Like many Unitarian Universalists, I came to my present faith from a different tradition. In my case, I grew up Roman Catholic. I still remember the weekly routine: an Old Testament reading, a responsive reading from the Psalms, a reading from one of the Epistles, a Gospel reading, a homily about what we just heard, and then the recitation of the Nicene Creed.

A few weeks ago, there was a video going around of the host of a comedy show being asked if he knew what he believed. He said, "Well, let’s see ... I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son ..." And he rolled right through the entire Nicene Creed on a maximum of three breaths. Never mind that he was probably working off a TelePrompTer; he got a nice round of applause. Hey, if you go to Mass every Sunday, you might well memorize it. Who needs an Order of Service when the show is the same every week? Hey, this is what we believe. Period. End of sentence.

I was a faithful churchgoer and, as a teenager, attended St. Peter’s Prep School in Jersey City, which was run by Jesuits. Though the Jesuit order started as an element of the medieval Inquisition, they went on to become some of the leading Catholic scholars and educators. The Jesuits are indeed wonderful teachers. In my case, they taught me to reflect upon my faith – and question it. And when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I came to be a serious doubter. I have a notation in a notebook I was keeping as a senior in high school, separate from my assignment books. "The evening was spent reflecting some of the religion questions in my book," I wrote. "This should be great. Tonight, I very nearly declared myself an atheist. An agnostic, maybe. Hey, kid, this is no way to get a 4.0!"

Interesting word, "agnostic". The word is a combination of the prefix "a-", meaning the opposite of, and "gnostic", G-N-O-S-T-I-C, meaning "having knowledge". So "agnostic" merely means "not having knowledge."

The various early Christian churches – communities of faith that sprang up all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean region in response to the marvelous stories about Jesus – had differing perceptions as to the nature of Jesus and what he meant to them. Some called him a rabbi, others a prophet, still others a greater-than-human being, and then there were those who considered him a physical manifestation of the God of their understanding. It took nearly three hundred years before the church, at a council convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine so that he could both embrace and control the Christian movement, would settle on an orthodox position. That council, held at Nicaea, gives its name to the Nicene Creed I alluded to at the start of this sermon.

But during those three centuries, and indeed for a long period afterward, thousands of people who by any standard would be called Christians believed in ideas that were heretical – that is, different from the orthodox view that was taking shape even in the years before Nicaea. As early as the year 180 of the common era, or 150 years after Jesus’ ministry, a fellow named Irenaeus – who was elevated to sainthood by the Church for promoting what became orthodoxy – was condemning texts that pointed to unusual ways of interpreting Jesus’ life and death. Irenaeus decried the people who followed tomes like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of Judas. For centuries, though, historians only knew of these ancient heretical texts because people like Irenaeus referenced them.

Then, in 1945, an Egyptian discovered a bottle containing ancient texts in codex form buried under sand where he was working at a settlement called Nag Hammadi. For several years, these texts were bounced around antiquities dealers and historians, until they finally became property of the Egyptian government and scholars got to work translating them. What they found was a number of these old texts that had been literally suppressed – buried in the sand – for fear of persecution by the church authorities.

A word about the doctrine of the Resurrection in the early Christian church is required here. In her book The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels points to both literal and figurative interpretations of the Resurrection that are supported by the canonical Gospels – the texts that church fathers used as the basis for the orthodox beliefs of Christianity. There are four officially sanctioned "gospels" in the Christian New Testament. While each presents a different view of Jesus, all contain stories about Jesus’ communication with his followers after his death. From these stories of "after death" encounters, the doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb became the official position of the Christian church.

The personal witnessing of the resurrected Jesus by the eleven remaining Apostles – Judas the betrayer had committed suicide – and a twelfth, Matthias, chosen to fill out the ranks from among Jesus’ disciples, conferred upon them a special station. According to this doctrine, which became the orthodoxy of the Church, these twelve could now witness to Jesus’ literal resurrection. In this fashion, the twelve Apostles become the first bishops of the Church, and they are thus able to confer this benefit to this day in what is said to be an unbroken line to the Apostles – a doctrine known as apostolic succession. Thus a primary motivation for belief in the Resurrection as a literal fact is political rather than theological. The Apostles and their successor bishops have no particular claim to power if the Resurrection was "merely" a metaphor, or a visitation by a spirit.

