“ Spiritual Secrets – Comments on the Da Vinci Code  and Esoteric Christianity”

May 28, 2006

Scripture Reading:   John 17:  11b-19, 25-26 

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

 

In 1945 A man in Nag Hammadi Egypt who was trying to fertilize his crop came across some ancient sealed jars that contained writings.  He had found an important trove of documents that were primarily composed by Gnostic Christians.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was one of these writings.  In this gospel Jesus tells Mary a secret.  He gives her a special revelations which none of the other disciples received.  At this point the text breaks off.  When it resumes Mary is in the midst of describing Jesus’ revelation concerning how the enlightened soul may be free of its earthly bonds, rise above them by the power of a great secret, and attain eternal, silent rest. 

The Gospel of Thomas is another one of these writings. Jesus this time tells Thomas a secret.  Jesus takes Thomas aside to impart secret teachings.  When Thomas returns the others ask him what Jesus had said.  Thomas replies, “If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up!”

The Gospel of Judas is another one of these writings.  In this gospel Jesus doesn’t say anything to Mary or Thomas but this time pulls Judas Iscariot aside.  It says, “Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something exalted, Jesus said to him;  ‘Step away from the other disciples and I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom…” 

If you take these three “gospels” on face value, you might wonder what on earth was Jesus thinking?  Did Jesus make everyone think that person and only that person had the special secret?  It reminds me of a story I once heard.  There was a person in a psychiatric hospital who thought he was Jesus Christ.  The chaplain knew him well.  Then one day another person was admitted who thought he was Jesus Christ.  The staff tried for months to keep the two separate.  They didn’t know what would happen if they found out that the other thought he was Jesus Christ.  Would that create further psychosis?  Would violence break out?  They had no idea.  Well, the inevitable happened and one day the staff saw the two “Jesus’s” talking.  They waved their hands around.  Voices became loud, then whispered.  Finally after about three hours the older resident came up to a staff worker and said, “Jerry, he needs a lot of help.  It is good that he is here.  He thinks that he is Jesus Christ and everyone knows that I am Jesus Christ.!”

Reading these Nag  Hammadi gospels one might think something similar was bound to happen among the disciples.  Mary, Thomas and Judas find out that the others think they each have the special secret of Jesus.  You can see them protesting to Jesus.  “Jesus, you better get rid of those guys.  Look who thinks they have your special secret!  And everyone knows that I have your special secret!” 

What is going on here?  These three gospels are not gospels at all.  They are Gnostic writings.  People in those days would write books and then claim that the book was written by someone famous.  They did this in order to give special importance to their book.  So, these Gnostic books were written under the pseudonyms of some of the apostles that had followed Jesus.  Salvation in these books is not based on repentance of sins, or even the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, rather salvation is based on knowing the right secret.

The word is “esoteric.”  Knowledge that liberates consciousness is described as esoteric in religious circles.   Usually when we think of the word “esoteric” we think of something obscure and far out.  But, really the root of the word is from the Greek esotero which means “further in.”  The gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Judas are esoteric Christianity.  They believed that there were many levels of reality inside of us.  The more levels one discovers and actively surmounts then the closer one gets to one’s salvations.  On the surface of things one would never guess that there were so many levels.  That is why esoteric Christianity relies on the metaphor of a secret.  A secret is the thing that is not apparent on the outside.  It is only revealed when the time is right. 

If you read these esoteric gospels you will notice a striking difference between them and the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  These gospels are non-historical and even anti-historical.  They contain little narrative and have no sense of chronology.  They show no interest in research, geography, or historical contexts.  These documents make no serious pretense of actually overlapping with the canonical Gospels.    Instead, they rely on cryptic sayings.  They remind me of Zen koans.  These are sayings that are like riddles.  A famous Zen koan is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”  The riddle is suppose to break open our everyday logic so that we can enter into a new kind of awareness and thinking.  For instance, the gospel of Thomas says, “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass.  And whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy.”  Or, another one from Thomas is, “When you make the two into one and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner and the upper like the lower and when you make the male and the female into a single one so that the male will no longer be a male nor the female be a female, and when you make the eyes in place of an eye, and hand in place of a hand, a foot in the place of a foot, an image in the place of an image, then you’ll enter into the Father’s domain.” 

