"Give Thanks for Life"

This week our church sang a very moving hymn for All Saints Day that seemed equally appropriate for either the Thanksgiving or Easter seasons, as well:

Give thanks for life, the measure of our days;
mortal, we pass through beauty that decays, 
yet sing to God our hope, our love, our praise:
Hallelujah, hallelujah!

Give thanks for those who made their life a light
caught from the Christ-flame, bursting through the night,
who touched the truth, who burned for what is right:
Hallelujah, hallelujah!

And for our own, our living and our dead,
thanks for the love by which our life is fed,
a love not changed by time or death or dread:
Hallelujah, hallelujah!

Give thanks for hope, that like the wheat, the grain
lying in the darkness does its life retain
in resurrection to grow green again:
Hallelujah, hallelujah!

(© 2005 Hope Publishing
Text: Shirley Erena Murray 
Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams)

Unfortunately, I've been unable to find a decent recording of the hymn that really shows how beautiful it is, but you can listen to a midi file of it on the Hymnary website here.

Happy Resurrection Sunday

I hope you all had a meaningful Resurrection Sunday, spending it with your loved ones. After an excellent church service, Alyssa and I returned home and spent the rest of the day watching M*A*S*H, doing homework, and eating veggie soup.

I'm currently leading an adult Sunday school class at my church, Rainbow Mennonite, using Jonathan Pennington's Reading the Gospels Wisely (Baker: 2012) as a textbook. This week, we discussed Chapter 4, "The Joy and Angst of Having Four Gospels," in which Pennington notes the difficulties of having four conflicting accounts of the same historical events. Since the earliest years of the faith, Christians have instinctively attempted to harmonize the differences among the Gospels, leading to some pretty wacky interpretive shenanigans. Appropriately, today we spent a good chunk of our time discussing differences among the varying accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. In Chapter 4, Pennington devotes a bit of space toward discussing what he calls the "Maximalist Harmonization" perspective, which holds that everything in the Gospels happened exactly the way it was reported; the trouble here, Pennington notes, is that it creates a lot of undue stress on the text to be solved into a workable narrative. For instance, what do Maximalist Harmonizers do with the different order of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness in Matthew and Luke? Are we to conclude that Jesus was tempted the same way multiple times in various orders? Probably not.

using Jonathan Pennington's

To illustrate the difficulty with harmonizing narratives, I brought in a copy of the brief Gospel harmony that I wrote using the various resurrection narratives for a class I took on resurrection in the New Testament last fall. The students were given the task of making the details of the resurrection in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and 1 Corinthians fit together in a reasonable and discernible way—a more difficult assignment that it appears on the surface. For instance, how many angels are at the tomb, and where are they located? Is the tomb sealed, or is it open when the women arrive? Are there multiple women, or just Mary the Magdalene? Following the resurrection, does Jesus ascend that same day (as in Luke), or does he ascend forty days later (as in Acts)? Depending on which book you read, each of the answers to these questions is different. The professor teaching my resurrection class gave us this assignment not to suggest that harmonization is the best way of interpreting the scriptures, but to illustrate how different the scriptures really are. So you may notice in the narrative below that I had to do some interpretive gymnastics to get everything to "fit" right.

Despite the numerous conflicting details of the resurrection narratives (even the accounts in Luke and Acts disagree with one another, and they're written by the same person!), they all agree on two important parts: 1) The event of the resurrection was discovered by women, who were not considered reliable witnesses at the time; and 2) The tomb is empty.

The Resurrection of Jesus

(a harmony narrative)

Late in the evening, when the Sabbath had ended, the women who had followed Jesus left the disciples and went to the market to purchase spices with which to anoint the Lord for burial. Among them were Mary the Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James), Salome, and Joanna. Early the following morning—the third day after Jesus’s death on the cross—they arose, dressed, and left their homes to prepare the body. They arrived at the tomb just before dawn, as the sun was beginning to rise, bringing with it the light of a new day. As they were nearing the garden, the women began to whisper to each other, “How will we move the heavy stone that seals the tomb?”

Suddenly, the earth trembled, and the massive stone rolled away from the entrance! A blinding light ripped the heavens open, and when the women could see clearly once again they noticed that the tomb was empty, and two men dressed in white were before them. One was seated atop the stone, while the other stood in the entrance of the tomb, not far from where Jesus’s body should have been lying. The guards who had been placed at the entrance shuddered fearfully and collapsed in a dead faint.

“Do not be afraid!” the man seated on the stone outside told the women. “You are searching for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.”

“But why do you seek the living among the dead?” asked the second man from within. “He is not here. See?” He pointed to the place where the body of Jesus was supposed to be. The linen wrappings used to dress the corpse were neatly folded on the stone bench. “He is risen from the dead, just as he told you would happen! Now go and tell Peter and the other disciples what you have seen.” When they had finished saying these things, they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

Out of fear, Mary (the mother of James), Salome, and Joanna fled from the tomb, telling no one of what they had seen because they were so terrified. Only Mary the Magdalene remained behind, kneeling by the stone, weeping.

Suddenly, Jesus appeared, standing behind her. “Why are you crying?” he asked. “Because,” she answered him, thinking he was the gardener, “someone has taken the body of my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him. If you have taken him, please tell me where you have put his body, and I will go and retrieve it.”

Jesus looked at her calmly and uttered her name: “Mary.”

Turning to look at him, Mary suddenly realized who he was, and cried out “Rabboni!” (which means “teacher”).

“Do not hold onto me,” he said, “For I have not yet gone to be with the Father. Instead, go and tell my brothers and sisters that ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ Go! Run!”

And so Mary the Magdalene ran as fast as she could with a message on her lips: “I have seen the Lord!”

