Reformation Sunday

Matthew 5:13-16

We are a very busy congregation.  “The church that does things!”  I’m proud of the many things we do and the ways we celebrate them.  I tell people that the heart of our worship is Light Signs where we say out loud the ways we are being God’s love in our community.  Sometimes busy can be overwhelming!  This week I put 300 miles on my car – in town! – driving about being busy.  When we are most busy may be the best time to hit “pause,” to stop and reflect for a moment on whether the busy-ness matches our values and our dreams.  Are we busy with the things that matter most to us?  This summer I bought a massive planner, not just for keeping track of busy but for space to put on paper the “why” of what I do.  (So far the calendar is full and the goals are mostly blank, but the possibilities are there waiting for me.)

At the heart of every question about how we use time and resources is a deeper question:  who am I?  Who do I want to be?  Jesus told the people around him, and through the ages he tells us, “You are the salt of the earth.”  “You are the light of the world.”  Because you ARE, life has flavor and zest, life has purpose and hope.  We call our reporting on each week “light signs” because Jesus invites us to be light in this world – a light that shows a way forward, calms fears, brings joy. 

In her book Becoming Wise Krista Tippett relates a story she was told by Rachel Naomi Remen.  Dr. Remen received this story as a present on her fourth birthday from her grandfather who was a rabbi.  She tells it this way:

In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life.  In the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light.  And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke.  The wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light.  And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident.  We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world.  It’s a very important story for our times.  This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew.  It’s the restoration of the world.

And this is, of course, a collective task.  It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born.  We are all healers of the world.  That story opens a sense of possibility.  It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference.  It’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you.

Each Sunday when we share our light signs, or when we’re quiet but remember the ways we’ve been light without sharing them aloud, we’re reflecting the ways we are healing the world.  This story isn’t as old as Jesus, but it grew out of the heart of Judaism which was Jesus’ heart.  Jesus was telling the people that even though they couldn’t overthrow the Empire which controlled their lives, they could live each day by the light of God’s love.  The could BE the light of God’s love.  And that light would heal their small piece of the world.  It would make it salty and delicious.  It would create the reign of God, the kingdom of heaven, hidden in plain sight and overthrow the Empire without open rebellion 

Today is Reformation Sunday when we’re asked to remember Martin Luther nailing his 99 proposals to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, inviting conversation about how things were going in the life of the church.  He wasn’t overthrowing the kingdom of the church.  He was suggesting that it might be time to think and act in new ways.  He was giving power to the people, wanting them to know for themselves the story of faith and God and Jesus and inviting them to see themselves as light in the world.  John Calvin wanted to be part of that conversation and apply its principles to both the church and to emerging autonomous cities, starting with Geneva.  Today when we engage in conversation about how to be the church in our time and place we stand on their shoulders.  We’re not talking about how to change the whole world, but only about how to be faithful stewards of the bit of light God has entrusted to us and let it shine as healing to those bits of the world we touch.  Over time, that proves to be life-changing.

Because we are already doing church in some new ways, we don’t always feel connected to our larger denominations.  We don’t always feel like we fit in with other congregations.  But this is a good Sunday to think about heritage and connections.  When I was thinking ahead about the conversation we’re going to start today, I wanted to know how our denominations answer the questions we’re going to ask:  Who are we?  What do we do? Why?  Their answers are a surprisingly good fit for Family of God.  I’ve put some of them in the bulletin so you have them for now and later. 

• Welcoming all into the fullness of God’s love.

• A world experiencing the difference God’s grace and love in Christ make for all people and creation.

• Activate each of us so more people…discover community, justice and love.

• Nurture safe and healthy spaces…shape an abundant future

• God is still speaking.

• United in Christ’s love, we seek justice for all.

• …serves as a catalyst for God’s love in action.

• Offer God’s extravagant welcome in the world.

We’re going to talk a lot about what we do (and don’t) do.  What we do begins with who we are, and Jesus told us clearly: 

You ARE the light of the world.
You are the light that heals.
You are the light that gives hope.
You are the light that changes everything.

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:1-11

It’s hard to listen to the news these days because it’s full of violence.  My phone tells me there are wars, civil wars, drug wars and more in 33 countries.  We try to pray for people in harm’s way, but frankly, I don’t even know where some of the countries listed fall on the globe.  These 33 don’t count the countries dealing with fires, floods, and earthquakes which are destroying homes and communities and causing rising casualty counts.

For two weeks we’ve been watching Israel’s every move in response to a terrible terrorist attack, and while as I write this they are not yet at war, thousands of people are dying, many more are injured, and humanitarian aid is far from meeting the need in Gaza. 

In the midst of all this anguish, I read a short piece written by a Jewish woman in our country.  Her heart is broken by the attack on Jews in Israel.  She felt powerless to stop the horror of terrorism or war in response. So she made her favorite supper dish and took it next door to her Arab neighbors.  They had coffee and talked.  They laughed and shed a tear.  The next day her neighbors brought her dessert.  They had coffee and talked.  Neighbors from two religions, two ethnic backgrounds, two cultures – sharing what they loved best to eat and sharing their lives.

We’ve been reading about the first century for four months now.  We’ve learned that the violence of those times even exceeded the violence in our own.  People have been hurting each other for the sake of power and wealth forever.  We also read that the folks who followed Jesus gathered together, shared food, and talked.  They talked about how Jesus taught them to live with dignity and compassion in the midst of violence and danger.  They laughed.  They surely cried.  The created a life within the life of their community that resisted violence and oppression.  They found a better way.

I used to think that the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount were about how God was going to fix the world. “Blessings” seemed to me to be God’s business.  Something God passed out as a reward for doing good.  Like when my granddaughter Lily got a chocolate pumpkin candy at the end of her sewing lesson on Friday.  Or when Weight Watchers gives you a charm for losing five pounds. 

These blessings are pronounced not for doing something right, but for just living.  In Jesus’ day almost everyone was poor or grieving, hungry and thirsty.  Matthew cleaned up the list with some spiritual language, but the truth is everyone who came to see Jesus qualified for these blessings just by getting up in the morning and making it through the day.

As the list goes on it shifts a little.  Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.  What is their reward?  Mercy, holiness, peace. Seems like doing good is its own reward.  If you want the blessings of kindness, generosity, and peace of mind – be kind, generous and focused on what’s good.

Some amazing folks with decades of meditation experience meet every Monday in our fellowship hall as Lotus Meditation Center.  Hanging out with them I’ve learned a few things about Buddhism – only a few.  The purpose of Buddhism and its meditation practice is to help people deal with the suffering of the world.  There’s plenty of suffering, but meditation teaches people how to set it aside and find peace.  I suspect that being a part of a sangha (or meditation group) is something like being a follower of Jesus in the first century.  You hang out together, you talk about things that help you in life, you practice living in a new way.  From these folks I’ve learned that it’s not the ups and downs of life that get you, it’s how you think about the ups and downs of life.  Too often we think life is supposed to be great for everyone and if it’s not, we haven’t received our due.  Generations of history show us that life is often beautiful and sometimes hard and no one is handing out chocolates to us just for being alive.  At the same time, we can learn to be calm in the midst of chaos, happy in the midst of hardship, at peace with what is, even if it’s not what we first hoped it would be. 

Finding peace through meditation and finding peace through the community of Jesus folks are a lot the same.  It starts with being honest about what is – good and bad.  Life is good.  Life is hard.  Life is. Folks get sick and sometimes don’t get better or get better differently than they were before.  Accidents happen.  Companies downsize.  Storms blow through.

We seldom have control over everything that happens to us.   We can choose how we respond to everything that happens to us.  We learn that in community with the support of people who care about us and have our backs.  We learn that although God doesn’t send us only the experiences we want, whatever comes our way with face it witih God.  Over the ages people have affirmed that when their own strength faltered, there is a stronger power at the center of life which keeps them going.  We say, “God is with us.”

Although we have less say than we want in how life unfolds, we have more say than we know in how we live it.  Remember the earliest Jesus followers resisted Empire by living in communities patterned on Jesus’ teachings.  They fed each other, employed each other, protected each other.  They had a good time together and called their efforts “new life.”  Our time isn’t identical to the first century, but we have similar opportunities to create life in Jesus’ way.  Today when I read the beatitudes, I hear Jesus telling us that if we want life to be full of blessing, we live as though those blessings were reality.  We live them into being.

At the recent Conference annual meeting the leaders recommended a book by Margaret Wheatley: Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity.  On the first page Wheatley quotes historian Howard Zinn:

We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.  The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Jesus tells us that in the midst of everyday challenges, we can be blessed.  “To live now as we think human beings should live” is to create blessing.  Goodness in life isn’t something we wait for God to hand us, it’s something we birth from our hearts and the heart of our community.  It’s taking the light of God within us and letting it shine as we live by the vision Jesus has given us.

Blessed are the merciful, the kind, those who share food and share vision, who make peace.  Blessed are those who make food and take it next door to the neighbors, looking for hope.  Blessed are those who shine the light of God into this present darkness and transform themselves and the world.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

This last week marked the first anniversary of my mother’s death. 

During this past year we siblings sold the house that she and our dad designed and built.  It has been home for us, my brothers and sister and me for 70 years and a welcoming place for the grandchildren and the great grand children. But it is hardly recognizable anymore, the inside gutted to meet the needs of the new owners.  My sister lives across the street from the house and has permission to wander in and see progress as it goes a long, but all work on the house stopped when the contractor ran off with the new owners money and is now being charged with fraud, again, who knew he had a warrant out, but that’s a different story.  The story I want to tell is how on one of these nostalgic wanderings, my sister became shaken by sadness and loss.  She was literally in the valley of the shadow of death, though not her own.  She stood in what had been our parents’ bedroom and sobbed, great big tears, what we call the ugly cry with red noses and staggered breaths and longed for our mother, cried out for our mother.  Her loneliness and pain were palpable.  And the sight of this 62 year old woman, mother of seven, grandmother of eight, overcome with emotion, surrounded by debris and dust and echoes of the past, and I know she was still in her pajamas for sure, could have been comical, except it wasn’t. 

Now I have to say, that my sister is a little dramatic.  Always has been.  Her daughter says other people are born, but with my sister, God lit a fire.  Honestly, you don’t know my sister, but we know this isn’t drama, but life.  We have all stood in remains of the past and felt deep loss.  If not for a someone, then for a might have been, or a never expected this, or a safe place that disappeared or a safe someone who turned hurtful.  A love.  It is a brokenness that we acknowledge in our saner moments as being human.

This event with my sister pales compared to the stories of horrific atrocities and death, destruction that we see and hear about on the news this past week.  Terrible and terrifying.  Inhuman.  Words cannot express the pain of millions of people at war.  I feel a little guilty about not addressing those issues this Sunday, but, today for just a few minutes let’s think about our pain, In this congregation, the little congregation that does good things and sings about being here for good, we try to live out the message of the good news as best we can, with God’s help, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, visiting the widows and the orphans of our world in their affliction.  For this moment, let’s think about what God wants for us.  Especially when we are hurting.   Our pain is personal and real and I believe matters to God.  And Psalm 23 says I’m right.  Against all that happens in our lives that brings us to tears, we hold up these words, for comfort and for peace in our hearts.  The Lord is my shepherd.  Note, if you haven’t already, how personal the pronouns are, my I me.  The psalmist makes it all very personal.  And in what he writes, we cannot help but notice that our needs are acknowledged, that we do not have to worthy of healing, that the comfort of the green pasture and the still water are ours, out of God’s goodness alone, a truth, what we often refer to as grace.   

