Today is the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost.
Monday is the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, a remembrance of her celebrated by Christians on July 22.
The lectionary reading for this Sunday is posted below. It is a good story — about a time that Jesus tried to go on retreat and failed.
My reflection is occasioned by the lectionary passage in Mark, but it winds up being about Mary Magdalene. She just keeps showing up.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.
Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
As many of you know, I’ve been on a “road sabbatical” since mid-March. Mostly, that means I didn’t accept any speaking engagements for six months this year. I needed to rest.
I’m happy to report that, although I’ve been writing a great deal and working on some projects at home, my sabbatical has been going much better than that of Jesus and his friends in today’s gospel passage!
I have traveled a bit in these last months — mostly for personal reasons. I recently spent a week at a wellness retreat in Arizona. It isn’t at a church camp or center. That was a purposeful choice on my part. I wanted to go to a place where people were not likely to know me or my work. I didn’t want to talk about theology or church or Christian nationalism. I needed to be away from it all. Thus, my destination was an eclectic place, offering classes on meditation, yoga, nutrition, and a range of spiritual options including things like healing circles and drumming. Walks in the desert. Staring at the stars in a clear western sky.
It was perfect.
Yet, as the week unfolded, something odd kept happening. There, in this alternative spirituality kind of place, where most of the guests appeared to be running away from anything conventionally religious, especially anything having to do with Christianity, I kept having visions of Mary Magdalene. It was almost like she was stalking me. Her presence was, in a word, unexpected.
I won’t share all the details as much of what happened was deeply personal. But she showed up at three different times in three separate guided meditations. In the first, she and Jesus appeared to me together, welcoming me into a place that might have been interpreted as heaven. In the second, Mary Magdalene anointed my feet, a reminder that — in a profound spiritual way — that our physical bodies are part of the mystical Body of Christ. Both of these images spoke to me deeply.
The third, however, was the most surprising of the three. After a lengthy mediation, the leader, a kind of intuitive healer with a pronounced accent from her native Scotland, went around the circle asking people about their experiences.
She spoke to each woman, and I was last. She looked at me intently, fell silent for a moment, and, without a word from me, blurted out, “Mary Magdalene! Mary Magdalene is sittin’ right there, next to ye!”
“Are you kidding me?” I responded. Other women in the circle later told me that they thought I was going to faint.
“Is she yer patron saint?” asked the guide. “She’s with ye. Powerful.”
Until recently, I can’t say that I thought about Mary Magdalene very much. As a teenager, I loved her songs in Jesus Christ Superstar. I appreciated the new emphasis and interest in her from scholars, prompted primarily by feminist theologians. A friend gifted me with an icon of her holding a red egg. And, of course, I’d read the DaVinci Code.
But that changed a few years ago when I met Elizabeth Schrader (now Elizabeth Schrader Polczer), then a graduate student at Duke, who shared with me her research regarding John 11. She had discovered textual problems in the familiar biblical story of Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary. There was a strong case to be made that there weren’t two sisters, but only one — and that one sister was Mary Magdalene.
Elizabeth, a.k.a, “Libbie,” and I became friends. Her work has — not surprisingly — rattled the world of textual criticism and scholarship on the Gospel of John. During the Wild Goose Festival, in summer 2022, I preached a sermon on her thesis. The sermon went viral online and has now been heard by about a million people.
The scholarly work is, of course, all hers. I spread the word. But I saw some implications for ministry in her research that she hadn’t yet realized — and I’ve preached about that, too. People ask us to do things together, like podcasts and articles. I can’t give a speech anywhere on any topic without someone asking a question about Mary Magdalene. Libbie and I recently submitted a proposal for discussion regarding all this to the upcoming synod to be held by the Catholic Church (you can get a peek of that here) — we’re just waiting to hear if they would like to have a conversation about Mary.
In a relatively short time, Mary Magdalene has gone from being a kind of devotional side interest to being an important part of the work I’m doing. She just showed up. And now she’s taking over significant parts of my life.
I didn’t bargain on this. I sure didn’t plan it.
