My sermon today is drawn from the writings and scholarship of Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton, the author of several books, including Beyond Belief; The Secret Gospel of Thomas. This book won her the Frederich G. Melcher Book award, presented to her at our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly this past June.

The presenter noted that Pagels’ book helps us see how certain, more universal writings and interpretations of the words of Jesus have been historically, invalidly excluded, leaving the Christian church more hierarchical, guilt-centered and gender biased than was necessarily the vision of Jesus, its founding prophet.

It’s a challenge for me, a 21st century woman minister, to explain to you how significant I believe Elaine Pagel’s work is. For me, an avid historian and religionist, it’s almost like discovering the Holy Grail, or like recovering the other half of myself, or finding a huge piece of a puzzle that’s always been missing. Because what her work points to, is what was lost as early Christianity solidified into the Catholic church and into an imperial religion under Constantine in the fourth century.

An orthodoxy emerged to guard, protect and unify the faithful. A Christian doctrine was formed, which could stand against the persecutions of the day and create a solid foundation for the centuries to come. It wasn‘t formed out of evil intent, I think that‘s important to recognize. It was formed for practical survival reasons, and by some because of their own very definite
way of thinking and believing about what Jesus‘ life meant, who he was, and how to interpret the scriptures – something which hasn‘t changed much since it was set so long ago.

As some of you may know, I am the Unitarian Universalist Representative to the Colorado Council of Churches. I serve on the board of Eco-Justice ministries, which falls under the council and I now chair the council’s Justice Commission, and even serve on the council’s executive committee because of my chairmanship. But Unitarian Universalists are not full voting members of the council. We are associate members without voting rights in council meetings. This is because we refuse to take the creedal statement of the council, based upon the Nicene Creed, adopted under Constantine, and accepted in Christian churches everywhere, be they Catholic or Protestant.

The history of our church is not to make creedal statements of faith for reasons of principal; such statements shouldn‘t be necessary to prove faith before anything resembling an all-encompassing spirit or God. But most of us also disagree with the creed itself, that the father, son and Holy Ghost are all one and the same, and we always have. We have always been heretics. And I am a heretic in the midst of the council. They and I know it.

What this means according to the Greek definition of the word “heresy,” as Elaine Pagels points out, is that I have agreed to “choice.” I choose to explore meaning, spirituality, ethics, values, and teachings. I am a heretic. I do not follow the orthodox creed. I believe in the value of experience - my experience, and yours. I believe that “revelation,“ the revealing of great truth is ever unfolding and different from generation to generation. That our lives today serve a specific, unknowable purpose that it is our job to discover.

I am open to today’s learnings and understandings. That’s what liberal means, to be open. I want to know how to live today, not how to live today based upon rules set 100, 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. I do not believe in a God or Goddess that requires a test, a creedal test, to define the faith of the worthy. I am a complete heretic.

What’s important about Elaine Pagel’s work and many other’s is that my way of thinking is neither unique, special nor all that modern. It was always a part of the early Christian Church, and even highly valued by many in the early days. Pagels, an Episcopalian, admits that the world she discovered in graduate school was not the world she was looking for.

When the Nag Hammadi scriptures, the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Mary, the gospel of Philip, the secret book of John - in all fifty- one separate books and fragments that were first published in the 1950s, Pagels approached them as heresy as did every other “responsible” Judeo-Christian scholar. A farmer had found them in Egypt, in a 6-foot high jar that had been buried for 1,600 years, and left there, scholars believe, by a monk trying to protect them from the censorship of the times.

They were generally regarded as heresy because they were not part of the established twenty-seven books of the canon, the New Testament. Not knowing how incredibly indelible had been the mark of the second to fourth century bishops who had decided for all time what was orthodox and what was heretical. According to Pagels, when the scholars actually read the books and didn’t find all the marks of heresy they expected - wild, unbelievable mythology, dualism, nihilism, rejection of reality, then they argued that the books were a showing of “how tricky the heretics are,” a remark that brought great laughter at our General Assembly gathering in June.

