““Feasting and Bathing” in After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)
Prayer of Thanksgiving (Nag Hammadi)
We give thanks to you, every life and heart stretches toward you,
O name untroubled, honored with the name of God, praised with the name of Father.
To everyone and everything, comes the kindness of the Father, and love and desire.
And if there is sweet and simple teaching, it gives us mind, word, and knowledge;
mind that we may understand you;
word that we may interpret you;
knowledge that we may know you.
We rejoice and are enlightened by your knowledge.
We rejoice that you have taught us about yourself.
We rejoice that in the body you have made us divine through your knowledge.
The thanksgiving of the human who reaches you is this alone: that we know you.
We have known you, O light of mind. O light of life, we have known you.
O womb of all that grows, we have known you.
O womb pregnant with the nature of the Father, we have known you.
O never-ending endurance of the Father who gives birth, so we worship your goodness.
One wish we ask: we wish to be protected in knowledge.
One protection we desire: that we not stumble in this life.
This week’s chapter from After Jesus: Before Christianity is entitled “Feasting and Bathing.” It’s about banquets and public baths. It’s in our study of the first two centuries because Jesus followers did those two things (among others) – they enjoyed great meals and they bathed together. In Christian tradition those two things became Holy Communion and Baptism, but they started out as two great ways to spend time together with people who cared about the same things you cared about.
Last week we talked some about the amazing meals Jesus followers and their neighbors in the first century enjoyed. They took hours. There was lots of food and wine. They were relatively small groups because everyone reclined to eat and couches take up lots of space. You don’t invite thirty friends to recline in your living room. These small groups of friends talked about everything that was going on in their lives and in the world around them. And if they were followers of Jesus, they talked about how his teachings made life better for everyone.
Our scripture lesson this week is a prayer found with other previously unknown Christian writings at Nag Hamadi in Egypt in the 1940’s. Imagine it being read as a meal prayer – a custom many families and most church groups still practice. It’s a prayer full of rich images and big ideas. It sets the stage for great food and even greater conversation. It invites God to be part of what’s going to happen next. It invites God to expand the minds and hearts of those who are about to spend hours talking about what God is doing in the midst of their lives. What a great beginning to an amazing time together!
One of the amazing architectural accomplishments of ancient Rome is the system of aqueducts that brought large quantities of water into their cities. I always thought they had big cities so they needed lots of drinking water. Actually, they needed lots of water so they could take baths at the hundreds of public bathhouses that were everywhere, even in the smaller towns. People took baths because it was a way to connect with extended family and with neighbors. Bathing provided the same kind of business connection that golf has played in our time. It was like a big public party. Bathing served multiple purposes. It got people clean from their work or the heat of the day. It provided time to unwind and process what was happening in life – like a long leisurely bath, only with friends. And bathing provided a ritual for making new beginnings. If you want to celebrate getting clean and sober, you invite your friends to bathe with you. If you want to stop cheating your boss and become an honest worker, you invite your friends to bathe with you. If you want to make a spiritual commitment to a new idea or philosophy, you invite your friends to bathe with you. If you want to set aside the violence and self-aggrandizement of Rome, you invite your friends to bathe with you.
Consider bathing in the story of John, whom we call the Baptizer but Westar calls “the bather.” John is challenging both the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman occupiers to live in a way more aligned with his understanding of Israel’s God. He asks them to be honest, nonviolent, compassionate and more. He’s preaching about turning life away from the prevailing understanding of Rome to what became Jesus’ vision of life – justice, merciful, lifting the burdens of those who are poor. As people sign on to his alternative vision for life, he invites them to bathe as a sign of washing off the past and getting ready for something new. And he does that, not in the beautiful new Roman bath built right along side the Temple in Jerusalem, but in the open air in the waters of the Jordan River. Those who bathed with John were rejecting Roman values AND rejecting the normal Roman place of bathing. They were claiming their lives in new ways in their own river. It was a double act of defiance.
We know that the early Jesus people bathed together because everyone bathed together. When they did so, they remembered that Jesus bathed with John and signed on to his movement to live differently than was the custom of their day. When they gathered they washed away the day’s contact with Roman commerce, with Roman soldiers in the streets, with Roman violence and division. They gathered as family, as rich and poor, slave and free, even men and women and adapted the custom of their time to a way to reinforce what they believed to be pure and holy – a new way of life.
So how did feasting and bathing become Holy Communion and Baptism? Over several hundred years social customs change. Reclining in small groups to eat becomes sitting at tables. Large public baths become less popular. The groups of Jesus followers in some places became larger. It was hard to fit everyone into a home or bathing room. So they adapted. They gathered in a large group for singing and prayers and ate a little bit of food, remembering that they would feast in small groups later. They stopped bathing together but continued to wash new members in water as a sign of a new beginning. Over time the practice changes until we no longer remember its roots, but we remember its root meaning. At the table in our sanctuary we still feast with Jesus. At the font we still wash new members and claim a new way of living.
These two practices we call sacraments are still rich and powerful in their meaning for us. We don’t need to replace them with banquets or group water aerobics. But we can expand their meaning even more by learning their roots and adding our ancestors experience to our own. And we can consider what we have lost over time that may still be important to recover.
One aspect of the earlier practices is the sense of community which came from spending long time together. It’s not just that they ate lengthy meals, but that they talked about Jesus and his teachings; they discussed how to put his values into practice in daily life. All that conversation must have been rich. We know that sometimes they disagreed in their conclusions. Disagreements can bring clarity and a better way forward. We have those conversations with friends and family, but we don’t often have them as church. We come together on Sunday morning and say what’s printed in the bulletin and listen to the pastor say what life is supposed to mean, rather than wrestling out meaning together. I suspect that the most important parts of our service are light signs when you talk (not me) and prayer concerns, when we say what’s on our minds and hearts. The best part of our gathering may be coffee hour, when we talk about what’s happening in our lives.
We’re reading this book together, partly because the information is interesting historically. We’re also looking, I hope, for clues about how people followed Jesus in the beginning that might inform how we follow today. Today’s chapter helps us ask, “Where do our lives intersect in significant ways? When do we ask important questions, even questions without obvious answers? How do we spend quality time together?” Even more important, how does being part of this church help us follow the vision of Jesus in our world?