Ken & Barbie & Mary Magdalene

I got an e-mail from a stranger asking me to send $200,000.00 to a poor widow in Appalachia.

I didn’t do it.

Yesterday, my friend Ken discovered that Barbie scammed him out of several thousand dollars.

Earlier this week a woman in her 20s at Ginny’s office died abruptly; .

Last night Ginny knelt before me and soothed some moisturizing lotion onto my stinging feet.

These four things caused me to think about one of the most interesting women in the Bible, Mary Magdalene.

For years Ken, a generous young Christian gentleman, tried to help Barbie over a rough patch in her life. A long rough patch.

He’s “loaned” her thousands of dollars but now finds she has no intention of paying the money back as she promised.

He feels let down.

While trying to exercise Christian charity, he feels he’s been played for a sucker.

I told him that it is better to be conned by a scam artist than to let one genuine needy person go hungry. It’s God’s money and He can sort it out.

Ken and I talked for a long time about how we can best give to the poor and naturally the conversation turned to Mary Magdalene.

When the prostitute washed the feet of Jesus and anointed him with spikenard, one of the disciples objected saying that the lotion could be sold for $300 and the money used to help the poor.

But Jesus said, “Let her alone… you have the poor with you all the time and whenever you want to, you can do them good”.

Then He gave this woman the highest sort of commendation saying, “She hath done what she could”.

This story is told in Matthew, chapter 26; Mark, 14; Luke, 22; and John 13. The anointing of Jesus is one of the few incidents recorded in all four gospels.

Some Bible scholars question whether the lady’s name was actually Mary Magdalene; they question how the ointment could be both in an alabaster box and in a flask. Obviously these guys aren’t married. Ever seen Ginny’s cosmetics on her side of the dresser?

Anyhow, here’s my own paraphrase of the words of Jesus when he spoke about this woman:

Throughout the world, in every age, in every place, anywhere my story is told, her story will be told also. That’s her memorial.

Her act of love in washing His feet, anointing him with “an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious”, and drying his feet with her long hair strike a cord in our hearts. He said that she had done this aforehand to anoint his body for burial.

Yes, He knew full well that he faced crucifixion and burial.

The torture came as no surprise to Him.

Yet, He went ahead… for us.

And after we nailed Him down. After we stood the cross in its socket. After we mocked. After we stuck His dead body in a hole in the ground. After three days, the very first person to see Him after He shook off death and walked out of the grave… that person was Mary Magdalene.

There’s a tendency to think of Jesus as a local boy who made good as far as death is concerned.

That’s not what the Scripture says.

He is declared to be the very Son of God, the Prince of Life by His resurrection from death. He constantly said that He had deliberately come into this world to seek and to save the lost, to destroy the works of the devil, to give us abundant life, to forgive sin, to die and to take up His own life again…

Doesn’t sound as though He was from around here, does it?

I sometimes have a tendency to think that helping the poor is the most important religious thing we can do.

Not necessarily.

Giving a few bucks to the poor makes me feel important; big daddy feeding the big-eyed starving kid with the begging bowl. But Jesus said the poor are always with us and we can do good to them whenever we will. So paternalistic motives and nonsense aside, we should do it, but that is not the main thing.

Giving to the poor is such a tangible thing. I can see results; I can feel peeved when I don’t see results.

But the worship of the Lord Christ is not tangible. Over the ages all over the world many great artists have chosen Mary Magdalene as their subject. A Google search turns up about 6,000 images from every age and every place throughout the world. Sometimes the artists portray her in her prostitute days, sometimes they show her washing the feet of Jesus, sometimes they paint her as running to hug the risen Christ when she recognizes Him – that sort of painting sometimes caries the Latin quote, Noli Me Tangere – Don’t touch me or Don’t cling to me.

God is spirit and we are to worship him in spirit and in truth.

While giving to the poor is important, the more important thing is that I try to recognize Him as who He is, to honor Him in the way I act, to try to appreciate what He does for me, to pay attention to what He said – to face reality.

And yes, I should give cash money to help the needy; and yes, sometimes I’ll get conned out of that money. But if I am giving to God, using the poor as a channel of that giving, then it’s His money.

And if my few coins happen to fall through the cracks, that’s OK.

He can afford it.