Just then, the guards awoke from their stupor and beheld the dead man, alive again. Frightened beyond measure, they ran into the city and told the religious officials what they had seen. Disturbed by this news, a meeting of the elders was called, and the guards were summoned and given a large bribe. “You must tell no one of what you have seen,” the elders said. “If anyone asks, you must say that the disciples of that Nazarene came in the night and stole his body away. If the governor hears about it, we will corroborate your story.” So this is what they did, and it is a story that many continue to spread to this day.

Meanwhile, as Mary (the mother of James), Salome, and Joanna fearfully made their way down the road, Jesus appeared to them. “Peace be with you!” he said. When they realized that what the men at the tomb had said was indeed true, they fell down at his feet and worshiped him. “Do not be afraid!” he said. “Go and tell my brothers and sisters that you have seen me.” And with that, they joyfully headed by way of the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, where the rest of the disciples were staying.

When Mary the Magdalene arrived, she could barely contain her excitement. “I have seen the Lord!” she exclaimed. Just then, the rest of the women arrived with the same message. But this news sounded like nonsense to the disciples. However, Peter and another disciple were curious, and jumped up and ran to the tomb to see if what the women had said was true. The other disciple outran Peter and arrived at the tomb first, but did not go inside. Peter, however, ran inside, and they both saw the empty folded linens resting on the spot where Jesus’s body had been laid. Then they both believed, for until then they hadn’t understood that in order to fulfill the Scriptures Jesus had to rise from the dead. After this, they returned home, puzzling over the mystery they had just witnessed.

Later that same day, two of Jesus’s followers were traveling along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Jesus joined them and appeared to them as a stranger, and as they discussed the events of the previous week, he began to point to all of the places in Scripture concerning himself—throughout Moses and the prophets. As it was getting late, the travelers invited Jesus to stay the night with them. When they sat down to eat, Jesus broke the bread, and suddenly their eyes were opened and they realized who he was—but he vanished! “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road?” they said, and immediately set out for Jerusalem to tell the other disciples all that they had seen.

That night, the rest of the disciples were meeting behind locked doors for fear of the religious authorities. Suddenly, Jesus appeared among them and said “Peace be with you!” But the disciples were terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. Jesus said again, “Peace be with you! Why are you afraid? It’s me! Look at my hands and feet. You can see that I am real, not a ghost; ghosts do not have bodies as I do.” They stood staring at him in joy and wonder, and he asked, “Do you have anything to eat?” So they brought him a broiled fish and watched as he ate. After eating, he told them, “My Father has sent me, and so I am sending you. Receive my spirit.” Saying this, he breathed on them, and added, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” And he left them.

Later, Thomas (called the Twin) joined them. “We have seen the Lord!” the disciples cried. But Thomas did not believe them.

“Unless I touch the nail wounds in his hands and the wound in his side I will not believe it.”

A little over a week later, Jesus appeared again to the disciples. This time, Thomas was with them. “Peace be with you,” he said. Then, turning to Thomas, he said, “Here. Touch my wounds. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

“My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.

“You believe because you have seen me, but blessed are those who believe without seeing,” Jesus said.

After spending the night with Peter and the rest of the disciples, Jesus spent the next few weeks in Jerusalem—forty days in all—and was later seen by at least five hundred of his followers at once, followed by James and the rest of the apostles. Afterward, he led them to a hillside outside the city and said to them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift that he promised you. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And you will be my witnesses, telling everyone about me throughout Jerusalem, Galilee, Samaria, and the ends of the earth, giving them this message: there is forgiveness of sins for all who repent. Now go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And know this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And with that, he blessed them, and as he was blessing them he was taken up into the clouds and disappeared from sight.

As the disciples stood there, straining their necks to see, two men dressed in white appeared behind them. “You Galileans!” they said, “Why are you staring up into heaven? Jesus has been taken up to the Father, and some day he will return to you in the same way you saw him go.” With that, they returned to Jerusalem, and they were continually in the Temple, praising God.

"See How He Loved Him!": Lazarus, the Love of God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (Part IV)

Below is the fourth and final piece of my theology paper for my Resurrection in the New Testament class. In Part IV, I conclude my paper with remarks on how the eschatological resurrection of the dead is—like the raising of Lazarus at Bethany—motivated primarily by God's love for Creation. See also Part I, Part II, and Part III.

The Resurrection of the Dead

I have argued thus far that the Gospel of John depicts both the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus as acts of divine love. It seems strange that while much attention has been given to the eschatological hope of the resurrection of the dead, the possibility of love as the catalyst of that eschatological hope has received little notice. To fully draw these three sections together into a discussion of the final resurrection, we now return to the two questions from earlier.

1) How does the Fourth Gospel portray death?

If there is one thing for certain about Lazarus, it is his death. By the time Jesus and the disciples reached Bethany, Lazarus was absolutely, totally dead. The Gospel writer emphasizes this by pointing out twice that he had been in the tomb for four days. Launching his journey from across the Jordan, Jesus tells his disciples, flatly and without great passion, “Lazarus is dead.” “This almost brutal announcement serves to correct any tendency to see death as illusory or unreal.”[1]. Death must be understood as an absolute reality for resurrection to hold theological gravity.

Some theologians maintain that resurrection is a means of surviving death,[2] but this is quite frankly against all biblical accounts, including the one most pertinent to this study. Resurrection is not a means of surviving or avoiding death. If Christ must die, the author of the Fourth Gospel argues, then we must follow him. “In response to Jesus’ decision, ‘Let us go to him [Lazarus],’ Thomas answers, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ The grammatical antecedent of ‘with him’ is Lazarus, although the meaning is clearly ‘with Jesus’ who will surely be arrested if he returns to Judea.”[3] Beginning with the decision of the disciples to follow Jesus to Bethany, the proceeding narrative is a proleptic foreshadowing of the events that will transpire in Christ’s death and resurrection. Lazarus was dead (and died again), Christ died, so surely we must harbor no illusions of escaping the inevitable. Resurrection is instead a means of descending into death and conquering it, and love is the catalyst that brings us through the other side into a transformed existence. Resurrection is our hope; in the Fourth Gospel, love is the power by which that hope is realized.

