[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong 10/24/07 The resurrection experience

[KroegerD at aol.com]

October 24, 2007 
The Fourth Fundamental:The  Historicity and meaning of the Resurrection 
Experience, Part VI  

Something clearly happened to the band of Jesus' disciples at some point  
following his crucifixion that was profound, life changing and deeply real. We  
have no written records between 30 C.E. and 50 C.E. from any source that  
purports to describe what that experience was. However, we can chart some  dramatic 
changes that occurred in that time span that can only be attributed to  
whatever that experience was. Let me state them quickly.  
According to Mark, the first gospel, when Jesus was arrested, all of the  
disciples forsook him and fled. I read this as a literal memory since by the  
time Mark wrote, the Twelve were heroes, yet the memory of their abandonment was  
still clear. Jesus is even made to predict this abandonment and to refer to 
how  it fulfilled the Jewish Scriptures, citing a verse from Zechariah to give 
that  claim particular emphasis. I do not think people go to this length to 
justify or  excuse the disciples' behavior if that behavior had not happened. So 
I read this  abandonment as literal history and believe that the facts 
suggest that Jesus  died alone and that his disciples engaged in an act of 
unbecoming cowardice. Yet  something happened to these fleeing disciples that changed 
them dramatically.  When it happened, we do not know. The time frame of three 
days is clearly an  interpretive and liturgical symbol to allow for the later 
celebration on the  first day of the week which would be the third day from the 
crucifixion. Where  it happened we do not know since in the gospels 
themselves there are two  competing traditions. Mark, Matthew and the appendix to John 
argue for a  Galilean setting. Luke and the regular conclusion of John argue 
for a Jerusalem  setting. Most scholars regard the Galilean tradition as the 
more original, the  earlier tradition, and the Jerusalem tradition as the more 
developed, later one.  This conflict is, however, present in the gospels 
themselves.  
How did whatever the Easter experience was actually happen? We do not know  
that either, but by reviewing the gospel material, we can pick up hints in a  
variety of places. The experience of the living Jesus that later came to be  
called resurrection seemed to have a liturgical context. Luke has the travelers  
on the road to Emmaus say, "He was made known to us in the breaking of the  
bread." That phrase was in obvious liturgical use when the gospels were 
written.  John's appendix (Chapter 21) also suggests a common meal through which 
Jesus  made himself known. The Book of Revelation uses the word "sup" or "dine" 
when  describing what it means to commune with the raised Christ. The narrations 
of  the Last Supper in Mark, Matthew and Luke carry resurrection connotations 
of the  eschatological emphasis on the new meal that will be eaten in the 
Kingdom of  God. John's gospel, which has no last supper, refers to the cross as 
the place  where the bread of life is taken, blessed, broken and given, but he 
turns the  story of the feeding of the multitude with a few loaves and fishes 
into a great  eucharistic feast and identifies eating the flesh and drinking 
the blood of  Jesus with the resurrected life that will be eternal.  
While we can only speculate about the when, where and how questions, we can  
be much more specific when charting the effects. Something brought the fearful 
 and fleeing band of disciples back together. What was it? Something 
empowered  them with such courage that they never again wavered in regard to their 
vision.  Indeed they were quite willing to die for it. What has the power to 
change  cowards into heroes, to redirect the lives of a group so dramatically? 
Whatever  Easter was it had to be big enough to do that.  
The second effect that is obvious is that whatever the Easter experience was  
it changed the disciples' understanding of God and how Jesus was related to 
that  understanding. When we turn to the witness of Paul, who wrote between 
50-64, he  says in his epistle to the Romans that "God designated Jesus to be the 
Son of  God" by the power of the "Spirit of holiness" and this designation 
was made  operative in that God raised him from the dead. Long before any gospel 
writer  had turned the Easter experience into a physical, resuscitated body, 
Paul had  interpreted it as God raising Jesus into whatever God is and 
whatever God means.  This transformation is then written back into the life of Jesus 
when, in the  synoptics, Peter is made to call him "the Christ, the Son of the 
living God,"  though, as it was later indicated, it would not be until the 
resurrection that  Peter would understand his own words. When John has Jesus 
identify himself as  being one with God and when Thomas is made to refer to him 
as "My Lord and my  God," the revolution was complete. It is quite clear that 
what Easter did to  these Jewish disciples was to force a redefinition of God 
onto them so that  forever after they could not see God without seeing Jesus as 
part of that  definition nor could they see Jesus any longer as other than as 
deeply at one  with God. It would be some four hundred years before the 
Christian Church would  define this transformation in the doctrinal language of the 
Incarnation and the  Holy Trinity, but the experience appears to have been 
connected to whatever it  was that originally constituted Easter. People do not 
redefine God except when  driven to do so by an experience that is undeniable. 
