[Dialogue] 6/02/11, Spong: Examining the Meaning of the Resurrection, Part II: Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Breakthrough?

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Examining the Meaning of the Resurrection, Part II: Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Breakthrough?
We begin our probe into the meaning of the Easter moment by asking who it was who stood in the center of the Easter experience. People do not always recognize that the claim of revealed truth requires both a revelation and a receiver of that revelation. The revelation may be of a timeless truth, but it has no effect unless someone, who is bound by both time and space, receives that revelation or that new insight and shares it. So who was that person in the accounts of Easter? The message of the New Testament is not unanimous on this question, but a common tradition can be found there that ultimately becomes dominant. Let me now try to lift this dominant tradition out of our sacred story.
Paul, who wrote all of his authentic epistles between the years 51-64, says in his treatment of the final events in Jesus’ life (I Cor. 15:1-11, written between 54-56) that he, the raised Jesus, “appeared” first unto Cephas. Cephas was the nickname for Simon, coming from the Aramaic word Kepha, which means rock. When translated into Greek Kepha is rendered Petras and from that the familiar name of Peter was created. This nickname, Simon Peter, was something like calling Simon, “Rocky.” This Corinthian text is the earliest reference we have in the entire New Testament to the Easter experience. Paul seemed to be asserting that Simon Peter was a crucial figure standing at the center of the story of the resurrection.
When the first gospel, known as Mark, came to be written about 15-20 years later, we have the earliest narrative account of Easter morning that is found in the New Testament. Mark has a messenger, who is not yet an angel but only a messenger; announce the resurrection of Jesus to the audience of women at the tomb in the garden. In that announcement the messenger says, “Go tell the disciples and Peter that he (Jesus) is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.” Once again, Peter is singled out in a decisive way.
Peter is not mentioned in the resurrection narrative of Matthew, the second gospel writer (82-85), but when Luke writes (88-93), Peter is once more placed front and center. While Luke relates no resurrection narrative about Peter, choosing instead to relate a story about an unknown man named Cleopas and his unidentified traveling companion on the road to Emmaus, yet just before Luke has Cleopas tell the disciples about his experience, he is told that “The Lord has risen and he has appeared to Simon.” Peter’s primacy is preserved by a hair!
When John, writing near the end of the first century (95-100), tells us his version of the Easter moment, he has Mary Magdalene, not Peter, serve as the star in the drama. Finding the tomb empty and the body missing, Magdalene goes and reports this troubling news to the disciples, who then set out to verify these things for themselves. In the first century, a report by a woman was not credible unless corroborated by a male. So we are told that Peter and the enigmatic figure the Fourth Gospel calls the “beloved disciple” run to the tomb. The beloved disciple outruns Peter and arrives first. There, however, he pauses, waiting at the mouth of the cave, but Peter does not pause so he becomes the first disciple to be confronted by the mystery of the emptiness of the tomb. This starts the process of drawing conclusions.
Next, we note that in the Epilogue to John’s gospel, considered by most scholars not to have been the work of the original evangelist, but to have been added to John’s narrative by another hand and at a later date, Peter is, nonetheless, once again the focus of the drama and of the conversation with the Risen Christ. In this conversation the authenticity of Peter’s love is challenged three times by Jesus and the admonition to feed the lambs or sheep of God is articulated three times by Jesus. As I suggested earlier that while the witness from the Easter stories of the New Testament is not unanimous, these sources, nonetheless, make it clear that Peter plays the primary role in the drama.
With that hint established, we then explore the rest of the gospel material aware that in some sense every verse of the New Testament is written inside the resurrection experience so that resurrection insights might be scattered throughout the entire gospel texts. When we look at the entirety of the gospels, we discover that every time the twelve disciples are named, Peter is always placed first (Mk. 3:16, Mt. 10:2, Lk. 6:14). At Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter is the first one who names him “Christ” or “Messiah” (Mk. 8:39, Mt. 16:16, Lk. 9:20). Matthew states that Peter is the first disciple that Jesus calls (Mt. 4:18). Matthew has Jesus call Peter “the Rock” on whom God will build the church. Peter is the spokesperson for the disciples in the experience we call the Transfiguration (Mk. 9, Mt. 17, Lk. 9). Luke has Jesus say to Peter at the Last Supper, “When once you have turned back, strengthen your brethren” (Lk. 22:32). John portrays the disciples as ready to abandon Jesus after the miraculous feeding of the multitude episode and portrays Jesus saying to Peter: “Do you also wish to go away?” To which Peter responds: “Lord, to whom can we go, you have the words of eternal life?” (John 6:68).
When we search the entire New Testament, Peter emerges at the center of the Jesus experience, yet there is clearly ambivalence in the biblical portrait of Peter. Peter also denies, Peter wavers, Peter turns again, Peter’s blindness to the meaning of Jesus is not removed easily or quickly, but when the story is told in episode after episode in the gospel tradition, it becomes clear that Peter is the clue to whatever the meaning of Easter is. Peter is the first one who sees. Peter opens the eyes of others to see. Peter strengthens his brethren.
So perhaps we ought to read every Peter story in the gospels as a resurrection story. Peter who walks on the water to Jesus, but who then begins to sink. Jesus has to lift him back and asks, “Peter, why did you doubt?” Peter, who after his Caesarea Philippi confession proceeds to define Jesus in terms of his own needs and limited vision and receives the rebuke, “Get thee behind me Satan!” Peter, who in John’s gospel refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet and is told that unless Jesus washes his feet, Peter has no part in him. Then Peter blurts out, “Lord, not my feet only” and invites Jesus to wash him all over.
If we can escape the imprisonment of biblical literalism, in which so much of the Christian story has been captured for so long, then we become free to see things we have never seen before. Take, for example, Mark’s story of Jesus healing the blind man from Bethsaida. I submit that this is not a miracle story at all, but rather a parable about the conversion of Peter (Mk. 8:22-30). Recall three things about this story. First, it comes immediately prior to Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus is indeed the Christ. Following that confession Jesus first applauds Peter for his insight and then rebukes him for not understanding his own words. Second, Peter hails from Bethsaida. Third, the curing of this man’s blindness does not come all at once, but rather it comes in stages, just as Peter’s understanding of Jesus seems to have done. At first we are told that the blind man from Bethsaida sees “trees walking” and only later when Jesus has laid his hands on him a second time and has looked at him “intently” was his real sight ultimately created and he was enabled “to see.” Luke says that after peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus looked on him (intently?) and Peter wept bitterly. The resurrection, whatever it was, appears to have been an experience that altered the angle of vision and enabled the disciples to see in Jesus something they had never seen in anyone before. Those who claimed that they had seen the Lord in resurrected glory were clearly not saying that they saw the physical Jesus resuscitated to life. They saw Jesus rather as a God presence. They saw Jesus as the life of God breaking into human consciousness. They saw the love of God mediated through a human life. They saw the being of God manifested in the fullness of Jesus’ being. It was not physical sight that is being described so much as it was insight or second sight.
Peter appears, however, to have been the first one who saw resurrection and that seeing did not come easily. He had to push against the limits of his understanding of reality, but when Peter’s eyes were opened, he opened the eyes of others. Peter, when you are converted, strengthen your brethren.
So our analysis of the resurrection experience yields its first clue. Whatever the resurrection was, Peter stood in the center of it. Once we grasp this insight, every Peter story in the gospels becomes a resurrection story and suddenly the literal blinders of the ages are lifted from our eyes and we can begin to read the gospels with a radically new and different understanding. The resurrection is not so much what happened at Easter, it is what happened first in the life of Peter and then in the lives of the disciples.
So our first clue comes by examining the role of Peter. We will walk through Peter in order to penetrate the mystery and to embrace the power of Easter.
Next, we will seek to answer the “where” question and there face the rival resurrection claims found in the gospels themselves. Did Resurrection dawn in Galilee or did it dawn in Jerusalem? So stay tuned.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
Mark Dickinson, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I recall reading recently a request from a follower asking if you have ever considered producing a TV program.  Frankly, I don’t think a TV program is effective for “this form of teaching/lectures.”  However, over the last month I have discovered an excellent educational organization, The Great Courses.  I do not know what business conditions apply to producing lecture/courses for them (the religion courses that I purchase are all presented by excellent lecturers, including Professor Amy-Jill Levine, Professor Bart D. Ehrman and Professor Emeritus James Hall.)  Although I’m almost certain that a Bishop easily qualifies as a professor equivalent.  Regardless, I am certain that your courses would outsell almost all of its contemporary (traditional) religious programs-and I would be one of your biggest customers.  Anyway I wanted to pass this information along.  Their website is at www.aboutgreatcourses.com.
Answer:
Dear Mark, 