2) How does the Fourth Gospel suggest death might be overcome?

While there is no escaping death, faith in Christ offers the opportunity to overcome it. This is not a faith which rewards the believer with a golden ticket to paradise, but a placing of trust in the belief that Christ will return to establish ju›stice, and will furthermore raise the faithful from the dead as a fulfillment of his great love for us. “In raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus was…demonstrating the validity of his own claims that he would rise again, and that he had the power and authority to do so. This miracle…illustrates Jesus’s claims that he will raise people at the eschatological resurrection.”[4] This eschatological promise is lived out in the present by believers who—like Peter in his “reinstatement”—are called to mutual service and submission, to feeding lambs and tending sheep while sharing in the love of Christ. Rowan Williams illustrates this well: “Growth is…not simply the buried Jesus calling the buried self into a shared tomb, but the inexhaustible depth of God’s remembering love calling to the depth of hope and potentiality and freedom in the self.”[5]

To Gregory of Nyssa, the connection between Lazarus, the resurrection of Jesus, and the future resurrection of the dead is a very clear one. In On the Making of Man, Gregory writes:

Once [Jesus] had accustomed people to seeing the miracle of the resurrection in other bodies, he confirmed his word in his own humanity. You already received a glimpse of that word working in others—those who were about to die…the young man at the edge of the grave, the putrefying corpse [i.e., Lazarus], all alike restored by one command to life…Now look at him whose hands were pierced with nails, look at him whose side was transfixed with a spear…If he then has been raised, well may we utter the apostle’s exclamation, “How do some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (25.12-13)[6]

In other words, for those who have faith in Christ, the eschatological promise of the resurrection remains our hope of redemption—just as Lazarus was raised by the power of love, and just as Christ was raised and transformed in love, so will we be raised and transformed by that same salvific love.

Additionally, W.H. Cadman concludes that the glory (doxa) of God which is revealed in the Lazarus story is the result of the love-union of Christ in the Deity:

The utterance of Jesus [“I am the Resurrection and the Life”] discloses a consequence when God and the incarnate Logos are in the relation of “glory” or “love” in which God dwelt with the Logos “in the beginning,” [and] “before the world existed. If Martha has grasped and accepted this consequence of the love-union she will discern in the raising of her dead brother a revelation of the union itself.[7]

Sandra Schneiders, building upon Cadman’s claims, equates the power of Jesus to resurrect those who believe in him with his love of Lazarus—the “one whom he loved” in this case being synecdochic of the greater body of believers.[8] Through the power of God’s divine love, those who believe are raised. Regardless of whether or not Lazarus holds the distinct honor of being the Beloved Disciple, it is clear that the tradition soon developed within the Johannine community (and scriptural canon—see 1 John 2:7, 3:2, 3:21, etc.) that all Christians are “beloved disciples” sharing in the hope of the resurrection together.[9]

Conclusion

            The Gospel of John weaves a narrative with a common resurrection thread—love. It is the love of a friend that moves Jesus to raise Lazarus and submit himself to the grave, it is the love of God that raises Christ in glory, and it is the love of Christ which raises us to new life on the Last Day. Throughout the gospel story, divine love is the undeniable “true constant, the one sure thing” upon which the eschatological hope of all believers may rest.[10] In the story of Lazarus, we catch a glimpse not only of the literary foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of Christ, but of our own resurrection, as well. “The resurrection calls us into a new beginning, into a new heaven and a new earth brought about through God’s transformative love.”[11] It is through this fundamentally transformative power that we hear the call of Christ to come out of the darkness of the tomb and into the light of New Creation, and by this power that we leave our grave clothes behind us.

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[1] Sandra Schneiders, 49.

[2] See Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993), 207.

[3] Sandra Schneiders, 50.

[4] Stephen S. Kim, 64.

[5] Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, Revised Edition ed. (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2003), 41.

[6] Quoted in Joel C. Elowsky, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol 4b. Thomas C. Oden, gen. ed. (Downer's Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 372.

[7] W.H. Cadman, “The Raising of Lazarus,” in Studia Evangelica: Papers Presented to the International Congress on “The Four Gospels in 1957” Held at Christ Church, Oxford, 1957. ed. by Kurt Aland, F.L. Cross, et al. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1959), 434.

[8] Sandra Schneiders, 55

[9] Ernest Lussier, God Is Love: According to St. John (New York: Alba House, 1977), 44.

[10] Jo-Ann A. Brant, 65.

[11] Lyle K. Weiss, 181.

"See How He Loved Him!": Lazarus, the Love of God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (Part III)

Below is Part III of my final theology paper for my Resurrection in the New Testament Class, in which I conclude my remarks on the raising of Lazarus and discuss the possibility of the resurrection of Jesus as another act of divine love. Part IV will conclude my paper with a discussion of the eschatological resurrection of the dead. See also Part I and Part II.

Conclusion           

In depicting a Christ who weeps out of love at the death of a friend, yet who also publicly declares, “I am the Resurrection,” the author of the Fourth Gospel establishes an inseparable nexus between the raising of the dead to new life and the sacred bond of divine love—a bond of love so strong that it will ultimately lead to the cross. The return of Lazarus from the grave is a proleptic microcosm that foreshadows the resurrection of Christ and, as we shall see below, the future resurrection of the dead. In other words, “The raising of Lazarus is the Gospel in miniature.”[1] When Jesus later claims that “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13), the author of the Fourth Gospel completes the relationship between the love that brought Lazarus out of the tomb and the love which motivated Christ to enter it.

