This is one of a series of sermons that combined two very different ideas: The Disciples of Jesus and America’s National Parks. In each sermon I talk about one or more disciples and one national park. Then I try to make connections between the two. Some of these will be from the imaginary situation of a disciple visiting a park and reflecting on it in the first person. Other will be in my voice making the connections. This series is the result of a brainstorming session with church members in which we tried to come up with creative ideas for a summer sermon series.
Mary Magdalene and Crater Lake National Park
John 20:11-18
In the voice of Mary Magdalene:
“Depth. That’s what I’m pondering as I sit by Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park,staring into the breathtaking blue water of this 2000 foot deep lake on top of a mountain – the deepest lake in North America. What does it mean to be deep?
When talking about a person, it’s often a compliment. When someone is deep we are saying they are wise, mysterious, thoughtful. Along the same lines when someone is shallow, we think of them as selfish or superficial.
People used to think of me as shallow. Back when I was possessed by the demons before I met Jesus.
The Bible said I had seven demons, “Mary Magdalene from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons,” but I don’t really know where they got that number. There were only three big ones. Three that caused all the trouble. The demon of resentment. The demon of fear. And the demon of arrogance. Those three were the root of most of my troubles. I suspect those three are the root of almost everybody’s troubles. Maybe all the little demons or sins that bother us are just riding the coattails of our resentment, our fear, and our arrogance.
Back in the middle ages people got the idea that I was a prostitute or at least very sexually promiscuous. There is nothing in the Bible that supports this. People just assumed that if I was a woman who was sinful, I must be promiscuous. How else could a woman possibly be sinful? Well, maybe I was greedy. Maybe I was hoarding money. Maybe I was angry and always lashing out at people. Or maybe I was lazy or gluttonous or maybe I was violent or maybe I was just really bad at following Jewish laws. The Bible doesn’t say how the demons troubled me. People just assumed it was sexual. Well I’m not here to confess to you all my particular sins. Suffice it to say, all my troubles went back to those big three: I was resentful. I was afraid. I was arrogant.
But, here is my point: just because someone is troubled or acting poorly doesn’t mean they are shallow. They might appear shallow because they are filled up with demons. But, it takes a lot of psychic space to accommodate demons. When I was possessed, I was still deep. I was just deep with demons.
No person is really shallow.
But, the day I met Jesus everything changed radically. They say that Jesus cast the demons out of me. Like I was just a passive player. Like I was a closet, he was clearing of junk. I don’t see it that way. On the contrary, Jesus helped me understand that I was the one holding on to the demons. I was the one keeping them around. I held on to resentments against others. I held on to fears about the future. I held on to the belief that the world and its people should be exactly the way I want them to be. That would be the definition of arrogance. When I met Jesus, he helped me let go of all that stuff that was harming me and he taught me how to open my heart and mind to God. And when I let go, the demons just floated away. I was free. I was at peace. I learned to accept the world and the people in it as being just as they were supposed to be.
And you know what. Even without the demons I was still deep. But it was a different depth. When those demons were gone, I could finally see my soul as vast and awesome empty space. It was like this lake: Crater Lake. It used to be a mountain filled with molten lava and fire. Then in one mighty explosion, about 8000 years ago, all that fire was released and there was a wide open space; a giant empty bowl. From that time on the bowl filled with rain and melted snow and became the beautiful deep lake it is today.
So it was with me. When those demons left my soul, I was a vast empty bowl that, with the help of Jesus, began to fill with the love and grace of God.
After that, over the years, I actually became Jesus’ closest companion. There is even speculation that I am the unnamed “disciple Jesus loved” reclining next to him at the last supper in the Gospel of John. Maybe the disciple whom Jesus loved was not named because he was a she. People even speculate that we were romantically involved. Sorry. I’m not going to quench your curiosity on that one, because the details of our relationship are not important to this story. The important part of the story is the emptiness of my soul that Jesus taught me to open up to the love of God, the way a flower blossom opens to the sun.
And in fact it was that openness that allowed me to see the thing I am most remembered for: to see Jesus risen from the dead. I was the first one. The first human being to see the Resurrection of Jesus. Not Peter or James or John or his mother. It was me, Mary Magdalene who had seven demons.
After I told the others about my visions of Jesus they began having them too. We began seeing Jesus as a community gathered in his Spirit to continue his mission.
From that point, people started looking to me as a spiritual teacher. They looked to me for wisdom. How did you do it? What do you remember about Jesus? Did he tell you anything he didn’t tell us? And I told them what I knew. I told them what I had experienced. That’s how the Gospel of Mary came to be. It didn’t make it into the Bible. In fact it didn’t survive as a complete manuscript at all. A big piece of the middle is missing.
In the early part of the Gospel of Mary it says, “Peter said to Mary, “Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them”. Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you”. And she began to speak to them these words: “I”, she said, “I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to Him, Lord I saw you today in a vision”.
Unfortunately, almost all of the manuscript containing my vision was lost to history. We have fragments of the end of the Gospel. It describes how some of the disciples became defensive and questioned my teachings because I was a woman. But, then the disciple Levi spoke up. He said, “But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Savior knew her very well. For this reason he loved her more than us.”
I’m not going to tell you what was in my lost vision. Maybe some day they will find a more complete manuscript. In the meantime, I offer you this lesson from my experience and from the edge of Crater Lake. Everyone has depth. Everyone is deep. You can’t always see it. Some people’s depths are so filled with resentment, fear and arrogance that you can’t see the true depth of their soul but it is there. As a formerly demon-possessed person, I assure you it’s there. You need a lot of depth to accommodate demons. But the path to true healing and joy and beauty is the path of letting the demons go. They are only there because you hold onto them. Let them float away. If you compulsively grab for them, just realize what you’ve done and let go again and again and again. Eventually, empty spaces will open in your soul. And as you turn your heart to the love of God, it will fill up those empty spaces. If you let go over and over again and trust God over and over again, eventually you will be deep with love. That’s the true nature of beauty and wholeness: empty human souls filled with the love of God.
Govans Presbyterian Church 