St. Mary Magdalene, human [St. Luke 7:36-50]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Who speaks to you all through the Gospel today saying,

“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

If we want to receive blessedness, we must first abhor sin and enter into a repentant life, and then believe that our sin is forgiven for Christ’s sake. Finally, we must also demonstrate our faith and bring it to light through works of love and mercy, as we see and hear in the sinner that is St. Mary Magdalene.

This is why, when a saint day falls close to a Sunday, we celebrate it, because not only are they an example for us, but they bring the Christian life down to our level; the human level. So often, whenever anyone starts out on a spiritual journey, it is always grand and spiritual and very far away.

When we want to live the Christian life, we think in terms of what we can do and what our neighbor isn’t doing. We think that as long as we’re working on our righteousness, that our neighbor’s righteousness is never enough. We think that as long as we feel spiritual on the inside, that is good enough.

St. Mary Magdalene shows us a different picture. I’m sure in her heart of hearts she knew and felt well within the grace of God, but faith did not let her sit still. Faith did not let her say, “I’m blessed” and sit at home or go and do something else. It screamed at her: Jesus, the Christ of God in the flesh is in front of you and walking around while you are alive. You cannot be anywhere else except at His feet.

The example that St. Mary Magdalene leaves us is a picture of what every prophet, priest, and believer has done through all of time. They all fall down at the feet of God lamenting their uncleanness and weeping over their debts. This is because, when they hear the Word of God, they are not just hearing prophecy, they are also hearing their own pardons preached to them.

That is, they use their human attributes and talents in order to thank and praise, serve and obey God. But even with those words, we are still in the high and lofty, because those things can still be done on the inside and be thought of as more grand than they are. No, we still need a concrete place to perform these works.

St. Mary Magdalene and the rest of the followers of Jesus had it easy. They had the literal face of Jesus to seek out and gaze at. They had the hands of Jesus to grasp and shake. They had the knees of Jesus to fall down at and they had the feet of Jesus to wash with tears. Later on, they also had the actual blood of Jesus, His literal cross, and the very empty tomb He rose from to sit at and worship Him all day long, if they wanted. What do we have?

Repent. We spend all our spiritual energy on trying to get to Jesus, trying to pull His ear, trying to grab His hand, trying to find His feet and we come up empty handed. Jesus even ascended to the right hand of God, but we still think that He comes to us in the same way He did to the Apostles and to St. Mary.

Do we want to know how to abhor sin and live a life of repentance? We need look no further than St. Mary Magdalene, who though she had been forgiven, healed, and exorcised; although she had already received the full benefit from the hand of Jesus Himself, she was still disgusted by her sins and continued to seek Jesus out.

She was so horrified that she did not care about the stares and backstabbing comments she knew were going on in the conversations around her as she stepped into the dining room. She went through this unbearable embarrassment to get to the true Son of God, because He does not condemn, as she well knows, but has mercy.

Who loves the Father the most except the Son? Whose debt was the greater that was forgiven except the Son’s, though it was not His own? In a strange and merciful twist of divine goodness and mercy, Jesus is the greatest of sinners, the chief sinner, even though St. Paul tries to claim that title.

Jesus receives the touch and caress of sinners and is not made unclean by them. He accepts the care of “this sort of woman” and instead of Jesus being corrupted by touch or influence, He gives out His power to forgive and to save. Instead of a double-edged sword or a beam of white-hot fire, judging and condemning, these sinners find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.

In the incarnation of God, the Lord is reconciling the world to Himself. In God becoming flesh, Jesus now presents and proves the mercy of God; that He is close and not far, that He desires mercy, not sacrifice, and that His loving-kindness endures forever, not just because He says so, but because He acts just so, on the cross.

The suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God, is the only proof that God loves us. Doesn’t St. Mary tell us so? She is credited with being the first witness of the resurrection, after all. See how she follows her Lord and notes each detail of what He is saying and doing. She doesn’t stay at His feet and she doesn’t even stay at the tomb, she follows Him.

Faith knows that the Son is loved by the Father. Faith also knows that if we are not a part of the Son, that we will not be loved, but condemned in our sin for eternity. Thus, our need for God to unite with us. Our eternal need for the life of Christ to replace our life and in baptism this miracle takes place.

Faith works the same way today. It does not point us to how well we have overcome sin in our lives, but to how well Christ destroyed sin. Faith doesn’t point us to how sorry we feel for our sins or even how repentant we are, but to how perfectly Jesus has forgiven them. Thus, we follow where the forgiveness leads us: yes, to the cross, yes to the empty tomb, but those are no longer there. What we gather around today is the promise of God made to bring those things to us.

St. Mary Magdalene needed such great faith because she had to deal with a man she could see and could hardly believe He was God. But we have a faith to believe Jesus is God and man, that He has forgiven us in the same way, and that He still comes to us to care for us. Though we do not have the Body of Jesus, we have the Body and the Blood; the place where the promise resides.

We don’t have to find Jesus, or His hands, or His knees, or His feet, because He finds us. Our sin finds us as well, we don’t have to look too far for that, but Jesus makes a place in His Church, where His promise to forgive sins is stronger than our guilt. He creates a very human institution, fills it with earthly things, and declares these sacraments in this place accomplish His work.

If our head is in the clouds of self-righteousness, waiting for our own sanctification to drop down on us instead of our neighbor, we will miss God’s work of salvation completely and be locked out of the banquet. This is because God’s work, His great and most holy work, is being done at our feet, to humans, on earth, in the Word and Sacraments.

Does St. Mary Magdalene seek out and burst her way into wherever the Body of Jesus is? Dear Saints at St. Luke, so do you in the Divine Service.