Harry Attridge and John Hare discuss faith, uncertainty, and the power of emotion in John 20:1-18. The text is appointed for Easter Day, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Seeing and Believing (Easter Day)
Voiceover Voice:
We, too, are being invited into that relationship, putting ourselves there with the Beloved Disciple, a step or two ahead of Peter.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. I’m your host, Helena Martin. Every week, we invite you to listen in as two of our faculty at Yale Divinity School chat about the Revised Common Lectionary.
If you’re preaching this Sunday, you’re trying to keep one foot in Holy Week while stretching the other one toward the Resurrection as you prepare your Easter sermon. It’s not an easy task. And we’re here to help you do that.
This episode, we have Harold Attridge, Sterling Professor of Divinity, and John Hare, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology. They’re discussing John 20:1-18, which is appointed for Easter Day in Year C. The text is read for you by student Julian Sieber.
Julian Sieber:
John 20:1-18.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, `I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
John Hare:
Harry, as a biblical scholar, how does this passage about Peter and the other disciple at the tomb, how does it strike you?
Harry Attridge:
Right. This is an incredibly complex and really interesting passage.
We have two sets of interactions going on here. We have Peter in the Beloved Disciple going to the tomb on Easter morning, and then the encounter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene a little bit thereafter.
And, in all of the stories in John 20, there’s some encounter going on between the resurrected Jesus and people who have been close to him during his earthly ministry. And in some ways, these encounters meant, I think, to suggest something to us about how we encounter the resurrected Christ. And I think we need to keep that in mind as we read all of them.
All of these encounters, too, say something about sensory perception: seeing things, and believing; touching, or wanting to touch; being denied the possibility of touch, or actually being invited to touch. There all sorts of ways in which sense is involved here. And I think that has something to do with how we’re supposed to reflect on our relationship to the resurrected Christ, too.
But to focus for a minute on Peter and the Beloved Disciple. That’s interesting because this is the only account of the Beloved Disciple coming to the tomb. We have reference in the Gospel of Luke to Peter responding to the claim of women to have found an empty tomb and checking it out. But it doesn’t mention John or anybody else going with him.
So I think the evangelist is setting up something and. And setting up something about the encounter with the resurrected Christ, but also saying something about differences within his own community, perhaps, or within early Christianity generally about how the resurrected Christ is perceived.
And Peter does not come off very well. He generally does not come off very well in John, until the very end, when he’s given the responsibility to feed the lambs and feed the sheep. He’s not given the keys, he’s given responsibility. So I think the evangelist is probably saying something here about the way in which ecclesiastical leadership is developing in his day and saying, “Yes, indeed, I think that Peter and what he stands for is fine. But he’s not the ideal.” And the ideal is represented by the Beloved Disciple, who comes, and before having any personal encounter with the resurrected Christ, believes.
What does he believe? That’s an interesting question. Does he simply believe the report that the women have provided, that the tomb is empty? Or does he believe that Jesus has been resurrected. It’s a little bit ambiguous and ambiguity is something that the evangelist likes to use. But I think he’s suggesting here that there’s a deeper belief, not simply belief in a report, but belief in the presence of the resurrected Christ.
And he believes because he’s seen something that can count for him as evidence. Would it count as evidence in a court of law? Maybe not. But it counts for him as evidence because he already has a relationship with Christ. He’s had that relationship, and it’s been described since the Last Supper scene in chapter 13. There at Christ’s side at that moment, there at the cross when Christ is dying, and here now, when finally Christ overcomes death.
And I think we, too, are being invited into that relationship by hearing this story and by putting ourselves there with the Beloved Disciple, a step or two ahead of Peter.
On the other side, we have Mary. Mary, who sees what? Someone she thinks is a gardener. And she’s crying. She’s weeping. She’s very emotional. Emotions are a big deal in John, and they’re dealt with in interesting ways.
Mary is emotional here until she does what? Until she hears her name being called. And she’s like the sheep in chapter 10 who hear the voice of the shepherd calling them by name. And when she hears that someone, she turns and sees and recognizes who it is that’s calling her: not a gardener, but the resurrected Christ.
