Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering

Christ and Women

A sermon preached by the Archdeacon of Northampton at Choral Evensong on the Feast of Mary Magdalene, July 22nd, 2007.

"Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there has never been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them; never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as 'The women, God help us!' or 'The ladies, God bless them!; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously ; who never mapped out their sphere for them; never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about women’s nature.”

So wrote Dorothy L Sayers in an essay in 1938 about Jesus' attitude towards women, one she did not find reflected in the Church.

Much water has gone under the bridge since then. Yet still, I think that, because the Gospel accounts of Jesus and his encounters with women are so familiar to us, we often fail to be surprised by his radical attitude. For Jesus was a Jew, living amongst other Jews, where it was normal for a Jewish man to thank God in his prayers that he had not been born a woman. Women were treated as possessions, operating in the private sphere of the home, not considered to have the ability to be reliable witnesses. BUT THAT IS NOT HOW JESUS TREATED WOMEN.

Jesus touched women, taking them by the hand and healing them: for example Peter’s mother-in-law. And he allowed women to touch him: the woman with the haemorrhage was seen as ritually unclean because of her flow of blood yet she knew that if she could touch even his garments she would be made well. A woman reputed to be a sinner washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair, kisses his feet and anoints them. Jesus doesn’t rebuke her but uses her as an example: she has shown much love compared to the self-righteous Pharisee. And he says “Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

Jesus debates with women: the Syro-Phoenician woman will not take “no” for an answer when she begs him to heal her daughter. The woman at the well in Samaria doesn’t at first understand who he is but once she realises she brings others to him.

Jesus has women amongst his travelling companions and depended upon them: those whom he had healed, including Mary Magdalene, were now able to provide for Jesus and his disciples out of their own resources.

Jesus has women as friends: Martha and Mary, with their brother Lazarus, at Bethany. And he tells them that Mary has chosen the good portion by choosing to listen to his teaching rather than, like Martha, being distracted and anxious by trying to overdo the hospitality.

“Women were first at the cradle and last at the cross.” One woman, Christ’s mother Mary was at both. But others were at Calvary too, “looking on from afar” and afterwards following and seeing where he is buried.

In all four gospels Mary Magdalene, whom we commemorate tonight, was one of those women, who, having seen where Jesus was buried, went to the tomb early in the morning on the third day.

The accounts vary: in Matthew, Mary Magdalene and another Mary meet the Risen Jesus who tells them to “go and tell my brothers” In Mark angels tell the women to go, tell the disciples, but they say nothing out of fear although an addition to the end of the Gospel has Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene – she tells the apostles that Jesus is alive but “they would not believe it.” In Luke, too, Mary Magdalene and the other women tell the eleven that Jesus is alive but “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

And then there is the account in John, the one probably best known to all of us, heard on Easter Day. Mary, weeping outside the tomb encounters the Risen Christ and thinks he is the gardener until he speaks her name “Mary”. Then she goes to the disciples and tells them: “I have seen the Lord.”

21 years ago, on this day, I was waiting to hear whether I had been accepted for training for ordination at a time when there was no certainty whatsoever that women would ever be able to be priests in the Church of England. On that day I received a postcard from my vicar. It was a postcard of Mary Magdalene with Jesus and on the back he had simply written “Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the apostles.” It was only later that I discovered that this description of Mary Magdalene had not been coined by my vicar, in a flash of inspiration, to give me encouragement (If it had happened recently I might have thought that is was something dreamed up by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code!). No, the title “Apostle to the apostles” had been given to Mary by the early church in recognition that, as the first person to meet with the Risen Lord she had been sent by him to go to the disciples and had declared to them ”I have seen the Lord”.

This was quite extra-ordinary, given, as I have already mentioned, that women were not considered to be reliable witnesses. Yet here it is, in all four gospels: women are the first witnesses to the resurrection. If we are to take St Paul’s definition of an apostle (one who has encountered the Risen Christ, as he had) then Mary Magdalene is certainly amongst them and was sent by Jesus to tell the good news to the men.

“Christ and women”: he was born of a woman, touched women in order to heal them, and allowed them to touch him, debated with them, taught them, depended upon them on his travels, appeared first to them when he rose from the dead, entrusted the good news to them.

What went wrong? To put it crudely, the men took over, patriarchy re-asserted itself. But now, after 2000 years, this message has been reclaimed: Jesus was and is good news for women as well as for men. Now we can and must work together, as equals, to proclaim God’s love and forgiveness, though Christ, offered to all people without distinction and without condition.

In 1986, the year that I was recommended for training for ordination, a poem by Greta Schuum was published in a General Synod report on Spiritual Renewal in the Church of England (“The Good Wine” by Josephine Bax ):

The Future Breaking In

It’s more than that, you know.

More than deciding
who opens the door
who chairs the committee
who waxes the floor.

Or allowing the woman to speak
in a sacred place.

The vision
is just stirring in the shell
and requires a tearing
a breaking up of pieces
a release from the past.

The vision
is Woman
turning into a woman
and Man
turning into a man
who’d rather care than compete
who spend some time listening
who writes ‘sister’ and ‘brother’
instead of ‘Dear Sir’.

Who give up their life for each other
feeding
healing
touching
forgetting that one was called great
and one was called nothing –
people freed to need each other.

In the unity
of One Spirit.
Where each person is the Gift
and the Giver
and no one goes without a name.

Christine Allsopp, July 22nd, 2007

Office Address:

The Rectory

Church Walk

Kettering

NN16 0DJ