Sermon: Mary Magdalene is an Apostle

Mary Magdalene is an apostle, or, sort of an apostle 

She is an "apostle to the apostles" which means that she has a sent-ness (apostellō is the Greek word meaning "to send"). 

But we don’t often think of her like this - as an apostle.  We don’t often think of women as apostles because the official "twelve apostles" were all men.   

But all four gospels single Mary Magdalene out as the very first person who saw the risen Lord.  And he sends her.  He sends her to the other disciples to tell them that he is "ascending" to the Father: 

"Go...to my brothers and tell them , ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God," he says (John 20.17). 

Now she had already been to the tomb, early in the morning while it was still dark we are told (John 20, 1).  And she had alreadu fetched the other disciples having found the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body missing.  But on seeing the empty tomb the other disciples had gone back to their homes.  While Mary, from Magdala, stayed at the tomb weeping. 

So it was with eyes full of tears, longing eyes, that she saw Jesus risen.  It was in her distress, her "soul sickness," her languish that she came to be the first person to see Jesus risen: 

"I have seen the Lord!" she said. 

And this kind of seeing is a recognition:  She recognises Jesus.  But she doesn’t recognise him straight away.  Because, until he speaks her name she thinks he is the gardener! 

Our God is a god who calls us; and calls us by our name. 

I first began to notice God's calling in 1997 and following it, over the last ten years, has been real "road" of discovery.  I had studied physics at Newcastle Upon Tyne and after a spot of Summer archaeology I got my first real job with a seismic surveying company.  I started off with three months of field work which took me to the remote desert interior of the Sultanate of Oman; where I met Muslim men who prayed .  This had a huge impact on me:  It was the first time in my life when I met people who took prayer seriously. 

The Omani desert is a very harsh and inhospitable environment.  Working from sun-up till sun-down in the dust and hot winds of the desert was an environment which set me soul searching.  At that time, being a young adult in my early twenties, I was trying to figure out what to do with my adult life.  And this voyage to a distant land, the hard work, and the harsh environment became so much more of a spiritual journey for me than simply a job.  In the aridity of the desert I came to see the spiritual aridity which I had inside me. 

Working for hours, alone, in the extreme heat of up to 50°C brought out of me the spiritual anguish which was inside.

And like Mary Magdalene I found myself crying out to God.  Like Mary I was left staring and weeping into an empty tomb - I was weeping at the absence of God:  "Where is my Lord!"

I was, as St. John of the Cross says,   

"soul sick in an advantageous way" (The Dark Night of the Soul, 19, 1).   

This is what he calls the first step on the "ladder of divine love."  It is the first stage of God communicating his innefable, indescribable language of love to the soul.  And it feels like disturbance in the soul, a kind of "love-sickness," which sets the soul searching for God. 

As we read in the Song of Songs: 

"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him. I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves.  So I looked for him but did not find him...‘Have you seen the one my heart loves?’" (Song of Songs 3.1-3). 

And as the psalmist says: 

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42.1,2). 

This is the kind of state I was in but I didn’t have a Christian background you see. 

I didn’t come from a  church family.  We were, at most, nominally Christian.  We used to go to midnight-mass once a year and the school term began with a service at Blackburn cathedral.  But like the majority of British society our contact with the church was minimal and our outlook on life was thoroughly secular - it simply didn’t involve the church or any informed religious perspective.

It’s so amazing, then, that from only the loosest connections with the church I had somehow acquired a powerful image of Jesus.  It wasn’t thought through at all and I didn’t even know I had it.  It was merely a notion.  But I had a notion that human suffering and the truth of God’s identity where somehow connected.  I had acquired, from somewhere an image (in my mind’s eye) of "the pain on the face of Christ crucified" as, somehow, being the revelation of the most profound truth.

At the time, though, I couldn’t have said anything about it; I simply didn’t have any words for it.  And although I recognised Jesus in my experience of spiritual anguish, in the desert, it was some time before I came to recognised, and understand anything, about the church.   

And this is true for many people.  There’s nothing unusual about this sort of situation. 

There is arguably as much interest in Jesus now, if not more, than at any other time in Christian history, but, people are terribly confused about the church - Its traditions, what do they mean? Its culture, who are these people? Its internal divisions? Its message? Its moral position, what does the church require of us?...

And while the church has been loosing its influence upon society, over the last fifty years, and is having to re-shape itself according to rapid social changes, society at large is engaged in spiritual searching as I was.  You could say "we are living in an age of spiritual quest":  

·          People are searching for certainty in these very uncertain times,

·          they are nostalgic for simplicity and community,

·          they seek safety in response to a climate of fear,

·          and they seek meaning in a world of overwhelming information and choice,

·          they seek the divine otherness in a world of material wealth... 

And it is into this world that God is calling; speaking in the depths of our being.  As the psalmist says: 

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.  By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life" (Psalm 42.7,8). 

Over the last ten years I have read and thought and talked a lot about the church and have come to understand it, more and more, as the human response to that call of God.  The ancient word for church used in the New Testament, "ekklesia", actually comes from the verb "to call" and means a gathering.  It is a community called into being by God.  It’s unity derives from, and signifies to the world, the unity which is in God himself - the unity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit: 

"...‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God...’" says Jesus (John 20.17). 

And that he is returning means that he was sent.  In the same way the church has a sent-ness - it is an apostolic gathering, an apostolic people.

            As we say in the Nicene Creed: we believe in "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church..." 

The church is therefore a holy people called out of the world and, but also, a people sent into the world:   

But sent into the world to so what? 

·          To communicate with all people;

·          to blend the religious perspective (which we learn together) with the lives we live in the world;

·          to participate constructively in the communities in which we are situated;

·          and above all, at this time, to listen: to listen to those who are seeking.  What are people in the world saying?

·          We are to listen to what people are saying and to discern God’s call at work in their lives...so that all may come to recognise Jesus as the true humanity. 

And, of course, we can only ever do these things if we are firmly rooted in him who both calls us and sends us. 

Let us pray: 

As you call us to be your people, you send us into this broken and beautiful world, with the message that you are ascended on high.  Amen. 

Preached by: Reverend Huw Butler at Llanbedr Church on Sunday, 15th July 2007