Still, in these few verses of scripture, we are invited to participate in our own recovery, or healing.  It is God’s gift to us, but we still have to decide if we want to receive it or not.  It begins with the declaration, the lord is my shepherd.  Our part is first to acknowledge the relationship we have with God whom we follow, depend upon for protection and comfort.  You might agree, we personally have a western way of controlling and self sufficiency that skips this part until we are in over our heads, until we are standing in our pajamas in a demolition zone, feeling very alone and broken.  We have a little ego that makes this first part of the psalm not easy for us to proclaim.  The Lord is my shepherd, which makes me a part of the flock and so I can be cute and cuddly but opinionated, stubborn, and susceptible to wandering off.  Not a big boost to my self-esteem.  And I repeat, until we are in over our heads.

This is a good psalm.    It is helpful to remember that we use the 23 psalm at funerals not at baptisms or weddings.  It is intended to comfort when we are in trouble.  Not a one size psalm fits all.  It’s more a your heart is heavy with pain, let me carry some of that load for a while.  You rest. 

And that is enough, isn’t it?  I’ll offer you a chance to cry your tears, shout your curses, connect with others, remember better times, rest. 

Lie down in green pastures. 

Be restored.

Sounds real good when you are in over your head.

Scholars tell us the 23rd psalm is actually two psalms put together.  The second one begins with he prepares a meal in the presence of my enemies…

I always thought, as I was growing up, that this was a picnic lunch, since we were already out in the countryside, in green pastures with a little stream running through it.  So we rest and we eat.  We know the healing power of food shared in time of loss, so it made perfect sense to me.

I learned later, of course, that in the time of the psalm was written, eating with your enemies meant that you were not enemies any longer. 

You eat with someone means you agree to let go of the past, you drop all plans for revenge, you may not be friends, but sharing food fixes what was broken between you and your guest/enemy.  So God prepares the meal and if you choose to eat, your relationship with the other is redeemed.  Repaired. Mended.  Open to a new future. 

That makes the 23rd psalm even more perfect for funerals than the comfort of the rest and restore part.  After hundreds of funerals, I have often found that the funeral dinner is more healing than the funeral service.  In-laws, crazy cousins who still call you by your grade school nickname, and neighbor who drinks too much, share a meal in a time of loss and you just never know what will happen.  It’s an opportunity.  Something good could come out of it.  Some history forgiven.  Some new future opened up.

For my sister and for others whose grief is deep and long lived, identifying the enemy may be hard: loneliness, feeling abandoned, needy.  It is complicated.  But if we think of the first part of the psalm as an invitation to let God participate in the pain we carry, then this part could also be an invitation to let go of what is holding us in a past that doesn’t work for us.

You can’t get even with an ex, or a disappointment, or a dream gone missing, and live your life in the fullness God intended.  Best to eat and move ahead.

When we had my mother’s service, we did not use the 23rd psalm.  My brother who is also a retired pastor and I just thought it too much of a cliché to consider and I think, now that was a mistake.  My siblings and children and grandchildren, need the comfort of that pasture and stream and invitation to live in the Lord’s care.  But more than that, they need the good news for the psalmist’s four words, he restores my soul.  It is a reminder that God is invested in wholeness and better said, in our wholeness.  Pain and loss that leaves holes, gaps in our souls are not what God desires for us.    And I invite you, in the business of our congregation and in the privacy of your own lives, to take comfort in the words, the lord is my shepherd….surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.  Even when, or especially when that life overwhelms and tears fall.

You know maybe I don’t need to feel guilty about not addressing the chaos of the world right now. Maybe talking about our own grief over loss is the best way to think about the people of Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Russia.  And maybe the 23rd psalm is the best prayer for peace at this moment.  In over your head seems like an apt description of much of the world.  You can decide for your self out of your own history with healing and forgiving and having your soul restored, if this is so. 

Thanks be to God for the good news of today.  Amen. 

- Nell Lindorff

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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?

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Excerpt from a letter from Emperor Trajan to Governor Pliny

“Romancing the Martyr” in After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

I have a vivid memory of seventh grade Sunday School the day my teacher asked us, “If a Russian with a machine gun came to our classroom this morning and asked if you were a Christian, would you say yes?”  The implication was that to be faithful to Jesus, we must be willing to die for our faith.  To be fair, that teacher was a progressive role model for me.  Her question had a lot more to do with growing up in the ‘60’s during the cold war than with faith.  But we were all willing to die for Jesus, a noble death.  After all, he died for us.

As we near the end of After Jesus: Before Christianity, our authors are tying up loose ends in reporting their research.  They want us to know that the image many of us have of early Christians as willing martyrs, isn’t very accurate.  Let’s unpack that a little.

It is true that followers of Jesus died at the hands of Rome. Jesus died at the hands of Rome. They executed him as a possible revolutionary.  They executed thousands of his neighbors, some with cause and many without.  They executed tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with Jesus.  Execution was entertainment in public spaces, including fighting gladiators and folks fed to wild beasts.  Execution was sometimes private entertainment, as was torture.  Execution and violence was a primary way Rome kept control of a vast empire, and people tolerated it – to save their own lives and because in general Roman peace meant prosperity for people in power.

Our reading today is an excerpt from a letter from Emperor Trajan to his governor Pliny.  It seems in the areas of Bithynia and Pontus which Pliny governed, people were turning in their neighbors for belonging to Jesus groups.  They even circulated a pamphlet naming those who followed Jesus.  Pliny felt obliged to question these people, not because they followed a Jesus religion but because Jesus was executed as a revolutionary and so those who counted themselves in his party were potential revolutionaries.  It’s true that they could exonerate themselves by making a sacrifice to the Emperor, who was seen as a god.  We commonly see this as a test of faith.  Romans would have seen it as an act of patriotism and national loyalty.  

Our authors suggest that those they called christianus would also have seen it as a political act.  They were following Jesus whose teachings and life witness contradict the violence and oppression of Rome.  Jesus says God is opposed to those things and invites people to live by a different world view and value system.  Their faith in the teachings of Jesus makes them opponents of Empire and a threat to Rome.  But they aren’t a direct military threat.  If they can prove that they aren’t plotting insurrection – perhaps by sacrificing to the Emperor – Emperor Trajan suggests they be left in peace.  After all, you can’t kill everyone in the empire and still have slaves and workers.  Violence is necessary, but excessive violence is self-defeating.  Rome prefers to officially ignore these folks if possible.  For sure the Emperor says not to pay attention to anonymous tips and pamphlets.

If Jesus followers weren’t being rounded up for mass executions like we’ve presumed, why are there so many stories of martyrs popular in the second century?  Remember Thecla who was supposed to be martyred but God kept rescuing her?  Surely enough people did die horrible deaths for there to be some credibility to death stories.  But the stories just aren’t about graphic death.  They are also about resistance.  People condemned who show great courage and honor – a Roman value.  People who rush into fire, slit their own throats, fight to the death in the arena.  These people don’t die cringing in fear; they stand up to their executioners and gain a moral victory.  Since many people were dying anyway in this culture, maybe the stories became popular because they stick it to Rome.  You can kill us, but we’ll die with honor and you’ll be embarrassed by how nobly we die.

Twenty-first century thinking says, “Jesus died for you, so you must be willing to die for him.”  It’s relatively easy to say that since hardly anyone is ever actually called to do that.  First and second century thinking may have said, “Rome kills randomly.  Jesus was caught in that, but he died honorably.  His presence with us will give us the strength to do the same if we are also executed.”  At the same time the teachings of Jesus are inviting people to live in a nonviolent, supportive community very different from their culture.  They honor Jesus and themselves by dying courageously if they have to, but otherwise they keep their heads down and take care of one another.

We’ve spent four months learning about what it was like to live in the first and second centuries and how people who followed Jesus thought about what that meant.  Next Sunday we’ll finish this book.  Then what?

Here are some of the things we’ve learned…

• Life in the Roman Empire was violent and hard.  Jesus helped people live in a counter-cultural way which made it possible for them to deal with hardship.  They cared for each other and used the teachings of Jesus as a model for everyday life.

• These people said a wide variety of things about Jesus and applied his teachings to thought and action in many different ways.  Each group emphasized what worked best for them.

• What mattered to them was what they knew of Jesus’ words and actions, more than theories about who Jesus was.

• Some of what we’ve always heard is essential to Christian belief didn’t exist until centuries later.

So what’s next?  Does any of this matter to us in this time and place?  Since these folks found Jesus’ words and actions life-giving and life-changing, we should probably pay attention to them.  I’m going to preach next on the stories that tell us what Jesus said and did.

This study gives us permission to think about Jesus as a model in our own moment in history.  We’re going to begin that on October 29.  The council is inviting us that day to stay after worship, to enjoy potluck brunch, and to have a conversation about what matters to us in our own time.  How does what we know about Jesus shape what we believe and what we do?  We’ll find some energizing ways to talk about those things, hoping that our conversation gives us identity as one group of Jesus-followers and focus for how we put our faith into action.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

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.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 1:11-19

“Jesus by Many Other Names,” After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

In the heart of Mecca is the Kabah, a square building made of black stone, covered with black silk.  On the silk are embroidered in gold thread the 99 beautiful names of Allah.  There is one God known in many ways.  We also know God by many names or descriptors.  So it should be no surprise to us that as the Jesus followers formed groups and talked about Jesus, many ways to understand who Jesus was and what he did emerged.  Today’s chapter in our book After Jesus: Before Christianity talks about a few of the ways people in the first and second centuries described Jesus.

A key understanding of Jesus’ teaching in the first century involved an unusual equality among men and women.  Both men and women were disciples or interns of Jesus.  In his parables or teaching stories Jesus used both men and women as key figures and examples of his points.  The apostle Paul, and early follower of Jesus and founder of several Jesus communities, recognized the leadership of both men and women who helped him in his work.  In his letter to the Galatians he famously declared, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in the Anointed Jesus. (Gal.3:28)  Jesus does away with divisions, including gender roles, and those who join his communities become his body or his presence in the world.  Those who know Jesus overcome their separations and experience the unity of God’s love.  This image was slowly impacted by the strong patriarchy of the Roman Empire so that by the second century people writing in Paul’s name declared, “Women should be silent in the church.”  But the image is still there in ancient manuscripts for us to consider today.

In the second century the Gospel of Mary names Jesus as the “true human,” who understands the spiritual secrets of life and gives them through the disciples so that people may find joy. This gospel still shows equality between men and women as Mary leads the others to understand the deepest meanings of Jesus’ teaching and gives them courage to tell others about him, even though they are in danger of execution for their association with him.  Jesus is the enlightened one who overcomes the suffering of life with truth.  This image shows common themes with Buddhism as we understand it today.

