There’s Something About Mary
She has been vilified and deified. Her name is Mary Magdalene and through the years she has been surrounded with myth and legend. With the exception of Mary the mother of Jesus there is no other woman from the bible who has been the subject of so much discussion and speculation as has Mary.
The Mary Of Da Vinci
The most recent discussions have been sparked by the book and movie The Da Vinci Code and in the Da Vinci Code Mary has been lifted to a new level for Millions of readers and movie goers. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie the hypostasis is that Mary Magdalene and not Peter was the head apostle, that it was Mary whom Christ had entrusted his church with and Mary who was supposed to lead it. That she was removed from her position by Peter and the other apostles because they resented her leadership and that she had to flee to France in order to save her life. And it is in France that he descendents still live.
The book and movie also tell us that not only was Mary an important disciple of Christ’s but that she was also his wife and was pregnant with his child, a daughter named Sarah when he was crucified. And that is the secret that is hid in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci that have been hidden from us until Robert Langdon the noted symbologist from Harvard was able to decipher the clues with the help of the beautiful police cryptographer Sophie Neveu and Leigh Teabing, a former British Royal Historian.
According to the book this is a secret that the Catholic Church, though the villainous Opus Dei, is willing to kill to keep covered up. So what are the clues? Well first of all we are told that The secret was first revealed when the Knights Templar discovered trunks full of documents buried beneath Solomon’s Temple which not only revealed the location of the Holy Grail but contained evidence that would totally discredit Christianity. It was from this incredible find that the Priory of Sion was established, in 1099, to protect the secret. The secret? That the Holy Grail was not a “Thing” but was a “Person”, Mary Magdalene, or at least her remains. Because if her remains could be identified then by DNA testing it could be established that the blood line of her and Christ were still around today. Hate to ruin a good story, but. Unless the body was carrying photo ID it might be a little difficult to prove it was indeed Mary Magdalene. If you could prove it you’d have her DNA but not Jesus’, unless there is another secret they’re not telling us about. So all you could prove is that her descendants were still around today, and that wouldn’t be all that shocking.
So how did they figure out the secret, well first of all they realized that Holy Grail in French is San Greal but in reality it was a spelling mistake because if you shift the letters you get Sang Real which is Royal Blood.
But wait there is more. The major clue in Da Vinci’s secret is of course hidden in Leonardo’s painting the last supper. Now the Bible tells us that the Last Supper was attended by Jesus and his 12 apostles, and they are named in Matthew 10:2-4 Here are the names of the twelve apostles: first Simon (also called Peter), then Andrew (Peter’s brother), James (son of Zebedee), John (James’s brother), Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew (the tax collector), James (son of Alphaeus), Thaddaeus, Simon (the Zealot), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).
But in the Da Vinci Code we are told that this person here is not actually John but instead is Mary Magdalene. What do they base that on? First of all it’s based on how girly John looks, but really what does that tell us, look at Phillip, he’s not as pretty but he could be a handsome woman. Artists of that era and Leonardo in particular tended to paint young men in a feminine manner as we showed last week with Da Vinci’s painting of John the Baptist. Then the book tells us that everyone knows the V is the feminine sign, I didn’t but presumably everyone else does. And here we see the V.
Here is a secret they don’t tell you in the Da Vinci Code, Leonardo Da Vinci painted the last supper 1000 400 years after Christ and his Apostles celebrated the Last Supper, and he wasn’t working from a photo. Here’s a painting of the last supper where all the Apostles are black, and here is one with all the Characters from Star Wars, Da Vinci could them all Smurfs and wouldn’t doesn’t mean anything.
The Mary of Da Myth. We don’t know a lot about Mary Magdalene we don’t know her occupation, the color of her hair, if she was old or young, homely or beautiful but of course that doesn’t keep people from speculated. It’s that old adage; never let an absence of facts stand in the way of a good story.
Around 200 years after the death of Christ the Gospel of Mary, Thomas and Phillip appeared for the first time alluding to Mary being Christ chose to lead the church and how she was pushed from that position by Peter who usurped what rightfully belonged to Mary. The problem being as we saw last week the four Gospels that we have were all written and accepted as the rightful account of Christ’s ministry 100 to 150 years before the so called Gnostic Gospels were written. There is nothing in these other Gospels to lend them any creditability at all.
One of the Gnostic passages quoted in the book is Gospel of Philip 63:32–36 The companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. And that would imply that there was a relationship there.
However the copies of Philip that the scholars have is not complete, it has been nibbled away at by worms and the inconsiderate critters sometimes ate letters, words and entire passages from the text and so what it really says is Gospel of Philip 63:32–36 The companion of the ___ __ Mary Magdalene. But ____ ____ her more than __ the disciples ___ __ __ kiss her ____ on her ____
The translators simply put words in that they thought would fit, they could very well have translated it this way Gospel of
Philip 63:32–36 The companion of the Duck was Mary Magdalene. But Donald loved her more than all the disciples he would never kiss her quick on her nose.
It was another 400 years before Mary was to step into the spotlight again. In the year 591, Pope Gregory the Great in a sermon preached to a gathering of Bishops declared that the Mary of Luke 8 was indeed the sinful woman mentioned in Luke 7 and was actually a prostitute. If I had done that people would say, interesting theory Denn has, but when you’re Pope and considered infallible when you say someone’s a prostitute then they are a prostitute.
