Posts Tagged ‘Synoptics’

What matters is that Christ has risen!

April 14, 2018

Easter 3 – 2018

Luke 24:36b-48

Marian Free

[1]

                           Four not one

In the name of God who, through Jesus, raises us to newness of life and empowers us with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This Semester I am teaching a subject entitled the Synoptic Gospels. The course entails looking at the first three gospels to try to discern what each author is saying and why they chose to order their material in a particular way. We ask: what was it about the author’s own experience and the needs of his community that led him (we are fairly surely that the gospels were written by men) to construct the story of Jesus in the way that they did. The question of four gospels is one that has led skeptics to deny the validity of the gospels and pious believers to come up with a variety of different explanations for the differences. An explanation that I was given as a teenager was that if four different people witnessed something (a traffic accident for example) they would all report the story somewhat differently. Each eyewitness would have observed the scene from a different point of view and would have come to their own decisions as to what happened.

In reality it is unlikely that any of the evangelists were eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus.[2]We believe that the earliest gospel to be written was the gospel of Mark and that it dates to the late 60’s or early 70’s. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the next decade. Until then the early believers had been happy to use the Old Testament as their scriptures and to rely on oral tradition (and maybe the letters of Paul) as their source for the teachings of Jesus. (In fact there were some like Papias who believed that the oral tradition was more trustworthy than anything that could be written down because it was “first –hand”).

At around the time Mark’s gospel was written there were a number of differing forces that led to a desire to capture the stories of Jesus in a more permanent way. The Christian movement was becoming more and more dislocated from its roots with the destruction of the Temple and the spread of the faith into a Gentile environment. The death of the first generation of believers gave an added urgency to the task of capturing Jesus’ story. It was felt that a record should be made while there was still some connection to Palestine and before the memories became more than second-hand.

For the first forty years after Jesus’ death years, the stories of his life and teaching circulated orally. They would have been told differently by different story-tellers and have been given different emphases depending on the context in which they were told. (It is remarkable that we have only 4 gospels and not 400!)

It is not surprising then that we have several different accounts of the resurrection. Mark’s gospel (as we saw on Easter Day) leaves us up in the air telling us only that the women saw Jesus but were too afraid to tell anyone. According to Matthew the women see Jesus at the tomb and are sent to remind the disciples to return to Galilee where Jesus commissions the disciples to make disciples of all nations. Luke has a number of resurrection stories that allow the author (through Jesus) to use scripture to explain Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Despite these differences there are a number of consistencies. In all three gospels women go to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week and find it empty. In all three instances a messenger speaks to the women and tells them that Jesus has risen. The messengers also give the women a mission. They are to remind the disciples either to go to Galilee or to remind them of what Jesus said when they were in Galilee. In all three gospels Mary Magdalene is one of the women who was at the tomb on that morning. In other words, at dawn on the first day of the week, two or three women one of whom was Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found it empty. A heavenly messenger informed them of Jesus’ resurrection and tasked them with taking a message to the men. As a consequence of their experience and possibly of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples Jesus’ followers were convinced that he was alive – so convinced that they began to spread the message far and wide until a small movement begun in an insignificant part of the empire, spread throughout the entire world.

As an academic I am fascinated by the differences between the gospels, It excites me to try discover the motivations of the authors, the needs of the communities, the cultural setting of the first century, the distinct emphasises of each gospel, the particular message that the author is trying to get across and the unique picture of Jesus that they are trying to paint. In the end though, none of that matters. Whether there is one account of the resurrection or several. I’m not particularly concerned to know whether Jesus entered locked rooms, ate broiled fish or walked to Emmaus. What is important to me is that on that first day of the week, something happened that convinced not only the women who saw, but the men whom they told, that Jesus was not dead but alive and that as a result their lives were so dramatically changed that within two decades a movement had formed around the risen Christ and had spread beyond the bounds of Palestine to as far as Rome. What matters to me is that two thousand years later women and men are still convinced that Jesus has risen and they know their lives to be enriched, empowered and transformed as a result of that knowledge.

We don’t need to explain the differences or similarities in the stories told by the gospel writers, nor to we have to justify to others the fact that there is not one, but that there are four accounts Jesus’ life and teaching. We all have our own resurrection stories to tell. Let’s tell our story with such passion and conviction that what happened on that first day of the week will continue to inform and transform the world.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 

 

 

 

[1]This cartoon was sent to me via email, so unfortunately I can’t acknowledge the source.

