Sermons

"Low Hanging Fruit"

Delivered from the Pulpit of First Congregational Church

of Anchorage by The Reverend Mark E. Long

on June 14, 2009

Lections:  Gen. 2.9, 15-17; 3.6-7a, 9-12, 22-23

                  Gal. 5.22-25

                  Jn. 1.1-5; 6.35, 41-59

Publicity regarding the gospels of the New Testament - Mark, Matthew, Luke and John - often gives the impression, intended or not, that they are the only ones who thought to write anything down about Jesus' life and teachings.  This would be wrong, easy to assume but wrong all the same.

There were many who picked up their pens to write about this most remarkable man.  Most of these "gospels" were of little help to others and so forgotten, or lost over time, but others were intentionally pushed to the back pages of memory by those who hoped in doing so to preserve more attention for the way that they remembered things.  Some of them have been recovered, dusted off or pieced together in modern times.

Still the gospels of the canon have a long head start in working their way into the lives of the saints.  I mean how many of you have heard of the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter, just to name two which receive more attention from scholars than others?  Better yet, how many of you know anything about either of them?

Actually, there is another even more recent "find," the Gospel of Judas, which has attracted lots of attention in the past few years.  This is the "good news" of how Jesus asked Judas to betray him because Judas was Jesus most trusted friend.  For good measure it was sold on the "black market" for antiquities and held in a mysterious safe deposit box for years all of which makes it sound like the inspiration for Tom Hank's next big movie deal.

After this group of gospels that grab the attention of scholars or headlines there are obscure little gospels - generally quite brief - which get little of the scholars' time and show up in no headline.  They are the "Rodney Dangerfield" of ancient writing; they get no (or little) respect.  These short works give a perspective of Jesus and his teachings which often are similar to one of the more prominent gospels.

Today we consider one of these - the Gospel of Truth.  The Gospel of Truth was among the large number of writings discovered quite by accident at Nag Hammadi in 1945.  The most familiar among these texts was the Gospel of Thomas.

The Gospel of Truth was written middle to late 2^nd c.  The references in it to "light," "the Logos" or Word of the Father, etc. place it in the Greek Neo-Platonic world in which the Gospel of John was written.  The message though is quite different.

This is not a survey of the Gospel of Truth.  The reason for the background information is to give you a foundation for understanding my response to not really a question drawn from the sermon box but a perspective which bears on our later celebration of communion.

Specifically, Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen King makes reference to a contrary picture in the Gospel of Truth of Jesus on the cross as "fruit on a tree" - in the sense of fruit on the tree of knowledge in Gen. 2.17 - rather than as the more widely understood sacrifice for human sin.[1]  Pagels and King go on to say that "through this image the Gospel of Truth transforms the meaning of the Eucharist (communion).  For while eating from the tree of knowledge in Paradise "brought death" upon those who ate it, eating this true "fruit of the tree of knowledge" brings life.  Thus, the Gospel of Truth suggests that those who partake of Jesus, sharing in the bread that symbolizes his body, discover the "hidden mystery" - that is, their own connection with God."[2]  In this way, the Gospel of Truth says, "he discovered them in himself, and they discovered him in themselves."'[3]  I suppose that I am asked, "What do I have to say about this?"

"Bravo" - or perhaps I should say "brava," (since they are women); well done in any case.  In spite of what some inside the church and outside of it would want you to know, there were from the beginning, as now, different ways of understanding what God did and how God did it through the life of Jesus.  These other ways have a way of disappearing or going underground, however, when one way of "seeing" becomes the "party line" aligned with the power of the State to take or make lives miserable.

As for the perspective itself, Pagels and King make an interesting connection between the idea of Jesus as the giver of a specialized knowledge or 'gnosis' and the meaning of the Church's communion ritual being about something different than recognition of a sacrifice given and received.

I share the perspective that Jesus is like "low hanging fruit," that is within easy reach, which brings life to us who feed on his teachings and are nourished by the "fruits of his (our) Spirit."  These "fruits of the Spirit" ward off the dis-ease of forgetfulness of our nature and the error of our ways which lead inevitably to spiritual starvation.

Jesus as a "stand-in" sacrifice required to avenge the sin of others just doesn't work for me.  This belief more than anything else is why I could not remain a Southern Baptist.  I could not see how it is that an all-everything-God could not come up with a less convoluted plan to save humans from a fate that God should have seen coming?  Why could God not have designed humans to freely lean toward the "right" choice rather than the "wrong" one?  Besides this, I wondered how does Jesus' physical suffering and death have anything to do with my moral failings thousands of years later?  How is the matter of my moral wanderings affected by the physical suffering of another?  I don't know, I just couldn't buy into it.

If you do, fair enough; I couldn't see it and apparently given the Gospel of Truth there have been others for a long, long time equally perplexed.  Long live Congregationalism - apparently it has ancient roots although not exactly allowed to flourish then.

Whatever this ritual that we are about to share together is about; it is not something that will mean the same thing to all of us.  At one time this was required, thank God, no longer.  Whether you partake in gratitude for Jesus' sacrifice or as an outward expression of an inner awareness of union with

God or something else entirely, it doesn't matter so much what we think or even that we think at all.   In fact, perhaps that is a problem turning an experience into a thoughtful exercise.  The call is not to think about how we got to this point, or reflect on what it means, but to "do" - participate in the celebration of the name in which the Father of All is known to us.  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus -yes there is something about that name!