Feast of St Mary Magdalene, July 22nd
Song of Solomon 3.1-4; Psalm 42; 2 Corinthians 5. 14-17; John 20.1-2, 11-18
“I will seek him whom my soul loves.”
Song of Solomon 3.2
Why do I have two songs going round in my head, one by Gershwin and one by Cole Porter, when I think of today’s saint?
Well the first is the Ira & George Gershwin song “Let’s call the whole thing off” recorded by Fred Astair in 1937.
You like potato and I like potato, You like tomato and I like tomato; Potato, potato, tomato, tomato! Let's call the whole thing off!Is it Magdalene (Magdalen), or Maudlin? The answer is relatively simple. If it’s an Oxford or Cambridge College, then it’s pronounced the tearfully sentimental way – maudlin, for that is how the name was pronounced in the 15th century when both colleges were founded, and indeed, the tearful Mary was the origin of the word maudlin. (There was a huge cult of Mary Magdalene in England in the 15th & 16th century and more churches were dedicated to her than to the Blessed Virgin Mary.) (The extra ‘e’, by the way, on the end of the Cambridge College name was probably a 19th century affectation, using the continental spelling to distinguish it for postal purposes from the Other Place.) Magdalene, is the pronunciation if it is today’s saint or a church dedicated to her, or a road named after her or a nearby church. Now Fr Anthony has outlined the biblical material we have about this Mary on the front of today’s Weekly Sheet, and I’m not going to repeat that. (See below) However, the church has a long tradition of conflating three, almost certainly different, women: this Mary Magdalene, exorcised of seven devils by Jesus and consequently, as a woman of means, a financial supporter, present at the Resurrection as we read in today’s Gospel; then there is Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus; and finally, the woman who was a great sinner and anointed our Lord’s feet and wiped them dry with her hair, often reputed to have been a prostitute, although there is no evidence of this. It is this woman who is so often pictured voluptuously by artists, as in the Titian on the front of today’s service booklet. And this takes us on to the second song that goes round in my head: Cole Porter’s 1928 hit, much bowdlerized since, “Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”
Birds do it, bees do it; Even educated fleas do it…Which prompted me to add a verse:
In Knightsbridge bars, debutantes do it; In the Sloane Club maiden aunts do it…Although I’m sure that can’t be true, because I was once told that in Knightsbridge, ‘sex’ were what the coalman delivered your coal in… The readings today have a theme running through them, that brings together the different aspects of Mary Magdalene as she is traditionally understood: the transformation of love, longing and lust, through penitence and tears, into the new creation of spiritual desire and thirst. Noli me tangere: ‘do not touch me’ says Jesus to Mary; look but do not touch. This is the erotic longing of the lover for the beloved, which we read in the Song of Songs. Or in today’s Psalm: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” (Ps 42.1) It is at once a physical and spiritual longing, which we hear caught in the very English restraint of Herbert Howell’s setting of the Psalm in the Offertory motet. Consider these two definitions of sexuality and spirituality for a moment.
Sexuality - of the essence of ‘being’ - knowing and being known – longing for connectedness, intimacy, absorption into the beloved.And:
Spirituality - of the essence of ‘being’ - knowing and being known – longing for connectedness, intimacy, absorption into the beloved.Looked at in this way, they are the same. It is hardly surprising then, that the Bible is full of graphic sexual imagery: in Genesis; the Song of Solomon; the Psalms; the Prophets; Jesus; Paul; the Revelation of St John… the sexual and the sensual run through the Bible, and the metaphor is taken up by many spiritual writers. But it is more than a metaphor. Human sexuality and intimacy are a reflection of the spiritual bond within the Trinity; a bond which we are drawn into through Christ’s passionate love for us. It is part of being made in the image of the triune God. Now in some centuries and in some parts of the church, this juxtaposition of sexuality and spirituality has all been too much, and so a sort of dualism has arisen, in which human sexuality has become the demon, and pure spiritual love the ideal. So the Virgin Mary becomes the pattern, and any life less virginal is regarded as second best. This sort of theology is deeply ingrained into many of us, and still produces inner tensions, and as we know, theological struggles in the wider church. It is a rich vein for the poetic. Here is John Donne wrestling with his feelings and longings, in Sonnet xiv:
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. I, like an usurpt towne, to another due, Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine, But am betroth’d unto your enemie: Divorce mee, untie, or break that knot againe, Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.I used to say, to the alarm of some of my students in my spirituality classes, that you will never be at ease with your spirituality, until you are at ease with your sexuality. For some had naively thought that if they became more spiritual, it would sort out their turbulent inner struggle with the sexual. But as celibate monks and nuns have observed through the centuries, there is a terrible irony, that as spiritual desire grows, so does sexual desire. The old abbot was once asked by a young monk when he would be free from all these sexual thoughts. He pondered a moment and then replied: “About 5 minutes after you die.” It is not coincidental that the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon was written by a man that Scripture tells us had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And they were not all platonic, political alliances. At another level, it is not surprising that people turn to the church, to the spiritual, for hatches, matches and dispatches. These are times of heightened emotional and physical awareness: the intimacy of marriage which Scripture likens to the bond between Christ and his church; the mystery of a child springing from within; the wrench of death and physical parting. Only as we realise that the physical and sensual and emotional are part of our spiritual relationship with God, will we grow in our love and desire for more of God, the mysterious beloved, whom we long to hold, like Mary, but cannot. Jesus tells Mary not to touch him. It is not the touch itself that is inappropriate, for later he invites Thomas to touch him. But it is a signalling that the relationship has changed, for her and for us who follow. The human longing to touch and hold those whom we love is but a shadow of the new intimacy of Jesus with his people. He will send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us; there will be a deeper union of God with us which transcends the limitations of human relationships. Here, at this Table, our hunger and thirst for the beloved is both satisfied and yet still inadequate. We rightly continue to long for a physical presence of Jesus. There is a symbolic physical closeness as we take Christ into our own flesh in bread and wine. And yet we know, that until we are united with him in the life to come, our Christian pilgrimage, like that of Mary Magdalene, will always be driven by desire. Our spiritual life will be characterized by the quest of all the saints: “I will seek him whom my soul loves.” Song of Solomon 3.2 Weekly Sheet notes Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feast day of 22nd July. Her name means ‘Mary of Magdala’, after a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The life of the historical Mary is a subject of ongoing debate and popular interest in her was heightened in the book and film The Da Vinci Code, each loaded with dubious and inaccurate historical assertions. In Luke 8:2 Mary is mentioned as one of the women who ‘provided for Jesus and the twelve disciples out of their means.’ The book also tells the story of an exorcism on Mary that cast out seven demons. These women, who earlier ‘had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,’ later accompanied Jesus on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matthew 27:55; Mark 15:41; Luke 23:55) and were witnesses to the Crucifixion. Mary remained there until the body was taken down and laid in a tomb prepared for Joseph of Arimathea. In the early dawn of the first day of the week Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James, (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Gospel of Peter 12), came to the sepulchre with sweet spices to anoint the body. They found the sepulchre empty but saw the ‘vision of angels’ (Matthew 28:2-5). As the first witness to the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene went to tell Peter and John, (John 20:1-2), gaining her the epithet ‘apostle to the apostles’ and again immediately returned to the sepulchre. She remained there weeping at the door of the tomb. According to the New Testament, she was the first witness of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus, though at first she did not recognise him (John 20). One tradition concerning Mary Magdalene says that following the death and resurrection of Jesus, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius Caesar. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house – hence, Easter Eggs!
