Luke 7:36 – 8:3

How many have heard of the book, The Da Vinci Code?  How many have read The Da Vinci Code?  How many are intending to read The Da Vinci Code this summer?  I had a general awareness of The Da Vinci Code, but the first time it came forcefully to my attention was when Della and were visiting friends on Nantucket last summer.

Our hostess asked, “Have you read The Da Vinci Code?

I said, “Not yet.”

“Well you must.  It is absolutely essential for someone in your position to read it,” our hostess insisted.

I have never understood exactly what people mean when they say, “someone in your position.”   Do they mean someone still standing rather than horizontal?

“You must read it,” our hostess said, “It is the talk of Nantucket.  All of my Roman Catholic friends are reading it and questioning their relationship with the Church.  All of your parishioners will be reading it.”

I bought a copy of the gook, for I knew the next time we met her, her first questions would be, “What was your take on The Da Vinci Code?”

It is a fascinating read.  It hit the best seller list the week it was published and has stayed there ever since.  Seven million copies have been sold and, according to the publisher, the book has been translated into forty languages and will sometime soon appear at your neighborhood theater.  It is the second in a planned trilogy by author Dan Brown.  The first book Angels and Demons and the third is expected to deal extensively with the Masons.  The book has prompted a few humorous comments as in the poster of Mona Lisa – “Why is this man smiling?”  Most readers before the last page is turned have many questions.  Pastors have been asked to comment on doctrinal issues they have not faced since seminary.  The book trades on the spiritual hunger of our time, the role of women in society in general and in the church in particular.

The book presents the Roman Catholic Church as a rather devious institution marked by deception, violence and scandal.  Many have been attracted to the book by what they regard as an alternative reading of church history.  The plot of the novel is complex and does not lend itself to an easy summary in the time we have this morning.  Suffice it to say, it involves a quest for the Holy Grail that begins with a murder in the Louvre in Paris.  The two central characters are Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who holds a chair of symbology and Sophie, a beautiful cryptologist.  In Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings the two discover clues to the meaning of the Holy Grail.  For those who have not read the novel I will not say any more, for I don’t want to spoil a fascinating mystery story.

May readers’ first question is, “Is it true?”  This is not an easy question to answer, it is after all, a novel.  Dan Brown has every right to use his imagination in the creation of his novel.  In the preface Dan Brown has a page entitled Fact.  The first being that the Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 and that Leonardo Da Vinci was a member.  In actuality the priory first appeared in France in the late 1950s.  Once the author’s “facts” are found by scholars to be either errors, confusions or misjudgments – then, in a manner of speaking, we are on a slippery slope.

The issue is further complicated b Dan Brown’s statement on NBC’s Today Show when he was asked if he had based the novel on “things that actually occurred,” Brown answered, “Absolutely all of it.  Obviously…Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historic fact.”

Dan Brown is honest about his sources, most of which would not be found in the library of a university history department.  His sources might best be described as alternative histories.  The book, in spite of the author’s claim, is not the result of hard historical research and the result is slipshod scholarship which mixes occasional fact with a large measure of creative imagination.  This is what causes some folks to be so angry and frustrated by the book and eager to keep others from reading it.

For our purposes this morning, Dan Brown’s most audacious, interesting and too many, most disturbing claim is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child whose descendents live on in France today.  Leading someone to remark, “The second shortest verse in the Bible might not ??????.  The author claims that for centuries the Church of Rome has practiced a conspiracy in its own behalf to achieve the suppression of the feminine principle – the place of the goddess in worship – to cover up the truth that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and she was pregnant at the time of the crucifixion and afterwards traveled to France and gave birth to Jesus’ child whose descendants are part of the house of Stuart ??????.  Furthermore, the author says, Da Vinci was aware of this tradition (the author would call it fact) and in his painting of the Last Supper, the figure next to Jesus – usually assumed to be the so called “beloved disciple” – sort of leaning on Jesus, is none other than Mary Magdalene.

Mary was a common name in the first century, consequently there are several Marys in the Gospels.  Mary Magdalene may have come from the village of Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, hence her name.  It was a cosmopolitan place and therefore it is assumed by some that Mary was a prostitute.  All Luke tells us in our Gospel reading this morning is that seven demons had been cast out from her by Jesus.  As we heard in our Gospel reading, Luke places the story of a sinful woman who comes from the city, forgiven by Jesus at the end of chapter seven, before he mentions Mary Magdalene in chapter eight.  This has led many people to conclude that the sinful woman who kisses Jesus’ feet and anoints them with oil is Mary Magdalene.

Luke goes on in chapter eight to tell of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the disciples and who as Luke writes, “Provided for them out of their resources.”  With one exception, Mary Magdalene always appears first whenever these women are mentioned in the Gospels.  In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is at the foot of the Cross.  On Easter morning it is Mary Magdalene who in the Gospel of John is the first to go to the tomb and it is she who tells the disciples of the Resurrection of Jesus.  SHE is the Apostle to the Apostles!