And now she’s barging in on my retreat at a vaguely New Age wellness center in the Arizona desert — where absolutely nobody knew me and very few people are even Christians.
Mary Magdalene is sittin’ right there, next to ye!
Maybe that’s how she is. Always sitting there, right next to us. But we don’t pay much attention. Maybe that was true for Jesus and the disciples, too. Perhaps they didn’t notice her nearly as much as they should have. But she’s always there — the first (if Libbie’s thesis is correct) to confess the truth about who Jesus was, serving him, anointing him, witnessing his brutal death, the first to proclaim new life. Maybe she’s always there, doing all these things and more, accompanying us on the journey, as companion and comforter, as witness and truth-teller, preaching good news even when everyone is stuck in the grave.
Mary Magdalene shows up.
And, once you notice, she just keeps on showing up. Trust me on this.
That’s when I began to wonder: Why now? Why show up in the midst of all this chaos and confusion — when people want to talk about stuff like Christian nationalism and threats to democracy and the stress that is consuming us regarding the human future? Why now? Haven’t we got enough to think about without worrying if the Bible messed up Mary Magdalene?
What’s Mary Magdalene got to do with it?
I’m ruminating. Maybe I don’t need to understand. Maybe something of the Spirit is afoot. Maybe noticing is enough. Maybe she’s the patron saint we all need right now.
Look for her. She’ll show up in the most surprising places. There she is — Mary Magdalene is sittin’ right there, next to ye!
Commenting is always available to paid subscribers. Comments open to free subscribers on Sunday morning around 9AM eastern.
In January 2024, Dr. Schrader Polczer gave a great lecture on her research at the Southern Lights Conference (which I co-host). That lecture, which was initially only available to those who attended the conference, is now open to the Cottage community.
This video includes her presentation, a short Q&A session, and a song from Ken Medema. It is a wonderful hour of compelling scholarship and great storytelling. (Click on the video below)
PLEASE JOIN ME AND BRIAN MCLAREN in January 2025 for the next SOUTHERN LIGHTS CONFERENCE.
Our special guests include Robert P. Jones, Jacqui Lewis, Dante Stewart, and Mihee Kim-Kort. The theme will be faith and democracy. And, given all the uncertain events between now and then, we don’t know if we’ll be celebrating or crying.
But I can promise you one thing: Whatever happens, we will be together singing, learning, and lighting the way toward a better future.
There are in person and online options available to attend.
INSPIRATION
The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.
The girl was going over her global studies homework
in the air where she drew the map with her finger
touching the Gobi desert,
the Plateau of Tiber in front of her,
and looking through her transparent map backwards
I did suddenly see,
how her left is my right, and for a moment I understood.
— Marie Howe, “The Map,” from her book of Mary Magdalene poems, Magdalene
Can't we look to Mary Magdalene as simply an early church leader whose rightful place next to Christ should have been acknowledged? There are no Scriptures to place her anywhere but right next to Jesus. Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows her to be a godly woman responding wholeheartedly to a message that must have appealed to her greatly. But the fastest way to rob a woman of her power is to make her a sexual suspect. It certainly has worked all these years for Mary Magdalene.
― Susan Campbell
It is time now, I said,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.
Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.
I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy.
About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be time, again,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.
— Mary Oliver, “Swimming, One Day in August”
Libbie was invited by National Catholic Reporter to write a piece about her work in celebration of Mary Magdalene this week. Please read her front page feature “In Consideration of a Female Diaconate, Look to Mary Magdalene” on the implications her work may hold for the upcoming discussion in the Catholic church about the role of women.
The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up.
And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn't necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him.
― Nadia Bolz-Weber
You inspired me to get out a book that has been on our bookshelf for years--Mary Magdalene, A Biography by Bruce Chilton, published 2005. Bruce is a Biblical scholar, pretty thorough in his research. I am getting deeper into Mary Magdalene. Thank you!
Loved your comments about Mary M. I believe that she was one of the inner group - dare I say Apostles? Once the church became "Imperial" the major role that women had played the first 200 ,years began to br erased.