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Re-Creating Easter VII
The Internal Process
Peter had so clearly wanted to be loyal to Jesus following his arrest. The story is told that he tried to follow Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. Peter had given Jesus his word that even if all others deserted him, he would be there with him; so he tried. This journey into enemy territory, however, ended disastrously when, as the story suggests, a maid serving the high priest exposed him and elicited from him the denial that his survival required: “I do not even know the man of whom you speak.” That was such an embarrassing memory that it seems too graphic not to have been real. Deeply embarrassing moments in the lives of those who become heroes are not finally capable of being whitewashed or repressed.
It was now late at night. Peter was incredibly vulnerable. Being identified by a maid, I suspect, was all it took to put Peter on his way to Bethany, just two miles away. In Bethany was the house of Mary and Martha. Their home also appears to have been the headquarters for Jesus and his disciples on this trip to Jerusalem, so it was familiar. It was also outside Jerusalem and thus was thought to offer safety. Was the Mary who lived there with her sister Martha the same Mary that came to be called “Magdalene?” I think that is a genuine possibility. It has become much easier to suggest since we now know that “Magdalene” was more of a title conferred on a person than it was a reference to hailing from a town called Magdala, as scholars have long and mistakenly assumed. “Magdalene” now appears rather to be derived from the Hebrew word “migdal,” which originally referred to a large tower, but the meaning of which shifted over the centuries so that it came to mean “large” or “great.” To call this Mary “Magdalene” was to refer to her as “Mary the Large” or “Mary the Great.” It was a title of enormous respect.
The relationship of Mary Magdalene to Jesus has been debated for centuries. She is always listed first when the women are mentioned. She was clearly the leading woman in the Jesus movement. She was at Jesus’ side during his life and appears to have been the chief mourner at his tomb in his death. She was portrayed as having easy access to the disciples even in that time when knowledge of where they were hiding was a matter of life and death. Was she Jesus’ wife? That idea has also been debated through the centuries. It will always remain speculative, but I personally believe that there is truth in that speculation.
If this Mary was the same as Mary Magdalene, then there could be a germ of truth in the story of her, either alone, as John suggests or in the company of other women as Mark, Matthew and Luke suggest, coming in search of the final resting place of the body of Jesus at dawn on the first day of the week. Since there was in all probability no tomb, but only a common grave dug to hold all of the victims of crucifixion from that day, she could not find it. The words attributed to her in the Fourth Gospel may well reflect that reality: “They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.” Over the years, that visit to the tomb seems to have gotten combined with the faith assertion that neither a tomb nor death itself could contain him, so legends of the tomb being empty entered the tradition. The reality of history, however, is that there never was a tomb. Mary probably returned to her home from that early morning search even more devastated by grief. Peter probably did not wait for her return. He had left Bethany at the crack of dawn to make his way to the safety of Galilee. It was every man for himself.
Let me now try to enter the mind of Peter. Any budding hope that Jesus might be the messiah disappeared with his death. He had been hung out to die on a cross of wood. The Torah pronounced a curse on anyone who was “hung upon a tree” (Deut. 21:22). Since God had not delivered Jesus from this peril, he could not possibly be the messiah. So whatever hope Peter might have invested in Jesus died in the crucifixion. The other emotions that accompany death, like anger, guilt and grief were, however, surely present. Jesus, the central linchpin of their lives, had been pulled from them. There was a sense of disillusionment in the realization that he was not who they thought he was. There was anger at having followed a loser. There was guilt attached to their abandonment of him. If Peter was truly alone, I suspect he processed all of these emotions internally on that long walk to Galilee.
Even as their bitterness became familiar, I suspect some of the positive feelings about Jesus could not be crowded out. Peter surely saw in him a God-infused man. Jesus seemed to know no barriers. Jesus had regarded all those that his society devalued as being of infinite worth. They remembered that he had treated bothersome children with welcoming love. They recalled that he had invited women into discipleship. They had observed his welcome to both Samaritans and Gentiles. Was no one an outcast? In a world where economic poverty as well as sickness and physical deformity were viewed as signs of divine punishment, Peter had watched Jesus reach out to the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, the blind, the deaf, the crippled and even the “sinful.” He accepted people as they were and then he had loved them into being all that they could be. How could God say no to these qualities in him and still be God? So grief and loss collided with Peter’s new understanding of what it meant to be human, a humanity he had seen lived out by Jesus. The two simply did not fit together.
