FINDINGS VII By Harry T. Cook

Easter III - C - April 10, 2016

Acts 9: 1-6; Revelation 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-19

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook

4/4/16

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 is said to have organized nor the world others would later say he came to save.

If According to John was 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 form is αγαπας the third time φιλω. Peter's response is φιλω 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 "who find no clear distinction of meaning in the alternation" of the two verbs.* Yet it remains tempting to suggest that maybe Peter's answers using φιλω 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: Should the homilist wish 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 lections for Easter III-C are together a cornucopia of motifs each 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 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.

* "The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, The Anchor Bible Series, Vol. 29A, 1970, Doubleday, p. 1103

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