THE DA VINCI CODE PHENOMENON
A Sermon by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
January 25, 2004
Religion is a complicated word. It stands for many things, interpreted many ways, depending on the mind set of the writer or speaker. Some people say they are not religious, because of definitions which indicate a belief in a supernatural power. Others say they are spiritual, not religious, because they don't adhere to a set of institutional beliefs. As Unitarian Universalists, we include both definitions and their opposites, being a free faith that encourages each person to make their own choices regarding divinity and beliefs, and we have a long heritage as one of the Christian Reformation religions of Protestantism, tracing our roots to the very earliest Christian beliefs.
Even so, we have been listed under "cults" in some religious textbooks, as if the editor couldn't abide our place among the religions of the world. The first definition of a cult is a sect considered to be extremist or false, though there are other less devious definitions. (Am. Heritage Dict.) Freedom in faith is a threatening concept to many religions, and when such freedom extends to include all faiths in the world and to include those who hold no belief in a god, we are even more of an anathema.
As we all know, though, a belief in god is not the measure of the goodness of a person. We had a tragic example of that in the 9/11 airplane hijackings and the destruction of lives that followed. Allah did not guide those brainwashed men to kill thousands of infidels, and God did not guide our troops to bomb Afghanistan or Iraq. Old anthropomorphic ideas of divine power held by a select few will eventually dissolve in the new age of human interaction and enlightenment. Part of that enlightenment involves encountering other points of view, other stories, other histories, and measuring them against our own understanding of the meaning of religion and life.
It's not anything new, this exploration of theology and religion and beliefs and cultures. And it is not a new thing for each person to encounter their own "Ah, Hah!s" as they go through life. What is new is for a book that goes against the dominant religious culture to be so popular, to captivate so many people. I'm talking about Harry Potter, with its exploration of witchcraft and sorcery as powers of both good and evil. And I'm talking about the Da Vinci Code, with its amazing ability to lead the reader down a path of step-by-step uncovering of layers of purportedly misleading Catholic doctrine and history to a seemingly new revelation of Christian history and story that turns out to be not new at all. The Harry Potter books have swept the world in popularity, and The Da Vinci Code has been on the Best Seller list for over 40 weeks. That's ten months, about the time I first saw the audio version on the shelf in Barnes and Noble and bought it for Curtiss to listen to on his long drives to work and back. I bought a copy for myself soon after.
What is so intriguing about the Da Vinci Code, besides it's eye-catching red cover and the words "Da Vinci" on it? I told you I was going to read it again for this sermon, and I'm about halfway through, reading it like a college textbook, and I'm just amazed. I'm amazed with the author, Dan Brown's, writing style, his use of metaphor, and his interweaving of historical and theological erudition or teachings with fast-paced action and intrigue. He lets the characters embody our reactions to the theological information he presents, and teases us into going along with what, in other contexts, would be considered heretical, outlandish, and threatening information. Little bit by little bit, he woos us into considering that the understanding of the Christian story which we have inherited in our churches and culture might really not be the whole picture. With this one fiction book, he has reached more common folk than any University or seminary course could ever hope to do. And generated a flurry of information and argument on the internet. And inspired thousands of people to gather in small groups to talk about a book that is apparently changing lives.
Dan Brown captures our attention and holds it not just with the intrigue of the murder in the Louvre, but with the way he scatters clues like bird seed on Hansel and Gretel's forest path. We are fascinated with secrets and mysteries and puzzles. Who is not? We learn crosswords and jigsaw puzzles at an early age, so this whole area of cryptology and symbology is sure to captivate us. With mathematical wonders like the Fibonacci Sequence, in which each number is a sum of the two which precede it, and Phi, otherwise known as "1.618 - The Divine Proportion," he teaches us little known facts of the scientific world (at least, little known to those of us who haven't studied them), even as he teaches us very little known theories of theology (at least, very little known to the common folk who haven't made theology their line of study, either).
I have always loved the word "palimpsest," which refers to the layers of a painting beneath a painting beneath a painting, but also to meanings beneath meanings beneath meanings. Explorers may have found most of the land masses on earth, but the explorer in us has much to discover, to uncover, when it comes to history, and there really is so much that has been hidden or destroyed in the face of oppressive religions or governments. Brown invites us into a world where secrets are the norm, and clues abound if you learn to read the symbols that surround us and carry meaning across the centuries. He takes us through the layers of the palimpsests we have inherited, showing us what lies hidden beneath the surface of the common Christian stories of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and much of Catholic history. And he shows us how to read the clues left in the art, symbols and rituals that are familiar to us.
