June 11, 2006 Sermon

Did Jesus Marry?
Luke 8:1-3, Mark 16:9-11

My wife, Linda, and I met in high school. A big place, it had over 600 in each graduating class. In four years, or 48 possible classes, she and I had three together. We did not even know each other’s names until one of those three classes ended. For two years we moved in separate circles. Yet in nine days we will celebrate our 25th anniversary.

How did we find each other? Those classes we had together were all band. Our band friends set us up at a party, we dated a mere six years, and then got married. Add it all up and Linda and I have been in a relationship for over 30 years. We have fought along the way. Each of us brought character flaws into the marriage. Both of us are stubborn. Yet by the grace of God we have received a gift. I cannot imagine life without her. I trust her when she tells me she cannot imagine life without me. God has blessed us with excellent children. Praise God!

I have no illusions about marriage. Linda’s and my marriage owes whatever success it has to the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness is a constant need. We are blessed. The fact that half of all marriages end in divorce does not make the people in them failures. Nor does it make marriage a bad thing. We would want a happy marriage for everybody. Maybe even Jesus.

In his book, The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown states Jesus got married. This is a very old theory. It appears in a document from less than two hundred years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Gospel of Philip. Quite a few people wrote Gospels, or religious biographies of Jesus. The Bible has “only” four of them because the others’ teachings about who Jesus was and what he did differed considerably. The early church was forced to decide which of them to trust.

But writings that did not make that cut still exist. Dan Brown writes a brief quote from the Gospel of Philip into the Da Vinci Code: “And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us.’”

After hearing this quote one character in the novel protests, “But it says nothing of marriage.” To which the man reading from the Gospel of Philip replies that the word in Aramaic for “companion” literally meant “spouse.” So a character in the Da Vinci Code claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. This is indeed one of the first stories about Jesus that the church rejected. Though Dan Brown claims that everything in his novel is “accurate”, it is as easy to refute this as, you will excuse the expression, an old wives’ tale. It does not survive even a cursory scholarly analysis.

Dan Brown uses selective, suspect translations from ancient languages. He relies on conspiracy theories about the Roman Catholic Church, the medieval Knights Templar and, well, men. He wrote a wonderful story, but as I have repeatedly stated, it is just a story. I suspect he must be laughing at all the preachers and Christian scholars scrambling to prove him wrong. It just sells more books. I bother to deal with the Da Vinci Code only because it has done a fantastic job of raising important questions, questions that nag at us even if we never read the stupid book.

One of those questions is: Did Jesus marry Mary of Magdela? The New Testament answers, No. I place a more trust in the Bible than in Dan Brown, so that is my answer, too. But asking the question raises two more: who was Mary Magdalene? Who was and is Jesus?

The Gospels contain surprisingly little about Mary Magdalene. The two passages we read today just about cover her. There are other references, but they only duplicate these. Mary Magdalene followed Jesus. She followed him all the way to the foot of the cross. She was among the first to see him after his resurrection from the dead. And as our passage from Luke tells us, somebody (apparently not Jesus) had cast seven demons from her soul. The Bible does not tell us the one thing we think we know about her: that she was a prostitute. There is simply no evidence to support that idea. It is a rumor, nothing more.

Mary was as close to Jesus as any woman. Not even his mother had closer contact with the adult Jesus. But that is about all we know about her. We know a great deal more about Jesus. And not one of the hundreds of documents about him depicts his wedding ceremony. Instead, they give us the compelling picture of a man who lived in the deepest loneliness while constantly surrounded by women and men. We have the picture of a man who was God on earth, human and God at one time, experiencing the full range of human emotions—including terror at the prospect of the cross—and temptation. Yet Jesus was at the same time God. He did not give in to the temptation to sin. He had the power to heal and perform miracles.

Jesus was and is God. If we read the Gospels as avidly as we do the Da Vinci Code we would encounter Jesus as a person. A compelling, complicated person who makes no secret of his desire to enter into a life-changing relationship with all people. A person with the light of God radiating from him. A person who is all about truth and openness and wants nothing to do with conspiracies and secrets.

And so we reach our final question: Do you know Jesus as the Son of God? Do you know him as the one who, at his Last Supper with the disciples, spoke clearly of the ultimate sacrifice he would make within hours? Or do we know him as a faker who slyly arranged the seating chart at the Last Supper to reveal to the “wise” that he was married to Mary Magdalene, as Dan Brown tells us Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting shows? When you receive communion in a few moments, as yourself one final question: Is this the tragic remembrance of a dead man, or the celebration of the God who loves us enough to die for us?