The Resurrection of Jesus

There has long been an understanding that the crucifixion of Jesus was an act of divine love—that is, it is commonly accepted that love was the motivator for Christ’s submission to the cross. “Through his death,” claims Jo-Ann Brant, “our relationship with him is not severed but strengthened, because his dying reveals his love for us.”[2] Furthermore, “[The Fourth Gospel] understands Jesus’s death as the consummate expression of divine love, but recognizes that this is only apparent in retrospect, from the vantage point of the resurrection.”[3] It makes little sense, then, to assume that the resurrection and vindication of God’s Messiah would not also be a continuance and intensification of that same love. However, following the death of Jesus, love is seldom mentioned in conjunction with his resurrection. The purpose of this section is to discuss the possibility that in order to fully grasp the theological implications of the empty tomb, one must explore the resurrection of Jesus as another act of love in connection with his death on a cross.

The concept of love in the Fourth Gospel fundamentally involves the act of giving and sacrifice,[4] and this is illustrated quite well in Johannine theology—“For God so loved the kovsmon, he gave his only son…” This giving is further implied in Peter’s “reinstatement” in ch. 21. As Christ submitted himself to death in the cross out of love, so God rewarded Christ with a vindicated, transformed body. Therefore, when Jesus questions Peter on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, he is also dictating to Peter the mark of true discipleship, that is, love submits itself to and receives its reward from the Source of Love. The cost of the eschatological promise is mutual submission and “feeding lambs” and “tending sheep” here in the present reality.

If we build upon our earlier assumption that the Fourth Gospel has fashioned Lazarus as the Beloved Disciple, it is not difficult to imagine the source of his “seeing and believing” at the empty tomb of Christ; Lazarus would have recognized the signs of one who has been raised from the dead through the power of love—the very love that called Lazarus forth from his own grave in ch. 11.[5] Yet unlike Lazarus, the Jesus that was laid in the tomb is not quite the Jesus that emerges on Easter morning. “In the resurrection God’s love for Jesus transforms him, attaining for Jesus his ultimate good and becoming, by anticipation, the embodiment of God’s new creation.”[6] It is the defining love of God that raises Jesus and transforms him into the living icon of New Creation. As the raising of Lazarus constituted a microcosmic illustration of what divine love envisioned in Christ looks like, so the resurrection of Christ has macrocosmic significance. The divine love illustrated in the body of the risen Lord as he calls Mary the Magdalene by name and as he hails the frustrated disciples from the shore of the lake is the result of the fulfillment of God’s ultimate cosmological plan for the salvation of the universe and the redemption of all things.

We now see that love is the impetus for both the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Christ. Yet, unlike Lazarus, Jesus becomes the opportunity through which the resurrection of all believers is made possible—he is, as Paul says, the first-fruits of the dead. “The risen Jesus is the living embodiment, the historical anticipation, of that realization and perfection towards which transformative love moves."[7] The confession of Christ coming in the flesh in 1 John 4:2 refers not only to the initial incarnation of the Logos in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel, but also to the resurrected Christ physically returning from the grave, clothed anew in that which is incorruptible: the transformative love of God.

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[1] Sandra Schneiders, 52

[2] Jo-Ann A. Brant, “A Sure Thing: Death and Eternal Life in the Gospel of John,” Vision 5, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 62.

[3] Craig R. Koester, 123

[4] Paul S. Naumann, “The Presence of Love in John's Gospel,” Worship 39, no. 6 (June-July 1965): 369.

[5] Floyd V. Filson, 86

[6] Lyle K. Weiss, 200

[7] Ibid, 202

"See How He Loved Him!": Lazarus, the Love of God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (Part II)

Below is Part II of my final theology paper for my Resurrection in the New Testament class. You can find Part I here. In Part III, I will conclude my remarks about Lazarus and discuss the resurrection of Jesus and the eschatological resurrection of the dead.

The One Whom Jesus Loved

I would here like to briefly consider the possibility of identifying Lazarus as the literary figure of the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel. Though the argument that the raising of Lazarus was motivated by the love of Jesus by no means requires this premise to be true, and a thorough examination of other possible identities of the Disciple-Whom-Jesus-Loved is beyond the immediate extent of this study, it is nevertheless insightful to my assertion that the Gospel of John undoubtedly characterizes the return of Lazarus from death primarily as an act of divine love.

Floyd V. Filson and Basil S. Davis are among those who believe the Fourth Gospel points to Lazarus as the Beloved Disciple. Filson argues strongly and convincingly that the only serious contender for the role is Lazarus, and that identifying him as the disciple in question creates a literary and theological cohesion to the second half of the Gospel that has been largely ignored by modern scholarship.[1] The character does not make his first appearance until after Lazarus has been called forth from the tomb, and following this momentous final sign performed by Jesus the Gospel repeatedly places the disciple within the most theologically profound moments of the narrative: at the last supper, reclining against Jesus (13:23); at the crucifixion, where Jesus charges the disciple to care for his mother, Mary (19:26-27); with Peter at the discovery of the empty tomb (20:1-9); and the final post-resurrection appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Tiberias at the close of the book (21:7, 20-23). In each of these appearances, the Beloved Disciple serves as a theological literary device to remind the reader that love is present even at those events in the narrative where love seems remote.

It is significant to note that when Jesus is initially sent word of Lazarus’s illness, he is informed by Mary and Martha that “he whom you love [i[de o{n fileiæV] has fallen ill” (11:3). Later, following the death of Lazarus, Jesus reveals to the disciples that “our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep” (11:11) In this case, the word used to denote “friend” shares a root along with fileiæV in v 3. Though it may be argued that two separate Greek words are used to illustrate Jesus’s relationship to Lazarus and the Beloved Disciple (filevw and ajgavph, respectively), and that the two characters should therefore be understood as distinct from one another, a variant of ajgavph is also used to describe Jesus’s love for Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha (11:5). This has led some scholars—Filson among them—to conclude that filevw and ajgavph are virtually interchangeable synonyms in the Fourth Gospel.[2] Moreover, having been raised from the dead by Jesus, who was himself later resurrected, it is not inconceivable to imagine a rumor arising among the early Christian community that regarded Lazarus as immortal, which is exactly what happened to the Beloved Disciple, supposedly providing the warrant for the composition of Gospel in the first place (21:23).[3] The purpose here is not to prove definitively that Lazarus was in fact the Beloved Disciple, but to illustrate that the writer of the Fourth Gospel goes out of his way to ensure that the reader is absolutely aware of the fact that Jesus loved Lazarus. If this is indeed true, then the case is strengthened for the raising of Lazarus as an act of love carried out by a divine Messiah.

