Wot I wrote on the Tube

Attended a meeting in London yesterday...thought about the service I'm leading on Sunday focusing on Mary Magdalene...and wrote this monologue about her on the Tube!

In a way I’m used to being in two places.

I mean alongside Simon Peter I’m probably one of the best known of Jesus’ original followers, and two thousand years on I’m told people are still writing about me; some are even continuing to make up rather upsetting stories about my life, but I’ve long since decided to put all that gossip to one side and ignore it.

So I know what it’s like to live in the limelight.

Twelve times, they say, I’m mentioned in the gospels; and I was there at all the important moments during Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem: his crucifixion (it was mostly us women who stuck by him – his male disciples found other places to be that first Good Friday), we helped with the burial ceremonies and I believe I was the very first one to experience his resurrection presence.

Yes, I know what it’s like to be in the limelight.

But, you know, I was happy to be in the background and quietly give support.

You see a group of us got together after meeting and listening to Jesus.  We knew each other because we’d all got a bit of money – most of us inherited because the male line in our families had run out.  Anyway, we all felt we’d like to use the few shekels we had to support Jesus and his preaching tour.  We paid for the food, made the arrangements for our stays in various villages up and down Galilee.  We were in the background as encouragers and enablers but Jesus always seemed aware of us and valued our contribution to his mission.

I’m used to being in two places.

But can I tell you about the best place I’ve ever been, and in a way it was the worst as well.

I didn’t understand his death and to be truthful his empty tomb and absentee body was a mystery to me also.  So it all started off as the worst morning of my life – Jesus dead and now his body stolen.

Then he spoke my name.  He spoke my name and everything changed.

The hope and trust that filled the days I spent with him up in Galilee – that hope and trust returned in the garden in the early dawn of Easter Day.

He called me by name.  Once again we shared God’s love as a gift to each other and once again I knew why I believed in him and his mission.  A mission to preach acceptance, live in a spirit of service, die offering forgiveness and live again showing us a way of hope.  God’s mission of love in Jesus.

He called me by name.

He calls you by name too, and invites you to join him – celebrating and expressing the love of God made real in both the struggles and joys of life.

So, perhaps like me, you too live life in at least two places – but it’s OK, God calls you by name, you are his.