“One”

(Ephesians 4.1-6)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 5, 2010

The twelfth in a summer series on topics you’ve asked to hear addressed in sermons.
This morning’s sermon is a response to the question,
“Who decided which books would be in the Bible and which ones wouldn’t, and how were those decisions made?”

I was a pastor at University Congregational United Church of Christ when the book The DaVinci Code was published in 2003. I remember someone from the church came into my office with a copy of the book. She was clearly upset. agitated. “Have you read this?” she asked. I said Yes.

Then she said, “After reading it, I don’t know if I can still be a Christian. The way the decisions were made about which books went into the New Testament and which ones didn’t was totally corrupt.” She talked about how The DaVinci Code says Emperor Constantine got bishops to keep the Gnostic Gospels out of the Bible so they could keep Jesus divine instead of letting him just be human. She said Constantine wanted everyone in the Roman Empire to become Christians. And he thought if they could make Jesus look like a god, then the pagans in the Empire will believe in him. “So,” she asked, “when how the New Testament was put together was so political, how can I be a Christian with any integrity?”

I couldn’t put The DaVinci Code down. I thought it was a great story.

But it’s a story ....

Since the book came out, Dan Brown has said if he’d written a non-fiction book about how the New Testament was put together, 95% of what was in The DaVinci Code would still be there. Even though no church historian I know of agrees with him. Yet many Christians believe him. I’m glad Catherine asked how the books of the New Testament were chosen and by whom. Because I think it’s important for Christians to know our history. We need to know the history of our faith and our holy books so, when someone like Dan Brown comes around, we don’t find ourselves asking ourselves whether we can still be Christians.

The fancy word for the collection of books that came together as the Old and New Testaments is canon. It comes from a Greek word that means “a rule”.

The quick answer to why the 27 books that ended up in the New Testament canon were chosen has three parts. First, each of the books was somehow attached to one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples or to someone who had seen Jesus. Second, the Christian communities heard in each book a message that was eternal; they weren’t just books that spoke to a particular place and time, but each book that became part of the New Testament offered a word and vision for all places at all times. And third, the book was seen as“orthodox”. It fit into the broad, common understanding of what the life and ministry of Jesus were about, and how communities could live that out. But that doesn’t mean the process was clean or without politics. As one Christian historian says with more than a trace of sarcasm, “these criteria were ... applied flexibly” (John Riches, p. 47).

Which is where the story gets a lot more interesting.

The Dan Browns of the world seem to believe that the books that became part of the New Testament canon weren’t read by Christian communities before Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire in 316. You might find that believable if you only look at the fact that the New Testament canon was formally closed to any new books in 692 (Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 117).

But Brown’s claim is completely false. It’s not like the Emperor and his favorite bishops gathered in a smoke-filled room, made up a set of pro-Empire, let’s-hypnotize-the-masses-so-they-agree-with-everything-we-say books, and then got Christians to swallow them without question.

By the time of Constantine, Christians had been hearing, discussing, arguing about, and praying some of the books that became the New Testament for more than 200 years.

The Apostle Paul wrote his letters to churches in what is now Greece, Turkey, and Italy in the 50s and 60s. By the year 95AD, his letters to individual churches had been put together and were being read in worship services throughout the Empire. And in the next 20 years, some Christian communities believed Paul’s letters were just as much the word of God as the only collection of books they’d ever used in worship -- the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, Fortress Press, 1986, p. 533).

And 40 years later, by 155AD, Christian communities were reading from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in worship. In these gospels, Christian communities were met by the Risen Jesus Christ. They felt him shaping them into faithful people. That’s what gave these gospels their power and meaning.

While these Christian communities were listening to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there were other “gospels” competing for attention. It’s helpful to look at a couple, and try to understand why they the majority of Christian communities didn’t accept them.

First, let’s look at Marcion, and the Gnostic Gospels. Marcion was the son of bishop. He didn’t create the Gnostic Gospels. But his thinking is very similar to key parts of theirs. Marcion saw the Creator God of Judaism only as a God of judgment. So he thought following Jesus meant cutting ourselves off completely from our Jewish roots ... which mean Christians should stop reading the Old Testament. He came up with a “New” Testament that only had his own version of the Gospel of Luke and Paul’s letters. Where he and the people who created the Gnostic Gospels agree is in their view of creation ... of things like flesh and matter.