And I think one of the things that this is suggesting is: Be open to the possibility, you hearers, that your name, too, is being called in a way that you might not expect, by people you might take to be someone other than the resurrected Christ. But Christ is there with you. Hear that call, and respond to it. So those are some of my initial responses. I could go on for a long time on that. But what do you think, John? What do you make of these?
John Hare:
Something that’s puzzled me about this. John gets there first, and he looks in, but he doesn’t go in, and Peter goes in. And that’s stressed. And then, when John looks in, and he sees and he believes, and then the text says, “For they didn’t understand that the resurrection was coming.” So there’s some distinction between the believing and the understanding.
So you ask, “What did John believe? What did the Beloved Disciple believe?” My thought is: Jesus has just said to them, “I’m going to go away. And then I’m going to come back.” And perhaps what he believed was the Jesus was coming back. And the fact that he didn’t understand. That’s something different that he hadn’t yet got.
It’s interesting. In the Greek, ēdeisan for “understand.” It’s the same word as “see,” but it’s in the perfect tense: what you have seen in such a way that you’ve really got it. And that, he doesn’t yet have.
So this faith that he does have isn’t yet a kind of objective certainty. There’s a substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not…
Harry Attridge:
I certainly think there’s a play on “seeing” and the different ways, the different levels of seeing.
There’s the physical sight and intellectual sight. And at this goes on earlier on in the text, with the healing of the man born blind and a number of other places where sight language is used. And one of the things we’re called upon to see throughout the text is who it is that’s hanging there on the cross. And just looking at a bloody body is not really seeing things because you don’t see the glory unless you see and understand what’s going on. So, there definitely is that play going on in the ways in which sight is used as a metaphor for a deeper appreciation and a deeper insight into what’s being experienced.
I think the business about the resurrection, not knowing how scripture is to be interpreted, etc., is in some ways an explanation of why Peter doesn’t get it. But it probably also reflects on the Beloved Disciple and the fact that he’s not fully there yet. I don’t think anybody is fully there yet throughout chapter 20. Even doubting Thomas, when he says, “My Lord and my God,” he’s using language that, in a contemporary sense in someone like Philo of Alexandria, is an inferior form of talking about the truly transcendent God.
And Jesus has identified himself with that transcendent God earlier on in the text, and the reader knows it. And so I think the reader can say, “Ah, yeah, even Thomas gets it, but not fully.” So I think everybody is moving toward that full relationship that the gospel wants to inculcate between Jesus and the believer. And no one is quite there yet.
John Hare:
I think we’re told in this passage something about what faith is like, the faith before understanding. And I’m a great follower of Kierkegaard. And he defines faith as an objective uncertainty, “an objective uncertainty, held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness.”
So you’ve got those things together. You’ve got the most passionate inwardness, but you’ve also got objective uncertainty. And I think that’s where John was.
Harry Attridge:
I think that’s a very useful way of describing that. It’s interesting that faith and believing—certainly it’s “believing” more than the language of faith. “Faith” is kind of Pauline language; “believing” is Johannine language. But “knowing” is also Johannine language.
And how do you come to know something that’s so uncertain? I think John is aware of that because he plays on uncertainty. He plays on ambiguity and forces you to think more deeply about what it is that you think you believe.
I think the whole of the gospel is written not as an evangelist’s text, but as a text to deepen belief and deepen a relationship with the Resurrected One.
John Hare:
But in the meantime for all of us, before we see Christ face to face, there is going to be this element of not understanding.
I’m a philosopher. I think a lot about the relationship between faith and reason. And I think that we have to acknowledge, as faithful people, that there’s a certain kind of certainty that’s not yet available for us. And we shouldn’t be hankering for it. It’s a nostalgia for something that isn’t appropriate for us to want.
Harry Attridge:
Amen to that.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening.
Look back at our feed from the past few days if you’re looking for reflections on the scriptures appointed for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil. And visit YaleBibleStudy.org for lots of Bible resources, including all our past episodes.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is produced by Joel Baden, Kelly Morrissey, and me, Helena Martin. Aidan Stoddart is our editorial and production assistant. Our theme music is by Calvin Linderman. Thanks to the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School, and thank you, Professors Attridge and Hare, for talking us through John’s account of the resurrection.
We’ll be back next week with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
john
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New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
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Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.