A Lesson in Hope from The Chosen

We’re all familiar with The Chosen; whether you’ve watched every episode 3-times-over or have never seen a second of it, there’s no denying it’s taken the Christian media circuit by storm.

And in my opinion—for good reason! Here we have a show that almost exclusively encourages scripture and meditation. It asks the questions in between the biblical stories: who were the Apostles outside public ministry? What led them to the places Christ found them? What did it truly mean to sacrifice everything and follow Him?

Not everything in the show is perfect—nor should we expect it to be—but I do think our prayer can benefit from it as long as we return to scripture in the end. And I’ve seen this most plainly through the depiction of St. Mary Magdalene.

The show premiered with the Apostle to the Apostles, our patroness. We see the moments before and after Christ casts the 7 demons from her, and suggestions about what those intimate moments could have looked like. 

From there we see her following Him with the Apostles and other disciples; 

we see her bringing peace and clarity to the group in times of confusion; 

we see her have her own struggles with her vocation and return to Christ after a fall; 

we see her slowly, patiently submit to the will of God even when she doesn’t feel worthy of it, even when she doesn’t understand—even when she feels broken beyond compare.

But in Season 5, we see something new. During the events between Palm Sunday and Jesus’s arrest, there’s a scene where Mary is concerned for Jesus and looking for help, but gets tossed aside by the Pharisees in Jerusalem:

*Mary approaches the Pharisees in a crowded street and asks one of them for help. The Pharisee immediately looks stand-of-ish and keeps his distance from her. Turning to the other Pharisees, he says,

P: “This woman is from the Red Quarter in Capernaum, possessed by seven demons!”

*Mary, slowly looking at him, says,

MM: “I am from Magdala by the sea—possessed by the Creator of the Universe.”

*The Pharisees appear stunned and are silent, and the leader continues,

P: “And what do you practice now? Allegiance to a Man who just preached His own death sentence to a crowd of 1,000 witnesses?”

MM: “—death sentence?”

P: “He has given us no choice! He will be silenced, shamed, and censured. And when people hear who stood by His heresies, you’d be better off in a leper colony.”

MM: “A leper colony He would heal and redeem. The truth is there is no where you can send us where Jesus is not Lord. I think what He said means something terrible for you. And I think you know it; they may not but you do. And it drives you mad.”

This exchange, although brief, is a moment of redemption for Mary Magdalene—a moment of profound hope. Even when the Pharisee calls out her darkest moment—a time she felt farther away from God than imaginable—she immediately sees the falsity in his words and speaks truth over them:

She is redeemed. 

She is whole. 

She is a daughter of God and nothing can take that away from her.

This is the response we should have to the devil’s lies. This is the attitude we adopt in our recovery.

These are the words we should proclaim with strength and faith in prayer. No matter where we’ve been, what we’ve done—what has happened to us or what has happened because of us—we are possessed not by sin, but by the Creator of the Universe.

Christ is here—He’s always with us—and there is no where we can go “where Jesus is not Lord.”