Verses from The Gospel of Truth
“Hiding in Plain Sight,” After Jesus: Before Christianity, Westar
As we’re studying the followers of Jesus in the first and second centuries, we repeatedly come face-to-face with the violence and oppression of the Roman Empire as a reality that everyone had to live with. Rome provided many benefits to its time – economic security, growing trade, social stability – and it did so because it exerted control through fear and violence. It was a good life if you kept your head down and never got in the way of the authorities, which was almost impossible. The Jesus communities had to deal with the presence of extreme violence, which was sometimes targeted at them. People lived with the fact that at one time or another, some of their friends and family members were going to be killed, maimed, or enslaved. One of the reasons they found hope in Jesus is that he lived in that same environment, died at the hands of the Romans, and still represented a way to live with integrity and wholeness that couldn’t be crushed. He showed them how to live well in difficult times and gave them courage and hope. Following Jesus, they created pockets of resistance which weren’t rebellion but which helped them live joyfully and authentically within an oppressive culture.
Today’s chapter is about one of the tools they used to cope with the hardships of their lives – stories of resistance hidden in plain sight. Our scripture from The Gospel of Truth is a snippet of one of those stories. It tells of people dreaming of violence (a reality of the times) and waking to the beloved Child who showed them how to resist. He teaches them a new way of thinking which helps them cope with harsh realities. “He became a way for those who were ignorant, discovery for those searching and strength for those who were shaken, purity for those who were defiled.” This is an indirect criticism of Rome (after all it’s only a dream) and affirmation of Jesus (who isn’t actually named). Those on the inside understood these words as praise for Jesus and his followers resisting Roman violence, but there’s plausible deniability here too.
Another story from the Gospels can be read in this way. Jesus encounters a “spirit possessed” man in a cemetery in Galilee. He’s so distraught he continually harms himself and terrifies his neighbors. Jesus calls out the spirit “Legion” and drives it into a nearby herd of pigs, who run off a cliff and into the lake. The man is cured. We read this as another miracle healing of mental illness. Our scholars point out that this man’s town is near a Roman garrison where a legion of soldiers is in residence. Could this man not be mentally ill but grieving abuses by these soldiers? Their very presence is an afront and they may well have beaten this man or his relatives, forced them into degrading labor, or even murdered some he loved. I’ve always wondered why there are pigs in this area, since Jews don’t eat pork. A Roman garrison might well keep pigs for slaughter. In the first century folks might have heard this story as a joke. The Romans had devasted this man, but Jesus healed him, cast “Legion” into the legion’s pigs and drove them to their death. The soldiers remained, but by poking fun at them, Jesus makes their presence a little easier to bear.
We treat scripture and ancient sacred writings as “holy” and think we always have to take them very seriously. They didn’t start out as scripture. They started as stories, letters and poems familiar to the people who heard them. They may well contain jokes or political commentary, most of which have been lost on us. If someone was ranting in our presence and I remarked that they sounded like a “very stable genius,” you might understand that wasn’t a compliment. A hundred years from now if someone read that, they would just think it’s an odd remark. Cynicism, irony and double meanings are culturally dependent and lose their impact over time. Our scholars are suggesting that there are many writings from the first two centuries that may have been understood in multiple ways by their contemporaries and given people in difficult circumstances a chance to smile and a bit of encouragement.
Why does that matter now? Westar writes, “Instead of reducing the meaning of Jesus’s experiences of violence and death to a sacrifice for sins, a wide range of writings see his death as an effort to make sense of people’s pain and loss, sometimes through such hidden transcripts.” I have for years struggled with the idea that “Jesus died for our sins.” I know a great many people much smarter and holier than I have affirmed that to be true, but I’m not buying it. If God is love, love forgives. Love doesn’t require that someone be punished first. Love doesn’t require death or sacrifice. There aren’t accounts to be settled or scales to balance. Jesus died because Rome killed him, just like they killed thousands of other innocent people over several centuries. Jesus himself taught that was wrong.
Jesus taught and lived by a very different value system. He encouraged compassion and mercy. He told the community to feed people, clothe people, forgive people – not because they deserved it but because it was the way God envisioned life to be good. When we live by these standards, everyone does better. There’s more joy. There’s more hope. Even though Jesus died, his vision didn’t. Some people kept trying to live his way. They spread the word and this nonviolent resistance to a very bad society grew. People said it was like Jesus was still with them. He gave them strength to keep at it, even when violence and hardship got up close and personal. Living his way made life better for everyone. They could feel God’s love and strength with them every day. Living in the movement was its own reward.
Over time following Jesus became less about living his way than about believing things about him. The powers that be signed on to the movement, but not necessarily to the lifestyle. They weren’t eager to say, “Jesus died because we killed him.” The truth shifted to “Jesus died for your sins” and the corollary, “If you believe in him, you’ll go to heaven when this life is over.”
Here’s what I believe is true: You’ll go to heaven when this life is over because God is love. You came from heaven and you’ll go right back there. In the meantime, if you follow Jesus and live the way he lived, this life will be better. For you and for everyone else.
I’m not sure we can internalize what that meant in the first century because our lives are not nearly as difficult as theirs were. But there are places in our world where we can touch what that might have meant to them. I suspect people who live in Ukraine know what it means to say God loves us even when life is unfair and unspeakable. People in refugee camps understand that community can make life good even when it’s uncertain. Just in this past week people in our country have stood together to say “fair wages matter,” “climate change is a real crisis,” and “gun violence is avoidable.”
There is a piece of our heritage that says followers of Jesus hold the vision of a better world and do all they can to create a new reality. Even when the big picture doesn’t change, we change. We may still be living in harsh realities, but we are living with love and compassion for ourselves and one another. To be a follower of Jesus changes the quality of life. It always has.