HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Re-Creating Easter II
Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Moment?
Who was the person who stood in the center of the most dramatic moment in Christian history, the experience we call Easter? Who was it who first saw the meaning of Jesus as the one who transcended all human limits and barriers, including finitude? Who was it who opened the eyes of others to see what he or she had seen and who thereby made possible the birth of what we call Christianity? We cannot ultimately unravel the mystery of Easter until we are able to look at it through the eyes of this crucial person and are enabled to determine just what it was that he or she saw.
If one walks through the Bible, reading each account of the resurrection in a literal way, the answers to these questions will produce little more than confusion. Paul says: “He (the risen Christ) appeared first to Cephas (Peter).” Mark gives us no account of the raised Christ appearing to anyone. Matthew says that the resurrected Jesus appeared first to the women in the garden at dawn on the first day of the week. Luke asserts that this first appearance was to Cleopas and his traveling companion in the village of Emmaus. The Fourth Gospel says it was to Mary Magdalene alone that the risen Christ was first made manifest. These accounts cannot be harmonized and they obviously cannot all be correct. Biblical literalism ultimately becomes intellectually absurd. Clearly there must be some other way besides literally to read the gospel narratives.
In this column today, I propose to take you into this other way. I start with some biblical facts. None of the gospels was the work of an eye witness. The first gospel, Mark, written no earlier than forty-two years after the crucifixion, would be the product of the second Christian generation. The last gospel, John, written sixty-five to seventy years after the crucifixion, was the work of the third Christian generation. The gospels are not current newspaper reports, they are thoughtful interpretive narratives reflecting the perspective of time. They must be read as such. So, walk with me into this new way to approach the story of Easter, a way quite different from what most of us have been taught in either church or Sunday school.
First we look at the New Testament as a whole. Who was the figure, other than Jesus, who appears first in the Epistles, who dominates the gospels, and who is the subject of at least a third of the book of Acts? What gave this figure his importance? The answer to our question is quickly reached. He is the man whose name is Simon, but who is better known by his nickname “Cephas” or “Peter,” both of which are literal transliterations of the words for “rock,” first in Aramaic and then in Greek.”. The name “Cephas” appears in the New Testament nine times. It is Paul’s favorite name for Peter. The name “Peter” appears in the New Testament one hundred and nine times. The name “Simon” is used to refer to this person over forty times. Add these references together and you discover that the New Testament mentions this man at least one hundred and fifty-eight different times, a total far beyond that which any other single person is mentioned in the gospel tradition other than Jesus himself. There must have been something special, unique and critically important about this life. So we begin to dig into the gospels in search of what it was that caused this person to receive such spectacular notice.
On every list of the twelve disciples, Peter- Cephas- Simon is always listed first. Why? Was he the natural leader during Jesus’ life? That does not appear to be the case until after the crucifixion. Indeed, he seems to have failed at almost every point. His denial of Jesus is noted in every gospel. His misunderstanding of Jesus as messiah at a place called Caesarea Philippi brings a rebuke from Jesus attested in three gospels. He was the “heavy” in the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, also mentioned in three gospels. With a record like that, it is certainly clear that he was not the leader of the disciple band during Jesus’ earthly ministry. Something must have happened after, which caused him to rise to the top of the list. So we ask: What was it?
In Matthew’s gospel, Peter is pictured first as having the courage to walk on water in response to Jesus’ invitation, only then to sink in fear. In two other gospels, he is portrayed as asking Jesus to depart from him “for I am a sinful man.” Yet, in the Fourth Gospel, when the other disciples seem ready to abandon Jesus, it is Simon Peter who is quoted as saying: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” In the synoptic gospels it is Peter who first sees Jesus along with Moses and Elijah as part of a trio of Jewish heroes, but that too is made to seem inadequate. In the Fourth Gospel, Peter is portrayed as being unwilling for Jesus to wash his feet and as unable to believe even when he has seen the emptiness of the tomb.
Yet, Matthew also tells us that Peter was declared to be the one upon whom Jesus would build the church. It is from that claim that the nickname “the rock,” or perhaps “Rocky,” was given to him. Surely something happened that caused Peter to emerge as the cornerstone of the movement started by the followers of Jesus.
This Petrine priority obviously had little to do with later claims that Peter was appointed by Jesus himself to be the first head of the universal church, which is a bit of 4th century nonsense. There is no reason to believe that Jesus ever even contemplated the establishment of a Christian church.
