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Knowing Jesus – being part of the story

July 28, 2012

Pentecost 9

John 6:1-21

Marian Free

In the name of God who is the end of all our stories. Amen.

 There is a wonderful movie called “When Harry met Sally”. It is about two graduates who share a ride to New York, separate, meet again, separate and finally admit that they want to spend their lives together. I watched the movie again recently and was reminded that one of Harry’s habits was that he liked to read the end of a book first. He couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting until the end to see how everything worked out, so he would read a few pages at the beginning and then turn to the end before going back to where he had left off.

When I first saw the movie I couldn’t believe that any one could spoil a good read by jumping ahead in that way. However, I have to acknowledge that there are times when I’ve been compelled to ask someone whether or not a book ends well because the suspense is too much for me. I don’t want to know the ending exactly, but I do want to prepare myself to know if, for example, the central characters are going to completely damage their relationship or whether they eventually get it together. If I know that it is all going to end well, then I can cope with the stresses along the way! I have to confess that on one occasion it took me several weeks to read the end of a book, not because I was anxious about the ending, but because I had guessed what the ending was going to be and knew that it would spoil the whole book!

For most of us, knowing the end of a story spoils our enjoyment of it. In fact, reviewers now have an expression: “here comes the spoiler”‘ which acts as a warning for us to stop listening, watching or reading because the end of the story is about to be revealed.

John’s Gospel should perhaps come with such a warning. Throughout John’s gospel we are given a glimpse of the community in the present – the risen Jesus, the Jesus known by believers in the present – makes his presence known in the gospel as much, if not more than, the Jesus of history. This is because the author of John, unlike the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke, writes from the perspective of a community which understands the historical Jesus as a result of knowing the risen Christ. Jesus is understood and taught from the perspective of those who know the risen Jesus. That is, the end of the story determines the way in which the story is told. That is not to say that the communities of the other gospels did not know the risen Christ and that they did not read that knowledge back into the story as they told it. It just means that they wrote their gospels from a different perspective. The writers of the Synoptic Gospels knew the end of the story but they wrote, by and large, as if they did not.

The account of feeding of the five thousand occurs in all four gospels. In fact in some gospels there are two accounts of miraculous feedings – the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand. Likewise in all four gospels the account of Jesus’ walking on the water is attached to the feeding of the five thousand.

John’s account has some marked differences from the other three. His detail of where the event occurred is more specific. He tells us that the Passover was near – a symbol that is associated with Jesus’ death. In John two disciples, Philip and Andrew, are mentioned by name. The emphasis in John is on the abundant provision of bread rather than the miracle itself. After the feeding, the disciples choose to go on ahead while Jesus withdraws by himself. There is a strong wind, but the disciples are more frightened of Jesus than they are of the storm.

A number of other factors in John’s re-telling stand out. These are what lead scholars to believe that the story is being interpreted in the light of the present situation – that of a community which knows the risen Christ. For example, in John’s account Jesus is completely in control. He is not trying to escape the crowds and they don’t reach the spot before him. It is Jesus, not the disciples who notices the hunger of the crowds and he doesn’t send the disciples to buy food to feed them.

In John’s gospel, Jesus sees the crowds coming, takes the initiative and asks Philip where they can buy bread. However, he does not expect an answer, because he already knows what he is going to do. The Jesus of John doesn’t waste time. As soon as he sees the crowds coming he wonders about feeding (not teaching) them. After they are fed, the crowds declare Jesus to be the prophet who is to come into the world. All this is in contrast with the other gospel writers who emphasize Jesus’ compassion, have Jesus teach and heal before the crowds are fed, and who stress the fact that the disciple’s misunderstand the meaning of the bread.

John’s concern in re-telling the story is less with the miracle itself and more with the question of the identity of Jesus. Even though they get it wrong, the recognition of Jesus by the crowds is an important part of the story. The crowds identify Jesus not just as a miracle worker, but as the prophet who is to come into the world. Mistakenly, they seek to make him king, but he is not the sort of king that they expect.

