In 1945, near Nag
Hammadi, Egypt, by the Nile River, a guy named Muhammad Ali—no, not that Muhammad Ali—unearthed
some clay jars containing the most significant find of the twentieth century.
It’s best-known for the complete version of the Gospel of Thomas, which I
taught a Christian Ed class on earlier this year. But hidden among the manuscripts
was a letter that was so explosive that the Catholic Church stole it and kept
it in a secret Vatican vault until just last year, when it was released to the
press by Vati-leaks, the shadowy group headed by a Gambian albino responsible
for bringing the equally-explosive Pope files to light, which revealed that
Pope Benedict was actually a Haitian woman named Rita.
What makes the Nag
Hammadi letter so mind-blowing, and what caused the Church to sit on it for over half a century, was that it
revealed that there was actually a thirteenth
disciple; in fact, the letter was from him to his girlfriend. And as a
Greenhills Community Church exclusive,
I have obtained a copy of the letter’s first translation into English. Here’s
what he wrote. His name is Shawn.
Hey, Babe, how you
doing? Been down to the beach lately? I really miss those onshore breezes, and
how you look in that little one-piece hijab . . . and how’s your old lady? Did
she get that cyst removed? Tell her I’m finally makin’ something of myself,
that this Jesus cat is gonna be big,
he’s gonna run the
place one of these days, and we’re gonna get in on the ground floor. Ask her
how’d she’d like to live in a big ol’ place, a palace, even, cause I’m sure it’s gonna come to
that before it’s all over.
I’ve been just OK, kind
of hot and tired, and my feet always hurt, because we couldn’t have camels, man, or even donkeys. No. Jesus is all
into this humility thing, this “don’t get above the people thing,” though I know it’s gonna be different
after the war. He won’t have any choice in the matter, after he throws Herod
and his toadies out of the country, they’re going to put him on their shoulders
, parade him though town, and install him in that golden palace. After all,
they already tried
to take him by force and make him king, but he snuck off, ‘cause it wasn’t
time. That Jesus is one smart dude.
So there we are,
rolling down the road, and even though I’m tired, I’m diggin’ it, ‘cause the
journey’s, like, the thing,
man . . . we’re free, with the wind in our hair, we can do what we want, how we want . . . well,
except for that donkey thing, what I wouldn’t give for just one measly little donkey. Can’t you see the
road’s a metaphor, man? A metaphor for life? Dig it: life’s like a journey, and
we don’t know where it’ll end, man, it’s like a road . . . what a great
metaphor, maybe I should write book . . .
Where was I? Oh yeah .
. . so here we are, on the road, and we’ve been there for a while, talking
about life, talking about how to live it, how to follow him, And this cat comes up
to Jesus, and he’s obviously rich, he’s well-dressed, in a purple robe and
designer sandals—la Boutin’s, I think—and he kneels in front of Jesus, like
he’s some kind of king, you know? But he calls him “Good Teacher,” and it
sounds to me like
he’s just being polite, like somebody’d come up and say “my good man,” or
something, but Jesus comes down
on him for that, he says he’s not good, nobody’s good but God, and it just
blows my mind, ‘cause I thought
he was good, you
know? I mean, if any body’s good, it’s Jesus
. . . He’s a better than all of us put together,
that’s for sure, including those Zebedee cats, James and John. They keep asking
him who’s the greatest, and if they get to sit at his right and left when he
comes into his kingdom. They keep doing that and they’re gettin’ nowhere, fast.
Anyway, Jesus say’s
nobody’s good but God, and then he reminds the dude about the commandments,
like everybofy
didn’t know them,
already, and sure enough, they rich guy says he’s followed them since he was a
kid, and he acts like he’s proud of
it. As far as I’m concerned, it just sounds like more rules, like . . . don’t
steal stuff and honor your old lady . . . What kind of revolution is this, man? All those
rules . . .
Anyway, after Jesus
lists all these commandments, all these rules, the rich guy says “Teacher”—I
notice he drops the “good”—“Teacher, I’ve kept all these since I was a kid.”
