Texts on Sunday, May 14, 2006
1 John 4: 7-12; John 15: 1-8
Fifteen years ago, film director Oliver Stone produced a fanciful thriller called JFK purporting to tell the real story behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I have forgotten its details, but suffice it to say that the film used the names and images of real people, now dead, to spin a story in which, within its labyrinths, the U.S. government harbored murderous conspirators who stop at nothing to prevent the world from finding out that this nation is based on lies about Kennedy’s life and death. For movie-goers under thirty in 1991, Stone’s fantasy became their primary historical source for those events–so much more interesting than that page of the high school history textbook with pizza crumbs on it telling of the sad events. Ignorance thrives like mushrooms when its spore lands in a stump of rotten knowledge.
Now there’s more big news from Hollywood: The world’s all-time best selling novel–42 million copies sold–hits theaters later this week. The DaVinci Code-The Movie will certainly set more records. And now, as with JFK-The film, almost everyone will know the truth, that Jesus actually had sex with a former prostitute, and had children by her after they were prawperly married. Moreover, they will know that within its labyrinths, the Church harbors murderous conspirators who stop at nothing to prevent the world from finding out that Christianity is based on lies about Jesus’ life and death. Nice work for $8.50 and five bucks of popcorn.
If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this review of the book by a customer of Amazon-dot-com: “I loved this book because it makes history (false or not) very VERY interesting . . . It’s about history and the church, but it’s actually interesting.” The movie will plug up empty spaces in millions of minds who do wonder what’s in those big empty churches on the corners and why they’re so empty and so boring and why do those TV preachers harp on about sex it must be they’re afraid of something maybe it’s a conspiracy . . .
If you think this movie won’t give millions memorable answers to such questions, just do this math. Total the hours that people you know spent reading The DaVinci Code, and set that sum next to the total time those same people spent studying the Bible over the last three years. Which number is greater? Now, the fact that the author of Code writes ugly prose and unconvincing dialogue actually does bother me, for I regret to see my fellow citizens swimming in swill when the best seller list could do so well by them. But the phenomenon of the book’s popularity and the boundless ignorance of the populace actually fascinate me, for though the book will fade quickly from the scene now that it’s a movie, the hunger signified by its immense sales is not going away. What is that hunger?
I am not going to rehearse here the distortions of history throughout the book. We could do that in a Bible study. Two themes stand out through the distortions. One is fascination with the idea that Jesus had sexual relations. The other is the thrill at the thought of the Church of Christ as a conspiracy. This, I’d propose, is the real Da Vinci code–a hidden handwriting that shows up clearly under Sunday morning light, revealing the fears and obsessions of our national culture.
If the culture could relax on a therapist’s couch, it might see that the desire to believe that Jesus had sex is driven by anxiety over sex in the first place. How could he judge us if he had it! He’s just like us. How could he be so far above us? So the fascination with the book is driven by a need to knock the judge out of his chair, so people can get on with their anxious sex without feeling their actual despair over the way they’re living. Believing the Church is a lethal conspiracy of lies functions in a similar way. That big bad machine and those clergy are more immoral than me! Who is in a position to condemn? whispers the inner voice.
And since it’s “fiction,” the new true believer never actually is told what he is coming to believe. The author certainly never put the awesome thought down in so many words, like a catechism: “What is the purpose of the Church? To lie and protect liars.” The medium of fiction makes possible what no lecture or essay could get away with. By consequence, almost completely beneath their radar, people get to hear what they desperately need to say: Don’t judge me. And a second, more tragic message: Don’t show me a higher way. Having sex and then maybe settling down with a family–don’t tell me there’s anything higher than that. To affirm these two sad messages–don’t send me down to judgment, and don’t raise me up for things above–America has bought millions upon millions of copies of a lousy novel with a lot of plot.
There is so much to learn from our people’s obsessions with sex, judgment, and fear of spiritual development. First of all, we of the church must confess that the people are absolutely on target in their desire to skewer the church as a fortress of judgment. Remember how Bonhoeffer characterized the church–as “the only place where it is unsafe to be a sinner”? The tragedy is that the church has wandered from its sublime rock of affirmation. You sang that rock minutes ago, “Jesus, thou art all compassion; pure, unbounded love thou art!” Whenever we have lived from that Spirit of Christ in the presence of someone who feared judgment– you have seen this!–how they opened like a morning flower, waiting for God’s light and love to come down through you.
Second, we of the church must confess that the people are absolutely on target in their desire to skewer the church for spreading not a gospel but a “badspel” about sex. (“Spel” is old English for “message” or “news.”) Unhappily, however, dragging Jesus off the cross to have relations with Mary Magdalene isn’t going to clear up anyone’s confusion about their own sexual relationships. Our Bible reading needs a huge portion of the Older Testament’s often unmixed and frank joy in sex.
Third, we of the church must confess that people are right on target in their desire to skewer the church for merely dreaming about heaven by-and-by-after-you-die, while teaching almost nothing about how to love and how to grow in God day-by-day. It is no surprise that Dan Brown’s little story ends with utterly conventional morality. Follow Jesus’ example: have some thrills, then get married and have children.
Well, it’s Mothers Day, and isn’t that the simple, humane message of most of the greeting cards in the shops? You had some thrills, Mom, then you got married, and had . . . us. Thank you. Into the chaos of hopes and fears that drive every body–every mind negotiating with its marvelous, awesome, humbling body–you brought some order and called her your own, called him “Henry.” Thank you very much.
But here is where Christian love and the love of our families need to look each other deep in the eye, and say a traveler’s fond farewell. For Christian love is a journey far deeper into the realms of reality than family love can go on its own. The fact is that every society generates a moral code to protect infants and raise children so that they don’t lie or steal much and do stop at red lights. It is in a mother’s nature (a father’s too) to care for the little ones. And though it is surely true that the moral precepts of the Christian religion and other religions help ground the family behaviors that support social life at every level, Christianity never meant to leave you with the notion that married sex and children can save you from the puzzle and pain of your body and its death. Christianity never meant to turn love of family into a religion, as America tries to do.
The Christian message–the gospel–holds so much more; holds a word for everyone who was born of woman, no matter how they have sailed their ship through the shoals of youth or age. The message is one that no married Jesus dying sweetly of old age could manage to speak with love and hope in your inward hearing. For the message can only come from above you, higher than you are. From the height of Christ of the cross-and-resurrection, who will always reveal to you God-more-humble than you are and God-more-alive than you are. From that height come the words of the Jesus code, clear as ever. You are my beloved. You are my beloved. You are my beloved. Abide in me as I abide in you. Be not afraid–not of your body, not of your sex, not of your death. Only love and do not fear. “Love, and do what you will,” as Augustine put it long, long ago. For there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for your fear–about death, about sex, about the church–had to do with punishment, and whoever feared has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4.18) When you are at rest in love, assured of the gospel that you are accepted by the Lord of all, then you know–and know again–what it is to rise with your Lord, and to love, even as you have been loved.
For there is no condemnation in Christ, but in him a full embrace of life in the body, life incarnate. Thus, in hearing Jesus’ voice clearly, no longer coded in the language of our culture’s fears, you can hear his effective call to leave hell and death, even while your heart keeps pumping, and to rise with your God and become the love that God is speaking into the ear of every child everywhere. There is a good book that tells this story. I understand it still sells better than Dan Brown. It is the only love story you ever needed to tell to those in pain, including yourself, and its code is so simple that no one ever misheard who was told it plain. God is love, and only those who abide in love abide in God.
delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York
© Stephen H. Phelps, May 2006
Recent Comments