At the same time, the multiplication of the loaves provides an opportunity for teaching  – something that is a common feature in John’s gospel.  The Jesus of John doesn’t teach and heal the crowds and then feel obliged to feed them because he has kept them so late. In John the crowds are fed first. The miracle of the feeding provides the illustration and sets the scene for the teaching that is to come. (For the remainder of this very long chapter, Jesus will explain the meaning of the bread, claim to be the bread of life and demand that people identify completely with him by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. In fact, as we will discover the teaching is so difficult that it separates the Jesus’ true followers from those who just want what Jesus can do for them.)

As in Matthew and Mark, John’s account is followed by Jesus’ walking on the water. Again there are a number of differences in John which suggest an interpretation by the post-resurrection church. Two features stand out – Jesus comes to the disciples (as he does after the resurrection) and the key to the story is the recognition of Jesus by the disciples (they don’t mistake him for a ghost). When Jesus walks towards the boat the disciples are terrified, but when they know it is Jesus, they try to get him to come into the boat with him.

Their recognition of Jesus also serves to separate the disciples from the rest of the world. The disciples recognise Jesus for who he is, whereas the crowds see him as they want to see him. The crowds judge Jesus by worldly not other-worldly categories, they can see him only in earthly terms. The disciples know the deeper, spiritual significance of Jesus, and understand that as a result of such knowing they are set apart as the community that follows in his name.

Like the gospel writers, we too know the end of the Jesus’ story. Like the community for whom John’s gospel was written, our lives and our understanding of Jesus are determined as much by the Jesus who is present with us, as they are by our knowledge of the historic Jesus. The story of the historical Jesus is essential for our understanding of our faith, but it is the risen Jesus who informs, teaches, challenges and guides all that we do in the present.

Our present is the end of the story so far, our past is already a part of the story, and our future will determine how the story is told. In fact our future may determine whether or not the story continues to be told.

May we live in such a way that the story known through us is a story which is filled with the transforming power of the risen Christ in our lives.

(I am indebted to L.Th. Witkamp “Some Specific Johannine Features in John 6:1-21.” in Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 40 (1990) 43-60. for some of the ideas above.)

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Boxed in

July 21, 2012

Mary Magdalene 2012 (Pentecost 8)

John 20:1-18

Marian Free

In the name of God who values us all, created as we are in the image of God. Amen.

On Friday evening Michael and I attended a play at the Cremorne Theatre called: “Head full of Love”. The play chronicles the friendship that develops between two unlikely women – a Northern Territory Aboriginal suffering from renal failure and an anxiety-ridden white woman who has run away from her over-bearing son. As the two women circle around, trying to understand each other, the dialogue between them exposes the sorts of prejudices and false assumptions that many white people make of the original inhabitants of this land and how difficult it can be to overturn those prejudices, even when contrary evidence stares you in the face.

Lilly requires five hours of dialysis five times a week. Nina naturally assumes that her kidney problems are a result of alcohol abuse. She blunders around trying to get Lilly to admit that this is true and initially refuses point blank to accept that Lilly has never drunk alcohol. It takes some time for Lilly to convince Nina that she, like many other indigenous people are simply born with underdeveloped kidneys, often as a result of low birth weight. Nina has absorbed one type of folklore about aboriginals which she unquestioningly applies to Lilly. When that view is challenged she finds it difficult to change her mindset and to see the issue through a different set of lenses.

Nina is not alone. When people do not have a wide variety of experience, or a personal knowledge of those who are different from themselves, they tend to accept the prevailing view as not only valid, but as characteristic of a whole group of people. So there are those who accept the view that all boat people are terrorists, or that all welfare recipients are lazy and don’t want to work, or that all members of Generation Y are unreliable and flighty. . The world is much simpler to understand and manage if we categorise people according to their gender, their age, their profession, their race or by any other characteristic that they might have in common. Once we have grouped people together we begin to see the ways in which they are the same and become blinded to the ways in which those within the group exhibit a huge variety of ability, intention and behaviour.

The human need to classify is as true with regard to individuals as it is to groups of people.

