AFTER a predictably dull deanery-synod meeting, one cold and dark December night, I was driving home to the vicarage in the centre of Ipswich. The busy Christmas traffic was moving slowly through the red-light district, and one particularly attractive young woman with beautiful teeth was not just standing on the street corner, but smiling and waving at the cars to encourage them to stop.
It was a fearful time in Ipswich. Between October and December 2006, five women would be murdered. Annette — the one I saw that night — became number four. The media circus was astonishing. Fake news is nothing new. There were those who were desperate to have their comments published in the papers, or to be interviewed on radio or TV. The police (who were wonderful) needed a lot of pastoral care and support.
A year later, after some of the dust had settled and the murderer was behind bars, we held a memorial service at St Matthew’s for the women: Tania, Gemma, Anneli, Annette, and Paula. In contrast with the time I led the memorial service at St Mary-le-Tower for Sir Alf Ramsey, with members of the victorious ’66 World Cup squad in the congregation, there was neither fuss nor a crowd, and certainly no “live on Sky” TV. The service was deliberately very quiet and low-key; and it was a privilege to meet their families.
MANY and varied are the stories and circumstances that lead women into the vulnerable and soiled life of prostitution. Remember I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s deeply disturbing film about the poverty trap, and the plight of the single mother Katie? There is a scene in which Katie goes to the foodbank in the church hall and literally rips the top off a tin of baked beans because her stomach is so empty. Later, she is caught shoplifting, and forced to go on the game, because of her inability to feed her family.
The thread that linked the Ipswich women, who came from all kinds of backgrounds, was drugs, and the insatiable need for money to feed that habit. Their boyfriends would drop them off for work on street corners just as somebody might drop off their girlfriend or wife at the office. The women would stand on those street corners in all weathers, often soaked to the skin. Much to the credit of the people of Ipswich, they were always referred to as “the girls” — not as prostitutes. We started a charity, “Somebody’s Daughter”: a moving phrase coined by one of the locals to describe one of the girls; and I was one of the trustees.
I will always wonder what might have happened if I’d have stopped the car that December night and tried to help Annette. What would I have said? What would I have done? Would it have saved her life? (How would I have explained that one to the Bishop — as an ecclesiastical variation on the activities of former Prime Minister William Gladstone?) But I didn’t. I passed by.
ON MONDAY, the church remembers St Mary Magdalene. Like us all, the traditional figure associated with that name is a mixed picture, a complex character. Mentally ill, the good-time girl from that busy city on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. What would you expect with all those sailors? The tart with the heart? Traditionally portrayed as sensual, what kind of welcome would she get in many of our churches?
It is St Luke, with his special emphasis on the women around Jesus, who tells us all too briefly about Jesus driving seven demons from Mary Magdalene. Just before this episode, Luke sets running an exegetical hare — which has encouraged many mistakenly to conflate the two events — by recounting the story of the sinful woman in the Pharisee’s house, pouring an alabaster jar full of perfume over Jesus’s feet and wiping them with her hair.
But the headline message is that Jesus didn’t pass by. He embraced Mary Magdalene with his love, channelled her love; and she became a key member of his apostolic band. Repeatedly, he didn’t pass by on the other side.
IN A sermon marking the 1600th anniversary of the conversion of St Augustine, Rowan Williams reminded us that the story of the Bible is the story of God in search of humanity. Again and again, God in Christ is searching for — and finding — us.
Jesus searching for, and finding, and saving the lost is a major theme for St Luke, and he drives this home with a vivid intensity in those familiar parables (some peculiar to this Evangelist): the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the Prodigal Son.
We are not human beings so much as human becomings. It is not what we are but, rather, what, by God’s grace, we may become that matters. In German, there is a saying, “Become that which you are.”
The prophetic Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz, in his poem “Mary Magdalene and I”, says of her:
. . . Forever between
The element of flesh and the element
Of hope, she stays still.
The Johannine encounter in the garden between Mary Magdalene and Jesus must be one of the most moving of the resurrection stories: the words, the scene, the emotion — heartbroken despair turned to incredulous joy at the speed of light. The Joshua and the Miriam of history become the Jesus and Mary Magdalene of faith. The Easter garden becomes the new Garden of Eden, an image of our new creation in Christ. You can dig for ever into the story of that encounter and never run out of gold.
Mary Magdalene — the one we would have frozen out, the one we would never have invited round (especially if our husband was present) — is the first witness of the resurrection. With her heart set on fire with joy, she becomes the Apostle to the Apostles, a model of what it is to be the church in the world today, and bearer of the good news: “I have seen the Lord.”
The Ven. Peter Townley is an Assistant Curate in the Sherburn-in-Elmet group of parishes in the diocese of York.