Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
April 11, 2004 - Easter Sunday
Reading 1:
Selected verses from the Gospel of Thomas, a gospel consisting only of the
sayings of Jesus, that are not in the Bible. This gospel pre-dates the gospels of Matthew,
Luke, and John.
Jesus said, “Those who seek
should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed.
When they are disturbed, they will be astonished.”
Jesus said, “If your leaders say to you,
‘Look, the kingdom of heaven is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will
precede you. If they say to you, ‘The kingdom of heaven is in the sea,’ then
the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is inside you and
outside you.
Jesus said, “When you come
to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you
who are the children of the living God. But if you will not know yourselves,
you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."
Jesus said, “If you bring
forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not
bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
Sermon:
A couple months ago, I
received two separate mailings inviting our congregation to purchase a large
banner to display on the side of our building during the week prior to Easter.
With a bright red background, white letters say: “The Passion of the Christ.”
Then in black letters: “True or False?” A silhouetted profile of Jesus’ face
with a crown of thorns is looking towards the other text: “Come and find out at
our Easter services,” followed by the service times for the church that orders
it. I declined to order the banner—because it wouldn’t go with our architecture.
I imagine the message of many a pulpit this morning asks
such questions. True or false: Jesus was sent to the world to die for
humankind’s sins. True or false: Jesus gathered with his disciples for a last
supper, after which one betrayed him and Jesus suffered a brutal death on the
cross. True or false: Jesus was resurrected on the third day making it possible
for all humanity to have new life.
These questions are not the essential questions to ask when
seeking the heart of true religion. No matter how we may answer, they are posed
in a context that prioritizes belief, and ultimately, this belief makes the
difference in many congregations whether you belong, whether you can come to the
table of the community, whether you are welcomed as a believer or judged a
heretic.
Genuine religion asks a different kind of question that
moves beyond belief, such as “How can we live with clarity in a world full of
ambiguity and uncertainty?” “How can we live with integrity and hone our
sensitivity to suffering and injustice?” “How can we cultivate an original
relationship with Creation, the Universe, God?”
…
It’s been a good year for religious reflection when looking
at pop-culture. Not only did Mel Gibson’s movie attract huge numbers of people,
but a book with religious themes remained a national bestseller for most of the
last twelve months. I imagine many of you have read The Da Vinci Code by
Dan Brown. It reads as a mystery thriller like those of Clyde Cussler. It’s not
great literature, but it sure strikes a chord with people who long for
spirituality that moves beyond conventional Christian belief. While Brown revels
in revealing historical facts and scholarly conclusions that question the
veracity of orthodox Christianity, he also engages in fantastic speculation as
if it were fact. Unless you’re well-read in the history of Christianity, it’s
difficult to discern what is fact and what is fantasy. For example, Brown’s
characters discuss the Council of Nicaea, held by the emperor Constantine in
325, where it was determined what writings would go in the Bible and what
writings would be left out, that many of the excluded writings were discovered
in 1954 in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, and that these writings painted a
significantly different portrait of Jesus than those chosen to be in the Bible -
all of which is true. However, he goes on to say that these secret Gnostic
writings coupled with the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that Jesus and Mary
Magdalene were married and had at least one child. For starters, the Gnostic
writings aren’t secret, and among them there is one passing reference of Jesus
kissing Mary on the lips, hardly evidence that they are married. As for the Dead
Sea Scrolls, they were written 200 years before Jesus lived and have nothing to
do about him.
Even as exaggerations and unfounded speculation fill the
clever storyline and intriguing conclusions, I appreciate the spirit of Dan
Brown’s mystery novel, tacitly encouraging religious inquiry. For free religious
inquiry leads to deeper religious faith and understanding. The Da Vinci Code
revolves around the mystery of Mary Magdalene, arguing that the feminine
dimension of Jesus’ teachings was lost when the early church leaders distanced
Mary from the twelve apostles of Jesus by portraying her as a prostitute.
Perhaps it was simple confusion of the early church fathers that Mary Magdalene
was seen as one and the same as the prostitute named Mary that anoints Jesus’
feet. Or perhaps it was intentional, as Brown claims, that the early church
fathers besmirched Mary Magdalene’s reputation to bolster a patriarchal
understanding of Jesus. We can’t ever know, but most scholars agree that Mary
Magdalene was a close disciple of Jesus, perhaps even closer than the apostles.
