Elijah and the Da Vinci Code

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Well, I finished the damn thing.

What exactly was this huge secret the Priory of Sion was hiding, anyway? Certainly not the secret that Jesus was some proto-feminist cavorting with Mary Magdalene who taught the world... what is it that Dan Brown actually thought the teaching of Christ was about, anyway???

In any event, that's not the secret. Teabing already knew that. And certainly just finding the bones of Mary Magdalene would prove nothing. All they would show through carbon dating is that a bunch folks through the ages who are into ritual sex have been schlepping around the remains of a first century woman.

And then the French lady at Rosslyn Chapel tells that the actual Grail (Mary's bones) was never meant to be revealed and the concept is more significant than the reality. Brown demythologizes his own myth. (And on top of it, if the final aspiration of this new religion is to kneel at the bones of Magdalene, and then to not reveal them would be like me inviting a bunch of people to eucharist and then telling them I hid the elements somewhere in Europe. Good luck.)

But that is not the point of this post.

I really got pissed at a minor little thing in a late chapter when Langdon explains the meaning of the Star of David to Sophie. What he says is that it is the sexual union of the archetypical male (blade) and the female (chalice) celebrated by the Jews as the conjugal relation between two deities: the one the ancients pronounced "Adonai" (I have too much respect for the Name to write it in this context) and Shekinah.

This causal overthrow of Hebraic monotheism and the imputing of paganism into the faith of Israel angered me more than anything else. This is full-on clothes rending stuff. Where is the outrage? (What if Brown portrayed Krishna eating a hamburger? Would folks react nonchalantly about that?)

All I kept imagining was Elijah reading DVC and inviting Dan Brown up the mountain for a chat. It was a satisfying thought.

Perhaps that is not particularly nice of me, but it was an enjoyable little rant.

Grief

Note: I found this in my Selva Oscura file. It was meant to be posted in mid-October. The contents explain my absence from the blog from that point to May 2006. I'm not sure why I didn't post it then, and not exactly sure why I am posting it now.

My father-in-law did go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service on December 1st. The process of his death was a profound and holy one for us all.

-Peregrinator+

The last two weeks have been difficult at the Peregrinator household as we received word that my father-in-law has been diagnosed with a rather aggressive cancer. While I have walked countless people through such family situations, this is the first time it has hit so close to home. Not only am I close to the pain my wife and children are experiencing, I have come to understand that I am very close to the old guy myself.

For two days after receiving the news I experienced what I now realize was a deep, deep sense of grief. I seemed to float through life, easily distracted, with a gnawing sense that life had been irrevocably changed. Underlying everything was an inescapable sense of sadness. Oh, I could be diverted and even joyous for the moment, but the baseline of existence was the sadness. On top of it all, I was tired. I felt a weariness in my bones.

I mention this for a few reasons. I would welcome your prayers for us, and especially for Gene, my father-in-law. But also the experience put into context my perception of my ministry and the fate of Anglicanism, this selva oscura in which I find myself. I am in grief.

I grieve the fracturing of Anglicanism. As events have unfolded in the months that have followed General Convention 2003, we have witnessed the steady dissolution of Anglicanism into several factions, none of which am I particularly comfortable with. I grieve the end of an Anglicanism which may actually have never existed.

Discussion on the Daily Office

Captain Sacrament has begun an interesting discussion on the Daily Office. Check it out.

Books in my Backseat: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

As those who know me are aware, the back seat of my car always has a number of books in it which are in various stages of being read by me. Family members are tempted to call my Corolla “The Book Mobile.”

Among the various theological and spiritual tomes floating around the backseat is usually a volume of history. Recently I have been slowly wending my way through volume one of Ian Kershaw’s magisterial biography of Adolf Hitler. I am currently about half way through the massive volume, the chapter narrating the events of 1930, the Nazis’ breakthrough year.

I must report that it is an engrossing read. I feel myself being drawn more and more into this nightmare slowly unfolding as the Weimar Republic commits suicide. Kershaw presents each step in the development of the Dictator, skewering facile explanations for Hitler, while following clues for his character evolution to reasonable and illuminating conjectures.

A few things that strike me today as I consider the book:

The Hitler that emerges from these pages is an enigma in many ways. He was first and foremost a public speaker and propagandist of the first order. That, combined with his emerging consciousness that he was the destined Führer after the failed Putsch, made for a dangerous and volatile mixture. From a psychological perspective, although the psycho-biographical card can be overplayed, Hitler was damaged goods, with an inability to make significant interpersonal attachments, sexual or otherwise, and bravado coupled with an inability to make decisions at crucial moments. (On the sexual aspect of his persona, Hitler sometimes referred to the masses to which he spoke and whipped into a frenzy as “feminine.” It would seem that his approach to the German people was orgiastic and sexual, replacing normal relationships.)

What this confronted in me was my image of a buffoon is inaccurate. It is influenced more by Charlie Chaplain and Mel Brooks than the historical record. There were things that were definitely off kilter with the man, but he had some particular gifts and knew how to use them.