For example, for those of you who might not have read the book yet, the popular image of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus on her lap is a copy of the Egyptian Goddess Isis sitting with the infant Horus on her lap. This is one of thousands of examples of the similarities or direct confiscations by the early Catholic Church of religious image and story of far older religions. Christianity is a palimpsest of layers of religious meaning inherited over millennia. This is not a bad thing, not a value judgment, but it is a challenge to fundamentalist orthodoxy which states that there is only one literal truth, one story, based on the Bible we know today. Every theologian knows of the Council of Nicaea in 325 during which many versions of the gospels were reviewed and excluded in favor of the four we have. The Gnostic Gospels were a fortunate discovery of some of that theology that Constantine had destroyed as heretical, and in those gospels, especially the gospel of Philip, we encounter a mortal Jesus and the story that he had a "companion," meaning "spouse," in Mary Magdalene. These are tiny bits of an almost overwhelming amount of information that Brown presents in The Da Vinci Code. But, as I said, he feeds us intriguing bits, a little at a time, and has his characters embody our skepticism as well as our ability to take another look at the picture of religious history.
To those of us who have encountered some of this before, it is probably easier for us to believe or to accept that the alternate stories might be true. Inspired and intrigued by The Da Vinci Code, I read Bloodline of the Holy Grail to start to gather some corroboration for what Brown had presented, even with my background in theology, including feminist theology. Brown even lists books to read on page 253, having his Sophie character read them on the shelf of Teabing's living room. Our UU Mystery Readers group has been sharing books and discussing theology for the last couple months inspired by The Da Vinci Code. I would guess other readers are having the same reaction: a desire to research further whether the theory presented in the book could be true, including the story of Christianity's overthrow of Goddess-oriented and pagan cultures and its incorporation of those images and stories into the religion we practice today.
And what is that theory? It is a story of a mortal Jesus whose wife, Mary Magdalene, escaped with Jesus' uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, to travel the Mediterranean to the southern coast of France, where they lived in exile. This story is not new. Southern France is covered with stories of Mary Magdalene having lived there. The Gnostic gospel of Mary Magdalene reads that Jesus gave Mary instructions on how to carry on the work of the church after he was gone. Brown writes that Leonardo da Vinci knew these stories, having been the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, a group formed to guard these secrets through the centuries, and in his painting of the Last Supper, Da Vinci has put Mary Magdalene, not John, to the right of Jesus. You have to read the book to get the full picture of the symbolism and what it meant.
The rest of the theory is that Mary Magdalene was pregnant with Jesus' child when she escaped. Her daughter, named Sarah, grew up in France, and the bloodline was kept careful track of, not because Jesus was divine, but because he was of the line of David, the kings of Jerusalem, and Mary was of the line of Benjamin, also royal. Their bloodline laid claim to Solomon's throne. It is believed that this bloodline mixed with French royal blood at some point to create the Merovingian kings. The Holy Grail is a translation of the French, "Sangreal" or "San Greal", but it also can be read as "Sang Real:" "Royal Blood." According to these theories, rather than a chalice, the Holy Grail is the bloodline of Jesus, the bones of Mary Magdalene and the genealogies proving the royal line.
The divine female in balance with the divine male is one of the precepts of this book. It is pointed out in the gospel of Mary Magdalene that Peter is sexist, mistrusting Mary because she is a woman. We also know that Paul was sexist, and their shaping of the early Christian church distorted Jesus' example of the inclusion and respect for women. The search for the Holy Grail is supposed to be a search to rediscover the sacred feminine in our lives and in our religion. Throughout the book, Brown takes us through the oppression and exclusion of women in religious history, including the annihilation of them in the inquisition and witch hunts.
One of the things Brown does is scatter lines of wisdom:
On page 15: "The connections may be invisible,.but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface."
On page 45: "Misunderstanding breeds distrust."
On page 95: "The chaos of the world has an underlying order."
On page 96: "Art is man's attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand."
On page 97: "There are symbols hidden in places you would never imagine."
On page 101: "Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once."
That last quote is fundamental to The Da Vinci Code. It affirms the sense that life is a mystery and we spend our lives discovering truths beneath truths beneath truths.
Perhaps, in the beginning of our exploration and discoveries, our building blocks crumble and we feel lost and betrayed. This is a common feeling people have when they learn that what they were told is not necessarily true. When our foundations are shaken, we can pull back and reform them with blinders, or we can move boldly forward and explore the new world which beckons through the cracks, whether those cracks are in the earth, in the church, in the clouds, in our hearts. We know that healing and understanding only happen when our preconceptions are cracked open and we are vulnerable, but aware in ways we may never have experienced before. It is like a mystery, finding clues and being brave enough to go the whole way. Maybe there isn't a final end to the mystery, but we can have fun peeling through the layers of the palimpsests life has willed to us.
As UU minister Vincent Silliman wrote, "Let religion be to us life and joy.[and] the wonder and lure of that which is only partly known and understood." I do believe Brown's point that "life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once." Religion is filled with secrets, because religion is life. May you experience the joy and mystery of the journey that awaits you.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson