Having An Adult Faith
Sunday, April 16, 2023
Gospel, John 20:19-31
Today’s Gospel is a reading from the Gospel of John, which is almost universally accepted as being the last written of the four Gospels. And it is in this Gospel, more than in any of the others, in which a very physical description of Jesus’ resurrected body is found. It is true that in the other Gospels and in Acts we have Jesus sharing a meal with one or more of his disciples which also imply ‘physicality’. But only in John do we have such a physical description of touching his wounds etc. Considering that this is one of the last writings of the New Testament written about 70 years after Jesus died, it is interesting to compare it with the first description of Jesus’ resurrected self (see Acts 22:6 which is one of the texts written around 50 years before John’s Gospel) where Jesus appears to Paul only as a Light.
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Paul is convinced that this kind of question is ‘foolish’ because it is obvious to him that the resurrected body will NOT be like the body we all experience in our daily lives. So Paul continues: How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
So Paul is clearly repudiating any kind of belief that says that the resurrected body is like the body we have now. Paul calls it a ‘spiritual’ body. It is likely that Paul would therefore have repudiated any kind of understanding of the resurrected body that we are likely to take away from the very physical description of the body that comes across in today’s reading from the Gospel of John.
So what do we believe then? While we can be confident that something extraordinary did happen at the Resurrection of Jesus, we are on shakier ground if we insist that it is essential to our faith to believe in the kind of imagery that is obvious in today’s Gospel. In other words, does our faith in Jesus depend on a belief in the physicality of Jesus’ body after the resurrection, or is it grounded on a belief in the new life of Jesus even beyond death - accepting that in the early Church this new life of Jesus was experienced in many different ways, from just as a LIGHT, to sharing a meal, to touching his wounds etc. They were all different experiences, EACH ONE SUITED to the persons who received these experiences. And perhaps that is true about all experiences of God, - every experience is adapted to our own cultural and personal experiences. If this is true, then the experience of God to someone coming from the Hebraic culture, the Arabic culture, Indian culture, etc. would all be different, for God cannot be limited to any one culture.
Furthermore, we could also conclude that all these different experiences tell us that we really do NOT know what the resurrected body of Jesus was really like, except as Paul writes, that it is quite different from the body we all now have? Does this kind of an interpretation of the Resurrection stories shake our faith?
Perhaps many of us feel the need to insist on mystery and miracle, or on what we have been taught by various religious authorities, because our faith is grounded on these three aspects (cf the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky). And it seems this mystery, miracle and authority is what human beings crave for in our religion(s). But for Jesus, these are not the essence of religion. That is why he even condemns such a desire for miracles in Mathew 16;4 when he says: An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign/miracle. For Jesus, it is only a relationship with God and our neighbour which is important.
If we are honest, most of us feel our faith is strengthened when we hear of a ‘miracle’ by someone in our own religious tradition, and tend to pooh-pooh any miracles claimed by those belonging to other traditions, whether it be a SaiBaba or Ma Amruthamayi, or somebody else. And when something in our own religion doesn’t make sense, we are told, “Oh that is part of the mystery - so just believe”. And finally when nothing else works for us, then we tend to look for some “authority” to assure us that we are on the right path.
All natural, all understandable responses. But as Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the same letter referred to earlier: When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see as through a glass, darkly; (St. Paul's First letter to the Corinthians, 13:11-12)
We are then asked to have an adult faith, even as we struggle to ‘see’ or to “experience’ God as through a glass darkly. What does that mean? Following Jesus, who based his teachings on the Jewish Scriptures that he believed in but did not allow the interpretations of the Pharisees and Scribes to control him, we need to use the New Testament as a starting point to help us grow and evolve in our faith. We must not rely on mystery, miracle and authority to control us or limit our learning from other sources - whether that source is to be found in the sciences or other religions. Whatever we have learnt from Jesus and the tradition of our Christian community must be a SPRINGBOARD from which we evolve even more, but never a STRAITJACKET that stops us from growing further. We have to keep polishing that glass or mirror in which, right now, we only experience God as through a glass darkly.
Gospel, John 20:19-31
19 In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, 'Peace be with you,'
20 and, after saying this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy at seeing the Lord,
21 and he said to them again, 'Peace be with you. 'As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.'
22 After saying this he breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit.
23 If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained.
24 Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples said to him, 'We have seen the Lord,' but he answered, 'Unless I can see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.'
26 Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. 'Peace be with you,' he said.
27 Then he spoke to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving any more but believe.'
28 Thomas replied, 'My Lord and my God!'
29 Jesus said to him: You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
30 There were many other signs that Jesus worked in the sight of the disciples, but they are not recorded in this book.
31 These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.
Moving to Paul is the best option .. refer to B B Scott below :
ReplyDeleteAstronomy offers a useful analogy at this point. When astronomers look into the night sky, they are not viewing the stars directly, but the light that flows from the stars and galaxies. Even though the light they see is hundreds and thousands of light years old, it is much younger than the star from which it came. Astronomers are aware that with more powerful telescopes they can see further back into the history of the cosmos. But they can see only so far, they cannot see all the way back to the beginning. Historical methodology is somewhat analogous to astronomy. Historical methodology will let us see back as far as our writings go, but it will hardly let us see before that. We must practice the discipline of asking the right questions and not assuming that we can see further back than we actually can. How far back can we see? The writings of the apostle Paul. These are the oldest surviving writings of the movement that became Christianity.
Another longer analogy ...it may help some.seekers :
ReplyDeleteVisual images form a cultural memory and our use of the theological term “resurrection” determines what we are looking for. Resurrection becomes a thing, an object, so we go looking for it and of course find it. Frank McCourt tells a story about Humpy Dumpty that illustrates our situation. And for a whole class period there’s a heated discussion of “Humpty Dumpty”. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king’s horses And all the king’s men Couldn’t put Humpty together again. So, I ask, what’s going on in this nursery rhyme? The hands are up. Well, like, this egg falls off the wall and if you study biology or physics you know you can never put an egg back together again. I mean, like, it’s common sense. Who says it’s an egg? I ask. Of course it’s an egg. Everyone knows that. Where does it say it’s an egg? They’re thinking. They’re searching the text for egg, any mention, any hint of egg. They won’t give in. There are more hands and indignant assertions of egg. All their lives they knew this rhyme and there was never a doubt that Humpty Dumpty was an egg. They’re comfortable with the idea of egg and why do teachers have to come along and destroy everything with all this analysis. I’m not destroying. I just want to know where you got the idea that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. Because, Mr. McCourt, it’s in all the pictures and whoever drew the first picture musta known the guy who wrote the poem or he’d never have made it an egg. All right. If you’re content with the idea of egg we’ll let it be but I know the future lawyers in this class will never accept egg where there is no evidence of egg. (Frank McCourt, ‘Tis. New York: Scribner, 1999. pp. 353–54) Humpty Dumpty and the missing egg describe our situation. Once traditions become fixed, they provide the lens thorough which everything is viewed. It becomes common sense. A recent survey of Americans found that a large majority believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus, despite Paul’s calling this into question. The liturgical practice of reading John 20 on Easter morning reinforces this notion, and our use of the technical theological term “resurrection” buttresses this. Once we think there is an egg in the narrative of Jesus’ getting up from the dead, we do not see that it is not there and we do not see what other things might be there. We need to develop a strategy to keep the egg out of what we are reading so as to see what is actually there.