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agdalena, I have decided that I
want to speak to you today. On some long distant day, your parents will likely
tell you the story of how they chose to give you your name. And the story they
will tell you, I happen to know, will go something like this: When your mom was
only a couple of weeks pregnant with you, your grandma got a phone call from
your great Aunt Maggie who lived way out west. She had called to tell your
grandma, before your mom had said a word, that your mom was pregnant and that
she was going to have a girl.
That event was
what prompted your parents to name you after your great Aunt Maggie (whose full
name, of course, is Magdalena). And I’m sure you can be proud of being named
after her – a strong woman who is obviously sensitive to things that many of us
are not.
But I didn’t
really want to talk to you about your Great Aunt Maggie today, but about
another woman – maybe one of the strongest I have ever heard of – after whom
you are also named. We know her, as Mary Magdalene, one of the early followers
of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, Mary
Magdalene is a very important person in Christian tradition. Down through the
centuries, all kinds of things have been said and written about her. She has
often been identified as a prostitute or as that repentant woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears
and dried them with her hair. I wanted to tell you first of all, Magdalena,
that there is absolutely no reason to think that Mary Magdalene was any of
those things. At least, at no point does the Bible say any such things about
her. These are all ideas that somehow became attached to the figure of Mary
Magdalene in later church traditions.
It might even be that these
negative images of Mary were intentionally connected to her by later church
leaders as a kind of a smear campaign. You see, she was a little bit embarrassing
to later Christians because it is pretty obvious that she was an important
leader in the early
church and, as time went by, an increasingly male-dominated church
didn’t feel comfortable with the idea that women could even be leaders.
So, Magdalena,
ignore what later Christians and traditions said about Mary Magdalene and lets
just concentrate on what the Bible says about her. It may not seem like there
is a lot in the Bible, but I think that what there is you will find very
interesting.
The first
thing that we know about her is her name: Mary Magdalene. And that name marks
her already as someone rather unique. Most women in that world at that time
would have used a name that indicated her relationship to some man in her life.
So a normal name for someone like her should have been Mary, daughter of Jacob
or Mary the mother of James or, as we have in an example in the passage we read
from the Gospel of Luke, Joanna, the wife of Chuza. This was because women, in
that world, were defined and limited by the men in their life. I’m not saying
that it was right – I’m just
saying that that was how it was.
But Mary
Magdalene doesn’t have that
kind of name. Already that marks her as unusual – as a strong and independent
woman who was able to make a mark on the world all by herself. Wouldn’t it be
something to be named after a woman like that!
But what is
the meaning of her name if it is not a reference to some man. The last part of
her name most likely refers to the place where she comes from. It means that she comes
from the town of Magdala. And, as it turns out, that also tells us a lot about
her because we have learned a few things about that place. Magdala, in the
first century ad, was an important town on the west coast of the Sea of
Galilee. It would have been a fairly prosperous town when Mary was born there
with three local industries: fishing, fish processing and textiles. In fact,
Magdala was so prosperous that some of its citizens came together to build one
of the very few stone synagogues to be found anywhere in the region at the time
The name of the town, Magdala,
meant tower. Some have suggested that the name referred to some tall
structure in the town built for
the drying of fish or
for some step in the process of dying clothes, but I suspect that the name
actually came from something else. The most prominent geographical feature of
the town was a cliff (the south end of Mount Arbel) that stood just outside of
town. This distinctive cliff watched over the entire town like a protective
bodyguard. Its distinctive form would have led fishermen like a beacon safely
to their home harbour from far out over the lake. It even looked like a tower.
So I believe that the south end of Mount Arbel gave the town its name.
So there young
Miryam grew up for her entire life under the shadow of that tower – the cliff
of Mt. Arbel. And life must have been pretty good while she was young, but
then, everything changed
almost overnight. In the year 20 AD – that is, about ten years before a man
named Jesus showed up on the scene – King Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, did
something stunning. He totally reorganized his kingdom. He abandoned his
capital city, which he had been building for years at a place called Sephoris,
and decided to build a brand new capital in a brand new city that he called
Tiberias.
Why would Herod do that? Capital cities
are expensive and kings don’t just move them for no reason. And it is not too
hard to guess what the reason might have been based on the location of the
city. Herod built his new city, Tiberias, on the west coast of the Sea of
Galilee, about a half day’s journey south of Magdala. So, any guesses why Herod
would have made a massive investment to build a city on the shores of the
largest freshwater lake in that part of the world? As with most things that
politicians do, you would probably be right if you said that it was about
money.
Specifically, Herod was making a bet that
he could make a lot of money by taking direct control of the fishing industry
on the Sea of Galilee. Herod had the power to force fishermen to take their
catches to his new docks at Tiberias. He would force them to pay for the
privilege of getting their fish processed in his new factories (and they were
certainly not allowed to take them anyplace else). Basically, Herod was taking
over every aspect of the fish trade and skimming as much money as he could off
of the top.
