Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ 4^th Sunday in Lent

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos 94022 March 2, 2008

MARK/JUDAS: WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?

Mark 8:11-33; Gospel of Judas (excerpts)

In asking the question - “Who do you say that I am? – over these past three weeks, we have heard five answers to this question from Matthew, John, Luke and Mary. Jesus is Messiah. Jesus is the Exalted, preexistent Christ. Jesus is Ethical Teacher and Savior-Healer. Jesus is the Soul’s Guide and Jesus is the perfected Human. Today we will look at what I call the Alpha and Omega of the gospels: Mark, which is considered the first Gospel, and Judas, written over a hundred years later. Let’s begin with Mark.

Mark is the first of the written gospels. It is really the one that presents the life of Jesus in a story form. It develops a narrative from his early ministry in Galilee to the main points of his life and culminates in his death. We know that Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basic source for their composition, and it is probable that John knew something of Mark, as well.

Mark retells the story of Jesus, beginning with elements of an earlier oral tradition that must have been known in the early church. “Do you remember when he was in Capernaum?” or “We were all out in a field and Jesus had been teaching all day, and no one had thought to bring anything to eat when, suddenly, they were passing around baskets of bread and fish, and everybody had enough to eat, and there was more left over at the end? Amazing!” These stories get collected an are transformed into the origin myths of the movement.

Mark takes these stories of wonders and miracles and weaves them together with recollections of Jesus teachings and travels. They are all a part of his understanding of how Jesus’ life worked and what it was intended to do.

“But,” writes L. Michael White, “in the final analysis, Mark’s gospel is really about the death of Jesus. It’s a passion narrative with an extended introduction. Mark tells the story by thinking about the death and letting all the events that lead up to that death move toward it and through it. So, it’s the death of Jesus that’s the guiding principle of Mark’s gospel, not the life…”

Why is Jesus’ death so important? It is because the people to whom Mark is writing are grieving or fearing their own death. The Gospel of Mark was most likely begun in the period just prior to the first Jewish revolt and the consequent destruction of Jerusalem, somewhere in the mid-60’s, and completed later in the 70’s. The author is writing to Hellenistic Jews in the Roman empire – some say Rome, others Alexandria, other Syria. The point is they are all witnessing the destruction of their ancient culture of origin and the death of a religious tradition. They do not know what this is going to mean for their own personal safety – this is the age of Nero, who blamed Christians and Jews for the burning of Rome – and their religious cultural identity. Can God survive persecution, holocaust? It is all a mystery.

The mystery of Christ’s identity lies at the heart of the Gospel of Mark. From the beginning of his ministry in Galilee Jesus goes out of his way to hide the truth of his identity, because the time was not right. As he goes on he perform s signs and wonders, and some want to proclaim him but he quiets them. “Not yet,” he says. In our morning’s text, Jesus goes to Bethsaida and brings sight to a blind man: Then sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village’”(8:26).

Early in the Gospel a leper came to him and kneeling before him said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” And Jesus does choose and immediately the leprosy is gone, but then Jesus speaks sternly to the man, saying “See that you say nothing to anyone…” (1:40-44).

Jesus’ seeming reluctance to reveal the true nature of his person or his mission is strangely at odds with the very public nature of his preaching and healing, yet throughout Mark’s gospel Jesus’ identity remains elusive. It would appear that who he is will be revealed through his death, and the whole structure of the gospel points like an arrow to the target of the tomb.

Richard Swanson outlines the gospel in this way. He notes there are four voices – all from people who are on the margins of society- who are ready to reveal who Jesus really is, only to be quieted, and then followed by a series of wonder stories. The first is the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue in chapter 1, who says I know who you are, the Holy One of God, followed by five stories, four healings and the calming of the sea. Then there are the legion of demons, followed by four wonder stories. The Syro-Phoenician woman speaks to Jesus, followed by three wonder stories. Then the boy with a Spirit that kept him from speaking is healed, followed by two wonder stories. And all this leads us to the passion and the final revelation. This description helps us see how beautifully and artfully constructed is Mark’s story. Weare left in suspension waiting for the final scene, but even the final revelation is shrouded in mystery.

In the end we are left with an empty tomb, and a young man in white telling the women to not be afraid but go to Galilee. So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid (16:8). And that is the end of the gospel.

