A Sermon for the Feast of Mary Magdalene:
Today we celebrate The Feast of Mary of Magdalene – which is officially July 22nd and falls on a Thursday this year -- but here at All Saints Church we’ve been transferring her feast to an adjacent Sunday for many, many, many, years now.
Here’s how former All Saints staff member Anne Peterson told the story of how
that came to be in a piece from our archives written in 2006:
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 starting out with 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. 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 back in those days highly unusual –
and moving to men and women alike. And eventually the celebration made its way
to Sunday morning.
And so here we are – all those years later – and once again we
hear the story of Mary’s encounter with the Risen Lord. And once again, I feel
honor bound to contextualize her story in the resurrection narratives. So here
we go:
Mary's is the first resurrection story in John’s Gospel. The second is when Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room when Thomas is out running an errand.
The third is when Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room when Thomas is BACK in the room.
The fourth is when Jesus appears to the disciples on the lakeshore.
And yet the conclusion of the lakeshore story reads: “This was now the third
time Jesus appeared after he was raised from the dead.”
So either John couldn’t count … or the appearance to Mary -- the woman known in the first century church as the “apostle of the apostles” -- didn’t count because she was a woman.
I’ll let you do the math.
It is an irrefutable data point that the biblical stories we inherit as our
scriptural family album came to us predominately from our male spiritual
ancestors who too-often ignored the work and witness of women because for them
… they didn’t count.
It is a story as ancient as the disciples who dismissed the women who first
proclaimed the resurrection and as recent as a conversation I had with a male
colleague about unexamined male privilege.
It was a conversation that ended with him saying defensively: “I’m
not privileged. My parents were working class people.”
That is how privilege works to maintain its power: abusing the power of that
privilege by refusing to acknowledge that privilege exists. And of course it
doesn’t stop with sexism.
It is a process as old as the sin of racism that has been part of our DNA even before we were a nation.
It is as current as the blog posts and twitter feeds tearing down those who dare to speak the truth that Black Lives Matter and those who remind us that unless we are indigenous Americans we are ALL immigrants – or descended from them.
And most recently, it is being used by those who are attacking what scholars call “critical race theory” because it dares to challenge us to teach our children all of their history – not just the parts that make their white ancestors look good.
All of this is at least part of the reason here at All Saints Church we have been using Dr. Wil Gaffney's “Year W” lectionary … a churchy word for “schedule of lessons” … this year: because it centers the often-neglected stories of the women in our biblical family album and gives us all a chance to hear them in a new way.
For as the words of the Psalm appointed for today reminds us:
The AUTHOR OF LIFE gave the word;
the
women who proclaim the good news are a great army.
We stand this morning here at All
Saints Church in Pasadena on the shoulders of a great army of truth telling, justice
seeking, Jesus following women whose stories bear telling and re-telling lest
we lose them to the mists of time.
One of those women is Margaret
Sedenquist of blessed memory, who we lost in February to COVID-19. In the
1970's Margaret began keeping track of gender-oriented words in the sermons and
liturgy here at All Saints. During her first recording period, 100 gender-oriented
words were used; 97 were male oriented and the 3 female terms used were mother,
daughter and wife. Her persistence in sending these tallies to then rector George
Regas -- and having meetings with him to discuss them -- led to changes in our
liturgies that put All Saints in the forefront of the inclusive language
movement.
In 1976, Margaret took the microphone on
the floor of convention to move that the Canons be rewritten to give equal
consideration to women. The logistics of the undertaking would be massive, but
Bill Rodiger, then Chair of the Commission on Canons, promised that his
committee would work over the next year to have a recommended version ready for
adoption at the next convention.
“Does that satisfy you, Mrs. Sedenquist?” Bill Rodiger asked from the podium.
The AUTHOR OF LIFE gave the word;
the
women who proclaim the good news are a great army.
Another of those women was Lydia Wilkins ... long time member of
All Saints and a feisty voice for inclusion and equity until her death at the
age of 106 in 2010. As an African American woman born in 1904 when women
couldn’t vote, and it was difficult or impossible for black men to cast a
ballot, Lydia saw momentous changes in her lifetime ... and was a dogged
participant in being an agent of those changes.
Until she was 101 she drove herself to the polls -- finally giving in
and letting daughter Marjorie drive her to cast her vote for the first African
American President in 2008.
"In 1946 Bishop Stephens called a meeting and so I said “Bishop Stevens,
what about our girls going to that camp you're starting up?” And after that
meeting my friend called me and said “Lyd, when you asked the bishop about our girls
going to camp he just about swallowed his cigar!” But I'll tell you what -- the
next year those little girls went to camp. All four of them. And he was at that
camp that year to see to it they were taken care of properly."
The AUTHOR OF LIFE gave the word;
the
women who proclaim the good news are a great army.
Today we celebrate the Feast of Mary Magdalene. But every day we have the opportunity celebrate the great army of truth telling, justice seeking, Jesus following women whose stories bear telling and re-telling lest we lose them to the mists of time.
And we have arguably never needed their inspiration more. as we face challenges in our polarized and divided nation moving out of a global pandemic back to a future we have yet to imagine in a world simultaneously threatened by the climate crisis attacking our planet and the rise of authoritarian oligarchies attacking our democracy.
So in conclusion, here are some words of wisdom and inspiration from Bishop Steven Charleston -- words that spoke to me the minute I read them as the marching orders for that great army called to proclaim that good news:
Those who need hope cannot see us if we are bent over with worry.
They cannot find us if we are
hiding from conflict.
They cannot join us if they cannot
see what we are doing.
As people of faith, we must take
the risk of being visible.
Even if our hearts are heavy we
must stand and be counted.
Each one of us is a sign someone
else is searching for.
We are the inspiration they have
been needing.
Our role is often nothing more
than being present,
visibly, actively present in
reality.
Not offering sympathy from a
distance
but offering a hand up close and
personal.
It is not always easy for us to
do.
It takes courage and commitment,
but consider this:
Who do you remember seeing
standing tall that touched you in your own life?
And who moved you by doing nothing
more than being seen to do the right thing?
THE AUTHOR OF LIFE gave the word;
the
women who proclaim the good news are a great army.
Mary Magdalene was part of that great army.
So was Anne Peterson and the women who worked to bring her story
out of the shadows into our Sunday worship;
So was Margaret Sedenquist who was not seeking satisfaction but justice for the
women of our diocese;
and so was Lydia Wilkins whose feisty challenge to Bishop Stevens just about made
him swallow his cigar -- and opened the way for integration at our diocesan
camp.
And so are all those who labor today to dismantle oppression in all its forms as
beacons of God’s love, justice, and compassion in our beautiful and broken
world.
And so on this Feast of Mary Magdalene – the first to witness the resurrection,
whether John counted her or not – let us give thanks for that great army of
women who have proclaimed the good news down through the centuries.
And let all of us – no matter where we fall on the continuum of
gender identity – continue to be part of the good work of amplifying their
voices and telling their stories as we take our place on their shoulders –
proclaiming in our generation as they did in theirs the good news of the indestructible
power of God’s inexhaustible love. Amen.
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A Woman's Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year W by Dr. Wilda C. Gafney
Cartoon by Naked Pastor; used with permission
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