Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commcommons.church for more information.

Last week, Jeremy walked us through the story of Junia, just one line in Romans. If anyone can craft an inspiring sermon from just one line, it is Jeremy Duncan. The story of light we wrap the series with today is Mary Magdalene's. In the gospel of Philip, a non canonical book that dates back to the third century, there's this line that gives us a clue of how important Mary Magdalene was in those first centuries. It reads, the teacher, being Jesus, loved her more than all the disciples.

He often kissed her on the mouth. Oh la la. Now that isn't in your bible, but it is a part of the narrative that grew around Mary Magdalene to speak of her closeness with Jesus and his teaching. So today we'll explore the many many Marys. The word Magdalene, apostle to the apostles and the gospel of dot dot dot.

But first, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to settle a little more comfortably into the present. We notice our breath. Maybe we're taking short, shallow breaths. And if we are, we breathe in a little more deeply right now.

And we exhale a little longer. We check-in with our bodies, our minds, our shoulders, our hands, our hips, our legs, our feet on the ground. Where there's tension, spirit breathe, rest. Where there's curiosity, bring reflection. Christ as a light, illumine, and guide us.

Amen. Now I love me some strong biblical figures, but even I get the many Marys mixed up. So let's sort them out. First, we've got Mary, the mother of Jesus. You'll find Mary's story in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as Acts.

And you might think she's first mentioned in the Christmas story, but the first mention of Mary is in the earliest gospel, Mark. Mark three, Jesus is teaching at a house and his mother and brothers arrive to reign him in a little. And at this point, he's got a bit of a reputation. The crowd sitting around Jesus say to him, hey, your mom and your brothers are outside. Who are my mother and my brothers?

Jesus asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, here are my mother and my brother. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. Jesus is elevating a new kind of family which sounds like a bit of a burn on his mom, but Matthew and Luke portray Mary in a favorable light. Going outside the biblical tradition, the devotion that would grow around Mary the mother of Jesus would color in the details of her parentage, her life choices, and even an account of her own ascension.

And maybe those Mary stories have been meaningful to you. A second Mary is Mary of Bethany. You'll find her in Luke 10 and John 11. This is Mary who sits at the feet of Jesus and is praised for it. This is Mary who weeps at the tomb of her brother Lazarus and who speaks so frankly to Jesus that you can't help but notice the security of their friendship.

John 11. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. Their friendship is not threatened by raw emotion and honesty. Now I'm gonna run through the next four Marys or we will be here all day.

The third Mary is Mary the mother of James and Joseph in Matthew and Luke or and Mark. Although Matthew later refers to her as the other Mary, which I mean sounds a little rude to me, but from here the Marys get even harder to differentiate. It's possible that Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, is also Mary, the wife of Clopas in John 19, but we don't know. So we'll count her as Mary number four. Mary number four was witness to the crucifixion and present at the tomb on Easter morning.

The fifth Mary is Mary the mother of John Mark whom we read about in Acts. This Mary is a homeowner with a courtyard where people gather. And there's no mention of her husband, so it's thought that she is widowed and wealthy. The sixth Mary is identified by Paul in Romans 16. Paul greets her as one who worked hard for the gospel in Rome.

And that's your Mary roll call. Let's hear it for all the Marys. Now, as fun as that was, probably mostly just for me, there is so much more to the Marys. On their own, there's little to go on. Just a few verses here, another there.

But together, they form a community around Jesus. Every chapter in his life includes a Mary. There when he's born, there as he makes friends, there as he calls disciples, there as he teaches and heals and challenges, there as he's tortured by the state, there as he lies in a tomb dead, there as he rises, there as the church carries on his mission by the spirit. We know Jesus through the Mary's And the Marys aren't so flimsy when you put them all together. Mother, sister, widow, host, witness, worker.

Now if I'm honest, without the Marys, Jesus is actually flimsy for me too. But he gets less blurry, less fuzzy around the edges when I see him through the eyes of the Marys. We don't know Jesus apart from his community. And when we're together, we find integration in Christ. And we'll see this in the story of one more Mary, Mary Magdalene.

We first meet Mary Magdalene in Luke eight. Jesus is traveling from town to town preaching and the 12 disciples are with him and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Mary called Magdalene from whom seven demons had come out. Joanna the wife of Huzzah, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

There's always been a lot of debate about this Mary. And some of it concerns the interpretation of the word Magdalene. People say Magdalene is where Mary is from, and maybe you have thought that too. But others say Magdalene is more of a nickname. So let's take a look.

