Sermon

The DaVinci Code
and Other Nonsense

The Rev. Jack D. Bryant

Hope Unitarian Church

May 21, 2006

First Reading: Theodore Parker. A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity. Preached at the Ordination of Mr. Charles C. Shackford, in the Hawes Place Church in Boston, May 19, 1841.

Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my word shall not pass away. Luke 21:33

In this sentence we have a very clear indication that Jesus of Nazareth believed the religion he taught would be eternal, that the substance of it would last forever. Yet there are some, who are affrighted by the faintest rustle which a heretic makes among the dry leaves of theology; they tremble lest Christianity itself should perish without hope. Ever and anon the cry is raised, "The Philistines be upon us, and Christianity is in danger." The least doubt respecting the popular theology, or the existing machinery of the church; the least sign of distrust in the Religion of the Pulpit, or the Religion of the Street, is by some good men supposed to be at enmity with faith in Christ, and capable of shaking Christianity itself. On the other hand, a few bad men and a few pious men, it is said, on both sides of the water, tell us the day of Christianity is past. The latter—it is alleged—would persuade us that, hereafter, Piety must take a new form; the teachings of Jesus are to be passed by; that Religion is to wing her way sublime, above the flight of Christianity, far away, toward heaven, as the fledged eaglet leaves forever the nest which sheltered his callow youth. Let us, therefore, devote a few moments to this subject, and consider what is Transient in Christianity, and what is Permanent therein. The topic seems not inappropriate to the times in which we live, or the occasion that calls us together.

Second Reading: From the Publisher’s Page in The Da Vinci Code.

All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Sermon

I went to the movie Friday afternoon and saw The DaVinci Code. I read the book a couple of years ago and that distance from the book made the movie more enjoyable because there were some details of the twists and turns I didn’t remember. Let me say at the beginning that it’s a better movie than the reviews suggest. It’s superbly made as one expects with Ron Howard as the director. It’s not a great movie, but it’s an enjoyable thriller. Like most such movies there are places where the behavior of the characters that set up the story stretches so thin you can see right through it. But overall I thought the movie entertaining, even better than the book. I say that because I went back and looked at a few pages from the book and confirmed what I remembered: if you look beyond the thriller plot elements that sweep you forward you will find the writing in the book is mediocre at best. It’s an engaging story and fun to read, but it will never be called literature. Dan Brown, of course, is laughing all the way to the bank.

But I didn’t go to the movie as a movie critic. I went to the movie because of all the religious fuss that’s been made about it. Several thoughts went through my mind as I watched it. I remembered a comment I made about people trying to debunk the book: Why would anyone feel compelled to debunk a work of fiction? And I realized I had no desire to debunk the movie. But because people will ask I’ll just say two things directly about the movie. First, I left the theater with the impression that Dan Brown’s knowledge of religious and theological history is based entirely on articles published in the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News. I kept waiting for UFO’s to be involved. His description of religious and theological history is just as ridiculous and just as wrong as many Christian Apologists have made it out to be, although not necessarily for the reasons they cite. Second, I spoke with my sons, both of whom are artists and have studied art history, and they confirm the same is true of the alleged art history in the story. And what’s ironic is that the real life of DaVinci is a better story than what Dan Brown invented for us. But it’s a fun read and a fun movie. Read and/or watch it and enjoy it and get on with life, just don’t take it as anything except entertainment. It’s good enough as entertainment that I’ll probably go again with my wife, who wants to see it, but couldn’t go with me on Friday. But the bottom line is I’m not sure which is more ridiculous, more nonsensical: the story’s religious content or the fuss that’s been made over it.

But setting aside the movie itself and some of the responses to it I believe, as calmer heads have suggested, that it does present a teaching moment. But the substance of what I think we can learn doesn’t have much to do directly with the movie or the book. Let me explain. When I left home for college I took with me my Methodist upbringing. For the first year and-a-half I attended church. But then something happened. A friend asked if I wanted to read a book called The Passover Plot. I read it. Much like the DaVinci code it offered an alternative history of the life of Jesus. The author, Hugh Schonfield, unlike Don Brown, was a real biblical scholar. He argued that Jesus did not die on the cross. The details aren’t important. I thought the story was fanciful and unpersuasive, but it made me realize I could question the religion of my childhood. I put down the book and no longer believed. I put down the book and stopped attending church. Again, not because I believed the book’s conclusions, but because it opened my mind to asking questions. Had I not read The Passover Plot years ago I might have had the same reaction to The DaVinci Code. I’m not sure. The Passover Plot contains some legitimate scholarship and The DaVinci Code is pure fiction. As the disclaimer on the Publisher’s page says, “All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” But even a story of fiction can raise real questions of fact - questions far more important than whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child.

Stop and think about it. What difference would it make? The doctrine of the Trinity says Jesus was wholly human and wholly God. There is no theological reason why Jesus could not have been married and been a father and been the Savior that Christianity says he was. There is also no evidence he was married - other than the fact that most, but not all, men in his culture would have been betrothed by their early teens. And there are reasons, legitimate cultural reasons, to explain why he might not have been married. The bottom line is there’s no theological reason why he couldn’t have been married. But there is also no theological reason why he had to be God. He could have just been wholly human and still have been the Messiah of Christianity. Of course, I betray my unitarianism with that statement. Orthodox Christian theologians differ. But I’m right and they’re wrong.

