Reading from The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown pp 219-237
Comment: This book is a mystery novel, a work of fiction. There are three Major characters: Robert Langdon, a symbologist, who specializes in religious symbols, Sir Leigh Teabing, a historian of religion, and Sophie, a brainy and beautiful French cryptologist. The following are excerpts from many pages. Bracketed words are summarized text to help those who have not read the book.
Robert Langdon smiled, "We're on a [Holy] Grail quest, Sophie. Who better to help us than a knight." (p. 219) [He referred to Sir Leigh Teabing, a British historian of religion who had devoted his whole life to searching for the Holy Grail.]
Teabing reached for the book [of Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings] and flipped toward the center…. "I assume you recognize this fresco?"
Sophie was staring at the most famous fresco of all time-The Last Supper-Da Vinci's legendary painting from the wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The decaying fresco portrayed Jesus and His disciples at the moment that Jesus announced one of them would betray Him. "I know the fresco, yes."
"Then perhaps you will indulge me in this little game? Close your eyes if you would."
Uncertain, Sophie closed her eyes.
"Where is Jesus sitting?" Teabing asked.
"In the center."
"Good. And what food are He and His disciples [eating and drinking]."
"Bread [and wine]."
"And how many glasses are on the table?"
[She recalled a line from scripture], And after dinner, Jesus took the cup of wine, sharing it with His disciples. "One cup," she said. "The chalice. The Cup of Christ. The Holy Grail. Jesus passed a single chalice of wine, just as modern Christians do at communion."
Teabing sighed, "Open your eyes. How many cups do you see? [Sophie counted 13 small glass cups. There was no chalice. No Holy Grail. . . . "This fresco, in fact, is the entire key to the Holy Grail mystery. Da Vinci lays it all out in the open in The Last Supper."
Sophie scanned the work eagerly. "Does this fresco tell us what the Grail really is?"
"Not what it is," Teabing whispered. "But rather who it is. The Holy Grail is not a thing. It is, in fact . . . a person-[a woman]." (pp 235-236)
[Teabing invited Sophie to look at the person sitting to the right of Jesus. Sophie was astonished to see that it was a woman with long, flowing hair. "It's Mary Magdalene," he said simply.]
Comment: A copy of the painting was on a table in the cloister of our church for people to examine for themselves.
Sermon
Many years ago, I read a book called The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table told from the point of view of the Lady of Avalon who was the priestess of the Goddess. It wove a fabulous tale of a time when people worshipped the Goddess, when fear of demons was strong, and delight in fairies produced wonderful myths. Scholars of ancient legends identify the town of Glastonbury in England as the likely location of the ancient Avalon and Camelot.
So taken was I with the whole idea of the mystery of the sacred feminine that I determined I would return to my native Great Britain as a pilgrimage to seek the Sacred Thorn tree and the Chalice Well to see whether they were fact or fiction. My visit to Glastonbury was a profound spiritual experience. I was on a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning"-our fourth Principle, before I even knew Unitarian Universalists had such a thing as Principles.
Books can add a great richness to our lives. When I heard of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown last summer, I decided that the plot was too far fetched for me to bother with. However, when I saw how many of you and my colleagues had read it, here I am bringing up the rear!
The Boston Globe reports that "The theological thriller by New Hampshire's Dan Brown is still selling an astonishing 80,000 plus hard-cover copies per week…bringing the number of copies in print to 7.35 million….Brown is writing a sequel…tentatively due out next year."
So what is so interesting about this book that so many people are on fire with these latest "discoveries". The fact is that The Da Vinci Code is a well-written, fast paced, easy-to-read novel that keeps you reading when you should really be in bed! I think the three-page chapters helped it move along for me! Here is the basic plot.
The curator of the famous Louvre in Paris is murdered in the fabulous glass pyramid part of the museum. An even more famous American Professor of Religious Symbology, Robert Langdon, becomes the prime suspect. Sophie, the estranged granddaughter of the murdered curator, frees Robert from the clutches of the head of Interpol and the two of them go on a chase across France and England in search of the Chalice or the Holy Grail.
Before he died, the murdered curator devised clues to the whereabouts of the Holy Grail and the secret society, the Priory of Sion, that had guarded it for 1000 years. His last clue was visually fabulous. He had taken off all his clothes and spread out his arms and legs like Leonard's Vitruvian man on the cover of your Order of Service. He used invisible ink to complete what his body could not. The Society's members and Grand Masters number such luminaries as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Jean Cocteau, and many more who hid clues to what the chalice means in their works of art. As we heard in the reading, "The Chalice" is actually the person of Mary Magdalene who was the wife of Jesus. These two had a family who fled to France after the Crucifixion. The Knights Templar who removed the documents of "The Chalice" from beneath the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem aided the secret society in their work.
According to the author, the "lost gospels" verify Mary Magdalene as The Grail, the sacred feminine, and her line as the true leaders of the movement Jesus intended to leave behind. The book maintains that these Gospels, discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, were suppressed by the church so that patriarchy would have the underpinnings of scripture and the Goddess, or the feminine face of God, would be discredited.
