The Gospel of John is one of the most beautifully written gospels. It stands in Greco-Roman multiculturalism. But what I want to talk about the clashing cultural beliefs about death and afterlife in John’s community. I will use the example of the Beloved Disciple and Doubting Thomas. They make the case for counter positions. This is not just a historical exercise of reconstructing this morning. It also reflects a deep divide and compromise.
Celsus, a non-Christian writer, criticized the appearance accounts of the risen Jesus. He actually mocks Christians.
If Jesus had wanted to demonstrate his power was truly divine, he ought to have appeared to those who maltreated him and to the one who condemned him, and to all everywhere.
Celsus makes a point that I thought as kid when I heard the Easter season resurrection readings each Sunday. Why didn’t Jesus just appear to the high priests, Pilate, and the masses in Jerusalem that chose Barabbas over himself?
Let me explain: The community of John, somewhere in Asia Minor such as Edessa or in Syria, is composed of Greek-speaking Jews and Greek converts. The appearance accounts of the post-mortem Jesus risen from the dead were a terrifying prospect. In Matthew, the women at the tomb are told by angels to “stop fearing.” And the second apparition of Jesus, some of the assembled disciples are doubtful.
Even before Jesus appearance in the upper room, the Beloved Disciple runs to tomb and looks into see Jesus’ funeral shroud thrown aside into a bundle but observes the funeral napkin rolled up neatly. He places his faith in Jesus and his words without seeing the risen Christ. In today’s gospel, the disciples neither fear nor doubt when Jesus appears in the upper room. I always thought it might the case of suddenly facing the risen Jesus with feelings of guilt and shame over abandoning him or Peter denying him three times. From that encounter, the Beloved Disciple and the disciples on Easter Sunday are full of faith trying to convince Doubting Thomas of their experience. Thomas was not present during that resurrection appearance, and he expresses doubt. The resurrected dead body makes no sense to him. What is a clue to the gospel today is Thomas’ need for a physical demonstration of the physical reality of Jesus.
In Luke’s story of Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is not merely a ghost without flesh and bones. When they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, Jesus says,
Look at my hands and feet that I am myself. Touch and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. But they were still incredulous. (Lk. 24: 39-41)
It was logical for the disciples to believe that Jesus had died and thus they were now experiencing a ghost or the soul of Jesus separated from his body.The community of John suffered division among its members—the primary group affirming that Jesus really died in the flesh. The other group asserted that Jesus did not have a real fleshy body on either side of death, either on the cross or after burial. They denied the reality of the earthly and physical Jesus or the resurrected Jesus. In 2 John v.7, a letter from that same community that wrote the fourth gospel mentions deceivers who have left the community and “who do not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” This is the later community who claimed Thomas as their apostle. We have writings from this group of Christians: The Gospel of Thomas and The Acts of Thomas. Some speculations went as far to deny that Jesus died on the cross, it was an apparition, not real flesh and blood man.
Many Christians at the time of the writing of John’s Gospel, somewhere between 90-100 CE, some 70 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and well after the death of the all Jesus’ immediate disciples, had conflicting views of the afterlife. Early Christianity proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus yet it inherited traditions of a variety of religious notions of the afterlife, few of which included the resurrection. Some included the ascension of Jesus, angelic body of Jesus, and the exalted and transformed body of Jesus,
On one side of the afterlife, there is a group of Jews that held to resurrection of the body at the end of time. This notion comes from the ancient Persian notions of the end of time in which God will resurrect the dead and unite the body and soul for a final judgment. This seems to be held by the followers of Jesus and some of the Pharisees such as St. Paul.
The prevalent Greek notion stresses the soul over the body. Many Christians held Jesus had risen from the dead as a spiritual being, in a spiritual body of light. For them, the body was corruptible, mutable and mortal flesh, while the soul, the spiritual body, was eternal. The earthly body was bonded to the material body, and it weighed down the soul. Upon death of the body, the soul was released to go to God. For those emphasizing the soul, the post-resurrection body of Jesus is something other than the very same flesh in which he was crucified. Both the resurrection of the body and the release of the spiritual body were two methods that early Christians tired to describe Jesus arisen from the dead.
Doubting Thomas is described as not having faith (apistos) in the tale of the physical resurrection of Jesus from the grave. There is division between the immediate disciples of Jesus who have experienced Jesus as fleshy human being, now resurrected, and Thomas who holds an alternative position of the release of the spiritual body of glory.
If the disciples had said to the absent Tomas, “We have seen the spirit of the Lord,” there would be no problem. There are many common stories of ghostly appearances in the Greco-Roman world. For Thomas, the body was the negative accompaniment of earthly life, and death was release of the spiritual body from its limitations. The post-mortem soul could participate in all embodied functions such as eating and joy.
But the disciples in the upper room said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” meaning in the same physical body with which he died. Thomas and his later faction of Christian community hold that the body traps the soul. He is weary of any talk about the fleshy existence of the risen Jesus. Greeks believed very much in an immortal soul.
Yet John’s community is different from the other communities which developed gospels. It affirms in the opening hymn that we recite during the Christmas Eve service; “the word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Incarnation is about the flesh and blood of a very human Christ.
