30/3/18 – Numbers 27:12-23, Numbers 28, Numbers 29:1-11 – Luke 8:1-18 – Psalm 38:12-22

Luke 8:1-3

After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

We need to talk about Mary Magdalene.

First – has she had a reputation injustice? Yes – but let’s not get confused by that.

I hear da reviewer of the Mary Magdalene film make some incredibly inaccurate statements, but sadly those statements represent what a lot of people think.

He said something along the lines that “the church” had done a character assassination of Mary – portraying her as a Prostitute who slept with Jesus, and accusing her of having demons, whereas in reality she was the 13th disciple who are an independently  minded woman that society couldn’t cope with and is mentioned in the bible more than the others.

I cannot even think where to begin with how wrong that all is.

First – Mary is never mentioned as a woman of ill repute in scripture. True. Was it a character assassination? I don’t believe so, I think it’s a confusion. First, Jesus had his feet washed by a woman who was certainly referred to as Sinful. He also had His feet washed by a woman called Mary.

BUT – first, it was a different Mary (Shocker! More than one person has the same name!!) and second, this event happened more than once with two different people.

Something as simple as feet anointing in a dusty country… in your lifetime – it’s not unusual for things to happen twice. We do the same thing often week in , week out. That’s what life is like – why should we be surprised if the same thing happened to Jesus twice with different people?

This confusion has allowed Mary to be painted in many films as the woman caught in Adultery… but no evidence whatsoever is available for that.

But character assassination? No – just lazy thinking and poor theology.

Incidentally, the church would never have painted her as a Prostitute who slept with Jesus – that’s just Dan Brown level stupid.

But the 13th disciple? A woman rejected because she was just forward thinking? Um… no. That’s revisionist nonsense. Another word for revisionism…? Making stuff up to fit with how you think the world should be.

Truth is, we don’t know much about Mary.

Was she a sinful woman? Who knows? Although like all of us she had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

One of the few mentions is in this list in Luke (where incidentally many other women are mentioned as following Jesus and helping support Him and nobody gets suspicious about them).

But here it does say that she’d been delivered from 7 demons. Thats’ very specific – I wonder where Luke got that? It’s not the sort of thing a guy who’s trying to get a true record would make up for colour.

Not many people would be familiar with the amount of demons she’d been delivered from – so Luke would have maybe heard this first hand or from a close source, because you don’t add a detail like the amount of demons unless you’d checked it out.

She wasn’t “misunderstood because she was progressive” – she was delivered by our mighty saviour!

She was also part of the group who discovered the resurrection. She met Jesus in the Garden. Amazing! She was the first evangelist!!! But the way, if the church wanted to discredit her, they’d have missed that bit out.

So don’t worry about revisions films – it’s just a load of rubbish. But yo need to be aware of what people think, because we should stand for truth. 13th disciple? No, part of the following just like Susanna, Joanna and many others. But blessed to be the first person to say “He has Risen!!” And that in itself is amazing! Let’s not add stuff to scripture, only the devil wins when we do that.