Close Encounters of the Unexpected Kind

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from Jesus Christ.

During the Wednesday evening service this week, I asked the people who were gathered here to tell me what they had heard about Mary Magdalene. The Da Vinci Code was quickly mentioned, which suggests that she was married to Jesus… an idea also found in the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. Then I asked what else people had heard, there was silence… with no one wanting to say out loud in church the most common association with Mary Magdalene. I tried to help by saying we might imply that she worked on Spenard. It turns out many people in this congregation work in Spenard and are not employed in the kind of work about which I was hinting. That was an awkward moment. Back to Mary Magdalene, she’s not the same as Mary the sister of Martha nor is she the woman accused of adultery nor is she the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with oil and tears, drying it with her hair.

The popular ideas about Mary of Magdala could make us wonder why she is a saint or why we have this day to honor her, but her place in this story can have no doubt. What we do know about Mary Magdalene is that she was probably from the fishing village of Magdala, she is the woman out of whom Jesus cast seven demons and she appears in all the resurrection stories. In today’s passage from John, she earns her title of apostle to the apostles… the one who is lingering to find out what happened to Christ’s body, only to discover it was beyond anything she could have imagined. If we are able to release what we have heard and join with Mary in this story, we are there in her tears of pain and of joy.

When Mary recognized Christ, her rabbouni, her teacher, he tells her not to cling to him. How her heart must have broken to be so close to the one she loved and to be at arms length. Yet he had work to do and so did she. We also have things to which we cling. If I cling fiercely to what I learned in seminary as the way things are done in a church, I am not open to my work here or to what you all can teach me. Similarly, if you hold onto ideas about me, even if they are that I can do everything, it does not create the space for me to grow. When we all cling to the ideas of how God moves in our lives and how God uses us, including what our talents are or what our relationship with God is like, we remain in the Garden, seeking One who is no longer there.

We don’t stay at the communion rail, holding the Body and Blood of Christ in our hands and our cups, waiting and waiting. Christ has promised to be present to us in that meal and when we eat and drink, we do so of him and with him. He nourishes us with that food for the good of the soul and we are strengthened, not for clinging to the cross or the altar, but to go out in the world… to look for him in the faces around us.

This is not always easy and we all have moments of dark, doubt and sadness- when the Presence seems far away. Thomas Merton writes, “Love gives us an experience, a taste of what we have not seen and are not yet able to see. Faith gives us full title to this treasure, which is ours to possess in the darkness. Love enters in the darkness and lays hands upon what is its own.”

Even in the times of trial, when we are in the garden- seeking our rabbouni- Christ is with us. We know through the words he spoke to Mary Magdalene, he was going to his Father and our Father, his God and our God. His death for sin is our death to sin. This is the Jesus of John’s Gospel, the beloved Son sent by a God who so loves the world and so loves you. We can know God as Jesus knows God because he did the work for us.

And God continues that work through us, using the talents He has given us to help the world he loves. Jesus’ God and our God is of surprises- using an Egyptian princess to rescue the boy who would grow to free the Israelite slaves from Egyptian imprisonment. Who raised Jesus from the dead and inspired many to minister in his name. How can we know how God uses in the world to each other? Many times what we consider a small thing is Christ to someone else.

Like Mary, we all have different stories (some true, some exaggerations), but those stories ultimately are not the most important issues. It’s what was done for us, for everyone, that makes us special, that shows us we are the beloved sons and daughters as well. As it did for Mary Magdalene, that news should speed our feet and encourage us as apostles to the world.

So a taste of Easter may seem strange in July, but God’s unexpected grace is a year-round phenomenon, coming when we least expect it. That grace frees us from expectations that we must save ourselves or earn God’s favor. The blessed unexpected infant, the unexpected healer, the unexpected lifter of the downtrodden, the unexpected Redeemer. Not Mary’s expected gardener, but her unexpected Risen Lord.

May God show you his unexpected grace this week in a way that blessed you and reminds you all that has been done for you. It’s July, but never the wrong season to remember and relive again the joy of the Risen Christ.

So with Mary Magdalene, all the saints who have gone before and all the saints gathered here today, I say to you, “He is risen.”

He is risen, indeed.

Alleluia. Amen.