A sermon by J. Stuart Taylor III
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church
July 9, 2006
By now many of us have read the book Da Vinci code or have seen the movie. And so I thought it would be appropriate this morning to join in a conversation that has for the moment gripped our society. The Da Vinci code raises many interesting if not disturbing questions. But I do not believe that the church has to be threatened by these questions or should we engage in attacks or boycotts on the film. Beyond being good entertainment the book and film provide a teachable moment, an opportunity for lively conversation about theology and spirituality and the nature of Gospel. I would like to take on two of the questions raised by Da Vinci code: First was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene and did they parent a child? And secondly: Has the church been involved in suppressing alternative Gospels that lift up the sacred feminine? This is an opportunity to be in conversation with the larger culture around us. So let’s jump in.
Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene and did they parent a child? Da Vinci code suggests that they did. The film cites one of the ancient Gnostic gospels allegedly authored by the Apostle Philip that says Jesus often kissed Mary. The book and movie also goes on to say that the ancient myth of the search for the Holy Grail is really a search for the living descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. What do we make of all this? I have long held Mary Magdalene in the highest esteem. There is little reason to doubt that during the life of Jesus she occupied an important place in the inner circle of the discipleship community. Did Jesus free Mary from a host of demons as suggested by Luke’s Gospel? Was Mary a prostitute as imagined by generations of the church that identified her with the woman who anointed Jesus feet in Bethany? We do not know but the Gospel writers are in agreement that by virtue of her faithfulness to Jesus, going to the foot of the cross she is held up as the paradigm of authentic discipleship. And because her faithfulness extended even to the tomb, she is the Apostle to the apostles bringing the good news of Christ’s resurrection to Peter and the male disciples. But let’s get to the question posed by Da Vinci code. Did Mary have a sexual relationship with Jesus? We simply don’t know. Since there is really no historical evidence to suggest this, it makes you wonder what is really going on here. What I think we have is a fairly trivial question (was Jesus married to Mary?) in the vicinity of a profound question. Was Jesus fully human? Was Jesus fully human? It is the humanity of Jesus, which is the most important touchstone of my faith especially as it is portrayed in Mark’s Gospel: a Jesus who gets tired, who weeps, who gets angry. And because Jesus was fully human we can imagine a Jesus who smiles, who laughs, who rejoices in the beauty of the natural world, who enjoys good food and wine and the pleasures of table fellowship. And if we affirm that Jesus was fully human then we recognize that Jesus was a sexual being just like me, just like you. How does that affirmation sit with you?
To affirm that Jesus was fully divine and fully human has been a complicated affirmation for the church of centuries ago and even now. Da Vinci code makes the case that at the council of Nicea, the actual humanity of the historical Jesus was sacrificed to an affirmation of his Divinity. I enjoyed acting a little like a history detective to investigate more deeply what actually happened at Nicea. In the year 325, The Emperor Constantine of the Holy Roman Empire had just recently unified his military and political control over the ancient world. Constantine was troubled by the political threat to his empire from potentially explosive theological divisions in the church. And so he convened a conference of 318 bishops to debate and resolve those theological conflicts which centered around the church’s understanding of Jesus Christ. Was Jesus fully divine? Was Jesus fully human? Very important questions that continue to divide the church. The council of Nicea affirmed that Jesus was fully divine, of equal substance as the creator. But this affirmation, found in our bulletin did not end the debate. For if Jesus was divine, then how was he human? Some believed that if Jesus was divine then he really could not be fully human. Jesus may have looked like a human being but he could not and did not have normal human feelings, thoughts, needs, and passions. I see evidence of this belief even today. There are many in the church that continue to think of Jesus as an all-knowing and all-powerful human being. No human being knows everything nor has omnipotent power. I believe that in Jesus we see a human life in complete harmony with the divine life. I believe that we see in Jesus the image of God shining brightly, a divine image that exists within all of us cleansed of all that would dim or obscure it. But that affirmation of the Divinity of Jesus cannot must not compromise his humanity. And if Jesus was fully human then he was not an asexual angelic figure but rather a sexual being like all of us. Why is this important to reclaim? In looking upon Jesus as asexual, are we not still perpetuating unconscious ideas that our sexuality is by definition sinful? The cornerstone of the Christian faith is the incarnation; the word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, the marriage of the divine and the human. If we can understand that Jesus was fully human and fully a sexual being-then we can begin to claim God’s presence in our own sexuality and in the gift of our sexuality with all of its challenges and responsibilities, its sorrows and joys. We can begin to claim the grace of God in our journey to become whole as the sexual beings that God has created us to be.
