Bloodline

"Jesus and Mary Magdalene were definitely in a sexual relationship. Then, you have the relationship between Jesus and John, the 'disciple whom he loved,' which would make Jesus also bisexual."

"Whoaaaaaaaa," Mimi exclaimed. "That's crazy! I never thought of that!"

Maritza, Mimi, and I had just left the Hollywood screening of the new documentary, "Bloodline." The director, Bruce Burgess, made a film detailing his search for the supposed secret being maintained by the Priory of Sion, the secret that Dan Brown brought forth in "The DaVinci Code," a secret originally put forth by the book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" in the '80s: Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers, she stole his body and staged his death, ran to France and had children whose descendants are now alive, well, and...French. The theory suggests that the past kings of France were of Jesus' bloodline, and now the Secret Society is hiding the locations of the bodies of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

I sat in the back seat, listening to the conversation between Maritza and Mimi as they recapped the movie, humored, but feeling no compulsion to say anything.

* * *

A few days before we went to the movie, Vegas, Mimi, Derrick and I had a conversation about Jesus' humanity.

"I think Jesus had a wife and kids," Derrick said. "I just do. Jesus, after all, was a man, and he experienced everything everyone else experienced, including love I'm guessing. What's wrong if he did have a wife? It's not like it would change his message."

"Of course it would," I said.

"Why?" he said.

"Sex is a spiritual union," I said. "Jesus could not have had sex with a woman who was a sinner because in that unity, his sinless state would have been compromised through her sin."

"What if Jesus had a relationship with Mary Magdalene though," Mimi said. "That wouldn't shake your faith, would it Sarah? There would be no reason for you to stop believing."

"Of course there would be," I said. "Jesus having a wife and children would make him out to be the greatest liar and fraud every to walk the earth."

"But his message was still good, and one of hope."

"Not really," I said. "The message Jesus brought was hardly feel-good. It was radical, divisive, controversial, and perceived by the religious authorities of the time as antagonistic. Jesus made the greatest, most arrogant claim of any human being - he not only claimed to be the Son of God, but he claimed to be the only way for people to be saved. And, he claimed that he would conquer death. His message, either way, was insane. He was either insanely deceptive, which would make him a very bad person, or he was insanely correct."

"But what if Mary Magdalene did hide the body," Mimi said. "What if Jesus never died, but she tricked everyone into thinking he did."

"That's a hard one to sell," I said. "If you look at Jesus' disciples, they were skeptical of his message for the three years that they walked with him. And they spent all of their time with him. Nobody knew him better than they did. Peter was the classic idiot of the group, the best representation, in my opinion, of the average person. He never understood Jesus. He said stupid things, had a problem believing what Jesus said, claimed to be loyal and then ended up denying any association with Jesus when he was about to die...Peter was a weak, skeptical, flaky, cowardly individual. No one would bet on Peter to come through in a tight squeeze. He was the classic traitor.

"But the crazy thing about Peter," I said, "was that he suddenly went from being a coward to the champion of Jesus' message - literally, the rock on which Christ built his church. Peter transforms into this bold evangelist spreading the Gospel even at the threat of death. He completely changes after Jesus' resurrection, and continued Jesus' message until he himself was executed by crucifixion. And even when he was dying, he begged his executors to crucify him upside down because he said he was not worthy to die in the manner of his Lord.

"Now," I said. "What on earth would make Peter, the cowardly traitor, transform like that? 11 out of the 12 disciples ended up being martyred, and they all died proudly proclaiming the name of Jesus as Lord. There is no way Peter and the other disciples would have given their lives for a hoax. No possible way. Would I give my life for a hoax? Absolutely not. But, if Jesus did raise from the dead, that's worth anybody's life."

"Maybe Peter was an opportunist," Derrick said. "He wanted the fame that Jesus had. And he had the chance to assume leadership of Jesus' movement, even if Jesus did die."

"That doesn't make sense," I said. "Why would Peter want to be the leader of a movement that killed Jesus? He denied any association with Jesus when he was being killed. Unless Jesus did actually rise from the dead, Peter would have had no reason to put himself out there, because he would have then been the next target. Jesus didn't have celebrity popularity among the religious leaders. He was a threat. Peter would not have wanted that."

"I am still confused about why Jesus' having a wife and kids would make people stop believing," Mimi said.

"Because," I said. "The foundation of life is that Jesus came to save fallen man. He was 100 percent God and 100 percent man. He lived the perfect life, which made him the perfect sacrifice for all of humanity. His coming had been prophesied for thousands of years, and God himself declared Jesus to be his Son. If Jesus was a liar, then God is also a liar and deceiver which would mean he is not God, and so it is all one big lie."

