2010-07-18 – "Walking in the Light: Back to the Future"

“Get Busy Living”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Text: 1 John 1:1-4; 2:24-29

Front page news several Easter's ago. A text was discovered in the Egyptian desert. A crumbling, ancient papyrus written in Coptic dating from the fourth century but probably a translation of a mid-late-second century document. Judas was Jesus favourite disciple, the headlines read. The newly published, Gospel of Judas, was big news.

The articles caused a stir and to illustrate how words can be used to push sensationalist agendas, Terry Garcia of National Geographic, described the text by saying, “The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature.” While it is a true statement, to the average reader, the words, “authenticated” and “genuine” invoke thoughts of “reliability,” “validity” and even “truth.” Yet, when the text is examined critically, asking real questions such as: Is it a true account of Judas' interactions with Jesus? Is it historical? Do we have to re-evaluate Judas and the whole garden scene of the Passion on the basis of this manuscript? The answers are, with a very high degree of certainty, “No, no, and no,” respectively. Yet, the damage was done. Doubt was laid in minds of those who want to have doubt and those who do not want to look into the claims with a critical mind.

A similar problem arose with the publication of Dan Brown's best-seller, The Da Vinci Code. The story is a heady mixture of conspiracy, suspense, religion, sex and art…. Fictional Harvard professor, Robert Langdon, becomes embroiled in investigating a series of brutal murders. They turn out to be connected to a secret society called the Priory of Sion which harbours the dramatic secret: the Holy Grail is actually the person of Mary Magdalene and her descendents. Jesus, it is claimed, was married to Mary Magdalene. Their union was a symbol of a religion that combined both male and feminine divinity. As Langdon investigates, it comes out that these “truths” were overwhelmed by “the official version of Christianity.” The church purportedly concealed the evidence about Jesus and Mary, suppressed all but four of the many original Gospels, and eliminated traces of the feminine from the Christian version of God. For 2,000 years, however, an underground movement has kept alive the evidence of Christianity's supposed true origin and protected the descendants of Jesus and Mary from the oppression of the official Church.

The Da Vinci Code is probably one of the most gripping stories I have come across. It is certainly a good and entertaining novel. I purchased the later, glossy version with pictures of all the art work that they interpreted as they were solving the crimes. It was a beautiful edition. Unequivocally, however, The DaVinci Code is fiction! Brown said himself that it was fiction however, he proceeded to give some support his fiction with actual documents. His ideas that, for instance, Jesus and Mary were married, that the divinity of Jesus was invented in the 4th century by Emperor Constantine, came from actual documents and sources. People read Brown and believed the documents and the interpretation.

But when one actually gets down to reality, the documents used to show the existence of the secret society, for instance, have proven to be fraudulent. The thoughts about what is imagined to occur under Constantine about Jesus' divinity are only supported by a small, radical group of revisionist scholars. The texts they use to support their concept of an early, widespread, Christian pluralism are considerably late, from the later second, third, fourth centuries and beyond. But again, the damage was done for the many who will not look deeper.

And we could go on. Tom Harpur's book, The Pagan Christ ventures into an academic never-never-land drawing on sources and the work of individuals who are little known and have little credibility in studies of antiquity. Grand assumptions and speculations are made with little or no support and even church-study groups have been eating it up as true, factual thoughts about the development of a so-called, Christ-myth.

There is an incredible amount of misinformation, suggestion, and distortion out there these days. It is masquerading as scholarship and truth but in reality is far from it. To really get into it all properly would probably require us to set up a university course in early Christianity and history. But what can we say within the context of a summer sermon about Jesus and history? Where can we go?

A couple of thoughts: Think back for a moment to your school days. Think back to the playground and the things that used to occur. Think back to one of those playground fights between individuals. I don't know about you, but I was in one of those once. I never really sought out fights but on this occasion, I had changed schools for the purpose of playing football rather than rugby and went immediately into the first XI. It was great. Immediate recognition until some of the lads who weren't quite on the team decided to figure out where I stood on the toughness “totem pole.” It was ridiculous, but big Fergie jumped me. I threw him off. He tried to get me in a headlock but I kept punching at his every advance. A crowd was gathering shouting, “fight, fight, fight!” I kept throwing a punch here and there and moving away. I had learned from Cassius Clay's rhyme, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” It took a while but the teachers arrived before much damage was done. Fergie and I were whisked off to the principal's office for a lesson. I know it was absolutely deplorable! But that is the schoolyard and these things become the subject of schoolyard lore for months.

Imagine, if you will another schoolyard: You weren't there but two boys, Dale and Richard, get into a fight. Your friend, Billy was there and he tells you that Dale really gave Richard what we used to call “a lickin'.” A few weeks later, you're out around town and your friend, Johnny, mentions the big fight between Dale and Richard. “Boy,” says Johnny, “Dale really got his comeuppance from Richard a few weeks ago.” “Wait a minute,” you think to yourself. “I thought Dale pounded Richard. Billy had said so.” So you do a little digging and you find out from Johnny that he hadn't been there but he had heard from Eric. You ask Eric and he says that he hadn't been there either but he had heard from Jim who had been told by Richard's best friend Bob who had been there. You start to think about it. “Am I to believe Billy who was there, or Johnny, who wasn't there but had heard about it through Eric, who had heard through Jim, who had heard from Bob?” All things being equal, wouldn't you tend to believe Billy? His was the earlier, eyewitness account.