The leadership of Peter has been established according to biblical texts that we still possess, as early as the year 52, when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. This is only about 22 years after the crucifixion, much earlier than any of the gospels. In that epistle, Paul names Peter, along with James the brother of Jesus and John, as the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. Paul then says that Peter was entrusted with the spread of the gospel among the Jews just as he, Paul, had been entrusted with the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles.
In two crucial interpretive gospel narratives, Jesus was said to have taken Peter, James and John with him into the transfiguration and Gethsemane experiences. In the earliest gospel, Mark, Peter tried to follow Jesus after his arrest, but wound up denying him and is left weeping and broken on the night of the arrest. The only hint of his recovery in Mark’s gospel comes when the messenger to the women on Easter morning says, “Go tell the disciples and Peter that he (Jesus) is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him.”
Matthew never tells the story of Peter’s rehabilitation. Luke has the two Emmaus Road travelers return to Jerusalem to relate their experience of the resurrection to the disciples only to be informed that “the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon,” that is to Peter. John records no word of Peter coming to faith or belief. In the Epilogue to John’s gospel (chapter 21), however, a chapter written by someone other than the author of the rest of that gospel, we are told of the dramatic confrontation between Jesus and Peter by the Sea of Galilee, which led to Peter’s restoration and to Jesus’ command given specifically to Peter to “feed my sheep”. This epilogue also acknowledges that it would be Peter who would be the leader of the Christian movement.
Perhaps the clue that interprets Peter’s confusing history best is found only in Luke. There Jesus describes to Peter the struggle that he, Jesus, has endured trying to win Peter’s faithfulness. He likened it to a conflict with Satan himself. Satan, Jesus said, desired to “sift you (Peter) like wheat,” but “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Then turning to Peter, Jesus was quoted as having said: “Peter, when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.”
When we collect all of these episodes and examine them, it becomes clear that Peter above all others was the one in whom the struggle for faith was most deeply played out. This struggle was resolved only in the moment that came to be called “the Easter Experience” when Jesus was seen as transcending the power of death. Luke, however, knowing all of this also knew that the Christian story would be born in Peter and that when Peter finally saw the meaning of Jesus, he would be the one who would enable the others to see. So Luke places these crucial words into Jesus’ mouth: “When you are finally able to see, Peter, then you must strengthen the others to enable them to see” (my translation).
When one reads the New Testament interpretively, not literally, it points overwhelmingly to the reality that whatever Easter was, it dawned first in Peter and that it was Peter who opened the eyes of the others to see what he saw. We embrace that insight as the first step in our quest.
We have answered the first of our four questions. We have identified the person, who stands in the center of whatever the Easter moment was. Whatever the reality was that we call “the resurrection of Jesus,” we know it dawned first in Peter.
Next week, we will try to locate Peter in a particular place when he is grasped by this life-changing experience in order to provide one more clue that might help us to unravel the mystery of how it was that Easter actually dawned in human history. So stay tuned.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
T. Baines from Canada writes via the Internet:
Question:
I have been reading Mircea Eliade's Cosmos and History. What do you make of his premise that religious ritual is analogous to primitive practices meant to evoke a mythical time when God was physically present?
Answer:
Dear T. Baines,
It has been a long time since I read Mircea Eliade's work. When I was exploring interfaith relations, I found him very helpful. There is little doubt in my mind that liturgical processes today reflect practices that would be more meaningful to our ancient religious forebears than they are to us. Religion in all of its organized forms is finally an attempt to guarantee that God will work for our well-being. That is its operating premise. The reason so much religious language makes so little sense to us today is that it does not transcend the theistic definition of God. This theistic symbol died with Galileo in the 17th century and needs to be replaced with other symbols of the divine. Most people do not, however, know of any other God symbol or God language to use, so we persist in the old patterns. That is why Paul Tillich, in my opinion the greatest theologian in the twentieth century, sought to get people away from thinking of God as a being, dwelling somewhere above the earth, possessed of supernatural power and designed to control for us the things we cannot control and to do for us the things that we cannot do for ourselves. We have turned God into “a being,” created in our own image, but lacking our limitations. We relate to this idol of our own making by pretending that if we are good enough or faithful enough we can force this God to do our bidding. It is a very immature way of imagining God. Tillich spoke of God not as “a being,” but as the “Ground of all Being.” That is a very different starting place.
The spiritual task today is to discover the infinite in the life of the finite. I seek oneness with God, not magical intervention by God. I think that is a goal that is not inconsistent with what Eliade was saying, but it might be a step beyond the conclusions that Eliade was able to reach in his generation. All of us build on the work of those who have preceded us, so I am grateful to him.
Thank you for your question.
John Shelby Spong
Announcements
Just a couple more days to take advantage of this amazing sale!!
