A Sermon preached on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill by The Reverend Robert Atwell on Sunday 22 July 2007

Poor Mary Magdalene always gets a bad press. Tradition identifies her as the penitent prostitute in the Gospel who anointed Jesus and dried his feet with her hair, and as such she appears in countless paintings in Western art. In the Middle Ages, and still throughout the Islamic world, the reason women cover their heads is because aside from young girls, only prostitutes wear their hair loose. The veil was a sign of modesty. Historically it’s why nuns have also worn veils.

It's easy from our western liberal perspective to smile at this, but it's not that long ago that it was virtually compulsory for women to wear hats in church. Look at the old black & white photographs of St Mary's in the Parish Room at the back of church, and see all the ladies in their hats.

But there's a problem in all this, at least as far as Mary Magdalene is concerned. The woman who dried Jesus' feet with her hair is not named in the gospels, whereas Mary Magdalene always is. Mary stood out from the crowd from the word go: people knew who she was. But there is no reason to identify her with the prostitute. Unfortunately for Mary Magdalene, the anointing story immediately precedes her first appearance in St Luke's narrative, with the result that the two unrelated incidents got telescoped into one. Luke simply describes Mary as the woman from whom Jesus cast out 'seven demons' (Lk 7.36-50). This has nothing to do with lax sexual morals, but in first-century speak is a reference to the fact that she suffered from a disabling psychological illness. In other words, Mary was mentally ill. It is small wonder then, that following her healing by Jesus she became a devoted disciple and was prepared to take extraordinary risks to be at his side.

People have always been fascinated by Mary Magdalene, and over the centuries various bizarre legends have piggy-backed onto her mistaken identification as the repentant prostitute. Most recently we've had to endure Dan Brown's multi-million fantasy, The Da Vinci Code, with its ludicrous contention that she had a sexual relationship with Jesus who fathered a child by her. Unbelievable rubbish - though I do wish I had written the book because it would have solved my pension problems at one stroke.

So this morning, just for once, let's separate fact from fiction and honour the woman, not the fantasy. Who was the real Mary Magdalene? What do we know about her and why do we honour her?

Well, from her name we know she came from Magdala, a town by the Sea of Galilee. We know that she was a constant companion of Jesus, who with other female disciples provided for Jesus and the twelve out of their own resources. We also know that following Jesus' arrest, whereas the men fled Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and the other women refused to abandon Jesus and were present at his crucifixion. It was the women who buried him in the empty tomb which Joseph of Arimathea, in a sort-of ancient pre-paid funeral plan, had had built for himself.

Finally, and most famously, it was Mary Magdalene who returned first thing on Easter morning to anoint the dead body of Jesus with spices in accordance with the burial custom of the Jews, his burial having taken place hastily on the Friday evening just before sunset. And, as a result, it is she who discovers that the tomb is empty.

Imagine her consternation as she runs and tells the other disciples the disturbing news. It is why the Christian tradition honours her with the title, 'The apostle of the apostles', a title first awarded her by St John Chrysostom. This in itself is extraordinary. In Jewish law a woman had no legal status and was prohibited from being a witness in court. And yet in this new Christian dispensation the first witness to the resurrection is a woman, a woman moreover who for most of her life had been mentally ill.

What is also extraordinary in the Easter story is that although Peter and John rush to inspect the tomb upon hearing Mary's news, they don't hang around much. They see the empty tomb, panic and run away. So much for the brave men. Once again it is only Mary who stays the course, and her weeping figure stands for all who are prepared to wait in dark places.

Lancelot Andrewes, one of the great Anglican preachers of the early seventeenth century, when preaching to King James I in 1620 spoke about this strange encounter in the garden between Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ. He said that by virtue of the resurrection, Christ will (and I quote) 'garden our bodies too, and turn all our graves into garden plots'. 'This gardener,' he said, 'made Mary all green of a sudden'.

I find that a beautiful image. 'Christ will garden our bodies' and like Mary Magdalene, will make us 'all green' again. It's sort of eco-friendly theology. We talk lots today about 'being green' and 'green consciousness' but not in the sense of personal transformation, of the new life that awaits us in and through the gateway of death. For Lancelot Andrewes, Mary Magdalene is a figure of the springtime of the heart which is ours when we meet the risen Christ.

There is one other thing I would want to say this morning. It is something we can say of all the saints, but given what we know of her life, it is something we can say of Mary Magdalene in particular.

Unlike the majority of us, saints are not interested in where we come from, but in where we are going in life, in what by the grace of God we can become. Whether or not Mary Magdalene was a converted prostitute, whether or not she suffered from a debilitating form of mental illness, her life speaks to us of God's future, his call to each of us not to be held captive by our past, including our mistakes and failures, but to move into the future he has in store for us.

In the words from St Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians which we've just read, 'If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old has passed away; see, everything is made new!' (2 Cor 5.17) God invites us to be renewed, to be re-created.

That's why the saints are so free, and so free-ing. We constrain one another by our petty jealousies and prejudices. We nurse grievances, are reluctant to forgive, won't let people move on. We imprison one another in our histories. But the saints speak to us of the freedom of God to become our true selves. There is a word for this in theology: it is called sanctification. God calls us to become whole and holy: to be saints.

That personal transformation, that inner 'greening', can be a reality for us too. So as we honour this woman, this 'apostle of the apostles', let's pray that by God's grace we will find ourselves on a journey of discovery. And rather than hug this treasure to ourselves, let's have the confidence to share the good news with others so that they too can experience the new life that Christ promises to all. Like Mary Magdalene, we have a gospel to proclaim.