Repeatedly throughout ch. 11, it is revealed to the audience that Jesus possessed great affection for the man he brings back to life. It is this affection in the face of death that leads to the climactic and familiar account in v. 35: “Jesus began to weep.” The basis for this very poignant human outburst from Jesus has long been speculated: Are his tears brought about by frustration with “the Jews” who misunderstand his ultimate theological purpose?[4] Are they tears of grief that “legitimate human agony in the face of death”?[5]  Tears of anger at the power that death continues to hold in this life? Though the text by no means demands a single interpretation of this emotionally moving incident, the simpler and more viable reading is that Jesus is indeed grieved by the death of a friend whom he deeply loved.[6] Regardless of attempts to isolate the precise cause for Jesus’s weeping, I would agree with Stephen S. Kim’s assertion that love is the lens through which this great miracle must be viewed: “Jesus’s display of his love and compassion…sets the stage for his miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead.”[7] Despite the fact that the man has been dead four days, the stone is rolled away. “Transformative love pursues the ultimate good of the other.”[8] If this is indeed true, it is with Lazarus’s ultimate good in mind that Jesus approaches the tomb, offers a prayer of thanks to God, and—knowing that this decisive moment will invariably lead to his own execution—he cries, “Lazarus, my beloved friend, come out!” By the power of transformative love the dead are recalled to life.

            Though we may ostensibly perceive of this story as having a happy ending, I must here call attention to the theological caveat at the close of the pericope. While it is true, as stated above, that there is no linguistic difference in the Fourth Gospel between resuscitation and resurrection, a subtle distinction is nevertheless maintained in the words of Jesus following Lazarus’s exit from the tomb, still in his grave clothes: “Unbind him and let him go” (11:44). When Lazarus does come forth, he remains restricted by the very trappings of death. This side of the eschatological final resurrection of the dead, the shroud of decay still clings to Lazarus’s body.[9] The great and true final act of love in the Fourth Gospel is the one that sees death itself folded and laid aside when the risen Lord emerges vindicated from the tomb on Easter.

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[1] Floyd V. Filson, “Who Was the Beloved Disciple?” Journal of Biblical Literature 68, no. 2 (June 1949): 88.

[2] Floyd V. Filson, 85

[3] Basil S. Davis, 231

[4] See Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: a Commentary (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 846.

[5] Sandra M. Schneiders, “Death in the Community of Eternal Life: History, Theology, and Spirituality in John 11,” Interpretation 41, no. 1 (January 1987): 54.

[6] D. Moody Smith, John (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 225.

[7] Stephen S. Kim, “The Significance of Jesus' Raising Lazarus From The Dead in John 11,” Bibliotheca Sacra 168, no. 669 (January-March 2011): 59.

[8] Lyle K. Weiss, “The Public Significance of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ” PhD Diss., St. Mary's Seminary and University, 2008), 201.

[9] Andrew T. Lincoln, “”I Am the Resurrection and the Life“: The Resurrection Message of the Fourth Gospel,” in Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 141.

"See How He Loved Him!": Lazarus, the Love of God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (Part I)

Over the next few days I will be posting sections from my final paper for my Resurrection in the New Testament course. Obviously theological writing is not my strong suit, and I would much rather be exploring the social world and the historical background of the New Testament, but I have for the most part enjoyed my time in this class. It has been a time of intense personal spiritual and theological growth, and I am grateful for the experience. Below is Part I, the introduction to my paper, "'See How He Loved Him!': Lazarus, the Love of God, and the Resurrection of the Dead."

I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world…and that, insofar as [the world] is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love…summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.

― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace

Introduction

The Gospel of John and its related literary counterparts, the Johannine epistles, place high value on the theological dualism which illustrates the triumph of light against darkness, good over evil, and love over hatred. Specifically, the author(s) of these texts contrasts love not only over and against hatred, but even death, which is presumed to be synonymous with hatred (John 12:25; also 1 John 3:15). It is particularly the pitting of love against death with which this present study is concerned. The raising of Lazarus of Bethany by Jesus well illustrates the triumph of love over death, and suggests that in this powerful sign we might catch a glimpse of the future resurrection, when all things are made right.

In this paper I intend to argue, using Johannine theology, that the raising of Lazarus was at its foundation both an act of love and a theological foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ. With this in mind, it is therefore possible to assume that the resurrection of the dead at the eschaton will likewise be an act of divine love in which God reconciles all things in the New Creation, in which Love comes to dwell and reign on earth, and in which God truly becomes “all in all.”

The Raising of Lazarus

Each of the four canonical Gospels presents its own perspective of the impetus for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The Lukan narrative depicts those assembled before Pilate as accusing Jesus of inciting political uproar and encouraging tax evasion, while Matthew envisions the charges brought against Jesus involving blasphemy and malice toward the Temple. In the Fourth Gospel, we might comfortably allege that it is the raising of Lazarus of Bethany from the grave that ultimately leads Jesus to Golgotha.[1] Indeed, this whole episode foreshadows the events that unfold early on Easter morning following the crucifixion—it is a literary mechanism that ultimately reveals God’s final plan for human redemption. According to Fred Craddock, “Briefly put, for [Jesus] to call Lazarus out of the tomb is for [Jesus] to enter it.”[2] The answer “Come and see” to Jesus’s inquiry about the location of the corpse is a call to death which beckons Jesus into the tomb.