No cultured Greek would ever ask to stick his hands in the wounds in Jesus’ arms from the spikes or the holes in his feet or the wound in his side from the centurion’s spear.” Would anyone here in Thomas’ position ask the risen Jesus? “Let me put my fingers in the holes in your body from crucifixion.” But does the insistence of Thomas, which we traditionally understand as doubting really doubt as much as holding a different viw of the resurrected Jesus?
The wounds in Jesus body indicate that the earthly fleshy Jesus, who has died, now survives the grave. The retention of the holes in the body of Jesus would not necessarily authenticate that the risen Christ is Jesus who died on the cross. So Thomas asks to touch the risen body, rather than just seeing the risen apparition.
Thomas’ doubts express his not placing faith in Jesus and his words at the resurrection of Lazarus in the tomb. “I am the resurrection and the life; that anyone who has faith in me shall live even if they die.” (Jn. 11:23) Thomas is expressing a position that the resurrection of Jesus is just purely spiritual. He emphasizes the spiritual body of Jesus, not the flesh while the disciples are holding to the resurrected Christ in the flesh. When Jesus appears to Thomas, he has faith in the risen Christ affirming ‘My Lord and My God!”
Let’s step back and review a few points.
The risen Christ is neither a resuscitated body nor a ghost or a spirit. What bodies can go through walls and appear in the midst of the disciples in the upper room!
It is a body that can’t be touched. Jesus says that to Magdalene, “not to cling.”
There are stories in the appearance accounts where the disciples do not easily recognized Jesus until he does something familiar from his earthly life. Mistaken as the gardener by Magdalene, Jesus says “Mary” in a recognized familiar tone for her to respond with “Rabboni.” Or there are the two disciples not recognizing Jesus as he walked with them on the road to Emmaus until he breaks bread with them. Or Jesus on the beach cooking fish when the Beloved Disciple realizes that is the Lord. Then Peter strips down and jumps into the lake and swims to shore. There is something discontinuous as well as continuous with the risen Jesus from his previous fleshly existence.
What we see in the original witnesses is human attempt to make sense what happened on Easter with the cultural stories and notions of death and afterlife various had at their disposal.
But there is a deeper issue that stands at the center of today’s gospel between the Beloved Disciple who looked into the tomb, seeing the rolled napkin and placed his faith in Jesus’ words and the absent Thomas who refused to place his faith in Jesus until the risen Christ asked him to place his hands in the wounds wrought by Roman torture and crucifixion.
For some of the Pharisees and Jesus’ disciples, they believed in the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. It seems Paul believed that when a person died, that person would not be raised until the end of time. And then there was the Greek position that the soul was trapped in the body, and when a person died, the soul was released to join God.
Both positions have come to be our modern Christian position on death. At memorial services, we speak of the spirit of the deceased joining God. Many of us have had the experience of the dying of a dear one, dreaming about her or sensing the presence of the deceased through something remembered or a song or an anniversary or place that generates a vivid memory. The deceased person is physically absent but present to us, and that is real. Something of our life force, spiritual energy, or soul joins with God and Christ.
But God created us with bodies, where we learn and appreciate a physical world. Christ too was incarnated in the flesh and experienced what it means to be human, experience our joy and our pains. We believe that the material universe was created for an intended purpose to be joined to God in unimaginable ways. This is the vision of the future for all of us—spirit and physical flesh united and recreated anew with God’s flesh and Spirit.
Early followers of Jesus proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus as the foundation of their faith; and it is certainly the foundation of my discipleship in following the Christ. Thomas’ position of a spiritual resurrection of Christ was probably the understanding of Paul in his vision of the resurrected and glorified body of the risen Christ.
It says to me that both the Beloved Disciples and Thomas were each partially correct in some fashion, offering us a vision of the risen Christ who united physical body with spirit. They were attempting to comprehend what happened Easter morning within their own languages of the afterlife. Both the followers of the Beloved Disciple and the disciples of Thomas hope to share the resurrected life of Christ. Some looked to an afterlife with fleshy bodies and others imagined spiritual bodies like angels. We will answer that question in the afterlife or something more unimaginable than we can conceive. It maybe the new speculations will talk about the quantum body of the crucified and resurrected Christ. All these are speculations, our attempts to understand something beyond our comprehension.
The tensions played out between these two perspectives leading the Christian movement to a clear proclamation of the real fleshiness of Jesus during his life and in his afterlife. It stands as sign of our fleshy connection to the resurrected Christ and our fleshy connection to the pain and sufferings of people, other life, and the Earth. We all shared a fleshy origin, and our flesh and bones are important to our spiritual journey and facing our mortality.
But for me I recognize this story of doubting Thomas. I recognize the disciples on the first night of Easter and on the eighth day after. I look to the resurrected Christ who carries the wounds of his crucifixion and all other crucifixions continued today. The world needs answers to our crucifixions and crucified Earth. The world looks to us for something tangible for our world to hope. It is the mystery of resurrected life with the wounds that Christ carries. God cares not only for the crucifixion of Jesus but all crucifixions whether it is brokenness of homelessness, the woundedness of poverty or mental or physical illness, or the human ravages of the Earth and its degradation, the world is looking to us to turn the passion of Christ and all crosses into compassionate change.
I look to Christ’s resurrection as the source of compassion for the world. Compassion is the inner message of the resurrected Christ. We are called to live our faith in the risen Christ who says, “Blessed are those who have not seen but placed their faith in me!” (Jn 20:29)