Scripture Luke 8:1-3
Soon afterward [Jesus] went on through one town and village after another, 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 ministered to them out of their own resources.
Meditation
How could I possibly resist the opportunity to share some thoughts on Mary Magdalene?
There are only nine passages of scripture that positively mention Mary by name: the passage I’ve just read, the four passion narratives, and the four resurrection narratives. That’s it. This little passage gives us the most information of any of them. We learn that, as Jesus has male followers, he also has female followers. Three of them are named, and we are told that they “ministered” to Jesus out of their own resources.
That word, “ministered,” means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. Here, because of the use of that other word, “possessions,” it means that the women who followed Jesus supported his ministry financially.
The other thing this passage tells us is that Mary had suffered with seven demons, and Jesus cast them out, cured her. The number seven in scripture represents completeness. Because it suggests the seven days of the week, it implies that the number seven contains the whole of time. In other words, Mary was thoroughly possessed. The presence of demons in scripture often indicates illness, mental or physical, or maybe both simultaneously. The image of a Mary who was strong enough to follow along on Jesus’ journeys around Judah and beyond indicates a full recovery from what was once a truly incapacitating illness.
Everything else you may have heard about Mary Magdalene growing up, or seen in virtually every movie about Jesus, is made up—that she as the woman taken in adultery, that she was a prostitute, or that she was a notorious sinner… none of these is true.
What is true, is that she was healed. Therefore, I would like to share with you a monologue from the perspective of Mary Magdalene, the story of her healing.
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They said this of me: "She has cracked," they said. Like an egg thrown at a wall. The smooth comfort of the home that was my own mind, gone. Instead, bits of what-was-me splattered, scattering, running down the wall and into the waste pile. Sharp-edged fragments lost in the dusty roads that run through my village.
I do not remember, you understand—could not re-member my smashed and scattered self, even after I was once again, as if by the deepest magic, restored and whole. My mother had to tell me. She did not want to. "No, it is over. Forget if you can." But I demanded the details.
... lying in the alleys moaning, head uncovered, insects in my hair.
... screeching obscenities at the priests in their processions.
... following the children to their places of play, scuttling along in the dust like a crab, flinging back the stones they threw in fear.
... tearing my clothes and rolling in the dung.
... drawing a picture on my arm with my father's finest knife.
These things I do not remember. My mother had to tell me.
She told me also of the band of drifters, with their wandering sage. She told me this as the mists parted, and I awakened on her bed to find the last signs of my madness being bathed away. How he found me, frothing like a dog that ought to be drowned, filthy and grinning, chasing women from the well with my stench. How he studied me until I—I returned his gaze, and then tried to run. How with his words—words heard only by me, for no one else would come near—he captured me and I paused in my flight. And how—there were thirty or more witnesses, so this is true—he touched me. He laid his hand upon my head and said one healing word.
Some say, I screamed a deafening scream, and they saw seven demons fly out of my mouth. Or that I writhed on the ground until they thought I was dead. Or that the old demons were replaced with a new one. But my mother tells me otherwise. She tells me that I stood still for a very long time. And people lost their interest and wandered away. And that eventually he turned back to his strange fishy smelling band and walked on through town. And that I quietly, very quietly asked a woman standing off at a small distance, "Are you my mother?" And that she, my mother, took me in her arms and led me home.
Within a day, a week, a month, I was once again smooth and round and whole, like an egg. And I collected a few things and set forth from my mother's house. I was clean and dressed as befits a woman of my station, with a bundle of large coins in my purse. And I walked down the same road, in search of the sage—Jesus— and his companions, so that I too might learn to heal.
"Woman, be healed."
"Woman, you are whole."
He said this to me. I say this to you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.