John 16:12-15 (The Message)
[Jesus said] I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Counselor comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ‘He takes from me and delivers to you.’
These words today from John’s gospel reminds us that we still have much to be taught - still have so much to learn. They also should remind us that the Spirit is continually revealing new truths to us as we grow to be able to take them in and start to understand them. We can’t take it all in at once – there’s just too much – we simply can’t hear it or comprehend it – and so it is revealed little by little, bit by bit, day by day, stone by stone ...
Three or four weeks ago when our scripture reading was from the book of Revelations I gave a very brief introduction to the writings of New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, specifically his work on reading the New Testament in the chronological order in which the various books had been written instead of the literary-style order in which they are usually presented.
In talking about this after church that day I suggested I was thinking of doing a summer sermon series on looking at the New Testament in this way and you all seemed interested, so ..... here we go.
This is bound to be more of a teaching series than a spiritual growth-type series but since these writings are the base of what we’re all about here, I can’t help but believe that the more we understand this book, the more we will understand who we are today as a result of these stories and how we got to be who and what we are. We’ll begin today with some basic information on the make-up of the New Testament and then head into Mark’s Gospel next week.
I touched lightly last week on oral history and community memory and how stories were retold within communities and that one community’s body of Jesus stories might contain different material than another community’s collection. Or they might have several of the same stories but with slightly different memories of just how the story went, so that before they were ever written down and codified, what you believed about Jesus might well depend on where you lived – whose stories we were raised with.
The earliest pieces to be written, it seems, in the New Testament were seven letters from Paul to various churches. These were all written without the benefit of any authorized ‘life of Christ’ to refer to – although there were still living witnesses, such as Peter and James, who had known and walked with Jesus himself. These early letters seem to be less about who Jesus was than about how we – the readers, should live our lives because of Jesus.
In the very first chapter of his book, Borg gave us a list of the things that most people would have known by word of mouth about Jesus prior to the first gospel account being written down. I’m going to paraphrase but this is all Borg’s list:
Three or four weeks ago when our scripture reading was from the book of Revelations I gave a very brief introduction to the writings of New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, specifically his work on reading the New Testament in the chronological order in which the various books had been written instead of the literary-style order in which they are usually presented.
In talking about this after church that day I suggested I was thinking of doing a summer sermon series on looking at the New Testament in this way and you all seemed interested, so ..... here we go.
This is bound to be more of a teaching series than a spiritual growth-type series but since these writings are the base of what we’re all about here, I can’t help but believe that the more we understand this book, the more we will understand who we are today as a result of these stories and how we got to be who and what we are. We’ll begin today with some basic information on the make-up of the New Testament and then head into Mark’s Gospel next week.
I touched lightly last week on oral history and community memory and how stories were retold within communities and that one community’s body of Jesus stories might contain different material than another community’s collection. Or they might have several of the same stories but with slightly different memories of just how the story went, so that before they were ever written down and codified, what you believed about Jesus might well depend on where you lived – whose stories we were raised with.
The earliest pieces to be written, it seems, in the New Testament were seven letters from Paul to various churches. These were all written without the benefit of any authorized ‘life of Christ’ to refer to – although there were still living witnesses, such as Peter and James, who had known and walked with Jesus himself. These early letters seem to be less about who Jesus was than about how we – the readers, should live our lives because of Jesus.
In the very first chapter of his book, Borg gave us a list of the things that most people would have known by word of mouth about Jesus prior to the first gospel account being written down. I’m going to paraphrase but this is all Borg’s list:
• Jesus was born shortly before the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE and grew up in Nazareth, a peasant village.
• In his mid to late 20's he heard a wilderness prophet named John and began, in some form, to follow him and his ascetic teachings. Sometime later John baptized Jesus and later yet, was arrested and executed. This was the time that Jesus began his own public ministry.
• Jesus’ message was all about the kingdom of God – what it’s like and how we should live because of it.
• The kingdom of God is about transforming this earth, not some future heaven.
• He preached mostly to the peasant class out in the rural areas, avoiding cities, except for Jerusalem.
• He taught in stories - brief, easily remembered and repeated stories and sayings.
• He was a healer and exorcist. Most of the stories about him involved physical healing or casting out evil spirits.
• He broke social boundaries, mingling with outcasts and women and ignoring purity laws.
• His followers recognized him as anointed by the Spirit.
• He went to Jerusalem at Passover in the year 30 and basically challenged those in authority there until they killed him.
• Some of his followers experienced him after his death – not as a “ghost” but as a divine reality who shared qualities with God.
These are the things, in scholarly reckoning, that would have been fairly common knowledge about Jesus. The details might have differed greatly from place to place but this was the shared base of what people knew.
This is what Paul and the other evangelists took with them as they went out to convert the known world of their time. When we have finished with the gospels, if we have time we’ll look at the first seven of Paul’s letter’s – all written prior to the existence of any codified gospel. This pool of knowledge is what existed as a result of communal memory – memories of a man who made a huge impact on the world around him. In talking about oral tradition and communal memory Borg points out that “Early Christian communities wouldn’t have remembered a saying or story by Jesus or a story about something he did unless it mattered to them.”
I have to say that when I first read that last statement it was a “well, duh!” moment for me. It’s so obvious once I read it, but I don’t know if I ever articulated it that clearly to myself before. The stories about Jesus that came down to us through oral tradition and made it into written gospel accounts weren’t just little news flashes of “what Jesus said or did today,“ – the stories we know down to our present day were remembered because they were about things that mattered to Jesus’ earliest followers. Think about that for a minute .....
I’m sure that in three years of preaching and teaching Jesus said a whole lot more than what is contained in the slim few pages that make up the gospels. All four together really make up a very tiny body of work. All that we have received down twenty centuries are the things that were important enough to the early Christians to remember – without any written texts to remind them – for forty years after Jesus’ death. Mark’s gospel – the first to be written down – was written at least forty years after all these things happened. We will most likely never know what has been lost to us but what we do have are the stories that changed the world by changing the people who first remembered them and then told them to the rest of the world.
And then told them to us ..... and here we are.
This is what Paul and the other evangelists took with them as they went out to convert the known world of their time. When we have finished with the gospels, if we have time we’ll look at the first seven of Paul’s letter’s – all written prior to the existence of any codified gospel. This pool of knowledge is what existed as a result of communal memory – memories of a man who made a huge impact on the world around him. In talking about oral tradition and communal memory Borg points out that “Early Christian communities wouldn’t have remembered a saying or story by Jesus or a story about something he did unless it mattered to them.”
I have to say that when I first read that last statement it was a “well, duh!” moment for me. It’s so obvious once I read it, but I don’t know if I ever articulated it that clearly to myself before. The stories about Jesus that came down to us through oral tradition and made it into written gospel accounts weren’t just little news flashes of “what Jesus said or did today,“ – the stories we know down to our present day were remembered because they were about things that mattered to Jesus’ earliest followers. Think about that for a minute .....
I’m sure that in three years of preaching and teaching Jesus said a whole lot more than what is contained in the slim few pages that make up the gospels. All four together really make up a very tiny body of work. All that we have received down twenty centuries are the things that were important enough to the early Christians to remember – without any written texts to remind them – for forty years after Jesus’ death. Mark’s gospel – the first to be written down – was written at least forty years after all these things happened. We will most likely never know what has been lost to us but what we do have are the stories that changed the world by changing the people who first remembered them and then told them to the rest of the world.
And then told them to us ..... and here we are.
RSS Feed