Before I leave this fascinating plot, I will tell you about another interesting character, called Silas, a massive albino monk who belongs to a group called Opus Dei. I know I'm becoming a good Unitarian Universalist because the more I read of Silas, the more I wondered whether our first and second principles were violated when an emotionally disabled person is cast in such a vile role.
For those of you who have not read the book, I don't believe I've given much away so that you will still thoroughly enjoy it. If you want to discuss it with someone, then do come to our book discussion here on Tuesday, June 8th at 7 pm-the more, the merrier!
The Catholic Church has in general regarded the book as an interesting novel simply not based in fact. However, a lot of clergy, biblical scholars, and Christian Theologians are outraged by what the book offers as "truth". I, too, was puzzled about the claim that Jesus was married since there is no foundation for this in the Gospels or in the more recently discovered Gnostic texts, including the Gospels of Mary, Thomas, and Philip. Since it would have taken me a very long time to identify what is true and not true in this book, I turned to a well researched book called Decoding Da Vinci: The facts behind the fiction of The Davinci Code by Amy Welborn.
Before The Da Vinci Code begins, there is a "Fact" page where Dan Brown claims that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." He also claims that a group called "The Priory of Sion" is a European secret society founded in 1099." This has particularly caused controversy since the documents supporting this claim were found to be forgeries that were deliberately introduced into the French National Archives, probably in the late 1950s by members of a right wing anti-Jewish group. (Welborn, 107) And there is no evidence that the Knights Templars had anything to do with the Holy Grail, though they certainly existed until the 14th century.
The story of the Holy Grail is probably an ancient Celtic myth about life-giving vessels of blood. The first written record was discovered in the medieval poem of Perceval. (Welborn, 105) The idea of the sacred feminine, goddess, and holy blood being equated with Mary Magdalene came from a book published in 1981 called Holy Blood, Holy Grail by authors who are not by any means scholars.
The idea of the "sacred feminine" was reinforced over the years by occasional discoveries of societies with women priests and seemingly egalitarian male-female relationships, but the evidence is slim. However, Goddesses abound in the history of all societies and in a few societies, women were actually honored for their procreation ability and the mystery of it all.
Brown has one of his characters assert that the Emperor Constantine concocted the idea that Jesus was divine. Even I knew that that wasn't true! Although it was true that Constantine ordered the first Council of Bishops to convene in Nicaea in 325 CE and he did prod them to make a decision as to Jesus' relationship to the Father. This began the first of 21 Councils.
We might think that the lost Gospels, or the recently discovered ones, are wiser than the ones in the Bible. The Gospel of Thomas does have some very wise teachings in it. However, at the end of this Gospel, we read: "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.'" (Gospel of Thomas, p.114) I doubt that Jesus said this and it is hardly a plug for the sacred feminine.
Another interesting claim in Brown's book is that Mary Magdalene is the disciple to the right of Jesus in Da Vinci's painting The Last Supper. In Leonardo's book Treatise on Painting, he explains that each figure should be painted according to his station and age. His book states, "A favored follower, a protégé, or disciple, is always portrayed as very youthful, longhaired, and clean-shaven…" The figure to the right of Jesus is the 'disciple Jesus loved'. I looked at the painting (a copy of which is on the table in the cloister) and I, too, thought the beloved disciple definitely is a woman. But that is not what Leonardo intended. But that's for you to decide.
There are many, many other so-called "facts" I could challenge in the Da Vinci Code that I could relate here, but suffice it to say that we should read this marvelous novel and enjoy it, with a pinch of salt!
The question in my mind is: Why is this book such a smash hit. I believe it has something to do with people not even knowing that our Fourth Principle, the search for truth and meaning, is what most people are drawn to. The only thing is, our fourth principle calls for a "free and responsible" search and this calls us to at least inquire into what is fact, what is fiction, and what is faith.
In 1989, when I made my first trip to the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, England, and I sat for 2 magical hours before the sacred thorn, listening to the ancient bubbling, healing waters of the sacred spring flowing into cement baths for ailing pilgrims, I thought I was in heaven. I do not know whether Timothy of Arithmea really did bury the Chalice from the Last Supper there, thus Christianizing the place of the Goddess, or whether there was truly a Lady of Avalon. But I do know that I felt profoundly connected to the Divine in that place and that I had brought the faith with me that the Divine IS.
When all is said and done, we are left with reason and the promptings of our own hearts. And the only person who can determine the truth for you, is yourself!
(Afterthought: After delivering this sermon, I pondered on whether I had treated the sacred feminine adequately and fairly. I think it would require another sermon to do this. Suffice it to say that I believe that the idea of the sacred feminine is attractive to us all, both men and women, because it holds the promise of a divine principle that is wholesome, unconditionally loving, and full of creativity. There is no punishing and violence and jealousy such is the impression of at least the early God of the Bible.)
May we always search for truth and meaning in our lives. And may compassion, reason, and tolerance ever inform our quest.
