The Earliest Stories of Jesus: Stories Paul Heard

What were the very first stories of Jesus that were being told?
Before there were Gospels, what were people being told about Jesus?


Tell Me the Stories of Jesus
The Earliest Stories of Jesus: Stories Paul Heard

I’ve been thinking about those old songs.
You remember: that old Fanny Crosby song, Tell Me the Story of Jesus?  
(We’ll be singing that coming up.)
 
And there is the other one:
Tell Me the Stories of Jesus
    Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear;
    things I would ask him to tell me if he were here:
    scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,
    stories of Jesus, tell them to me.

So, I was thinking , let’s tell the stories of Jesus.
Let’s talk about the stories of Jesus.
So, for the next few Sundays, I will be telling some of the stories of Jesus.

I couldn’t get that other song out of my mind, either:     
     Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above,
     Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.

So, I thought a place to begin would be to find and tell the very oldest stories we can find about Jesus.
Just what are oldest stories about Jesus? –
The first stories of Jesus?

Just to remind us, the obvious needs to be stated: 
no one was following Jesus around with a tape recorder loading sound bytes for future generations.
No one was following him around with a pencil and papyrus.

And, again, as a reminder, none of the documents in our New Testament were written when Jesus was alive –
all of the stories of Jesus we have in our Bible,
the stories we have heard all our lives,
were written long after Jesus lived.

We know that almost all of our Jesus come from the four Gospels in our Holy Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
And, Biblical scholars from all persuasions agree on general dates each of the Gospels were written.

And, it has become clear from studies in last 60 years, or so, studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
the Nag Hammadi library,
and other “recent’ discoveries of ancient documents,
each of the Gospels in our Bible comes out of a different community reflecting different traditions, (different denominations, if you will) –
communities of “Christians” that differed in some ways from other communities of Christians –
differed in their practices,
differed in their racial/ethnic make up,
differed in their emphases,
differed in their theology behind their understanding of Jesus.

All Biblical scholars seem to agree that the very first Gospel (the earliest one that was written) is the one attributed to Mark.
(This document is called Mark because it stems from a community that was influenced by the Apostle Mark. 
No one thinks that the Gospel of Mark was written by the Apostle called Mark –
The Gospel of Mark was written around 80 AD – about 50 years after Jesus was executed.
That would make the Apostle Mark an unbelievably old man for his day.
But we have found out that there were a number of Christian communities that came to be because of Mark and his work as an apostle after the death of Jesus.
These people heard Mark’s preaching,
followed Mark’s teaching,
and heard Mark’s stories of Jesus.
(The old, old, stories . . .)
 
Mark is the first Gospel to be written,
but Mark is not the earliest document we have in the New Testament.

Curiously, the very first documents we know of to be written about Jesus were some of the letters of the Apostle Paul.
The very earliest document we have that Paul wrote is the first letter he wrote to the believers in Thessalonia.
This letter can be dated to 50 AD – around 20 years after the execution of Jesus.

Again, when Paul wrote these early letters, none of the Gospels had been written,
no stories of Jesus had been written down yet.

We know that before the stories like these get written down they are told and retold over and over again,
and are transmitted from person to person,
from people to people,
from generation to generation –
orally – by word of mouth.

Tell me the old, old, stories . . .
 
As I thought about this topic, my curiosity got the better of me:
just what were the oldest of the old, old, stories?
What were the very first stories of Jesus that were being told?
Before there were Gospels, what were people being told about Jesus?

So, it seems to me, the place to look for the very ‘earliest” stories of Jesus, were the early letters of the Apostle Paul.
Not only were these letters written before any of the Gospels and their stories,
but, unlike the disciples who lived with Jesus,
who experienced the resurrected Jesus,
and were commissioned by Jesus to go spread the word to the world around them,
Paul didn’t know Jesus.
Paul never met Jesus.
Paul was a devout Jew –
who apparently had a reputation of harassing Christian believers.

Paul’s “conversion” experience did not occur until years after the execution of Jesus.

So, Paul didn’t know Jesus.
Paul never met Jesus.
Paul never read any stories about Jesus.
And, yet, Paul must have heard stories told about Jesus –
stories of Jesus that made him open to recognizing what was happening when he had that experience on the road to Damascus.

Paul had heard stories of Jesus –
stories that became so real to him that he could teach and interpret and translate a vision of life based upon the stories he had heard.

