i'm pretty glad the Diatessaron didn't catch on. it was an early attempt to smooth out the differences in the four canonical Gospels into one seamless "super Gospel" (my phrase). as much as not having to address the disagreements between the Gospels (and yes my literalist friends, there are disagreements) might make my job and life easier, i really am thankful we have the four different accounts. it's tough to think about what we would lose - especially based on certain criteria. for instance, if we went with the so-called multiple attestation criteria, those stories that appear most frequently between the four should stay. if we did this, what would the Christmas story look like? it doesn't appear at all in Mark or John, and the version in Matthew is quite brief - sparing the tricky details about why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem in the first place. only in Luke's Gospel do we read the details about Mary and Joseph laying the baby Jesus in a food trough "because there was no place for them in the inn." Luke is proclaiming Jesus to be the son of God and the savior of the whole world, so such beginnings would be pretty convenient to leave out - unless Luke was also trying to tell us something else.
i think he was as Luke reiterates throughout his Gospel God's love for the poor, outcast, and abandoned. i think he included these details to show us from beginning to end a world that made no room for the very people who bless us beyond measure. i couldn't help but remember this story the last few days. there's a gentleman who comes regularly to the community soup kitchen. last week, the trailer he was living in was burned down. now he has no place to live. it was only by trying to help him find some temporary housing that i learned my community has no homeless shelter which is inexcusable on so many levels, especially considering the new multi-million dollar addition to the local jail. (i wonder why the jail needs so much space?)
thankfully members in one of my churches agreed to let him stay in our fellowship hall until we can find him permanent housing. i've been asked several times why the larger churches in town don't do such a thing regularly as there is no shelter. officially, i don't know that they don't because i only spoke with three, and i didn't ask if they could put him up in their fellowship halls. but this is something it makes sense for churches to do. this man spent a few nights sleeping under a bridge when almost every church on the street he slept under could have taken him in.
maybe if Luke hadn't included that little phrase about having no room for Mary, Joseph, and Jesus it wouldn't be such a big deal to keep people out of our churches or houses. but i think God had a purpose for the very words Luke used. we can't say we don't know any better. that phrase should remind all who read it not to turn anyone away, because there's no way to know who you're making sleep in a barn or under a bridge. at the very least, it's a child of God. but it could very well be God's only begotten Son.
1 comment:
hey buddy. your words- a "super gospel" actually make it sound really cool, so youre kinda shooting yourself in the foot there.
just to comment on the general idea- i think trying to consolidate the gospels takes away the humanity of them all. its not a few nba games to cut into a highlight reel- its four very tangible, human accounts of the life of christ, and for me my faith in those accounts would be lessened if there WERENT contradictions and disagreements and differences.
im far, far, far from literal in most cases, biblically, but one thing i do believe firmly is that the bible is divinely inspired as a whole. theres a reason theres not multiple accounts of, say, numbers, and theres a reason there ARE multiple accounts of christs life from those around him.
i feel its one of many ways that god opens himself to fuller inspection, even questioning, and leaves our faith room to breath- so to speak, to find the truth for ourselves. its a little offensive and arrogant to say you could pare down the gospels to get to that one truth when theres not a "one truth", in terms of the hows and whys. its the parts of truth, and the perceptions that maybe arent "the" truth but are wholly real that make it...understandable to me. so i guess i shouldnt be surprised that someone, somewhere figures they can perfect the gospels, to boil it down to its essense, so that ive got a cliffs notes version of the truth, huh?
in a lot of ways, we try too hard to divine the messengers- and even the message- and this is a real glaring case of that for me. doubt and contradictions and inperfections are much more foundational in my faith than seamlessness and perfection in the message, and the only way my faith continues to grow.
let me take this from one more angle- i remember one night my second year rc'ing, and troy was doing wilderness at the time, he had a night off so he came by the cabin and we were telling my kids this rambling, vaguely johnny lakeshore-ish story. we got to some fairly minor detail and one of the kids gets all excited and says, "yeah, i saw about that on the news!"
at that moment it was completely real to them, and we could do anything with that story we wanted to- i mean, that kid saw it on the news, right? it was completely and undeniably true.
one gospel of christs life would be a beautiful story that i could appreciate in the same way i do proverbs- but faith in that would be really hard for me. four mean giving their accounts of christs life, with each one more or less impressed by different things, each one a distinctly different voice- reading that- it is completely real to me, they can take me anywhere they want with the story after that.
...of course me and troy ended up with a dinosaur, so the belief eventually is tested in any faith (lets call pat robertson my "dinosaur" as far as the gospels go), im just sayin...
hope youre good, bruh.
randall
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