Sermons

March 6/05

Why Are The Churches so Upset About ‘The DaVinci Code’?

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

You’ve got to love Churches! We’re like little towns and gossip is our currency. Last week someone told me that they heard Emmanuel Howard Park United was going to perform a marriage between a human and an animal and I answered I would perform such a marriage when the animal was capable of filling out the license form on their own and could pass the marriage preparation course. So that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

There is a piece of gossip that I think actually did happen and this was told to me by someone who has now passed on, one of the ‘quiet ones’, one of the saints of our community, about another of the saints of this community. A woman who was kind of the Joan (Awrey) before Joan came on the scene. And by the way, that rumor is true, Joan is a saint! This woman’s name was Margaret and she sat on the hiring committee that hired me for the role of Outreach Minister. I was kind of the second stringer at the time, seven years ago. Apparently, according to this reliable source, Margaret had said that she would never hire a woman for this role, ever.

Now, I know enough about her, although I never met her, to know that this wasn’t internalized sexism, that this was actually genuine concern for her Church because in the generation that Margaret was from to have a woman at the head of a Church meant that the Church would be in trouble because after all nobody listened to a woman and nobody could respect a woman the way they could respect a man. You knew that if a woman was the head of a Church that meant that the Church was trying to get by on the cheap and that they just couldn’t afford a real preacher. This was the way that the world would perceive it. You know, I think she was right.
She came from a generation where women had very few choices in terms of careers. Women could be teachers. They could be nurses. They could be secretaries. Or they could stay at home. This was not a question of choice. This was actually legislated. You know that at U. of T. until the late 60’s had a quota on the number of women in their medical programs and their engineering programs? No more than 10% were allowed in.

This week sees International Woman’s Day and I think that we live in a little bubble in this city and in this country in terms of women’s rights. Even here, women’s rights have not been the case for a long time. Both my mother and my grandmother were born not as legally defined ‘human persons’ according to Canadian law with all the rights of a human person that is to say, to vote, to hold property. That’s within living memory.

I remember my first taste of feminism in the late 60’s and 70’s. The real issue was getting rid of the Help Wanted ads back then labeled ‘Help Wanted Female’ and ‘Help Wanted Male’. Imagine that! That’s within my memory. That’s how things have changed.

Now what has all this got to do with ‘The DaVinci Code’ and why Churches are so upset about it? Well, I’ll tell you. First of all for all those who haven’t read ‘The DaVinci Code’ and even for those of you who have; it’s not a very well written book, kind of a page turner mystery and I’m not really all that ‘into’ mysteries. It’s the kind of book you should find at the drugstore or grocery or gas station. But for some reason, for some reason, the Roman Church and a great many of the more right wing Protestant Churches have latched onto this book and made it a best seller. Why?
Down at Holy Family Church there was a big sign up and it said ‘The DaVinci Fraud’. They’re having a series on ‘The DaVinci Code’ and if you Google ‘The DaVinci Code’ you’ll find reams of reams of stuff by people arguing every point in this book. In fact, there are a number of books written now whose only reason for existence is to dispute ‘The DaVinci Code’. Why?

Partly you know, Dan Brown uses as his setting the Catholic Church itself and by extension the universal Church. He talks about Opus Dei as if they’re the Mafia, Opus Dei being the right wing of the Catholic Church. In ‘The DaVinci Code’ they hire hit men to go after their enemies. Now, I don’t like Opus Dei but I’m sure, at least I hope they don’t hire hit men. This is a novel after all, a page turner of a novel. But he does raise some issues.

He raises issues about the role of women in our tradition. I’m going to ask you to cast your eyes to the left, to that rendition of, our take of the DaVinci tradition of ‘The Last Supper’. Now one of the points that ‘The DaVinci Code’ makes is that the figure to the right or left, if you’re Jesus himself, is a woman. That the figure is none other than Mary of Magdala, the prophet, priest and ‘The DaVinci Code’ maintains, possibly Christ’s wife. Now I’ve always thought that that figure looks like a woman.

The Church’s answer to this is that the figure is John and John being young and that Leonardo DaVinci being, a not very well kept secret, gay man, always shows John as being effeminate. My question is, "Why?" Why has it been the tradition of the Church to always show John as being effeminate to the point of being seen as a female. Kind of interesting don’t you think? I’m absolutely convinced that Mary of Magdala was at that Last Supper because where else would she have been? She was one of the priests and the prophets who followed Jesus himself.

Of course as you read The DaVinci Code, you’ll discover that a lot of the research that went into that book is really, really questionable. He says things that are definitely not so based on sources that are very suspicious. One of the things we’re looking at in our Godtalk is an article by Sandra Meisel who’s a Vatican apologist and she goes through point by point every mistake that Dan Brown made in his book. Lots of her points are true.

One of the most glaring mistakes that he makes in the book is that he says that nowhere in the early Church or in the early writers in the Christian tradition does anyone say or uphold that Jesus was the Messiah. Well it seems to me that this is blatantly ridiculous. Paul is the earliest writer in the canonical texts, that is to say the Bible as we know it, and Paul clearly has a very high version of who Jesus was. To Paul he really is the Son of God, if not the Divine himself and after all what did all those Martyrs die for if not that slogan, "Jesus is Lord" as contrasted with Ceasar is Lord or anybody else is Lord. From the earliest days of the Church that was part of Christianity.

