‘Mary Magdalen’ reflects on her experiences, with a little help from Psalm 51
Before we go any further, let me just get some things straight with you. My name is Mary and I come from Magdala, which is not far from Capernaum where Simon Peter comes from. We’re all Galileans! There are other Marys in the Bible, but they’re not me. Neither am I one of those other women with no name who turn up occasionally. So, I am not the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears and I am not the woman who poured ointment on his head.
I am just as respectable, I’ll have you know, as Joanna and Susanna and Mary the mother of James and Salome (no, no, no - the other one!) and all the others who accompanied Jesus. I was cured of seven demons, true, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, as some have thought. There was that man who was cured of as many demons as there are in a Roman Legion, and nobody thinks he was a bad man. He was unfortunate, but then he was cured. Same goes for me.
Oh, and one more thing. They like to say I was ‘in love’ with Jesus. Well, of course I was in love with Jesus! We were all in love with Jesus! And we still are.
Right. Now for the Psalm.
This is a Psalm about getting fit in order to spread the Good News. ‘Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you’, it says. But I start with myself, not the others out there who need it, but no more than I do. It’s a Psalm full of the paradoxes of our existence: we do wrong, but we are agents of good; we are always in need of forgiveness, and we permanently receive forgiveness; we are forever turning to God, but God wants us to turn to those around us – ‘you have no delight in sacrifice’, it says. Only when we have rebuilt Jerusalem. Neither does he want us to be constantly focussed on our many and various shortcomings, which are obvious to anybody, but to work hard on what he wants us to do: ‘Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit’, it says. To me, that sounds like ‘get on with the work in a happy frame of mind’.
The fact is, we have been saved, delivered, our sins overlooked, given a job to do and been trusted to do it. Jesus was always saying to people: ‘Have you not read what it says in the Bible? Oh, you have! So why do you not do what it says, then?’ He didn’t expect them to fall down in a heap of sorrow for their faults, but to get on with what they very well knew they should be doing!
I was making a big thing at the start about people confusing me with other characters in the story. Now I think I should say something about the real me. I went through a bad patch, obviously, at one time in my life. Seven demons is quite enough, thank you very much. You won’t mind if I don’t go into too much detail, but I will just say the seven demons weren’t seven different demons, as you might be thinking. It was the same demon that kept coming back.
In other words, it took me a while to get over it. Some things are just hard to shift, hard to change. We all know that. I still have to watch my step, as I’m sure you understand. As it says in the Psalm, though, ‘wash me thoroughly’ applied very much to me. But it was nothing so unusual. Don’t you think they would have told if it had been? And why do you think it was Jesus who cured me? Where does it say that?
The other thing I want to mention is that morning at first light in the garden where the tomb was. Some say I went alone, some that I was with a group of women. To be honest, I can’t remember who was there. I was in a daze. I was in shock. But I do know this: something happened there – I’m still trying to sort it out in my head – but whatever it was has kept the words of that Psalm going round and round inside me: ‘Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice… A broken and contrite heart you will not despise’.
So how do I go on after that? I will go back up north, to Galilee, to Magdala. There is a fine synagogue there, not far from the lake. I have relatives there who I have not seen for a while. I feel I should speak to them, explain, if I can, where I have been and what I have been doing. Maybe they’ll let me speak in the synagogue. ‘O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise’, as it says.
I hope they will take me back without too much fuss. He used to call me ‘The Prodigal Daughter’! Perhaps I’ll get lucky, like the boy in the story he used to tell.
People have started going off in other directions, but I think I should go home for now. Galilee was where it started, but I do not think it will end there. ‘Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.’
Before we go any further, let me just get some things straight with you. My name is Mary and I come from Magdala, which is not far from Capernaum where Simon Peter comes from. We’re all Galileans! There are other Marys in the Bible, but they’re not me. Neither am I one of those other women with no name who turn up occasionally. So, I am not the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears and I am not the woman who poured ointment on his head.
I am just as respectable, I’ll have you know, as Joanna and Susanna and Mary the mother of James and Salome (no, no, no - the other one!) and all the others who accompanied Jesus. I was cured of seven demons, true, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, as some have thought. There was that man who was cured of as many demons as there are in a Roman Legion, and nobody thinks he was a bad man. He was unfortunate, but then he was cured. Same goes for me.
Oh, and one more thing. They like to say I was ‘in love’ with Jesus. Well, of course I was in love with Jesus! We were all in love with Jesus! And we still are.
Right. Now for the Psalm.
This is a Psalm about getting fit in order to spread the Good News. ‘Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you’, it says. But I start with myself, not the others out there who need it, but no more than I do. It’s a Psalm full of the paradoxes of our existence: we do wrong, but we are agents of good; we are always in need of forgiveness, and we permanently receive forgiveness; we are forever turning to God, but God wants us to turn to those around us – ‘you have no delight in sacrifice’, it says. Only when we have rebuilt Jerusalem. Neither does he want us to be constantly focussed on our many and various shortcomings, which are obvious to anybody, but to work hard on what he wants us to do: ‘Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit’, it says. To me, that sounds like ‘get on with the work in a happy frame of mind’.
The fact is, we have been saved, delivered, our sins overlooked, given a job to do and been trusted to do it. Jesus was always saying to people: ‘Have you not read what it says in the Bible? Oh, you have! So why do you not do what it says, then?’ He didn’t expect them to fall down in a heap of sorrow for their faults, but to get on with what they very well knew they should be doing!
I was making a big thing at the start about people confusing me with other characters in the story. Now I think I should say something about the real me. I went through a bad patch, obviously, at one time in my life. Seven demons is quite enough, thank you very much. You won’t mind if I don’t go into too much detail, but I will just say the seven demons weren’t seven different demons, as you might be thinking. It was the same demon that kept coming back.
In other words, it took me a while to get over it. Some things are just hard to shift, hard to change. We all know that. I still have to watch my step, as I’m sure you understand. As it says in the Psalm, though, ‘wash me thoroughly’ applied very much to me. But it was nothing so unusual. Don’t you think they would have told if it had been? And why do you think it was Jesus who cured me? Where does it say that?
The other thing I want to mention is that morning at first light in the garden where the tomb was. Some say I went alone, some that I was with a group of women. To be honest, I can’t remember who was there. I was in a daze. I was in shock. But I do know this: something happened there – I’m still trying to sort it out in my head – but whatever it was has kept the words of that Psalm going round and round inside me: ‘Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice… A broken and contrite heart you will not despise’.
So how do I go on after that? I will go back up north, to Galilee, to Magdala. There is a fine synagogue there, not far from the lake. I have relatives there who I have not seen for a while. I feel I should speak to them, explain, if I can, where I have been and what I have been doing. Maybe they’ll let me speak in the synagogue. ‘O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise’, as it says.
I hope they will take me back without too much fuss. He used to call me ‘The Prodigal Daughter’! Perhaps I’ll get lucky, like the boy in the story he used to tell.
People have started going off in other directions, but I think I should go home for now. Galilee was where it started, but I do not think it will end there. ‘Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.’