Still, We Rise
Rev. Christina
M. Neilson
March 23rd, 2008
Easter Sunday
Low,
in a grave, buried in the sands of Egypt, laid a document that few knew
existed, the Gospel of Judas. Judas
Iscariot, the quintessential traitor of Jesus, the betrayer who turns his
friend and teacher in to the Roman authorities, is rarely connected with the
“Good News” of the gospel. The Gospel of
Luke claims that Satan enters Judas and drives him to betray Jesus, the “Devil
made me do it.” The Gospel of Mathew implies that he is simply greedy,
betraying Jesus for a few pieces of silver.
The Gospel of John says that Judas is a devil and is greedy! The Gospel
of Mark is neutral- he simply reports what happened, and doesn’t judge
why. Judas lets the authorities know
where Jesus is, which leads to being charged by the Roman authorities, and
sentenced to a brutal death. In his
despair, Judas hangs himself, or rips his belly open and dies with his intestines
splayed out in the field of blood, depending upon which gospel you read.
Jesus
fulfills his destiny as savior to the world, the one who died for our sins on
the cross so that original sin may be washed away and we can dwell in the house
of the lord forever. Jesus died to atone
for our sins. Judas is the bad apple,
portrayed as hostile, evil, and betrayer over twenty times in the New
Testament. But if Jesus had to die on
the cross for the salvation of the world, wasn’t Judas doing a good thing by
allowing Jesus’ destiny to be fulfilled?
He betrays Jesus but could be construed as the hero of the gospel. We wouldn’t have salvation if not for
Judas. We wouldn’t have Easter. We would still be eating chocolate bunnies
and eggs in celebration of the pagan fertility rites of spring.
I
have to admit there are few stories in the bible that are harder for me to
accept theologically than the Easter story.
Yes, it’s dramatic. It’s fun to
act out with laying palms as Jesus processes into town, then the following
week, slaughtering lambs, and a Eucharistic dinner. Jesus is beaten severely, forced to carry his
own cross to the grave, then dies a bloody death. He goes to hell, and then rises from his
death to go to heaven. His tomb is
empty. He comes back again and is
spotted by Mary, and others who witness his resurrection. It’s dramatic, but I prefer to believe as the
Universalists do, that we don’t have original sin, so there is nothing to
atone.
There
are variations within the four gospels, but this is the essential story. On
Holy Thursday, we experience the last supper.
Perhaps a communion service, or a foot washing and blessing of the
bread. On Good Friday, the Berea area
churches do a cross walk, and literally carry the cross through the streets of
Berea to experience walking in Jesus’ pain and suffering. Ouch!
I can’t bring myself to do it.
On Easter
Sunday we celebrate the resurrection.
Good News! Jesus lives! We look around us and see signs of spring,
new life coming back after a long winter.
We see birds migrating, mating rituals, snow melting, and maybe even
sunshine! I love the spring with the
flowers peeping through, the grass trying to be green. But even with this early Easter, and this
year it is about as early as Easter can get, if one looks they can already see
these signs of life. Still, we rise, and
are reminded again and again of new life. It makes me want to start
spring-cleaning, and on Friday for some reason, I had to spend a few hours
cleaning and organizing before I could start to write this sermon. I can embrace a metaphorical theology of the
resurrection, but the atonement keeps me questioning and probably always will.
But
then, it’s important to recognize that the four gospels in the accepted
Christian cannon, are the only authorized versions of the story. There are many Christianities, just as there
are many forms of Judaism. Every other
version was deemed heretical in the 3rd and 4th
century. The Gospel of Judas, along with
the other Gnostic texts, was among those that were condemned. People buried them so that they would not be
destroyed, and now around 1800 years later, some of these texts, long missing
from circulation, have been found in caves in Egypt. Low in the grave they laid, and are
resurrected today, so that we may learn another truth about the man called
Jesus.
The
Gospel of Judas is the most recent find.