The Letter of Peter to Philip shows Jesus as the one who gives comfort to those who also faced crucifixion.  It’s one of many images strongly influenced by the violence of second century Empire.  Because Jesus endured crucifixion nobly, he is able to be the rescuer of those who face similar death.  In this letter Jesus’ followers pray, “Child of life, Child of immortality, who dwells in the light; the Child, Anointed of immortality, our rescuer, give us your power for they seek to kill us.”  In response Jesus appears as a great light and tells them to share his teaching with the whole world, for he is the world’s Savior – not from death but from fear of death.

In the Gospel of Truth Jesus is described as parent.  Clues in this gospel indicate that those who wrote and remembered it were also victims of torture and injustice.  The fact that Jesus was also tortured and executed but is still remembered and his teachings are still revered gives them a way to process the terrible violence of their lives.  He is the Mother who teaches through her Word and story.  His crucified body becomes the Father’s fruit of wisdom, given to all for their joy.  He has overcome death by becoming the fruit of knowledge which brings joy, even in the presence of death.  In spite of its acknowledgement of pain, this gospel focuses on Jesus as JOY.  

In previous chapters we’ve learned that Romans (including those who followed Jesus) valued self control, even in the face of hardship or death.  When the early church leader Ignatius faced his own execution, he wrote that the suffering of Jesus was the pattern for the way he himself would face death.  He was influential in our contemporary thinking that It was important for Jesus to suffer for our sake.  For Ignatius it wasn’t so much the knowledge that Jesus gave us in spite of suffering, but that he himself actually suffered in the same way many second century followers suffered that mattered.

The Secret Revelation of John was the first known writing of Jesus’ followers that talks about the nature of God and of good and evil.  In this writing Jesus appears as a child, an old person, and an enslaved person.  He explains that his followers must understand that God is good and evil is fraudulent as they encounter evil in their everyday lives.  This work talks about salvation, not as escaping God’s judgment but as dealing with the realities of fear, disease, chaos, danger and death.  “Jesus is the light who enlightens the deceived sufferer.  He is Wisdom, Foreknowledge, Anointed, Lord and Master who shows the way to deal with the harshness of life.

Last week we talked about Marcion who was later declared a heretic.  That’s partly because he didn’t believe that Jesus was the son of the Hebrew God.  The Hebrew God had created this imperfect world and trapped people within it.  Jesus came as the God of Love.  After he was crucified and resurrected he had the power to save everyone who believed in him as Love from the darkness of the world.  Marcion  saw Jesus as the end of the Judean’s God, not the reformer of the way people understood God.

But Justin Martyr saw Jesus not just as the reformer of Judaism but as the perfecting of everything God is – the very presence of God in human form.  We’ll recognize that thought from the theology we’ve heard all our lives.  For Justin to call Jesus “Christ” or “Anointed” is to declare that he is the culmination of our knowledge of everything that has been true about God from the beginning of Creation, the Word made flesh.  He echoes the Gospel of John:  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. .. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

This is a lot of information, too much for us to keep straight.  I can’t improve on the Westar summary of this chapter, so I’ll just quote it:

The implications from the variety of images of Jesus from the second century surprise us.  First, Jesus often was not the dominant figure in the writings and narratives produced by these second-century movements.  Second, Jesus’s death and its aftermath stirred the imagination more in the second century than his life and ministry.  Third, the kaleidoscopic images cannot be confined to a polarity between old and new, right and wrong orthodox and heresy.  The second century was rich with multiple images of Jesus.

Let me add just one thought.  The first century gatherings of Jesus followers focused more on what he said and did as a pattern for living a more joyful life in the midst of a chaotic and violent culture.  The second century begins to think more theoretically about what Jesus means in various world views.  We often think of ourselves as a first century church, so that gives us the freedom to examine what we’ve been taught as “right” or “wrong” belief in light of what Jesus shows us as a way of life.  In later centuries people took the rich variety of the second century and chose one way to think.  That’s been questioned and adapted, but we see origins of what’s become contemporary doctrine and what hasn’t.  If we’re learning anything, I hope it’s that uniformity isn’t required.  We don’t have to agree on a single way to be people of faith or a single way of thinking.  We agree on a leader who is our model and work out what that means.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Corinthians 4:9-16

“Paul Obscured,” After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

The apostle Paul is the star of our New Testament (after Jesus, of course).  Well over half of the books in the New Testament are attributed to Paul as author, and half of the book of Acts tells the story of his missionary journeys.  We can be forgiven for thinking Paul had an out-sized role in creating the first century church.  For our scripture today I chose one of his own descriptions of how hard he worked to tell people about Jesus.

Today’s chapter gives us a dose of Paul reality.  Let’s start with Paul’s writings.  Scholars work hard to understand Paul’s theology and his understanding of Jesus across all his writings, a task that’s made harder by the fact that not every letter that bears Paul’s name is consistent with the others.  How do we know what Paul really thought?  That question is particularly interesting because some of what’s in those letters is out of sync with contemporary practice in the church.  (Paul has a reputation for not valuing the ministry of women, even thought we know he worked in partnership with many women in his own ministry.)  Over time scholars have come to consensus that Paul probably wrote, Galatians, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians.  Which means he probably didn’t write Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus.  (You don’t have to remember that; I have to look it up every time.)  In our time borrowing the name of a famous author is frowned upon, but in the first and second centuries it was common.  Those books on the “not probably Paul” list reflect issues addressed later in time, after Paul’s death, and used his name to borrow his reputation.  If we were doing a deep dive into Paul rather than just one sermon, we’d find that most of the inconsistencies with Paul’s key ideas show up in these extra books.

There’s no doubt that Paul was extremely important to the gatherings of Jesus people in the towns where he founded Jesus clubs (which we now call churches).  His letters were primarily about how those clubs should manage their daily affairs.  They are practical because people were just figuring out how this Jesus association worked and they needed advice.  They were never intended to be what we call a “systematic theology” or an explanation of every detail of how our relationship with God and Jesus works.  

We think of Paul’s letters as a collection which we call scripture – the Bible.  First and second century folks had no collection and no Bible.  The scholar Marcion did write theology at the beginning of the second century and he was quite fond of Paul.  He did make a collection of Paul’s letters and advocated for their prominence in the conversation about faith.  His collection was circulated among people who agreed with him.  Unfortunately, Marcion has been declared a heretic by those who came after him and his influence has been minimized.  

Paul is important as the missionary to those who weren’t primarily Jewish, which was important, especially after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 CE which essentially eliminated Israel as a people.  Paul is also important as someone who was himself a Judean and saw Jesus as the culmination of the Jewish faith.  Since those are essentially opposite truths, it makes our understanding about Paul complicated. It also means that there are generations of Jesus followers at the end of the first century and beginning of the second who didn’t know much about Paul and didn’t care.  They were part of Jesus communities in towns Paul didn’t visit and had their own favorite leaders.  

We’ve been learning through this book that the beginning of Christianity, before it was Christianity, was diverse and complicated.  That’s contrary to our Sunday school training that told us Paul started all the churches outside Jerusalem, heard from Jesus what was the “truth” about God, and wrote it down for us to follow.  In our traditions that gets expanded because Martin Luther treasured the writings of Paul and based much of his own writings on them. This chapter isn’t meant to say that Paul isn’t important or wise or even enlightened about God.  He is all those things.  He’s also not the only game in town and when we are looking for ways to follow Jesus, he’s an important option but not the only option.

A word about the Bible might be important here.  The Bible is our holy book.  We call it scripture.  We say it’s inspired by God.  We don’t say (like some churches) that the Bible was dictated by God to people who wrote it down word for word.  We can spend a lifetime studying the Bible and not scratch the surface of its complexity.  It’s many books, gathered over millennia by many different editors.  It’s a collection generally agreed on about the fifth century but varying even today among different denominations.  It exists in many translations made from ancient manuscripts of individual books, and there is not one “correct” ancient copy of anything.  So how can we trust it?

We trust the Bible because we trust the people over centuries who have done the work to gather it, preserve it, and translate it.  They have done very careful scholarship.   

We trust it because we read it for what it is:  the story of people who wanted to know God recorded over time as they learned what it meant to live in relationship to God and each other.  In the Bible thousands of people are telling us why God matters to them. 

We trust the Bible because we read it together.  We compare translations.  We talk about what’s clear and what’s confusing.  We keep each other on track, helped along by people who give their lives to this study so they can share their knowledge with us. We come back to passages over and over again and our understanding grows over time.

We trust the Bible because we read it in the presence of God.  We bring our experience of God to the reading and the conversation – just like our spiritual ancestors have done for thousands of years.  Sometimes we have an a-ha! moment and gain an important new insight.  Sometimes we change our minds about what the Bible means, what it says or doesn’t say.  God is in that process.  We don’t do it alone.

When we say that the Bible is Holy, we’re saying that we meet God in the stories, through the stories, and as we compare the stories to the stories of our own lives.  It’s not the book that’s sacred, it’s the process of reading it together and making it our own that’s sacred.  Just like the church is evolving and our own faith is growing and changing, the Bible is a living work that’s becoming God’s word to us, new each time we encounter it.  That is a holy thing.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

From The Secret Revelation of John

“Demolishing Gnosticism” in After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

Today’s scripture is from a book most of us have never read, The Secret Revelation of John.  It begins by asking questions every first century follower of Jesus must have asked:  How was the Savior appointed?  Why was he sent into the word by his father who sent him?  How is his father?  And of what sort is that aeon to which we will go?  He told us that the aeon is modeled on that indestructible aeon, but he did not teach us about what sort the latter is.

Christianity has answers to those questions, but Christianity didn’t exist in the first century.  The people who were attracted to Jesus and his teachings were just beginning to figure out answers, and they came to a variety of responses.  One of those is in the second part of our reading:  “The Unity…is pure light.  It is the Spirit.  It is not appropriate to think about It as God or that It is something similar.  For It surpasses divinity.  It is a dominion having nothing to rule over it.”  We recognize the idea that the being whom we call God is greater than all that is.  Many strands of those who thought and taught about Jesus would answer in a similar way.  They reflected a strand of thinking in their time which believed there was a pure, holy existence of which our earth is an imperfect mirror.  Those who gain divine knowledge can see the qualities of that existence and after death participate in it.  Over time some parts of that thinking have been labeled Gnosticism (for the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge).

In the last seventy years, particularly as more ancient manuscripts have been discovered, scholars have studied Gnosticism.  They’ve written thick books about it.  I’ve taught adult education classes about it.  To start with Gnosticism was a traditional heresy – seen as a branch of Jesus followers in opposition to true Christianity.  In the fourth and fifth centuries its theology was denounced and driven out of the orthodoxy of Christianity.  More recently as more of the writings have become available to more people, folks have seen some ideas as commendable. 