One point of interest for me as a Christian is that in the early 1030s as the Nazi movement begins to attract a broader base of support, it came from the Protestant elements of society far more than the Catholic (even though the movement began a decade earlier in largely Catholic Bavaria.) Certainly one of the reasons is that the Catholics had their own center-right party, Zentrum. But might it also have to do with what I suggested a few weeks ago about the tie between Protestantism and the Nation/State? And at this juncture in Nazi history the appeal from Hitler was less to anti-Semitism (which was played down to attract the bourgeoisie) and more toward rising above the factionalism of parliamentary democracy by reasserting German greatness coupled with strong anti-Bolshevik rhetoric. The main villains were those who capitulated to the Western powers at Versailles and overthrew the Germany tradition of strong central government represented by the Kaiser.

Were Catholics somehow more immune to this appeal to power and nationalism? It is an interesting question for which I have no solid answer. (And does Mussolini’s Italy offer a counter-argument?)

Can it happen here? That is always the haunting question that accompanies reading histories of the Third Reich. (Why such questions don’t haunt us when we read of the Bolshevik terror is another question.) In fact, some well known writer (whose name escapes me) recently wrote a volume of alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh becomes the leader of a Fascist USA. And certainly some quarters have leveled the argumentum ad Hitlerem toward aspects of our domestic intelligence gathering of late.

But reading Kershaw’s book on the rise of Hitler convinces me that there are not enough significant parallels to warrant such fears. American constitutionalism is vastly more stable than the strange intricacies and asymmetries of Weimar parliamentarianism.

Furthermore, we do not have a vital tradition in our recent memory of the great Leader, who will lead the nation. Democracy was new in the 1920s in Germany. Many, not only Nazis, longed for the return of a Frederick the Great or a Bismark to unify what historically had been a fractious grouping of Germanic principalities. Hitler fused the German desire for an authoritarian leader with his ideology, thus creating the Führer cult. Such a cult was contiguous with their history and political longings. If anything, we have deconstructed our concept of the political leader since at least the Watergate era. No one is longing for a new Lincoln or Washington recidivus.

And, frankly, I don’t care what I read in the letters section of my local rag, Bush is not Hitler. Not even close.

If I had a rating system, I’d give this book five out of five whatevers.

Last time for Ephesians 5:21ff.

It just struck me that this is the last time I will have the opportunity to preach on Ephesians 5:21 ff. on mutual submission in Christian marriage. Next time this section of the Lectionary passes by we will be using the Revised Common Lectionary instead of the Prayer Book Lectionary. The RCL, I'm afraid, sanitizes the lectionary by omitting this passage.

Yes, yes, it is a difficult passage to preach. But that is what makes it so important. We all hear it read from a rather sexist perspective, just to find it on deeper inspection talking about a mutual kenotic marital concept that seems to reflect the Carmen Christi of Philippians 2. All is dependent upon the verse "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." (And even futher dependent upon verse 18: "Do become drunk, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.")

I fear that the spirit we are filled with if we intentionally omit this passage is the spirit of an age that will pass away.

I find this a reason to mourn tomorrow.

I just don't get it

I have avoided reading the Da Vinci Code for some time now, but have now plunged ahead as the Adult Ed Committee asked me to start out the Fall Sunday Forums with four sessions on the allegations of the book. While I knew that I would most likely be non-plussed by the anti-Catholic posture, I was told repeatedly to be prepared for a ripping yarn.

But having now slogged through most of it, I find it not some great page-turner, but a puerile comic book, all too impressed with its self-importance. Frankly, for an author who intends to debunk the canonical portrait of Jesus, Dan Brown gives me no indication that he has even read the four Gospels. His references to the orthodox Christ (and, indeed, all early church history) was gleaned from watching a half hour show on Jesus on the History Channel.

And what's this tripe about the gnostic gospels teaching about a purely human (and apparently lusty) Jesus? The point of gnosticism in its docetic Christian form is that he wasn't human.

And call me old fashioned, but the thought of worshipping at the bones of Mary Magdalene as the goddess sounds not merely like a simple revision of Christianity but rather idolatrous. Shouldn't Christians have a sense of revulsion, rather than curiosity?

I have been told not to blow away my audience by quickly dismissing the book. It's going to be a struggle. So far I have been debating titleing the first talk either "This is blasphemy" or "What Bullshit." I think the latter may be a little more eye catching in the parish newletter.

I have heard other pastors and other Christian leaders say that no matter what the merits of his thesis, Dan Brown raises important issues that need to be discussed. Well, no he doesn't.

Can anyone help me here?

Hey, kids! Try these at home!

Someone passed on to me some volumes of home liturgies to perhaps incorporate into our repository of forgotten and unread books called the parish library.

One is a 1989 new-agey volume by a Catholic priest, who (if still alive) must really be chapped at the ascension of B XVI, entitled Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim. I just had to share two of the home rituals for "Cosmic Amphibians": "A Urine Ritual" and "A Ritual for Fingernail Trimming."

O God of all life, as my body now flushes out its physical impurities,
grant that all negative, harmful, and angry feelings may be flushed out as
well.

