FINDINGS II
Easter
III - C - April 18, 2010
Acts 9: 1-6; Revelation 5: 11-14; John 21:
1-19
 By Harry T. Cook
4/12/10
RUBRIC
The Gospel of John makes no mention of what ultimately became
of the one said to have been resurrected. Matthew comes close in 28: 16-20 up
there on the mountain "to which Jesus had directed [the disciples"] with a
valedictory known as the Great Commission. But no movement upward from the
mountain top. The "why-there-wasn't" would make for a great doctoral
dissertation. Luke, ever the fiction and screen writer, depicts an actual
ascension, but not before spinning the tale of the walk to Emmaus -- perhaps
one of the finest narratives in the entire New Testament collection. Mark
leaves things as they were at the tomb, the women too afraid to tell anyone
anything. John's resurrected Jesus seems to hang around, first here, then there
-- underscoring the idea that early Christians did not traffic in the
reanimation of dead tissue so much but rather in a "spiritual" presence.
On this coming Sunday, a full two weeks after Easter,
Christians will be asked still to consider that an executed prophet,
"crucified, dead and buried," left neither the community he organized nor the
world others would later say he came to save.
WORKSHOP
If According to Johnwas begun with a
prologue (1:1-18), why should it not be closed with an epilogue? A reasonable
consensus of those who have worked over 21: 1-19 is that the passage is,
indeed, an epilogue. To almost every eye, 20:31 seems surely to be the
intentional conclusion of the gospel narrative. The fact that in 21:4, the
disciples -- presumably the same (or some of the same) disciples who in 20:
19ff recognized Jesus -- do not recognize him here suggests that ch. 21 is from
another source but appended to the gospel narrative by later editors. Some
analysts, though, point to 20:30 and the "many other signs" Jesus was said to
have done in the presence of his disciples and suggest that ch. 21 constitutes
one of those other signs. You can see similarities between ch. 21 and Luke 5:
1-11. An exegete here and there will say that the latter may have been the
source of the former.
The prominence of Peter in ch. 21 may suggest some
ecclesiological revisionism. Peter does not come off too well in the fourth
gospel and is made out to have been outrun to the threshold of the tomb by John
(authorial privilege?) -- see 20:4. Peter is the one to whom it is said, "Feed
my sheep" (21:16), in the interesting interplay between Jesus and Peter as the
former asks the latter thrice: "Do you love me?" Twice the verb is "agapas,"
the third time "philō." Peter's response is "philō" all three times. Scholars
are divided over whether the use of the two different verbs is significant.
Raymond Brown says he agrees with James Moffatt and Rudolf Bultmann, for two,
"who find no clear distinction of meaning in the alternation" of the two verbs.* It
remains tempting to suggest that maybe Peter's answers using "philō" in all
cases could mean that he still didn't quite "get it."
A useful approach to ch. 21 may be to ask what it conveys
that ch. 20 does not, or how it conveys what it conveys differently than the
material in ch. 20:
* in ch. 20, the disciples are depicted locked away in a room "for fear of the
Jews"; in ch. 21, they have gone back to their old jobs;
* in ch. 20, the disciples know Jesus instantly when, deus ex machina, he
appears; in ch. 21, they see a figure on the beach but do not recognize him
until he tells them where the fish are (Luke 5:8);
* in ch, 20, the risen Jesus imparts to the disciples "a holy spirit" that
empowers or encourages of enables them to effect forgiveness; in ch. 21 Jesus
prepares and feeds them breakfast;
* in ch. 20 (the second appearance a week later), Jesus presents physical
evidence of his suffering, and, by his very appearance, his resurrection; in
ch. 21, Jesus engages Peter in a three-question/answer litany (an undoing of
the three-fold denial at 18: 15, 25 and 27??) that connects love for the former
with the charge of the latter to feed "the sheep" as Jesus has just fed his
disciples a meal that conveyed care and love.
