FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook 

4/29/13

In mid-June of 2007, I enjoyed what would be the last of many lunches over many years with a rabbi named Sherwin T. Wine. We made big plans at that lunch for the expansion of a lecture series he had established some years before and into which he had subsequently invited me as a co-lecturer.
 
If I was not a disciple of Sherwin Wine, I was at the very least a fellow traveler -- and we were fellow travelers upon a path not ordinarily taken by rabbis and priests, i.e. one of agnostic secular humanism. As we stood that day in the parking lot next to our adjacent cars, we shook hands as we always did when parting and he said, "I'll be back in August. Don't worry about the series. We'll work it out together." Then he was gone. He did not come back. He was killed instantly in a car accident in Morocco a month later.
 
But his promise to come back was fulfilled, as all that he had left behind -- an intellectual legacy that had his name on the lips of thousands across at least three continents -- has lived on. I and others have continued his work of challenging people to think in new ways, providing timely lectures covering a broad range of interests and, as he once said, "discouraging mental laziness."
 
None of us who follows in his train pretends to be Sherwin Wine, no more than he would pretend to be anyone of us had he survived and we had died. But the ding-an-sich, as Immanuel Kant would say, lives on after Sherwin, and will continue so to do if we, his one-time fellow travelers, keep on keeping on. The "thing-in-itself" is what matters. Wine and I and those who walk with us have been, are and will be its stewards.
 
That is as close as I can come to a personal appreciation of the gospel lection for this coming Sunday, Easter VI - C.

This passage (John 14: 23-29) is a part of what is called Jesus' "Final Discourse," as if what J. Dominic Crossan called a "Mediterranean Jewish Peasant" or John P. Meier called "a marginal Jew" went around making discourses. What we hear in this passage is a late first century CE rumination of an intellectual leader in a community of Jesus Jews trying to help that community recall the personage who called them into being in the first place. That one was probably the itinerant sage (again, Crossan) whose radical wisdom brought down upon him the wrath of an oppressive army of occupation working assiduously to keep the natives from getting restless. Meanwhile, as the decades rolled on, that wisdom became a glowing coal of comfort and inspiration to a beleaguered people who were evidently protective of their identity.
 
There is the nettle, I think, in that question John has Judas (not Iscariot) put to Jesus in 14: 22, something to the effect of "How is it you will disclose yourself to us and not to the world?" The operative Greek terms here are εμφανιζειν (exhibit) and κοσμος-- the same κοσμος that cannot receive the Spirit of truth in 14:17.  What has taken place that causes John's Jesus to exhibit his true self (or identity) to his followers and not to others on the outside? The answer is somewhat convoluted and seems to be, if not an outright evasion, a puzzle. If one remembers that the answer, such as it is, is a response to the question regarding sight -- that is, how the disciples "see" Jesus when the world cannot -- one can then take the reply John gives Jesus to make (13:23-24) as explaining why. It is because the disciples demonstrate their love (αγαπη) for him by keeping his word (or commandments), and in so doing are enabled thereby to appreciate his nature and real identity. Conversely, those who do not love Jesus by keeping his commandments cannot ipso facto see him as he is - ding an sich. And lest anyone misunderstand, John means for his audience to believe that this word or these commandments have their origin in His origin (cf. John 1:1-14).
 
Jesus is depicted as telling his followers that he is vouchsafing all this to them "while I am still with you" (14:25). Imagine the difficulty the leaders of late first century Jesus Judaism experienced in holding the focus of their communities on Jesus who had been dead for nearly 60 years. The "still with you" phrase may well proceed out of that ecclesiological effort, as may the budding doctrine of the Holy Spirit which becomes explicit in 14:26 and again at 20:22.
 
The crucifixion was death in no uncertain terms, and of that fact few would have been doubtful, certainly not Thomas. The inexplicable events, surely subjective in nature, testified to by some early Christians (Paul at I Corinthians 15: 5-8) created another problem. Even if "500 brethren at one time" saw a risen Jesus, those who didn't would always be doubtful as John depicts Thomas as being (20:24-25). Hence a presence of some kind must be established.
 
The genius of the fourth gospel is to be seen in 14: 25-26 as the connection is made among the Jesus who lived in Palestine circa 6 BCE and 33 CE, the Jesus some said they encountered in unspecified resurrection forms, and finally the evanescent spirit whom John's Jesus is made to call the παρακλητος one who is "called along side of" a person to give aid, comfort and support -- the very things those late first century C.E. communities would have needed. Most translators now render παρακλητος as "advocate" in the sense that an attorney is one's advocate standing with him before the bar of justice.
 
John's Jesus says the Father will send this advocate "in my name."  "Name" in such biblical contexts as this generally means "nature," so that the coming advocate will be essentially the ding an sich, non-corporeal Jesus. The non-fleshly effect will be the same. Thus it can be said that "Jesus lives." The implication here is one of emergent disclosure, of a dynamic, transforming situation in which it will be necessary over time for the disciples and their communities to learn new things, new strategies, new ways of coping with the exigencies of being an opposed and often persecuted minority.
 
That established, John's Jesus confers the gift of peace upon his disciples (14:27), not the causal shalom of an ordinary greeting, but Shalom with an uppercase S. This shalom is Jesus' bequest, his estate distributed among them. His successors will need all the shalom they can get to speed them on their way through the troubles their communities would encounter toward the end of the first century. Jesus will be going, but he will not be gone.

On July 21, 2007, I found myself, as others must have found themselves, acknowledging that Sherwin Wine, our friend and colleague with whom we had had so much to do and had planned to do so much more, would not be coming back. And yet his presence remained with us, first as one we were fiercely reluctant to let go. Then, as sanity reversed its outward flow, Sherwin Wine became in his absence what he had been in his presence: a challenging, demanding, driving, purposive force that animated us and that empowered us to pick up where he had left off. No, none of us would ever be Sherwin, just as Sherwin could never have been one of us. As incandescent as the personality was, as personalities may be, it is not, in the end, about personality. It is about the ding-an-sich - the thing-in-itself.
 
That is very truth for the communities that claim as their touchstone of purpose the ethical wisdom of Jesus and of his predecessors, the prophets. It is the wisdom nurtured by memory and commitment that matters.
 
The church is shortly to celebrate a feast known as "Pentecost," the focus of which, however, has nothing to do with "fifty days" or a "feast of weeks." It has to do with the realization among members of the earliest communities of Jesus Jews that Pontius Pilate, Herod and the Romans did not have the last word where that Mediterranean Jewish peasant was concerned. His witness stood and would stand. It was the thing-in-itself, impervious to all but human forgetfulness and neglect. And therein is the homiletic initiative for this coming Sunday.