In the back page interview in the Church Times Jeffrey Archer was recently quoted to the effect that he finds John’s gospel the best at story telling. When I read that I was puzzled. Has he read the whole of John’s gospel? There are fewer stories in the fourth gospel than any of the other three and there are far more lengthy and puzzling discourses by Jesus than elsewhere more theology than story.
Archer wrote his mother recent novel about Judas with the help of a Professor of New Testament studies who found himself having to reign in the novelist’s vivid imagination. Perhaps Archer likes John the best because his stories enable your imagination to take off and to ask provocative questions.
John’s stories of the resurrection in his twentieth chapter are a case in point. They begin with the sound of running feet. Mary runs to the disciples, to Peter and the beloved disciple and they run to the tomb. The beloved outruns Peter because he is younger, because of the greater intensity of his relationship with Jesus? But when they arrive he looks in but does not enter all he has seen is the linen cloths, which would have been used to wrap the body, lying on the shelf where the body would have been placed. Why does he not enter? Is it anxiety, or reticence waiting for the older man to arrive and take the lead or a reverent sensitivity to the grave? Peter enters and John describes what he sees in precise detail the linen cloths and the cloth wrapped round the head lying separately. The implication must at least be that this is not how grave robbers would have left the scene they would surely not have removed the cloths before taking the body.
The beloved disciple enters he sees and believes but what does he believe? The question is made more complicated by the following statement that neither of them knew the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. Does the beloved disciple believe that something marvellous has happened but he doesn’t know what? It seems that he doesn’t share whatever he believes with Peter or Mary. All that happens next is that the two men go home. It could be said that because of the positioning of the cloths he believes the body hasn’t been stolen but after such a build up that is rather a trite conclusion, for such a good story teller. At the tomb the beloved disciple saw and believed and perhaps what he believed was that there was something more to come in his relationship with Jesus. Nevertheless, it has to be said that this is the story we are least likely to remember in connection with Easter. Mary at the tomb, the women’s vision of angels, the road to Emmaus, doubting Thomas, the appearance by the lakeside are all in their way more memorable and less puzzling. But John’s must have had a reason for telling the story in this way.
After Mary’s encounter with the Jesus she has mistaken for the gardener the next story starts with another puzzle. The disciples are in a locked room for fear of the Jews, except what John more precisely says the doors being shut where the disciples were.’ Like each of the stories of the resurrection in this gospel, it is as though the previous story hasn’t been told. Peter and John have been to the tomb and found it empty but the evidence makes it unlikely the body has been stolen. Mary Magdalene has met the risen Christ and been told to tell the disciples that he has risen; but here they are, hiding and afraid and not afraid because of what Mary has supposedly told them but afraid because of the Jews. The shut doors almost seem to represent their state of mind.
We see a similar situation in the final story when the disciples are back in their boats fishing on the Sea of Galilee. They again seem unaware of Christ’s resurrection and his appearance on the shore seems to take them entirely by surprise. How are we to explain this seeming lack of connection between John’s stories? A biblical critic might rather boringly suggest that these stories represent subsequent editing of an original text the stories are added on with out too much attention being paid to whether they relate logically to one another. Nevertheless, who ever was responsible for the final version must have looked at these final chapters of the gospel and considered the possibility of making them fit together better; perhaps he had such reverence for those who had gone before him that he didn’t want to tamper with their work or perhaps he saw more to these texts as they stood than we have so far considered. What significance could there be in the lack of continuity between these stories?
To answer that question we need first to go back to John’s account of the crucifixion. It is as though John, given what he had come to believe about Jesus, found the cross harder to explain than the resurrection. How could the Son of God die? John presents the cross as the start of Jesus’ return to the Father. For John the resurrection is clearly not the reversal of the crucifixion. The moment Jesus lays down his life is the moment at which he reveals his oneness with the Father and the Father’s glory. John is not like the other gospel writers. For John perhaps the resurrection is not so much the moment of victory and vindication as the logical consequence of the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory. And there is something else as well. The Resurrection is also the final test of the disciple’s real knowledge of Jesus. That is why we have these puzzling stories of disciples who half believe, disciples who don’t recognise Jesus, disciples who must touch or cling to Jesus.
We the audience think we know what has happened we have heard all these stories before. But if we listen to them closely and as we allow ourselves to be puzzled by them so we are put as it were in the disciples’ place. St John’s gospel has told us a lot about Jesus but there is still the question of connection with or true recognition of what we have been told. It is as though we approach the resurrection saying Well I sort of knew or I thought I knew ‘ And perhaps this is why John’s gospel takes us from the garden tomb to the upper room and then back to the lakeside in Galilee it is as though we and the disciples have truly to recognise Jesus in the places we thought we knew him best. And what the disciples recognise is not only the truth of Jesus’ relationship to God but the truth of his relationship with each one of them, with Mary, with Thomas, with Peter, with the Beloved disciple and with them all as a community.
So we find them in the Upper Room with the doors closed, afraid of the Jews afraid because they think they too will be arrested as suspected terrorists like Jesus, afraid because the Jews will accuse them of stealing the body, or afraid because the Jews represent all those who reject Jesus and the disciples cannot face such rejection themselves? This perhaps is the same room where Jesus washed their feet and spoke of the spirit, or advocate who will guide them into all truth; the same room where he said, My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled neither let them be afraid.’ And now all these words seem to have been forgotten by the disciples they have heard them, they know them, but now they can make no connections.
And so Jesus comes to them and his first words remind them of that peace; he gives them the commission to go out in his name, he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit. All these things he has through his words given them before but there has been no real connection with those words. It is his risen presence that makes the connection.
All this takes place, John says, at evening on that day, the first day of the week. We hear them at evening on the commemoration of that first day, and perhaps that is their message to us; we know the presence of the risen Christ whenever his words make a connection whenever we sense his words being spoken to us with a new force, which enables us to know his presence making a difference in our lives. The resurrection for us is the difference between knowing about peace and actually knowing his peace deep in our hearts and minds.