Whatever Easter was, it has  to be big enough to account for this dramatic 
change.  
The final evidence of change is a little more vague and a little more  
stretched out in time, but it is powerful nonetheless. Whatever that  life-changing, 
post crucifixion experience was, it came to be connected in  practice with 
the first day of the week. My own study of the resurrection has  led me to 
conclude that the first day of the week was never the day of the  Easter experience 
but was rather the liturgical day set aside to celebrate the  Easter 
experience. My best guess is that somewhere between six months and a year  actually 
separated the crucifixion from what came to be called the resurrection,  but 
what I call the Easter experience to keep it more vague and less literally  
defined. I see evidence for this in all of the gospels, especially in John  
(Chapter 21), but time does not permit me to spell that out here. There is no  doubt, 
however, that very early the disciples of Jesus observed the Sabbath in  the 
synagogue and then gathered for "the breaking of the bread" on the first day  
of the week. By the time Paul wrote to the Romans, the first day of the week 
was  so deeply established that Paul could refer to it simply as "the Lord's 
Day"  without any further explanation. Within a single generation, "the Lord's 
Day"  rivaled the Sabbath in importance even among the Jewish disciples of 
Jesus. This  was long before Christianity became a predominantly Gentile movement. 
When it  did move from its Jewish womb into the Greek world of the 
Mediterranean region,  it was the Jewish Sabbath that would ultimately be dropped by the 
increasingly  non-Jewish Christians and the first day of the week became the 
exclusive  Christian holy day.  
The change that created the first day of the week as a new holy day was,  
however, connected to whatever the transforming Easter experience was. Something  
clearly happened. Change in behavior, change in theology, change in 
liturgical  practice all occurred and all cry out for explanation. The Easter 
experience  lies under all of the explanations.  
The last thing I want to note in this column is that the various explanations 
 of the Easter experience found in the four canonical gospels, which were 
written  40-70 years after the transformation they purport to describe, are 
completely  contradictory in almost every detail. For those who want to literalize 
the  Bible, the startling discovery is that in the Easter experience, on which 
the  Christian movement so clearly stands, there is total disagreement on 
details.  Who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week? Paul does 
not seem  know that tradition at all, while none of the gospels agrees on who 
these women  were. Three went says Mark; two went says Matthew; an undisclosed 
number went  says Luke; only one went says John. The only thing they all agree 
on is that  Magdalene was central in that drama. Did the women see the risen 
Christ at the  tomb on that first Easter? No, says Mark; yes, says Matthew; no, 
says Luke; yes,  says John but only on the second look. Who was the first 
witness to "see" the  risen Lord? It was Cephas, says Paul. Mark never records 
anyone seeing. It was  the woman in the garden says Matthew. It was Cleopas and 
his friend on the road  to Emmaus says Luke. It was Magdalene says John. Where 
were the disciples when  the Easter experience, whatever it was, broke upon 
their consciousness? Paul  doesn't say. Mark says it will be in Galilee. 
Matthew says it was in Galilee on  top of a mountain. Luke says it was never in 
Galilee but occurred only in  Jerusalem and its immediate environs. John says it 
was originally in Jerusalem,  but then he suggests much later it also occurred 
in Galilee.  