The best selling page turner, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, which this week was released as a movie, is based on knowing a secret that supposedly Jesus knew.  If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, the plot goes like this:  A curator at the Louvre in Paris is murdered.  This leads to a trail of clues found in the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, and the discovery of a centuries old secret society.  The mission of the secret society revolve around the Holy Grail. 

Traditionally the Holy Grail is suppose to be the chalice that Jesus used during the Last Supper.  It is the chalice he holds up when he says “This is my blood for the forgiveness of sins.”  However, the novel identifies the Holy Grail as the bloodline of Jesus.  The book suggests that Mary Magdalene was wife of Jesus and the mother of the child.  And because she bore descendants, particularly a daughter by the name of Sarah, she is, in fact, the Holy Grail.  After the crucifixion, she fled with their child to the south of France where they established the Merovingian line of European royalty, which then became the basis of a secret society to preserve that bloodline and to protect the secret until it was time to make it known to the wider world.  (Along the way, Brown also suggests the church invented the deity of Jesus, and it’s all been covered up by the Catholic Church.)

All four books, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Judas and the Da Vinci Code  make the claim that they know a secret we don’t.  Furthermore, true salvation is based not on repentance of sins, and the sacrifice of Christ to show us the love of God.  Rather, salvation in these books is based on knowing the secret and cracking the code. 

Before I talk about what is right about esoteric Christianity let me caution what is wrong about it.  The problem with esoteric Christianity is that it can easily go to extremes.  The belief that there are secrets one must know for salvation can easily lead to one and only one person knowing the secret.  A select few may be let into the inner circle of the saved.  Only a few know the truth.  Plus, there is no examining what that truth may be because it is a secret.

Furthermore, the scriptures themselves are often read allegorically.  That is, the scriptures are read not for their apparent meaning, but for their inner meaning.  Have you ever picked up one of those dream interpretation books at the check out line of the grocery store?  If you dream of a dog that means you are angry at you boss.  If you dream of flying that means there is going to be a change in your life.  If you dream of loosing your purse that means that you are going to enter a new period of your life.  Esoteric Christians would often do a similar thing with the scriptures.  So, for instance, whenever you read of Adam that means the scriptures were really talking about “human intelligence.”  Whenever you read of Eve that mean the scriptures were talking about “human sensitivity.”  Animals meant “human passions.”  So on and so forth.  Plus, there wasn’t one standard set of allegorizations.  Rather, Adam might mean “human intelligence” to one person.  To another Adam might mean “hard work.”   The problem with this approach is that the spiritual secret becomes the key to all allegory and all interpretation of the scriptures.  The real history and literal meaning of the text was made irrelevant.    

Dan Brown allegorizes everything in light of the secret about the Holy Grail being the blood line of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.  I guess he calls it “carrying the plot forward.”  He doesn’t care about what really happened historically with the Christian church, or what the artist Leonardo Da Vinci really thought about his own paintings.   For instance, at Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” Brown makes the argument that on Jesus’ right is a woman and not a man.  Plus, she and Jesus make a “V” shape in the space between them.  This “V” is a sign for the Holy Grail.  Therefore, Da Vinci must have meant that the woman was Mary Magdalene and that she was in fact the Holy Grail as Jesus’ wife.  He makes the argument as if it was real history.   It doesn’t matter that Da Vinci himself had written the name “John” under that person in his preliminary sketch of the painting.  Nor does it matter that the painting is not of the Eucharistic moment, but rather it is of the moment when Jesus says, “One of you will betray me.”  That is why Da Vinci has no actual cup on the table in the painting.   

