The First

Scripture: Easter Vigil, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of women in the Bible named Mary, and this can lead to a certain degree of confusion. For faithful Jews, the name surely stems from Moses’ sister, the prophetess Miriam, in the book of Exodus. By the time of Jesus, however, it seems as though every other woman in the New Testament is Mary Something-Or-Other: Mary of Clopas, Mary Salome, Mary the mother of John-Mark. It’s actually a little bit subversive.

You see, when Rome rolled in and took over the independent kingdom of Israel, a particularly cruel and clever man named Herod managed to position himself as Rome’s puppet-king. He had no royal pedigree to speak of. To cement his claim to the Israelite throne, Herod married the last princess of the previous royal line: Mariamne. True, he ended up murdering her later, but by all accounts he was pretty broken up about it. After that everybody who was anybody started naming their daughter Mary, to show their loyalty to Herod’s chosen queen—or rather, to the dynasty that he usurped.

But politicking aside, let’s be honest. Besides Jesus’ own Mother, there’s really only one Mary who concerns us: Mary Magdalene. If most folks know anything about Mary Magdalene, it’s that conspiracy figures peg her for Jesus’ secret wife. (She wasn’t.) Or perhaps we’ve seen the various depictions of Mary in the media which portray her as a prostitute. (She might’ve been.) Regardless, Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ closest, bravest, most loyal, most loving, and most devoted disciples. She has been called Equal to the Apostles and, more tellingly, Apostle to the Apostles. And she was the very first person to encounter Jesus Christ risen from the dead.

Mary came from the town of Magdala along the shores of Lake Tiberias, better known as the Sea of Galilee. Right next door, Herod’s son Antipas had built the town of Tiberias as a pleasure resort for his Roman benefactors, and the girls of Magdala were often employed in “entertaining the troops”, as it were. Jesus grew up in Nazareth and spent much of His ministry in the towns along that same lake. He avoided Tiberius, mind you, but around the Sea of Galilee He preached the Sermon on the Mount, multiplied bread and fish to feed the multitude, and even cured the Gergesene demoniac. Capernaum, a busy lake town perched upon Israel’s major trade route, became Jesus’ home base. Here He stayed in the house of Simon Peter’s mother, preaching, teaching, and healing the sick. Here His fame traveled up and down the highway, so that He became well known even in Jerusalem.

This is surely where Mary got to know Jesus, if she hadn’t known Him before. At one point in His career, we read that Jesus cast seven demons out from Mary of Magdala, a dramatic transformation in any person’s life. At another, He rescued a woman caught in adultery from being publically stoned to death by a self-righteous crowd. We don’t know that this was Mary, but tradition leans that way. Mary Magdalene was one of several wealthy women who supported Jesus with food and shelter during His ministry. The men get all the attention, but they would not have gotten very far without the care and dedication of Jesus’ female disciples. He treated women as human beings made in the Image of God, amongst a Hellenistic culture that often preferred to treat them as property, or as defective men.

As a faithful Jew, Jesus regularly traveled to the Temple in Jerusalem for the holy days. Barely two miles east of Jerusalem stood the town of Bethany, which seems to have been settled by Israelites who hailed, like Jesus, from the north. Here Mary had a home, where she stayed with her sister Martha and brother Lazarus. We know that Jesus was very close to this entire family. Mary’s devotion to Jesus is particularly well known, as she chose to sit and listen to the Lord rather than help Martha with the immediate household chores necessary to feed Him.

It was here in Bethany that one of Jesus’ most astounding miracles occurred. For three and a half years, His fame had spread. Many believed Jesus to be God’s Messiah prophesied of old—which of course He was. The political situation was tense, with Rome anxious to prevent yet another Jewish rebellion as the Passover holiday grew near. They had already put down several would-be Messiahs before this Jesus; they had no qualms about doing so again. But if there’s one thing Romans hate, it’s chaos, so they bided their time. And the tensions only grew. The Apostles feared Jesus’ traveling to Jerusalem, but when He insisted, predicting His own death upon a Cross, it was the Apostle Thomas who said, with brave resignation, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

At this point news came to Jesus from Martha and Mary that Lazarus had grown sick unto death. By the time they arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead in the tomb four days, and his corpse had begun to stink. Jesus called for Mary, who ran to Him, fell at His feet, and wept, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus wept with her, and the gathered crowds, who had come out from Jerusalem to see this famous Messiah, all wondered at how deeply Jesus loved Mary and her family. And so He raised Lazarus from the dead before them all.

As you can imagine, this caused something of an uproar. Only days before the Passover, with Jerusalem stuffed full of Jewish pilgrims from all the known world, Jesus, the suspected Christ, resurrected a well-known local man from the dead not two miles away from the beating heart of Roman power. He was hailed by the crowds as the rightful King and heir to David’s throne. And Mary knew this all to be true—but she also knew that it was His death sentence.

Shortly thereafter, Jesus was invited to dine at the house of a man named Simon the Leper—presumably another suffering soul miraculously healed by Jesus. And there amongst the guests reclined the recently reanimated Lazarus. In came Mary bearing an alabaster jar of pure spikenard, ridiculously expensive by any standard. 300 denarii works out to a full year of working man’s wages. And, weeping, she publically anointed Jesus’ head and feet, going to the extraordinary lengths of washing His feet with her tears and drying them with her hair.

This extravagance causes consternation. Here is a woman known to have lived a sinful life, yet clearly endowed with riches, who has wasted such a treasure in this ridiculously melodramatic spectacle. Has she no shame left at all? But Jesus rebukes those who criticize her, for only Mary has realized the gravity of His situation. Jesus is about to die, and she, she alone, has seen fit to anoint His Body for its burial. Wherever the Gospel is proclaimed, promises Jesus, this act of absolute love and devotion will be told in memory of her. And so we tell it here.

The rest of the story you know. She stays with Him to the end. Mary follows Jesus into Jerusalem and witnesses the horrors of the Crucifixion. She and the other Marys—Mary of Clopas and Mary the Mother of God—stay by the Cross. They watch where His Body is buried; they see the stone rolled over the tomb. And from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, they can do nothing, for it is the Sabbath, and work is forbidden. But as early as is permissible, well before the rising of the Sunday morning sun, Mary Magdalene sets out with a troop of other women to properly anoint the Body of Jesus with myrrh. Lo and behold, what do they find?—but that the tomb is empty!

Mary is shattered. Here lay the one who cast from her demons, who saved her from stoning, who raised her brother from the dead! Here lay the one who taught her the value of an outcast, the infinite love of the merciful God whose Image she bears. And now she cannot even pay her respects to His corpse. So distraught is she, remaining alone in the garden by the tomb, that she does not recognize the man who approaches her until He calls her by name: “Mary.” And bloodshot eyes wet from weeping widen in shock as she recognizes her Lord. “Rabbouni!” she cries.

Mary is the first. Jesus comes to her first, in the night, and sends her out first, to proclaim the dawn. “He is Risen!” she cries to a disbelieving world still wrapped in darkness and fear. “He is Risen! He is Risen!” As a woman, her testimony carries no legal standing, but she does not care because Jesus does not care. She is His first Apostle—the Apostle to the Apostles—the sainted sinner whom Jesus loves.

She is the first, but not the last. No, never the last. For from the darkness of this night until the endless light of eternal glory, every Christian, every sainted sinner, shall raise his voice with the Magdalene and sing her joyous song: “He is Risen! He is Risen! Alleluia! He is Risen!” And the tomb can claim us no more.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.