John 21:20-25
"Better than a New Testament?" After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)
Today we reach the end of our journey through the book After Jesus: Before Christianity by the Westar Institute. It's taken us four months and we've traveled over time and space, back two thousand years to the Roman Empire. As the title implies, there was no Christianity there, but the roots of Christianity as we know it lie deep in the lives of the people who followed Jesus. They organized themselves in many ways and believed a variety of things about Jesus. Virtually all of them believed that the life and teachings of Jesus mattered and in them they found creative and helpful ways to respond to the realities of their own lives. They lived long before creeds were crafted or orthodoxy imagined, but perhaps they would all agree to one core principle: because we know Jesus our lives are better.
Having heard almost every Sunday that what we thought was true of our Christian origins wasn't accurate for the very beginning, I'll bet it won't surprise you when I tell you that these earliest followers didn't have a New Testament. If they had had one, they wouldn't have been able to read it. The majority of people in that time didn't read or write, and being literate wasn't necessary for their success. If they were wealthy, they paid someone (or enslaved someone) to read and write for them. If they were poor, nothing they needed in daily life required written words.
When the followers of Jesus gathered, their meetings were rich in content. They sang songs, recited poems, told favorite stories over and over. Sometimes a group would receive a letter which one person would read to them. The heart of their meetings was conversation and feasting. They talked about what had happened since they last met. The discussed and debated how Jesus or the disciples would handle the situations they faced. The worked through what it meant to love your neighbor or to do good to those who persecute you in the flesh and blood world of their village where everyone could name who 'the neighbors and the persecutors were. They ate good food and drank good wine and thanked Jesus as the symbolic host of the banquet they were enjoying.
By the end of the first century letters had been written from mentors to groups and some few of these have survived. Gospels had been composed, not so much to teach people about Jesus but to record what they had already heard and committed to memory. Writing, which later became scripture, wasn't the starting point of their community. They began with talk and action and then wrote down what they already knew, what they had worked out together over time and much conversation. No original manuscripts have survived, but we have copies from 100 years or so later that tel! us what they thought was important enough to write down. It would be several hundred years more before these writings became our Bible.
This doesn't mean that in order to reconnect with our roots we need to set the Bible aside. The Bible contains the stories which have shaped us. It's part of the fabric of our lives and we honor it as we learn from it. It's an important part of how we know Jesus and God, through the stories of those who knew them before us.
If we want to capture some first century vitality, we might want to approach the Bible less as sacred text and more as exciting story, with life and energy. We might also want to acknowledge that life and energy come to us in additional ways.
Feasting - at the Lord's table and the tables of coffee hour. Both are places where Jesus is present.
Bathing - It's no longer our custom to meet at the public baths, but we have retained the importance of washing at times of new beginnings at the baptismal font. What does it mean that this font in present with us every time we gather? What new beginnings have been made here, and what new beginnings might we still want to make? Are we holding each other accountable for saying we want to be made new in Christ?
Conversation - We've made a start at sharing aloud the stories of faith and life in our "light signs." What if we expanded on that. I don't mean I should talk more, but maybe some of you might. Can we talk about what we've done in the world and also about what we'd like to do? Or don't know what to do about? Or how to make a difference?
Prayer - which is just an extension of conversation. When we name those things we celebrate or those that worry us, the people we care about and the situations that are troubling, we are inviting God to be present in them and committing ourselves to do something about them.
Singing - this summer we requested favorite hymns. The words of hymns can express our faith and the music can lift our hearts. What song do you hum when you're happy? Or worried? Or frustrated? Should we expand our repertoire to include what we sing throughout the week?
Written word - Every week we read from scripture. This summer we've stretched that a bit to include things not in the Bible. I've often wondered about other writings that would be helpful or encouraging, but finding them is hard. What if you brought bits of writing you find especially meaningful? Something from a magazine or a classic book or a poem. When Merie shared her poems, we were all,lifted up.
The Jesus folk of the first two centuries were creating a life together from their core belief: because we know Jesus, our life is better. How are we creating that life in our time? What do we know about Jesus, about God and about life? How do we know it - through scripture, writings, songs, poems... ? What do we do about it? What difference does it make in our attitudes and our actions? How can we help each other live more profoundly and more joyfully?
We have permission from our spiritual ancestors to create the life of Jesus' followers in this time and place. We have permission to be flexible - to try out many things, to allow ideas that appeal to some and not to others, to go with the flow. And we have an invitation to be intentional. To talk through what matters to us and how we'll impact our world. I was reading about a ND legislator this week who wants the legislature to be explicitly Christian. I think he meant that everyone should follow his rules. But now we know that to be intentionally a follower of Jesus is to be creative and kind, extravagantly loving, counter-cultural and peacemaking, accepting and encouraging. By connecting with our past we've learned that the future is wide open to us. What will we make of it?