Our opinion of someone is formed on the basis of what we observe to be true and we find it hard to change that opinion even when all the evidence indicates that we were wrong or that the person has changed. No one expects an ugly duckling to become a swan, or the leopard to change its spots.

Mary Magdalene is one such person who has been defined and categorised to the point that many of us assume that we know all there is to know about her. Yet Mary remains an enigma. Over the past two thousand years she has been cast in many roles. She has been identified as sinner, lover, witness to the resurrection and more. Scholars and novelists have made her a person of interest – building on or breaking down the mythology that surrounds her. For example, scholars have made the claim that Mary was married to Jesus and Dan Brown has used her to forward an argument that Jesus produced children and that Jesus’ descendants continue to walk the earth.

Given the degree of interest in her that is shown in art, scholarship and fiction, it is interesting to note that Mary is mentioned rarely in the gospels. Most of the mythology that surrounds her is based on conjecture. Luke mentions Mary as one of the women who supported Jesus in his ministry  (8:1-3, cf Mark 14:40-43) and all four gospels include Mary in the accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. She is the woman from whom seven demons are cast out (Lk 8:2) and the one who announced the resurrection to the disciples (Jn  20:18).

Even though the gospels contain so few references to Mary, she has been identified with at least two of the unnamed women – the sinful woman who anointed Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great sealed her fate by identifying Mary as the repentant sinner who washed Jesus’ feet. For centuries Mary Magdalene became Mary the reformed prostitute. It was only in the last century that feminists, determined to rescue her from this unwarranted position of subjugation, tried to reclaim her. In so doing they found the Mary of John’s gospel and the Mary of the Gospel of Philip. Mary Magdalene – the apostle to the apostles – had been buried under centuries of complacent presupposition even though she had had a prominent and leading role in the early Christian community.

Pope Gregory made Mary into a fallen woman – the perfect foil the other Mary, the Virgin who remained pure and sinless. These two women became images for womanhood -woman is either fallen or pure. Feminists may have redeemed Magdalene, but their weakness was to imply that Mary had value only when she could be demonstrated to hold a position of authority within the early church. Neither categorisation is satisfactory. The problem with both approaches is that they serve to colonize and to appropriate Mary to serve a particular purpose, rather than allow her to be herself – whatever that may be. If Pope Gregory relegated Mary to the role of repentant sinner, the feminists have inadvertently implied that for a person to be deemed as significant, they must be shown hold a position of authority.  In this way Mary is redeemed at the expense of the millions of Christians throughout the ages who have not aspired to or attained leadership roles with the Christian community.

Whatever scholars uncover about the Mary of history – and that will not be very much, we can be sure that she was a unique individual who brought to the early church a variety of gifts and talents and that her past – whether as sinner or leader – did not continue to define her. We can learn from the treatment of Mary throughout history and even in recent times, that we do a great injustice to people – individuals and groups- when we attempt to define them or when we use a few basic characteristics to classify and to categorise them.

If we believe that all people are created in God’s image and that everyone is precious in God’s sight it is incumbent upon us all to create environments that allow people from all races, genders and backgrounds to reach their full potential. It is important to value all people – especially those who are different from ourselves -, to help them to find and name their own identity – not one we have imposed on them, and to recognize and treasure the gifts that each person brings to the body of Christ.

We are all so many things, family and friend, teacher and student, helper and helped. None of us would like to be known for only one aspect of who we are and none of us would like to think that something from our past continued to define us in the present.

Life might be easier if we put individuals and groups into neat little packages, however, we do no one a service if we do not allow them to continually surprise or astonish us. We will find ourselves the poorer if we box people in and expect them to always behave in a consistent way and we will be guilty of failing to recognize the wonder and diversity of God’s creation if we hold on to our prejudices in the face of information which conflicts with what we think we know.

Centuries after Jesus walked on earth, the true Mary continues to elude us.

May she be a reminder to us that we do not always see all that there is to see and may we accept the challenge to be ready, open and willing to learn about and from those whom today we do not fully understand.

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