And Jesus loved
him, he did, you
could see it in his eyes,they
almost brimmed over with tears, and it got me thinking of why we all started to
follow him in the first
place . . . You ever think about that? Why we followed him, I mean? Why James
and John left their father on the beach? Why Zaccheus—that wee little man—gave up his lucrative career
defrauding his own people? For that matter, why I left my primo spot on the Galilee surfing
team, not to mention a hot babe like you? It’s because we can see the love in
his eyes, we can tell it is real,
man, that no matter what we do, no matter the idiotic stuff that comes out of
our mouths, he’ll love us the same as he does now. Cat like that I’d follow anywhere (especially if it
ends up in that golden palace . . . don’t forget to tell your mom)
So Jesus loves the guy,
and smiles at him, but it’s tinged with sadness, like he already knows how it’s going to end,
and he says “Only one thing missing: go and sell all your stuff and give the
money to the poor—don’t worry, you’l have treasure in heaven—then come follow
me.” And you can see the rich cat deflate like a punctured balloon before
sneaking away all hang-dog like.
And it kind of freaked
us out, you know? Though I guess it shouldn’t have—when Jesus sent out the
seventy, two by two, he told ‘em not to take anything, not even an extra suit
of clothes, and then there was that refusal of a camel or even a donkey (oh, my
aching dogs)—but even though we should have been used to it, it still made us
uneasy . . . I mean, if a cat like that
couldn’t get into heaven, what about us run-of-the-mill working dudes? Jesus
must have noticed ‘cause he gathers us around and tells us how hard it is for a
rich guy to get into the Kingdom of God, and that
makes it worse, because now
it seems like God doesn’t like rich dudes—which is ok by me ‘cause I don’t much like
‘em either—but come on,
this is God. Isn’t
he supposed to love everybody?
But instead of
reassuring us, instead of explaining how a love of stuff can clog up our hearts and our minds so we can’t love
anything else, which means we can’t experience
the Kingdom—which he says is all around us—he doubles down: “Children,”—I hate
it when he calls us that—“Children, It’s really hard to enter the kingdom of God! It’s easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich guy to enter the
kingdom of God.” And I go “Dude!
That’s hard! Then
who can be saved?”
And he just looks at us, and it’s that look he gets when we’ve been
particularly stupid, and says “For humans it’s impossible, but for God? Not so
much. For God, all things are possible.”
And it hits me hard, you know? It hits me
like a ton of bricks,
like I’ve wiped out and hit my head on a hard Galilee rock, and I’m thinking “Holy
Moly! He’s right .
. . God’s a big
dude who can do anything he wants!” And I begin to put it together: it’s not
that the guy’s rich
that’s the problem, it’s just he’s got so much stuff! More stuff than the rest of us combined, that’s for sure,
but the requirement for rich guys is the same as for us: if you’re gonna follow
Jesus, you gotta
give it all up, just like we
did. Just like James and John and Peter gave up their boats and nets, just like
Zaccheus gave up that income and I gave up my board, you gotta give it all up
for Jesus. It’s just harder for rich dudes.
And when you look at it
that way, it’s
pretty good news. In this Kingdom of God place, it doesn’t matter if you’re
rich or poor, a foreigner or home-dude. The rules are all the same: to follow
Jesus, you gotta give up all your stuff.
But at the same time,we aren’t the ones who can
do it, we aren’t
the ones who can save ourselves,
and that’s good news, at least on the surface. But here’s the thing: only God
can save but we’re still
supposed to give it all up? If only God can save, why doesn’t God just do it? Now my head is really starting to hurt . .
. we have to give everything up, but we can’t do it ourselves? I guess it is reassuring that in the
end, that it’s not up to us, that God makes it possible for us to do it, to give it all up . .
. maybe it’s like that combination of skill and luck that keeps me from killing
myself on a wave, only instead of luck, it’s God’s good grace . . . Dude! Where’s the Tylenol?
Well, babe, I gotta go
. . . Jesus is being accosted by one of those Pharisee dudes again. I think maybe the thing is, we’re trying to
figure out these cosmic mysteries with our tiny little noggins . . . maybe
we’ll find out by and by. Say “hi” to your mom, and don’t forget to tell her
about that palace on the hill. Love, Shawn. P.S. One thing I do know is that God is good,
all the time. Amen.
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