Minivan messiah

The Right Rev. Darrell E. Berger fears not. He is telling the congregation that Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene. Two sons, he says, whose descendants are the rightful heirs to the thrones of Europe. Degradation and wars ensue when those heirs are not in their rightful places, the reverend tells us.

It’s Mother’s Day here at the 102-year-old Fourth Universalist Society and Landmark on the Park Unitarian church in New York City. A hundred or so people are scattered throughout the pews. The woman in front of me periodically shakes her head, as if to keep The Rev. Darrell’s words from getting in her ears. Folks do not take kindly to having their mythology unraveled.

The reverend continues. He is reasoning from the premise that Jesus was a man, one with an absent but demanding father and a mother who worshipped him; one who knew a perfectly good trade, but preferred to hang around with riffraff and develop a fanatical following, something like Sean “Puffy” Combs, sans Italian designer suits.

The Gnostic gospels depict Mary Magdalene as Mrs. Jesus Christ, the reverend says, and these gospels include a Book of Mary. We don’t hear a lot about the Gnostics, Mary, her children or her book, because they were driven from the annals of history by a power structure set forth by the apostles and the other Mary - Jesus’ mother.

I suppose it stands to reason that if your son is the Truth, the Light and the Way, no woman could possibly be good enough for him. I find the reverend’s sermon perfectly credible, and while it will have no impact whatsoever on my faith in God, his courage in relating this forbidden truth certainly reaffirms my faith in man.

In 10 years of attending United Methodist Sunday school and 25 years of intermittently going to services at churches of various Christian denominations, I never heard one word about Jesus’ family. The Gnostics, I’m told, were persecuted out of mainstream Christianity for mentioning it. Christians apparently believe having a family is beneath their savior.

I was glad to learn this day, for the first time, that Jesus may have had children. I had a crush on him when I was a little girl. Everything he said and did, with the exception of the day he blew up at the money-changers in the temple, was about tolerance and forgiveness. Like every other good little Christian, I dutifully absorbed the words and ideas ascribed to Jesus, but the more I did, the more they seemed in conflict with church rhetoric. Here was a man who loved and accepted everyone, but whose followers condemned to hell anyone who didn’t agree with them. I had trouble believing in a deity who would squander 4 million souls based on what appeared to me to be cultural differences. What did Jesus have on Buddha, Mohammed, Babaji or Shiva? Public relations, perhaps?

The Rev. Darrell’s sermon would be perfectly scandalous in most of the churches I’ve attended. He would be marked as a heretic quicker than a priest with an overheated valve for little boys, all because he gave his congregation something to think about, rather than telling them what to think.

A few Sundays ago, I learned The Rev. Berger will be leaving the Fourth Universalist Society and Landmark by the Park Universalist church at the end of this month after 10 years at the pulpit. I heard he upset a few people in administrative sessions, which isn’t hard to imagine given his affinity for speaking his mind.

I just hope he never stops doing it.

Monday, May 10, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.