You will have noticed, I'm sure, that Mary Magdalene has become rather famous recently!

And that's not surprising...

... after all, she was married to Jesus and the mother of his children.

She is the co-founder, along with Jesus of a royal bloodline which exists even in the present, and which has been carefully guarded and protected over the centuries.

The Church, of course, has known this all along but instead of coming clean, has suppressed the truth and has endorsed a whole range of lies and falsehoods in order to protect itself.

That, as I'm sure you'll recognise, is the Da Vinci Code slant on Mary Magdalene anyway!

And, since the Da Vinci Code is one of the big blockbuster films of the year, it seems appropriate to mention it here.

I expect that quite a few of you have seen it. I went to see it soon after it first came out, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it - despite its bad reviews and the fact that various Christian groups and churches have condemned it!

And I must say, I really can't understand why Christians are getting so upset by it. But they are...

... If you google `Da Vinci Code' there are literally thousands of sites renouncing it and condemning it and telling us why we shouldn't read the book or watch the film.

When all said and done though, it's just a book - and now just a film - and, as such, quite entertaining to read or to watch.

As a piece of history though, it's complete rubbish... 1

... or, to say that in a more objective and balanced way...

... as a piece of history it is based on very little evidence, and the evidence on which it's based is extremely dubious and unconvincing.

All of which has taken us some distance from the proper subject of today's sermon, Mary Magdalene.

Again, if you do a google search for Mary Magdalene, you'll come up with thousands of websites about her. She certainly seems to have a fan club.

For example, I came across an organisation called `The Centre for the Study of Mary Magdalene' - complete with mission statement...

... and a site with the address `www.Magdalene.org' - devoted to ex- ploring the infiuence the figure of Mary Magdalene, and the myths and legends that surround her, have had on Western Culture over the last 2000 years.

And of course, as I've already said, an abundance of pages devoted to either supporting or renouncing the ideas found in the Da Vinci Code.

Historically, of course, they are quite unsubstantiated...

... but they are fascinating, nevertheless!

From very early on, for example, she was thought to have been a pros- titute, before receiving forgiveness from Jesus and joining his follow- ers.

There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest this...

except that the so called `sinful' woman who anoints Jesus' feet with her hair in Luke's Gospel is often taken to be Mary Magdalene - though Luke doesn't actually say this!

Other things that have been said of her include that she was the author of John's Gospel...

... and that, before following Jesus, she was a temple priestess in one of the fertility cults.

Also, in some of the later, non-canonical and Gnostic writings, she is presented as being very close to Jesus... 2

... and is sometimes described as being his companion or even con- sort - and idea which was, as we know, fully developed by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci code...

... but which has also, from time to time been fiirted with by more serious scholars -

but the evidence, based as it is on documents written several hundred years after the death of Jesus, is pretty week.

The Da Vinci Code focuses on what perhaps is the most interesting legend about Mary Magdalene - and it has certainly now become the most familiar.

It originates in the South of France and is about the Holy Grail -

... purported, variously, to be the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, or a chalice used to collect Jesus' blood whilst he was being crucified.

According to this legend then, Mary of Magdalene is the bearer of something called `sangraal' - which is old French for the Holy Grail.

At his crucifixion, Mary is said to have collected some of Jesus' blood...

... and, later, when fleeing persecution took the blood, or at least the vessel in which it was collected and escaped in a boat to the south coast of France where she arrived with her 12 year old maid called Sarah after surviving a storm and the loss of the boat's oars.

A significant variation on this legend, and the one which Dan Brown took full advantage of...

... depends on a different translation of the word `sangraal'...

... here, the claim is that Mary Magdalene wasn't so much the bearer of the Holy Grail as the bearer of the royal blood - the sang real rather than the san graal...

... -in other words that she continued Jesus' bloodline, by having his children.

This is how Mary Magdalene is understood in the Da Vinci Code. 3

As far as I can tell, Dan Brown based that understanding on a book called the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail written by Michael Baigent and a couple of others in the early 80s,...

... and, in turn, Michael Baigent based his theory on evidence about something called the Priory of Sion which was, allegedly, a secret society set up in the 11th Century to protect and preserve a secret about the bloodline of Jesus.

Which is all very interesting - except that the whole idea of the Priory of Sion has been proved to be a hoax...

... invented in 1950s by someone called Pierre Plantard who was a pretender to the French throne and hoped that the existence of the Pri- ory of Sion would encourage the restoration of chivalry and monarchy in France...

... and, of course, bolster his claim to the French throne.

To make his hoax more convincing, he travelled round France in the 60s planting evidence about the Priory of Sion, that could then be discovered and used as proof of the priory's long pedigree.

Later, more than 100 letters sent between Plantard and his co- conspirators came to light, and proved beyond doubt that the whole thing was a massive con.

Dan Brown, of course, refused to accept this, and in the Da Vinci Code claims that the Priory of Sion really exists.

Anyway, enough about myths and legends.

What about the real Mary Magdalene?

The little that we do know about Mary Magdalene can easily be gleaned from the bible!

Without doubt, Mary was a follower of Jesus. According to Luke, she had been cured of evil spirits, and seven demons had come out of her.

All the gospel writers note that she was amongst the women at the crucifixion and... 4

... according to Matthew and Mark, she was one of the women who went to anoint Jesus' body when it lay in the tomb.

Finally, she was one of the first, and in John's gospel, the first, to encounter Jesus after his resurrection...

... and for this, came to be known as the apostle of apostles.

Beyond this, there isn't really much we can say with any certainty...

... except perhaps that there remains a strong tradition that she had been rather an outcast from society but had been forgiven and restored by Jesus.

And it's perhaps here that we can learn from her - or at least from her story!

Whatever the truth or otherwise of the legends that surround her, it seems that Mary Magdalene was a woman who inhabited the margins of her society -...

... that she wasn't quite acceptable to what we might call the moral and religious majority.

Jesus, it seems though, healed her, forgave her and welcomed her into the community of people that had formed around him...

... and, in that community she played an important part - eventually receiving the highest honour as the first witness to the resurrection.

From this story, perhaps we can learn two things!

The first is that there is always hope - nobody is beyond redemption!

And the second is that one of the functions of our church community is to offer that hope,and that possibility of redemption to those who, like Mary Magdalene, are rejected and marginalized by the rest of society!