The One Who Stayed
Sermon by Rev. Hannah Wilder preached on July 19, 2026 at St. Paul’s, Feast of Mary Magdalene.
If you ask most people who Mary Magdalene was, many will answer almost instinctively: “She was the prostitute.” The remarkable thing is that the Bible never says that. Not once.
Mary Magdalene was a woman from whom Jesus cast out seven demons. She became one of his closest disciples. She traveled with him. She supported his ministry. She stood at the cross when nearly everyone else fled. She came to the tomb before dawn. And she became the first witness of the Resurrection—the first person entrusted to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord.”
For centuries, however, Western Christianity confused her with several other women in the Gospels, especially an unnamed sinful woman in Luke’s Gospel. That misunderstanding, popularized through Pope Gregory’s famous sixth-century sermon, shaped Christian imagination for almost fourteen hundred years, even though Scripture itself never calls Mary Magdalene a prostitute.
Think about that: the first preacher of Easter, the apostle to the apostles. Yet for centuries, much of the Church remembered her not for her witness, but through a mistaken story that obscured who she really was. Perhaps today is, in a small way, an opportunity to let Mary simply be Mary again.
Our Gospel begins with tears: “Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.” She is grieving with her whole body. She isn’t looking for resurrection. She isn’t looking for miracles. She is looking for a body. She simply wants to care for the one she loves.
And then Jesus speaks one word: “Mary.” Her name. Not a lecture. Not an explanation. Her name. And suddenly everything changes.
This summer, the Daughters of the King have been reading The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Episcopal priest and contemplative teacher Cynthia Bourgeault. One of the gifts she offers the Church is an invitation to slow down and notice that Mary Magdalene’s role in the Easter story may be deeper than we’ve often imagined.
She suggests something that isn’t meant to compete with Scripture, but to open our imagination. She imagines that while Jesus descended into death itself—into whatever mysterious place we mean when we say in the Creed, “He descended to the dead”—someone remained above holding the thread. Holding love. Holding faith. Holding relationship. Holding him.
Like a climber descending into a dark cave while someone trustworthy remains at the surface holding the rope, she imagines that Mary became that tether. Not because she possessed magical powers, but because love does something astonishing: love refuses to let go.
I find that image breathtaking. Because if Christ descended into the deepest darkness imaginable, someone remained steadfast in love.
What actually happened in those mysterious hours between Good Friday and Easter morning? I don’t know. The Church has never completely answered that question. But something happened.
Something happened powerful enough that frightened fishermen became fearless apostles. Something happened powerful enough that ordinary women and men faced lions, crosses, prisons, and execution rather than deny what they had seen. Something happened powerful enough that tiny house churches outlived emperors. Something happened powerful enough that Christians became famous—not for winning arguments—but for rescuing abandoned infants, caring for plague victims everyone else avoided, feeding widows, and welcoming strangers.
The Roman Empire had power. The early Church had love. And somehow, love won.
Paul says today, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” Not merely a better religion—a new creation. As though resurrection wasn’t simply something that happened to Jesus. It was something that happened to reality itself. Something shifted. Something opened. The universe itself tilted toward reconciliation.
I wonder if Mary Magdalene understood that before anyone else did. Not intellectually, but in her heart, because love often knows before the mind catches up.
She didn’t become the first apostle because she had the best theology. She became the first apostle because she stayed. She stayed at the cross. She stayed through the silence. She stayed through the grief. She stayed when hope seemed impossible. And because she stayed, she was there when resurrection arrived.
Our collect says something beautiful that we often overlook. It says Christ restored Mary “to health of body and mind.” Healing wasn’t simply about removing demons. It was about restoring her whole humanity.
Cynthia Bourgeault loves to say that Mary shows us what a fully transformed human being looks like. Not perfect. Not superhuman. Whole.
She speaks about conscious love: the kind of love that keeps choosing faithfulness; the kind of love that becomes less about possessing someone and more about giving oneself away.
Jesus even tells Mary, “Do not hold on to me.” Because resurrection isn’t something we cling to. It is something we are sent to proclaim. Love matures from holding to sending, from grasping to giving, from possession to blessing.
I suspect every one of us knows someone standing outside a tomb today—someone grieving, someone waiting, someone convinced hope is over. Maybe that someone is you.
Mary Magdalene reminds us that resurrection often begins not with certainty, but with tears; not with answers, but with staying; not with triumph, but with love that refuses to walk away.
Perhaps that is her greatest gift to us: not simply that she announced Easter, but that she teaches us how to wait for it.
Today the Church remembers Mary Magdalene, not as the woman history mistakenly imagined, but as Scripture remembers her: disciple, witness, apostle to the apostles, the first voice to proclaim the greatest news the world has ever heard: “I have seen the Lord.”
May we become people like her—people who stay, people who love, people who become tethers of hope in a frightened world, people through whom Christ’s resurrection continues to remake creation.
I want to close with a story about Mary Magdalene—a little bit of lore. One of my favorite traditions about Mary Magdalene is the one involving the red egg. It’s a cherished story from the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
According to the legend, after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Mary Magdalene traveled to Rome and was granted an audience with the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar. As was customary, she brought him a simple gift—an egg.
When she proclaimed to him, “Christ is risen!” the emperor reportedly laughed and replied that someone rising from the dead was no more likely than the egg in her hand turning red. At that moment, the egg miraculously became a brilliant crimson.
From that story comes the tradition of red Easter eggs. The egg symbolizes the sealed tomb from which new life emerged, and the red color represents Christ’s blood, poured out in love and transformed into the life of the Resurrection.
Whether or not the story happened historically, it’s a wonderful piece of Christian imagination because it captures who Mary was so well. She was the first evangelist—her whole life became a proclamation of resurrection.
The egg also has another layer of symbolism. From the outside, an egg appears lifeless. But inside, unseen, new life is growing. It’s the perfect symbol of the Resurrection: what appears closed and dead is actually on the verge of astonishing new life.
Please pick up an egg as a gift for you today, on this Feast of Mary Magdalene, and remember: what seems like the darkness of the tomb may actually be the incubating darkness of the womb.
Sources:
Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (One World, 2020), along with her public teaching on revolutionary love.