| June 18, 2006 | Church of the Covenant
The Rev. Dr. Robert J. Campbell, D. Min., D.D. Printer-Friendly Version |
Da
Vinci De-coded
John 13:21-26a, 21:20-25
Luke 7:36-38, 8:1-3
Carol and I saw the movie the other night. But let me quickly add, this is not the Campbell critics corner on current cinema attractions. Although, like the book, I thought it to be a good mystery and not nearly as bad as some movie experts panned it; there was an awful lot to squeeze into a two and a half hour film, so if you haven’t read the novel, do it first.
Since the publishing of Dan Brown’s book, a whole industry has grown up around it. There is decoding and then the decoding of the decoding of the Da Vinci code. So it is, I was moved to think about all the fuss around the book and the film.
Some in the Roman Catholic Church want it banned. Fundamentalists decry its terrible attack on our Lord and the Bible, seeing it as dangerous to our faith; which is to me the real issue; how we read our Bibles and understand what we believe. What really is dangerous to our faith? To quote Robert Ingersoll, some understand the Protestant church to say, "Read your Bible for yourself; think for yourself; but if you don’t come to the right conclusion you will be eternally damned. Therefore any sensible person will say, ‘The only way you can be sure to believe is not read the Bible." Reading our Bibles with an inquisitive mind is the heart of any true faith. As for heresy, I might suggest that Mel Gibson’s "The Passion" with all its brutality was far more damning to the reputation of a God of love.
What was it actor Ian McClellan said when the concern was raised that the film should have a disclaimer at the beginning? "I’ve always thought the Bible should have a disclaimer," he quipped, "saying 'fiction.'" There is truth to that statement to a degree, but there is also a world of truth within its pages. What is most critical is that our Bibles or our faith don’t keep us from thinking, exploring, growing in our understanding of God.
We have interfaced pop culture and faith several times over the last couple of weeks and that is once again the case here. But then faith and culture have interfaced ever since God first infected humans with the capacity to think and the desire to define the existence of their creator. What is theology? It is a human mind doing its best to define the indefinable in human terms. The problem being, theology often results in people making God as small as they are.
So, while this might seem like "sermon light" material, there are important learnings in a world where over 40 translations of the book have been made and over 10 million copies sold. And the movie, while being out-paced by the film "Cars" and others, is still a hot date flick.
For those of you who have not read the book or seen the movie, a few Cliff notes but hopefully not enough to spoil the plot. The story is about that old quest for the Holy Grail. The mystery begins in the Louvre in Paris and ends up in London. The hero, Tom Hanks, is a Harvard expert on symbols and the heroine is a beautiful French cryptologist. Everything needed for a good Sherlock Holmes case.
In Da Vinci’s painting of the "Last Supper," the two discover that the real Holy Grail isn’t a chalice used by Christ, sought after by Percival of King Arthur fame at all. Rather, the theory is put forth that it was in fact Mary Magdalene who, according to Brown, bore Jesus’ offspring, and whose decedents live today; making the quest the search for her remains.
With this discovery, author Dan Brown claims to have made a serious contribution to a revisionist history of Christianity. To which I have to add, "nice try Dan but not quite" the "Jesus scholars" were there long before you.
It is a story of the church being chauvinistic to the point of murder in order to preserve orthodoxy. The central clue resting in the conjecture that the person closest to Jesus in that famous painting of Da Vinci’s "Last Supper" is really Mary not John the beloved disciple. The trouble is, that would ignore both the gospel of John and the tendency of Renaissance painters to portray young men as "callow fellows."
So without spoiling the mystery any more, let’s try and tease fiction from fact in Brown’s theory because there are deeper truths and the church has not always been forthcoming.
First fact: there was a "Priory of Sion," the supposed guardians of this secret. The Priory was founded in 1099 and became part of the Jesuits in 1617. In 1956 there was a hoax document, fronted by a French right-wing group, advancing the idea that Mary had mothered decedents. The seed for the mystery rested in the fact that Herod Antipus was banished to Gaul. Royalty from New Testament lines ending up in that part of the world leads to all kinds of urban legend.
There were the "Knight’s Templar" who guarded the way of pilgrims during the crusades and laid the groundwork for modern banking and who are known to many today through modern Masonry. The original Templars were disposed of on Friday the 13th during the inquisition because it was believed they worshiped the devil or Muhammad. Which, true or not, was excuse enough to rid the king of a nasty debt.
