MARY MAGDALENE'S TEARS (circa 1996)

“Mary, why do you weep over death?” says He.
“Your Lord is alive, is no longer dead.
Come back to the tomb, come back to Me.”

 

Roll back the stone and let me in to see

to kiss my Lord’s feet and cold, pale head.

“Mary, why do you weep over death?” says He.

 

The stone is removed, the tomb is empty.

Angels of Heaven appear in His stead.

“Come back to the tomb, come back to me.”

 

Here, Lord.  I have come as You have called me.

But You are not here, not in Your death bed.

“Mary, why do you weep over death?” says He.

 

I don’t want to mourn my Lord of the sea.

Let me wash You with my tears instead.

Come back to the tomb, come back to me.

 

“I’ve been here, Mary.  Did you not know Me?

I have been here, always.  I am not dead.

Mary, why do you weep over death?” says He.

“You came back to the tomb, back to me.”

MARY MAGDALENE

Today is the feast day for Mary Magdalene, and when I saw that, I started to think about how much I love Mary Magdalene and how often I have written about her.

In fact, I started writing about Mary Magdalene in college, almost thirty years ago.  I was taking a poetry writing class and my professor was real big on structured, formal poetry, not the free verse that I had been doing since elementary school.  My professor wanted us to concentrate on form, on meter and rhyme and though I am still a free verse poet, I did fall in love with a particular type of poem called the villanelle. 

Perhaps the most recognizable villanelle is one by Dylan Thomas—if you remember the Michelle Pfeiffer movie Dangerous Minds, or the Robin Williams movie Dead Poet’s Society, then you will recognize this poem.  Thomas writes, “Do not go gentle into that good night/old age should burn and rave at close of day/rage, rage against the dying of the light.” 

The villanelle intrigued me as a form because of the song-like quality of the meter which is iambic pentameter and the repetition of lines that form a refrain for each stanza.

And so when it came time to write my own, I chose to do a villanelle on the moment when Mary Magdalene goes back to the tomb on Easter morning.  Each stanza alternating between Mary and Jesus and beginning with these lines, “Mary, why do you weep over death, says He/Your Lord is alive, is no longer dead/Come back to the tomb, come back to me.”

And if you’re thinking, Kendra you were writing Bible-themed poetry in college, how did you not wind up in seminary immediately after graduation?  The answer is—I was close.  I was very close—this close to seminary.  But no regrets.  In the multi-verse, I’m sure there is a version of me that went to seminary right after college and is now the pastor of a Disciples of Christ church.  You lucked out with the Episcopal Church version of me.

Over and over, again and again, I have written different poems, different versions of Mary’s time in the garden on Easter morning where she greets the risen Jesus.

But one thing I have never addressed in my writing until just recently is the story of Mary Magdalene before she met Jesus.  Much like Jesus’ childhood, there is not a lot in the gospels on who Mary Magdalene was.  There is a common misconception that she was a prostitute, but the only thing we know for certain appears in Luke 8:1-3 which reads, “Soon afterwards 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: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”

In other words, we know that Mary had seven demons cast out of her and we know that she and these other women, some named, some unnamed are providing financially to Jesus’ ministry.  What does this mean for Mary?  It means it’s possible she had money.  Where did she get that money?  Possibly she was a widow.  But you see how even those two questions open the door for a huge Mary story that we are never shown.

Over the years, pop culture has portrayed Mary Magdalene in this early state in different ways.  The Chosen, from what I’ve seen, seems to portray Mary Magdalene as someone who is fundamentally good but is tormented by her demons in a mostly euphemistic way—at times she would not be out of place in a horror movie today.  But this Mary has suffered trauma and as a result suffers from depression.  She also has problems with alcohol. 

In the movie Mary Magdalene, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, Mary Magdalene is shown as someone her family considers possessed because she will not conform to society’s expectations of women at that time.  She will not be forced into marriage to her brother’s friend.  Her family drags her to the water and tries to exorcise her by almost drowning her.  This traumatizes Mary further.  Only when Jesus appears and offers Mary “purpose” that gives her agency over her life, is she relieved of her mental anguish.

In earlier performances of Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Weber, Mary is seen as a temptress.  And of course in books like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as perhaps the wife of Jesus.

All of these suppositions make compelling stories.

But who is the true Mary Magdalene?

It was a question I attempted to answer in my new book Your Light Has Come: The Miracles of Jesus when I decided to tackle Mary Magdalene and her seven demons.

My new book is written in the same style as my two books Witnesses to the Passion of Christ and Witnesses to the Resurrection.  Using, what I call “spare verse” poetry, that is free verse that concentrates on images and the importance of each individual word, I put myself in the heads of these people and write from their point of view as they either witness Jesus’ death or His resurrection, or in the case of my new book, I write from the point of view of the people who benefited from His healing miracles.