It was first discovered in the 1970’s by a farmer, and sat with an
antiquities dealer on Long Island for almost thirty years. Scholars then had access to the text and
could translate it. When originally
found, it was in rather good shape, but after traveling several continents, and
finally landing in New York, where it was not carefully preserved, led to a lot
of damaged text. We knew it existed
because some of the early church fathers, particularly, Irenaeus, a heresy
hunter, talked about it in the writings and condemn it.
It’s
appropriate that this gospel has been kept “secret.” The Gnostic knew secrets that were revealed
only to those “in the know.” They know
secrets that can bring salvation, but not salvation from sin as the bible
tells. Salvation is knowing the
truth. The truth about who God is, about
who we are, where we came from, how we got here, and how to return to
heaven. The Gnostics believed that the
material world was not their home. God,
Jesus, Christ, salvation, human existence and Judas in particular, are all
portrayed very differently.
In brief,
the Gospel of Judas story goes as follows. Jesus observes his disciples
gathered in a circle offering up prayers to God and laughs at them. Confused by
their master's irreverence, they tell him troubling dreams that each of them
had the night before concerning the future.
Twelve
priests lord over a great church, yet they appear to be acting in a decidedly
unchristian manner. "Some sacrifice their own children, others their
wives." They sleep around. They countenance war and slaughter. They
"commit a multitude of sins and deeds of lawlessness." And yet they
all invoke Jesus' holy name.
Jesus
chuckles again, "Those you have seen receiving the offerings at the
altar—that is who you are, ministers of error, who on the last day will
be put to shame." The disciples
stare at Jesus, unsure of what to say.
They consider themselves to be faithful servants.
Judas
breaks the uncomfortable silence. He also has a dream to tell. "In the
vision I saw myself, as the twelve disciples were stoning me and persecuting
me."
Judas is
less than pleased with this prospect, until Jesus clues him in on the plan. The
plan is that Judas will betray Jesus and then commit suicide. Why? Because
Judas's appointed role in salvation history is to rescue Jesus from
contaminated humanity, including his blithering disciples.
Judas is
portrayed as Jesus’ closest and most intimate friend. Judas understood Jesus better
than anyone else. Jesus wanted to escape
the material world and go to heaven. We
are trapped in bodies of flesh, and need to learn how to escape. The Christian Gnostics believed that “Christ”
brings this secret knowledge that will reveal the truth and set them free.
In
the bible, the world is the creation of one true God. The Gnostics believed that God who created
this world is not the only God, all-powerful or all knowing, but the creator is
a lesser God, inferior, and ignorant.
They looked at their world and said, “How can anyone call this
good?” They saw earthquakes, floods,
hurricanes, famines, drought, epidemics, misery and suffering. They thought the world was a cosmic disaster,
and that salvation only came to those who could escape this world.
The
Gnostics saw the Gods as pure spirits that inhabited this realm, and then there
was a cosmic catastrophe where the divine beings fell from divine realms and
created lesser beings. This world became
a place of entrapment. These sparks of
divinity that were released had to be captured and placed in human bodies. Immortal souls were trapped in this miserable
realm of matter, and needed to escape to return home. They believed that some of us are trapped
divinities, that need to be released, and some are not. For those without the divine spark, death is
the end. The twelve disciples lacked the
divine spark.
We
can’t realize this truth on our own, we need a divine revelation. Christ brings this revelation. Some Gnostics believe that Christ was an
emissary from the spiritual realm who tells us the truth of our origin and how
to escape. Jesus is not the Son of God
of the Old Testament, (Yahweh) and he is not the son of the creator God.
(Elohim) He is a divinity from above, who took on the appearance of flesh and
blood, a phantasm, or ghost, to teach those who were called the secret truths
for salvation. He often took on the
appearance of a child, or an adult, and could appear simultaneously to more
than one person. (Sort of like George
Burns in “Oh God!” – he also does this in the Gospel of John.) They believed that God is projected self
reflection- how we see the true God is how we see ourselves.
In
the Secret Book of John, another Gnostic gospel, it says, “The one is illimitable, since there is nothing to limit it.