But here’s where the other nonsense comes in. Remember the title of my sermon, The DaVinci Code and Other Nonsense? This is what I was talking about. Religious people spend most of their time arguing about matters that are largely irrelevant or of temporary, that is transient, relevance. Religious people are obsessed with dogmas and creeds and proving this or that to be true beyond question. And that spirit is also alive amongst Unitarian Universalists, although Unitarian Universalists tend to be concerned with proving something false.

Religious people insist that Jesus was God, that he raised the dead, walked on water, healed the sick, the Magi visited him as a child, Herod murdered the children, a woman washed his feet. The list goes on and on. Buddhists tell us the Buddha’s real name was Siddartha Gautama, that he was raised a wealthy prince, that he abandoned his wealth to seek enlightenment. On his journey he saw a sick man, an old man, an ascetic and a corpse and eventually found enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. He died from food poisoning. Mohammed taught that God meant submission and he was taken bodily into heaven as the last prophet of God. Once upon a time women ruled the world and life was perfect and there was no war. Again, the list goes on and on. Every religion that has ever existed has constructed an elaborate set of beliefs about events that are supposed to be actual and factual. So what?

Let us assume the claims of evangelical Christianity are literally true. God is a supernatural being. He - or she - created the world in seven days. He was angry with humanity so He had His only son brutally executed to assuage His anger. When children die it’s okay, because it’s part of His plan. God can, at will, make the earth stand still, knows everything that is going to happen and condemns to eternal torment those who don’t believe, those who don’t bow down and worship. God knows what is being said here and can strike us dead for saying or listening to it. It is God who sends Hurricanes and natural disasters as punishment for human wrong doing. God has all the powers attributed to Morgan Freeman in the movie Bruce Almighty and none of the inhibitions, none of his sense of humor. Does this mean we should worship God? Certainly we should fear such a God, but should we worship Him? Shouldn’t we ask whether such a God is good? Or is the sole basis for worshiping God the fact that He is powerful? Is the sole basis for worshiping Jesus the fact that He said particular words and performed particular acts and that certain people did certain things to him? And the same is true of the Buddha and Mohammed and Confucius and every other religious figure.

The traditional approach to religion says we should worship God because God is powerful. Its political counterpart is the belief that one should never question what the government tell us. Its political counterpart says Big Brother is good because he’s big - “big” being a metaphor for power. And such political comparisons are appropriate. Much of the western concept of God is derived from the Suzerainty kings of the ancient Middle East. These were kings that controlled their world - which often consisted of small city states. Their word was life and death. What they said and did was good because they had power. Saddam Hussein is a modern inheritor of that concept of kingship which we call dictatorship today. And the popular western theological concept of God is almost a carbon copy. To question God’s power is heresy to such theologies.

Don’t you think it’s time to move beyond such understandings of religion in general and God in particular? Aren’t such concepts nonsense? Why don’t we concern ourselves with questions about the morality, about the worthiness of what religious leaders such as Moses and Jesus and Mohammed and the Buddha are supposed to have said and done? Not whether they actually said and did it, but whether it makes any sense. Why don’t we ask ourselves if the propositions and beliefs attributed to them are good? Setting aside all the claims of divinity - or the rejection thereof - is there some essential message attributed to Jesus that transcends all that is temporary, all that is transient, some essential message we can call permanently good? Or will people worship Jesus or the God of Mohammed just because they think he is God and can order hurricanes to kill people? And shouldn’t we look beyond the identity of the messenger? Are we to believe that something can only be true because Jesus or Mohammed or Moses or Confucius or the Buddha said it? Are we to believe that just because Jesus said it it’s true? Isn’t that like saying if God does it, it must be good? Isn’t that nonsense?

Let us ask instead what is good. Let us ask instead if the images of God claimed by people are worthy of worship. This is the real danger that books and movies such as the DaVinci code pose to orthodoxy - not just to Christianity, but to all orthodoxies. I believe it’s why Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, was threatening to orthodox Islam. It threatened to inspire people to look beyond the surface, to look beyond the temporary and the transient of Islam, to look beyond the human made dogmas and creeds and beliefs and to look for something that might be real, something that might be permanent, something that men and women could say is good regardless of who said it, regardless of who believes it.

Such ideas aren’t new. It’s what Theodore Parker was talking about in 1841 when he described the fear in the hearts of the pious in response to any who question the creeds and dogmas of Christianity. Parker was unabashedly a Christian. But his Christianity did not rest on creeds and dogmas, it rested on a commitment to what he believed to be the heart of goodness that was given shape and form in the life of Jesus. It wasn’t the transient shape and form of a man he worshipped, it was the eternal goodness that existed and continues to exist regardless whether Jesus ever lived. Parker’s religion transcended the life of Jesus and Moses and Mohammed and the Buddha and all the religious figures of history. He did not ignore them, but he recognized their lives and their examples as transient and temporary. What he sought was an absolute religion, what he sought was the permanent and the eternal.

There is but one truth, one reality. From time to time human beings create creeds and dogmas to express that reality. From time to time human beings find human exemplars of that eternal truth, of that eternal reality. But creeds and dogmas and people are transient. Yet despite all that changes there remains something eternal, something true, something that is the good. Jesus pointed to it when he spoke of the lilies of the field. The prophet pointed to it when he said, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) It is this reality that is the true basis for religion. To make the transient and permanent into an idol to be worshipped is the real nonsense. Truth is not beholden to belief nor a particular personality. Truth speaks in different tongues and in different places. Our loyalty should not to be to any particular language or person who has expressed it, but to truth itself, to goodness itself. Anything else is idolatry. And it is only by making our allegiance to the truth that we will ever hope to achieve the dream of Amos, the dream of a world where we shall,

let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

Amen.