“Blessed are those who have not seen”
The dramatic stories of Holy Week lead to the equally dramatic stories of Easter, celebrated this Sunday. If you read my blog post from last week, you might be thinking, “So, I suppose you’re going to say the Easter story is made up, also.” And, of course, the short answer is, “Yes.” But something obviously happened and that’s what we need to explore first. Then, we can turn to the next question, “So what? What meaning does Easter still have for us today?”
As with the stories of Holy Week, we must start by understanding the sources of the Easter stories. For the Easter morning story of the empty tomb, the answer seems to be the gospel of Mark, written approximately forty years after Jesus’ death. Paul, writing about twenty years earlier, never mentions this tradition. Nor do any other non-gospel writings in the New Testament.
I wrote last week that Mark was the first to create a “Jesus story.” Jesus’ life ended with his crucifixion but for Mark, of course, the story of Jesus went on as the risen Lord and Messiah. I believe that it was to convey that truth that led Mark to conclude his gospel with the story of the discovery of the empty tomb.
For many Christians today, the astonishing thing about Mark’s Easter story (which is the Easter gospel this year) is that the risen Jesus makes no appearance. Three women go to the tomb where Jesus had been laid and find the stone “door” rolled away. Inside, they meet “a young man dressed in a white robe” who tells them that Jesus is not here because he has been raised. He directs them to “tell his disciples and Peter” to go to Galilee where they will see him again. They don’t exactly follow his instructions.
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.
And that’s it. No Jesus, no disciples, no joyous reunion. Scholars have made many attempts to explain this odd ending to Mark’s gospel. Perhaps the most likely is that in the wake of the destruction of the Roman-Jewish War, Mark is declaring the Jerusalem/Judean chapter of the Jesus movement to be over. Galilee, symbolizing the bridge between the Jewish and gentile worlds, is now where the risen Jesus is to be “seen.”
It’s obvious that there was dissatisfaction with Mark’s ending. Some manuscripts of Mark have other endings where Jesus does appear, but these are now recognized as additions by later Christian scribes. Matthew and Luke, of course, add appearances of the risen Jesus to Mark’s story (on which their gospels are based), but they are not consistent with each other (or with John).
What this means, then, is that the first account of a physical Jesus appearing on Easter morning is not written until at least a half-century after Jesus’ death. It’s impossible to imagine that such astonishing events would not have been immediately and repeatedly spoken about. The only conclusion, then, is that those stories were first created decades later as part of the early church’s developing proclamation.
So what did happen on Easter? Was Jesus raised from the dead? That answer is (and has always been) in the letters of Paul. His most explicit statement is in 1 Corinthians 15.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ … appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
The Greek word translated “appeared” is one commonly used in the ancient world to refer to experiences in visions or dreams, which were taken seriously and meaningfully. Paul’s own discussion of his experience, and even Luke’s account in Acts of Paul’s Damascus road experience, support such an interpretation. What is significant is that Paul implies his experience of the risen Jesus, late as it was, was of the same type as that of the disciples before him.
Other than Paul’s list, we have no stories of these appearances, not even to Peter (“Cephas”), who was supposedly the first to see the risen Jesus. It’s also possible that the first such experiences were actually among Jesus’ women followers, as the gospels seem to imply. Visions and appearances are subjective experiences, however, and this may explain the element of doubt in the gospel accounts.
In Luke, the women’s empty tomb story is met with skepticism by the disciples. “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” And even when Jesus appears to the disciples themselves, there is uncertainty. “Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering.” In Matthew, Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee with similar results. “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.”
If the Easter experience was that of seeing a physically resurrected Jesus, this doubting makes no sense. But if instead “Easter” was a series of people saying (over a period of weeks, months, or even years, as in the case of Paul) that they had a vision of Jesus alive and in heaven, then the doubting is easily understood. “You say you saw what? I don’t believe it.”
The resurrection story in John’s gospel may point as this problem most directly. He seems to try to preserve the disciples’ reputation by attributing all the doubting to the hapless Thomas. Absent for Jesus’ appearance on Sunday night, when the disciples tell him, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas responds, “I will not believe,” unless he, too, can see the marks of Jesus’ crucifixion on his body.
When Jesus appears again a week later, Thomas gets his wish and believes. Jesus’ response to Thomas’s confession sums up the early church’s dilemma, and that of the church ever since: What if you haven’t had a vision of Jesus?
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
The appearance of a physically raised Jesus makes for good stories. But to take it beyond storytelling only leads to theological conundrums (e.g. where did his raised body go?) and distracts from the real issue of faith: What does it mean now to “see Jesus?”
To return to Paul, he asserts his experience of the risen Jesus (“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”) to justify his claim to be an apostle. He never says people should believe in Jesus because of his experience of seeing him. Where is Jesus now? “You are the body of Christ” he writes. Christ now lives in him and in every disciple, who bear in their lives the “fruits” of Christ’s Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
An obsession with the ancient gospel Easter stories is a way of avoiding the challenge of faith now. “If the Easter stories aren’t true, then there’s nothing to believe in!” Nonsense. Christianity isn’t about believing in incredible stories from two thousand years ago. If Christianity has any value, it is in faith that the God we encounter in the story of Jesus is just as real today.
The truth of that is not obvious, of course. That’s why it’s called faith. Yet that faith is not affirmed by closing our eyes tight and repeating “I believe. I believe.” Rather, faith is affirmed by taking the risk of living by it and experiencing its truth within us and in the world and people around us. Only then may we be able to respond like Mary Magdalene, “I have seen the Lord.”