Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

February 26, 2006

“A Different Gospel: Thomas for Our Times”

Rev. Kathy Duhon

My New Testament professor began teaching us about the Bible with the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” – oddly enough, as an example of what the Bible is like. He was making a point, not about content, but about development. Fairy tales come out of oral tradition. Everyone tells them slightly differently, although some stand-out phrases are the same – “What big teeth you have!” Some storytellers have made their mark on a story as it was being passed down, based on what they thought was right, and may have left out a disturbing passage, such as Little Red Riding Hood being eaten by the wolf, or may have added in a detail to make things come out better than how they had heard it, such as the woodcutter being the girl’s father, who was able to fully rescue everyone with one chop of his axe.

Storytellers throughout the ages have told the story of Little Red Riding Hood as a teaching, a cautionary tale, a way of imparting wisdom. They are really saying, “Be careful of the deep woods, literally and figuratively, and of wild animals, and of those who lead you astray, especially when you are a maiden in full flower. Be kind to your elders and protective of your young. Finally, although cunning and slyness may seem to have the upper hand, in the end, family, strength, love, and life will surely triumph.” Fairy tales aren’t told to explain history, nor to just pass the time; they’re told to pass on values. When finally put down in written form, a few versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” exist, but the story has become more static and less changing.

The Bible comes from material that was almost always originally oral tradition, and had many different tellers whose details varied – the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon on the Plain in a different gospel – and who also said some things exactly or almost the same – such as the prediction that Peter, the future leader of the Church, when Jesus was arrested, would deny that he knew Jesus “three times before the cock crows” – a detail as difficult to hear as “the better to eat you with my dear”, yet found in every gospel. Some of the tellers of the gospel story left out details they thought unimportant, or figured were wrong, or added in details to fill in the story, or to make connections with other stories, or with current events some 50 years after Jesus’ time.

Those who endeavored to capture these oral traditions on paper wrote from their own unique culture and time, usually many years after events happened, in languages that may have been different from the original tradition, and they wrote from their own personal sense of what was important to them, to their society, and to their religion. They were not historians or journalists, and did not think it untruthful to alter the facts, or to draw theological conclusions. Even the direct quotes of Jesus, for example, have been clearly changed, manipulated to fit certain perspectives. The writers of the Bible told great stories of good news in order to pass on religion and value, to give to others what they found deeply meaningful, and like “Little Red Riding Hood”, those versions of the story are now captured in static, written form.

Just as many folks were part of the telling of the Biblical stories, over generations in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, and decades in the case of the Christian Scriptures, so, also, many others wrote them down in books that would become the Bible. In the process, multiple versions were preserved, with contradictory details, sometimes right next to each other. An example of this is the two stories of Adam and Eve’s creation – the created equal and at the same time one, which women prefer, but is almost never mentioned, and the one about a rib from Adam, which some men have been using to justify their dominance ever since.

Plenty of similar writings from the Biblical period did not make the cut. At one point in Jewish history, and another in Christian, the writings were canonized and plenty of stuff was left out. Mostly, these documents were lost for generations, sometimes suppressed, and often destroyed. In the 20^th century, we began finding very old papyri, often in fragments, including the oldest versions of books we already had – Isaiah, for example. There were some differences between what we have in our Bibles today and these very old versions of Scripture. Over time, written documents, copied by hand, are bound to change. There were errors and edits, and deliberate changes of what was misunderstood in order to make it “right”, and there were problems of translation. Sometimes a note was scribbled in the margin which was later copied as though it were really part of the text. Bible scholars have always looked to the oldest extant versions we have of Biblical texts, but none were nearly as old as the archeological finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, though they tended to be only partial fragments.

A few ancient Hebrew and Christian books were found in the 20^th century that had not become Scripture – some we knew about, some we didn’t. Some were truly marginal, even silly – there’s a gospel in which the young boy Jesus makes a bad carpentry cut, and magically alters the wood in order to make it come out right. The writings about Mary Magdalene as a strong leader of the early Church, however, with as much power as Peter, were obviously suppressed for chauvinistic, cultural reasons. These have spawned a great deal of study, as well as a popular novel which is about to become a major motion picture. By the way, although Dan Brown got many details right, The DaVinci Code is fiction, full of speculation and at least one factual error that I found, but it does have some basis in real documents.

One of the most interesting finds is the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945 in a desert cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Serious Bible scholars use this book to understand the life of Jesus better – for decades it has usually been given as much weight as the four gospels. A few people see it as a more worthy, less theologically constructed book, and so possibly closer to what Jesus actually said. Others are simply drawn to what seems like a more universal religious perspective in Thomas. The Jesus we hear about in Thomas is a teacher, a mystic, and a wise sage.

Other scholars reject the importance of Thomas, seeing it as just a later distillation of the gospels, done from a Gnostic perspective, which has traditionally been considered a heretical branch of Christianity that was rightly stamped out. Since Unitarian Universalists love heresy – the word originally meant ‘to choose’, and we believe that it is our sacred path to choose our own religious understanding – we have no problem with the Gnostic connection, and I believe it is exciting for us to explore the Gospel of Thomas and discover its wisdom for our times.

Thomas only wrote down sayings of Jesus, not stories about his birth or death, about what he did, or what it all meant. These sayings are in the form of proverbs and parables, and therefore have a universal feeling to them. They sound like the Hebrew Wisdom writings, especially the Book of Proverbs, or like the Tao Teh Ching, in their compactness and impact, and also like the Bhagavad Gita, when they take the question and answer form. They are often couched as dialogue – what the disciples ask which Jesus answers. Gospel scholar Luke Timothy Johnson notices that Thomas’s Jesus seems more like a friend, helping those around him who are seeking understanding from within.

