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FINDINGS VII By Harry T. Cook
Easter II - C - April 3, 2016
Acts 5: 27-32; Revelation 1: 4-8; John 20: 19-31
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Harry T. Cook
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By Harry T. Cook
3/28/16
It is a pity that far fewer people show up for the Sunday liturgies in the weeks following Easter Day itself, because it is the so-called post-resurrection appearance stories that give some needed texture and scope to the raw proclamation of Jesus' resurrection, which is obviously impossible for reason-centered people of the 21st century to believe.
It is my hypothesis that the provenance of these latter chapters in John and, indeed, in the other canonical gospels, is the evolution of those late first century CE communities that began their lives as conservators of the ethical wisdom sayings of Jesus as found in the Q document (imbedded in Matthew and Luke) and the Gospel of Thomas. To compete in the world of Graeco-Roman myth religions, it was deemed necessary for what I call Jesus Judaism to distinguish itself from what, post-Temple, was evolving as synagogue Judaism. This was accomplished by setting the legendary stories of Jesus' alleged miracles topped off by his resurrection in a myth-like context.
If one works from that hypothesis, how does he or she deal with the "post-resurrection" narratives? What place have they? One suggestion is that they may be closer to the "truth" of the matter than the resurrection proclamations themselves. If indeed a Jesus as variously accounted for in the gospels actually existed and did actually draw to himself a devoted following of disciples, that following must have been thrown into confusion and grief by his execution, and, as so often happens in the wake of the death of a charismatic leader, dealt with that grief by trying to make him present to them by keeping the community together and carrying on whatever his mission had been. That's what the second generation of post-Martin Luther King Jr.-era leaders did.
So we should find it neither strange nor repugnant that stories of "appearances" of the dead figure would crop up, be expanded and become part of the community's lore. That may be essentially what we have in John 20: 19-31. Since all four canonical evangelists skirt the issue of a direct, first-person account of the resurrection, what else each includes about Jesus after his execution is important to understanding the particular theological agenda.
It is helpful to remember that Luke and John had different ideas about what the church came to call "the holy spirit." Luke in Acts 2 makes a production of the spirit's advent and places it 50 days after the supposed resurrection. John 20:22 places the arrival of the spirit on "the evening of that day, the first day of the week" -- the day first mentioned at John 20:1.
Luke includes a rough parallel version of John 20: 19-31 at 24: 33-39. A number of those who work with these texts suggest that the two passages have a common origin. While Luke makes reference (though not by name) to the holy spirit at 24:49, he puts on Jesus' lips the promise that it will come upon the disciples to empower them as depicted in Acts 2.
Both Luke and John see the conferring of the spirit in the context of forgiveness (Luke 24:47 and John 20:22-23). It is important to note here that the literal translation of John 20:22 is "receive a holy spirit," not "the" holy spirit. This may indicate that the unfortunate Christian doctrine of the holy spirit was a matter for Christians of a later generation to form more fully.
Are we to understand from John 20: 22-23 that, in possession of "a holy spirit," followers of the post-crucifixion Jesus are actually empowered both to remit and to retain sins or consequences of their or others' wrongdoings? Or is it a statement of the obvious, viz. that sin is committed against human beings by other human beings, and that the aggrieved parties may or may not be disposed to forgive the consequences of wrongdoing? If not, they are, ipso facto, retained as stumbling blocks in a relationship. Perhaps "a holy spirit" conferred by one who has been terribly sinned against (i.e. Jesus) upon those who had been close enough to him to get the message enables such followers to forgive rather than to retain and, therefore, to enable the "peace" of John 20:19.
When you envision "the house where the disciples had met" and the doors that were "locked for fear of the Jews," what do you see? Try not to see "the Eleven," because the word disciple (μαθητης) refers to one of a general following or "community" and not exclusively to those so named earlier. See not so much disciples quaking in fear of Jews implicated by John in the crucifixion but a late first century CE community afraid of what synagogue Jews would say and to do them for their fealty to the Jesus movement. See a eucharistic setting with members of the community gathered intentionally to "re-member" Jesus, and do so as they hear the president of the liturgy say, "Peace be to you." See the community engaged in a mutual sorting out of grievances, mindful of the "spirit" they believe they have received through membership and participation in a community gathered around the ethical teachings of Jesus, now physically dead and gone those 60 or so years. See a certain member or members of that community expressing reservations about the validity of their existence and purpose.
Imagine the church's first and most threatening "heresy," viz. docetism (Jesus only seemed to be human). You could hear John 20:25 ("Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands . . . I will not believe") as "I'll believe when I see some signs of his humanity, of his suffering." Then see the president of the liturgy give thanks over the bread and wine; see members of the community share both in a spirit of respect and affection. See those who had reservations gladly accept their shares in that symbol-laden meal and conclude, after all, that Jesus was present among them as if they could actually touch him (again John 20:25 and 27).
The problem for the earliest members of the communities of Jesus Judaism was not persuading people that he had been raised from the dead. Plenty of suffering and dying sons of the gods were reputed to have experienced that in antiquity. The problem was: Where was this particular son of their particular god, and how could his presence credibly be accounted for? The answer came in stories of the late first century CE communities' lives as they struggled to "re-member" Jesus by didactic and sacramental means.
There would always be characters like Thomas in the life of the church - skeptics and questioners - and that for the church's own good. Such characters force the church to vouchsafe to the world dependable signs of its humanity, even of its suffering. If the gospel is real and real-life, then where are the wounds, where are the marks of sacrifice on the body of the church that supposedly takes the gospel it proclaims from doctrine to action, from proclamation to practice?
Why should proclaiming the gospel in action bring any harm to the proclaiming agent? Here's why: The gospel is first and foremost a gospel of justice (distributive) and of peace (meaning more than simply the absence of war). It follows as the night the day that those who advocate distributive justice run afoul of establishment values. The martyrs of the American civil rights movement paid with their lives for such advocacy. Clergy who go into their pulpits to denounce economic inequality, racism and war often pay for their advocacy by being fired.
Yet, there is no point to proclaiming resurrection even in a metaphorical way -- which is the only way it can be proclaimed -- unless the agent of proclamation is itself alive and engaged in the world. And if the proclamation has anything to do with the Jesus of the Christian gospels, then what is said must be matched by what is done to fulfill the promise of his ethic: Turning the other cheek to the one who smites, walking the second mile after the mandated first, giving up a shirt as well as a coat to one who has neither, loving enemy as self, forgiving however much and however often forgiveness is needed and respecting the dignity of every human being.
How rich in prophetic ministry Eastertide could be if its preachers took the gospel seriously rather than literally.
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