Today’s chapter in our book has a shocking suggestion:  Gnosticism doesn’t exist.  At least it doesn’t exist as an identifiable movement separate from the Jesus movement which became Christianity.  Gnosticism isn’t a wrong way to be Christian.  The writings we identify as Gnostic were a part of the rich, varied soup which eventually produced what we know as early Christianity.  And over the years they were written out of what leaders determined were acceptable ways of thinking about Jesus.  In the beginning there weren’t Gnostics.  There weren’t Christians.  There were just people attracted to Jesus’ teachings and trying to figure out what it all meant. 

Today’s scripture opens with a Pharisee telling John that Jesus was a false teacher, turning people against the tradition.  That too was part of the conversation.  Was Jesus a reformer in the tradition of Abraham, or was he leading people astray from that tradition?  Was he a good Jew or a trouble maker?  Was he a Martin Luther?  A John Calvin?  Or a cult leader confusing followers with lies?  In the first century that was a real question and people spent time and energy trying to find answers.  Just as people have always spent time and energy looking for answers to spiritual questions.  Finding those answers is always an evolutionary process and always related to the moment in which it takes place.  Religions begin in cultural and historical settings which impact their stories and their theology.  Religions, if they are living, evolve.

We live in a moment when Christianity as a religion is facing significant change.  When I was a child, mainline Protestant denominations in the United States had a major social and political influence.  They elected their members to congress.  They were a driving force in support of civil rights, fair housing, and other reforms.  Today that influence has shifted to the Evangelicals.  This is a theological shift in the ways we understand the teachings of Jesus and it has an impact on political policy. 

Most of us can remember when churches were full of families, when community leaders were expected to be church leaders, when confirmation was more important than school activities.  None of that is true anymore.  The fastest growing church affiliation in our time is “none.”  Many of the political issues that divide us have roots in vast differences in how we think about God and humanity.  Lots of people are uncomfortable with these significant changes and long for the “good old days.”  But in reality there are no “good old days” when the church was exactly like we remember it because in every generation the church has been changing. 

There is a thought in our faith that God never changes.  I’m not going to tackle that one today.  But I can guarantee that the way people think about God changes – with cultural change, with the advancement of science and technology, with major events (wars, earthquakes, volcanoes).  Some say we should go back to the “purity” of the way Christianity has always been because that’s what God wants.  But there is no way Christianity has always been.  There has always been variety.  This week Pope Francis criticized conservative American Catholicism for being too slow to change.  Even the Pope understands that a living faith responds to contemporary realities.  Even Christianity can change and grow.

The key questions are those our scripture today starts with:  Who is Jesus?  Why was he here?  What did he tell us about life?  Just like in the first century, there are going to be varieties of ways to answer these important questions.  We  don’t need to find the one right answer, but we can hold that variety as possibility.  How is it that we as Family of God intend to follow Jesus in our moment in history and allow his teaching to shape our lives?

We’ve already begun to answer that, and our answer is evolving.  We aren’t the same as we were ten years ago before we came together, five years ago before the pandemic, or even this time last year.  We’re not the same as we’ll be a year from now.  Life is going to keep on changing, but we have the opportunity to shape that change.  We get to say what matters to us and what values we’ll follow.  We get to choose what we’ll do and with whom we’ll do it.  We’ve already made some good choices.  What will we choose next?

I’m going to suggest that when we finish this book in a month, we take a fresh look at the teachings of Jesus and think together about who we are and how we serve.  I hope you’ll join me in that adventure.

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 28:16-20

“Inventing Orthodoxy through Heresy” in After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

What’s the purpose of education?  In our time, education transfers knowledge of thousands of facts about many subjects to someone who accumulates that knowledge over time.  There’s a subtext about making children into good adult citizens about which we have various opinions, but the focus is information.  In the first century education was about learning self-control.  Males were educated about how to control their emotions – joy, grief, anger, jealousy, fear…  People also learned skills that they needed for life and work – fishing, commerce, farming, household management, construction, spinning and much more.  They learned skills by doing them from adults who already knew how to do them.  These were formal or informal apprenticeships.  But education was about becoming moderate and modest and under control at all times.

The earliest followers of Jesus lived immersed in this culture where the highest ideal was self control and it impacted the ways they thought and acted.  When we think about faith communities, we associate them with believing the correct things.  When we want to know more about a particular community, we ask “What do they believe?  What is their doctrine?”  We expect to learn a list of items they do and don’t believe about whatever they consider most important in life.  Those who agree with the doctrine will be “orthodox.”  

The first century religions didn’t care nearly as much about what people believed as about what they did.  Various groups practiced “orthopraxy” or consistency in behavior.  When we think about the teachings of Jesus, much of it is about how to act in the world:  turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, share your bread, practice mercy and justice – not as ideas but as behaviors toward others.  In today’s scripture we read that Jesus sent his students into the world to make students of others and to teach them how to live in the way Jesus lived.  When we read the Didache, we learned that new followers first learned to behave in the way the community required and when they had shown that they had mastered the lifestyle, they were admitted to the community.  The same is true of the many various religions and other groups in the first and second centuries.

Because it’s behavior that mattered, it was possible to be one of many groups that followed Jesus and believe a variety of different things about that.  There was no established orthodoxy.  Jesus didn’t leave a catechism of things to memorize as true.  It wasn’t about what you thought about Jesus, it was about whether you lived in the way Jesus lived.  And even though much of that behavior was counter-cultural in the Roman Empire (non-violent, merciful, inclusive), the prevailing emphasis on self-control still figures largely in their values.

In today’s chapter we learn that the variety of ways to think about being a follower of Jesus was called “hairesis”, a word we now translate as heresy.  In the fourth century heresy began to be understood as we use it today – a thinking or belief about something that is wrong.  By the fourth century Christianity had become mainstream and the Emperor decreed that everyone was Christian.  When everyone is converted to that religion, they have to know what they think and do, so groups convened to decide what was right and what was wrong – orthodox or heterodox (heresy).  In the first century, heresy just meant different.

Paul talks about various groups within the church in Corinth and admonishes everyone to agree with him.  But he doesn’t tell them that only those who follow his teaching can be part of the community.  Other first century authors talk about variety in the Jesus community as heresy, but not as right or wrong.  There is certainly disagreement about what following Jesus means, but disagreement doesn’t disqualify people from belonging to the group.  No one is cast out (or ex-communicated) for believing the wrong things.

Let’s look at two first century ways of understanding “salvation” as an example.  First, the group that honored those who were martyred or killed for their association with Jesus.  Paul died for his activity as a follower of Jesus.  Peter died for his activity.  Both are seen as heroes for being willing to die.  In the first century death isn’t a choice.  If Rome decides you die, you die.  We think of martyrs as those who wouldn’t deny Jesus and live.  Most first century executions weren’t really about believing in Jesus or denying Jesus.  They were about needing scapegoats and so a Jesus community was murdered in the arena for entertainment.  They don’t save their lives by denying the faith.  But in a society which idolizes self-control, how you face that death matters.  Heroes go to their death praising God with courage and with full control of their emotions.  They act bravely and quietly and honor both themselves and God by refusing to fall apart or act foolishly as they die.  One “heresy” or option in first-century thinking says this show of self-control guarantees them “salvation” or a reward in the next life with God.  God is honored by their well-controlled response to death and so honors them.

Another groups saw less honor in martyrdom.  They recommended that instead that Jesus followers try to avoid being killed.  Fly under the radar of local authorities.  Do everything you can to avoid notice so that you don’t become a target for public amusement.  Rather than dying nobly in the arena, try to live long and prosper at home.  It’s not your death that saves you according to these folks, but the knowledge about God that you acquire through Jesus that saves you.  This is a pretty stark contrast in a society that sees education as self-control evidenced in courageous behavior.  Jesus followers weren’t the only groups pointing to knowledge as the way to access a better world in the afterlife.  Today we call these groups Gnostics, although they didn’t see themselves that way.  We’re going to learn more about them in September.  They also emphasize self-control but as a mental control and knowledge of higher ways of being which then guides the way you live.  To them Jesus shared the secret knowledge which helped them understand and access God.  They would be “saved” by what they knew, not by being martyred.

We’ve talked before about Thecla, memorialized in The Acts of Paul and Thecla.  Thecla is a second century hero.  She is converted by Paul (who of course didn’t live in the second century), decides to remain a virgin and teach about Jesus.  She combines these two ways of thinking, which may explain why she was so popular for a while.  Because she refuses to marry, she’s condemned to die as a martyr.  But when they try to burn her, a thunderstorm drowns the fire.  When they feed her to wild beasts, the beasts protect her.  When she decides to baptize herself in a pool of seals, lightening strikes and kills the seals but not her.  She faces martyrdom bravely, with self-control, but God refuses to let her die.  Instead she lives to an old age and teaches many people what she knows about Jesus, making many converts.  She combines martyrdom and knowledge, self-control in danger and in life.  She is one of the many “heresies” or varieties of ways to follow Jesus. As we learn more about these variations, we can be looking for those who speak to us.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

““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?

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Corinthians 11:17-33

“Join the Club” After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

Last week we learned that some of the groups who followed Jesus in the first and second centuries thought of themselves as families.  They could be actual families – all the people associated with a household in the Empire, or they could be created families – groups of people who adopted each other.  Perhaps they had lost their natural families because of illness or enslavement.  Or they never had a family and found each other.  Or they left their original families and connected instead with a new family of Jesus people.  At any rate, these variations on family challenged the stability of the Empire and pushed the boundaries of what family could mean in ways that many Christians are unwilling to do today.  When we challenge traditional family to expand the possibilities of loving relationships and caring connection, we’re firmly in the earliest tradition of Jesus followers.

Today we’re going to learn about associations or clubs of Jesus followers.  Unlike last week when the groups of followers pushed boundaries of social norms, associations were well within the customs of the Empire.  Anybody and everybody could belong to an association.  There was nothing unusual about them.  So that means the earliest Jesus followers sometimes broke social norms and sometimes followed them to their own advantage.  Once again, diversity is the key.

Much of what we know about these common associations we know from their bylaws.  These have been preserved for us because they were literally “set in stone.”  They were inscribed on stone chunks or pillars and set up in the meeting places for everyone to see.  Not much written history exists about these groups because they were common, and those things which are every-day rarely get written into histories, which recount momentous or unusual events.  But because these inscriptions were on stone, archaeologists have uncovered some of them so they can be studied.

These groups went by a variety of names:  collegium, koinonia, synods, synergasia, synagogue.  We recognize those names in our words for groups or gatherings.  They commonly gathered for meals, sometimes for singing or dancing, or for discussion of ideas they valued.  There were dues for these groups and often the group would provide a funeral and burial for members who otherwise wouldn’t have those services.  Some groups were for only men or women and others were mixed.  Jesus followers who formed an association would hardly be noticed in their communities because they were doing what many people did.

The rules each association followed would have been drafted and voted on by the group and then enforced by leaders and by bouncers, which some called “horses.”  Many called for orderly conduct in gatherings.  The association which honored Bacchus by drinking wine had strict rules about not fighting when inebriated, and the horses could evict those who violated the rules.  They would have to pay a fine of good wine for the next meeting to be reinstated.

