Why I'm UCC, or Thomas, John, and Benedict XVI - sermon by Don Portwood April 24, 2005
While working on the sermon I decided to put the readings in the midst of the sermon rather than at that beginning, so let's begin with prayer.
Gracious God, keep us open to your Holy Spirit moving in us this morning,
to your widening love,
to the variety of ways we can discover you:
through Jesus the Christ,
through Scripture,
through seeking your light within us and outside us. Amen.
There's an old joke that says "UCC" stands for "Unitarians Considering Christ." The older I've gotten, the more that joke seems like a truth to me. With John's gospel reading you'll hear in a minute and the Faith and Fellowship group concluded a study of Elaine Pagels' book, Beyond Belief, the Secret Gospel of Thomas, it was a perfect time to "consider Christ."
I also decided to preach today's sermon because many of us struggle with who Jesus is. Is that true for you? And when many of us end up believing that Jesus wasn't divine or wasn't God, we wonder then, if we Unitarians are Christian. Don't we have to believe Jesus is God, God in three persons blessed trinity, like we sang in our first hymn?
You may be surprised to discover, like I was, that this question many of us are asking is the same question the church has been struggling with since Jesus. About Jesus, Episcopal Bishop and author, John Shelby Spong says, "Remember, first comes the experience, then comes the explanation."
First, people experienced Jesus, his life, death and presence after death, then came the explanations. And there were many explanations that came months, years, decades, hundreds of years after Jesus. So I've felt relief, that the struggle I've had in understanding Jesus, is similar to many faithful Christians who lived 100, 200, 300 years after Jesus.
In this sermon I'm going to give you some old and new history that Pagels' book sheds light on.
Let first, I put two questions before you that I hope to provide some answers to. Both questions are raised by John's gospel in our reading this morning.
1) Is belief in Jesus, the only way to God?
2) Is Jesus the same as, equal to God the Father/Mother?
John's gospel, differing from Matthew, Mark and Luke's gospels, would answer yes to both questions. That's orthodox Christianity. Believe differently, you may be called a heretic, a liberal, not biblically sound or a religious relativist.
But some "new history" has changed what we know about the early church. It came through the discovery of an urn of texts from the beginning of the Christian era, unearthed near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. Researchers have discovered that early Christianity was much more complex and diverse than the "official" versions of Christian history. One of the texts discovered in Nag Hammadi is called the Gospel of Thomas. Elaine Pagels believes one of the reasons the gospel of John was written was to oppose the gospel of Thomas.
So listen as Donna reads first from John, about Jesus being the only way to God and equal to God, then from a hidden gospel discovered 60 years ago, the gospel of Thomas.
John 14:1-7
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In God's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Sovereign, we do not know where youare going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father/Mother except through me. If you know me, you will know my Mother/Father also. From now on you do know God and have seen God."
Thomas 1:70 & 77,
Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will destroy you."
Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all. From me all came forth, and to me all extends. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there".
# # # # #
In other parts of John and in Thomas, both gospel writers believe that Jesus is God's own light - in human form. But they end up in two different places.
John identifies Jesus with the light that came into being "in the beginning" and that's what made Jesus unique - God's only begotten son. John calls Jesus the "Light of all humanity," and believes that Jesus alone
brings divine light to a world in darkness. In our scripture this morning Jesus says in response to Thomas saying we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to God, but by me." John says we can experience God only through the divine light embodied in Jesus.
Certain passages in the gospel of Thomas, written at the same time as the gospel of John, but discovered in 1945, draw a different conclusion. For Thomas, the divine light Jesus embodied, is shared by humanity since we are all made "in the image of God." In the gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all. From me all came forth, and to me all extends. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there".
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will destroy you." So what mystics in both Judaism and Christianity have been saying for centuries - we find in Thomas a thousand years earlier, "that the 'image or light of God' is hidden within everyone, although most people remain unaware
of its presence." This quote from the gospel of Thomas was from our Call to Worship, Jesus saying, "The Kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living God."
John says, we find the light by looking to Jesus, by only believing in Jesus, God's one of a kind, unique child. Thomas says, we can find the light by looking inside, to discover God's light within.
Thomas and John are both explanations of who Jesus is, written perhaps a hundred years after Jesus. But rather than seeing them as two ways to discover God and know God's presence on earth, Pagels says, "they became rival explanations, for by claiming that Jesus alone embodies the divine light, John challenges Thomas's claim that this light, may be present in everyone. John's views, of course, prevailed, and have shaped Christian thought ever since."
Remember again, first is the experience of Jesus, then the explanations. Because, for John, Jesus becomes the one we must believe in, John is not concerned about offering ethical teachings, like Matthew, Mark and Luke. You find no sermon on the mount, no words of how we must live in God's kingdom. He is primarily concerned that people believe that Jesus is God, the light of God, equal to God. It's not following Jesus that's important, it's believing in Jesus. John says it himself, "but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."
How did John's gospel win out over Thomas? Pagels says it was due primarily to the church leader Irenaeus, around 200, as well as certain Christians in Asia Minor and Rome. Irenaeus championed John's gospel as the greatest gospel of the four and saw it's promotion as the way to unite diverse Christians living under persecution by the Roman Empire.