The kids magazine “Mad” did a spoof on Dan Brown’s allegorizing in this month’s issue.  It has a spread of Da Vinci’s  Last Supper with comments above different characters.  One comment is this:

Each of the Apostle’s robes corresponds to the color of marshmallows in boxes of Lucky Charms cereal.  Biblical scholars disputed this until General Mills added blue diamonds, purple horseshoes, and red balloons in 1975, 1984, 1989, respectively, fulfilling an ancient prophecy hinted at in Revelations. 

Allegorizing can go off the deep end. 

That is what is wrong about esoteric Christianity.  Secrets are exclusive and allow the secret keeper to claim superiority over others.  Plus, it allegorizes the scriptures and anything else it cares to,  to such an extent that it becomes a free for all regardless of the historical realities, literal meaning and original intent of the authors.  That is what is wrong. 

What is right about it?  The fact of the matter is that there is an inner journey that is important to us in the Christian life.  If we are to grow closer to God we all must go esoteric.  That is we all must enter into deeper layers of reality and deeper ways of being than just dwelling on the surface of things.  It is this that I think is what appeals to people.  Finding the truth is a journey which we must be actively engaged in just like the two main characters Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu did.

The Saint Teresa of Avila describes this inner journey wonderfully in her classic,  The Interior Castle.  She likens the soul to a castle which is shaped like a diamond.  We journey through  this castle as we deepen our spiritual life.  The rooms of the castle are made in concentric rings and the inner most ring being where God resides.  This is what she says:

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many rooms….

…Let us now imagine that this castle, as I have said, contains many rooms, some above, others below, others at each side; and in the center and midst of them all is the central room where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.

Aha!  Here again, Teresa talks about secrets.  Teresa of Avila is a esoteric Christian too.  However the difference here, and the reason why she wrote her book, is that anyone can take the journey into their castle.  The way through the castle is deepening prayer.  All rooms are good rooms in their own way.  It is just that when you think you are there, more layers of the castle begin to unfold and there can be even greater intimacy and joy in God than you had hitherto imagined. 

She writes of seven rooms.  If people are interested, some day I would be glad to have an adult study about her book.  It would take too long to go over these seven rooms in the sermon.  What I would like to talk about is the final room.   Where God dwells.  That room she calls the spiritual marriage with God.   The place where she says the most secret things pass between God and the soul is the place of divine union with the soul. 

Dan Brown also talks about marriage.  Only he talks about a literal marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  Somehow it is this literal marriage and the literal blood line that we are suppose to worship.  However, in true esoteric Christianity it is not a literal marriage that is important.  Rather it is the spiritual marriage.   This marriage comes up in the Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi.  For instance in the Gnostic gospel of Philip it says,

Indeed marriage in the world is a mystery for those who have taken a wife.  If there is a hidden quality to the marriage of the world, how much more is the undefiled marriage a true mystery!  It is not fleshy but pure.  It belongs not to desire but to will.  It belongs not to the darkness of the night but the day of light. 

The fact that in the gospel of Mary Magdalene Jesus is said to have kissed Mary, my guess would be, refers to this spiritual kiss.  It refers to a spiritual depth and intimacy that they share.  Indeed, in the old testament there is a book called The Song of Songs.  It is a love poem where the beloved and the lover are searching for each other.  Through Judaism and Christianity, that book is understood as the souls searching for God and God searching for the soul. 

Teresa of Avila describes this marriage as the soul merging with God.  She says it is like rain falling from heavens into a river or a spring.  There is nothing but water there.  It is impossible to divide or separate the water belonging to the river from that which fell from heavens.  Or, she describes it as a tiny stream that enters the ocean from which it can find no way of separating itself.   

Does anyone wonder what the secret is?   The deep secret that is shared between the soul and God in the most inner room of the interior castle is not a code or special knowledge.  Rather it is divine love itself which passes between the soul and God.  Love is the ultimate secret which has no words. 

This secret is not exclusive to Mary Magdalene, Thomas, or Judas.  Nor does Dan Brown have a monopoly on the secret via the marriage of Jesus and the Holy Grail as a blood line passed down through a monarchy.  The real secret is available to all of us as through prayer and our life’s journey following the way of Jesus we get closer to God  and find is great love.