The Marys

The Marys, preached April 29, 2007
All-Women’s Service
Isaiah 43:1-7 and John 20:1-18

(note: names changed to maintain anonymous blogging…..)

Growing up in a family with four girls, I got called a lot of different names. We were all close in age. By the time the oldest was five and a half, the other three were already here: 5, 4, 1 and an infant. Bless my mother, for surely she was and is a saint. I can understand, in her years of sleep deprivation, why she sometimes got mixed up as to which daughter she was calling, and just rattled off: “Ellie, Joy, Jennifer, Emma….” And the right one would eventually appear. When we had a little wooden sailing pram, a bathtub with a sail, really, we decided to name it “ElJoJinEm”. Not the most musical of names, but it included all of us, which was key.

People outside the family didn’t always bother to figure out our individual names. The week after Easter this year, on vacation in Virginia, I ran into a woman who had grown up in my home church in Florida, though she is probably 20 years older than me. I introduced myself and she said, “Well, I knew you were one of the Coleman girls, I just didn’t know which one.”

In college, there was another girl there with my name, though she spelled it differently. We both worked at the library at the same time, and it was a real problem. People looking for one of us would find the other. I got her paycheck by mistake once.

And there is another Joy Coleman out there, living in ********** or ******* who is Presbyterian. I will hear from people who saw her name on a list for this or that church meeting, and met her, when they expected me, and I am sure the same happens to her.

Did you know there is a website where you can type in your name and see how many other people in the country have your name? Howmanyofme.com There are 79 of me. But we are not all the same. In childhood it was always amazing and thrilling when someone remembered which Coleman girl I was, called me by my name, and best of all, remembered something about me that made me different from my sisters.

That’s why I’ve always felt a little bad about the Marys in the Bible. New Testament women, all of them. There are 6, all together, and apart from the big ones, the ones many of us know, they have been sort of interchangeable in my mind. I had never spent a lot of time trying to puzzle out which one was which. Easter would roll around, and those passages about the women at the foot of the cross, and at the empty tomb would come, and I just thought of them as “The Marys”.

There is the big Mary, of course: the mother of Jesus, peaceful and mild, in her blue head scarf. A young girl, acquiescing to the Spirit, and cradling her child in a barn in Bethlehem. We’ve seen her in pageants, we can recognize her instantly in pictures. Her story begins the New Testament gospels, and we see her again at the end, at the foot of the cross. She is so familiar, that even those who don’t know her through the church can point her out.

Two other Marys are familiar to those who grew up in the church. Mary Magdalene…well, she has gotten some press lately, and most of us are probably still confused about exactly who she was and what she did or didn’t do, but still, we’ve heard of her. We know she was a friend of Jesus’, and traveled with him throughout his ministry. And she might have some whiff of scandal attached to her. She was healed of seven demons, but whether that was some kind of mental illness or another kind of possession, we are not sure. I picture her as beautiful, maybe, though perhaps a little faded.

Then there is Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha, and of Lazarus, too. She is the one who sat at the feet of Jesus, listening, while her sister scurried around getting the house and the meal ready. We have a picture of her in our mind, which varies, probably, depending upon whether we are ourselves more like her or her sister. John’s gospel tells us she is also the Mary who, in Bethany, anointed Jesus with costly oil, and used her hair to wipe his feet. Did you know that? None of the other gospels gives her a name, they just say “a Woman”. Luke says she was “a sinner”, so we assume maybe, Mary Magdalene, poor thing, when really, who in that room wasn’t a sinner? But John is clear that she was Mary, sister of Martha, who was again serving the meal. So, Mary the mother, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Bethany. These are the big three Marys. But there are three more. The other Marys, and it’s high time we tried to see them as individuals.

First, there is Mary the mother of James and Joses, and also the wife of Cleophas. She is mentioned in all four of the Gospels. Her son James was one of the 12 disciples, and perhaps the writer of the book of James. When he began to follow Jesus, she must have worried, as any mother would, when her child quits the safety of a regular job to follow a charismatic figure around the countryside. But somewhere along the way, she believed. She began her travels perhaps by watching solely over her son, but at some point, she began caring for Jesus too, “ministering to him”, Matthew tells us. She followed Jesus from Galilee. She stood by the cross of Jesus, and she brought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him, on that first Easter day. Luke tells us that she also told the glad news of the empty tomb to the apostles. This Mary, mother of the disciple James, was one of the Marys I never bothered to figure out before. But I see her now: a worried mom, who in leaving her home to watch over her own son, became a mother of sorts to Jesus and probably all the other disciples, too. She is the chaperone, the den mother, the one who will always go on the youth trips.