It wasn’t that Gregory had anything against Mary; he was simply using her for an illustration of how Jesus can change your life. I’m not sure the sermon had the effect Gregory was hoping for because we are told a Magdalene cult spread throughout Europe.
The French were so taken with Mary that they made her French. Around 1260, a Dominican monk published the Golden Legend, which claimed that after Jesus’ death Mary had fled Jerusalem and ended up in southern Gaul. Her spirit, the story said, protected French, although she must have been on vacation between 1914 and 1945.
Later the Catholic Church apologized and in 1969, declared that, for the first time in 1400 years Mary should not be thought of as the sinful woman of Luke. I guess you’re only infallible while you’re still alive. And then in 1988, Pope John Paul II called Mary Magdalene “apostle to the apostles” in an official church document and noted that in Christians’ “most arduous test of faith and fidelity,” the Crucifixion, “the women proved stronger than the Apostles.”
Mary was once again cast in the role of a fallen woman in 1972 in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. (Show Clip from Original Superstar of Mary singing I Don’t Know How To Love Him)
At different times in history Mary of Magdalene has been identified as Lazarus’s sister, the “sinful” woman mentioned in Luke 7:32 and the woman caught in adultery in John 8 that would be the entire “Cast the first stone” story, but there is no evidence for any of those theories.
And according to Wikipedia we owe our custom of Easter Eggs to Mary One tradition concerning Mary says that following the death and resurrection of Jesus, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius Caesar. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house.
So that’s Mary of Da Vinci and of Da Myth but how much of that is actually supported by Da Bible?
If you were to look in the Bible for Mary Magdalene you would find twelve instances recorded, all in the four Gospels. We know that she was from the community of Magdala, from her name, which if we pull down our trusty map of Israel we see here is the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. And right here on the Sea of Galilee we discover the community of Magdala, here is a picture. I know, not much of a village, it’s actually no longer there.
In Luke 8:1-3 we read He took his twelve disciples with him along with some women he had healed and from whom he had cast out evil spirits. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples. So from that one passage we know that Mary followed Christ as a disciple, that Christ had delivered her from seven demons, we don’t know what those demons were and if anyone tells you what they were they are simply speculating, read my lips we don’t know. What we do know is that it was a life changing experience for Mary. Because she began to follow Christ, and she began to financially support Christ.
The next time we see Mary is at the cross Mark 15:39-40 When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the younger and of Joseph), and Salome.
But her devotion didn’t stop at the death of Jesus, you’ll remember from the passage that Paul read earlier Mark 16:1 The next evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene and Salome and Mary the mother of James went out and purchased burial spices to put on Jesus’ body.
And in John 20:11- 18 we are told that she was the first person to see Jesus after the resurrection, John 20:18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message. And that is all we know about Mary. We know that Jesus changed her life and she in turn committed her life to him.
Was she romantically attracted to him? Ladies you could answer this better then I could, he cared about her, he delivered her from something that had control over her life and set her free, he was sensitive and he was single. What do you think? Did he reciprocate? There is absolutely no evidence that there was a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In an era when wives were usually identified by their husbands, Mary the wife of Clopas or Joanna the wife of Chuza, Mary was never referred to a Mary the wife of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 9:4-6 Paul is defending minister’s right to marry and he says 1 Corinthians 9:4-6 Don’t we have the right to live in your homes and share your meals? Don’t we have the right to bring a Christian wife along with us as the other disciples and the Lord’s brothers and Peter do? Don’t you think it would have been a compelling argument for Paul to have said, “Hey even Jesus had a wife.”?
Now, put yourself in Jesus spot, you’re dying on the cross, you look down and see your wife Mary in the crowd and you say. . .? According to the Gospels nothing, you take the time to entrust your mother Mary to John, you make sure that your mom is taken care of, but you say nothing, zip, nada to your wife. No “I love you”, or “I’ll miss you”, or “it’s going to be alright.” He said the same thing to Mary that he said to the other four of his followers at the cross, and that’s recorded in John 19:26-27 When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Woman, he is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “She is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home.
There is no evidence in the scriptures that Jesus married Mary, or Martha, or Samantha or Bobby Joe or anyone else, the bible speaks of Jesus Mother, his brothers and his sisters but says nothing about a wife. But understand this, if tomorrow new evidence came forward that proved irrefutably that Jesus and Mary were indeed husband and wife it would not change who Jesus is. Marriage is not sinful, it is ordained of God, sex is not sinful inside of marriage, it’s kind of God’s wedding gift to us, so why would Jesus being married change who he was and who he is? It wouldn’t.
Mary was a person whom Jesus touched and changed her life, just like he has touched and changed the lives of many of you here. And in response Mary gave back to Jesus everything she was and became his follower. And each of you has that same opportunity today. I don’t know what it is that you need to be delivered from today, but understand the same Jesus that delivered Mary from her demons is still in the delivery business today. The Bible never says Jesus had a wife but it does say he has a bride, His bride is His church, you are the bride of Christ, but only if you want to be and all you have to do is ask, and he’ll never require more then that you believe.
Hope you enjoyed the message, PowerPoint may be available contact me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
