Mary Did you know?

Tomorrow night I’ll be delivering a monologue during our Friday night service as Mary Magdalene. If I can memorize the dang thing. I wrote it about a week ago… it took me forever because I was trying to come from a place where people hurting today could understand. I didn’t want to hand hold the “audience” by saying ” I am Mary of Madgala, blah, blah, blah. But there was SO much Speculation about her, how much was actually TRUTH. So, while it’s obscure, I think it works and I think she will be recognized. SO I got it done….. then my husband came home from 7 months of deployment, my son turned 2, my son got stomach flu and had us up all night, the transmission started to go on the car, I had to work, my husband got the stomach thing 2 nights later and here we are… Thursday night. I can sort of fumble my way through it. I’m stressed about it and the perfectionist in me wants to curl up in a ball and cry. Why didn’t they just ask me to sing a song??? I could have busted out “via dolarosa” and been done.
anyhow, I will share it here… so if you are one of the very few who read this and go tomorrow night and wonder what I am babbling about… here’s what I was supposed to say… Please add vocal inflections and dramatic pauses where appropriate.

I’m not even sure … what to say right now. It’s still dark, I’m still covered in dirt, I can still smell the stench of blood and death. And for what? Because he loved people? Because he healed people? Taught them forgiveness, instructed them how to love each other, how to pray. No, but because they felt jealous and threatened. Their rules and laws that they’ve held over us for so long. Making us feel less holy, less worthy of God then they were… when really they were hungry for superiority and power. Power they will never have.

Jesus had true power, power to just touch someone and heal them of sickness, blindness or worse. And I know first hand. Before I met him I was filled with demonic presence. 7 in all. They ruled me. Ruled my heart, my mind, my emotions… made me think no one would ever love me, because I was worth NOTHING. I was so filled with hate, fear, rejection, hurt.. I felt dead inside.

That is until I met him. It was a regular day, but it changed my life forever. I was passing as he was teaching in a field and I stopped to listen for while. After all, he was all I had been hearing about for days in the marketplace. …. When he had finished , he began to make his way to me, everything inside me wanted to run and hide, but I couldn’t move… then said my name…he knew my NAME?!, he reached out, touched my hand and with the quietest, yet strongest voice I ever heard said… leave her. All at once I felt dizzy, but giddy and light and I…. for the first time in my life I felt JOY. Not the fleeting happiness that people mistake for Joy. But JOY, and peace. I was FREE , It was the most incredible thing.

He didn’t care about my past, He didn’t care what I had done, He didn’t care what people said about me… He only cared about ME. He helped me to look past all the titles and labels, some I put on myself. He saw not only who I was, but who I could be. I knew He had healed me for a reason, a purpose, and I determined to follow this man who could do such wonders. He had looked past everything, and just saw me… and I saw Him.

From there I sold up most of my belongings…, you see, before I met Jesus I was a woman of… business. Buy, sell, trade…And whatever you may think that entails, you are probably right. But my years in the world had taught me to be smart with what I had and I was able to have quite a bit of money that I used to help pay for Jesus and his disciples to travel and teach.

Most of the time I traveled with them. Soaking up as much as I could of his presence, his teachings. He was my friend, my teacher… “Rabboni!” I would call him. He taught me about REAL love, not the emotional thing that everyone gets caught up in, but real love. The kind you Choose, not feel. He showed me Love, in the purest sense. Before Jesus I was broken, hopeless, trash. I never thought I would feel like I was worth something… but he changed all that.

Today they killed him. CRUCIFY him they yelled. Beat him, tortured him. More than I have ever seen them do to a prisoner. Then they hung him for all to see. We were there for what felt like days… we got as close to him as we could… I .. I just cried, and screamed. I couldn’t understand… I still don’t. WHY?!?! After about the 6th hour the sky went black… the crowd got quiet…some left. I stayed. I stayed with him till he cried out “my God, MY GOD”… and then he was gone
And now… what is left? What does this mean? I think about it and I cry. I cry when I think about watching him die. the hate I saw in the eyes of those who beat him, who nailed him to that tree and mocked him. I cry when I think of returning home without him. What do I do now? What will the rest of us do? He was our hope, our light… He was supposed to change the world. He said he had plans and that someday I would understand… but I don’t. and now he is gone.
and now what is left, but hope lost and fear.