In a 2021 article from the Journal of Biblical Literature, the scholars Elizabeth Schrader and Joan Taylor map out these arguments with beautiful expertise. Schrader and Taylor say, yes, people claim Mary came from a fishing town and that town was eventually called Magdalene, but there is no evidence for that. Now, I'm simplifying a bit, but the term Migdal or Magdal means tower of, as in the tower of something. Something. And the article says, although there have been various ways to understand her name, no author prior to the sixth century identifies her as coming from a place beside the Sea Of Galilee.

Several ancient authors actually understood Mary's nickname to be rooted in her character rather than her providence. So she's not just Mary from the block. Schrader and Taylor offer this interpretation. You need to look at how Luke uses a familiar naming device throughout his work. Luke says things like Elizabeth who was called Baron, Simon called the zealot, John called Mark.

And in contrast, Luke uses a different formula to indicate where people are from. Jesus, the Nazarene, Nicholas, a convert from Antioch, Lydia from the city of Thyatira. And another way to examine the title Magdalene is through extra biblical evidence, which just means literature from times closer to the events than our own. So Origen, who was born in January, says that more than the place, Magdalene means magnification. To Origen, Mary ministered to Jesus and was a person of great prominence.

And Eusebius, who died in March, was passionate about biblical place names. We love a good nerd around here. But he never nails down a location for Magdalene. And Jerome who died in April believed the title Magdalene was strictly honorific coming from the Hebrew word for tower. He said, Mary properly the Magdalene received the name of the tower or toweress.

So in their conclusion, Trader and Taylor point to a helpful grouping of biblical names to which Mary belongs just like James and John, the sons of thunder, and Peter, the rock. Mary is the tower. And to me, it's curious and tragic that so much of church history has robbed Mary of her title and inspiring example. Mary Magdalene has been left behind and minimized and even made out to be someone she is not. Pope Gregory the Great wrote a sermon in May, and that sermon stuck around for centuries saying Mary was a woman whose sexual sins were so great.

It's amazing she was forgiven at all. But look, according to Luke eight, she was just a woman with a certain level of inner chaos. I think we can all relate. And when she encountered Jesus, all the voices inside of her stopped screaming. Her past, whatever it held was integrated into her life in a way that changed her.

Mary called Magdalene mattered a great deal to Jesus from that day on. So much so that she'll be the first person he greets on that strange morning when death or demons could not have the final word over Mary or over us or over a tradition that named Mary not only the tower but also the apostle to the apostles. Mary Magdalene is present at all the resurrection scenes in the four gospels. If you go looking for the famous 12, you won't find them, which just feels like such a great prank to me. It's just women, women, women, women for days.

Just kidding. It's not that many women. It's like three. But the gospel of John even takes it up a notch and features Mary Magdalene all by herself as the first person to see the risen Christ. So there she is standing outside the tomb crying after realizing his body is gone.

And just as she bends down to take another look she sees two angels sitting where his body should be. The angels ask her why is she crying and she says they have taken my Lord away. I don't know where they put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, woman, why are you crying?

Who is it you are looking for? Thinking he was the gardener, she said, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him. I love her own idea of her strength here. It gets me every time. And Jesus said to her, Mary.

And she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said, do not hold on to me for I have not yet ascended to the father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news. I have seen the Lord and she told them what he had said all these things to her.

Now a good Jewish reading of the story would hear echoes of the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is a love poem where two lovers sing back and forth to each other. And in Song of Songs three, the lover is desperately searching for her beloved. All night long on my bed, I looked for the one my heart loves. I looked for him but did not find him.

I will get up now and go about the city through its streets and squares. I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. Have you seen the one my heart loves?

Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go till I had brought him to my mother's house to the room of the one who conceived me. Getting a little steamy in Song of Songs. But seriously, can you hear it? The echoes of Song of Songs in the Gospel of John.

A woman is desperately searching for the one she loves. Earlier in John 20, Mary runs through town and brings Simon Peter and John with her back to the tomb as if they are the watchmen from the poem. And once they inspect the tomb, maybe mansplain a little and leave, Mary is alone. And then there he is, the one her heart loves, and she holds him, and she doesn't let him go. This is a love story.

