Sermon: St Mary Magdalene

 

The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford Photograph of Victor Stock

Preacher:
Victor Stock
Date:
Sunday 24th July 2011
Venue:
St Mary Magdalen, Oxford
Service:
Patronal Festival Mass

There should be some bits of Mary Magdalene in the current Reliquary Exhibition at the British Museum - there is enough of her to go round, parts of her body being venerated in at least two parts of France, because of her enormous popularity in the Medieval Church.  When I was thinking about this sermon and about the place of the imagination in Christian faith and life, I had on the dining room table at the Deanery in Guildford that old war-horse The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church with its entry on Mary Magdalene, last Saturday’s Financial Times and The Oxford Classical Dictionary, described modestly as ‘the ultimate reference work on the Classical World’, and  I was struck by some connections.

First, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church: ‘From early times she has been identified with the woman who was a sinner, who anointed Christ’s feet in Simon’s house and with Mary, the sister of Martha, who also anointed him’, but the Gospels give no real support to either identification.  Then, Pandora in The Oxford Classical Dictionary: ‘This name combines ‘all’ and ‘gifts’, was a goddess connected with the earth, or is better known as the first human female, the cause of all man’s woes’.  The article continues, ‘If the name has any relevance here, it sounds ironic, for the two Pandoras may in fact be connected through the idea of the earth as first ancestor.  She was fashioned out of clay by Hephaestus, given gifts by all the Olympian gods, and sent as a gift herself to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus.  Here she opened a large jar and released all manner of evils into the world, only hope was left to counter-balance these.  Pandora’s box and Mary Magdalene came to mind together because in art, with or without relics, Mary Magdalene is shown holding a box, a box, of course, of precious spikenard. 

Then, the FT just happened to be open at a photograph from the Yad Vashem memorial of the bridge connecting the two parts of the Lodz Ghetto in 1941, a bridge peopled with those on their way to unspeakable suffering and annihilation.  As with so much that is precious to us, Mary Magdalene is ambiguous.  Some in the tradition heap upon her the opprobrium heaped on Pandora, the cause of all man’s woes, the prostitute, the sinner; others speak of her as the champion of womankind, the Apostle to the Apostles.  Here she stands, holding her box of precious spikenard. 

The Catholic tradition in the Church of England is in, what my mother would have called, ‘a bit of a pickle’, and all its various schools of thought are here in Oxford, you know them better than I do.  There’s the Ordinariat for those who want security, but can’t quite let go of Choral Evensong (though I’m not sure how many of those joining the Ordinariat have been aficionados of the Book of Common Prayer or the Cathedral tradition.  But there you are, that’s what happens when the Secretariat for Christian Unity isn’t asked its opinion by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who cooked up all this).  Then, there are those of us who have a romantic attachment to the Sarum Rite, practically vanished now, the world of Percy Dearmer, the academic gown and square cap for parish visiting, the apparelled amices for the servers at the Eucharist, the Book of Common Prayer, seen through the rose-pink glow of Sir Ninian Comper’s finest damask textiles.  All this against the phenomenal growth of Evangelical Christianity within the Church of England, a movement that has taken some of us by surprise over the last fifty years and now, with enormous energy, and slightly macabre psychopathology, pursues homosexuals and women bishops. 

So, there’s Mary Magdalene, standing here with her box of ointment, and her very ambiguity, as well as her honoured place in a complex tradition, should encourage us.  For to be a Christian at all is to take an ambiguous stand, a stand which requires the exercise of godly imagination.  The world as it is, in Syria or Bahrain, in the unspeakable suffering of the Horn of Africa, in displacement and famine and tribal conflict, to all of which the politicians of the West are largely indifferent, and the complexities of what is going on within Islam, makes the world a dangerous and difficult place, and a challenging one in which to have faith in a God of love, or as Prince Charles once said, ‘whatever loves means’.

The Magdalene stands for a tradition within Christianity which says loudly and clearly that love is costly, and theologians would say it is costly to God, costly to create and to sustain the universes, and costly to enter into the life of this world, with its DNA of sin and pain, and unjust suffering.  The exhibition at the British Museum looks at the relic as a way of coming close to the power of God, to the way of being before a God who, if he is love, is also a consuming fire.  But the difference between Pandora’s box and Mary Magdalene’s box of spikenard is that when Mary Magdalene’s box is opened, the costly ointment is poured out over the feet of Jesus, mingling as it’s poured with Mary’s tears.  And the bridge at Lodz, with its human cargo destined for destruction in the Ghetto, is an enduring reminder of the fragility and pain in the very fact of being human.  Pandora herself – well, how lovely, that having released all manner of evils into the world, hope was left to counter-balance these!

Imagination and hope, that’s a cocktail we can drink as a stirrup cup in honour of Mary Magdalene, our patron and our friend, and raising that glass to her, we can encourage each other.  For there is no real security to be found, be it in a revived Christian fundamentalism or in the certainties of Rome, Rome which is only so certain because instead of opening the box, it’s screwing down the lid.  As Catholic Anglicans here in Oxford, be encouraged by the connections Anglicanism makes between the world of the New Testament and the Classical world, and between both and the realities of a Warsaw ghetto in 1941, and what that continues to mean as it troubles conscience, forcing us to our knees.

One of the many wonderful things about your Church is that you have a statue to Our Lady of Joy.  Our Lady of Joy!  When so many Marian statues are either sickly sentiment or seven sorrows.  And in this Church you honour a saint who holds a box of something immensely precious, that ointment Mary so extravagantly poured away.  I wonder whether you remember Margaret Thatcher applauding Mary Magdalene as the thrifty housewife, who saved up for the nard.  Well, we all misunderstand symbols and images, but that was pretty spectacular.  If anybody was less like a thrifty housewife, it was the ambiguous and passionate figure of the Magdalene.

Imagination and fantasy are different.  The tradition about the Magdalene is rooted in a reality that flickers and burns in the pages of the text.  So, let the text have the last word: ‘The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene, early, when it was yet dark … Then she runneth’, and because she ran in the dark, we are now here, eagerly anticipating, as she did, her risen Lord coming to meet us.