Some of the sayings are similar to material in the Biblical Gospels, but usually with variations. You heard the parable of the Great Banquet from both the gospels of Luke and Thomas – it is gentler in Thomas, with less conclusions drawn, which the writer of Luke likely added for the instruction of the early Church. Sometimes though, the different version in Thomas seems more stark, or turned on its head from what we are used to hearing in the gospels. About half the material in Thomas is found nowhere else. Much of it sounds mysterious, and very wise.

Here are a few sayings from Thomas:

“Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be.” (18)

“Love your brother like your soul, guard him like the pupil of your eye.” (25)

“Become passers-by.” (42)

The Gospel of Thomas is said to be written by Didymos Judas Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus, not a historical fact, but a legend. Parts of it were known in the 19^th century, but the real interest came when the full text was discovered in 1945. The dating is unclear – it was written before 200 C.E. and as early as the second half of the first century, so it was probably written down around the time of the four gospels, or a few decades later. In one of the sayings, there is a tiny bit of evidence for dating that may make it the oldest of the gospels. In general, the sayings are often thought to be more primitive than their equivalent gospel versions, or else represent the development of a more primitive version, so they may have been based on a previous set of written sayings that is older than the gospels in the Bible, or on a very ancient oral tradition that remains more pure than the other gospels as it is written down in Thomas.

Although some proponents of Thomas argue that he is not Gnostic at all, others say that Thomas is written in the Gnostic tradition, whose followers believed in a secret knowledge, a hiddenness to the sayings of Jesus that only an inner circle could comprehend. At least that was the traditional reason that their heresy was stamped out. Now, some folks wonder if the Gnostics weren’t simply more mystical, and more equitable, not more spiritually conceited – and that maybe they believed the truth is not a secret, but usually is hidden right in front of us, waiting to be dug up, like a treasure in a field, and revealed.

The sayings in the Gospel of Thomas emphasize the Kingdom of God preaching of Jesus, which is also strong in the other gospels. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is here, and near, and coming; within you, and hidden, and growing; like a seed, like yeast; and depends upon your kindness to the least of your brothers and sisters. In the 20^th century, Christian and Unitarian Universalist preachers, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and UU humanist Dick Gilbert, began to rename the Kingdom of God, calling it the Beloved Community, since we can’t really relate to kingdoms, and we aren’t all of us comfortable with the word ‘God’. Although Christians often emphasize individual salvation, Jesus was clearly teaching about the importance of making the whole world a better place, a beloved community, and that everyone already has the ability to do this within them. That understanding is Biblical, and it is most clearly emphasized in the Gospel of Thomas.

Andrew Harvey writes that the Gospel of Thomas is a challenge “to see that the Kingdom already exists in and around us and is only waiting for our transformed insight and for the action that flows from it to break into flame and change everything”. He likens “Kingdom-consciousness” to “love-consciousness” and calls the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas “the world’s supreme mystical revolutionary” who helps humanity recognize their sacred power to create a wholly new world. Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas teaches that we are supposed to become one with the Divine, which is essentially a nineteenth century Unitarian way of understanding Jesus – he shows us what it is to be divine so that we may join him in experiencing the oneness of the Oversoul. Unitarian Universalists have a wide range of understandings about divinity, but do largely agree with the idea that we are sacred beings, in essence at one with the world, and powerful, able to transform the world.

Finally, I’d like to explore a little further the passage I read to you last, saying 22. It begins with the image of infants breastfeeding, emphasizing the feminine nurturing side of the divine. And the disciples then ask how this infancy image relates to entering the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community. Jesus explains that you have to get rid of all the false dichotomies that have grown up since you were a baby – that your insides and outsides are not opposed to each other, that categories that make distinctions between upper and lower are not real, that it doesn’t even matter whether you are a male or a female.

The last part of the quote is the most mysterious: “When you make an eye to replace an eye, and a hand to replace a hand, and a foot to replace a foot, and an image to replace an image, then you will enter the Kingdom.” This is not the foretelling of prosthetics as being our modern-day entry ticket into the Beloved Community. This is interpreted differently by various people. I begin with the sense that being able to replace body parts seemed impossible at that time, like a camel going through the eye of a needle, or a mountain being moved, yet if you could accept the impossible, then you would be at one with the divine.

Another interpretation is that this passage emphasizes the importance of the physical being when it comes to mystical union – that all of you will be transformed and you can’t get rid of your body or its needs in the process. If followers will allow their whole being – body, mind, emotion, spirit – to be transformed by the light of understanding, then the whole world will be transformed.

Another interpretation is related to the infant image – it is when you can reach outside of yourself and bring another into the world, with other hands and eyes and feet, and a new image of the divine different than your own, that you are able to move on into the beloved community of divine oneness. This does not mean that you must become a mother or a father, although it clearly embraces that natural part of our lives – this Jesus is definitely not asking you to be a hermit or to remain chaste – but that the beloved community, kingdom of God is really based in service to others. Although we might be tempted to think it’s a mind thing, about knowledge, or a spiritual thing, about wisdom, it is always also a bodily thing, a whole self thing, about compassion and justice and peace and community. When we feed and clothe and house others, when we tend their sick bodies and replace the sad images that haunt their minds with joyful images, then we are transforming the world, while transforming ourselves.

The Beloved Community is already here – notice, seek, uncover, cherish, and rejoice, and so will the world be blessed. Amen.