The second big question raised by the Da Vinci code: Has the church been involved in suppressing alternative Gospels that lift up the sacred feminine and other “subversive themes? The answer to this question is a tragic yes. Yes the church has been involved in a conspiracy to repress the divine feminine. The authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel that lifts up the divine feminine has been subverted and repressed by the church throughout our history. Again, Da Vinci code suggests that this change was consolidated under the Emperor Constantine. And I have to agree. In the sweep of history, that Constantinian moment led directly to the inquisitional church of the 13-16th centuries. There have been many holocausts in the history of the world. But the one committed against women by the inquisitional church is one of the most horrific. Conservative estimates are that 1 million women were tortured and murdered by the church inquisition, (liberal estimates are up to 8 or 9 million). (the US witchcraze was miniscule in comparison) It was all about the threat that women were making to patriarchal authority of the church. Who were these women who threatened the interests of the church? Women were midwives and were often the ones with healing powers, including control of sexuality and reproduction. They were called before the priest at the time of birth and death -- roles that clergy came to share with (male) doctors. There is nothing in our history as a church that has had a more dramatic impact on the gospel of Jesus Christ than this historic moment when Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Empire. In that moment the church moved from the margins of society to the center of power. Faithfulness to the Gospel was subordinated to maintaining the strategic interests of the empire. It was this moment that Jesus began to be portrayed as pro-war, pro-rich, anti-immigrant. And ultimately anti-feminist. And it is this anti-Christ of the fundamentalist Christian right that poses such a threat to the world today.
But I take great hope in this truth. No matter how much the church has suppressed the role of women, the Gospel of Jesus Christ continues to break free. In some ways Mark’s Gospel is Mary’s Gospel because running throughout Mark’s Gospel is a feminist subplot. It is mark’s Gospel that holds up the women disciples who had accompanied Jesus from the earliest days in Galilee, to the moment in Bethany when an unnamed woman perhaps Mary who anoints Jesus feet with costly oils. And it would be Mary and the other women continue on faithfully to the foot of the cross. The women are there but the men are nowhere to be found. And because the women will be the ones who will attend to the burial of Jesus, they will be the first witnesses of the resurrection. All this has even led some scholars to wonder if Mark’s Gospel was written by a woman, in fact the very woman who anointed Jesus body. The Gospel of Jesus Christ continues to proclaim in our world today the power of the feminine witness. The Gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims a ministry of compassion that continues to be upheld and celebrated in the life of the church primarily through the faithfulness of women disciples. And no one is in a better position to understand this than the people of St. Mark’s are who for the last 13 years, have been blessed by this co-pastorate model and by the ministry and by the friendship of the Rev. Sue Westfall.
In closing, I guess my biggest problem with the Da Vinci code is this fascination that our culture has with the idea of a few elites breaking a secret code to discover spiritual meaning that somehow distinguishes us from the rest of humanity. And our culture’s fascination with this secret Gospel has infected the church making many of us more interested with a secret Gospel than the Gospels we know very little about but are perfectly available and accessible to us anytime and anyplace. Which leads me to conclude that there is no better place to hide something than in plain view. That may be why one theologian I know described the Gospel of Jesus Christ as an open secret, a hidden truth that is available to all. May we continue to boldly proclaim this open secret this gospel of Jesus and Mary that will transform the world and us.