Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (6C), June 12, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear the famous story of an unnamed city woman who lived a life of flagrant disobedience to the law (aka a criminal). In order to undercut the authority of religious leaders in Luke’s own time at the end of the first century, Luke misrepresents and caricatures a Pharisee named Simon in a way that is historically mistaken and theologically inappropriate. Pharisees were quite clear in their teachings about the abundant mercy and compassion of God, and their teachings that faithful people were to emulate God in offering mercy and compassion. Of course there may have been a gap between teachings and behavior. We’ve seen that in our own religious practices, haven’t we? Ironically, Luke, and those who have repeated the slander of Pharisees, put themselves in the position of needing great forgiveness. [1]

Then, tacked to the end of our Gospel portion for today, we have a pearl of great price! Unfortunately, it is rarely seen, buried as it is under piles and piles of…well, you know. The pearl – the exquisite gem — is Luke’s description of Jesus’ traveling companions as he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. “The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities.” I just have to stop a moment and tell you that the ancient Greek word here translated “infirmities” can also be translated “feelings of inadequacy” or “timidity.”

There was Mary, called Magdalene, meaning that she was from the village of Migdal, or perhaps that she was nicknamed pillar or tower, which is what Migdal means. (Perhaps Peter was called Rock and Mary was called Pillar.) According to Luke, Mary Magdalene had been possessed by seven demons, which is another way of saying totally possessed, and she had been freed. And there was Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward. It seems likely to me that Joanna is the same person that Paul calls the Apostle Junia in his letter to the Romans (Joanna being the Hebrew and Junia being the Greek form of the name). [2] There was also Susanna, and many other women, Luke says. They provided for him (not them. Him, that is, Jesus) out of their resources. The word for provided is the same as the word for deacon, and the word for resources is the same word as property, or possessions, or wealth. I want you to hear, with me, that these women were not along for the ride to fix supper for Jesus and the other men. These women were financing the ministry. They were women of means, of influence and of wealth, and they had been healed of their feelings of inadequacy, of their timidity, and in response they were enthusiastically making sure that the good news and the good work of Jesus continued. They ensured it before and after his death.

You should know that this is the only mention of Mary Magdalene anywhere in the Bible apart from the Gospel stories that place her at the foot of the cross, at the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid, and in the garden outside of the empty tomb. Although the Gospels tell different and sometimes conflicting stories of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, each one of the four canonical gospels names Mary Magdalene as a witness to the crucifixion, a witness who saw the tomb where Jesus’s body was placed, and each of the four gospels tells that she was the first to witness the empty tomb. She was the first to experience the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the first to be told by a young man in Mark, by one angel in Matthew, two angels in Luke, and by Jesus Christ himself in John – to go and tell the disciples who were in hiding, that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Each of the gospels also says that the men did not believe her. This is the full extent of what the Bible says about Mary Magdalene. Anything else we think we know about Mary, the pillar of strength, is extra-biblical legend. Pope Francis has just this week elevated her feast day to be equal to the feasts of the apostles. Better late than never!

Do you know what magdalene means in our vernacular? It doesn’t mean pillar or tower of strength. It doesn’t mean “apostle to the apostles.” It means a badly behaving woman. [3] And I think it’s no coincidence that this story of a woman who is known as a sinner in our Gospel of Luke reading gets read on the same day as Mary Magdalene’s name gets its only pre-passion mention, and on the same day that we hear a completely unedifying story about Jezebel. Do you know what the dictionary definition of the noun jezebel is? A “morally unrestricted woman.” Jezebel and Magdalene both get used to describe immoral women.

And maybe they were. But what I know is that that’s also what women with material resources and public power – women who speak out with authority — get called by folks who want to take them down a few notches by casting aspersions on their morality, their religion or their politics. You might remember when Georgetown Law School student, Sandra Fluke, testified before members of the U.S. House of Representatives about the importance of mandating contraception coverage in health insurance plans as a matter of justice and of women’s health? Rush Limbaugh went on the airwaves and broadcast his speculations about her personal life, calling her bad names. [4] I’m not going to repeat them because they are not polite words!

And I won’t lay out a full defense of Queen Jezebel right now, but I will say that it is very curious to me that the biblical Queen Esther gets praised and celebrated for the very same qualities for which Jezebel is scorned – namely for her beauty and skill in [um…private] to win power while deceiving her husband about her true identity (according to Biblical scholar Eleanor Ferris Beach. [5] What I want to highlight for you is what Beach asserts in her introduction to The Jezebel Letters: Religion and Politics in Ninth Century Israel: “detectives take for granted: that no single witness has the complete story, that each witness’s testimony is shaped by the experiences and perspectives through which their perception of truth is filtered. If any one witness controls the interpretation, the truth will be shortchanged.” [6]

This is why we need community. Brother Curtis Almquist at the monastery across the river teaches that “the early desert monastics learned what is repeated again and again in the wisdom literature of the Scriptures: you cannot do it alone. Left alone, to our own devices, cleverness, and calculations, we are incredibly vulnerable to self deception.”⁶ We need a community with many voices, many interpretations of scripture and other wisdom, many interpretations of events – contemporary and historical. We need an expansive measure of mercy and grace, compassion and forgiveness, to accommodate difference and even conflict (non-violent conflict, that is). Because it’s hard to be in community – and the more diverse the community is, the harder it is. The more diverse the community is, the more likely we are to be uncomfortable, to be challenged, pressed. The more diverse the community is, the more likely we are to see and hear, feel and smell and taste and even do things that are not our preference. And yet, the more diverse the community, the less vulnerable we are, not just to self-deception, but to all sorts of other infirmities associated with isolationism, including feelings of inadequacy and timidity. For Christians, being a part of a diverse community is an essential form of diet and exercise! It makes the Body strong!

In a few moments I am going to be baptizing two little boys named Luca and Jax. Luca means bringer of light. Jax means “God has been gracious.” I can tell you that each of their names are already true. They have already lived up to their names in the eyes of God, in the eyes of their families and friends, and now in the eyes of all of us who are representing the Body of Christ – the Church. Even though they have already lived up to their names, I pray that they will grow into their names more and more and that they will learn that both boys and girls can be leaders in the church – lay and ordained, and that has been true from the very beginning – from the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry.

The word in Greek that we translate baptize is baptize. Alright, it’s baptizo – but close enough. It doesn’t mean sprinkling water on person’s head. It’s actually a very ordinary word for plunge. When it gets talked about in the Jesus movement, it means diving deep into a new life in the creative, restorative and inspirational work of the Holy Trinity. What we are doing in church when we baptize is a symbol – it’s not the thing. We’ll have a small bowl of water. I’ll add some water that I’ve collected from the Jordan River and carried back to Boston. What we will call a baptism is a symbolic representation of the thing – the deep plunge, and honestly, with an ocean so close, we should be doing the symbolic thing of plunging at the beach where the water would take our breath away and the symbol would be vastly more dramatic and powerful, but it’s a little chilly!

Jax and Luca – I want you to know that you are being plunged today into this diverse community called the Church – and sometimes the church is amazing and wonderful, beautiful and right. And I have to tell you, sometimes it’s boring or worse – sometimes it’s awful, ugly and downright dangerous. We are going to need you to help us make the Church better, to call us to account when we miss the mark, and we will promise to help you and support you as you do that. We are also going to renew our own baptismal promises to behave more often like the beloved children of God that we are. We are hoping that your parents and your godparents and all who love you tell you about this glorious day, and show you lots of pictures of the day that you were welcomed into this sacred community.

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