Mary Magdalene

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

This week we'll be using the lessons appointed for the Feast of St. Mary of Magdalene on Sunday -- something All Saints Church has done for years now ... and so we asked Anne Breck Peterson, our Senior Associate for Leadership, Growth and Incorporation ... to share a little of that history in this week's Saints Alive newsletter.

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What is the passage of scripture that energizes you most? For me it is the scene of Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Easter morning. Sadly confronting a man who appears to be a gardener, she asks who has removed the body of Jesus and to what location. This gardener calls Mary by name, and in this exchange she experiences her friend and mentor, Jesus. Bidden to go and tell the others, Mary runs hell-bent-for-election, yelling, “I have seen the Lord!” The surprise, the delight and the energy of that scene excite me. I use this scene as a periodic meditation, wondering in what ways I am living as if I had “seen the Lord.”

The celebration of Mary Magdalene at All Saints began years ago when task forces exploring inclusive language and images of God were at work. Women’s Council went looking for women in the New Testament. Not many were to be found, but there was Mary-a leader of women who supported Jesus’ ministry out from their resources, a faithful disciple who stood at the cross when others had vanished, and the first to experience the risen Christ.

We celebrated this amazing woman in an evening service. The fact her feast day, July 22, was in the summer months when the liturgical calendar encouraged experimentation, was helpful. The first services, sponsored by Women’s Council, experimented with inclusive language and feminine images of God. A priest friend Anne Howard and I composed a eucharistic prayer for these occasions. We invited a variety of women priests to preside. After the services participants were invited to gather and talk about what it felt like to be in such a service. Having this opportunity to focus on a woman in our traditionally patriarchal church was moving, to men and women alike.

We have all come a long way, and Mary Magdalene is mainstream now. But the excitement of her encounter with the risen Christ will always keep us on the edge!

—from Anne Breck Peterson

in this week's All Saints Newsletter,

SAINTS ALIVE

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COMMENT: From my favorite straight, white, male, Republican, Floridian, cradle-Episcopalian attorney:

I would post this on your blog, but I don't know how to do a picture. "Feminine images of God. Hmmmpphhh. Everybody knows what God looks like:"

UPDATE: (From the aformentioned Floridian) -- I'm not a Republican!!!! I gave up that Calvinist dominated theocracy years ago and registered Libertarian. Oh, for the days of Barry Goldwater and Harry Truman.