How in the world would I do Mary’s story justice when there is so much left unsaid?

I considered leaving her out of the book completely, but then I remembered she is such a big part of the other two books, that I would be leaving her story unfinished if I didn’t try to tell the story of the worst time of her life.

Everything I write in the book about Mary Magdalene is from my imagination, anchored only by the verses in Luke 8. 

I wrote Mary as someone suffering from deep grief and deep emotional pain—so severe that she has almost shut down physically—her behavior so odd that the only word the people had at the time to describe it was possession, because she is not herself.  Her first encounter with Jesus involves Him taking a literal physical burden off her shoulders and from then on, she begins to climb out of her pit and toward the first light of hope she has seen.

The exact circumstances of Mary’s first encounter with Jesus are not what’s important.

Because we know the results.

We know she followed Him.

We know she followed Him all the way to the cross.

We know He chose to make her the first witness to His resurrection.

Peter may have been the rock on which Jesus built His church.

But Mary was the apostle to the apostles.

It doesn’t matter where Mary started. 

It only matters where she wound up.

That’s how her story becomes a universal story.  That’s why her story is so appealing to so many women in particular—I’m not saying her story can’t be important to men—but to women—we know how women were treated in Biblical times. 

We also know how important Mary was to Jesus.

That makes her worth celebrating on this feast day, for her story can be our story.

God had great things planned for Mary Magdalene.

And He has great things planned for you and me.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

IS THE END OF READING HERE?

Years ago, a teacher friend of mine invited me to speak to her fifth graders about writing.  I brought copies of my latest book Jules Verne and A Raven Named Poe and made sure every student had a copy.  And then, I read the book to them.  It was a small book.

But by the second paragraph, two boys in the front row, sitting right in front of me, put their heads down and went to sleep.

I had been a teacher myself, but had been out of the classroom for years, so when I saw them go to sleep, my first thought was, “Yep, I still got it.”

The rest of the visit was uneventful.

A week or so later, my friend sent me thank you notes from the kids.  The notes were sweet, but one in particular stood out to me.  In this note, a boy had included an illustration of one of the scenes in my book.  It was just stick figures, but I smiled when I saw it.  He had illustrated the scene just as I had originally imagined it.

Think about that for a second.

Because this is why reading and writing, the connection between author and reader is magical.

I had to first visualize the scene in my head.  Then I had to find words to describe it.  Then I put those words to paper.  The boy then read those words.  He visualized the scene in his head.  Then he drew that scene on paper.

It’s telepathy.  It’s magic.

More importantly, it shows how reading novels and stories strengthens our ability to empathize with others.  A good book puts us in the shoes of others.

Recently The Atlantic had an article entitled The End of Reading Is Here.  It asserted that we are officially living in a post-literate society.  It argues that while we are still reading and reading many words every day, that reading is confined to short excerpts, think of Instagram or Twitter/X or the text messages we receive all throughout the day.  Or maybe you are like me and leave the closed captioning on the TV screen constantly.  We are reading. 

What we are reading has changed.

Only 38% of people surveyed in 2022 read a novel or a short story.  Another survey said that only 16% of people report that they read for pleasure.

When I was teaching roughly fifteen years ago, I read a novel a quarter with my eighth graders.  We read as a class and with a book on tape.  I generally chose books that I knew would capture the imagination of even the most reluctant reader, mystery books, comedies etc.  And virtually every year, I would have students come up to me and tell me that that was the first book they had ever read.

My guess is that number would be much larger these days.

So what are the consequences when a society stops reading books, especially novels?

I would argue that the chief consequence is that we become a society that is far less empathetic, a society that can no longer identify with people who are different than them, a society where we can’t imagine ourselves in the same situation and so we become unsympathetic.  We turn away from the suffering of others.

Jesus addresses this lack of empathy in today’s reading from Matthew 25:31-46.  He says, “'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me … for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'”

Jesus asks His disciples to see Him, to see Jesus in the face of those that society ignores, the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner.

To be able to see Jesus in everyone is the height of an empathetic relationship.

I was reading elsewhere this week that the “incarnation itself is God’s act of radical empathy.”

If you want to know how God values empathy, look no further than Jesus.

Jesus understands humanity because He is human.

He understands suffering because He himself suffered.

He understands grief because He himself grieved.

He understands hunger because He himself hungered.

He understands pain and loneliness and all the ways that human beings suffer because He himself lived and died as a human being.

So, what good books have you read so far this year?  May I recommend Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards and Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and The Children by Melissa Albert.

Strengthen your empathy muscle today.  Feed it with the voices of people different from you.

Read a book.

Amen.

 

GIVE FREELY, LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

Many years ago, a friend of mine, who was a guidance counselor at the time, gave a survey on bullying to our students.

