July 22, 2007
Text: John 20:1-2, 11-18
Title: Leading Witness
How many of you have read the book, The DaVinci Code? How many of you have seen the film, The DaVinci Code? I finally got around to reading the book this summer during my June vacation. I enjoyed reading it. Dan Brown is a good writer, delivering a good suspense novel with a disappointing ending. He certainly has a fertile imagination, because a lot of what appears to be fact is pure fiction. And he is, well, a very rich man because of the book.
What I liked about it most was the suspense and the setting: much of it takes place in and around Paris. What I didn’t like was the harshness with which he portrayed the Church and the early Fathers of the Church.
The novel—and that’s exactly what it is, a work of fiction—puts Mary Magdalene front and center. The DaVinci Codesuggests that Mary Magdalene is at center of the best-kept secret in human history: that Mary Magdalene is the wife of Jesus of Nazareth and mother of his child, meaning that there is a genetic Jesus bloodline to this very day. Further, Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail, not the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper, sought after for two thousand years. The novel develops the idea that the Priory of Sion is pledged to protect a box of documents to prove Mary is Jesus’ wife and one day reveal the truth.
And the secret society, Opus Dei, is pledged to keep the truth under wraps. A great story, but untrue.
One thing Dan Brown suggests that is true is that the early Church battled and almost eliminated goddess worship. In the Mediterranean basin at the time of Jesus goddess worship was mainline and dominant. Goddess worship was the worship of fertility, and the first century was obsessed with sexuality and reproductive organs. Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, was a small sect that viewed sexuality as primarily reproduction. And its god was spirit, the unseen God described by Paul to the Athenians and never carved or pictured. Sexuality was subordinate to the kingdom of God and the ethics of Jesus. It is St. Paul who suggests that Christians remain celibate; and if they can’t, then they should get married.
Edee and I went to Ephesus a few years back. It is part of modern Turkey. But in its day it was the second or third city of the Roman Empire, an artistic, religious, and commercial center. It housed the third largest library in the world. I was excited: here are some of the greatest Greco-Roman ruins, the stadium where the Ephesians gathered to deal with Paul’s God that was undermining the production of idols. And it was a place Paul had been himself.
Was I ever surprised. Located in Ephesus was one of the seven great wonders of the ancient world, the temple of Artemis. The ruins are impressive. It was a grand edifice dedicated to Artemis. She was a goddess, with at least 19 breasts to signify the power fertility.
When we went to the Ephesus museum, I was surprised to see the greatest collection of the biggest male reproductive organs ever. The early church believed that when sexuality and fertility were worshiped, the creator of sexuality was not being worshiped. So they systematically opposed it.
Back to Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene has been at the center of a lot of distortion and speculation. Tradition held that Mary was a prostitute, although Scripture certainly doesn’t support this idea. Some have connected her to the woman who anoints Jesus with oil but Scripture never identifies that woman as Mary Magdalene. In the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, written in 1971, Mary sings a siren song, I don’t know how to love him. She is pictured in the musical as powerful, pretty, and a prostitute.
Would the real Mary Magdalene please stand up? Now, the real Mary is described by the canonical Gospels as a pretty amazing woman:
She was from Magdala, a prosperous little town along the Sea of Galilee.
She was possessed by seven demons according to the Luke 8 and Jesus healed her. We have no idea what the demons were, but she was pretty bad off.
She traveled with Jesus and supported him financially, according to Luke 8.
She was at the foot of the cross according to Matthew 26 and others, along with Mary the mother of Jesus. She was there when he was buried.
Mary reminds us that Jesus regarded women highly. More highly than even the Jews of her day. They were required to separate themselves from men during religious activities at the temple or the synagogue. But Jesus had women followers, Mary among them, whom he treated equally with respect. No keeping them at a distance here.
But one other thing we know about Mary makes her chief among the followers of Jesus. It makes her the leading witness among all the disciples. She was the first human being to see and experience the resurrected Lord.
According to the Gospel of John, Mary went to the tomb after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week. She noticed the tomb had been opened. She thought his body had been stolen and told the disciples. Peter and John came to take a first-hand look. When they looked in the tomb and didn’t see Jesus’ body, they went home. But outside of the tomb, in tears, Mary Magdalene saw a figure she mistook to be a gardener. But it was Jesus, whom she came to recognize. The first to see him alive, resurrected, was Mary Magdalene. Not Peter. Not John. Nor any other of the twelve.
Mary’s name is mentioned in the four Gospels 13 times. Of those 13 times, only once is her named mentioned outside of the resurrection stories. And that is why Mary Magdalene is a leading disciple. She was there, at the foot of the cross, at the tomb, and she saw him with her own eyes; on that the Gospels agree.
As you know, my faith rests on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Take that away and Jesus is nothing more than a kind and generous man. Take that away and death still claims us all for eternity. Take that away and hope that God will one day reign is nothing more than illusion. But I am not worried. Because a woman from a little town in Galilee, along the Sea of Galilee, saw what happened and has passed it on to me. You see, I believe her and what she saw.
Amen.