Some scholars see Mary as a thirteenth apostle, the one who understood his
teaching best, given that she was the one person who stayed with him to the
bitter end of his life, served to mollify the others in their agony, and then
was the first to be visited by a vision of the risen Jesus.
Clearly, there is an affirmation of the feminine in the
gospel stories that often is ignored, and even more so among the early Christian
writings that were excluded from the canon. It is exciting to notice the
popularity of scholarly books about the writings that did not make the cut at
the Council of Nicaea in 325. Another strong bestseller of the past year is
Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief. Pagels is the author of the bestselling
Gnostic Gospels, who in her new book compellingly argues that the Gospel of
John in the New Testament was written as a searing criticism and response to
communities that followed the Gospel of Thomas. Another recently released book
is Karen King’s The Gospel of Mary of Magdala which provides not only the
surviving text of the sole known gospel named for a woman but also a reflection
on how Mary was Jesus’ closest apostle.
It may be a surprise to some that there are gospels other
than those found in the New Testament. The Gospel of Mary was first found in
1896 but remained un-translated for fifty years. Unfortunately the first six
chapters are missing and may never be known. The text suggests a considerably
different understanding of Jesus’ teachings and the religion he professed as
that of an interior spirituality. According to King, in Mary’s gospel,
“salvation is not something that comes from an external savior. … One has to
seek salvation within.” The gospel also suggests women were among the spiritual
leadership of early Christian communities.
The entirety of the Gospel of Thomas was not known until
discovered in 1945 with other Gnostic writings in the Egyptian town of Nag
Hammadi. Between 1600 and 1700 years ago, the emperor Constantine supported one
specific form of Christianity and provided the authority and resources to
destroy other forms along with their writings. It is amazing that one desperate
person with foresight hid the papyrus scrolls of his community in a jar that
wouldn’t be discovered for sixteen centuries. Their discovery makes clear there
was not unity and certainty among early Christians. They understood Jesus
differently, focusing on teachings of Jesus than teachings about Jesus,
differences that led to conflict and division. Whether or not one sides with the
early church fathers who excluded the Gnostic gospels, I agree with King,
“either way, examining these controversies makes it possible to gain a much
richer grasp of the meaning of the Christian teachings.”
The Gospel of Thomas is dismissed by some Christian
scholars as elitist, for some of the sayings suggest that only a chosen few come
to know God. But similar teachings in Luke, Matthew, and John echo this idea of
divine election. Elaine Pagels, in her recent book Beyond Belief, argues
that “Thomas’s gospel draws a quite different conclusion: that the divine light
Jesus embodied is shared by humanity, since we are all made ‘in the image of
God.’ Thus Thomas expresses what would become a central theme of Jewish – and
later Christian – mysticism a thousand years later: that the ‘image of God’ is
hidden within everyone, although most people remain unaware of its presence.”
The early Christian communities were inspired by a
spiritual vision and community that honored the inherent worth and dignity of
every individual. Their adherents engaged in practices that offered them
spiritual integrity and community. In 325, the formation of the Nicene Creed was
the result of the Council of Nicaea. The history of Christianity suddenly
accented right belief over practice, and in time church doctrine placed
religious authority with the church leaders. Orthodox Jews and Christians
haven’t ever fully denied the affinity between God and ordinary folks like us,
but their leaders have tended to not only discourage but circumscribe the
process by which people can seek God on their own. Without question, this is why
many people raised as Christians and Jews today look elsewhere to supplement or
replace their tradition’s focus on having the right belief. It is becoming clear
to ever more people that true religion moves beyond belief to practice, those
paths that lead to self-transcendence and the transformation of communities.
I am struck by the sense of urgency in the teachings of
Jesus found in the Gospel of Thomas, a beckoning to bring one’s life and what is
most important into focus. There is a radical injunction to seek, and that
seeking will lead to being disturbed and astonished. Thomas’ Jesus calls us to
find the Kingdom of God both within and outside ourselves, to know ourselves as
children of God, to bring forth what is within and among us.