(Now, we are told after his conversion experience, Paul went to visit the Apostle Peter for a time –
presumably for a crash course in Jesus theology – but, this visit happened three years after Paul’s conversion experience
and after he began his preaching and teaching an organizing –
and it only lasted two weeks.)

So, if Paul never knew Jesus,
if Paul never read one of the Gospels,
where did Paul get his information about Jesus?
The stories that Paul heard about Jesus have to be the very earliest stories of Jesus that were being passed around –
the very oldest of the old, old, stories.

So, what were they?

I think it is interesting what the stories were not about:
the were no stories about the birth of Jesus,
there were no stories about Jesus growing up and doing Jewish things,
there were no miracle stories,
there were no parables for illustrating the life we are called to live,
there was no sermon on the mount,
there was no lord’s prayer,
no betrayal by Judas Iscariot,
no Gethsemane story,
no story about the transfiguration,
and the list goes on.

(If these stories existed and were passed on, Paul either never hear them,
or ignored them.)

The Jesus Paul talks about came from stories of Jesus’ death,
and Jesus’ resurrection.
The stories of Jesus that Paul heard stem from the community’s experience after the execution and resurrection of Jesus.
Paul heard these stories and spoke of these stories.
They affected his understanding of Jesus and the purpose and reason for believer’s faith.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
If there was no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;
if Christ has not been raised,
then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . .
If Christ has been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

It would appear that very earliest stories of Jesus that were passed on among believers of most of the communities of faith before Gospels were written,
were those of Jesus’ execution and resurrection
and the experience of the early believers with the Risen Christ.

Of course, Paul wrote about the Lord’s Supper.
This was probably not a story heard,
nor a story delivered by direct revelation,
but, most scholars agree that Peter must have shared the communion with him when he came for that visit.
Interestingly, Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper was written in 54 AD –
long before the Gospel of Mark was published in 67.
Matthew copied Paul’s words later,
and Luke copied Paul’s words years after that.

I find it fascinating that most of the stories of Jesus that we like to hear –
our favorite stories that we like to repeat –
the Christmas stories,
the parables,
the sermon of the mount,
the Lord’s prayer –
these were not the oldest, old stories,
these were not the earliest stories of Jesus,
It took 50 years, 100 years, before these stories came into being and were being told within and to the Christian communities.

Tell me the stories of Jesus that I long to hear . . .
Tell me the old, old, story of Jesus and his love.

I encourage you to continue singing the songs,
and continue telling the stories.
There is no one but you and I that are telling the stories.
These stories are not being told on television,
these stories are not being told in the schools,
these stories are not being told by many parents these days.
The only place these stories are being told today are in churches like this.
Keeping the stories alive is a sacred task.

I will keep on searching for the old, old, stories of Jesus – 
and keep you posted on what I find out.
As we continue next week with another episode of The Stories of Jesus.

Amen.





The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard this sermon during a worship service September 9, 2012.

The Birth of Jesus and The Gospel of John

Dwelling on establishing the specialness of Jesus with stories of his birth was not important to [the earliest believers].
What was important, was how their faith in this radical new religion based on Emmanuel –
based upon the Incarnation –
based on God now being with us instead of dwelling from on high –
how life based on this new faith fits into the cosmic scheme of things –
and how it is different from the old ways of doing.

 Isaiah 52:7-10
John 1:1-14

So, for us in the church, this is the Fourth Sunday of Advent – a time for us to contemplate why we celebrate Christmas anyway.

Again, this year, during these weeks before Christmas, we have been looking at the very earliest documents we have to ascertain just how those earliest Christians celebrated Christmas –
hoping to find clues as to how we might have a better understanding and actually experience a better Christmas this year.

The first week of Advent, we looked at the very earliest writings we have –
the letters of Paul and some of the writings that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammurabi and other places in the desert country of Egypt and Syria and Palestine,
and the very earliest Gospel in our Bible:
the Gospel of Mark – which was published around the year 70.

We actually have several texts now that were published during these early  years – during the first 75 years or so after Jesus was killed.
And, look as we may, it is obvious that none of these texts say anything at all about the birth of Jesus. 
It just was not important to those earliest believers.

Yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their history,
yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their faith,
yes, Jesus was a pivotal figure in their life experience –
in their understanding of who they were and what they to do.
Clearly, they each articulate a faith that in Jesus, they saw God incarnate – God in the flesh –
for them,  Jesus was Emmanuel – God with us.

