The other day I was watching a programme on telly about the Holy Grail and what was being called The Real Da Vinci Code. It was one of those historical quests trying to look into the validity of various claims. My ears pricked up when it started looking at the Knights Templar, because of their local connection with Temple Newsam and this church - though we didn’t get a mention. Each time a claim was examined it got knocked down by some level headed expert, causing Tony Robinson - famous for Time Team and playing the hapless Baldrick in Blackadder - to move on to the next.
One of the claims that caught my imagination was the notion of there being a secret bloodline from Jesus. This argues that the true Holy Grail is not a chalice used at the Last Supper, but Jesus’ descendents through Mary Magdalene. The implication was that when Jesus died on the cross Mary Magdalene was already pregnant and the rest of Christian history has suppressed this truth. This claim got rejected on a number of fronts - not least the primary documents on which it is based being fake!
What caught my imagination was the idea of looking at the Holy Grail, the sacred relic, as human ancestry rather than some object. This is what we profess in baptism. Through the waters of new birth we become children of God and inheritors of Christ. We are the spiritual bloodline that continues in an unbroken dynasty from the first disciples and the resurrection. The sacred treasure is to be found in living human beings transformed by the Holy Spirit and subject to all the frailty that we are so aware of. It is a relic that is vulnerable to human foibles and yet somehow manages to stay broadly on course. That ‘somehow’ comes through the Holy Spirit who inspires and guides, even corrects where necessary.
What started out as a wild notion became a fresh way of looking at the Christian vocation to be living stones, built into a temple for God (to quote 1 Peter 2:4-5, 9). It is the priesthood of all believers, which is itself rooted in the priesthood of Christ, indeed issues from his priesthood.
If we start thinking about the most sacred relic of Christ being the bloodline that flows through baptism, then we have to ask how we honour that in our treatment of other people. The best comment that I came across on Jerry Springer the Opera, (the controversial show screened on BBC2 and which I used as my springboard for last month’s letter, concerned this very point of how we honour human beings. In the first part of the opera, ordinary people are treated in a degrading way. The point was that this is how the show would treat God and the only way Jesus would get on such a show would be in a way that could be degraded. If that offends us, perhaps the first half should offend too! Satire is never comfortable.
Easter is early this year. At the end of this month we will walk again through Holy Week and journey with Christ through the cross to the central celebration of our faith, his resurrection. Looking for the actual cup used at the Last Supper may be of curious interest, but it is a distraction from the real treasure on offer. The true mystery is how this faith captures and inspires us, how Christ lives in his followers and opens to us redemption. If we found the actual cup it would be placed in a museum case, behind protective glass and we would not be allowed to touch it. The bloodline is much more accessible and therefore much more powerful and adaptable.
So how is our bloodline faring? Do we allow it to be the dynamic source of our life and keep us vibrant, or do we in effect put it behind a museum’s showcase with a big sign saying do not touch? It is worth remembering that boxes cannot contain God, not even the box of a stone-cold tomb: he just breaks out.
Looking at the sacred relic being a bloodline, being the Christian Church in all its strengths and weaknesses, means it is also a folly to look for some kind of perfect Church. We will never find it. It is made up of human beings and while some are pretty remarkable, none are pure and perfect. But they are, we are, accepted for this remarkable role. This is God’s madness and as St Paul said, this is wiser than any human wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:25). It is creation being drawn into its own salvation and the freedom that sometimes trips us up is also the very means of that salvation.
© Ian Black 2005