Our scripture lesson today is quite likely Paul’s rules for the association in Corinth concerning common meals.  Many associations which honored a particular god or leader would understand their gathered dinners as hosted by that god or leader.  So Jesus is the host of the meal when his association gathers.  Because of that, they should conduct this meal in a way that honors Jesus and builds up the community.  They should share the food equally and refrain from drunkenness or gluttony.  They should remember Jesus breaking bread during his lifetime and remember how his body was broken through crucifixion when bread is broken among them.  They should not abuse the wine but instead solemnly remember that Jesus bled for them whenever they share a cup.  In the custom of the time, these meals would have been lengthy affairs with participants reclining on couches around the room.  From time to time servants would have gathered the scraps people had dropped and let the dogs into the room to gobble them up and clean the floor.  There would have been plenty of time for conversation and for remembering the teachings of Jesus.  He would have been understood as present in their gatherings, and Paul wants folks to be respectful of that reality.

Another familiar passage that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth is 1 Corinthians 13, which we know as the “love chapter” and often read at weddings.  Originally it wasn’t about marital love (since marriages were arranged and not based on love), but was a set of guidelines for an association.  A group which is going to get along, build each other up, learn about Jesus and honor him, should have love and respect for one another.  They should be kind, gracious and forgiving.  They should set aside jealousy or boastfulness.  They should refrain from being rude.  All of these are good guidelines for a group which wants to be together over time and prosper.

Of all the many ways of being a Jesus-following group, the association may come closest to looking like what we know as church today – at least our small church which is a gathering of friends for our mutual benefit and to honor Jesus.  So it benefits us to think about what we would inscribe on our stone as guidelines for our association.

At our last council meeting we began again to think about how we could include more people in our church and grow.  How can we invite friends to come be a part of who we are and what we are doing?  We need to start by being clear about who we are and what we do.  What matters most to us?  What are the written and unwritten rules about how we do things?  How do those rules change when they need to?  (a good reason to write on paper and not actual stone)  What do we say “yes” to when opportunities come our way?  What do we say “no” about?  How do we decide?  What does it mean to be Family of God in this time and place?

Those are big, important questions. They deserve some time and solid reflection.  If we answer too quickly or too easily we may miss something important.  But in the life of this congregation, it’s time for us to have the conversations we need to find our answers.  The answers of these people in this time and place.  We’re reading this book this summer because it’s good to know how followers of Jesus started out.  It’s good to know where we are as followers of Jesus in this time.  Those are the foundation stones of our future, which we get to create together.  Which we align with our understanding of Jesus – who he is and who he is becoming – as we live him into our moment in time.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 12:46-50

“Experimental Families,” After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

When we think of family, we often picture two people who have chosen to connect because they love each other and their biological or adopted children.  In the nifty fifties when I was growing up, that was almost always a married man and woman (mom and dad) and their children (statistically 2 ½ of them).  Families don’t often look like that anymore.   Grandson Colin and I were having a conversation the other day in which I was trying to explain to him what it means to be “related” to him.  His parents and siblings are “related” to him because they are his family.  And so are his three grandmas and his grandpa.  Then he wanted to count his aunts and uncles – which is a more complicated enterprise given the marriages and divorces and the fact that when you get to the second generation he’s never met some of those people.    It gets even more complicated when we factor in the people he calls “uncle” or “auntie” who aren’t technically related but very important to him.  He explained that to me by saying they are like “Pat and Denny” who are his grandparents but not related to him.  And that was settled.

Given our mobile society, the way families spread across the county today, it makes perfect sense to us that children would have family members who aren’t related to them.  When our biological families aren’t near, we create family where we are and “adopt” people of all ages to connect with and celebrate good times with.  We hear today’s scripture through that lens and it makes perfect sense to us when Jesus says that his students have become his family because of the time they are spending together and the values they share.  In the first century his statement was shocking and impossible.

First century families were led by the paterfamilias, the head of household (father of the family).  This was always the oldest male.  And the family consisted of the people he owned:  his slaves or indentured servants, his wife (who had been purchased from her father) and his children.  All of these people lived and worked under the command of the household head, and because they all obeyed him, things ran smoothly.  He ran the family business, he sacrificed to the family gods (whom he inherited from his father), he made all the decisions about who lived and who died.  The empire ran smoothly because its households ran smoothly and above them all is the greatest householder – the Emperor, who owns the empire and all its peoples.

Because family IS the fabric of the Empire, it’s a reality that impacts everything about the first followers of Jesus.  It has a unifying effect – when the head of household becomes a follower of the Anointed, the household becomes followers of the Anointed.  The New Testament is filled with references of groups (we call them churches) who meet in households – Chloe’s, Lydia’s, Aquilla and Pisca’s, Philemon’s, and more.  The group is absorbed into the milieu of household.  

Sometimes, on the other hand, the Jesus followers have a disruptive effect.  Today’s scripture about Jesus choosing his own household fits that category.  The male followers who leave home to be with Jesus disrupt their families and the family businesses.  The female followers would have had an even more disruptive impact on their families.  Runaway slaves who joined Jesus groups and freed slaves who formed groups and became family were a disruption.  We’ve talked about Thecla, who was a woman who refused to marry so that she could work with the apostle Paul – very disruptive.

Even more  disruptive is the idea that God is the father of these groups which function like families.  Jesus – a human male – isn’t the father.  He defers to God as the lead.  But unlike human fathers who are loyal to the emperor, God is at least equal to the emperor.  To say that the family’s or the group’s allegiance is to God is treason.  In Empire, that’s the greatest disruption of all.

There’s another important way that Jesus’ story is disruptive of family and that’s found in the genealogy of his ancestors in Matthew’s gospel.  Matthew traces Jesus’ line from Abraham through David to Joseph, naming the male head of each generation.  But five times he also names the women involved:

Tamar – wife of Judah’s son Er and also mother of 2 of Judah’s sons
Rahab – prostitute in Jericho who was the great-great-grandmother of David
Ruth – David’s great-grandmother who became the wife of Boaz, her husband’s distant cousin
Bathsheba – whom David stole from Uriah who became Solomon’s mother
Mary – mother of Jesus

Each one of these women were in danger for their lives because they lived in a patriarchal society.  Each one found herself in a compromised position because of pregnancy (or lack of it) and used her ingenuity to survive.  In most cases she tricked the head of household into caring for her and her children.  The way Matthew puts it, not only is the Jesus movement subversive, his entire ancestry has been subversive of the householder’s power.

Some Christians today (like Focus on the Family for instance) insist that the Roman model is God’s ideal and the church should support patriarchal families alone.  Fathers should be in charge, mothers should be obedient and raise obedient children.  (Technically they say God is in charge of fathers, but it’s interesting that God always seems to be on the side of what the fathers want to do.)  The first century followers of Jesus were already shaking up this model.  They were treating all people as equals within their groups (at least sometimes).  They were affirming those who didn’t marry.  They were adopting folks who needed connection.  They were breaking all the rules. 

It seems to me that when God is the head and God is love, then people are always more important than rules.  That’s what we’re holding up as true here at Family of God.  Love is what creates family.  Because of our culture, we feel like we’re doing something new when we celebrate diversity in families – traditional models; single folks; same gender couples; biological, adopted and foster kids; non-related aunties and uncles and grandparents; sons that become daughters and daughters who become sons.  Some of it’s disruptive – which makes us much closer to the first century reality than anything that’s been connected to Christianity in our time.

In the first century family/household was about structure and control.  The people who followed Jesus were about his values.  In the twenty-first century we stand for families shaped by those values.  We’re willing to give up control to allow love and life to flourish.  So families are groups of people who love each other.  They focus on support and encouragement and joy.  They make sure everyone thrives and life is meaningful.  They can be folks who live together or folks who worship together or folks who just hang out together.  Family is a word that describes us as connected by God for the benefit of everyone.  Family of God.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Philippians 3:2-11

“Belonging to Israel” in After Jesus: Before Christianity  (Westar)

We think of the apostle Paul as one of the most influential early Christians.  Paul thought of himself as an Israelite, a Hebrew, or a Judean – all ways to describe people connected to southern Israel in the first century.  Interestingly, although he was also a Roman citizen, he doesn’t call himself Roman.  He was from Tarsus, a city now in Turkey.  But because of his Judean heritage, he identifies with what we call “the Jews.”

Paul also identifies as a follower of Jesus, “the anointed” or “the Christ.”  In fact, he writes in the passage we read today that his most important identification is as a follower of Jesus.  In Paul’s day it was absolutely possible to be both.  Jesus was also an Israelite who believed in Israel’s God.  His mission was about a better way to connect with that God.  He wasn’t interested in starting a new religion, “Christianity.”  He was trying to get people to understand Israel’s religion in a more profound, life-changing way.  Those who signed on to his mission and became his followers were attracted by his life-changing teachings.

We keep reminding ourselves that the first century was a time of Roman conquest and rule.  Rome was becoming a great Empire by wiping out neighboring nations, as far north as the British Isles, as far east as Syria and Iraq, as far south as Egypt and northern Africa, as far west as Spain and Portugal. When each of those people were defeated they didn’t become Romans, they became subhuman – with no identity.  So one of the most important questions of the century was “who am I? who are my people?”  

Jesus had been an Israelite.  So people who signed on to the Jesus people found it easy to identify as an Israelite.  We call them “Jews” and think of them as a religion.  They called themselves “Judeans” or “Israelites” and thought of themselves as a nation, a people.  Yes, there was the God of Israel whom some of them worshiped, but every nation had a God.  You worshiped the god of the place you identified with.  It wasn’t about belief.  It was about origin and ethnicity.  It was about place and belonging.

Paul invited all the various Jesus clubs he connected with in the Empire to not only accept the teachings of Jesus but also to become part of his nationality – Israel.  It was a welcoming place to belong.  It was also a natural step for Israel because for centuries it had a vision of drawing all nations to itself and its god.  For a country so often defeated and of relatively little significance (except for its geographical position on many trade routes), it had a grand vision of itself as the people and the God which would attract all others.  And there again Israel is at odds with Empire.  It’s Empire that’s uniting all people, not the conquered Israel.  There’s audacity in the invitation to all people to unite as Israelites and follow the crucified hero, Jesus.

This vision of Israel, embraced by Jesus groups, was also a natural because Israelites or Judeans were already spread across the Empire.  They had traveled because of commerce or previous wars to virtually every major city.  They were and Empire-wide presence, so being   connected to them carried some weight, if not official significance.  The fact that Paul encouraged those who became part of the Jesus movement to also worship Jesus’ God, Israel’s God, was also unifying.  You may be originally from some place far from Israel, but if you adopted the worship of Israel’s God, you could be “in” with the others who shared that God.

The Jesus followers weren’t the only clubs turning to religion for identity in an Empire trying to erase identity.  Some turned to Isis and Osiris, gods from Egypt, for signs of hope.  Stories told of Isis finding a dismembered Osiris and putting his body back together, bringing him new life.  Others reinvigorated the worship of Eleusis and Dionysos with similar stories.  Stories of Jesus, who died and rose to life again, were equally attractive.  When all you’ve ever known has died, the promise of new life gives you hope.

