The Disciple Jesus Loved

 Nancy Schnieders is a feminist biblical scholar. I have chosen her book, Written that You May Believe, to get acquainted with a field of study regarding the Gospel of John, and in particular the scholarly treatment of Mary Magdalene in John 20. In John’s Gospel, Jesus invites Mary Magdalene to cross the threshold between despair and hope, spiritual blindness and sight, the economy of history and that of resurrection. 

John  20 is in many ways Mary’s story. The utter hopelessness she feels as she discovers the empty tomb so engulfs Mary that she is completely distraught. Being addressed by angelic messengers doesn’t penetrate her grief, which has left her spiritually blinded. Even when Jesus stands in front of her and speaks to her she doesn’t recognize him. Ironically she misidentifies him as the “gardener”which in reality he is, preparing the garden of God’s kingdom. But she can’t distinguish between the missing body of Jesus and his person.  Schneiders says she continually confuses “him” who is missing with “the body” that is missing. Mary is a victim of blinding spiritual sadness and hopelessness.

Mary is insistent, when she faces Jesus, that this person is not the object of her search. She is still looking for a body, not a living person. As a result Schneiders defines Mary’s “turning back” as a turning toward what lies behind;we’re reminded of Paul’s personal commitment: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,  I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 Revised Standard Version)

It would not surprise me if Schneiders has thoroughly absorbed Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me, a personal treatise on “acedia, the deadly sin of sloth; spiritual torpor and apathy; a mental syndrome, the chief features of which are listlessness, apathy, and melancholia.” This is where Mary is trapped in her turning, moving not toward faith and the future but toward the past and death.

Norris relates at length her inquiry of Kierkegaard. In her study of acedia and despair, she states,

Kierkegaard valued the insight of Christian ancients in naming despair a sin, even as he presented a new term, “the sickness unto death,” that would so accurately describe contemporary humanity. Yet even as we suffer from this malady , Kierkegaard maintains, we are not merely ill but also caught up in the “battle of faith.” When someone faints,” he writes, “we call for water, Eau de Cologne, smelling salts; but when someone wants to despair, then the word is: Get possibility, possibility is the only salvation … for without possibility a person seems unable to breathe. (Norris, p 166-7) 

Mary’s dilemma often becomes ours.

Her conversion, for Schneiders, hinges on her protagonist finding a new possibility while caught in the grip of despair. In the face of a pandemic we ask, “When will everything return to the way it was?” Frankly it won’t. We can’t step in the same river twice, pandemic or no. Like Mary, what we’re caught up in isn’t working, but it is nonetheless inviting, this business of turning back to what we’ve embraced before. Mary, John hints, isn’t intent on opening a hair salon or a restaurant He suggests that she is the disciple Jesus loved. And her ultimate concern is, in John’s mind, salvation. For her salvation, Jesus offers the true conversion, the true possibility encased in calling her by name. He calls his own sheep by name, and they know his voice and they follow him (see 10:3-5

).

Returning to a previous paper, Mary and Easter, “www.Sailing Howard Prairie.blogspot.com” (April 1, 2021) I stated that John’s Gospel can become most confusing. It is easy to get lost in it. This is especially true in ch. 20, where a seemingly infinite number of commentators have addressed Mary’s role and the conflicts it engenders. There is tension in her relationship with the disciples, the political issues raised, the intent of the church to subsume Mary’s person to no more than a foil to deal with the resurrection, the male-female dynamics that pertain to every social system since the crucifixion, and finally the possibility of a physical, emotional, and moral love relationship between Jesus and Mary, the Disciple Jesus Loved.If the issues intrigue you, think about what Mary and Jesus meant to each other, and what you and Jesus likewise mean.

Easter, a Pivotal Event

  

Easter is the pivotal event in the Christian faith, and the women who followed Jesus are instrumental to the Easter story. They went to prepare his body for burial after the crucifixion.  Luke names some of them: Mary Magdeline, Joanna, Mary the mother of James. 

It seems that Mary Magdelene led them.   Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”           

In the gospel Easter accounts, Mary sees the empty tomb and describes the scene to Peter and to the disciple Jesus loved. Knowing this, we can leave the story for a moment having pointed out the fact of that remarkable morning. Or we can take what we see happening a step further, just before sunrise, just light enough to see that the stone has been pushed away from the entrance to the tomb. And then Mary Magdalene steps into the world of the resurrection and meets the living Lord on Easter morning. 

If we do wish to go further the next step is to ask, “Now what? Where is this headed? Do we resonate with Mary’s experience?” It’s difficult to duplicate the experiences of another group or individual. 

But if the meaning of Easter is expected to carry us past sunrise services, family meals and colored hard-boiled eggs, it may be helpful to consider Mary’s experience more closely. What did she encounter that morning?

She encountered the empty grave and the shock Is evident. It was the inhalation of resurrection reality that got her attention, much as if someone had broken into the house and absconded with her mother’s jewelry. Did Mary remember she was speaking to men, a boundary seldom ignored? 

In this conversation one can feel the anger in Mary’s voice. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”  Was she shouting? She may have been gasping for breath. Can you relate to her anger? Was she in tears? On the surface it’s a simple statement:  “The tomb is empty.” But on the interior of her soul her eyes flash. Perhaps she thinks, “Someone did this, and I’ll find out who.” Suffice it to say Mary and the others seemed a wreck by the time they reached the apostles.

Fear, too,  permeated that morning and the following day. This had gone past the fear of arrest. They hadn’t been picked up on the street for fomenting a riot.  The authorities seemed content with the crucifixion that had already taken place. If the guards suspected what was occurring the gospels make no mention of it.  No one was harassing the women or the men. Evan Judas had disappeared. Yet here was a need to stay out of the crowds, and perhaps that was to give themselves some space to clarify  what was taking place. It  seems to have been a time for rest.  They could stop to think because the last harrowing events -the parade into the city, the Last Supper, the arrest and the trial before Pilate, and the verdict of guilt, the crucifixion, and now the missing body of the Lord - were over. As Jesus said, “It is finished.”