Theological Questions

It has become widely accepted among scholars and theologians that the raising of Lazarus must be distinguished from the resurrection of Christ by the use of the term “resuscitation” rather than “resurrection.” N.T. Wright clarifies resurrection as “going through death and out the other side,” presumably in opposition to (as in the case of Lazarus) returning from death into this world, where death continues to govern and those resuscitated must die again.[3] No such distinction is made in the Fourth Gospel—the word used to indicate the resurrection of Christ (ajnavstasiV) is used in the same capacity when Jesus claims, “Your brother will rise again,” in 11:23, and again when he announces, “I am the resurrection and the life” in 11:25. However, a thorough study of this distinction is beyond the scope of the present essay. The more urgent theological issues presented by this story involve the nature of death and the power by which death can be reversed. It is thus appropriate when attempting to establish theological correlation between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus to consider how the Fourth Gospel answers the following questions: 1) How does the present Gospel narrative depict the nature of death? 2) How does it suggest death might be overcome? I will examine a few possible answers to these questions in a later post.

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[1] Basil S. Davis, “The Identity of the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,” The Expository Times 113, no. 7 (April 2002): 230.

[2] Fred B. Craddock, “Jesus Wept: John 11:32-44,” Journal for Preachers 23, no. 3 (Easter 2000): 37.

[3] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 3): 422.

Review of Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection

Joshua Paul Smith. Review of Beth Felker Jones, Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2007).

The problem of a normative dualism has for centuries—millennia, even—plagued not only the most brilliant theological minds of the Church, but has been a driving force behind popular culture, as well. A Neo-Gnostic separation of soul from body is alive and well in many churches today, and continues to inform popular conceptions of what constitutes a “normal” human body. The harm that this dualism visits upon the body—particularly female bodies—is ironically both physical and spiritual. Bodies are fashioned and broken by the 10-billion-dollar-a-year cosmetic surgery industry, by eating disorders, and by dangerous normative expectations glimpsed in tabloids and on swimsuit models. Few attempts have been made by theologians to reconcile a Christian understanding of a bodily resurrection with feminist conceptions of the body. Such is the basis for Beth Felker Jones’s Marks of His Wounds. In five short chapters, Jones attempts to argue that not only do gendered bodies matter in the future physical resurrection of the dead, they are indeed integral to understanding the grace of God’s redemptive plan for humanity.

Jones’s thesis is twofold: 1) A new, holistic feminist anthropology is needed to replace those feminist theories of the last several decades that have slipped into a body/soul dualism that considers only the female body or only the female essence, and 2) this holistic feminist theory of the body is reconcilable to the orthodox Christian tradition of the physical resurrection of the dead. This twofold thesis is punctuated by the necessity of bodily sanctification reaching from the eschaton into the present.

In the first chapter, entitled, “The Body Broken,” the author establishes the problem that she hopes to address—namely, that current feminist and theological anthropologies have proven insufficient for developing a theology of the body as a psychosomatic (body/soul) unity. To take on a feminist theology of bodily resurrection, it is first necessary to determine what constitutes embodiment, and furthermore, feminine embodiment. A difficulty with any such undertaking is that even feminists are predominantly dualistic when it comes to theories of the body: either a woman is a woman because of her physical composition (essentialism), or gender itself is transcendent and performative, based upon roles dictated by a one’s dominant culture (constructivism). Rejecting this dangerously dichotomous approach, Jones suggests that there is a third option which allows for both the respect of our physical forms as well as the recognition that humans are more than the sum of our parts: the body is good, says Jones, but the body is also broken.

The second and third chapters (“The Body Ordered” and “The Body Dying,” respectively) expand upon this idea with perspectives on the general resurrection of the dead from Augustine and Calvin. Utilizing Augustine’s theology of the body and his understanding of bodies that are “ordered toward God,” Jones argues that physical resurrection of the gendered body must occur if the redeeming work of the Creator is to be complete. The physical body is not inherently evil—quite the opposite, in fact. The physical body, as a creation of God, is good. Through sin, however, holistic body/soul unities become disordered in our love of “things of the flesh” over the “things of God.” Jones insists, along with Augustine, that the future resurrection of the dead necessarily rests on the re-ordering of psychosomatic entities toward the City of God through the transformation of psychikon bodies into pneumatikon bodies.

Jones’s treatment of John Calvin, however, is not as clear. Calvin’s theology of the body, she points out, differs significantly from that of Augustine. While Augustine understood the body to be inherently good yet disordered under sin, Calvin understands the body as that which prevents the soul from fully comprehending God. Where Augustine viewed the corruptibility of the flesh as the ultimate enemy of embodied creatures, Calvin reserves this claim for death itself. In fact, while the future bodily resurrection of the dead is a theological reality for Calvin, he nevertheless maintains an intrinsic dualism that distinguishes body from soul. However, Jones argues that for Calvin, the concept of the noetic—that is, the intellectual knowing of God—is ultimately inextricable from the optic, or the seeing of God at the eschaton, and that these are in turn connected to God’s sanctification of the physical individual. This implied physical act is vital to an embodied feminist theology that embraces the gendered physicality of the resurrection.

In the fourth chapter, “The Body Raised,” the author further argues the necessity to conceptualize human beings as psychosomatic wholes. Jones makes a case for the non-reductive physicalism of the body/soul unity. Regardless of what a soul is, is should be understood as completely inseparable from the physical body. In essence, one’s identity is bound by both body and soul. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the hypostatic unity of Christ himself—though the analogy ultimately breaks down, the psychosomatic unity for which Jones argues is nevertheless very similar to the contention that the physical body of Jesus and the divine nature of Christ were one and the same.