Dan Brown also upholds the Knight’s Templar as exemplars of feminism. They championed the role of Mary Magdala. Well, please, the Knight’s Templar were part of the Crusades. They were known for raping and pillaging their way through the Middle East. These were not people you would want to uphold for any reason, and I could go on and on. But at a certain level one thinks his critics protest a little too much.

We have The New Age versus The Old Age in this debate. You have Dan Brown saying that Gnosticism had it right and the Gnostic Gospels, that’s really where it’s at and we should be talking about the Goddess and not God. That the Christian Church, the Jewish Synagogue and the Muslim Mosque are all hopelessly patriarchal religions and really should just be dispensed with. And the Old Age which says anyone who says anything about the Divine Feminine, anyone who tries to uphold the role of women in Church and in the history of Christianity has it all wrong. I always think it’s very interesting when ‘that’ voice is a woman’s voice.

So I thought we’d do, with your assistance, a little romp through scripture. Because they both have it wrong. The role of women from Genesis on is a powerful and strong role in our scriptural tradition. There is a lot to look to and for, not only in Christ’s ministry but also in the incredible trajectory of the Old Testament and the Jewish scriptures.

A little test: Who was the first prophet mentioned in the Bible (Exodus 15:20)? Miriam was, the sister of Moses. Who was the first prophet mentioned in the New Testament (Luke 2:36-38)? The prophet Anna was one of the first people to see Jesus as the Messiah. Which disciples gave their own money to support Jesus in his ministry (Luke 8:1-3)? Mary of Magdala, Joanna and Susanna all traveled with him from the beginning. Who were the first people to see Jesus alive again after the resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10)? Mary Magdala and the other Mary (probably the mother of James and Joseph) were the first to see Jesus alive. Who was the first European to become converted to Christianity (Acts 16:11-15)? Lydia and all her household became Christians. Which teacher in the early Church probably wrote Hebrews (Acts 18:2-26, Romans 16:3, 1 Corinthians 16:19)? Priscilla also housed one of the first Churches.

Who were the Disciples, other than the twelve, who followed Jesus throughout his Ministry (Mark 15:40-41)? Mary of Magdala, Mary, Salome and perhaps Thecla are mentioned. Many other women who had significant ministries like the woman from Samaria are mentioned, just not by name. The woman from Samaria, we remember, was accepted and taught as if she were a student Rabbi.

Mark 10:11, here Jesus changed the marriage laws of his day. He was a reformer of marriage laws, in favor of women’s rights. He challenged the notion of divorce in those days which left a woman destitute. And finally Mark 5:25, he challenged purity laws and in Luke 20:46 showed his deep concern for widows.

But even before that, right back to the beginning of the world, back to Genesis, we look to a God who created male and female in God’s image in the earliest of all accounts. God is not male. God is both. In the oldest story of Genesis, God is male and female. One of the problems I have with the use of the term Goddess is that it assumes that the word God equals male and it certainly does not. Not in the Jewish and Christian lexicon, perhaps in the Greek.

Shekhina, the female principle that is the Law and the divinity behind the Law brought to the Israelites, is female. Shekhina becomes a person in Jesus Christ. It’s as if Jesus takes on that feminine role of carrying on that aspect of God to a whole new generation of Jews and gentiles.

I also love the story in the book of Ruth. You might ask yourself why the book of Ruth is even included in the Hebrew scriptures? Well here is a suggestion. The Book of Ruth is included because Ruth is the very image of God. Ruth acts like God would. Ruth is loyal and self giving even to the point of danger. Ruth is brave and courageous, powerful and cunning. It is Ruth herself who is the very image of the biblical God going back thousands and thousands of years.

The point of it all: that we might see who have been blind. That we might see our scriptures for the first time as we’ve never read them before, as if we’ve been blind, as if we now can see all those women, even those unnamed in Christ’s ministry as our mothers and great great grandmothers, as those who were prophets and priests. That we might see the one we image as God as both female and male, both in one entity. That we might be able to see. Why is it so scary to all the Churches?

Because in the Christian Church, most of the Islamic Mosques and most of the Jewish Synagogues, there are two baptisms, one for a man and one for a woman. There is the entrance into membership that says that you can be ordained and the entrance into membership that says you can’t. It’s a two tiered system where all members are not equal and though women populate the pews of all the world’s religions, women do not populate the pulpits. Why?

My suggestion is that we call our brothers and sisters back to their own faith. That we call them back to their own, in our case, Christian faith, to the role in particular of Mary Magdala who followed in faith when all the male disciples had betrayed and deserted Christ. To her who was the last to see him before he died and the first to see him arisen and was probably the author of many books in scripture and yes, is one of the true priests of our tradition.

I went to a Conference a long time ago and at the Conference folk were asked to call out all the names of the men who had been their mentors. Many names were called, almost all of them famous, names like Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Gandhi and others. Then we were asked to call out all the names of women who had changed our lives, who had mentored us and many names were called out, none of them famous, names of aunts, grandmothers, mothers, friends, teacher, nurses, secretaries. Those women who went before, who changed the laws of this land and all lands. Those women who wrote scripture. Those women who saw Christ fall and rise. Those women of all the great faiths who provided not only commentary but faithful witness, . Those women, those nameless ones.

It is in their honor that I speak today and also in the honor of International Women’s Day.

Amen.