O Divine Friend, as I trim my fingernails, may I also transform my inner
aggresions into love. May I, by your grace, seek to be a peacemaker in all
my dealings and in who I am.

Well, I am approaching the age where a urination litany might be helpful.

But this does have my mind reeling at the other opportunities for home rituals our author may have missed. Here are a few of mine:

For a perfect medium-rare tri-tip on the grill
When the puppy takes a dump on the carpet
Litany for delieverance from a snoring spouse
Penitential rite for forgetting to take out the trash when left-over shellfish has been put in it

I'm thinking of reviewing the excommunication scene from Becket to get ideas for a solemn ceremony for the grounding of a teen-ager.

Are there others we have missed?

Reading the Bible Christologically

For those who follow the Daily Office lectionary of the Episcopal Church, you know we are now reading from Judges as the selection from the Old Testament. Much of the time we find ourselves rather taken aback with the bloodlust that seems to be endemic to such texts. One of the hermeneutical tacks that is taken to retrieve these stories as scripture is to receive them as metaphors for the life of faith. Thus Jael is less an instruction to drive tent stakes through the oppressor's head, and more a metaphor for bold women fighting injustice.

A good case in point is the story of Gideon when the LORD commands him into battle with only three hundred men against a much larger foe. The lesson, of course, quite explicitly stated is that the people know that it is the LORD who gives the victory and not their own power.

Certainly as a metaphor for Christian existence today this is a powerful image. We see the ebbing tide of faith in the West and we are encouraged that the faithful remnant can through God’s grace prevail in a secularist culture. Yes, my congregation is relatively small, I might say, but I should not see us as a small and powerless band in a rear-guard action in society, but as Gideon’s band of 300 (Peregrinator’s band of 185 ASA?).

But there is a problem here with this metaphorical application of scripture.

As I read the passage about Gideon and the 300 the other day what passed through my mind was not the story as a metaphor for the plucky 185 at St. Swithin’s. Instead I was wondering how Louie Crew and Bob Duncan were reading the text. Each could read it as a metaphor for their respective movements: and lesbian and gay advocacy group Integrity, or a group formed to combat Integrity’s agenda, the Network. Each has begun as a small group against a larger foe. Integrity has prevailed thus far in the Episcopal Church. The Network may prevail in time, if not in the Episcopal Church, then in the Anglican Communion. Both might claim, with Gideon, that this is a sign that the victory belongs to God, and not themselves, even though they pursue contradictory ends.

(Please note that I have no idea if either of them has read the story in this way. Probably not. The only thing of which I am relatively certain in this regard is that they have probably both been more faithful in saying the Office than I.)

My point is that such a common metaphorical application of scriptural texts is fraught with problems, not least of which is a sort of self-aggrandizement in which the subject of the Bible becomes me. Scripture becomes the breeding ground of hubris. And conversely, the other becomes the enemy in the text, whether Integrity or the Network. (And note here, I am not intending to rehash the continuing problems in the Episcopal Church, because if I do Kyle has promised to poke me with a stick.)

None of this is to say that the scriptures, here specifically texts from the Old Testament, do not have an application to our lives. It will not do to say that the story of Gideon is merely an ancient story of the conquest of Canaan. Such stories do function as metaphors, but not as unmediated metaphors. To appropriate the text as metaphor Christ must mediate the story to us. It functions metaphorically to us because it first pertains to first to Jesus.

Now, by this I do not want to suggest a crude eisegetical apologetics that I commonly read in high school, wherein the Old Testament served simply as direct prophecy of Jesus. Here I am thinking more of a patristic turn toward Irenaeus and his doctrine of recapitulation. In Christ the history of Israel is brought to a climax. He is faithful Israel, embodying the Covenant anew in his life, death, and resurrection. Thus, Jesus is the new Gideon, going into battle with sin and death on the cross armed only with his trust in God. (And the 300 are reduced to a true “army of one.”)

Now we can begin to appropriate Gideon as a metaphor for our lives. But we do so at the foot of the cross. And our approach is as the disciples, waffling between faith and faithlessness, at once a loyal follower, then betraying, denying, and fleeing. We read texts in relation and encounter with the crucified and risen Jesus.

And thus, with Bonhoeffer, we are forced to read biblical texts as against us before they are for us. The crucified one is Gideon. We may be the 300. But only first after we realize that we are the enemy, or the men of Israel who were not among the 300 (and indeed were later the grumblers). Through such a Christological hermeneutic our hubris is confronted and we cease being the primary referent of biblical metaphors.

Further, Christ redefines the metaphor of Gideon as an image not of antipathy and bloodshed, but cross-bearing and kenotic servanthood. We may see ourselves reflected in the image of Gideon, but only after we have been crucified with Christ and bear his marks in the world.

Of course, if we read the text in this way, it does not mean that Integrity and the Network will suddenly come to an agreement on the issues that vex the Episcopal Church and also much of Euro-American Christianity. But such a reading will help us to approach texts humbly, and, in doing so, find the transforming power of God within them.