What Pagels develops is a complex story of how history and the writings of the gospels collided to give us the Christian orthodox religion, which set aside forevermore those who followed different forms of Christianity in its early days. On the historical level, Pagels talks at length about the thought of Irenaeus, a second century bishop who saw and lived through the martyrdom of his mentor, Polycarp, and many other Christians, and who wrote five volumes on how to define and unify the true Christian faith.

For Irenaeus, as it was to ultimately be in the mid-fourth century, there were only four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When pushed, Ireneaus would explain that there were four, because, as Pagels told us at General Assembly, there are four pillars holding up the sky, and four principal winds that blow, so there are four, no more, nor less, gospels - a kind of scientific approach,” she said (which also brought great laughter).

But deeper than history is the theological argument going on within the gospels themselves, particularly between the writings of the accepted, orthodox gospel of John and the now heretical gospel of Thomas. As many scholars have come to agree, the different books of the New Testament are based upon the writings accepted within different, early Christian communities. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as apostles also had separate communities that followed their
specific gospel.

Elaine Pagels takes the remarkable position that Thomas was left out, and on purpose. John, the latest of the four gospels, with Mark being the earliest, goes so far as to even exclude Thomas in the story of when Jesus comes back from the dead to anoint his apostles. For John, only 10 disciples were present, although Matthew and Luke say all eleven were there (with only Judas Iscariot missing, since he’s the one who betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities).

In three places John, and no one else, goes on to make Thomas even a foolish figure, the ‘Doubting Thomas,’ the one who would not believe until presented with proof, the one who had no faith. John does this, Pagels believes, because that community was in disagreement with the Thomas Christians of the time. Pagels believes with others that the Gospel of Thomas may be of even earlier origins than Mark. Combined and written only twenty years after Jesus’ death, so it had a long-time following.

Although there are many similarities between the two gospels, Thomas is theologically diametrically opposed to John. For example, John is the only gospel that the Trinitarian creed of the father, son and Holy Ghost, all being one and the same, could have been based upon.
Only in John is Jesus clearly the only, beloved, begotten Son of God, and therefore God in human flesh. All the other gospels are mysterious about who Jesus is - a teacher, a prophet, a healer, the son of man.

And Jesus never says he is God. In the days after Jesus’ death, apparently the debate began. On one side is John and on the other, Thomas. The name of Thomas, which means “the twin,” says Pagels, was viewed by others, as literally like a twin of Jesus, so close were they, especially according to the Thomas writings. While John tells his believers that they must believe only in Jesus to be saved (he is the only way to salvation), Thomas Christians saw this, but also recognized that the light of life, Jesus or God, was in all creatures, and that all of us could recognize our light and find God within. This means that there could be many paths to God and that finding the light, within any tradition, would still be finding the light.

Thomas did not win this argument. Instead, thanks to John, Thomas went down in history as a doubting, losing apostle - preaching without the blessing of Jesus. The gospel of John became the primary pillar for the new church when it was unified and defined under Constantine. The book of John also places John as more beloved and significant than even Peter, recognized in the other three gospels as the rock upon which the church would be built.

Only in John, do we have what was described to me in seminary as “the race to the tomb.” Peter clearly comes first in other gospels to discover Jesus missing after his death, but in John, they, Peter and John, start out together to find out what has happened at Jesus’ tomb, but the beloved disciple, John, arrives first. Pagels, as well as many other scholars, argue that John was purposefully written in an attempt to answer questions about Christianity, created from other Christian traditions at the time, and the John version won out.

With other gospels and communities, such as Thomas, Mary and Phillip being destroyed and persecuted under the new Catholic church, what was lost was huge, and I should say that this is my assessment, not necessarily Pagels’ nor anyone else’s. First, we lost the idea of plurality and diversity within Christian thinking; you signed onto the creed or you were not a Christian. Those who questioned whether Jesus was really God, or not, Jesus’ divinity, were heretics. Those who wondered what happened to the Mother God, Mary, were heretics.

