[Dialogue] Spong on raising the dead

[KroegerD at aol.com]

January 17, 2006 
Did Jesus Really Raise the  Dead? Part II
The Widow's Son in the Village of Nain  

Last week we began a series on the gospel narratives that purport to show  
that Jesus had the power to raise the dead. There are only three accounts in the 
 Bible that appear to make that claim. We opened this series by examining the 
 first of these three episodes, the story of Jesus raising the daughter of  
Jairus, a ruler in the synagogue. This narrative we observed was the only one  
included in three different places in the New Testament. Though they differ  
slightly in the details, there is a recognizable version of this story in Mark, 
 Matthew and Luke. This week, I want to look at the second of these accounts. 
It  is a narrative found in Luke alone and it involves the raising from the 
dead by  Jesus of the only son of a widow in the village of Nain.  
First, let me examine the details of the story itself. Jesus comes upon a  
funeral procession. The body of a young man, quite literally on his funeral bed  
called a bier, is being removed to his place of burial. He is identified as 
the  only son of a widow. In first century Jewish society this was a story of 
great  sorrow and pathos, focused not just on the premature death of the young 
man, but  also on the plight of his mother, who would be forced into dire 
circumstances by  this tragedy. In a patriarchal society, a woman's only security 
was to be in the  care of a man: a father before marriage and a husband after 
marriage. A woman  who was a widow had no husband to be her male protector. A 
woman with a grown  son would be thought of as too old to return to the 
protective care of her  father who, in all probability, given the life expectancy in 
that era, was no  longer alive. This woman's sole sense of security and 
protection would be her  grown son. Now, we are told, this only son has died. 
Poverty, begging or  prostitution were the only viable options open to this widow. 
It is a story that  has a strong sense of pain within it.  
Jesus, we are told, affected by the tragedy, was moved to pity. Halting the  
funeral procession, he ordered the bearers of the body to unbind this man from 
 his grave clothes. He then overcomes the power of death, revives the victim 
and  restores him to his mother. Luke's description of this action was quite  
dramatic. But was it real? Can the dead actually be raised or is the death  
process irreversible? If this episode is not history then what does it mean?  
Would an event like this, conducted in public with mourners all around, not  
become a cause for startling wonder that would be the talk of the area for a  
long period of time? Why then was there no mention of this story until Luke  
wrote some 60 years after the death of Jesus? Why would this story not appear in  
any other source? These are the questions that literalists either try to dodge 
 completely or to which they give the weakest, flimsiest of answers. However, 
 these questions represent the first hint that we need to embrace to begin to 
 understand that, like so many of the gospels' miraculous tales, this story 
is  something other than an account of a miracle story.  
The second place to which we turn to provide additional material that might  
cast light on this story is found by looking once more at the two cycles of  
miracle stories that we identified as part of the Hebrew Scriptures. They are  
found first in the Moses-Joshua stories, which portray nature miracles, many 
of  which clearly show up in the nature miracles attributed to Jesus. It is 
not,  however, until one reaches the Elijah-Elisha cycle of stories (II Samuel 
and I  Kings) that miraculous healings are introduced into the developing 
tradition.  This healing tradition is next added to the messianic hopes of the 
Jewish  people. These messianic expectations first appear in the writings of I 
Isaiah  (8th century BCE), where healings are said to be the signs that will 
accompany  the dawning of the Kingdom of God. Time after time themes from these Old 
 Testament antecedents also show up in the healing miracles attributed to 
Jesus.  The final type of miracle story that is attributed to Jesus is that of 
his  raising the dead back to life. This idea is also first found in the  
Elijah-Elisha cycle. Last week, we noted sufficient similarities between the  gospel 
accounts of the young daughter of Jairus being raised from the dead with  the 
story of Elisha raising a child from the dead to establish a significant  
connection. So the first thing we do when examining Luke's story of the raising  
of the widow's son in Nain is to look once again at similar narratives in the  
Elijah-Elisha cycle. That look strikes pay dirt almost immediately.  
In I Kings 17:8-24 we have the story of Elijah, who raises from the dead a  
widow's son. The connections between the two stories are once again more than  
coincidental. In both stories the victim is the only son of a widow. In both  
stories the young man is stretched out on his funeral bed. In both stories the 
 healers, Elijah and Jesus, speak commanding God to act. In both stories the 
son  is restored to his mother alive. In both stories this act elicits the 
prophetic  claim. In Elijah's case, it was said about him "he speaks the words of 
God." In  the Jesus story, it was said that "a great prophet has arisen and 
that God has  visited God's people." These connections make it obvious that 
this narrative  found in Luke alone is not a miracle episode designed to elicit 
awe and wonder,  but is rather a part of the claim Luke makes in a number of 
places that in Jesus  a new Elijah is present. If that conclusion is accurate, 
as I believe it is,  then the expositor's task is not to defend the literalness 
of the supernatural  miracle, but to examine the role that Elijah played as 
the interpretive clue to  Jesus in the writing of Luke's gospel.  
Why would Luke choose to borrow an Elijah story to be used in his gospel? I  
believe the context in Luke gives us the clue. The story in Luke comes right  
before his story of John the Baptist in prison, sending a messenger to Jesus,  
