Sermon on the Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters
[00:00:00] May be given to me to speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Please do be seated.
As many of you know, I grew up not in the Church of England, but in the Pentecostal Church. I've preached before about the ways in which God directed me from my early experiences of Christianity, theologically and liturgically, to be with you all today. Yet, whilst there remain some serious theological points upon which I disagree with what I was taught in my early years as a Christian.
One of the main reasons I 

[00:01:00] never got on very well as a Pentecostal is that I am not by nature very comfortable with very boldly expressing my emotions. Pentecostal worship, in fact charismatic worship in general, tends to be very free and lively. And the outward expression of emotion isn't only common, but encouraged.
This is in fact one of the reasons that the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic movement more broadly is one of the fastest growing in the UK and across the world. People want to find a space in order to express the fullness of themselves. To God and to each other, and the charismatic form of worship allows that in a way that perhaps we feel less easy when we are singing from hymns ancient and modern.
Pentecostalism Charismatic has done us the Great 

[00:02:00] favour, therefore, of reminding us that God seeks a personal relationship with each one of us and there is no relationship without emotion. Whether it be a deep belly laugh of joy or sobbing deep in sorrow, emotional expression is the foundation of really intimate relationship.
But aside from my very closest people, expressing my emotions isn't something that I do particularly well. I don't dance except when I'm on my own, I very rarely cry, and whilst one or two of you have seen me perhaps. slightly more grumpy than I ought to have been. I don't really shout. I express my joy in fascination and my sorrow in silence.
We all fall somewhere along that spectrum of emotional expression. Perhaps with me in my 

[00:03:00] sorrowful silence at one end and the brothers and sisters of the Pentecostal church who I grew up with dancing and doing handstands in the aisles on the other. And all of this will play a great part in the way that we express ourselves to God.
In St John the Baptist, there are some who more naturally dance and raise their hands in worship. People who will enthusiastically shake everybody's hand during the piece. And then there will be those who like to sit in the corner very quietly and not be noticed. All of this comes down to aesthetic preference.
and ultimately down to who we are. And this isn't really so much a theological matter, certainly not a theological matter about which there should be any sort of division. I prefer the organ to the electric guitar, but that 

[00:04:00] doesn't mean that God prefers one to the other. But whilst there may be Things that we do very differently here at St.
John the Baptist from our brothers and sisters in different traditions. I have always believed That there are deep truths that every church tradition can teach each other We must be important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater by saying we're not charismatic or we're not Anglo Catholic and Throwing away all kinds of things that might be useful to us useful to our training, useful to our learning.
And today, as we remember St Mary Magdalene, I want to focus on a truth which my Pentecostal charismatic upbringing taught me. There is no relationship without emotion. Whilst it might be comfortable for us who prefer a more 

[00:05:00] contemplative Anglican approach to worship to consider our type of worship the norm, Worship of our gods throughout the ages has in fact tended to be much more lively and much more emotive.
Consider the Psalms, a book of 150 songs of poetry written largely for music, mostly to be sang, offered every day in the temple, well known and well used by Jesus and his disciples. The psalm set for today is Psalm 42. Which begins as the deer longs for the water brooks. So longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is a thirst for God, even for the living God.
My tears have been my bread day and night, while all day long they say to me, Where is now your God? These are words of deepest emotion, penned by a psalmist who is pouring their heart out to God. The 

[00:06:00] psalmists often talk about weeping before God, of being so moved by emotion that they pour ashes on their head and rip their clothes in sorrow, or else laugh and dance and sing for joy.
This is in fact the normal mode of worship that we see throughout the Old Testament. In 2 Samuel chapter 6, the traditional author of many of the psalms, King David, is thus described. David and all the people with him set out and went from Baal Judah to bring up from there the Ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim.
David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. Later, in that description, David is described as dancing so hard that he remains only in a loincloth, 

[00:07:00] and the nobles of the city look on him with bemusement and judgment, because he's abased himself as the king, and yet they are punished by God, and by the prophets, who say David is truly a man after God's own heart.
He is a true worshipper. As we turn to our Gospel reading in which Mary Magdalene met Jesus, newly risen from the tomb, we see a similar expression of emotion and worship. First, we're told that Mary Magdalene first went to the tomb on the third day and discovered that Jesus body was no longer inside.
Having told St. Peter and St. John, their beloved disciple, she remained outside weeping. Mary Magdalene had an intimate relationship with Jesus, her rabbi. She had devoted her life to following him, listening to his teaching, following his path. 