"How would you feel about that, Buddy," Vegas asked me with a grin. "Are you hesitant to go see Bloodline? Are you afraid of what you might find out?"

"No," I said. "I want to go see it, actually. I want to see what's out there, and what's being talked about. Am I afraid that my faith would be challenged? No, I am not afraid of that. Like Peter, I spent the first 14 years of my life following rules of the Bible out of fear of Hell. God was some distant power I was afraid of. I was a good person, but not sold out for Jesus by any means. He hadn't yet shown himself to be a savior for me.

"But then, all of a sudden, he did. He performed such a mind-blowing miracle in my life, the resurrection became real for me, and my faith with it. So, with that said, I don't just know God in my head, following rules and trying to be a good religious person. I am not religious. I am a believer, and Jesus Christ is real to me, in my life, as surely as I am talking to you now. I have walked with a personal God for almost 10 years, and as I know him better and better, my faith grows in strength. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is who he said he is. So no, I am not worried about them finding Jesus' body. Or Jesus' French children, for that matter, which is a humorous speculation in itself. It's never going to happen because Jesus is not dead."

* * *

The movie turned out to be a journey about Bruce Burgess trying to connect circumstantial evidence using fallacious logic to make Jesus have a wife and kids in France. Burgess ended up in France, at the Rennes le Chateau, where he and a man living in a van discovered a body in a cave next to a chest that contained a cup, some sort of middle eastern vial, and a bottle traditionally used for perfumes. All in all, some scientists tried to carbon date the hair on the unidentifiable corpse, and although they were unable to tell from the sample the gender of the mummy, Burgess somehow concluded that the corpse was middle eastern and by some sort of rickety syllogism crafted by Burgess, Mary Magdalene. Burgess concluded his film by saying, "I think Jesus was married to Magdalene and had children..."

Burgess surprised the theater by entering at the end of the film to take questions, to the applause of the audience. He happened to be in Hollywood.

During the question and answer session, I was baffled by the extent to which people praised the man for finding the "truth." I knew that most of the people in the audience were secular, because most evangelical Christians would be offended by the making of the movie, let alone open-minded about seeing it. Audience members were asking questions such as, "how will the world take this - the fact that you have discovered Magdalene's body?" People were thanking him for exposing the greatest "lie" of all time, for finally challenging a ludicrous notion that Jesus was somehow divine, etc..

I didn't feel the need to leap up and defend the name of Jesus to the theater; I was with my friends, who are seekers, and I understood the context of the movie. But, nevertheless, as a reasonable human being, I was still startled by the readiness with which they accepted these random and loosely connected finds as "truth."

Burgess declared, "I am in search for the truth. The most important thing this movie does is challenges Jesus' divinity. In doing that, it makes him more like us, instead of someone we cannot relate too. And, as such, it highlights the divinity in each and every one of us." The response of the crowd was thunderous applause, even a standing ovation. He then went on to talk about how much flack he has received from the evangelical right for his movie (no surprise, I thought), how many people got up and walked out of the theater, how many death threats he has received, and so on.

It didn't help either that a woman in the audience became very combative with the director during the Q and A and was making all of these rude, aggressive statements that weren't even factually correct. She was probably a church-goer, which made it even more embarrassing.

If there is one word in the human lexicon that has had a timeless history of controversy, it's "truth." I am always amazed when discussions concerning truth surface, because as much as people declare that they desire to discover the "truth," expose the "truth," tell the "truth," acknowledge the "truth," when it is presented to them or if another possibility poses a challenge to their own, they do their best to avoid, tailor, deny and/or dismiss it as wrong or irrelevant. So it remains an elusive concept, and one that people, for all of their claims, find offensive. Truth is only desirable when it is convenient and affirming to personal, individual beliefs. When it challenges, convicts, and questions preexisting systems, though (as truth should), it can't possibly be true...

Truth, however, stands by itself as its own witness that eventually has its say, whatever it might be. Though facades masquerade as copycats, truth eventually comes to light because it is constant; a sword in stone.

* * *
"I think Mary and Jesus had a relationship," Maritza said to me after the movie.

"What convinced you of that?" I asked.

"It just makes more sense to me than the resurrection," she said. "How can I believe some guy claiming to be God's son was raised from the dead? It's just not believable."

"And what if he actually was the Son of God, as crazy as it sounds?" I said.

Maritza hesitated. "I don't know," she said, shrugging. "I guess that would change things."