The second week we looked at the second Gospel of Matthew, published some 15 years after Mark, and intended for a somewhat different audience.
Matthew begins his Gospel with a detailed genealogy setting Jesus firmly in the Jewish camp – a descendent of King David,
and even Father Abraham, himself.

In the 15 years between Mark and Matthew an interest in birth stories had developed.
Matthew’s community wanted to believe that their Jesus was no less a god than the mighty Caesar or any of the other gods they encountered among the cosmopolitan culture of the Roman Empire.
Every other god had a miraculous birth story to show their specialness, so, Jesus should have one, too.

The Gospel of Luke is the third Gospel of the collection in our Bible.
It was published some 15 years after Matthew.
And, again, it was intended for a different audience than Mark or Matthew.

Again, we are reminded that during these early years, indeed, for the first 100 to 150 years, there was no separate Christian church.
There were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and revered as Emmanuel – God with Us – and they would meet as small groups –
sometimes even sharing meals and resources and living arrangements –
but, when they worshiped, they went to the Temple.

We see Luke being addressed primarily to a predominately gentile audience to show that belief in Jesus in Emmanuel conflicted in no way with their ability to serve as good citizens of the Roman Empire.

And, we see that each of the Gospels have a very different starting place.
Matthew starts very differently than Mark does – again with that long genealogy.
And Luke starts differently than either Mark or Matthew does with that miraculous birth story – not of Jesus, but of John.

And, here in the Gospel of John, we have an even stranger beginning.

Most scholars agree now that this Gospel of John was published no earlier than 110 years after the death of Jesus.
Clearly this Gospel was addressed to people under stress –
there was a conflict between the communities of believers in Jesus as Messiah
and the communities of believers in John as Messiah;
and there was a widening rift between these communities of Jesus believers
and the other believers of Judaism.
The break that we know today was occurring by the time John was published.
And this Gospel is written in that context.

Again, dwelling on establishing the specialness of Jesus with stories of his birth was not important to these people.
What was important, was how their faith in this radical new religion based on Emmanuel –
based upon the Incarnation –
based on God now being with us instead of dwelling from on high –
how life based on this new faith fits into the cosmic scheme of things –
and how it is different from the old ways of doing.

Curiously, we know from the writings of a Jewish Greek philosopher from Alexandria, Philo, that this concept of God as the Doer, the Speaker, the One who Acts, the Word
was emerging in Alexandria some 50 years before the Gospel of John was published.

Here, Jesus is remembered not primarily as a specific man at a specific time in history, but
as the embodiment of a wisdom, a sophia, that pervades all things and all people.

The Word has existed from the beginning, and the Word came and dwelt among people, “they knew him not.”

Here, John tells the story in a radically new way.

Jesus is identified with the Logos – the Word of God –   and becomes something other than a man from Nazareth born of flesh and blood –
but nothing less than a construct of God –
a part of the Almighty himself –
a very part of the cosmos itself.

Like I concluded last week,
I think it is important for us to ask why each of the Gospels treat the birth of Jesus differently.
And to remember that the story that you and I have learned and could tell on a moments notice, actually does not occur in any of our gospels.

The story you and I learned,
and the story you and I tell,
is really a composite of the stories we see in the Gospels.
We tend to take a part from one and combine it with a part from another and a part from another, and, lo, we have our story.

But, if we actually did what those early Christians did, we wouldn’t revere any of the details of any of these stories;
but, we would come up with our own story –
like they did.
A story that begins with an experience with Emmanuel –
an experience of God being with us –
and then coming up with an explanation as to how special that experience is.

For you and me to fully understand and celebrate Christmas, we have to seek out and identify times of Emmanuel for us:
times we have been in the presence of God,
times we when we have been absolutely convinced that God is with us.

And, so we say Where or where is Emmanuel today?
And we are on the lookout for signs of Emmanuel in our times:
for some, like the shepherds in Luke’s Gospel, it is in celestial music;
for some, it will be in coming to the Lord’s table as we do today;
for some, it will be in helping feed the hungry at the food closet;
for some, it will be in sharing special time with loved ones;
however and whenever and wherever;
this Christmas will be the best you have ever had when you open yourself to the presence of Emmanuel and recognize God with us.

Amen.

The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Dexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard this sermon on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18, 2011.