The idea that God is love has always been imbedded in Christian scriptures, and it still is. But the wrathful, judgmental God rules in orthodox faith, determining the saved from the unsaved - those who will go to heaven from those who will go to hell. This is the fearful weapon that keeps Orthodox thinkers from easily accepting those of differing beliefs, including us Unitarian Universalists. At stake is their very idea of who goes to heaven and who does not.

What has been lost is lived experience, the idea that you or I could have a religious or spiritual experience that would be significant in the eyes of orthodoxy. Thomas argued for the individual journey, while others felt that such searching demonstrated a lack of faith, Pagels says. Closely connected to not accepting individual experience is the loss of the appreciation of mysticism. Orthodox Christianity does not give room for outside deviations, but mysticism, by definition, does not follow designated pathways.

So most of Christian mysticism has been constrained and controlled as much as possible through the centuries. Pagels argues that the Thomas Christians and others had a more mystical, spiritual sense of Christianity. They believed that once you accepted the faith, you could go deeper and find the light of God within yourself. This second, higher level of understanding even led in some of the old communities to a second baptism - something unacceptable to Irenaeus and the other orthodox thinkers who would follow.

It is easy with our scientific world view to dismiss mysticism today, but what I want you to realize, is that mystical tradition was all but banned long before, not because of its lack of reason or scientific explanation, but because it challenged and threatened the unified World view of Christianity, because mysticism cannot be controlled.

What we also lost was the role of women. Women were a part of Jesus’ early church - Mary, the Mother, Mary Magdalene Salome. Some believe that Mary Magdalene was a disciple and an apostle. Pagels even believes that the Holy Ghost may have originally been the Mother, the female version of God - that it was originally Father, Mother and Son.

But the early church bishops purged feminist interpretations from the scriptures. Irenaeus and others couldn’t stand for women having leading, priestly roles - a sure sign of deviance. It has taken nearly sixteen centuries, ironically almost as long as the Thomas and Mary scriptures were hidden and lost, for women to become recognized as leaders, priests and ministers in the church, and they still aren’t ordained in the Catholic Church.

Pagels believes that Christianity would have been much richer if these early communities hadn’t been banned from the tradition. The religion, itself, would have been more diverse and more tolerant of diversity, and so also would have been more open to different religions as our world has shrank through communication and transportation - and we all recognize just how diverse religious expression is among the many peoples of the world.

I would observe, however, that the lost points of view of Thomas and others were not really lost. People who have questioned and thought like us were just redefined as heretics. Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors, as well as many other thinkers and challengers of the church, believed in an all-loving God, one that would grant universal salvation, because we are all the same - all possessing inner light.

Because of this deep belief, we have fought, albeit sometimes slowly, for the inherent worth and dignity of all people in every generation, whether its freeing slaves or equal rights for women, or today fairness and civil rights for those who love differently (our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters). We have argued for the values of diversity and pluralism, the need to find a way for different peoples and cultures to live together in peace without insisting that one religion is better than another.

And more than anything, we have argued for the value of human experience and the use of human reason, which includes reading the scriptures and being open to different interpretations. What is profound about Pagels’ and other’s work, is that these values are not necessarily incompatible with what was the original faith of Christianity, but they were quashed in the second to fourth centuries, when the creedal orthodox faith was formed, leaving no room for ‘Doubting Thomases.’

I would like to think that the Egyptian monk who so long ago hid away the heretical, apocryphal, secret gospels of Thomas and Mary and others would be glad to know that heresy never really died out. The choice to question, to use reason and develop our spiritual imaginations continues among people of faith, even if it’s not always encouraged within the larger Christian church.

I do not expect that the Christian community will revise the Bible based upon Pagels’ or anyone else’s scholarship, but I do hope that one day the world’s largest religion will understand that accepting diversity of all kinds is not threatening, but instead, can lead to a deeper, more spiritual understanding of life and the mystery that has so many names.