[Dialogue] Spong 1/8 The title is not indicative of the content (Warning to Cynthia)

[KroegerD at aol.com]

January 9, 2008 
Iowa's Vote - National and  International Scandals  

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  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Dear Friends,  
Instead of the question and answer section of the column today, I want to  
share with you something written by a priest in the Church of England, who is  
under pressure from his Bishop to conform to traditional Church teaching and  
practice. He is, so far as I can discern, a faithful priest who is caught in  
that awkward position where he must violate his own conscience and integrity in 
 order to conform to ecclesiastical expectations. Many clergy live in that 
place  today as the Church becomes more and more closed minded and afraid and as 
its  leaders move to put unity ahead of truth. I was so impressed with his 
work that  I wanted to share it with you.  
John Shelby Spong  
LEAVING HOME  
I’m off!
I must leave the political and ethical compromises that have  corrupted the 
faith of my Jesus. 
I must leave the stifling theology, the  patriarchal structures. 
I must leave the enduring prejudices based on our  God-given humanity, the 
colour of my skin, my gender or how my sexual  orientation is practiced. 
I must leave the mentality that encourages anyone  to think that our 
doctrines are unchangeable. 
I must leave the belief of  those who insist that our sacred texts are 
without error. 
I must leave the  God of miracle and magic. 
I must leave the promises of certainty, the  illusion of possessing the true 
faith. 
I must leave behind the claims of  being the recipient of an unchallengeable 
revelation. 
I must leave the  neurotic religious desire to know that I am right, and to 
play at being God.  
I must leave the claim that every other pathway to God is second-rate, that  
fellow Hindu 
searchers in India, Buddhists in China and Tibet, Muslims in  the Middle East 
and the Jews of Israel are inadequate. 
I must leave the  pathway that tells me that all other directions will get me 
lost. 
I must  leave the certain claim that my Jesus is the only way to God for 
everyone. 
I  must leave the ultimate act of human folly that says it is. 
I must leave the  Church, my home. 
I must leave behind my familiar creeds and faith-symbols.  
I can no longer stay in an unliveable place. 
I must move to a place  where I can once again sing the Lord’s song. 
I must move to where my  faith-tradition can be revived and live on. 
I must move to a place where  children don’t tell me what I believe is 
unbelievable but tell me they can  believe what I believe. 
I must move to a place where they are not playing at  moving the deck chairs 
on the decks of an ecclesiastical Titanic. 
I can  never leave the God experience. 
I can never walk away from the doorway into  the divine that I believe I have 
found in the one I call the Christ and  acknowledge as “my Lord.” 
I must move to dangerous and religiously  threatening places. 
I must move to where there is no theism, but still God.  
I’m off! But to where, God only knows. 

David Keighley, An English  Anglican Priest




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