So it is that we have an event that so clearly brought about substantial  
changes, making its reality hard to dispute, but when people sought to explain  
what actually happened, they disagreed on almost every detail. This points, I  
believe, to the probability that the experience itself defied all human limits 
 and forced those who were impacted by it to explain in human language this  
inexplicable action that was of God, but its effects were expressed inside 
human  life. That is what the Easter experience was and is. That is also why 
those, who  want to literalize its physicality and make the explanation of 40-70 
years after  the event a requirement for being a Christian, misunderstood so 
totally both the  faith they seek to follow and the gospels they read so 
loosely.  
Neither the miracles of Jesus nor the Resurrection of Jesus can be understood 
 as literal, supernatural events. They are far more, not less, than that. The 
 crucial fourth fundamental, I think we can state with authority, does not 
defend  Christian truth, but actually distorts Christianity badly.  
John Shelby Spong  
Editor's note: Bishop Spong's book on the Easter experience,  which goes into 
these issues far more deeply than a weekly column can, is  entitled, 
"Resurrection: Myth or Reality" published by Harper Collins. It is  available in 
paperback from any of our major bookstores or _through this  website_ 
(http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/store/Resurrection.aspx) . 
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Jim Harris from Salem, Oregon, writes:  
Thank you for being the light that you are, shining forth with your truth as  
your heart guides you to do. Thank you, too, for so eloquently and clearly  
stating so many of the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about Jesus and modern  
Christianity that have been rolling inside me since I was first old enough to  
understand what I was being taught in the Lutheran churches. I fully believe  
that Jesus was the true embodiment of God, or Spirit, or whatever name you  
choose to give to that Universal Source, and that Jesus was the mirror that  
reflects the "Christ nature" that is available to each one of us. I am also of  
the belief that Mohammed, Buddha, and founders of other religions expressed a  
similar God presence that spoke to people whose traditions were different 
than  those of the Jewish background from which Jesus came. Because of this, I 
believe  that a true and dedicated follower of Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or 
any other  religious tradition, though they are not "born-again Christians," 
can express  the same Christ nature that Christians associate with a true 
connection with God  or Spirit or Universal Source; when they transition from this 
human life to what  they call paradise, nirvana, or enlightenment, they are 
speaking about the same  thing that Christians mean by "heaven." I am interested 
in hearing your thoughts  on other religious traditions and their 
similarities to or difference with your  vision of a personal connection to God.  
Dear Jim,  
The first thing that all religious people need to embrace is that no  
religious system can finally define God. That is not within the human capacity.  I 
wonder why we have even thought it is. No one thinks that a horse, bound by  the 
limits of a horse's consciousness, can define what it means to be human.  
Neither can human beings, bound by their human consciousness, define what it  
means to be God. That is both elementary and profoundly true.  
Religious systems are also not just about religion. They are inevitably  
deeply informed by the culture out of which that religion system has grown.  
Christianity today is the primary religion of the West and, through its  missionary 
efforts and colonial past, also finds expression in the Third World.  
Islam is the primary religion of the Middle East. Hinduism and Buddhism are  
the primary religions of the East. Judaism, the mother of Christianity, is a  
minority presence in both the Muslim Middle East and the traditionally 
Christian  West. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, for one raised in a 
different  culture to embrace in a full way the religion of a culture other than his 
or her  own. I do not mean that a Westerner cannot become a Buddhist or a 
Jew, or that a  Middle Easterner or a Chinese person cannot become a Christian - 
that happens  regularly, but it is never quite the same as it is for one 
raised in the culture  out of which that religious system grew. That fact has led 
me to a new and  different kind of appreciation for religions other than my 
own. I am not  supportive of conversion activities. I have had significant 
dialogues in my life  with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems. I have been 
impressed by the fact that  the religions of the world all appear to be addressing the 
same universal  questions that my religion seeks to address. In our questions 
there is a  remarkable similarity. It is in the answers that we give to these 
questions that  we diverge and much of that divergence is the product of 
acculturation.  
I walk the Christian path. Christianity is my home. This is the tradition in  
which I have been taught to seek God. So I explore its depths and seek its  
truth. I do not doubt that adherents of other faiths do the same inside their  
religious traditions. I rejoice in that. I do not judge anyone. That is God's  
role not mine.  
John Shelby Spong 



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