One of the questions, an obvious question, was whether or not they had ever bullied someone, and if so why?

One of the students answered that yes, he had bullied kids and the reason he gave was one word … angerment.

Yes, you are correct “angerment” is not a word.

And yet this new word seemed perfect.  Anger is something you feel.  Angerment is something you have.  It is something you own.  It is a part of you, to the bone.

There are still days, decades later, where I will text my friend and tell her, “I have angerment.”

In our readings over the past few weeks, including today’s reading from Matthew, we see a Jesus that has some angerment.

And it may be a side of Jesus that makes us uncomfortable.  It’s not a side we’re used to seeing.  Recently I have been watching various episodes of The Chosen.  I am in the middle of writing my new book and I want to make sure that my stories, my interpretations of Jesus’s miracles, specifically, are different than other interpretations.  I don’t want to be accused of copying.

But what amazes me as I watch The Chosen is just how loveable Jesus is.  The people of the time expected the Messiah to be a soldier, a King David, to lead them into battle.  But the Jesus we see in The Chosen is … quite frankly … and I mean this respectfully, a big old Teddy Bear.  He is someone you want to be embraced by.  He is someone you want to hear tell you how much God loves you.

In the episode where He meets the woman at the well, He is almost pleading, begging her to believe Him.  He has tears in His eyes.  It’s not that He needs her to believe for His sake.  It’s that He wants her to believe for her sake, because He knows how much she needs this, to know that God is watching over her, that God sees her.

But the Jesus who says in today’s reading, “You brood of vipers,” is a Jesus with angerment, not bullying angerment, but a righteous anger.  Between Matthew 23, today’s reading, and Mathew 26 where Jesus is betrayed and arrested, Jesus makes many comments about the end times, about the signs of the times, and final judgement. 

Jesus’s words in today’s reading are harsh.  They are not gentle.  They are not kind.  Jesus is running out of time.  And it forces Him to get real so to speak.

“For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth,” Jesus says. 

These are words that speak to us even today. 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which you may have read in high school, but is definitely required reading if you are an English major in college, a man, Dorian Gray, sells his soul for eternal youth.  A painted portrait of him, hidden in the attic does all the aging for him.  But the story is more than that.  Given a life where consequences are meaningless, Dorian Gray engages in some truly awful behavior.  It is not just that the picture shows his true physical age, it also shows the monster within him, the evil that he has done.

Dorian Gray is Jesus’s “whitewashed tomb” and his portrait is what is filled “with all kinds of filth.”

As I have said many times, it is so easy these days to become cynical about the state of our world.

But even as I was writing this, right after I finished the Dorian Gray sentence above, there was a knock on the door. 

It was the little girl, the one who has been knocking on my door from the time I first moved here, trying to sell me things, but who I have not seen in a very long time.  Last night, she had books and she wanted to know if I wanted them for the Little Free Library, but here’s the thing … she wanted money for them.

And while I was good with giving the kids money for things they made like bracelets and other artistic things, I knew I had to draw the line with books.  That’s not the purpose of the Little Free Library.

So, I told her I would trade her, books for books.

She didn’t seem thrilled by my offer.  She hemmed and hawed about it for a minute but she had a boy with her who was her age or maybe younger and who I hadn’t seen before.

And he looked at her and said, “Yeah, let’s take the books.”

So I asked them what kind of books they liked and while they put their donations in the library, I went looking through my shelves.

I wound up giving them Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants of course and some books based on Disney Pixar movies and some other graphic novels that I thought they might like.

The boy called them picture books but because I had called them graphic novels, the little girl corrected him. 

She had already realized that calling them graphic novels elevates them.  They’re not little kids books.

For the past several weeks, I have been talking about our reading where Jesus warns people not to put stumbling blocks in front of the children.  Now I have taken that as to say we should not put stumbling blocks in front of any of God’s children and we are all God’s children.

But I don’t want to take away from the fact that Jesus consistently shows how much He values children, our little ones.

Earlier yesterday, I had been so cranky.  I had such angerment.  I was so frustrated with people behaving badly. 

I have no idea what those kids will do with those books.  Maybe someone will tell them they can get money from Half Price Books if they take them there.  Maybe the books will wind up discarded in their yard.  Or maybe they’ll find a space on a bookshelf.  Maybe they’ll be treasured.

But what happens to the books is not the point.  Did you see how quickly wondering like that can turn cynical?

The point is … the joy is … in the giving.

And so maybe the answer to angerment is simply this … give freely.  Whatever is most precious to you, share it with someone else.  Do it freely and unconditionally and without expectation of return.  After all this is exactly what Jesus did.

And remember this which I said so often back in the spring.

Love God.

Love your neighbor without exception.

Amen.