As a result, texts that did not support the idea that Jesus literally rose from the dead were often destroyed, and those who put stock in these heretical beliefs were persecuted. Many of these texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, point to what has become known as the Gnostic tradition. Gnostics – the root word is "gnosis", G-N-O-S-I-S, or knowledge – believed that the key to the Kingdom of Heaven was in acquiring the knowledge needed to get there, and a select few had, or were capable of obtaining, that knowledge. As a result, a lot of the Gnostic source material, including the Gospel of Thomas, consists of sayings attributed to Jesus that, if properly received, would lead to the needed knowledge. So Gnostics believed that they possessed both the spiritual disposition and a special knowledge that allowed them to know the true nature of God, while Agnostics were those who lacked either the ability or the knowledge to know God fully – at least, according to the Gnostics.

One of the Gnostics’ core beliefs was that, while there is a perfect God whose name is unknowable and unspeakable, he does not exercise immediate control over the affairs of the earth. That duty is delegated to a subordinate, sometimes called Nebro, who has a rather mean streak in him. We might liken the relationship to that of a worker with his foreman and, in turn, with the president of the company. The worker sees his foreman every day, but the president remains rather mysterious to the rank and file. Likewise, we on earth see what Nebro has wrought every day of the week: war, famine, pestilence, and so forth. But he is but an underling compared to the perfect God, who holds the key to the divine. According to this Gnostic interpretation, the God of the Old Testament is this creator god Nebro, not the perfect God of the divine realm.

As Marvin Meyer, one of the translators of the newly translated Gospel of Judas, writes: "For these believers, the most profound mystery of the universe is that within some human beings is the spark of the divine. Although we live in a flawed world that too often is the domain of darkness and death, we can transcend darkness and embrace life. We are better than this world, Jesus says to Judas, for we belong to the world of the divine. If Jesus is the son of the divine, so are all of us children of the divine. All we need to do is live out of that knowledge of the divine, and we shall be enlightened."

While the Gnostics believed that only a select few people could acquire the knowledge necessary to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven, as Unitarian Universalists, we believe that all people are spiritual equals. A common belief among Unitarian Universalists is that each of us, along with all of nature, contains the spark of the divine – we are all sons and daughters of the God of our understanding. While the Gnostics believed that only a few people are capable of gaining spiritual maturity and insight, we believe that all are capable if they truly strive for such awareness in a disciplined manner.

Now we have to bear in mind that none of the ancient texts that discuss the nature of Jesus was written while he was alive. The Gospel of Thomas is believed to be one of the older texts out there, but even that wasn’t set down until 25 to 30 years after Jesus’ time. Scholars believe that both Thomas and another source, still lost to history but usually called Q, for the German word Quelle meaning "source", informed the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the Gospels in the church canon, which was probably written 40 years or so after the events it describes. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are remarkably similar, are said to have come about ten years after Mark, and the Gospel of John was perhaps 20 years after Matthew and Luke – a full three generations after Jesus walked the earth. So it’s easy to get the idea that the authors of these texts were putting their own spin on the events they describe, none of which they personally witnessed. They were tailoring the story to their specific audiences – a particular church or group of churches. Even going back to the Gospel of Thomas, one of the earlier texts and one that may have been penned by someone who heard Jesus preach, the collection of sayings was designed for a specific purpose. That was to promote understanding of what Jesus was all about – and thus provide the necessary knowledge to join him and his Father in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Gospel of Judas is the latest edition to this non-canonical roster of Gospels. This codex was discovered only in 1972, and it went through a post-discovery phase very similar to the documents found at Nag Hammadi. It finally came into the hands of the National Geographic Society, which assembled a team to authenticate and translate the document – or what was left of it. By the time the Geographic reached it, it had become brittle and had fragmented. Many portions are missing. Still, what did survive reveals a curious insight both into the potential nature of one of the most reviled persons in Christian history and the face of the Gnostic movement.

Remember, while the various Gospels, whether in the canon or not, often bear names of historical figures, they are not generally regarded to have written them. So if you open a Bible and it refers to "The Gospel According to St. Matthew", that’s just a name. The historical Matthew probably had nothing to do with it. The existing copy of the Gospel of Judas is written in Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language, and is said to date to about the year 300. Now since Irenaeus writes of the Gospel of Judas back in 180, it can be reasonably assumed that the original text – which could have been in Aramaic or Greek, no one knows for sure – dates to sometime before 180. But it doesn’t date back to the time of Jesus and Judas. In fact, it may have been written well after the four Gospels that are included in today’s modern Bible..