When we evaluate historical texts as sources, a general rule of thumb is that earlier is better. A source that derives from a time in close proximity to the events described is generally to be preferred to later sources. And so it is with our Gospels and the NT writings. They are from the first century and ought to be preferred to later, apocryphal gospels that are now being used by some to revise history. Oh, reporters will use these things, ever eager to jolt the public into reading their story, they use the sensational. But what they are really suggesting we do, in these cases is to believe Johnny's report that he had heard from Eric, who had heard from Jim (none of whom had been there), who had heard from a close friend of Richard about the fight. They want us to accept a mid-second century and later documents over the eye-witness accounts penned in the first century.

The apostle John opens his writing that we know as 1 John:

But let's think some more, for a source is only as credible as the credibility of the witness. Getting back to the playground brawl: What if, for instance, we know that Billy is a downright liar who never tells things the way they actually were, and what if Johnny, Eric, Jim, and Bob are relatively normal, trustworthy types. That could change our view of things. We may even take Johnny's later account as potentially more valid than Billy's. We would have the opposite view if we knew Billy to be truthful as opposed to Johnny or any of his sources.

So, what of the credibility of the sources of information about Jesus? If we look at The Gospel of Judas, for instance, it is interesting that the great Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons mentions it in his writings c.180. In his day he was as close as anyone to Jesus. He wrote of how as a young man he had known the elderly, Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, before he was martyred. And when he was a young man, Polycarp had known the apostle John when he was quite old. So Irenaeus was only one step removed from an eye-witness of Jesus.

Irenaeus wrote against heresies of his day, one of which was associated with a group he called Cainites. The Cainites, he said, did not believe that the God of the Jews was God at all and when they encountered the Jewish and Christian sacred writings, they sought out all those who opposed God and rewrote texts and history in their favour. In other words, they rewrote the history of individuals like Cain, Esau, Korah, the people of Sodom, and Judas. Irenaeus says that they produced a fictional history of this kind, one of which they call The Gospel of Judas. So there is evidence from c.180, that there was a group known to rewrite texts and history in accordance with their beliefs. It makes them less than credible.

What about the NT writers? Think of the characters of those who wrote about Jesus. Think about Peter, James, and John, and even Paul. Each one went out declaring amazing things about Jesus. Sources close to them express how they incurred trouble, endured suffering, and even martyrdom for what they said. They did not get rich from what they taught, they sought out no gain, they just went forth with the amazing story of Jesus crucified and risen. In the writings that they have left us, they speak of truth and honesty, uprightness and justice, love, compassion, and faith. Would they have put forth lies, while speaking of these things? NT scholar, Birger Gerhardsson, has stated that the early apostles appear to have done what they did and produced their writings “in good faith.”

Think also of Peter and the boys as Christ was being crucified. They scattered, they denied him, they fled. On that awful Friday that we call “Good,” a woman said to Peter, “You are one of them.” And Peter replied, not once, but three times, “I don't know the man,” Think of how later, Peter became a great man in the church, perhaps even the most important apostle. He became sought after for his knowledge, witness and insight, he was lauded and honoured as a servant of God. Why would such a derogatory account of Peter be in the Gospels? It would have been quite normal later, when the Gospels reached their final form, to edit that sort of thing out so as not to defame the great Peter. But it seems that the early Christian writers were more interested in truth, less interested in elevating themselves, and more interested in elevating Jesus and what one could become with Christ. It seems that these people were telling it as it was even if it meant embarrassing Peter. There is an integrity to this, an integrity to how they lived and what they suffered for the sake of the greatest thing they had ever seen in their lives.

What I'm suggesting here is that we go with Billy's account to understand what happened in the playground. The NT sources are both earlier than anything else and have an integrity to them. I think that these things are why John took the stance he did when he wrote his letter against those who were, in the latter stages of the first century, changing things and suggesting that Jesus could not be the messiah or that the divine could not enter human form (as we discussed last week). He was appalled at these early revisionists, people who would change history to fit with their worldview to make Christianity more palatable to the, then, modern mind. John described them as liars, antichrists, and he says to his people, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life … Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life (1:1, 2:24, 25).” He says, we were there, we saw and heard and touched the word of life, Jesus (1:1ff); we have declared all that happened in him, do not stray after the thoughts of those who are fusing Jesus with other religious ideas. That's not what we experienced, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you (1:1; 2:24).”

That's not bad advice. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you (2:24).” That's not bad advice for us in our day, faced with dubious and sensational claims at every turn. Whether it is The Gospel of Judas rediscovered, or the thoughts implicit to The DaVinci Code, or The Pagan Christ, or anything else, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you (2:24).” That's not that we shouldn't think. It's not that we should accept everything. It's that there is a credibility to what we have had from the beginning and it will take a lot to move it.

Maybe you recall the series of films, Back to the Future, with a young Michael J. Fox. In its time they were box office smashes, telling the convoluted stories of how Marty McFly travelled through time back to 1955 and each time he travelled back something happened that changed the future and he had to travel back again and again to correct things that he had done.

In a way, John is telling us, “Go back to the future.” “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you (2:24).” Maybe what we learned in Sunday School is not that bad. Maybe what we grew up with in faith is closer to the truth than all the adult, sophisticated ideas we hear now. Maybe, just maybe, the Gospels and NT letters are closer to Jesus than some academics would suggest. Maybe the so-called apocryphal gospels were left out of the NT canon for good reason as the NT took shape.

When the NT did take shape, the early Christian leaders went back to the eyewitnesses to guide them into the future. And maybe the way forward for a church today that is limping along in a sea of doubt and uncertainty, is to go back to the future. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you (2:24).” And maybe then, the faith will have meaning and the transformative power it has had over countless generations.