There are other reasons first century folks found Israel and her God attractive.  One is the claim that there is only one god – ours.  Before small nations each had their own small god taking care of local business.  But first century Rome is a global enterprise.  Rome is uniting all nations under its umbrella.  It begins to make sense that one god would unify the Empire.  It takes a bigger, mightier god to represent a bigger, mightier world.  In addition, Israel’s god required things like goodness, compassion, mercy and justice.  The Empire worshiped the Emperor who rarely had any of these qualities.  The idea of one God creating good for the benefit of all people had mass appeal.  And third, people were becoming familiar with some of the holy writings which eventually became the Hebrew Bible.  These said interesting things like “welcome the stranger”, “feed the hungry” and “God is good.”  People began to see Israel’s literature as holding wisdom for everyone and describing a better way of living.

These are the same themes that Jesus has lifted up in his teaching.  So the Jesus followers are emphasizing the same life-affirming teachings that are attracting people to Judaism in their day.  There’s a convergence that supports what’s happening in the small groups who are meeting to try to live a more kind and whole life in the midst of violence and chaos.  Far from differentiating themselves from Israel, Jesus followers embrace those things Jesus valued about Israel’s God.  Certainly there was tension with Jewish leaders who didn’t follow Jesus or see his critique of their religion as positive.  But perhaps longer than we’ve imagined the two strands of practice – Jesus followers or not – remained interwoven.  Following Jesus was a way of being Jewish and claiming the identity of the long history of Israel and the unique teachings of her God.

Here's one possible learning we can gather from this journey through the first century:  rather than focusing on how different we are from the Jews of our time, we might learn more about what we have in common.  What are the teachings of Judaism which Jesus most valued?  What are the ideals he dreamed of expanding?  How does his identity as a Jew enrich our heritage as followers of Jesus?  Welcoming all people, embracing the stranger, feeding the hungry, practicing kindness and mercy, standing for justice – these aren’t just Christian themes but resonate through the long development of Judaism.  It’s possible that they do more to hold us together than those things which pull us apart.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Gospel of Mary (selected passages)

Testing Gender, Testing Boundaries and Forming New Identities through Gender from After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar Institute)

This week we’re tackling two chapters in our reading of After Jesus: Before Christianity because they are closely related.  I must admit that I feel like I’m writing a book report about a book that’s over my head!  We’re going to look at the understanding of gender in the first century and the communities who followed Jesus and that means laying aside layers of assumptions that we have in the 21st century about gender – because they simply don’t apply to the first century.

Let’s start with the fact that gender, like race, is a social construct.  I’m learning that means that differences (or similarities) that we apply to one race or another aren’t inherent in skin color or facial features.  Physically, race doesn’t make one person different from another.  It has no influence on mental ability or physical strength.  It doesn’t impact how a person functions in life – until culture and society assign meaning to racial differences and tell us they matter.  All races have equal ability but not equal opportunity.  It’s the story we tell about racial differences that creates inequality, not inherent characteristics. 

In our lifetimes the stories we’ve told about gender have changed dramatically.  Many of us grew up in a time when particular careers weren’t open to women.  Thankfully, that is slowly changing.  Of course we understand male and female anatomy as different, but ability to accomplish important things in life isn’t primarily anatomical.  And so we are rethinking our understanding of gender roles and realizing they are mostly irrelevant.  We’re blurring boundaries and opening opportunities for people.  Interestingly, blurring boundaries is a recurring theme as we’re learning about the first century.

Oddly, in the first century the prevailing social assumption wasn’t that men and women were different genders, but that all gender was male.  There were those males correctly formed (whom we call men) and those males whose genitalia failed to properly fall outside their bodies but were instead internalized (whom we call women).  Women weren’t another gender from men, they were deformed men, and as such played a more private role than their more “perfect” counterparts.  The word for “man” specifically means “an adult male over twenty years old, married to a woman, free-born, not enslaved, a Roman citizen, engaged in military activity, and expressing virtues such as courage and honor.”  The culture didn’t separate physical characteristics from social roles.  In the same way the word “woman” doesn’t apply until someone has borne a child.  To be either man or woman requires participation in a traditional family, which is the framework of the Empire.  So long as they keep their proper “place” the Empire is stable.

However, within the Jesus communities people kept pushing boundaries and upsetting stability.  Last week we talked about those who died bravely within these communities – later called martyrs.  It’s a man’s role to die with courage as a soldier.  But those who were killed because of their faith included old feeble men, women and children.  Their courage made them equals with the Roman men, upsetting the way things were supposed to work. 

The apostle Paul is known for preferring that people in his communities remain unmarried, which also defied the stability of traditional families.  Women who refused to marry the men their fathers chose for them were especially upsetting of social norms.  The woman Thecla is honored as a student of Paul’s who refused marriage, was to be martyred in the arena but survived (when flesh-eating seals were struck by lightening and killed before they could eat her), and went on to be a teacher about Jesus for a long life-time.  

The role women played in first-century Jesus communities is uncertain.  Today’s scripture from the Gospel of Mary portrays Mary as a favorite of Jesus, receiving special teachings, and able to encourage the male disciples when their resolve fails and they want to give up.  Yet they also discount her teaching because she is a woman.  Paul’s letters are full of references to women who functioned as leaders in the church, yet letters under Paul’s name written in the second century tell women to be silent in the assembly and remain subservient to the men.  It seems that women were leaders in some communities and other groups refused a role to women.  As time passes, women’s roles became more restricted, mirroring society around them.  There’s more than one way for gender to function in early gatherings and it’s not possible for us to point to one right way.  It is clear that in some cases women pushed boundaries much farther than the contemporary church has been willing to acknowledge and were full participants in their communities of faith.

In the first century and the twenty-first century those who placed limitations on the role of those who weren’t men of traditional power have claimed that they were following God’s will.  The diversity of roles and ambiguity about practice from the first century make that impossible to support.  While we can’t say that women functioned from the beginning in the same way women do today, we can say that there’s no clear mandate that gives authority and leadership only to men.

So when the Southern Baptists prevent women as pastors in 2023 and expel churches with women leaders, they are responding out of their culture but not with a biblical mandate.  The Bible reports that some early folks would agree with them, but many would not.  The same is true for the Roman Catholic Church and others who exclude women.  

My grandson came home from church camp this week and told me that while God loves all people, the Bible tells us that it’s wrong to be gay.  After all, God made Adam and Eve male and female and that’s the way it is.  While I rarely interfere with my grandchildren’s education, this one earned him a “Well grandma knows more about the Bible that anyone at your church camp and they are wrong.”  This position takes isolated Bible passages out of context and uses them to reinforce a social position folks want to be right.  The Bible actually says even less about gender identity than about being female and what it says is far from this position.

While we’re learning much about the first century which makes it easier to understand what people were thinking and what their writings meant to them, most of that time remains a mystery to us.  We have to be careful not to read ancient texts with modern eyes.  They simply aren’t coming from the same place we are. The best we can do is acknowledge diversity in many different groups which followed Jesus.  We’re looking for clues from that diversity about how to follow Jesus.  But we’re not trying to replicate what they did.  Instead we understand the past so with God we can create our present and perhaps impact the future.  In the first century people made historically appropriate beginnings at expanding the boundaries of faith and reducing the limitations placed on people.  In the twenty-first century we hope to do more.  We can recognize that much of what people attribute to God’s will is really our social fears prompting us to hope that God will endorse what we are comfortable with.  Instead God keeps opening up new possibilities.  Some early followers of Jesus believed that God’s love broke down barriers and divisions, that in Jesus there is neither “male nor female, slave nor free.”  Those are the folks whose story encourages us today as we try to create a more just and loving world.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

4 Maccabees 16:16-25

“The Deaths of Heroes,” After Jesus: Before Christianity, (Westar)

Today we come to the end of the first part of our book After Jesus: Before Christianity, which we are “reading” this summer as a way of understanding how people who lived in Jesus’ time answered the question, “Who is this man and why does he matter?”  That’s a question we also ask and answer, so to hear from our ancient spiritual ancestors informs our journey.  The first part of the book has been putting Jesus into a historical context, teaching us what it was like to live when he lived.  More than anything we’ve learned that his world was violent – full of warfare and coercion to insure that Pax Romana made life easy for the elite few.  Today we look at a final thought about why this violence was so formative for those who followed Jesus, the tradition that heroes died a noble death.

We start with Socrates, who died 450 years earlier but was still revered as a hero of Greece.  Socrates taught the young men of Athens that democracy was a bad idea because the people as a whole couldn’t possibly make wise choices in the way that a few smart men could make them.  Since democracy was the new thing of his time, he was tried and convicted of “impiety against the gods of Athens and corrupting the youth of the city.”  Since he told his accusers that he wouldn’t stop until he died, they sentenced him to death.  He gathered his followers around him for a final meal, drank poison hemlock and died.

Socrates’ death was considered noble because he stood up to tyranny, to those who wanted to silence him, and he showed great self-control by facing his death without fear, a sign of his great character.  After Plato’s writings made Socrates’ death well-known, he was revered as a great role model by generations to follow.  His good name was preserved by his noble action.

The people of Israel, who were the core of Jesus’ followers, told other stories about faith heroes who died nobly.  Our scripture today tells a story from the time of the Maccabees, a family who led a revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes, who attacked Jerusalem in 168 BCE.  Everyone knew the story of the brave mother whose seven sons were captured in battle and one after the other were tortured to death while she watched.  Our scripture today records her words, encouraging each one in turn to die rather than to turn against their nation which God commanded.  Their resistance to a conqueror is loyalty to God and their history as a nation.  To die nobly is in itself an act of defiance and patriotism.

Finally in the first century people told stories of those who died nobly at the hand of the Empire to preserve the possibility of their nation rising again in the future.  So many nations were conquered and each one had many heroes from the battles they endured. They give their lives for the glory of their people and the hope of their rising again as a people.

When we look at the earliest reports of Jesus’ trial and death in the Gospels, we can see how those who heard the stories connected them to the tradition of noble death.  

First Jesus eats a last meal with his disciples.  He shares bread and wine and words of explanation and wisdom he wants them to remember.  He tells them that like the bread his body will be broken.  Crucifixion breaks a body in terrible ways.  He tells them that the wine poured out is a new covenant in his blood.  Every Roman meal ended with wine poured out as an offering to the Emperor.  To forget to pour the wine is like forgetting to sing the national anthem before a sporting event.  It’s scandalous.  But Jesus doesn’t pour the wine – a sign of defiance toward the one who will soon murder him.  And he tells people to remember and retell the story every time they eat.  For the next decades his followers end every meal remembering that Jesus spilled blood is their wine.  Every time they eat they multiply the defiance toward Roman control.  By remembering over and over how Jesus died they keep his heroic act alive.  He remains the hero.

Jesus’ death is like that of noble heroes because he is innocent.  His trial demonstrates his nobility, his fearlessness in the face of danger, and his thorough goodness.  He doesn’t deserve to die.  He is loyal to his truth, his teachings, his cause, and his God.  Rather than renounce what he has said in an attempt to save his life, he is silent before his accusers.  He’s steadfast and brave.  In some versions of the story the soldiers notice how bravely he dies and express their admiration.