The Gospel of Judas gets its name because it refers to a relationship between Jesus and Judas that goes well beyond that of accused and betrayer. The introduction describes the text as "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days before he celebrated Passover." That puts the time frame for our narrative as Monday or Tuesday of the Passion week, depending on which canonical Gospel you use for establishing the date of the Last Supper. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic meaning "seen through the same eyes". These three gospels all tell very similar stories about Jesus, but each from a unique perspective, and all three record the Last Supper as a Passover Seder; but, the Gospel of John does not. More than the other three, John is a Gospel of signs and displays of the God-ness of Jesus, the Gospel that "proves" that Jesus is the Father’s only-begotten Son. The other Gospels, particularly Mark, make Jesus out to be remarkably human and capable of suffering just like you and me.

Early in the Gospel of Judas, the disciples say to Jesus, "Master, you are the son of our god." And Jesus rebukes them, for he is not the son of their god, Nebro, but of the Perfect God. "Truly I say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me." Jesus is saying that the people who will know him are those of what Gnostics often call "the generation of Seth." Seth, you recall, is the third son of Adam and Eve, the one who was born after the dysfunction between Cain and Abel. Seth represents a new beginning for humanity, some Gnostics believed, and so to belong to "the generation of Seth" is to be part of the enlightened humanity.

After a long moment of reflection and lack of understanding among the disciples, Judas finally speaks up and says, "I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo, and I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you." Barbelo is a word often used by Gnostics to refer to the divine Mother of all – sometimes referred to as the Forethought of the Infinite Father. Jesus recognizes that Judas "gets it" and tells him, "I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve may again come to completion with their god."

In the next few days, the disciples recount visions they have had, including one of the Temple, which Jesus interprets for them. And then Judas recounts his own vision separate from the others, and Jesus calls him "the thirteenth spirit" – already discounting him as one of the Twelve because of what must happen, yet continuing to teach him because he recognizes his higher spiritual nature. "No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen," Jesus tells Judas, "for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels." And Jesus warns Judas again, "You will grieve much when you see the kingdom and all its generation." Judas asks, "Then what good does it do me to receive this?" And Jesus replies, "You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations – and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy."

From that point on, Jesus goes into a lengthy discourse about the "great and boundless realm", and the luminaries that abide there. He concludes, "Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it, and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star." And Judas follows the star and enters the spirit world. This empowers Judas to carry out God’s will by betraying Jesus after the Last Supper.

So what we have here is a narrative Gospel – not just a collection of sayings about Jesus, or things he might have said, but a story of what happened during Passion Week to explain why Judas betrayed Jesus. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a favorable portrayal of Judas. You may recall that in the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar", Judas gets a much better treatment than he does in your standard catechism. But we also have that long narrative about the "great and boundless realm". Jesus explains, in rather obtuse terms, what it takes to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven. And according to the Gnostics, coming to an understanding of these secrets is the key, the knowledge, the gnosis, that leads to eternal life.

Gnosticism is a rather complicated animal. The Gnostics believed they were beings who had a spark of the Spirit trapped in a material body, and by "knowing" the way of the true God would the Spirit escape the body and achieve reunion with the Spirit world. The Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman writes, "For Gnostics, a person is saved not by having faith in Christ or by doing good works. Rather, a person is saved by knowing the truth – the truth about the world we live in, about who the true God is, and especially about who we ourselves are." For Christian Gnostics – and not all Gnostics were Christians – Jesus was the emissary, an embodiment of Spirit who taught the lessons. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of these sayings, and the Gospel of Judas is a narrative, which when "known" would allow the Spirit to escape. I’m recalling a hit song by the British rock group the Police called "Spirits in the Material World". Gnosis, or knowledge, would unlock our spirits, freeing them from the material world and lifting them into God’s kingdom just like Judas.

As you can tell, I find the subject of Gnosticism fascinating and I could go on talking about this at great length – but we have an Annual Meeting after the service, so I won’t. However, for those of you who are interested in learning more about Gnosticism, I encourage you to attend an Adult Religious Education program on the subject, which is scheduled for this fall.

I’ll leave you with words of wisdom from an editorial writer for The Record of Hackensack. A week ago Friday – Good Friday, in fact – The Record took up the issue of the Gospel of Judas and what it might do to the legacy of Judas Iscariot. The editorial writer came up with words worth living by: "Jesus would not have assigned blame for his death. And neither should we." For it is not Jesus’ death or the nature of the Resurrection that truly matter: it is his life. If being a Christian means following Jesus and the wisdom he has passed along to us over twenty centuries, I am proud to call myself a Christian.