High Stakes (10 page)

What I call the well-known Beatitudes are in Matthew, but I didn't want to neglect what was in Luke, because it shows how Christ was trying to give us a formula for life, which before that had been only esoteric knowledge. This gets down to the grassroots of life, living and dealing with everyday situations. Notice how everything leads us to finding our own spirituality. This again shows us that Jesus was more interested in how a person led their life than in how they followed the rules and laws and dogma of a religion.

We find in Matthew Chapter 5:1–12 the often quoted and more popular “classical” Beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying:

It boils down to right living and giving solace to all those suffering the difficulties of life and just getting out and showing your love and knowledge. Like I've always said, Love God, do good, and then shut up and go home. If you believe in and love God, then help someone else…a hidden light of truth and spirituality doesn't do any good for you to just sit in the house with it. Get out and help each other. This doesn't mean you have to be converting and preachy, just do good acts for others and in that way you'll be fulfilling your Chart no matter what your themes or purpose are.

Even when he taught the Lord's Prayer on the mountain…here we see again that he always gave honor to his Father in heaven. He never started the Lord's Prayer with “My Jesus here on earth.” It's sad…because Christianity has made Jesus the only God and forgotten the Father and even more so the Mother.

You certainly can read these yourself in the Bible, but as I stated, read it with new eyes of love and right living and spiritual search. It's like he said, in the Gnostic tradition, “Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” If you stop searching for truth, then you become complacent and you really don't realize what his life was about.

As he traveled through Galilee and the surrounding areas, he would speak about mostly the Kingdom of God and God's love and forgiveness. He was what we might call today not only a spiritual teacher, but also a motivational speaker. He was the only one who told people how to live, how to treat servants, how to forgive a son that was ungrateful, how to treat widows, and even taught them how to set up house hold rules, have a happy marriage and manage finances. Not unlike now, he would address and give advice on all the social problems of the day…bigotry, oppression, taxes and political problems. He was truly as he depicted, a shepherd leading his sheep to a pasture where they could be nourished, rather than looking at everything as hopeless.

Mary Magdalene always was with him and even took notes. When her gospel was found in Akhmim, Egypt, in 1896, it contained information that was very enlightening, and most of it was not in the four canonical gospels. It certainly indicated that Jesus shared with her all of his teachings and that she understood his teachings better than any of his disciples, because she was later known as the “Apostle to the Apostles.” This would be a great honor, considering the status of women at the time. Some Gnostic texts consider her to be the first disciple or apostle because she understood his teachings so well and even interpreted some of them for Peter and James. In the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, it acknowledges the fact that Jesus often kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth and implies that she was the most beloved of all his disciples. Philip's gospel is also one of the reasons why some scholars now think that indeed Jesus and Mary were married.

Aside from his ministry we don't ever hear about the “social Christ.” My guide says he had a highly developed sense of humor and loved children…and often was seen playing with a type of ball and hoop in the midst of a group of excited and laughing youngsters. Francine says he loved to have what we today would call picnics, taking food and drink and going to a grove of olive trees and eating and drinking and talking about all manner of things with his disciples and friends.

He also loved visiting at not only the poorer homes, but homes of the elite for dinners. He talked with people of different races and religions, even though that part of the country was not a real melting pot. There were always merchants and caravans coming through and he loved hearing about distant lands and news from the parts of the world he had visited and studied in.

According to many artists, Christ had a very olive complexion, almost dark like many Arabs', with luxurious shoulder-length hair that fell into soft curls. Francine says he wore a close, well-trimmed beard and mustache. He had full lips, an aquiline nose, huge dark eyes with gold flecks in them, perfect eyebrows and beautiful teeth. He stood close to six feet or a little more in height (which was unusual for that day) with a fairly lean body or frame. Magdalene had red hair (which was also unusual), brown eyes and was also olive-skinned. She stood five feet six inches, which was also taller than most women of her day. I believe his height gave him a presence and commanded respect in a world where men were lucky to make it to five six or five eight and women from four feet ten to five feet. Even if you look at some of the suits of armor in museums, they are so small that you wonder who could have worn them. I've also seen the beds at some of the old missions in California, and they look like beds for children.

In all my travels, the one person I found to be tall and large in armor and clothing was King Henry VIII. I understand that Mary, Queen of Scots, was five feet eleven; but people like these two were the exception and not the rule. Most people in ancient times were much smaller in stature than people today, due to either a lack of food or poor diets—although Francine says that the Merovingian and King David lines were tall and Joseph was fairly tall, being a descendant of King David. Mary, Christ's mother, was also fairly tall for her time, so it must have been a design for notability from God, as well as her DNA.