The final chapter, “The Body Sanctified,” establishes an ethics of living the eschaton in the present as proleptic of the future resurrection of the dead. Jones here examines two traditions of resurrection embodiment: the eradication of gender in the resurrection according to Eastern tradition, and the retention of gendered resurrection bodies in the Augustinian tradition. For feminist theologies, the Eastern tradition is particularly problematic, since it rests on the presumption that gender will not be carried over into the resurrection due to the inclination of gendered physical bodies toward lust. This perspective, Jones maintains, is inherently gender-biased. One might here recall the promise of Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas to make Mary the Magdalene male in order that she might participate in the Reign of God. Instead, Jones maintains the full continuity of (albeit redeemed and transformed) gendered bodies in the resurrection. Augustine’s concept of bodies reordered at the eschaton toward the love of God eliminates any concern of lust from those who might claim gender retention unholy. Furthermore, Jones concludes that an embodied resurrection must have implications in the present—the Church much take its cue from Jesus, who remains for us the example of one truly ordered toward God, not in his maleness, but in his cruciformity. 
There are, of course, occasional shortcomings in Jones's argument. For instance, the concept of humans as psychosomatic wholes—the very premise upon which this study rests—leaves a few questions unanswered when explored more thoroughly. If, like Jones, we are to reject both essentialism, which claims that gender is determined by physical anatomy, and constructivism, which holds that gender is the sum of one's environment and social upbringing, then what of those who are subject to the very real dualism lived out every day in the transgender community? If one's gender is integral to his or her identity in the redeemed New Creation, how then are we to approach those for whom sexual identity is an unclear struggle, or otherwise completely dichotomous? If the physical, gendered body is important in the resurrection to mark someone as a fully integrated person, then what of those with androgynous or intersex bodies? Jones's claim has very serious implications for a great number of people whom she fails to acknowledge in her assessment. 

Despite all this, Marks of His Wounds remains a well-argued and thoughtful examination of both the dangers of Neo-Gnostic body/soul dualism and the necessity of an adequate theology of the body that respects what God created as good—human, gendered, psychosomatic wholes. Though at times Jones’s primary thesis may appear lost among dense language and layered thoughts, the book ultimately converges on the very heart of what it means to confess belief in resurrection of the dead: that God created human bodies as good, and God will restore them to that goodness once again in the New Creation.

More Thoughts On Death And Afterward

Never in my whole life have I spent such a focused, extended period of time thinking about death.

For the last two weeks I have been a part of an intensive module course at a local seminary. The class is called "Resurrection in the New Testament," and is a theological approach to how death, resurrection, and judgment are depicted in the NT. We just finished discussing our secondary text for the class, Anthony C. Thiselton’s Life After Death: A New Approach to the Last Things (Eerdmans: 2012), and I’m perhaps even more confused now than I was before. The fact is that many people in the Church simply do not think about life, death, and the “Last Things” nearly as thoroughly as they should. Below are some of the thoughts that have challenged me these last two weeks.

1. Eternity

What exactly is time? We flippantly throw around the idea that God is eternal, but what exactly does "eternity" mean? Is it a really, really, really, really long period of immeasurable time? Is it another dimension, outside of the four with which we are already familiar? Does God really exist outside of time? If so, how then does Christian tradition allow for such a deity to enter into the human story and be affected by it? How is it possible to have “a relationship” with a being that exists outside of time? How did you or your church define eternity when you were young? How do you feel about it today?

2. Hell

Two years ago, if you'd have asked me if I believed in Hell, I would have responded, "Absolutely not." These days, I’m not so sure. Thiselton presents three distinct streams of thought that have deep roots in the tradition of the Church, with each also being somewhat grounded in scripture:

a. The view of Iranaeus that afterlife consisted of “conditional immortality.” 

Sometimes this view is called “annihilationalism.” It’s based on the belief that, upon death (or perhaps more accurately, at the time of the resurrection), the faithful will live while the “wicked” perish, simply slipping into nonexistence. This is partially supported by Paul, who claims that “the wages of sin is death.”

b. The view most prominently held by Gregory of Nyssa, which is similar to what today we would call universalism.

Move over, Rob Bell! As early as the fourth century, this Cappadocian Father was preaching that “It is the peculiar effect of light to make darkness vanish, and of life to destroy death…Cleansing reaches those who are befouled with sin; and life, the dead…Error may be corrected, and what is dead is restored to life.”[1] Gregory believed that the ultimate goal of God (again, supported by Paul) was that God become “all in all,” even if it meant that the “wicked” must be purified by fire before entering the Kingdom. This view caused quite a bit of controversy recently with the publication of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.

c. The Augustinian view of a conscious, eternal torment. 

Hellfire, burning, eternal torture. This is perhaps the most commonly accepted understanding of Hell in the Protestant and Evangelical tradition. A person chooses to turn away from God, and is burned for all eternity as a consequence. However, Thiselton acknowledges that this view is particularly problematic: "The greatest difficulty of the 'everlasting punishment' view may be partly the relation between eternity and time; but even more fundamentally how we can conceive of God eternally sustaining both the life of believers in fellowship with [God], and also that of a group who are in every other sense 'separate' from [God]."[2] In other words, if God is truly the sustainer of life and is fully present with those who take part in the resurrection, how can a life exist outside of that life-giving presence?

I am particularly fond of Gregory of Nyssa’s view. However, I acknowledge that it has its shortcomings. Many of the early Christians sought universal salvation as “something to be hoped for,” even if it wasn’t a solid reality. I would like to hope for the idea that the Creator with restore all things in the end, as well, but I have this crazy notion of justice that keeps me from fully believing it. Which brings me to my final topic that I have been pondering:

3. Justice and Mercy

The United States is a place of "liberty and justice for all." In many ways, we still operate on the foundational social code of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In most states, those convicted of first degree murder are often considered for the death penalty. Kill, and we kill you. That's how justice works, right? Thiselton suggests that in reality, we have a skewed understanding of biblical justice (Heb: tzedekah, Gk: δικαιοσύνη). A better translation of both words is perhaps “righteousness,” the idea that God is going to “put things to rights,” as N.T. Wright says. In essence, there is no conflict of justice and mercy in God. Righteousness includes a freeing of the oppressed, in whatever form their oppression might take. This entails a profoundly different understanding of the word justice; rather than God submitting to the back-and-forth of human right and wrong, God fixes the root of the problem. In other words, it's as if a mother chided her two children for fussing, and one of the children responded, "He started it!" to which the mother answers, "And I'm finishing it." What matters is not that God repays all wrongs tit-for-tat, but that in the end, God makes all things right. That is the righteousness of the Deity.