Why the mystery and the suspense? I think it is because of the life situation that Mark’s community was living through. Jerusalem was about to fall, and fall it did. Ancient Judaism was destroyed, crucified, dead and buried. Is there life after death?

This motif of Jesus concealing things and the fact that the disciples characteristically misunderstand is part of Mark’s way of reinterpreting the story of Jesus for the, now, post-war audience. They are the ones who are supposed to understand. This Jesus is not just a miracle-wonder worker, which was the stock and trade of spiritual teachers everywhere. Why, even the emperor was supposed to have performed miracles every now and then. This was, instead, the Son of God who came and lived our life and died our death, suffering every indignity we may experience, to reveal to us the secret, that yes, there is life after death with God. This is a word of comfort to those who are living through the crisis.

More than one hundred years later (c. 180 CE) the Gospel of Judas is written to a community of Christians who are far removed from the destruction of the Temple and the loss of ancient culture and traditions. This is a thoroughly Hellenistic community with no attachment to Jewish roots. This is a Gnostic text with a very different world-view. These are Greeks and Gentiles. While all religious traditions acknowledge that the world is imperfect, orthodox Christianity came to believe that was the fault of humans. Gnostics, on the other hand, felt the blame belonged with the “Creator.” In fact, they believed that the Jewish Yahweh was a lesser divine being, a demiurge, or “half-maker” who fashions humanity half darkness by the false creator God and half light of the True God.

Jesus is the “perfected One” from the light who comes in the body of a human being to reveal the true self by casting off his mortality. Not being really human he comes in different guises. He began to speak with them about the mysteries beyond the world and what would take place at the end. Often he did not appear to the disciples as himself, but he was found among them as a child.

The disciples, here as in Mark, keep missing the point, and Jesus laughs at them. In the opening scene of the Gospel of Judas it reads: One day he was with his disciples in Judea, and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance. When he approached his disciples, gathered together and seated and offering prayer of thanksgiving over the bread, he laughed.

The disciples said to him, “Master, why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving (eucharist)? We have done what is right.”

He answered and said, “I am not laughing at you. You are doing this because of your own will but it is through this that your god will be praised.”

They said, “Master, you are the son of our god.”

Jesus said to them, “How do you know me?...

When the disciples heard this, they started getting angry and infuriated and began blaspheming against hi m in their hearts.

Oh, isn’t that always the way. When we pious one’s don’t hear what we want to hear and our sacred cows are threatened we grumble and murmur, “blaspheming in our hearts.” Oddly, it is Judas who is willing to stand before him, with eyes turned away, and because of his courage and openness Jesus takes him aside to reveal the secrets of the universe.

At this point the language becomes obscure and the cosmology something a science fiction writer would appreciate. Jesus laughs two more times in the text at the inability of the disciples to grasp who he is. Finally he asks Judas to become the martyr for the cause by handing him over to the “high priests.” Jesus praises him saying, “But you will exceed them all. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” The gospel concludes with the betrayal scene, but it has a different meaning, now.

Why do I bring up the Gospel of Judas in this series of sermons? Because, as Elaine Pagels points out, “…what really happened in the early (Christian) movement is far messier, more intriguing, and more human. These recently discovered sources show us what was censored – and what those who didn’t become “orthodox” were saying. For (the Gospel of Judas) is the only Gospel we have ever seen that shows Jesus laughing at his disciples – because they have distorted his message and gotten it so wrong.”

I wonder if Jesus would laugh at us here this morning, at our piety, and our ritual – or our irreverence, at times? I have sometimes wondered if Jesus would feel comfortable in any church in America.

Who do you say this Jesus is? Is he a secret messiah, for whom you are waiting to be revealed, or is he the divine light known in many forms waiting to be revealed within yourself, in your self – becoming conscious of a higher Self.

Paul knew this struggle of identity in a world pulled between Jewish tradition and Greek philosophy. In 1 Corinthians 1:22-24: For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So here we are, standing with the women at the tomb. There is no body. And here we are getting ready to eat the meal from the table of thanksgiving with all the other disciples. Jesus asks: “Who do you say that I am?” How we answer that question will say a lot about how we deal with our death, and how we will live our life.