If Mary Magdalene was born around 10 ad in Magdala, can you imagine how her
world must have changed when she was about ten years old? All of a sudden, the
fish processing plants in her town were shutting down, fishermen were getting
less money for their catches and everyone she knew was struggling just to get
by. Assuming that she was a smart, intelligent young woman (which she clearly
was) how do you suppose she might have reacted? I’ll tell you how she reacted:
she got mad. She spoke up and said that this was not right and that Herod was gouging
his people.
How do I know that that was how she
reacted? Well, that brings us to the second thing that we are told about her in
our reading from the Gospel of Luke this morning. When she is introduced, we
are told that, at some point in her life, she had had seven demons and that
these demons have gone out from her. At some point in her life, she had been
labeled by the people around her as being demon possessed.
Now what might lead people to do that? It
was not uncommon in the ancient world for many different things to be diagnosed
as demon possession. This would include things that we now understand to be
mental illnesses or disorders such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or
epilepsy. We have fortunately learned today that those problems have nothing to
do with evil influences and we are much the better for it.
But it wasn’t just mental illnesses that
ancient people blamed on demons. In fact, anytime anyone behaved in ways that
that were not considered to be acceptable, people were very likely to blame
that behaviour on demon possession.
So, what do you think that the people of
Magdala might have said about a young woman of their town who, instead of being
quiet and obedient as all young women were expected to be, started to speak up,
to complain about the policies of the king and how they were devastating her
family, friends and neighbours? I’ll tell you what they said – they said that
she had a demon, or maybe even seven of them.
So I am now even more convinced that Mary
Magdalene was a strong woman who dared to stand up and speak her mind about the
injustice that she saw in the world. And, what’s more she paid the price for
her defiance by seeing her friends and neighbours reject her and become afraid
of her because they thought that she had a demon or seven. Again, Magdalena, I
think you should be proud to be named after such a strong woman.
But there is one more thing that we
recognize about Mary Magdalene today. Something changed for her. Her neighbours
in Magdala may have feared her because they thought that she had demons, but
they also recognized that something happened to her that released her from
those demons. What do you suppose that was? I don’t think it is a big stretch
to think that the big change happened when Mary met Jesus. But how did that go
down?
The town of Magdala is only mentioned once
in the New Testament (apart from Mary Magdalene’s name) and that is in the
passage that we read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. According to at
least some of the original manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus
miraculously fed bread and fish to four thousand Galilean men and probably just
as many women and children in the desert, he went to Magdala. Not all ancient
manuscripts say that. Different ancient manuscripts that have been discovered
say that he went to Magadan or even to Magadala. You have to read the footnotes
in your Bible to actually find the name of the town of Magdala. But all of
those words, if they mean anything, seem to be pointing us to the same region –
the region close to Magdala.
And if Jesus went to Magdala or anyplace
close to Magdala soon after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes in the
wilderness, I cannot help but think that that was when he met Mary Magdalene.
And I believe that there was a connection between those two events. Jesus cast
the demons out of Mary Magdalene’s life at that point – demons that had come
upon her because she was so angry at how Herod was claiming all of the fish in
the Sea of Galilee for himself.
Well, what had Jesus just done before he
went to Magdala? He had performed a miracle for the people in the wilderness.
We usually focus on the miraculous nature of his provision when we read the
story, of course. What we often miss is that, in the political context, what
Jesus had just done also had a political dimension. He had just taken the fish
of the Sea of Galilee and distributed it (free of charge) to the people of
Galilee. He had taken the bread of Galilee and done likewise. He had defied the
plans of Herod who was in the process of claiming all of these things for
himself. And then he went to Magdala, one of the places hardest hit by those
very policies.
In Magdala he met Mary, whom he set free
from her seven demons. How did he do that? I suspect that he had just
demonstrated to her (and to all of Galilee) that there were ways to resist what
Herod was doing without falling into rage and depression and violence. He had
shown her another way – the way of the kingdom of God. These demons were not
cast out of her life so much as the energy that had fed these demons of hers
was redirected towards a noble cause.
And on that day, Mary became a follower of
Jesus. And not just any follower. A leader in his group. Jesus had this habit
of giving nicknames to his key leaders. He called James and John, two bothers,
the “Sons of Thunder.: One of them, a guy named Simon, he liked to call “rock”
because he was so tough and stubborn. We remember the Greek translation of that
nickname and call him Peter. Well, I think that Jesus gave Mary a nickname too.
He called her the Magdalene. It wasn’t just a reference to where she came from,
though, he was calling her a tower – he was calling her the one who would watch
over and protect his movement. She mattered that much.
Magdalena, you have been named after a
great and wonderful woman. I hope (and honestly, knowing your mother whose
quest for what is right I also admire, wouldn’t be terribly surprised) if you
grow up to be a woman like Mary Magdalene who is scandalized at the injustice
that happens in this world and who demands that it stops. Our prayer for you –
and this is why we have welcomed you into the church by baptism today – is that
you may also find (as Mary Magdalene found) a way to channel that quest for
justice towards peace, reconciliation and understanding in the kingdom of God
which is, we believe, the true hope for a better world.
140CharacterSermon
Mary #Magdalena teaches that we can make a difference by channeling our anger
at injustice towards #hope in God’s kingdom
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