But they weren’t over. And as the followers of Jesus found out, this was to be the most consequential step of all – believing Jesus. It meant to step out of grief and disbelief and anger and seize on the one core value that prevailed, one value of consequence that would cause them to stand firmly in the Kingdom. It was to believe in God’s messenger in the world who told them, “I will be with you always; I go to prepare a place for you; I will send the Counselor in my place.” 

Mary needed a counselor to bring her peace, and she needed to become a messenger with good news. She took up the call of the Spirit to believe in Jesus and to be the bearer of trustworthy reports to the disciples. 

Can you relate to that calling as a Baptist, or as one seeking to share the growth of your faith and your desire to help bring about peace to your community and your neighbors?

Taking this step isn’t contingent just on family leaders and their children. Yes, many pastors and youth leaders claim belief in Christ. Yes, many lay leaders believe, as do ministers of music and missionaries, health care providers and children’s workers. It also includes phone scammers, the homebound, the seamen and farmers, students of chemistry and engineering, the poor and wealthy. As they – and we - do so we begin to hear God saying, in that still small voice, “It is good, and it shall be very, very good!”

Pastor Mike

 

                       

 

Maundy Thursday: An Evening of Grief

 

 

John the Evangelist and the early church have given us the Gospel of John. If you’ve read it, you may agree with the editors of the Spiritual Formation Bible -things in this gospel can get confusing in a hurry. At the same time we typically explore these verses from a slightly altered Evangelical point of view. We work to internalize the customs of Jesus’s day, seek meanings for the words we don’t clearly understand, and diligently examine not just the Gospel of John but the rest of scripture to corroborate and broaden our beliefs and our responsibilities. In short, we seek the truth. We look for what the story meant then and attempt to transfer that meaning to now.

Another approach besides that “modernist” one is possible. It views the initial readers, and us, the present readers, as recipients of John’s collected histories and stories that were emerging during the conclusion of the 2^nd c. of the current era.  John contains the broader story about Jesus, who is intent on expanding the love of his disciples for the Father. It also includes a description of Maundy Thursday, Jesus’s last meal with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion.                 

By studying John, modernists want to enshrine a past Gospel. Another party, 21st c Evangelicals,  seem to have drifted into a Biblical Neverland  focusing on political issues to the exclusion of more studied faith concerns. Post-modernists are more concerned with focusing on the dialog in the story and understanding where we go from here. 

 The story of the Last Supper is one narrative of many John includes in his Gospel to persuade his readers, present and future, to follow Jesus.  His Gospel is in fact long and expertly crafted to convince us that Jesus is the Messiah. The story of the upper room meal is part of that persuasive effort.

If you aren’t too intent on capturing the whole “truth” of the Last Supper you may recognize John’s intent of describing Jesus and the disciples in the story.  Together they can be seen as a  literary foil to invite us further along the path of John’s argument.[1] 

In this narrative the disciples conveniently arrive at the upper room when Jesus does. John wants us to follow Jesus as the Messiah, the one who promises that those who believe in him will have eternal life, just as the disciples are promised.  Finally the meal concludes with Jesus’s arrest in the Valley of Kidron.  Much work is left to the reader in making sense of all this. The details emerge slowly, but it is grief that drives Jesus to praying alone and feeling alone, deeply troubled.

 

Maundy Thursday has a dark side.

Jesus foretells his death, saying he will eat no more until the kingdom of God is fulfilled. The meal also marks an act of betrayal. Jesus says, "One of you will betray me."  Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' 12 disciples, is pointed out by Jesus as the one who will do so. Judas leaves the pre-passover meal early to, as we might say, rat Jesus out. 

 Holy Thursday or “Maundy Thursday” is derived from the Latin word for "command," and refers to Jesus' commandment to the disciples to "Love one another as I have loved you." Here John selects the most important teaching he can pass on. Love one another.  And he reassures them when grief sneaks out of the shadows and appears unexpectedly. 

 Jesus’s response to their disorientation is, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

 And so in this story John recalls a discussion between Jesus and the twelve.   With it we are given a wonderful opening to explore who we are with regard to God. With whom do you identify most? The disciples in the story? Perhaps it is Peter, or Judas. With whom do you most closely connect? What does it entail to follow someone who claims to be the messiah? Or one who calls God his father? Or could it even be God’s own self with whom you identify most closely?

 The next step (we might call it a further turn in the dialog) asks us to take this new relationship we have chosen and ask, “What could make this a conversation conclude with a better outcome, one that follows more closely Jesus’s admonition to “Love one another?” The question at the heart of this approach is to ask, “What are we making/doing together, both with God and one another? How might it be improved?

     Then take a similar approach to stories that include Jesus’s other assertions about himself, “I am the bread of life. ... “I am the light of the world. ... I am the door. ... I am the good shepherd. “I am the resurrection and the life. ... “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  And then this, the 8^th statement, when Jesus echoes the Lord’s words to Moses at the burning bush. “I am, and I will be whom I will be.”[2]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] If you passionately dislike uncertainty, you may find this approach troubling. The rift between modern and post-modern biblical scholars is, like the children’s church song, “deep and wide.“ There is, however, the possibility for some common ground between the three groups. I just don’t like being backed into a corner by either side. In reality post-modernists only accept as true what can be demonstrated so far. After that everything is up for grabs. Thus the postmodernists focus more on now and tomorrow rather than proving yesterday

[2] Note there are several translations for this phrase.