Much has happened in the past ten years in terms of my episcopate. I was appointed an Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Melbourne with oversight of some 50 parishes plus schools and chaplaincies, some 75 clergy in all, spread over a wide area. I lived in a provincial city an hour’s drive from Melbourne where the Diocesan offices were located. I loved the visits to parishes and working with clergy and lay leaders in appointments, in clergy and lay development, dealing with the stresses and strains of parish life and relationships, and being involved with ministry to schools and prisons in particular. However after some years the burden of administrative work in a large but poorly resourced diocese let alone the isolation of the task and the sheer amount of car travel began to take their toll. This compounded by the issues arising out of the 1998 Lambeth Conference and the Australian Churches’ inability or refusal to deal with them creatively led in the end to my resignation and to my desire to return to parochial life, to regain a sense of spiritual and social community. This diocese has given me that while at the same time honoring and using my episcopate. For that I can only say “thanks be to God”.

But this is Mary Magdalene’s Day. The choice of this day for the service of consecration was interesting in itself. Keith Rayner, the Archbishop of Melbourne and Australian Primate, who appointed me and was chief consecrator, was eager for the service to take place as soon as possible after my appointment was ratified by the equivalent of the Standing Committee of the Diocese in April. “What about Peter and Paul, or the Nativity of John the Baptist he said?” Well Peter and Paul are of course princes of the church and died martyr’s deaths. While full of admiration I don’t see myself as having the makings of a martyr. Then I have never been a natural ascetic and did not feel particularly drawn to John the Baptist. The Archbishop then added almost as an afterthought, “then there is of course Mary Magdalene. She falls on a Saturday and that would be suitable if we wait that long.” Immediately my face lit up. “Mary Magdalene, I like that,” I said. My mind was racing as I thought of Mary Magdalene with all the baggage of sexual innuendo that has been linked with her but who above all things was Witness to the Resurrection and in a real sense Apostle to the Apostles. Mary Magdalene would be patron of my episcopate. She was a fully human person, with feet of clay, who loved and was loved, who was faithful to Jesus beyond death, who encountered her Risen Lord in that exquisite scene described in today’s Gospel.

The choice of the preacher for this service of consecration came to me as I tossed and turned one night. The name of Janet Gaden, a priest in the diocese, and widow of another great Australian priest, John Gaden, who had died too young, was providential. The choice of Janet caused some excitement since she was to be the first woman in Australia to preach at the consecration of a bishop which had previously been all male affairs. Janet understood Mary Magdalene and what she represented for me. It was in a memorable sermon twice interrupted by applause, itself highly unusual in restrained Anglican society, that Janet dwelt on the words “supposing him to be the gardener”. She described Durer’s etching of the scene with Jesus wearing a gardener’s hat and carrying a large spade on his shoulder. This spoke to the gardener in me. But the whole point of that moment in the gospel narrative is that Mary Magdalene was right even though she did not realize it. Of course Jesus was the gardener. Like Adam of old delving in the Garden of Eden, here was Jesus the new Adam in the garden of the Resurrection, the new Eden. John’s Gospel subtly introduces this theme with his repeated reference to the garden, first in the only gospel reference to Gethsemane as a garden and then to the fact that the tomb in which Jesus was laid was also a garden. In other words the archetypal battle between good and evil and its resolution and reversal in the Resurrection of Jesus takes place in garden as did that first struggle in Eden.

But there is so much more that one could say about Mary Magdalene that makes her an attractive saint and an encouraging patron to adopt. Janet referred to her passion. She was a woman who lived and felt passionately. She not only followed Jesus with her intellect but she loved him with all her heart. She demonstrated that in her staying with Jesus along with the Mary the Lord’s Mother and the other women at the foot of the cross while most of the male disciples feared for their lives; and according to John she came to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning only to discover that it had been disturbed. Then even after Peter and John had left Mary Magdalene remained at the tomb expectant in her grief and aggressive in her enquiry and interrogation of the angels and of Jesus the supposed gardener. Then in that sublime moment of encounter with the risen Lord on hearing her name spoken so familiarly Mary reached out in passionate embrace to the one she loved, that moment captured so beautifully in many works of art. Jesus’ seeming rebuke of her loving gesture, “Do not hold me”, is to remind her and us that life has moved onto a new level of existence; her passion in the future will be expressed in new ways. And as if to illustrate that Mary Magdalene continues her passionate commitment to Jesus in his Risenness by immediately sharing her joy-filled experience with the other disciples. Her passionate enthusiasm becomes the model for witnesses to the Resurrection; Mary Magdalene initiates the Mission of the Church to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

Mary Magdalene provides us with an accessible model of discipleship and ministry. Her passion, her persistence, her enthusiasm as well as her insight arising out of her deep experience of the healing and reconciling love of Christ serve us well as we seek to be faithful to him “whom our souls long for and love”.   Amen

Return to "Sermons"