Irenaeus took on what he called heretics. Heresy means choice, people who were choosing different explanations. Irenaeus took on the people who refused to acknowledge how utterly unique Jesus was. Irenaeus said, Jesus is not just the light sent by God, but God's word, so that when you read - that the Word, or the Lord, spoke to Moses or Abraham or the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures, that was Jesus, God's word, speaking to them. Or in John this morning, Jesus says, "If you had known me, you would have known God also; henceforth you know God and have seen God."
In order to promote his reading of the gospel of John and his view of Jesus, Irenaeus called upon fellow believers to judge and excommunicate heretics and destroy any that disagreed with Jesus absolute uniqueness. Move forward in time 100 years.
This battled in the early church continued until 312 when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian. The horrible persecution of Christians ended. Amnesty was declared and confiscated property was to be returned to Christians throughout the empire. But in many churches there were rival factions still explaining Jesus in different ways. Constantine specified that privileges applied only to those he called "ministers of the lawful and most holy catholic religion". But who were they?
To answer that question and unify the church, a decade later, in 325 Emperor Constantine called Bishops from churches throughout the empire to meet at his expense at Nicaea in Turkey. They were to come up with a formula that would join together a world-wide communion of Christians in one catholic and apostolic church. So the question was who was that holy and catholic church? Catholic means universal.
Even in 325, there where were still bishops, churches, Christians debating whether Jesus was divine, was of one being with God. Many said that belief was not found in the scriptures, nor in Christian tradition - Jesus was divine, but not in the same way as God the Mother/Father. The other group said Jesus was essentially no different from God, of one being with, the Father/Mother.
We know which side had the majority. The document and wording that won became known as the Nicene Creed. A majority of bishops signed it. Some bishops refused to sign it. It became the official doctrine that all Christians henceforth had to accept in order to participate in the only church recognized by the emperor-the "catholic church".
I invite you to read the Nicene Creed together, not as a doctrine you have to believe, but to hear what it says, page 883 in the hymnal.
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
who has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
# # # # #
Nearly 50 years after this creed was accepted, many Christians still looked not just to Jesus, but to the light within to seek God. They continued to read books and gospels outside the prescribed canon that two hundred years earlier, Irenaeus had denounced. So in 367, the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, issued an Easter letter in which he demanded that Egyptian monks destroy all such writings, except for those he specifically listed as "acceptable". That list makes us virtually all of our present "New Testament". But someone - perhaps monks at the monastery nearby, gathered dozens of the books Athanasius wanted to burn, removed them from the monastery library, and sealed them in a heavy, six-foot jar, intending to hide them. They were buried on a nearby hillside near Nag Hammadi. They remained hidden until an Egyptian villager stumbled upon them sixteen hundred years later.
Now we can read for ourselves, some of the writings that Irenaeus detested, Athanasius banned and discover for ourselves how early Christianity was much more diverse and broad than we have been taught.
What I came to realize in reading Beyond Belief, was how similar the debates, discussions and arguments taking place 1700 years ago are to today. While mystics still seek God through intuition, reflection, creative
imagination, by looking inward -- others say, Jesus is the only way, the only truth, the only life and while they humbly say that are not adding or subtracting anything from the Bible, they themselves become guardians of the truth, God's own authority for interpreting the scriptures as they see it.
You hear that when Christian fundamentalists argue against gay marriage. You get a hint of it from now Pope Benedict the 16th, whom the Spirit may be working on.
In last Wednesday's Star Tribune, reporters Sharon Schmickle and Rene Sanchez wrote, "A declaration that then Bishop Ratzinger issued in 2000 as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed "sincere respect" for other religions but also attacked 'religious relativism which leads to the belief that one religion is as good as another.' He said, 'If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation,' Ratzinger said in the document, which called non-Catholic Christian bodies, 'defective.'"
I'm UCC not just because I'm a unitarian considering Christ, but because I also seek to follow what Jesus said, hear God's still speaking word today and discern where that Spirit of God, that light of Christ, is moving within me and within the Church and outside the Church - in Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, quantum physicists, and the world.
I'm UCC because we are not a creedal church. We don't make you sign on the bottom line that you believe everything in the Nicene Creed. We are a covenantal church, joined together in covenant, "agreeing to walk
together in the way of Jesus Christ, made known and to be made known to us."
I'm UCC because I believe the love of God and God's unpredictable Holy Spirit keeps meeting us on the margins of life, keeps breaking down the walls that we've erected to divide us; keeps popping us out of the boxes we've created to explain God; keeps widening our vision of truth and grace - that doctrines and explanations have narrowed tighter and tighter.
So my invitation to you in this sermon is to stay open to the Holy Spirit in yourself,
to God's widening love,
to the variety of ways we can discover God:
through Jesus the Christ,
through Scripture,
through seeking God's light within us and outside us
so that ultimately,
we all discover that there is NO scripture,
NO doctrine, NO one way...we put our trust in
but only God and God alone. Amen.
