Mary Magdalen: the ethics of rumour and reality
Mary Magdalen: the ethics of rumour and reality
A sermon by Kenneth Padley
Sunday 21 July 224
When I was growing up, no childhood party was complete without the game known variously as Broken Telephone, Secret Message, Whisper-down-the-Lane or – more traditionally and for some pejoratively – as Chinese Whispers. In this game, one person murmurs a message to the next along a line of people with the effect that the sentence at the end of the chain is often nothing like how it began.
Behind the fun is a serious point about how communication can fail because of human inattentiveness, impatience or anxiety. The game illustrates how, within oral cultures, stories tend to resolve into familiar forms or come to dwell on words and ideas which recipients find most memorable and agreeable.
Henry II vocalized his frustration at a ‘turbulent priest’ with the result that four knights murdered an archbishop. More recently, a candidate seeking to deflect the political ‘bullseye’ onto his opponent is accused by critics of fomenting assassination.
The reception history of Mary of Magdala, whose feast day falls tomorrow, is a classic example of how oral transmission can shape a narrative into something very different from how it started.
Lots of legends have built up around Mary Magdalen, most notably that she and Jesus had a baby and that their descendants can be traced through the Merovingian kings of France down to this very day. Needless to say, the rumour is nonsense. But that didn’t stop novelist Dan Brown repopularizing the myth in his novel The Da Vinci Code. This book was an instant hit, a testament to how its central premise remains salaciously alluring and how it represents an alternative truth which is almost impossible to refute because evidence about the real Mary Mags is so very scant.
So what do we know? We read in all four gospels that Mary of Magdala was a witness to the death of Jesus and that she attested to his glorious resurrection three days later. John’s gospel makes much of the encounter between this Mary and the risen Jesus in the Easter Garden. Noli me tangere, do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. John 20.17.
Beyond the Easter narratives, we learn just one more thing about Mary Magdalene, that is, about how she became associated with Jesus in the first place. Chapter 8 verse 2 of Luke’s gospel reports that Jesus drove seven demons from Mary and, as a result, she became one of his committed followers, helping to provide for his ministry.
And that really is it – all the Bible tells us about tomorrow’s saint. It is from these meager scraps that the ancient equivalent of Broken Telephone has woven a tale of intrigue and scandal, a process of mythmaking which begins even in the New Testament itself, long before we reach the Knights Templar and Dan Brown’s other protagonists. Within the New Testament several formerly independent stories about different women become confused together and with which the name of ‘Mary’ has become associated.
• In Mark chapter 14 a woman pours oil over Jesus’ head in preparation for his burial.
• At the end of Luke chapter 7 – just before we meet Mary Magdalene and her demons in Luke 8.2 – a unnamed sinful woman wets Jesus’ feet with her tears and then dries them with her hair. Feet for Jews were euphemistic, so there’s a suspicion that this woman is a sex worker.
• These independent stories in Mark and Luke are slammed together in John chapter 12 where the ideas of oil and feet become entwined as well as connected with a woman whose first name is ‘Mary’.
It is not hard to see how later Christians would then back-project John 12 onto Luke 8, neatly tying the whole into a single character under the name of Mary Magdalen. From here it is one final leap to the rumour that this lady was Jesus’ special friend and we have arrived at the scarlet-clad temptress of Renaissance art and The Da Vinci Code.
The process of murmuring by which we arrive at this classic image of Mary Mags is revealing on several fronts.
• It contains a lesson about how people communicate. Jesus warns against ambiguity. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no he says in Matthew 5.37. We can never wholly control how our communication will land. On occasion, I have known listeners to my sermons to conclude the exact opposite of what I was trying to say! In the light of this, we can only redouble our efforts to be as clear and as honest as possible in our dealings with one another, in our homes, in our neighbourhoods and in our places of work.
• There’s also a lesson here not only about how we communicate but about why we communicate, our underlying motivations. A former colleague used to say, ‘I’m not one to gossip, I’m telling you this for the purposes of prayer’. I suspect that his prayer life was fruitier than most. What is my motivation for telling you something? Am I recounting a tale to admit you into a circle of illicit knowledge, and thus to buy your friendship?
• There’s a third lesson from the myth of the Magdalene about humility. Christians do not always get it right. We are human and so make mistakes. There was a time when many Christians thought that the sun went round the earth and that it was OK to keep slaves. In an age when AI algorithms pander to our prejudices and so reinforce our world views, we need sufficient modesty and self-criticism to be able to check our thought processes. It is not contrary to mature integrity but consonant with it that we remain open to unpicking the stories which we tell about ourselves, about our communities and about our world.
• Finally, there is a theological point about what it means for Christians to be part of an Apostolic Succession. Many associate ‘Apostolic Succession’ with a line of ordination, an unbroken chain of bishops going back to Jesus. Now it just so happens that the Church of England enjoys such a line of ordained ministry. But this is no guarantee that we’ll always get it right. I am a priest ordained by a bishop in physical succession to the apostles, but that doesn’t debar me from spouting tripe, should I wish.
So, for me, the Apostolic Succession which is most important is not a succession of ordination but a succession of truth. To the extent to which it is possible to discern, if we believe what the apostles believed and do what the apostles did then we stand in the footsteps of the real Mary Magdalen and her companions. This is not a detached theoretical nicety: it is a vital point about the essence of the Church which has a bearing on ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and our brothers and sisters in the Lutheran and Methodist traditions, among others.
We have traveled a long way from Mary Magdalene, but have not left her behind. On her feast day tomorrow, I urge you to reflect on the impact of whispering and on our calling to be constantly redirected back to the truth which is only to be found in Jesus. Amen.