Mary Magdalene: Witness to Grace in Suffering
I identify with Mary, partly because I am a woman who has suffered from my own demons, but mostly because almost 40 years ago, I heard the Lord call my name and I began to recognize him in my own ordinary life, even in the darkness before dawn. So, I am grateful for a chance to share in Mary's witness to the presence of our risen Lord.
To get a better picture of Mary Magdalene, let's reflect on four scriptural references to her:
In Luke 8:1-3 we read of a group of women who accompany Jesus and his disciples. One is Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.
John 19:25 describes the crucifixion: ....standing near the cross of Jesus were (Mary)His mother, His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
In John 20:16 Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb in the darkness before dawn to minister to the body of Jesus. She is overwhelmed with grief when she can't find him. She only recognizes Jesus when she hears him call her by name. Then, she is the first to know that Jesus is risen.
In John 20:18 Mary is also the first to proclaim to others the good news that Jesus is risen.
These Scriptures leave us a lot of blanks to fill in and I'm about to take liberties imagining what Mary Magdalene was like and what she was experiencing, so keep in mind that this is the gospel only according to my imagination.
Contrary to all rumors, the Scriptures never actually labeled Mary Magdalene a prostitute. That was just a conjecture that came later. So, if Mary wasn't a prostitute, how did she have the time, money, and cultural freedom to hang out with Jesus and the disciples?
If she is grouped with Jesus' mother and his aunt could that indicate that she was no spring chicken, never the less, a swinger? In fact, couldn't she have been a nice middle class, middle aged widow? Her seven demons weren't necessarily the head spinning kind. Maybe they were the estrogen imbalance kind, like anxiety, forgetfulness, mood swings and erratic sleep! And if she was up before dawn going to the tomb, maybe she, like many of us mature women, tended to wake up at odd predawn hours and want to use that time to do something helpful and loving.
With this picture of her, imagine for a moment what she was experiencing at the foot of the cross. Jesus was her teacher, her healer, her hero, her savior, maybe even her hope for meaning and purpose in the rest of her life. Then she had to stand helplessly watching him suffer and die.
Many of us have nursed a parent or even a spouse through their last illness. We know first hand that anguish for their pain and for their loss of dignity. We can remember our own fears and loneliness, maybe even our shock over the human frailty of our hero.
We can relate to her wanting to do what little she still could for Jesus. We can recognize the grief she felt at the loss of that final physical connection to him. We have all experienced that kind of grief, a grief that can blind us to the presence of God. But we too have heard Jesus call our name. It's not a theory in a book. It's not just Mary's story. It's our story.
My own experiences of a living Savior have varied greatly; from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the mystical to the practical, from the sorrowful to the humorous, from better than coincidental timing in external events to an inner assurance and peace. Sometimes I haven't been able to see Him in the darkness of my circumstances until years later in hindsight and there are some heartbreaks that seem like it will take heaven to heal them.
When my husband and I were in our early forties, we had a particular six month period overloaded with challenges. First, an ethical conflict forced us to start over in business on one week's notice, losing our financial security during what turned out to be the beginning of a serious recession; in that same month my mother, who was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, came to live with us; and a few months later our 16 year old son and his girl friend announced that she was expecting their baby. By that time I was seriously considering buying one of those tacky bumper stickers that say, (loosely translated) Manure happens!
But one morning as I was driving out our country road praying, "God, where are you? I am up to my neck in manure here," I noticed a large ripe cow patty beside the road, covered with beautiful golden Monarch butterflies! I had to pull over, because I was both laughing and crying at what a wonderful symbol it was. So instead, I found a bumper sticker that said, Grace happens!
We all experience both. God is alive in our darkness, whether we know it or not. But if we don't pray and watch and listen with expectancy, we won't recognize Jesus in our circumstances.
Mary Magdalene was the first to recognize the Risen Lord, perhaps because she had admitted long before how much she needed him. She literally looked for Jesus in the darkness of night and found him in the darkness of suffering and loss. Because she knew him well, she recognized his voice. She knew first hand that her Savior lived and she told others.
Many of us write, because we too have a personal relationship with a living Savior still present among us. Because he lives, we find grace in suffering, life after loss, and the freedom to let go and move on. And we are committed to sharing the good news that Jesus is alive and still healing and freeing, teaching and guiding, comforting and saving.