Prayer: Holy One, may the words of my mouth, the meditations of all our hearts, and the actions of our lives, be pleasing to you, the One who is our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Hallelu, hallelujah. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are the four gospels found in our New Testament – the four books of the Bible which tell the stories of Jesus. Thomas, Mary, Peter, Judas. These are four gospels written to tell the stories of Jesus, but these Gospels are not found in our New Testament. Somewhere along the line they got voted off the island. But each of these gospels – these writings that tell the “good news” of Jesus – speaks of the “kingdom of God” and each in some way encourages us to seek that kingdom: Matthew 6:33 – But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Mark 1:14-15 – Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near … ” 1 Luke 17:20-21 – Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” John 3:5 – After Nicodemus came to him in the night and they discussed what it meant to be born again: Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. Thomas, verses 1-3 – And he said, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death … Let one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds … If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the Kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are poverty.” So what is this “kingdom of God” we talk about so often? Amazingly, it is not the church. Jesus did not spend his time on earth building the church as we know it today. He spent his time teaching his followers the way God intended life to be lived. 2 The word we translate as “kingdom” comes from the Greek word basileia. Basileia tou Theou – the kingdom of God. Each of our gospels describes this kingdom in different ways. Some believed it was coming in the very near future. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples that some of them will not taste death until they see the arrival of the kingdom. Some believed it was a futuristic event even beyond the lifetimes of the disciples, which makes sense if you consider the gospels were likely written anywhere from 30 – 70 years after the death of Jesus, and at a time when the early church was suffering great persecution. Many of the original disciples had been killed or were dead, and there was still no sign of this coming kingdom, so it was easy to write about it as some event in the future. Some believed the kingdom was already here. Luke’s writer describes Jesus telling his disciples that the kingdom of God was among them. Some translate that as “within” them. Later in Luke, the writer claims the kingdom is still to come, but this idea that the Jesus spoke of a kingdom “within” is present as well. If we remember that each of these gospels was written by a group of followers who were loyal to the disciple named in their titles, we will be reminded that these various and wide-spread groups of believers were as diverse as our own Protestant denominations are today. 3 Matthew was written for a Jewish audience. In this gospel, the writer attempts to show how Jesus fulfills the prophecies of a coming Messiah. In the Gospel of Matthew, the kingdom of God is named only 6 times, but the kingdom of heaven is referred to throughout. Scholars believe this is because the writer was a Jew, whose beliefs did not allow for the use of God’s name casually, hence the writer substituted “heaven” for “God”. Mark was most likely written for a Roman audience. In it, Jesus is a heroic man of action, recognized even by the Roman centurion at his crucifixion as the Son of God – a title reserved for Roman emporers. The Gospel of Luke depicts a Jesus who was concerned for the marginalized and the outcasts. Jesus describes his mission using the writings of the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Many scholars now believe the Gospel of John was written in response to the Gospel of Thomas, to set the record straight and denounce Thomas as one who was not a faithful disciple. Thomas is mentioned in the story of the raising of Lazarus, where he voices his belief that Jesus’ actions will get every one of the group killed. Perhaps the most telling depiction of Thomas in the Gospel of John is found in the description of Jesus appearing to his disciples after his crucifixion. 4 All of them are gathered in a house. Jesus appears to them and offers them this blessing: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Thomas is noticeably absent from this scene, and when he is told what happens he claims he will have doubts unless he sees the marks of the nails in Jesus’ flesh, earning himself the somewhat notorious “doubting Thomas” label. More important than his doubts, though, is the fact that he was not present and so did not receive the blessing and the commission to go and preach the good news. So what was it about the teachings of this group of Jesus’ followers who grew up around the disciple Thomas that led the writer of the gospel of John to cast Thomas in such a negative light? What was it that caused this Gospel to be rejected for the canon? As we heard in the reading today, the Gospel of Thomas suggests the kingdom of God can be found within us. In addition to saying “the Kingdom is inside you and outside you”, the Gospel says: His disciples said, “Show us the place where you are, for we must seek it.” He said to them, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear! There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark.” 5 And: Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] destroy you.” For this group of believers the way of salvation was to know oneself – to understand oneself as directly related to God. They believed each one of us holds within ourselves a spark of the divine, and that we must seek to find that spark within and to understand what it means. As the early church developed, more and more emphasis was placed on the atonement theory of Jesus’ life and death – the idea that Jesus was born, lived and died to become the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of humanity. The church also began developing around a hierarchical structure in which priests, bishops, and eventually a pope, were necessary to determine what was orthodox – or what the people should believe. Gnosticism was a label attached to groups which were considered heretical. The Greek word gnosis means “to know” or “knowledge”. It was applied to groups who believed salvation came from knowledge – from seeking to know God – and eventually came to be used in derogatory fashion against the factions that did not fit into the defined orthodoxy. 6 Gnosticism is a broad term and has been applied to many groups, but Gnostics basically believed that the death and resurrection had nothing to do with salvation. Salvation was found through understanding the secret teachings of Jesus. One source I looked at described a Gnostic view of the universe in this way: there was a supreme God and there were cosmic subordinates of this God and at some point in time there was a cataclysmic cosmic event which splintered the God into millions of pieces of light which came to reside inside humans. Humans were considered matter, and the salvation of humanity comes when someone finds enough self knowledge to recognize the spark of God within and seek to reunite it with the other shattered pieces. In this view of the world, our bodies are nothing more than matter – than clothing which must be shed in order for us to attain a higher position.