Later explanations will amplify the meaning of Jesus’ death, but these early ones see him as the great hero, facing the power of Rome and standing up for both the people of Israel, his people, and for his teachings, which like Socrates he refuses to recant.  They remember his wise parting words.  They remember how strong he was at trial and in death.  They remember him at every meal, giving their offering of wine not to the Emperor but as a memorial to Jesus.  He gives them hope for a different kind of life than Rome imposes on them.  He is the one who died for their cause and for their new way of living into a better future.

As we try to understand how much this meant to them, we can think about who are the ones who die a hero’s death in our time.  Who would we name?

• The soldiers in Ukraine?

• Those who died protecting our own country? 

• Or in wars and prisons in other nations fighting for freedom?

• Emmet Till?  Martin Luther King Jr.?  

• George Floyd?  Trayvon Martin?  Breona Taylor? So many nameless others?

• Matthew Shepherd? 

• The victims of mass shootings? El Paso? Synagogues? Schools? Night clubs?

Before we finish this project, we’re going to see how Jesus started as a hero and came to represent much more.  But all that starts with seeing what he represented to oppressed peoples, living in constant danger, hoping for something more.  It helps us to consider who are the heroes who die for something bigger than themselves today.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:43-48

“Violence in Stone” from After Jesus: Before Christianity

Today’s chapter from After Jesus: Before Christianity focuses on the Arch of Titus, a tribute to the deceased emperor Titus, built by his brother, the new emperor Domitian in 81 CE.  It declares Titus to be a god, in the tradition of Roman deifying emperors, and it depicts the destruction of Israel/Judea and Jerusalem as one of Titus’ greatest works. 

Jerusalem and Judea were pawns in a struggle for power.  They had briefly freed themselves from Rome in 66 CE and spent four years while the general Vespasian played with re-conquering them, waiting for the time to be right to cement a victory and claim the right to be emperor.  Titus finished the job for his father.  Near the end it’s estimated that Romans crucified 500 people a day, trying to intimidate the holdouts in Jerusalem to surrender. Perhaps a million people died in the four-year war and 20,000 were enslaved. When the army finally broke through the walls, the Temple was set ablaze and utterly destroyed.  Historians debate whether that was intentional or accidental, but it was still devastating.  For the first time in Roman military history, the Temple of the conquered was left in ruins, rather than being rebuilt.  In fact Jerusalem was left uninhabited until Hadrian built a Roman city on the ruins fifty years later.  But the riches of the Temple and Jerusalem were carried to Rome (a scene depicted on the Arch) and financed the building of the coliseum.  Jewish slaves quarried the stone for that gift to the Roman people.  

In the thick of all this destruction the followers of Jesus were trying to figure out how to maintain their own identity as Judeans, followers of Israel’s God, when their mother nation and Temple were destroyed.  It’s fitting that we think about the meaning of identity as national PRIDE month comes to a close and we’re preparing for ND celebrations of PRIDE in August.  We are 54 years after the Stonewall uprising when folks who identify as LGBTQIA+ said enough was enough.  Fortunately, the movement has seen gains over time and not destruction.  Yet the struggle to claim dignity and value for everyone continues, and in this particular moment seems to be losing ground.  Reflecting on how we claim the goodness of all people in our time gives us insight into how our ancestors struggled to claim their own humanity under oppression.

It seems like the early chapters of our book this summer have repeated the themes of violence over and over.  In the face of pervasive violence and dehumanization, how do the followers of Jesus carve out an identity and a way of surviving that is life-giving?  Today’s scripture tells us in part:  they commit to love.  God is love and those who identify with God share that love with everyone.  With friends and family of course, but also with enemies, persecutors, the unrighteous.  Their lives were full of these difficult folks.  This teaching of Jesus wasn’t just theoretical – they really were persecuted, threatened, treated unjustly virtually every day.  In the face of that treatment, they chose to love.  They turned the other cheek, not in submission but in strength.  They shared meals, shelter, clothing, work, hopes and dreams with each other and those in need – of physical sustenance and emotional support. In the weeks that follow we are going to look more closely at some of the many practical ways that played out over a century of experimentation.

On the first anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center I was asked to give the sermon at a service honoring those who died on that day and those who helped then and in the months following.  It occurs to me that those who attacked on 9/11 were a bit like Rome – so certain that they were right that they were willing to kill in the name of their convictions.  They took power into their own hands and purposely created chaos and horror.  They wanted to be feared.  Those who were attacked, on the other hand, reached out in love.  They phoned family and friends and left last words of love.  They helped each other and some were able to reach safety.  First responders rushed toward death in hopes of saving even a few lives.  

Before we had launched the war on Iraq, on that first anniversary, we as a nation were facing a choice:  we could act in self-righteous violence (like the attackers in planes) or we could respond with the strength of love – not to condone violence but to refuse to be engulfed by it or to succumb to its temptation.  We could at the same time protect ourselves and forgive.  We could end the cycle of violence by refusing to participate in it.  We could be heroes like those who acted in love.  We all know which choice we eventually made.  I wonder what today’s world would be like if we had made another choice.

This weekend the United Church of Christ is meeting in General Synod and Rev. Dr. Cheryl Linday is preaching one of the central sermons.  Her sermon describes the way in which prophets (in ancient and modern times) invite us imagine a future defined by a loving God.  (We think of prophets as predicting the future, but she reminds us that prophets speak instead of consequences of present actions.  If you…, then…)  Rev. Linday also invites us as a church to imagine a different way of being.  What if we created a culture of love?  What if we created a culture of justice?  What if we created a culture where everyone thrived, without fear?

That enterprise is just what the first followers of Jesus were up to.  They lived in horrific times and at the same time they lived in communities of love and support.  They imagined a better way and they lived it into reality. 

What would we live into reality in our time if we could?

A world in which PRIDE was a given because we were genuinely proud of every person.  A world in which who we loved and how we identified was celebrated in the full richness of human variety.

A world in which our community fund was unnecessary because those who worked made a living wage and those unable to work were fully supported by our community.  Housing was affordable and available for everyone.  No one was hungry.  No one lacked health care.  No one was alone or afraid.

A world in which varieties of opinions were respected and debate was encouraged, but without rancor or name-calling.

A world in which the earth was treasured and cared for so she could care for us.  

A world in which those who grieve were held close until they found life again.

A world in which those who are ill found healing, and those who were dying were treasured and carried through into the next life with joy.

Our spiritual ancestors lived in a difficult world – as do we.  They ALSO lived in a world of their own making in which love and compassion overcame fear and community surrounded each person with support and care.  I wonder what we have the strength to imagine.  And if we dare.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:1-11

“Gospel of Empire, Gospel of Jesus” from After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

Today’s chapter from our book is about Good News – for the Empire and for those who followed Jesus.  “Good News” is a translation of a Greek word which meant that literally.  It’s also translated as “Gospel” from the old English word Godspel, which also meant “Good News.”  In the first century some “Good News” was official.  It was the announcement by the government of something official to celebrate – a new victory in war, the birthday of the Emperor, the building of a new temple in your town.  It bore the stamp of Empire approval.

If you were a Roman citizen in the first century, the Pax Romana was indeed good news.  Civil war had ended and the government was stable.  Roads were easy to travel and were relatively safe.  Wealth poured into your hands from across the known world.  You owned slaves taken in war to do your heavy work and care for all your needs.  The Empire built beautiful buildings for entertainment, for bathing, and for worship.  It was a very good time to be alive.  The Emperor had SAVED you from barbarians and given you a great life.

If you weren’t a Roman citizen, you paid the cost for all this luxury and leisure.  Last week we talked about how the “peace” was maintained by violence, which impacted everyone’s life directly or indirectly.  In contrast to the official “Good News” of the Empire, the people who followed Jesus (the Anointed) made their own good news in quiet ways, under the radar of those who ruled them.  They chose this same Greek word “good news” when near the end of the first century they wrote down stories about Jesus.  He became the instigator of good news by teaching people how to live in a new way.  He was not the violent winner of conflict but the crucified victim of Empire.  He was the Anointed leader of a nation which had been crushed by Rome.  Those who identified with him claimed that in spite of being utterly defeated, they found a good way to live.  They made a different kind of peace, turning the hardship of their everyday lives into moments of joy. Jesus SAVED them and gave them new life.

The tiny communities gathered for support and encouragement and to practice a way of life built on very different values than Rome.  They spoke of love, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, and justice.  They treated each other with dignity and respect.  Every action they took according to these values was a repudiation of Rome.  

Some of these groups were dinner clubs.  They met in very small groups and talked over common meals about how they wanted to shape their lives by Jesus’ teaching.  Others were wisdom circles our groups of students who discussed and debated the teachings of Jesus and others.  They were similar to the students of philosophers, but their topics were more focused on daily life – how to build friendships and working relationships, how to relate to nature, how to be a good neighbor, how to deal with hardship and loss, how to think strategically and build community.  How to make meaning.  Some became groups that gave folks an identity.  Rome dehumanized those it called barbarians.  When you are officially not fully human, you need to find a way to reclaim dignity and purpose.  You could belong to the followers of the Anointed.  You were no longer “Judean or Greek, enslaved or free, woman or man but all one in Jesus, the Anointed King of Israel.”  Some women joined together and resisted marriage, which was essentially enslavement to a man.  Some men formed families to replace families they had lost.  There were so many ways of being a Jesus group that we haven’t discovered all of them, but we’ll be looking at some of them more clearly later this summer.

Most of these groups were places to build “confidence” or “trust.”  This is a word used 252 times in the New Testament.  Jesus encouraged people not to be afraid, but to be confident.  Often our translations read “Faith” rather than “confident.”  The meaning is significantly different.  

Hear today’s scripture again using the Westar translation:

Congratulations to those who grieve.  They will be consoled.

Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice.  They will have a feast.

Don’t fret about your life, what you’re going to eat, or about your body, what you’re going to wear.  Remember there is more to living than food and clothing….Think about how the lilies grow; they don’t toil and they never spin.

Communities who trust become self sufficient, confident.  Rather than being afraid of the many dangers of their time, they are able to love and encourage one another.  They are empowered.  They become healthy.  They create their own safety and find their own joy, even though they still live in difficult circumstances.  They live differently.  They find new life.

We are a small community of Jesus’ people. We name values we believe Jesus taught and try to live by them:  justice, inclusion, equality, compassion.  We believe everyone should eat.  Everyone should have a home, an education, an opportunity for meaningful work, a community who cares about them.  And we are living by those values, influencing the larger community in which we live.  Instead of worrying about what we can’t do because we are few, we focus on doing everything we can.  That matters.

How much more is this Jesus lifestyle important to those in more desperate circumstances than we are.  Folks experiencing warfare.  Those whose people have known generations of racial injustice.  People in the cycle of extreme poverty.  When we build confident, supportive communities, everyone can benefit.  This is good news for everyone today.  We hold this in common with our first century ancestors.