Jesus was well built, but more on the athletic angular side rather than huge and muscular. I think the climate and all the walking lent itself to that. Francine says he wasn't a vegetarian, even though he had been at one point in India. He ate lamb, fruits, vegetables, olives, dates and fish, which he dearly loved. Remember, he was part of the disciples' fishing trips. His favorite meal was fish, fruit, lamb and wine. At that time, there were no alcoholic drinks to speak of except wine, which was plentiful and cheap. They drank wine because most of the water was bad; unless they went up into the mountains to drink spring water, good drinking water was fairly scarce because sewage from the towns ran into the water supplies. Although the Judaic people were very hygienic, they were not that knowledgeable about sanitation and sewage systems. The Romans were fairly knowledgeable about sanitation, but sewer systems of any size were confined to the larger cities and towns and not to rural areas such as Galilee. The pollution of water supplies gave rise to leprosy and all kinds of parasite and bacterial illnesses such as amoebic dysentery and giardiasis.

Jesus seemed to never, ever be sick, nor to have any type of physical malady ever. Magdalene was also privileged with good health and not to be ill or have any maladies. We must remember that the Hebrew communities were very much ahead of the world as far as hygiene was concerned. That's why they survived the plagues in Europe, and many thought the reason they did was because they were in league with the devil. The Judaic people believed in cleanliness and in not eating pork—rightly so, because at that time swine carried so much disease. We know now not to even eat half-done pork because it causes trichinosis and other diseases.

As Jesus traveled and socialized, he also, as we know, healed and taught. My guide says that only major points of major sermons were recorded, but she says he talked to huge groups and multitudes at least four days or nights a week. Sometimes his sermons would last hours and sometimes he did two a day. He usually did not preach on the Sabbath, except in the occasional synagogue, and that was probably due to his Judaic upbringing and obedience to old rabbinic laws.

Three years might not seem like a long time, but with this kind of schedule Jesus literally reached thousands of people. Francine says he spoke a beautiful sermon about marriage and children and the sanctity of the female, but it was not transcribed. We can't blame this omission on the Church, for the original scribes who had a Judaic background and archaic beliefs concerning women just chose not to write it down. I feel it's because old norms or religious teachings die hard. We have to take into consideration that even though they were disciples, they still had been raised with Judaic law that, as we read in the Old Testament, treated women as less than nothing. Old teachings put forth that women were made to work, be quiet, give birth and wait on their husbands. So a sermon about the equality of women, I feel, was purposefully not taken down and transcribed.

The disciples of Christ in more than one instance show great jealousy toward Mary Magdalene. In the Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic gospel that is not included as canon in the Bible, it says:
As for the wisdom who is called “the Barren,” she is the mother of the angels. And the companion to the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you like her?”
Now, to be fair, a portion of this gospel is missing just at the point where “on her mouth” is, and that translation of those three words is a scholarly “best guess” or assumption. Francine says it does say mouth and that the actual three words were
on the mouth.
Even though scholars say people exchanged kisses frequently in that day and age (Judas betraying Christ with a kiss, etc.), the jealousy part should give us pause to consider. You are only jealous of someone who is shown favoritism, as she was undoubtedly shown. Jesus confided in her, loved her, and he wanted her to carry on his church…not Peter, as the Bible says.

Jesus felt Peter was good, but in many ways a dolt. We must remember that Peter was a poor fisherman who had hardly any education. Most of us are acquainted with Christ's supposedly saying that Peter was a rock and that he would build his church upon it (Matthew 16:18). Francine says this is erroneous and that it was a case of the humor of Jesus manifesting itself when he actually said tongue-in-cheek, “Why would I build my philosophy on you, Peter? You have no more courage or charisma than a rock.” I had always wondered (before I heard Francine's translation) why Christ would use a rock to define Peter; especially when you realize he predicted accurately, before his crucifixion, that Peter would deny him three times before the cock would crow…which came to pass, according to the Bible.

I don't know about you, and not to judge Peter, but I'm not sure I'd leave my teachings to someone so disloyal and even cowardly. Of course he went on to repent and teach and was later crucified upside down, but this was years later. Again, none of us can really know what we would do out of fear…that's not the issue. It's an issue of giving over control to someone with strength and loyalty.

This would make sense because after Christ's crucifixion, women held all the prominent places in early Gnostic Christianity. They were the ones who despised the so-called blessings and spiritual teachings of both the Judaic religion and the early Jewish Christians. Then later on we have Paul coming into the picture, and Peter aligns with Paul while James, the brother of Jesus, remains as the head of the Jewish Christians. Later still, as I stated before, the Roman emperor Constantine adopts “Pauline Christianity” and thus the Catholic Church was born with Peter as its first symbolic Pope.