Acts 2:42-47
I love the descriptions of the first gatherings of Jesus followers from Acts. They portray groups of people brought together by a common conviction that Jesus has something important to say about how to live in a godly and important way. They shared worship and meals. They took care of each other. They became community and family. They created a new way of life based on the values Jesus lifted up. They worked together to make life for themselves and the world the best it can be.
Acts portrays this effort as unified and straightforward, but those of us, all of us, who live in groups of people know that’s a rosy picture of what was a harder reality. When groups of people work together, there are always kinks to work out. It takes work to find consensus, make new rules, accept differences in personality and focus. If we believe that life in the earliest churches ran smoothly, then we’re surprised when life in contemporary churches is rockier. So sometimes it’s helpful to go back to the beginning and discover ways that diversity showed itself. The earliest people were perhaps of common purpose, but rarely of common mind and they created a variety of options of how to follow Jesus. Those options have been smoothed over with centuries of stories about one way to be the church. But when we find some true variety, it helps us put our own diversity into perspective. It shows us that the story is richer and more complicated than most people realize.
For the next few weeks we’re going to explore the story of some early Jesus people through the Gospel of Mary. We may hear familiar names and we’ll consider some new ideas. We don’t do this because this story is better than what we’ve always had, but because it’s part of how church began and gives us interesting options to explore.
Contemporary Christians are used to thinking about the Bible as the official writings inspired by God that we are to pay attention to. It’s the family history and the rule book and it’s official. The writings there carry weight because they have stood the test of time and proven helpful. But they aren’t all there is.
We value written words because we live in an time when writing carries authority. We are used to being able to look up information and to learn from books. First century people were much less literate than we are. They valued spoken words. They learned in conversation with great thinkers and with their neighbors. Books were rare and fragile. The books that make up our New Testament were not a collected work in the first 300 years of Christianity. They were individual pieces circulated from friend to friend and town to town. Many began as letters written to particular people under specific circumstances. They were copied by hand, so they show variations from accidental or intentional edits. There is no original official copy of any of them and no first century collection of all of them. The ones who are in our Bibles gained popularity and then consensus that they had worth. But they weren’t the only writings that circulated. Some scholars estimate that we have only about 15% of the writings shared among early house churches – that much more has been lost than has been preserved.
The Gospel of Mary is one of those “lost” pieces. It came to the attention of a German scholar in the late 19th century when a salesman in a booth in an Egyptian market offered it to him. It’s in a codex or small book made by sewing sheets of papyrus together, from the fifth century and is written in Coptic, a form of ancient Egyptian. The original was probably written in the early 2nd century in Greek, and two small fragments of Greek text have also been found among ancient manuscripts. The total gospel was probably 19 pages long and the first 6 pages and pages 11-14 are missing. The original scholar who bought the text worked several years translating it, interrupted by two World Wars, and the first text was originally published in 1955. This is such a small fragment that we can only guess at what its full theme was, but it shows some differences with traditional Christian theology and some familiarity with Greek philosophy, which would have been common in its time. As the name indicates, Mary Magdalene figures prominently as a favorite of Jesus and a leader among disciples.
In addition to reading the Gospel over the next few weeks, we’ll also read stories about Mary in the four Gospels and discover what scholars are saying about her role in the early church. The gospel’s key question is this: What is it that Jesus taught us that we have to share with others? That’s an important question for any people who want to follow Jesus. We’re used to hearing that if we believe Jesus we will be saved and our lives will be better. But what is it that we are to believe – either that Jesus said or that others said about him? And how does that make our lives better? Reading something with a little different slant helps us clarify what each of us considers to be the core teachings of Jesus. It also helps us consider how those teachings improve life for ourselves and for everyone.
The diversity in contemporary Christianity shows that there isn’t a single right answer to the question Who is Jesus and how does he teach us to live? Studying the variety of answers to that question from ancient times helps us claim our own answers in our own time. We may find nothing to agree with in this new gospel, or we may find important ideas that enrich our faith. Along the way, we’ll understand more about our roots and flex our theology muscles to be clearer about our own faith. I hope you consider this an adventure!