What happened to Jesus? (continued)

(CCBlogs users note: For some reason CCBlog links are not going to the correct post. "Drip, drip, drip" can be found here.)

(This continues the thought of the Reflections post below on April 16, "What happened to Jesus?").

One can, of course, take the conclusion that the Easter experience was one of visions and apparitions of Jesus a step further. Some would say this is all Jesus ever was. The voices have been slowly but steadily growing more numerous who say Jesus never existed as a flesh-and-blood human being. Jesus was never other than in people's heads. Personally, from my own reading and thinking on the subject, I have to say it is possible. Certainly the modern "quest of the historical Jesus," as Albert Schweitzer called it, has raised far more questions than it has answered. To borrow Churchill's phrase, Jesus has become "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma".

Perhaps the simplest and most helpful explanation of the problem comes from New Testament scholar Robert Price. What Jesus research has produced, says Price, is too many Jesuses. No one has been able to construct a picture of a historic Jesus that can encompass all the various personality traits, theologies, and social agenda that scholarship has uncovered. It's as if we are at the end of the old TV show "To Tell the Truth". When the host asks the real "John Doe" to stand up, each of the candidates make a move as if to get up until one finally does. In this case, however, the real Jesus won't stand up. We just get a lot of shuffling from the candidates.

The explanation that Price and others have come to is that there is, in fact, no "real Jesus" to be found. The bumper crop of Jesus possibilities is the result of his being a constantly evolving figure in the literary and kerygmatic imaginations of the early Jesus movement. One theory is that rather than Jesus being a real person spiritualized into the Christ, he actually have started as a mythical and heavenly figure that was the central character in a great mythical salvation drama of death and rebirth. Over time the stage moved from heaven to "history" and the cast found their feet planted here on earth. Indeed, without too much difficulty, one can imagine the Jesus Paul talks about as just such a mythological character. Hence, the near absence in Paul's letters of any references to Jesus' "earthly" life and ministry as one finds it in the gospels.

When I first heard of this theory it seemed, of course, radical and revolutionary. If accepted, if "true," the church would never be the same. That's a common reaction of both proponents and opponents of a mythical Jesus. Now, however, I wonder if it really makes all that much difference. The historicity of all ancient figures is pretty fuzzy. We have our Alexanders and our Caesars. But even the lives of the greatest rulers and generals are missing many of the details modern biographers want and those we have often appear suspiciously like romantic embroidery.

As we move to lower levels of prominence, the historical reconstruction process becomes nearly impossible. And ancient religious and philosophical figures are several levels below that of royalty. Do we really know anything about Socrates' teaching, for example, given that virtually our only source is a hardly objective Plato? Historians today cast doubt on what we really know about any of the great religious figures of history: the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, as well as Jesus. The fact is that all we have to deal with today is the religious traditions that trace their origins to the stories, historically accurate or not, surrounding these figures. We know there was an explosion, but there is so little left of the building it's doubtful we'll ever know what really caused it.

So the historical Jesus is likely to remain hidden—perhaps forever—in the fog of the ancient past. But what if a convincing mythological proto-Jesus were found in some yet undiscovered document, thus shifting the argument in a non-historical direction? Again, I suspect, it wouldn't make all that much difference. After the media splash, those of a fundamentalist persuasion would remain unconvinced and those more liberal would repeat what they already say, which is that it's "the story" that matters, and the philosophy and ethics that goes with it.

And that, of course, is where contemporary Christianity's problem lies. The question is not what is or isn't historically believable about the Bible and the Jesus story. Rather, the question is whether we really care about them anymore. "The story" (which actually unites Christian conservatives and liberals more that they realize) comes to us from very distant time—from another world, really. The attempts of preachers and teachers to make it "relevant" are now so strained that many have basically given up on it. For those that haven't the results are often laughable and pathetic. Verses and texts are seized willy-nilly to frame this or that teaching on marriage, sex, child rearing, personal finance, and countless other contemporary topics, many of which ancient people couldn't have even imagined let alone had an opinion about.

And all this focus on contemporary life issues in the church is a not very effective screen for the growing disinterest among Christians in the classic themes of sin and salvation, the mystery of God and eternal life. We simply live in a different world than did our ancient spiritual ancestors. Do Jesus and the Bible generally have anything to say to us about life and death and the meaning of existence? Of course, but then so do many sources of ancient wisdom—but it’s found only after sifting with difficulty through much that is irrelevant or incomprehensible to us. And even if we concede that the biblical and Christian traditions have insight and wisdom unique in the ancient world, it still doesn't mean they can provide us an overarching philosophy or even mythology with which we can understand and organize our lives today.

This is the Jesus the church needs to find today, whether historical or not—a Jesus whose story and message can give inspiration and meaning, purpose and comfort to people living in a confusing and evolving post-modern world. For the contemporary church, as for the women at the Markan tomb, this Jesus isn’t here. What’s uncertain is where or whether this Jesus can be found.

Sunday Reflections for April 19, 2009: "What happened to Jesus?"