Jesus' depiction of Thomas' conversion at 20:28 is almost a
reproach of those fortunate enough to see the evidence to support belief,
contrasting the belief of those who have relied on the strength of others'
witness.
Vv. 30-31 of
ch. 20 seems to validate that precise point, viz. that the "signs" seen by
those witnesses have been written down so that "you (the receivers of this
gospel) may come to believe (not 'know') that Jesus is Messiah, the son of God
. . ."
The "follow me" at 21: 9 seems to be a fitting conclusion to
the epilogue. Yet, there is a postscript that deals with an apparent rivalry
between Peter and "the disciple whom Jesus loved." His, too, was an answer to the
call of v. 19 "to follow." Jesus' reply as depicted by the epilogeuer
established the "disciple whom Jesus loved" as a legitimate follower. But
again, at v. 22 is the admonition to Peter also to follow, preceded by an
"enough already with the competition between you two."
If my hypothesis to the effect that the entire New Testament
belongs to the library designation of "early Christian history" holds up, we
might consider the push-pull of the Peter-John relationship as an echo of some
kind of competition for authority in the early years. If so, one has to admire
the evangelist for hinting so broadly at it.
Ch. 21: 24-25 acts as a seal upon both the epilogue, and to
all to which it has been appended as a kind of oath that what has been written
therein before is the Real McCoy and therefore not to be challenged as to
accuracy or purity of intent. That has a whiff of too much protesting about it.
And the markedly unabashed hyperbole of 21:25 is typical of the overstatement
common to the time and culture. Of any of us who survive to age of 30 or so, it
could be said that all the actions we had taken over a life of 10,000-plus days
might well fill many a book. Just ask Proust.
Footnote:If the homilist wishes to see the underlying issue of these lections as
the impetus to believe in what is being proclaimed, then he or she can attend
to the reading from Acts in which Paul, upon "seeing" Jesus, is blinded, and to
the reading from Revelation in which John, its putative author, "hears" (with
no mention of seeing) "many angels surrounding the throne" and singing the
ascription of "blessing and honor and glory and might" to the occupant of the
throne. While the faculties of seeing and hearing can be contaminated by what
is not objectively visible or audible ("seeing things" or "hearing things"
commonly associated with psychosis), the other side of the coin is that one
actually needs to "see" and "hear" and to rationalize both what is seen and
what is heard before it can realistically become knowledge available to others.
* "The
Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, The Anchor Bible Series , Vol. 29A, 1970,
Doubleday., p. 1103
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
The lections for Easter III-C are together a cornucopia of
motifs reaching out for the homilist's attention: "Preach me! Preach me!" One
promising approach for the homilist would be to ask of his or her listeners
what it is that actually makes or allows them to believe anything.
There are plenty of people who believe that Barack Obama was
not, like Bruce Springsteen, born in the U.S.A. -- despite the clear and
uncompromising evidence that he was. There are plenty of people who believe
Earth is little more than 6,000 years old and appeared in the form which hosts
us today and that all life forms (animal, vegetable and mineral) were
purposefully created one by one through divine fiat -- despite clear and
uncompromising evidence to the contrary. There are plenty of people who believe,
absent any objective data whatsoever, that the flesh of a dead Jesus was
reanimated, that he ascended into heaven and, moreover, will descend again to
Earth to settle hash once and for all.
The homilist might take the opportunity these lections offer
to bid people to regard what is undeniably real and available to belief about
the world in which they live, viz. the grinding poverty of millions of their
fellow human beings, the grave economic and social injustices that are so
manifest in so many places, the suffering that wars have brought and are
bringing upon humanity. The homiletic task is then to turn knowledge of such
grievances into belief that they must be redressed if such terms as "God" and
"love" and "grace" and "salvation" are to have any meaning whatsoever.
Such is not exactly the message many people come to church
to hear of a Sunday, which means that it is often enough not the one proffered.
And that may explain a lot about why the church in general is becoming more and
more a monument to irrelevance.
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