MARY MAGDALENE - LOOSE WOMAN OR FEMALE ICON?

I for one am looking forward to the movie 'Mary Magdalene'. Good cast including Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix and Chiwetel Ejiofor and a great director, Garth Davis. And just in time for Easter.

And I'm happy to see the resurrected debates (see what I did there?) about Mary's position in the early church.  It's good to have a reminder that women were there amongst Jesus' disciples, amongst the Apostles (i.e. those who witnesses the resurrected Christ) and were prominent in the churches early years - Priscilla, Phoebe, Monica of Hippo, Catherine of Alexandria, - please go look them up. 

But back to Mary M.  Not a prostitute (despite what you may have read elsewhere) and not the wife of Jesus (I know it makes great gossip - but it's not in the eyewitness accounts), but a disciple: one who followed Jesus the rabbi, the miracle worker, the resurrected Saviour. 

And women of God still play a key role in the present day church.  Kathy Frost, missionary and Boys Brigade officer who taught me the Lords Prayer, the late Ailish Eves, who inspired me as a young boy with tales of her life in Indonesia and later taught at my bible school, Bev Clarke whose visions of angels in the office inspired me to think more imaginatively about God in the work place, Janine Jackson my friend who pointed me to Redeemer-London, Anna Hamilton whose gifted teaching challenges me every time, Abi Sibuns whose worship leading ushers us into the presence of God...They are disciples and instrumental in church growth.  

An aside:  I was reminded this week that God made man and woman in His image because one gender wouldn't do Him justice - He needed both male and female to reflect who He is.  

So look out for the Marys and the Abis in the church and you'll see God reflected in who they are.  

I do hope the movie is a good one.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE AB FAB FILM

Earlier this week, I had a great conversation at my meetup. The general message we were discussing was this: you can’t pick and choose what bits of Christianity you believe – take it all, or leave it all.

With that in mind, two headlines caught my eye. Both are attention-grabbing, and both are cinema-related:

1. New Emma Watson film makes £47 at UK box office

2. Audience members ejected from cinema for laughing at Absolutely Fabulous

Both of them look like ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary stories…but in fact both are non-stories, for different reasons.

The Emma Watson film was never intended to make money through cinema screenings, aiming for the home streaming market instead. So the headline should really have read:

New Emma Watson film basically makes exactly what it hoped to through cinema screenings

Not quite as catchy, I’ll grant you.

How about the Ab Fab story? Well, four people were kicked out of a screening – rare, but not unheard of. Why were they kicked out? The four people say they were told to ‘laugh on the inside’, and the cinema says it was because they were annoying other cinema-goers by talking loudly. So the headline should really have read:

Audience members ejected from cinema, most likely for valid reasons. 

So neither story is really news, is it.

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Let’s agree on one thing. In a perfect world, there would be no need to make up news, but that’s not how the news business works.

Think about it. Newspapers, news websites, news TV channels and radio slots – all of them produce frequent news updates. They don’t publish news when there’s news, they publish news when there’s a publication deadline.

The net result of that is journalists tasked with filling space rather than finding the best news story – and so stories are written based on the angle rather than the truth.

And that’s much more fun, isn’t it? Take a tiny detail, one piece of the puzzle, and make up an interesting whole-picture story that fits that one detail.

Could we really build a new hospital every week if we left the EU? Of course not, but saying ‘an insignificant sum goes to the EU in exchange for tangible and intangible benefits’, while a fairer reflection of the truth, isn’t a good enough angle.

So how about Christianity?

The same is true. We are all tempted to embrace angles on Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, church life…

I invite you to regularly lose every misconception and filter that’s built up over time, and come back to the purity of Christianity.

And you can do that this coming Tuesday evening, in Ealing Broadway. Email hello@redeemerlondon.org to find out how you can get a free meal and an opportunity to properly explore Christianity!