It’s all very well discussing how the gospels came to be, but are they true and do Christians adhere to what Jesus purportedly tells them there? Let’s take a look at one of his instructions from Matthew 23.8-10:

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 

Context: Matthew’s cult community is moving away from synagogue worship and so supplies Jesus with words condemning Pharisaic practices. Instead, because the new cult at this point is egalitarian, they have him endorse its practice. One teacher: the heavenly Christ. One church: the brotherhood. One Father: God in heaven. One Instructor: the heavenly Christ again.

How quickly the church jettisoned this advice! By the time of Ephesians (written in the late 1^st or early 2^nd and certainly not by Paul who was long dead) the church is awash with ‘the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, (given by Christ) to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up (Ephesians 4.11-12)

A little later still, 1 Timothy – again, not written by Paul – speaks of hierarchical structures of overseers (‘bishops’), leaders, teachers and instructors (the two words have the same meaning), while later in the first century, and in direct contravention of Jesus’ admonition, the Roman church started calling its priests ‘father’. The Pope, – the term means Father or Papa – soon became the Father of all fathers.

Did the early church not really believe that Matthew 23.8-10 recorded the words of Jesus? (They’d be correct if so.) Or did they think that they didn’t matter; were, in fact, optional? (Parenthetically, what is it with gospel-Jesus habitually referring to saviour-figures in the third person? He does it here – ‘one instructor: the Messiah’ – and when he refers to ‘the Son of Man’. Why should we suppose he means himself when he does this? He’s not afraid to talk at length in the first person about himself in John’s gospel, but in the synoptics he’s apparently too timid to do so and feels compelled to use the third person and hide behind alter-egos. Unless of course fictional gospel-Jesus, or his script writers, regards ‘the Messiah’ and ‘the Son of Man’ as beings other than himself.) 

Then there’s the modern church, with its pastors (‘shepherds’), bishops (‘overseers’), teachers, instructors and priests (‘elders’). Does it too consider that gospel truths about brotherhood, no father but God and no teacher except the Christ, to be optional – insignificant even? Apparently so.

Which other words of Jesus do believers feel free to jettison? We’ll take an occasional look in the weeks ahead.