Second, there is Mary the mother of John Mark, whom we know as Mark, the author of the first Gospel who was a co-worker of Paul in spreading the early church. We meet this Mary after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was to her house in Jerusalem that Peter came, after he had escaped from prison. He found there many people praying for him. That’s about all we learn about her. Like Mary the mother of James, Mary the mother of Mark had a son who was a disciple, and who became an important part in the dangerous work of the early church movement. We don’t know what this Mary was doing during the travels and ministry of Jesus and her son. But we see her opening her home to early believers and escaped prisoners and to a prayer group at a time when such things were risky. In my mind, she is prayerful, and brave.

The last Mary we meet is Mary of Rome, mentioned only once, by Paul in his letter to the Romans. “Greet Mary, who has worked hard among you.” Paul singled her out, among just a handful of women, to thank and greet in his letter for her service to him and his companions and to the church just beginning in Rome. Perhaps it was a meal, perhaps she let Christian travelers stay in her home. Perhaps she helped set up meetings and preachers, or taught new converts. Whatever her work, she was remembered by Paul, and we remember her these many years later for service to the church. She looks to me, like one of the women who can be found in the church kitchen, or the nursery, a Sunday School teacher, or one who counts the offering. She makes sure that the mission of the church goes on.

Today we celebrate the work of women in the church, with a service led by the women. All ages, all different gifts, members of this church for different amounts of time. I know many of you out there know some of these women by name. Some have been leaders, held offices, taught, or run meetings. Maybe they have brought meals to your house when you were ill, or sent a card to you on your birthday. But I am guessing there are few who know all these women by name. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some of you I can’t always keep straight. Like the Coleman girls or the Marys, some of you are known by a family name, and some of you are referred to as “the women of the church”, or even “one of the new members” or “one of the youth”. And not just the women. That applies to all of us here. As time goes on, and some members move or die, and are laid to rest, new members join, new staff members come, new babies are born, and new faces appear in the choir, in the pews, at the May meeting tables next week. Wouldn’t the Marys be proud. They, who traveled with Jesus, shared his message, opened their homes to his followers all so more and more people could share the good news that they had witnessed. Wouldn’t they rejoice that we have new names to learn?

In our gospel passage this morning, we see Mary Magdalene, alone John tells us, visiting the tomb of Jesus. Other gospel writers say that other women were with her, other Marys, even. But John has her reaching the tomb alone, and being the first to see the stone rolled away. When the disciples see the open grave, and run away, Mary is left behind. She sees two angels in white and weeps because she doesn’t know where Jesus has been taken. Then, seeing a man she supposes to be the gardener, she asks him if he knows where they have taken the body of Jesus. She hears him say her name, “Mary”, and she recognizes him. He is not a gardener, not an angel, he is her friend Jesus, her Lord. And he calls her by her name. Not just “Woman”, but Mary. You can be sure that Jesus knew exactly which Mary this was. He knew her. She who came from a particular place, who had herself been healed by Jesus, who was with him throughout his ministry, all the way to the cross, and who ends up here. The first to see him risen. Known, loved, called by name, and given a specific task: “Go and tell the others.”

Known, loved, called by name, and given a specific task. Sounds to me like what happens to each of us. Known completely, as an individual by God, loved no matter what by God, called by name, our particular name, in our baptism, and given specific tasks. We are not all to stand up in church and sing, or read, or pass the offering plates. We are not all to teach, to serve meals, to lead meetings. But we are all called by name, and asked to carry on, however we can, with the work of the Lord. Did you hear the anthem before the sermon? O sisters, O brothers, O fathers, O mothers, let’s go down to the river to pray. All of us, not as some nameless shapeless mass of people, but as a family of individuals called and named and asked to serve. It takes all of us, working together.
It would be a good start to learn some names, don’t you think? So we can know each other as particular people, with particular talents, and particular needs. It might help us all do our work together.

There are nametags on the ends of the pews, and markers. Now I know, some of you might think that everyone who matters knows your name already. But you would be wrong. We don’t all know each other. And we all matter. And praise be to God that there are enough of us here for that to be true! So take a nametag, write on it your name, and say a silent prayer of thanks to the One who knows you inside and out, has called you, and loved you and given you a place and a job to do in this church or wherever. Then stick it on your shirt so we can greet each other after the service by name.

And just so no one gets embarrassed, I give everybody permission to actually look at the nametags, even if you already know the person you are greeting. But try to learn a few new names. So we can continue to do the work of the Lord in this place together, stronger, united in our common mission.
Amen.