Elaine Pagels tells the story when she was at the San
Francisco Zen Center. The Roshi or teacher, was an American, Richard Baker. He
told the story how he had gone from Boston to Kyoto, where he entered a Buddhist
monastery and became a disciple of Shuryu Suzuki Roshi. He laughed and said,
“But had I known the Gospel of Thomas, I wouldn’t have had to become a Buddhist!”
So who was Jesus if we take into account not only the
gospels that were included in the canon that came together in the 4th
century but also all the other gospels, and most notably the Gospels of Thomas
and Mary? Marcus Borg, one of the forefront scholars among the Jesus Seminar,
gave a most cogent answer when he was asked this question by NBC—and to keep his
answer to 70 seconds. This is what he said:
Jesus was a peasant, which tells us about his social
class. Clearly, he was brilliant. His use of language was remarkable and
poetic, filled with images and stories. He had a metaphoric mind. He was not
an ascetic; he was world-affirming, with a zest for life. There was a
socio-political passion to him-like a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King; he
challenged the domination system of his day. He was a religious ecstatic, a
Jewish mystic, if you will, for whom God was an experiential reality. As such,
Jesus was also a healer. And there seems to have been a spiritual presence
about him, like that reported of St. Francis or the Dalai Lama. And as a
figure of history, Jesus was an ambiguous figure, you could experience him and
conclude that he was insane, as his family did-or that he was simply eccentric
or that he was a dangerous threat-or you could conclude that he was filled
with the spirit of God.
John Dominic Crossan, an esteemed Catholic scholar, perhaps
the most scholastically rigorous of the Jesus Seminar, concludes that Jesus was
“a nobody and a nuisance” who had a revolutionary vision that compelled people
to transform their lives, trusting the power of the spirit and the
transformational nature of intentional religious community.
For me, what is most important to remember about Jesus is
that he was a Jew, a poor Jew, among an oppressed class within Roman society. He
ministered to people who had their backs up against the wall, people for whom
life was full of uncertainty and unfairness. Yet, in the face of struggle and
injustice, Jesus taught and modeled a way of being in the world that affirmed
the worth and dignity of every individual, that spiritual clarity is in the
reach of all, and that love exists at the heart of reality and extends to all
people seeking it. His ministry and teaching spoke to people who knew loss,
ostracism, hatred, violence, and persecution. Jesus didn’t live and die so that
people would bow down and worship him. He lived and died so that by his
teachings and example we will learn to live for love and die for love. And just
as he rose again, we too can rise. Our lives can be raised by the love we
cultivate in our own lives. But this takes practice, spiritual practice.
And this is at the heart of all true religion. Every
religious tradition in the world provides for the practice to cultivate a
spirituality that not only deepens one’s relationship with the spirit of life
but also calls one into genuine engagement with the wider world. The heart of
every religious tradition lies beyond belief. In the Christian tradition, I
believe we are called to practice resurrection, that is, to cultivate our hearts
and souls to be lifted by love. This isn’t a once and for all occurrence.
Resurrection, as I understand it, occurs time and time again. If we live our
lives out of genuine encounter, authentic engagement, and embodied love, if we
engage in the discipline of prayer or meditation, if we cast our lot with a
specific faith community.
The practice embodied by Jesus is symbolized in the passion
of Christ. The passion of Christ: True or False? True, when understood as the
practice of Christ in which we can participate, the practice of living with
clarity in a world full of ambiguity and uncertainty, the practice of responding
to suffering and injustice, the practice of cultivating an original relationship
with Creation, the Universe, God.
A ten year old girl penned the following poem following a
sunrise service in which I co-led several years ago:
It’s
Easter morning.
Christ has risen.
Or has he?
I can’t see him,
But I can feel him.
I can feel his kindness,
His happiness.
Or is it theirs?
The people’s
The people who are gathered here.
The people who have come together,
Come together to celebrate.
May we rejoice that we come together to celebrate together
as a religious community that moves beyond belief. We agree to disagree
theologically, for we trust that we need not think alike to love alike. For it
is the practice of love rather than the belief in it that ultimately saves us.
Blessed be. Amen.
© Copyright 2004 Alan C.
Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