I am an avid fan of the Great Courses series produced by The Teaching Company in Virginia.  Founded by a Harvard graduate, Tom Rollins, they get the best professors from the best universities in the United States and Great Britain to record these programs, enabling them to teach far beyond the walls of their particular universities. I would guess that I have taken over 50 of their courses in Astrophysics, Physics, Biology, Math, Chemistry, History, Music and Art, as well as the courses in Religion that you mention I love them and recommend them all the time. 

Since my career has been in the parish churches as rector and in a diocese as bishop, I don’t fit their format, but I am a happy consumer.  I take about ten of the Teaching Company’s courses a year.  I take their DVD courses when I am running on my treadmill for four miles each morning.  I take their CD courses when I am driving, hiking, cooking and shaving.  My goal in life is to be an educated man.  The Teaching Company helps me walk toward that goal. 

~John Shelby Spong





Announcements

Bishop Spong to be honored!

Breaking through confined and narrow theological structures has been John Shelby Spong’s life work.  He has brought thousands of grateful people on the journey with him; people of faith, people who doubt, but all people with serious religious and intellectual inclinations. 

Since his retirement as Bishop of the Diocese of Newark in 2000, Jack Spong has continued articulating his point of view all over the world.  In his writing, his lectures, his preaching, he asks his listeners to open their minds to scientific reality, their hearts to compassion for one another and their souls to the love of a God not bound by narrow interpretation.  Bishop Spong’s themes have not been without controversy.  The slings and arrows of religious dogmatism have been plentiful.  With the unfailing support of his wife, Christine, however, as a pair they have been unafraid to keep educating. 

To honor their efforts and to perpetuate progressive religious scholarship and experience, family, friends and admirers of Jack and Christine want to establish a lecture series, to be named the John Shelby Spong Lectureship, to be housed at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, NJ, the home parish for the Spongs. 

For more information, contact:  Marie-Charlotte Patterson, Parish Administrator at St. Peter’s Church, Morristown. 973 538 0555 Ext. 10 

Announcements from the Publishers 

Read what Bishop Spong has to say about A Joyful Path Progressive Christian Spiritual Curriculum for Young Hearts and Minds: "The great need in the Christian church is for a Sunday school curriculum for children that does not equate faith with having a pre-modern mind. The Center for Progressive Christianity has produced just that. Teachers can now teach children in Sunday school without crossing their fingers. I endorse it wholeheartedly." 

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