Unfathomable, since there is nothing
before it to fathom it.
Immeasurable,
since there was nothing before it to measure it,
Invisible, since nothing has seen it,
Eternal,
since it exists eternally,
Unutterable, since nothing could comprehend to utter
it,
Unnamable,
since there is nothing before it to give it a name.
The one is the immeasurable, light,
holy, immaculate.
It is
unutterable, and perfect in incorruptibility.
Not that it is just perfection, or
blessedness, or divinity: it is much
greater… No one can understand it.”[1]
Other
Gnostics believe that Jesus did not have the divine spark, but the divine came
to him during baptism and left as his spirit cried, “My God, why have you
abandoned me?” The divine spark left
prior to the crucifixion, since the divine cannot suffer and die.
Irenaeus
found the Gnostic groups difficult, because he could not reason with them. They believed they were given “secret”
knowledge, so others could not possibly understand what they were able to
understand. Like many Gnostic groups,
they turned the bible inside out. The Gnostics revered Judas, because he
understood the truth. Jesus wanted Judas
to betray him, so that he would be executed.
Jesus says, “You will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” We should emulate rather than scorn him. He was the ultimate follower of Jesus. He was a hero, not a villain.
In
like manner, some Gnostic groups revered Cain for killing his brother and Sodom
and Gomorrah for being destroyed, because they understood the necessity to
leave this bloodthirsty, senseless existence. The world is corrupt, evil; we
must escape it. No one can accuse the
Gnostics as being optimistic! Maybe they
just liked to root for the underdog!
Transcending the material world is a spiritual liberation that has
already begun.
The
Gnostics were free thinkers. They
opposed and attacked all orthodoxy. They
pushed all boundaries and took it to the ethical extreme. They opposed anything that the traditional
God commanded. To them, God of Old
Testament was a “bloodthirsty rebel” and those who worshipped him (especially
the 12 disciples) were fools! They did
not obey the Sabbath; they ate pork, committed adultery, etc… They were pretty
“in the face” of the other Christians.
So if you’re planning to have ham this Easter, you may be a
Gnostic!
The Gospel of Judas ends with the betrayal of Jesus to
highlight its importance. (The four
gospels end with the Resurrection.) There is no resurrection- that’s the last
thing that Jesus would want. He wanted
to escape, not be pulled back. The Easter story, God killing his son to atone for our
sins is blasphemous; and the resurrection, is a cheap magic trick that has been
kept alive by slight of hand and human credulity for two millennia.
The Gnostics
believed that the fundamental problem in human life was not sin, but
ignorance. They believed in knowledge,
especially secret knowledge, not faith.
Those with the divine spark will be saved. The others will simply die.
So why
bother? Why not stick with spring and forget Easter? Each gospel brings an
important theological message, even though we may never be able to sign our
names on a doctrinal dotted line. We may
be able to embrace the teachings of Jesus:
Forgive and love your enemy. Love your neighbor as yourself. God is
love. Love is divine. And love is immortal.
The Gnostics say that God is unfathomable, immeasurable, eternal,
unnamable and perfect divine love. Each
story, though very different, brings hope and healing.
Still, the
truth will rise. Books may be hidden,
destroyed, or crumbled with age, but the truth will out itself. When we do discover the other side of the
story, we will examine it with an open heart and sensitive understanding to
these people who sought to know God, Jesus, and themselves.
Still, we
rise. As we seek to understand
ourselves, to resurrect our church once again.
We arise again with new members, with new ideas for growth, for a
renewed connection to each other, and a commitment to share our gifts, time and
talents. We rise to a new hope of a
future church property, we celebrate what each person brings to renew our
common life, and see the hope of spring.
That, my dear friends, is the true gospel.
Blessed Be.
May this Easter open your heart to truth.
[1]Kasser, Rodolphe, Meyer,
Marvin and Wurst, Gregor, editors. The Gospel of Judas. National Geographic, Washington D.C, 2006. pp. 145-146.