Sermon for the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, Apostle

July 22, 2007

Ruth 1:6–18
Psalm 73:23–28
Acts 13:26–33a
John 20:1-2, 11-18
Year C
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)

Song: We have seen the Lord ELW 869 stanza one

In the Bible, men are lifted up as shining examples of faith: Moses and Elijah, Isaiah and Amos, Peter and Paul, James and John, Timothy and Titus.

In the Bible, men ruled the world while women were over there doing womanly things, but were not of consequence or import in matters of faith.

In the Bible, a few woman break the glass ceiling that prevent us knowing them as exemplars of faith. At the very mention of their names they glimmer, shine. At the very mention of their names, they serve to make both men and women today notice, sit up, and sing their praises, among them Naomi and Ruth, Lydia and Dorcas, Miriam and Deborah, Esther and Jael, Mary and Martha, and, of course, Mary Magdalene.

For those who feel women get short shrift in honorifics for passing on the faith or being known for anything but their child-bearing or cooking, let this roll off your tongue today: Mary Magdalene, Apostle. Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles. Mary Magdalene, Proto-Evangelist.

No matter how Mary Magdalene has been mistakenly confused with the prostitute whom Jesus forgives, or fancifully portrayed by Dan Brown in the DaVinci Code as Jesus’ lover. There is no biblical nor historical evidence that Mary was anything but a disciple of Jesus.

Now allow Mary’s exuberant excitement to evangelize, to share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, to change her sadness into joy to fill your imaginations and to inspire your own outlook!

Here’s Mary in the gospel of John chapter 19 being an eyewitness to Jesus’ death on the cross, seeing him join the disciple whom he loved to his mother. Here’s Mary in the gospel chapter 20 schlepping to the tomb to pay her respects, stuck in her grief, not even noticing Jesus in front of her and confusing him for the gardener.

Here’s Mary recognizing Jesus being alive again as he calls her by name and running pell-mell to tell the other disciples that she had seen the Lord.

Song: We have seen the Lord ELW 869 stanza two

Mary, a woman, is the first to see Jesus (eyewitness). Mary, a woman, is the first to tell the other disciples (apostle to the apostles). Mary, a woman, is remembered throughout the church on July 22 as an initial bearer of the good news (proto-evangelist).

We may not be gathering here today if it had not been for Mary Magdalene, and other women like her.

I would not be here today if it had not been for my mother, who taught me by her example to listen intently to the Word of God as if it might transform my life and bear Christ for me.

I would not be here today if it had not been for Judith, who working at Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis twenty-five years ago as a field education student with me while giving me rides home to my apartment regularly asked me if I was happy. My first year in seminary in St. Paul, I felt a little like a fish out of water being from the Northeast with so many from the Midwest. Judith would tell me stories about those renegade professors from another seminary who walked off the campus when their president was being tried for false teaching. I knew that my own father sat at the feet of some of those professors. I discovered that these professors would be joining the faculty at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. In her car, taking me home from our field education site, Judith would listen to my lament and ask me if I was happy. Judith enabled me to discover a new way, a way of encountering the risen Christ as I made a transfer to another seminary the following year. She was my Mary Magdalene to me, who sincerely wanted me to know the good news was for me. She so wanted to encourage me to encounter the living Christ in my own preparations for ordained ministry.

There have been these women in my life, my mother, and Judith, and others who have been evangelists and apostles for me.

Being an evangelist above anything else means being a good news sharer, or good news bearer.

Being an evangelist above all means allowing your own experience of Jesus, and his death and resurrection, to so fill you up with hope and joy, that it becomes part of your own life story, that you are willing to wed the gospel into your own biography, that you are eager to talk and meet and engage with others so that they can be enabled to discover a new way, a way that they can encounter the living Christ in their own daily lives.

You do not need to be a preacher or to preach.

You do not need a theological education.

You do not need a title, like pastor.

What is required is that you are willing to listen to others, and to talk about your faith as easily as you talk about baseball, or the weather, or your children, or your work.

People discover the Christ in you as you share of yourself, your hopes and dreams. People discover the Christ in you as you embody compassion. People discover the Christ in you as like you and with you they are drawn out of self-occupation to seek and to find the company of others who yearn for the holy, who seek to live as those who are forgiven, who search for Christ in others whom they meet.

Each Sunday we have the chance to practice with one another. Each Sunday we have the chance for evangelist training. Each Sunday we overtly share the gospel that is for everyone who is stuck in their grief, who think that maybe death is the last word, and instead hear Jesus call them by name, who claim them through the Sacraments of grace, and who sing and pray and gather and give voice to God’s Word as if to say we have seen the Lord.

We have seen the Lord ELW stanza 3

We agree with Mary Magdalene. We so want to live a new life, and we want to share that with those whom we meet.

Thanks be to God for Mary Magdalene, and others like her in our lives, for encouraging us to be like her, apostle, apostle to the apostles, and proto-evangelist.

Who knows, maybe in time, people will be talking about you, about this community at Christ the King, as good news bearers, Kristi, Joe, Judy, Jim, Trudy, and Joyce, women and men of faith, and will say I wouldn’t be here today as a disciple if it hadn’t been for you. Thanks be to God!

I.N.I.

The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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