Hippolytus of Rome in the early third century wrote a commentary on Song of Songs where he gives the title apostle to Mary Magdalene. Going further early medieval tradition will call her the apostle to the apostles for her part in the story she is the first to see resurrection and she is the first to tell about it. But no, you won't find Mary Magdalene's name on the list with Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Thomas and Matthew and another James and another Simon and Judas one and Judas two. And that can bother you or not phase you. That's okay too.

But there is more to the story than less. Something shifts for Mary here. She goes from following and serving to leading. She finds new life on the other side of her grief and she moves out into the community of Jesus in ways I think even he would be surprised. That's how much he trusts her to go and tell the story of his new body, new location, new plan for what comes next in her own words.

Jesus sends Mary back to her community and while there are big tensions and huge losses up ahead I think in this moment she has never felt more whole. Like love chose her and pushed her forward and just lit her up inside. Mary Magdalene will live so much more life after this garden scene and history has left us just some little snippets. So let's finish with just a little taste of what became of Mary Magdalene. In 1896, a fifth century manuscript was taken to Berlin after being purchased in Cairo by a man named Carl Reinhardt.

And two more fragments would come to light in the twentieth century and that manuscript was the Gospel of Mary dating somewhere between eighty and one eighty CE written in her name though not by her. It represents an early form of Christianity. And I say early form of Christianity because Christianity has never just been one thing. It had Jewish Christians and Greek converts and North African saints and European mystics all interpreting the way of Jesus through their own lived experience. It's actually believed that at least 85% of Christian literature from the first two centuries has been lost and that's just the literature that we know existed at one point.

Now the gospel of Mary in its three copies is incomplete. The same sections are missing in all of them, which is so interesting, but still it has something to offer. Offer. In chapter five, the disciples are distraught after the resurrected Jesus has given them instructions and then departed. They say, how shall we go to the nations and proclaim the good news of the child of humanity?

If they did not spare him, how will they spare us? Then Mary stood up. She greeted them all and said to her brothers and sisters, do not weep or be pained or doubt for all his grace will be with you and shelter you but rather let us praise his greatness for he has prepared us and made us humans. When Mary said this, she turned their heart to the good and they began to discuss the words of the savior. The gospel of Mary five two to 10.

Now if you feel like standing up and yelling, but Bobby, that is not in the Bible, you'd be right. But we read all kinds of texts to encourage our faith. We curate a lending library here at Commons that includes books to help you in your deconstruction and your reconstruction. So think of the Gospel of Mary like a book on an ancient lending library. You don't have to agree with it all but it was written with people like you in mind.

The gospel of Mary is unabashedly in love with being human. Jesus is called the child of true humanity and the goal of Jesus's people is to integrate their humanity through an inward spiritual journey. And God, well God is called the good. I told my husband God was called the good over dinner last week, and he got this calm look on his face and just said, oh, I like that. I mean, if you aren't sitting around the dinner table talking about the gospel of Mary with your partner at the end of summer, I don't know what's wrong with your marriage.

In Mary Magdalene, we see a Christianity that integrates all of life. If your Christianity doesn't serve to make you a more integrated person, body, mind, and soul, past, present, future, on your own, in your family, with a crowd, then it is not worth your time or your devotion. To put it another way, you are worthy of a Christianity where you can be all of who you are. Now we spent a whole summer talking about stories of shadow and stories of light. And by now, you know you can't draw a line between them.

As you are shadow and you are light, you are death and you are life, you are kind and you are okay, you are maybe sometimes mean but mostly when you need a snack or when you're tired or when an important need isn't met. You are all of it. All of what it means to be human. So fall in love with that this autumn, your total self held by God and made for loving others. Let us pray.

Loving God, we take a moment to listen to our own hearts. For those who are nervous about what the fall holds, For those who are sitting here waiting and waiting and waiting for God to show them what's next? For those who aren't sure what to say or how to arrange their truth in their own words? Can we imagine Mary Magdalene running to us to remind us that new life is always, always going to find us? Our past can heal, present moment is a holy encounter with you, our risen Christ.

The future involves every part of who we are engaging all of life. So spirit, help us to be healthy and help us to be integrated humans. Thank you for Mary Magdalene, the tower of faith restored. Amen.