Arriving back in Galilee a week or so after the crucifixion, I suspect that Peter kept a low profile, making no effort to reconnect with the others with whom he had spent so much of his recent life. Grief, no matter how intense, does, however, with the passage of time begin to lessen. A sense of safety also began to grow in him with every passing day. If the authorities were not immediately seeking the disciples of the crucified one then these disciples began to think that they would not do so at all. Arresting and executing the leader appeared to be sufficient to squash the movement. Whatever fears the authorities had invested in Jesus seemed to dissipate now that he was gone. When one cuts off the head of a movement, one does not have to bother with what remains. So a sense of security expanded as fear diminished and even as the pain of grief lifted. What still remained, however, was the question of how the life of Jesus, so apparently God-filled could still be subjected to the fate that befell him. He was punished by God, they assumed, as a sinner. That was their understanding of what their own theological thinking had taught them.
Since the synagogue had so clearly been part of their life with Jesus, I suspect that now following his crucifixion, it continued to be part of the life of the disciples. The Sabbath made little sense without the synagogue, so I believe that Peter and the others were in attendance at Sabbath Day worship. They sang the psalms; they listened to the readings from the Torah and the prophets. They listened as synagogue leaders or visiting teachers expounded on the scriptures. In the process, they heard different understandings of messiah being articulated. There were political messiahs who would re-establish the Jewish homeland. They needed to be of the royal line of King David to gain credibility. As Micah the prophet suggested, they might need to have been born in Bethlehem, King David’s birthplace. Messiah might need to possess supernatural power. He might be called the “Son of Man,” an apocalyptic title introduced into Jewish thought by the prophet Daniel. The signs of the Kingdom of God breaking into human history needed to appear if messiah was deemed to be present. What were these signs? Isaiah had spelled them out in chapter 35 of his book. Water would flow in the desert causing the crocuses to bloom in that barren place. Human wholeness would then replace brokenness. The blind would see, the deaf hear, the lame leap and the mute sing. These messianic images flooded into Peter’s mind, Sabbath by Sabbath, perhaps even month by month.
In the passage of time in the synagogue they would also hear the words of a nameless one, whom the prophet we call II Isaiah would call the “Servant.” This messianic portrait was first drawn in the dark days when the Jews began to return from the exile in Babylon to re-build both their nation and their Temple and to re-establish their power. Arriving home, however, they found the re-building task to be beyond anyone’s comprehension or ability. The land of Judah was a hopeless wasteland. Jerusalem was a pile of rubble. The Temple was little more than pieces of broken crockery in a field. A new population had moved into the area, who were not eager to receive these returning Jews. The realization set in quickly that the nation of Judah would never rise again. The Jewish dream was about to die. That was the moment when the one we identify as II Isaiah took quill in hand to write a new story of how even in weakness, defeat and death, these Jewish people could still fill the messianic role of being a blessing to the nations of the world. They were, this prophet wrote, to play the terribly unpopular role of being a continuous victim. By absorbing both the hostility of the world and the world’s power to kill without resisting or fighting back, they could drain the world of its negativity and transform that negativity into love. Perhaps in powerlessness, weakness, abuse and death, the messiah could still function. It was a new idea for Peter. So he opened his mind to this possibility while still processing his grief and pain.
Finally, the day came when Peter decided the time had come to start living again. “I am going fishing,” he said, and the others said they would go with him. So back to their pre-Jesus life toiling in the Sea of Galilee they went. It was in this setting after the passage of weeks, perhaps months that I believe resurrection finally dawned in Peter in Galilee.
To tell the story of how that happened we will turn next week, as this series concludes.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
Charlie Loving, from West Texas, writes:
Question:
I am on very good terms with my bishop and attend yearly the annual diocesan council. I find it entertaining and in some way uplifting. I have a problem in that I do not believe in any of the mythology, but I was brainwashed in it from a young age, so I can do it all by rote.
The diocese does great things in the name of some superior being up in the sky somewhere, which does not bother me if they want to believe in some spirit. They could do many good works, such as “Wounded Warriors,” building houses for humanity and drilling water wells in Honduras. If they did these things in the name of Donald Duck, I would be there helping and doing my part.