The Church has struggled with these questions for the better part of 2,000 years, and humanity itself has pondered the same issues since the first people began to consider their purpose in the cosmos. Honestly, I don't yet believe that there are any real answers. However, these are the questions that effective ministers should be struggling with. Death is always around us, regardless of whether our culture admits it. The families of those coping with the suicide of a loved one, or the young man who died of a drug overdose, or the child who fell victim to cancer—these are all problematic to the Christian worldview of an all-loving God. But it is precisely these circumstances that call for real, humble ministers, who approach such great questions with fear and with trembling.

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[1] Gregory of Nyssa, Catechism 25, quoted in Thiselton, 147.

[2] Thiselton, 149.

Why You Should Leave Behind Left Behind

If you're going to believe you could be Raptured at any

given moment, it's probably a good idea to keep that

denim skirt at least ankle-length.

When I was a kid, I was crazy about the Left Behind series. By the time I was around 15, I had almost all of the books. We watched the film version of the first book, starring Kirk Cameron, in my youth Sunday school class. It wasn’t until years after being introduced to the books that I began to see the deeply flawed nature of their theology.

Let me be blunt from the beginning of this post: there is no such thing as the Rapture. Nowhere in the New Testament text does it explicitly state that Christians will ever disappear, or suddenly be propelled into "Heaven," leaving the rest of humanity and the earth to go to Hell in a hand-basket. 

The text most commonly utilized as an apologetic for the dubious doctrine of the Rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve, as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

A 19^th-century clergyman named John Nelson Darby is largely responsible for the twisting of this passage to suggest that on the Last Day, Christians will be “caught up” in the air (Latin: rapiemur, the root of the English word “rapture”) and sent to Heaven, leaving this mortal coil behind. His ideas were further interpreted and integrated into the Scofield Bible (1909). The idea of a rapture is only a little more than a century old.

In reality, Paul is referring to the Royal Return of Jesus, or the Parousia (Greek: parousiva). According to scripture, this event immediately precedes the final resurrection of the dead. But a little more insight is necessary to understand why this text-segment has nothing to do with the subject of the Left Behind series. The primary question that any Bible interpreter (pastor, scholar, or layperson) should ask of any given scripture is this: What is the context of this passage?

“We don’t want you to be uninformed concerning those who have died, brothers and sisters,” Paul says. Paul is here addressing concerns from within the Thessalonian community about the return of Christ. By the time Paul was writing to the Church in Thessalonica, the death and resurrection of Jesus was nearly a quarter of a century in the past. People were beginning to die, and communities were beginning to question whether or not their loved ones would be raised from the dead in time to participate in the Royal Return of Christ, which many believed would happen within their own lifetime. In an attempt to calm their fears, Paul is arguing that the dead will indeed be raised at the time of Christ’s return, and that both the living and the dead will be caught up in the air to greet him.

The Greek term parousia (parousiva) literally means “return,” or “visitation.” In the first century, it was often used to describe the royal visits of Caesar. When the emperor would ride into a town, the wealthy and political elites would ride outside the gates of the city to greet him. They would then return in a royal procession into the town square, where the emperor would be presented with lavish gifts worthy of his lordship. The Apostle Paul applies the term to the Return of Christ, and it is this idea that he is getting at when trying to describe the circumstances of what many refer to as the Second Coming. Sure, the living and the dead will be caught up in the air to greet Christ. But the implication (assuming Paul was consistent in his description of the Resurrection on the Last Day) is that when Christ returns, as N.T. Wright says, to “put things to rights,” we will all return to earth to inhabit the New Creation that God has prepared for us.

“Going to Heaven” is not at all a Christian idea. Heaven, in fact, comes to us (as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer). 

Now, one could ponder all day about how exactly this whole business of “getting caught up in the air” is going to happen. However, to give too much authority to a literal interpretation of this text—as George B. Caird says of over-literalized readings of Revelation—is to “unweave the rainbow.”[1] The main point Paul is trying to communicate is quite simply hope. The dead will not be forgotten or abandoned when Christ returns to make all things new, as the Thessalonians feared. In fact, the living and the dead will both share a role in welcoming the Parousia and establishing God’s Reign on Earth for eternity, a reign that leaves no room for death, decay, hatred, or greed.

 

I should make note of the fact that this theological discussion is not a minor one, and the debunking of Rapture theology is extremely important. The most concerning problem of the doctrine is this: dispensationalism and millennialism aren't merely harmful little belief systems that just happen to contradict scripture and the better part of two thousand years of Church doctrine. It is—as my "Resurrection in the New Testament" professor calls it—a "sub-Christian" ideology. And the way these ideas are spoon-fed to our youth is quite dangerous. These beliefs breed assumptions about the inherently evil nature of Creation (which we know from Genesis is untrue; after all, God “saw that it was good”). If we are simply “going to Heaven” and leaving this crazy place behind, there is no need for us to be good stewards of Creation, or even care much for our fellow brothers and sisters who may not share the Judeo-Christian worldview, since it’s all going to burn away, anyway. It becomes a way of avoiding the problems of our time, rather than addressing them, and it takes a dim and shallow view of God’s power to fully redeem the world. It is the ultimate escapist revenge fantasy.  

What do you think? Were you raised to believe in the Rapture? Have you changed your mind since you were younger? Feel free to leave your comments below.

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[1] George B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine (London: Black, 1966), pg. 25. Quoted in Anthony C. Thiselton, Life After Death: A New Approach to the Last Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), pg. 109.