asking if he is the expected messiah or must John look for another. Jesus  
responds by quoting Isaiah 35 in which the prophet describes the signs that will 
 accompany the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God: the blind will see, the 
deaf  hear, the lame walk, the mute sing. Because resurrection lies at the heart 
of  the gospel story, Jesus adds that the dead are raised. However, unlike the 
 earlier gospels, Luke has not yet related his version of the raising of 
Jairus'  daughter. That will come later in his text. If the signs of the kingdom 
present  in Jesus include the raising of the dead then he must have a story in 
his gospel  that validates that claim. Therefore, Luke takes this Elijah story 
and retells  it about Jesus. It also serves Luke's theme of wrapping his 
Jesus narrative  around the figure of Elijah.  
Let me now trace that theme ever so briefly. First of all Luke does not, as  
Mark and Matthew do, identify John the Baptist with Elijah. In Luke's gospel  
John the Baptist comes only "in the spirit of Elijah." He does not dress in 
the  Elijah garb, eat the Elijah diet or roam the Elijah wilderness as he does 
in  Mark and Matthew. Luke saves the Elijah identification for Jesus. Luke uses 
 other echoes of the Elijah-Elisha cycle in his depiction of Jesus. He alone  
records Jesus' healing ten lepers of whom only one, a Samaritan, returns to 
give  thanks. Elisha, we need to note, also healed a non-Jew, Naaman the 
Syrian, of  his leprosy in a similar manner.  
Luke's ultimate identification is of Elijah, not his disciple Elisha, with  
Jesus. That becomes obvious when we come to those stories that climax his  
version of Jesus' life. I refer to the accounts of Jesus' ascension and his  
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on his disciples at Pentecost (see Luke 24, Acts  1, 
2). Elijah, we are told, also ascended into heaven (II Kings 2:1-14). He  
needed help, however, to transport him. It came in the form of a magical fiery  
chariot, drawn by magical fiery horses and propelled heavenward by a God-sent  
whirlwind. Jesus, the new Elijah, demonstrated his superiority over the first  
Elijah by ascending on his own power. When Elijah ascended, he bestowed as his 
 final gift upon his single disciple Elisha, a double portion of his 
enormous,  but nonetheless human spirit. Jesus, the new Elijah, said Luke, 
demonstrated his  claim to divinity by bestowing the infinite power of God's Holy Spirit 
on the  entire Christian community in sufficient strength to last through all 
the ages.  If there is still any doubt as to Luke's use of the Elijah story in 
the telling  of Jesus' ascension, one has only to note that Luke takes the 
fire from the  fiery horses and chariot and turns it into tongues of fire that 
danced on the  heads of the disciples gathered on the day of Pentecost, and he 
took the  propelling whirlwind and turned it into the "mighty rushing wind" 
that filled  the room on the day of Pentecost.  
None of these connections, however, can be made unless the reader of the  
Bible is familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures. The tragedy of Christian history  
is that the Christian community not only moved out of the Jewish world that  
produced it and into the Gentile world, but that only Gentiles read, interpreted 
 and wrote commentaries on the gospels for the next 1900 years. These Gentile 
 interpreters were not only ignorant of the Jewish Scriptures that lay behind 
the  gospel tradition, but they were also prejudiced against all things 
Jewish. The  result was the Christians began to read the gospels as literal history 
rather  than as interpretive narratives based on Jewish sources. They saw the 
miracles  as signs of the presence of the supernatural and not as the 
expansion of human  language to make it big enough to say that in the life changing 
experience they  had with Jesus of Nazareth, God had been encountered.  
A new way to read the gospels must be found or else a mindless literalism  
will be our only alternative to the nothingness of a faith tradition that has  
died because it has become unbelievable. It is interesting that the narratives  
that make this the clearest are the miracle stories in general and the 
raising  of the dead stories In particular. Stay tuned, for next week I will examine 
the  story of the Raising of Lazarus.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Richard & Claire Smith from Claremont, Western Australia, write:  
We are studying "A New Christianity for a New World" at our church study  
group. One question raised last night was the implication of continuing with the  
words, "This is the Word of God" following our bible readings in church on  
Sundays. What alternative words could better reflect the role of the Bible in  
post-modern Christianity?  
Dear Richard and Claire,  
Yours is a very good question. There are some lessons from the Bible that  
when read you want to say, "This is the Word of the Lord?" I think of God  
slaying the first-born male in every Egyptian household on the night of the  
Passover, of Samuel instructing King Saul to practice genocide on the Amalekites  or 
even Elisha calling out some she bears to eat up some little boys who have  
insulted him. If that is the word of God, I want nothing to do with that deity. 
 The phrase, "This is the Word of God" comes out of that period of history 
before  biblical scholarship and higher criticism began. It is terribly 
misleading and  ought to be abandoned.  
When I was an active bishop, I borrowed a phrase from the New Zealand  
Anglican prayer book and closed lessons by saying, "Hear what the Spirit is  saying 
to the Church." Sometimes I'm convinced the Spirit is saying, "Please do  not 
take these words literally" or "These words are not worthy of the God we  meet 
in Jesus of Nazareth."  
The Church teaches through its liturgy. We need to look carefully at what  
that teaching is and move to modify it wherever necessary.  
Thanks for raising this issue.  
John Shelby Spong 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070124/7ff5c643/attachment-0001.html