There is, as Brown suggests, a right wing organization of Roman Catholics known as "Opus Dei" meaning "the true church" which includes some modern influential politicians and power brokers in this country as well as membership all over the world. I know some of them and they are no different than right wing groups in all faith traditions who sometimes become blinded by their desire to purify the faith to a point of confusing power with purity.
Finally, Brown puts forth, with little or no evidence, the theory that along with Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and others were part of the "Priory of Sion."What is true, is that they all were forward thinkers and therefore they fell under religious suspect, something that has plagued the church from her earliest beginnings. So, is it any wonder writers like Brown and readers in search of not only good mystery but who are suspicious of religion, can take a leap from possibility to certainty?
The problem is; if a quest for belief lands a person in the camp of Christian skepticism without a willingness to further explore, or if it forces a person to a place of blind affirmation, asserting that any challenge to any thinking other than historic gospel tradition is in danger of heresy, then both assumptions are on very dangerous ground. Which is why a "sermon light" like this becomes serious business and worth our time in worship.
Church history tells us from the very beginning cultures have had their influence on Christianity. That hasn’t always been a bad thing, so long as those within the faith know "who and whose" they are.
We claim Jesus was mortal as well as divine. Brown suggests Jesus was only mortal lifted to divinity by Constantine. But the bottom line for the Christian faith is that Jesus was raised from the dead. That God did this in an effort to expose true evil and reveal true love as it is reflected in what is perceived to be the weakness of grace and forgiveness. The Christian faith, unlike any of the other great religions, affirms that God came to us in the form of unconditional love. God calls us by name, seeks us out and is with us regardless of our frailties and faults.
Once we have come to grips with that understanding it really matters not whether there was a virgin birth, whether Jesus ever walked on water or if he had a girl friend, because none of that has any bearing on how we live out our faith, grounded in the centrality of a God revealed in Jesus the Christ with the power to overcome even the great enemy Death. What is important is that this faith is to be lived out by a people who understand that the power of unconditional love and acceptance is greater than any earthly power that seeks to harm or destroy. That is who and whose we are!
As for the church, that frail human creation seeking to be reflective of Christ, it has been abusive of women from the beginning, at one point burning some 30 to 50 thousand as witches during the Middle Ages. Fact is the church is still influenced by male dominance. All four Gospel accounts focus on the most important moment in our faith being revealed first to women in a time when women were seen as chattel. It was men who doubted and called the Resurrection silly. That is not something of happenstance. If it occurred as recorded, it was God’s intentional action and it was important enough for the recorders of the event to include it in the face of custom as something of counter culture.
Mary Magdalene has traditionally been portrayed as "a woman of ill repute" yet no where is that documented. The passage in Luke that we read this morning has been used as proof text but the assumption comes from association not good exegesis. Modern research is making it clear that she was most probably a leader on equal standing with the disciples until male influence had its way.
That’s important today because it was only a little more than 50 years ago that the United Presbyterian Church affirmed women as elders. The Southern Baptist and some from within our own denomination are even now rejecting the leadership of women while women make up almost half of the student bodies of our seminaries and two finalists for moderator of our General Assembly are women. And the Roman Catholic Church still will not consider them for priesthood. Imagine how different the church would be if Mary Magdalene had been given her rightful place.
So yes, the "Da Vinci Code" invites readers to indulge in a little light entertainment, with glimpses of church history offering a taste of exposure into culture’s often not so beneficial influence upon the things we believe. It might even encourage discussion enough to cause some to dig into church history, which can at times be more exciting than fiction. (that’s a plug for a series next year on the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic teachings.) But of far more importance is a faith needed by every culture that questions the way the world tells how things are, a faith that causes those who believe to ponder both their belief and their culture, a faith that challenges those who doubt to investigate and those who abdicate to culture to take notice that there might be a better way. Unfortunately Brown and a lot of other contemporary writers seem to miss that.
What is important for our times is to recognize that the Jesus of the gospels stands with the ancient prophets condemning the misuse of power, lamenting the failing of community, and attacking the pretentiousness of orthodoxy when it seeks to control inquisitive minds. He calls for costly love on behalf of the vulnerable, the oppressed, and those living in the margins of life. He summons all who claim his name to worship not myth, not our Bibles and certainly not an institutional church, but rather, a God of justice who exposes the idolatries of every age. If Brown offers any insight here into the real nature of the Christian faith, it is how easily the conspiracies of the world can mold what we believe. Which should move each and every one of us to claim a higher ground for our faith.
Back to Past Sermons