Gnostics believed “the created world was a worthless sham”. They said flesh and all other matter are corrupt. Jesus was too holy ever to have been human. So Jesus was only ever a spirit. These are the writings The DaVinci Code says Constantine and the bishops ruthlessly suppressed (Diarmaid MacCollough, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Viking Press, 2010, p. 126). But it’s not surprising early Christians would never have accepted such a Gospel. Who was Jesus if Jesus hadn’t ever walked this earth as a human, and loved this earth?

Another document that surfaced late in the 2nd century was by a man named Tatian. He thought having four gospels that talked about Jesus in some very different ways couldn’t help shape a cohesive Christian community. So he decided to get rid of the messiness and turn the four gospels into one neat story. The writer took out the messiness and turned the four gospels into one nice, clean, consistent story. Syrian Christians loved this gospel, and read it with gusto for several hundred years. Finally it fell out of favor. Part of this was for political reasons. Different bishops preferred different gospels, so they weren’t willing to have their preferred gospel monkeyed with (John Riches, The Bible: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 46). Another reason seems to be that Christian leaders understood that the purpose of the gospels wasn’t to be pure history. In the variety of these four gospels, Christians were found by a living Spirit that grabbed them, healed them, and called them together in different ways to be one people who traveled one road together.

Books like The DaVinci Code suggest the process of forming the canon was inherently corrupt. It’s what the woman who came into my office years ago believed. People argue that the bishops who made the decisions as to what went in and what stayed out had evil motives. They argue that, in every decision, they chose the conservative book over the radical; they chose what supported the institution over what gave the Spirit freedom; they chose hierarchy over egalitarianism; they chose books that emphasized hard teachings over the mystical; they chose books that suppressed women in favor of men. So many people say the canon should be opened up again, so this generation could decide what the Bible ought to be.

It would be ridiculous to say the process of shaping the New Testament canon was pure. “All human decision making involves politics and power. The church has never been [perfect]; its grasp on the truth is always fragile and sometimes faithless ....” At the same time, it’s not like those who tried to get other books in the New Testament canon were motivated solely by the Spirit of God. They played their share of dirty tricks (paraphrased from Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, Fortress Press, 1986, p. 542-3).

What I wish I would have said to the woman who came into my office is this: “If the decisions about what books went into the New Testament were not all made with the best motives, does that mean these 27 books lack the power to shape communities of people who want to follow Jesus? When you listen at all the books in the New Testament and the Old Testament, what do you hear? When you don’t just look at passages that you don’t like, but listen for God’s voice in the whole sweep of the Bible, what do you hear? Where do these stories call you? What would a community that let itself be shaped by these stories look like? How would such a community live, love, and forgive? How much would you want to be part of that kind of Bible-shaped community?”

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a very early community of people who wanted to be shaped into followers of Jesus. Ephesus is in what is today western Turkey. Paul writes a letter to the Ephesians from prison. Paul seems to find himself in prison a lot. Listen for a word from God.

Here's what I want you to do. While I'm locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.

You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Abba of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.

Why did the books that got into the New Testament’s final 27 get in? There’s no single answer. But what seems clear is this: over a period of several hundred years, Christian communities found these books helped them become the Body of Christ. These books helped shape them into one people -- who called themselves The Way. These books inspired, strengthened, goaded, moved, and healed them. So they could come together with the one purpose of being followers of Jesus. These books guided them to do the hard work of building a community of The Way. And keeping The Way vibrant and faithful. In spite of everything that threatened to tear them apart. That’s what the books that became the New Testament gave the early church.

And that’s what those who brought these books together wanted these books to do for us. To gives us a common set of stories that we come to and drink from and wrestle with and be shaped by. So, for our time and place, we can become a community of The Way. Following Jesus, living as his people. Walking as one. Not divided by what doesn’t matter. Walking as one. So everyone can look at this community, and see in who we are and how we live the God who calls us all beloved.

Amen.