[2]Only about 25% of the population lived beyond their mid-twenties.

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Finding in Jesus all that we desire

July 25, 2015

Pentecost 9

John 6:1-21 (Matt 14:13f, Mark 6:32f, Lk 9:10f)

Marian Free

In the name of God who provides for us more abundantly than we can imagine and more generously than we deserve. Amen.

I always approach the sixth chapter of John with a sense of trepidation bordering on dread. This is not because I find it particularly difficult to unpack or that there are themes within the chapter that jar or disturb. The reason John 6 fills me with a sense of disquiet is that we will spend the next five weeks working our way through it – all 75 verses of it! For the next five weeks (allowing for some literary license) I will be lying awake at night wondering whether there is yet another way that I can speak about bread or help to make sense of eating flesh.

Fortunately, John’s gospel has timeless appeal and is sufficiently complex that it warrants regular rereading and rewards a more detailed examination. So let us take a close look at today’s gospel – a well-known story that we hear today from a Johannine perspective.

The first thing of note is that the account of the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle story that is found in all four gospels. We know it so well that we have probably only paid attention to the elements that are familiar – the crowds who have followed Jesus, the concern shown for the hungry crowd, the worry that five loaves will not provide enough to go around, Jesus’ giving thanks, the sharing of what little is available and that not only is everyone satisfied but also that no less than twelve baskets of fragments are gathered afterwards.

So far so good, but I wonder if you noticed there are a number of significant differences in the telling of the story that alert us to the fact that John has a particular reason for recording this miracle. To begin at the beginning, John does not tell us that the hour is getting late as do Matthew, Mark and John. Instead John sets the scene by saying that the Passover is near. This detail is significant, as the remainder of the chapter will make clear. The author of John’s gospel wants the reader to understand that Jesus has supplanted not only the Passover Feast, but all the Jewish Festivals. They have been made redundant because in his own person Jesus is the light of the world, the living water, the bread of life and so on[1].

Another difference is that it is Jesus who takes the initiative in John’s gospel. It is he (not the disciples) who is concerned about the hunger of the crowds and he who asks how they might be fed. Further, Jesus doesn’t engage with the disciples as a group, but specifically with two of them – Philip and Andrew. It is Philip to whom Jesus addresses the question about the bread and Andrew who identifies the boy who has brought the barley loaves and dried fish.

These and other differences tell us that John has a specific reason for recording this particular miracle. Unlike the Synoptics writers who emphasise Jesus’ compassion and welcome in their accounts, John’s purpose in recording the feeding is to emphasise Jesus’ foreknowledge and power and to set the scene for the discussion and discourse that is to follow. The discussion will allow Jesus to reveal something of himself, his relationship with God and his purpose on earth. In this instance the story provides the author of the gospel with the opportunity to introduce a number of topics – Jesus as the bread of life, the bread that has come down from heaven. Unlike the manna in the wilderness, this bread will not perish and those who eat of it will live forever. Those who come to Jesus the true bread, the living bread – will never hunger or thirst because the bread that Jesus will give is his flesh – his life, his very self. Those who eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood will be raised on the last day.

This is a lot to absorb, which is why it takes 75 verses and why we take five weeks to explore it. It is important to note at the start that at the heart of the argument (and at the heart of the gospel) is the Johannine idea that Jesus and the Father are one and that discipleship consists of nothing more and nothing less than having a relationship with Jesus that is the same as Jesus’ relationship with God. According to this view, discipleship results in a complete dependence on God that stems from an understanding that in and through Jesus all our needs can and will be met. The miracle of the feeding is the vehicle that enables John to explore this theme and to make it clear that intimacy/union with Jesus puts an end to all our desires and all our striving because in and through our relationship with Jesus we will discover that we have all that we require and more besides.

Yes, it is extraordinary that five thousand are fed with just two small fish and five small loaves, but it is just as extraordinary to recognise that the discipleship that results in eternal life does not depend so much on what we do, but what we don’t do. By allowing Jesus to be our primary source of sustenance and our sole reason for being, we will discover that union with God that provides a sense of fulfillment and well-being such that the world can never supply.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:15-19)

[1] The Festival of Booths celebrated water and light and a central element of the Passover was bread.

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