In some of the non-canonical early writings there appears to be a conflict between Mary Magdalene and Peter.  Some believe that Mary had the credentials to claim a place equal or even superior to Peter.  This struggle resulted in the suppression of the feminine role and the emergence patriarchal hierarchy of the early church.  In 591 Pope Gregory preached a sermon in which he combined the two Marys, saying that the repentant sinner was Mary Magdalene.  In the middle ages a cult grew up in Eurpoe especially among the common people in which Mary Magdalene was venerated.  One of the three churches where her remains are said to be buried became the fourth most popular pilgrimage site in Europe.  The Church became alarmed by her growing popularity, so the Council of Trent, a Counter-Reformation council, proclaimed on her Saint Day, July 22nd, that she should be viewed as a repentant sinner and not as the Apostle to the apostles.  In 1969 the Second Vatican Council on her Saint Day proclaimed that she was no longer the repentant sinner, but the Apostle to the Apostles.  No small event for those concerned about the place of women in the life of the church!

Was there then, as Dan Brown suggests, a conspiracy on the part of the Church to suppress the role of women in the life of the early Christian community and to deny the place of the feminine in Christian worship?  You decide.  The Gospel record is very clear, as you can see in our reading of the morning.  Women played an important part in the ministry of Jesus and in the early church, and in the church were and are today persons of faith, discipleship, wisdom and leadership.

In the Western Church the tradition is that Mary and others left the Holy Land in a boat without sails or oars or a rudder and led by the Holy Spirit landed in France where she became a powerful preacher and is so depicted in numerous stain glass windows.  In the Eastern Church Mary was never the repent sinner but always the Apostle to the Apostles.  Tradition has it that Mary preached to the Emperor Tiberius in Rome, who said it was as likely that someone was raised fro the dead as the eggs on this table would turn red.  Mary picked up an egg and it turned red.  Till this day red eggs are given out on Easter as a sign of the resurrection.  Tradition in the Eastern Church says that Mary died a martyr in Ephesus.

Were Jesus and Mary married?  Is Mary leaning on Jesus in Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper?  There is not a shred of evidence in the New Testament to support this.  There is a reference in the non-canonical Gospel of Philip which intrigues some scholars.  It describes Mary Magdalene as the one whom Jesus loved “more than the other disciples” so much that he used to “kiss her often.”  It is quite a stretch to read this as a reference to marriage.  We remember Mary Magdalene today as the Apostle to the Apostles; a sign of the vital role women played in the ministry of Jesus and in the life of the early Christian community.

An even greater concern to Christians is Dan Brown’s take on the divinity of Jesus.  Brown argues that for the first three centuries Christians viewed Jesus as a mortal man, not divine.  Jesus was a great prophet and teacher, a powerful man, but a man nonetheless.  This would have been a great surprise to the Apostle Paul and most of the early Church leaders such as Tertullian whose writings defined Christian belief in Jesus as both fully human and fully divine.

Brown is correct when he says that the Emperor Constantine was a leading figure and that he did call the Council of Nicea in 325, and that the Council did produce the Nicean Creed which has served the Christian Church as a standard of orthodoxy over the centuries.  There is hardly a shred of evidence however, to support Brown’s claim that Constantine and the patriarchal Church authorities ruthlessly suppressed any evidence that Jesus was human.  Brown insists that is was Constantine who, in Browns words, “upgraded Jesus’ status” by concocting the notion of his divinity for political reasons, perhaps as a coercive force in holding together a fragmented empire.  Many scholars, Brown insists through the voice of one of his characters, claim that the early church literally stole Jesus from his original following, hijacking his human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity and using it to expand their own power.  Who were these early followers interested only in Jesus the man, the great prophet and teacher?  Brown does not say and the historical evidence for the claim is about nonexistent.

Dan Brown’s claim to factuality has been pounded to an intellectual pulp.  Which still leaves an interesting question – Why, aside from the novel’s hyper-active plot, has his story of creed as catholic conspiracy appealed to millions of Christians and churchgoing Roman Catholics no less than others?  One possibility is our culture’s anti-creedal atmosphere.

Some of you may now be trying to remember to whom you loaned your copy of The Da Vinci Code to, who in turn loaned it to five other people, and how are going to get it back so you can read it again.  It is a wonderful read, an intriguing mystery.  Especially if you are fond of puzzles and riddles.  Enjoy it.

I believe the Church should be grateful to Dan Brown.  Of course, not everyone agrees with that.  Some are angry about the book and want to stop other people from reading it, because they are convinced the author distorts the biblical picture of Jesus and the history of the early church.  But were it not for this novel, we would not have considered Mary Magdalene or the Nicean Creed this morning.

Whatever you make of the book, it is positive that because of it so many want to talk about Jesus and the history of the church and discuss things many of us have not thought about together for years.  So let’s say thanks to Dan Brown for a great yarn.

In the spirit of the One who is the Alpha and the Omega of our lives.  Amen.

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Resources used in the preparation of this sermon:

“Dismantling The Da Vinci Code”, Mark S. Burrows. The Christian Century, June 1, 2004.
“The Da Vinci Code Decoded”, a talk by Bruce Rigdon at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. January 12, 2004.
“Beliefs”. Peter Steinfels.  The New York Times, June 5, 2004.
“The Bible’s Better Half”, Ed Spivey, Jr.  Sojourners, February, 2004.
“Christians Counter The Da Vinci Code”.  The Christian Century, March 9, 2004.
“Defender of Christianity Rush to Debunk The Da Vinci Code”, Laurie Goodstein.  The New York Times, April 27, 2004.
 

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