[00:08:00] She'd done so despite it being presumed improper for a woman of first century Israel to engage in any kind of education, despite having been denied the formal education which would have been extended to Jesus male disciples.
Mary had helped to support Jesus ministry over three years, along with other female disciples, and had stayed true in her support, even going to the foot of the cross, where most of the male disciples had fled. Then, in the depth of her grief, after Jesus death, she'd gone to the tomb to help properly prepare his body.
to offer her prayers and let her heart pour out the depth of her grief to God her father. Whilst the male disciples ran here and there concerning themselves with all kinds of material concerns through Jesus's passion and death and burial, it was Mary Magdalene who 

[00:09:00] allowed herself the freedom of emotion to be real with Jesus, to be present with him all the way through that period.
And then, of course, the impossible happened. St. Mary's grief turned to incredulous joy. At first, she met a man who disturbed her grief and thought him the gardener. She experienced the confusion at Jesus appearance, as did all of those who Jesus appeared to after the resurrection. Jesus had changed in some way.
He was totally himself. But as the first of the resurrection from the dead, he showed that the resurrection of the body isn't necessarily the resurrection of our body right now. It wasn't until Jesus said her name, Mary, that she understood the miracle. And her response, Rabboni, expresses just how tender and emotional the moment was.

[00:10:00] Rabboni is a phonetic spelling. of the Hebrew rabbi in St. Mary's Magdalene dialect. It's not a different word, it's just how she would have pronounced the word rabbi. Jesus said her name and she, knowing him and known by him, responded in a way that was truly and authentically herself. In John chapter 10, Jesus teaches, the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. I am the good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me. The interaction between St. Mary and Jesus is so emotive. It is described in such emotive terms, even down to St. John adding the phonetic spelling of what Mary said, Rabboni. because St. John wants us to link 

[00:11:00] together what is happening here with what Jesus was teaching in John 10.
We are called to remember that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, truly deeply knows us down to the depth of our being and we are to know him truly and deeply as close as our own heartbeat. And so Jesus called her by name Mary, and she responded with the depth of her being
having been called by name, by her good Shepherd, how natural it was then for St. Mary to hold on to Jesus, to hug him, her emotion coming alive in her actions. This wouldn't have been a quick embrace of two people who barely knew each other, but the long and tender embrace of the dearest friends, joined together in a journey of 

[00:12:00] sorrow and joy and love.
It was an embrace which conveyed a thousand words, because Jesus responded to the unanswered statement of that embrace. He said, do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. In that embrace, St. Mary conveyed her loss, her desperation for things to go back to the way they were. That embrace said, please never go again.
She, his loyal disciple, he her teacher, guiding and encouraging her, please let us go back to what once was. But of course, nothing remained the same after the resurrection. St. Mary's tutelage was over. She was no longer a student, but now a teacher herself. And so came Jesus first commission for her. Go to my brothers and say to them, I am 

[00:13:00] ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.
And so, St. Mary became the first apostle to preach the resurrection. The apostle to the apostles. This interaction spoke of a relationship grounded in truth. Jesus knew St. Mary and she knew him. And because their relationship was truthful, it was transformative.
There are plenty of us who will never feel comfortable dancing before the Lord as David did, or weeping out in the open like St. Mary did. It's important that we never allow that to make us feel unworthy in our worship. For me, it wouldn't have been any more real to dance in my Pentecostal church than it would have been for members of my congregation to sit in contemplative silence for an hour, as I would have preferred.

[00:14:00] But we all must find a way to let God know the depth of our heart. We must learn from St. Mary and allow ourselves to listen for the Good Shepherd's voice so that he can speak our name and we can return and speak to him in sincerity and truth. Worship cannot be something that we do. It must be something that we are.
And so I encourage you, have the courage to be honest before God. Let him know the depth of your heart, whatever is in the depth of your heart. And your relationship with him will flourish. Amen.