I just have to fake it when they all pray and say the creed. I take the wafer and drink the wine at communion and wonder if this is some sort of barbaric cannibalism. I cringe at my having to fake it. I believe in good works and have devoted a lot of time to helping fathers and parents. But I can’t believe in the crazy tales of virgin births and Jesus coming again and his rising from the dead. Am I wrong?
Answer:
Dear Charlie,
No, you are not wrong. That would be far too judgmental a word to use. You are, however, very poorly informed, biblically illiterate and even profoundly ignorant about what Christianity really is, and you are not just a little bit dishonest. If you really think the way you describe yourself as thinking, it seems to me that you are wasting an awful lot of your time in church activities. Something of which you are either not aware or cannot admit even to yourself draws you rather inexorably into association with your bishop and with church life. I doubt seriously whether that can be chalked up to “brainwashing…from a young age so I can do it all by rote.” You can probably also recite, “Mary had a little lamb” but that does not involve in regular attendance at kindergarten There are so many things that one experiences as a child that one discontinues without ill effects in one’s adult life. I doubt, for example, if you still put out cake and hot chocolate on Christmas Eve to refresh Santa on his worldwide travels.
I suspect you would be surprised to learn that I do not know a reputable biblical theologian, who still today treats the virgin birth as either literal history or literal biology. There are many ways to look at the three stories in the gospels of Jesus raising someone from the dead. The raising of Jairus’ daughter, told in Mark, Matthew and Luke, looks very much like an Elisha story magnified and retold about Jesus. The raising of a widow’s only son in the village of Nain, told only by Luke, appears to be an Elijah story magnified and retold about Jesus. The raising of Lazarus from the dead, told only by John, appears to be a rewriting of Luke’s parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. This story of Lazarus, dramatic and powerful as it is, does not enter the Christian tradition for 65-70 years after the crucifixion. Do you suppose that if this miracle really happened and was as public an event as John says it was, that no one would have mentioned it for 65 -70 years? When it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, I just recently wrote a series of ten columns on what the New Testament actually says about the resurrection of Jesus. I will not repeat that here except to say that to treat the resurrection of Jesus as if it is about the physical resuscitation of a deceased body, reveals only that you have not ever really engaged these texts. That understanding does not enter the Christian tradition until the ninth decade. It is not an original part of the story any more than the virgin birth is. Given your level of biblical knowledge that fact should surprise you. Are you aware that neither Paul, who wrote between 51 and 64, nor Mark, the earliest gospel writer who is generally dated about the year 72, appears to have heard about the virgin birth tradition? All Paul says about the origins of Jesus is that he was born of a woman. That does not sound to me very unusual. He also claims that Jesus is “descended from David according to the flesh.” Mark says that the Holy Spirit entered the presumably human Jesus at his baptism, not at his conception. Paul never describes a resurrection appearance, giving us only a list of those to whom the raised Christ “was made manifest.” Mark never gives us an account of the raised Christ appearing to anyone. He only gives us the promise that the disciples will see him when they return to their homes in Galilee. So for you to call these literalized stories “crazy tales” is simply to reveal how little you know.
“Mythology,” Charlie, is not something you believe in or not. Mythology is not ever to be read literally. It is a human way of discovering truth through a fanciful tale. No one believes that the story of Little Red Riding Hood being eaten by a wolf is history. It is, however, a culturally true and deeply validated human insight that when a young girl enters puberty, which is what the story is all about, she is well advised to “stay on the straight and narrow path” lest she be eaten by a wolf.
It seems to me to be a very literal shame that in your fairly extensive life in the church, you never learned or were never taught to read or study the Bible in a competent way. Your view of the Bible is quite childlike, I would say about that of a six year old. If you were to become biblically literate, you might still have questions, but I doubt that you would be tempted to act out your faith in the name of Donald Duck.
I do not know who your minister or bishop is, but the church that you claim brainwashed you in your childhood gave you little more than a profoundly shallow understanding of what Christianity is. If I thought the way you think, I would have given up association with the Christian Church long ago. I will not do that today because I see something about the Christian story that not only moves, me, but also calls me into active, believing discipleship. I write and teach out of that experience. I covet such an experience for you.
My best,
John Shelby Spong
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