At the same time there are key differences between the first and twenty-first centuries.  First century folks couldn’t challenge Rome.  There was no democracy, no dissent.  They were powerless to change the prevailing system.  We aren’t.  It’s important to build resilient communities, but telling folks to find their own good news in the face of oppression is insufficient.  We CAN challenge our system.  We can learn and respond to the challenges of our time – warfare, racism, discrimination based on economics or gender or sexual orientation. 

For example, we have been giving housing assistance to people a few times each year.  That’s good news.  We’ve also learned how dehumanizing it is for those folks to cold call churches and social agencies, tell their story and hope for a handout.  This week I’m going to call our partners in this work and ask them to help us think about how the process could be easier, less abusive of those who need help.  And to help us think about why people need emergency help with housing.  Maybe we’ll discover ways that we can advocate for change and be even more helpful.

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 6:9-13

“Engine of Empire: Violence,” chapter After Jesus: Before Christianity, Westar Institute

Our scripture from Jeremiah today talks of violent times, seeing them as retribution for not following God’s law or caring for God’s people.  It reminds us that when we study history, often the outline of our text is a listing of various wars and the timeline connecting them.  The common thread of human history seems to be violence and warfare as one group struggled to gain and maintain power over another.

The first century is called the time of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome.  In reality it was a particularly violent and dangerous time as Rome maintained “peace” by completely dominating all other nations.  They conquered the lands around the Mediterranean, most of what we know of as the Middle East, and central Europe as far as Britain.  The Empire was vast, and once the internal civil wars mostly ended in the generation before Jesus, Roman armies were deployed across the known world to dominate everyone else.  

Rome maintained its version of “peace” by torturing other people who came under their control.  This included both rape and crucifixion.  Historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of conquered people were crucified just to terrify others into submission.  Crucifixions were public, with crosses lined up along main roads so everyone could watch slow and painful death by suffocation.  It was meant to be intimidating and it succeeded.  We think of crucifixion as unique to Jesus, and often we’re told that it would have been off-putting to those who heard about it.  In later centuries Christians talked about Jesus crucified as the sacrifice both required by God and effective in connecting us to God – overcoming sin by pain.  That’s a key Christian understanding, but it’s not a first century understanding.  Scholars are beginning to speculate that early New Testament references to Jesus crucified aren’t about his sacrifice on our behalf but are about solidarity.  Just like everyone today knows someone who was seriously ill or died of COVID, everyone in the first century knew someone or many someones who had been crucified.  Saying Jesus was crucified said he was one of the thousands who understood the wrath of Rome.  He too was caught up in the horror of crucifixion, as were his disciples or students who loved him.  Then his life and influence continued – a resurrection – and crucifixion wasn’t the last word.

When Rome conquered a new city state or territory, it took many of the inhabitants as slaves.  Slave labor was the backbone of the economy.  When Jerusalem was conquered in 70 CE almost 100,000 people were taken to Rome, where many of them helped to build the Colosseum.  Almost every Roman citizen owned at least one or two slaves, and those of wealth owned many.  Slaves ran every household, did all the manual labor of the Empire and provided labor to most businesses.  The wealth of Rome depended on slavery, just as the wealth of pre-Civil War plantations depended on enslaved persons.  Even the government depended on the knowledge and work of enslaved people who had been scholars and government workers in conquered territories.  Paul speaks of being enslaved to Christ and people understood what that meant, because perhaps the majority of Jesus people were themselves enslaved.

In addition to taking the wealth of conquered lands as its own (silver from Spain, art from Greece, farms across the Empire), Rome supported its wealthy class with taxation.  Entire towns were built with tax money and populated with slaves and retired soldiers who were moved far from their homes to populate the Empire.  One such town was built only three miles from Nazareth during Jesus’ lifetime.  The great monuments and temples in Roman towns were paid for with taxes.  Herod the Great who Israel on behalf of Rome taxed the people to expand the Temple in Jerusalem.  The tax collectors appear often in stories about Jesus, and people hated that they became relatively rich by charging extra for their own pay.  There was no first century middle class.  There were a small number of wealthy businessmen and administrators and there were vast numbers of slaves and peasants who owned nothing and paid a high percentage of their own production to the upper class.

Across the Empire were visible monuments to the power and violence of Rome.  Each Emperor was thought to be a God and people were required to present sacrifices and offerings to their statues.  Carvings on arches and buildings reminded everyone that the Emperors as Rome were raping and murdering their way across the known world, and no one was safe from their reach.  Into this moment in time came the followers of Jesus the Anointed, a few thousand of them at most spread across the entire Empire, claiming that Jesus brought “good news” to the oppressed, the poor, the enslaved, the common people.  Westar describes this “good news” in this way:

This good news was not about winning a great battle or gaining a material foothold.  Nor was it about gaining of assurance of life in the hereafter.  What made a difference for these communities was caring for one another, bestowing forgiveness, being fed, finding a future, and being surrounded by companions.  No wonder student sages mused, “You are the salt of the earth…the light for the world…Don’t fret about your life – what you’re going to eat or drink – or your body – what you’re going to wear…Take a look at the birds of the sky: they don’t…gather into barns…You are to seek God’s domain and…justice first, and all these things will come to you as a bonus.” (Mat. 5:13, 14; 6:25, 26, 33).

Flying under the radar of Rome’s domination, small groups who styled themselves after Jesus’ way, lived in this repressive time with joy.  They kept their heads down, watched out for one another, made sure everyone had enough to eat and a place to sleep.  They became friends of one another and of Jesus and resisted Rome by living differently than their oppressors.  They were kind, honest and just.  They demonstrated compassion and mercy.  None of those qualities was built into the fabric of their daily lives, but they discovered that there was goodness in living by different standards than the rest of the world.  They found peace and joy in the teachings of Jesus and their connection to each other.

In our lives we assume that justice is a given.  That those who work hard can prosper.  That all people are equal, and opportunity is for everyone.  That is our experience, but it’s not the experience of most people of color in our nation.  It’s not the experience of the world’s people who live in extreme poverty, in developing nations and in our own town.  It’s not the experience today of the people of Ukraine who have been invaded to assuage the vanity of Putin and his cronies.  The first followers of Jesus have more in common with those folks than they do with us.  We believe we can have a positive impact on our nation and our community – they knew they could not. So they didn’t try to make the world a better place.  They simply lived in a better way.  They weren’t confronting power.  They were hearing good news about community and connection and support for one another and living that good news into their daily reality.  In the midst of extreme hardship, they were finding joy and telling others it was life-changing.  Just like folks in our time are living through danger, persecution and war and maintaining their humanity.  They are the ones who can teach us about what it means to follow Jesus in a first century way.  If we let them.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Acts 11:19-26

Chapter 2 (If Not Christian, What?) of After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar Institute, 2021)

Shakespeare has Romeo ask, ”What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!”  “Christian” is the name we know for the followers of Jesus.  But in the first century, the followers didn’t call themselves by that name.  Today we’re going to learn some things about the name and what significance it has for us.

When dictionaries were invented, Samuel Johnson (1755) defined Christian as “professor of the religion of Christ.”  Today’s Oxford English Dictionary give almost the same definition:  one who believes or professes the religion of Christ; an adherent of Christianity.  Not much has changed over the years.  It intrigues me that both definitions refer to the “religion of Christ” as Christianity.  In reality, Jesus lived and died as a Jew and his religion was first century Judaism – which he fervently wanted to reform.  It would be more accurate to say that Christianity is a religion based on the life and teachings of Christ.  

We assume based on today’s scripture reading that the earliest followers of Jesus identified themselves by the word “Christian.” That’s hardly the case.  Scholars tell us there are approximately 138,015 words in the New Testament.  The name Jesus is found 1,002 times.  The name Christian appears three times – twice in Acts and once in the First letter of Peter.  That’s certainly not enough appearances for us to understand this as a common word.

We’ve talked about what “Christian” means in our time, but what did it mean in the first century?  

The word in Greek, the language of the New Testament, is christianos.  It’s made of two parts:  christ and ianos.  Christ means “anointed.”  It’s a translation of the Hebrew word we know as “Messiah.”  It’s used for all those who are acknowledged in an important role by being anointed with oil – having oil poured over their heads in an official ceremony.  It refers to kings, prophets, and priests – all of whom are anointed for their roles in society.  Ianos is a suffix given to people who follow or belong to a party associated with the first word.  Christianos are people in the party of Christ.  In the first century “Herodians” were members of the party of Herod.  In our time “Republicans” are those who support the republic.  “Americans” are those who claim allegiance to America. 

“Christian” is used in the first century not by people who followed Jesus, but by those outside the group in reference to Jesus’ followers.  It has a dangerous and derogatory implication.  The followers of Christ are those who identify with a man executed as a revolutionary.  He’s not seen as the founder of the one true religion, but as a challenger to the authority of the empire.  These folks are potential revolutionaries.  They follow a man they call “anointed” even though he wasn’t officially an anointed person.  He wasn’t a king/ruler, a prophet, or a priest.  By calling him “anointed” his followers are claiming authority for him that he doesn’t have.  That’s a direct challenge to the authority of those who are anointed.  It’s a challenge to the empire.  

Consequently, we see the term used by governors when they ask their superiors how they should deal with the christianos in their towns.  The governor Pliny told his supervisor that he was interrogating Christians and insisting that they repeat a prayer to the Roman gods and make a sacrifice to the statue of the emperor.  We read that as a religious act when it was actually as political sign of allegiance to the emperor and the Empire.  It’s allegiance to the “real” anointed ones rather than the upstart “anointed.”  Pliny goes on to describe what he could learn about Christian practice in a tone of disbelief:

They declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this:  they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath…to abstain from theft, robbery and adultery, to commit no breach of trust and not to deny a deposit when called upon to restore it.  After this ceremony it had been their custom to disperse and reassemble later to take food of an ordinary, harmless kind… This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women…I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to an extravagant length.

Pliny was writing early in the second century, using the word Christian which didn’t become common until at least 100 years later.  It’s common usage was to refer to a group of Judaeans, followers of an executed radical whom they called “Christ” or “anointed one.”  They were seen as potential troublemakers from a political and social viewpoint  - one of many troublesome groups from Israel, all of whom objected to Roman rule.  You can see that this bears almost no resemblance to the way we understand the word “Christian” so as we study the first century, we won’t use our word with its overtones because we’re looking for what came before our understanding.

So what did Jesus earliest followers call themselves?  There were many groups by many different names.  Some of these names have been lost to us.  Others can be pried out of ancient writings with a little research.  Scholars have identified 24 used in documents we now have.  They include:

• Jesus peoples

• Followers of the Anointed

• Disciples – which is most accurately translated as Student or Jesus’ students

• Believers of the Anointed

• Confidants of the Anointed

• Friends of the Anointed

• Sisters and Brothers of the Anointed

• Chloe’s people (or the name of local leaders)

• The Way

• The Enslaved of God

• The Perfect Day

• The Migrants

• The Children

• Members

These names represent variations in how each local group thought of themselves and how they connected to other groups.  There’s a rich variety, and in the next weeks we’re going to spend time with several options.  It’s our mission to discover what it meant to be a student or follower of the one called “anointed.”  We’re looking for the themes that connected these folks to Jesus and we’re looking for ways to rediscover what connects us to him as well.