(Note to CCBlog users: For some reason you are being directed here, when my most recent post is actually here. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16, Gospel for Easter Day B)

“Hey! Where’s Jesus?” Alone among the gospels, Mark’s account of Easter has no appearance of Jesus. Instead, women come to the tomb and find it empty, except for an angel who scares the daylights out of them. Where’s Jesus? “He is not here.” But he will appear to his disciples in Galilee, the women are told. And with that they flee in terror.

How can you have Easter without an appearance of the risen Jesus? In the ecumenical three-year lectionary, Mark provides the Gospel texts most of the time in Year B (the current year). There is an option on Easter Day, however, to choose John’s Easter story instead, thus avoiding the awkwardness of a Jesus-less Easter. Another option—chosen by the ancient church—has has been rejected by the modern church, and that is to add a new ending to Mark in which Jesus does appear. There are multiple alternative endings to Mark but most scholars agree none of them are original to Mark’s gospel. It seems pretty clear that there was some unhappiness in the early church about Mark’s version of Easter, hence the attempts to “improve” his story.

In the interest of historical honesty, most recent versions of the Bible now end Mark as we see it here (perhaps putting one or more of the alternative endings in a footnote). But the main reason Mark’s Easter story carries weight (and thus ought to be chosen over the John alternate) is that New Testament scholarship is nearly unanimous in believing Mark was the first of the Bible’s gospels to be written. In fact, it’s pretty obvious that the authors of both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of their own gospels (the author of John may also have had Mark in front of him but that’s less clear). Thus they both added appearances of Jesus to the Easter story they found in Mark.

So why does Jesus not appear in Mark’s Easter story? It’s hard to imagine Mark’s author left out such a detail if he knew of it. And therefore, as surprising as it might be, it seems likely that he was unaware of traditions or stories about Jesus walking around and talking to people on Easter. Nor was Paul, who wrote perhaps twenty years before Mark and who never mentions it in his letters. Thus it was not until the writing of Matthew and Luke, a half century after Jesus’ death, that there were written accounts of Jesus appearing to his followers on Easter.

How could that be? One clue is in Paul’s letters. Paul insists that, like the other apostles, he too has seen Jesus, and he implies there is no difference between his experience and theirs. The word he uses repeatedly in talking of all the apostles’ experiences of the risen Jesus is “appear” (“last of all…he appeared also to me”). The Greek word translated here is the one used in talking of what happens in a vision or a dream (a relatively common subject in ancient writing). Paul never describes his experience of Jesus though he does speak of being “caught up” into heaven, again obviously in some kind of visionary experience. Also, the stories in Acts about Paul’s conversion (but not written by him) describe his experience as being a vision of Jesus.

As a consequence, many scholars have concluded that the experiences which launched the church after Jesus’ death were visions of him raised and in heaven. Very likely the first to have such a vision was Simon Peter. (Interestingly, while this is said in multiple places to have happened, there are no New Testament stories describing Jesus appearance to Peter.) Other visionary experiences then followed, perhaps even with groups. The appearance to Paul apparently was one of the last of these. His need to assert it indicates, however, that some in the church may have questioned its authenticity.

So what do we make of the stories in the other gospels of Jesus’ Easter appearances? They are certainly more vivid, dramatic, and, we might say, “tangible”. Yet this is what has made these stories difficult for many people to swallow, especially in recent years. The physicality of the risen Jesus does raise all sorts of questions and problems. This bothers some people and not others. In any case, appreciation of Mark’s Easter story and the experience of Paul show there is more than one way to faithfully understand the resurrection of Jesus.

Many conservative Christians today insist on the literal truth of everything in the Bible. Surprisingly (perhaps), this was not the case in the pre-modern ancient and medieval church. In commentaries and preaching from those periods, metaphorical and symbolic interpretations of scripture were both popular and often considered of more value. Reading these today, they often strike us as farfetched and even bizarre. Yet they actually simply continued a tradition that long preceded them. Our concern for separating “fact from fiction” and for determining what really happened is a relatively new development and would have struck our nonscientific ancestors as odd and rather pointless.

Personally, I certainly appreciate the Easter stories where Jesus actually shows up (Luke’s “road to Emmaus” is one of my favorites). Historically, however, I do find the idea of visionary experiences of Jesus a more plausible explanation for how the “Jesus movement” got its start. What is important to realize, though, is that Christianity is not based on beliefs about what did or didn’t happen in ancient history. Faith is not based on belief in anyone else’s experience, whether it’s someone we know personally or someone who lived centuries ago. Faith can only be based on our own experience.

Paul, again, is of help here. Never does he use his experience of the risen Jesus as a reason for others to have faith (he does use it to insist on his credentials to be an apostle). Rather, “faith comes by hearing” the words of scripture and the words of preaching and witness. Or as Luther says, faith happens “in our ears” and is itself a miracle and gift of grace. And what faith does is awaken us to the presence of the risen Christ within us, rather than one wandering around a garden in ancient Palestine. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is what is important, Paul declares.

Did God raise Jesus from the dead? Is Christ alive? As Mark implies and as Paul says, this is not a question of history. Rather, it is an existential question that we can only answer for ourselves, and for our world, today. Whether Jesus lives here and now—however you understand that—is the only question about him that really matters. “He is not here” in this tomb, the angel says. He’s gone on ahead.