Disciple Bible Study 23, John Part VIII

Okay, normal, terrible question.

What did the what did the end of John do for you?

New or uh remind you of, or again, always welcome to be bothered by something?

Yeah, in the video, she said something that I mean I've read it before and heard it before, but it didn't strike me the same way, I guess.

If she was talking about how Mary didn't know what to believe, and I thought, I've always had this feeling that if you were there with Jesus, it would be easier.

You would have all the answers, you would know, you would be with you.

It I never thought about the fact that even they, who were there with Jesus, still struggled with what and how to believe.

Well, I that was uh obviously just a dumbfounding experience because nobody had seen uh you know they saw Elijah go to heaven in his uh uh his chariot and uh do things like that.

But you know, um uh there is some.

I think uh I did some reading about that this week, and uh it's um you know the disciples left ran away from Jesus when he was in the garden against Sunday.

They split and run.

Even the young man that was bound in linen uh was naked otherwise, uh, and they grabbed him, he let them have the linen and he went off naked.

So uh it's uh you know, when you and of course and Judas also betrayed Jesus.

So I mean he's like everybody left Jesus.

So now to come to the resurrection, then who gets to be there but the women?

Because the women were faithful to Jesus at the cross.

Okay, even in the Samantic Gospels, they're standing at a distance, whereas in John, they're standing underneath the cross, okay, or alongside it somebody.

Okay, so there's a there's a I think there's a shift in emphasis here that the church has not really uh recognized, and that is Mary, a woman, is the first witness to the resurrection, to the new, to who Jesus really is.

It's the beloved that's the first Christian because he's the one that first believes it's Mary who's the second one.

Well, when she talks to Jesus, well, okay, but when she but she's the one who sees Jesus.

He may be the first Christian, but he does not get to see the divinity, the divine Jesus.

And so, and Jesus gives Mary instructions.

You know, go and tell the disciples and a few other things.

I wish I brought my Bible with me, but anyway.

So there is a leadership role that is given to Mary, that Mary has been denied for 2,000 years.

Okay, so uh, and um, so I think it's important for us to realize that Mary and women just didn't happen to show up.

They had been faithful to Jesus all along, and they continue to be in God, Jesus has honored him by saying, Grow up and be disciples.

And um of course the church didn't look good, but anyway.

They did for 300 years, but after that, there were a couple things that uh kind of came to my mind.

Um I didn't realize the the kind of beginning emphasis on the numerology that continues through the resurrection.

Uh there are three days for the assumption, there are three appearances.

He asked Peter three times if you believe.

Um back over on page uh 186, he said John did not record all the resurrection appearance.

He did not need to.

Other gospels told him Jesus breaking bread and so forth.

I was under the impression that John was not aware of the other gospels, which is why he is different.

Now that may not be true.

And also John is looking for a kind of intimacy, which I didn't hadn't seen there before.

He is looking for an intimate relationship with Christ, which these synoptics, I don't think, seem to seem to do.

Um and the shepherd goes for being Christ to being answered to Peter, and I thought that was kind of interesting.

And I didn't remember that.

Well, you know, when you talk about John and the synoptics and the differences, you know, John's gospel was written decades after the synoptic.

So John has all had all this time to live with the risen Jesus, you know.

And so uh it seems to me that John uh understands more about Jesus than the synoptics because he's had time to think about it.

He's had time to experience God, to experience Jesus.

He's had time to see the wonders that Jesus can work too, he's disciples.

So that may have something to do.

And the uh the speaker said something about uh the disciples did not read the scriptures about him uh being resurrection, but I don't think that was in the old design, was it?

Um no, I think that's probably why in the synoptics Jesus says he's come to fulfill, to fulfill, uh, to sort of deeply resonate or bring to fruition like the unspoken threads.

Yeah.

Yeah, because there's really not a concept of resurrection in the Hebrew Bible.

Well, but uh what there is is in the Bible is if you take the life of Jesus and then uh hand uh like um Moses is going to sacrifice his son of Isaac.

Okay.

Isaac carries the wood that he's going to be sacrificed on himself.

And Abraham, not Moses, Abraham has a knife, which he's going to use to kill him.

Well, there's a parallel to what Jesus did.

That Jesus carried the wood.

Isaac seems to be, he hasn't taught his father at all.

He seems to be a willing participant.

So Jesus willingly gives his life as his father wants him to.

Um the sword of Peter cut off the what, the servant of the high priest or somebody.

And that's you can make a parallel between the knife of Abraham and the knife of Peter.

You know, so um I should have a little broader, but I'm reading a book that takes the Old Testament stories and connects them with the New Testament of Jesus.

And you can see this carryover.

So God has been giving the people signs all along.

They just don't necessarily really understand what they're going to lead to or what they're trying to tell them all the time.

Because as we know what we focus on is what happens today, and then we may think about it and then we may forget about it.

Well, that's what I'm asking you all.

I just I guess in a way uh it was more like a feeling of an experience of what it must have been like.

You know, and uh but also then later that that she was something you know that she wasn't honored by the other disciples uh disciples and that also.

Yeah.

We don't know what happened very badly when that's we don't know.

We don't know, yeah.

Well there has been some research on doing that, but anyway, I'm not gonna go into it because uh right now the church is ignoring it, but she um she she went into exile as far as they know.

And uh the information that I've read uh about a group of women who did a lot of research on the topic uh was that she and um some other what it was, in the Mediterranean.

And anyway, they ended up in southern France.

And I don't remember the name of the city, but Mary went when she arrived in southern France, she went to a cabin and she spent all of her time there, praying and people coming and so forth.

And Elizabeth was supposed, according to this, was supposed to be with him, and he became a bishop in that annual.

And uh so that's but so but you know, do you believe what these women have researched?

Because if you go to Southern France, you will find a lot of devotion to marry me, right?

Well, the uh the other thing that that comes across is that faith has to be very intimate.

Faith.

It has to be very intimate, and I think that's what John's message is about.

Yeah, it's supposed to be transformative.

Yeah, yeah.

She was also called the Apostle to the Apostles, though.

That's right.

And she's I guess those are some of those books that are not writings that are not maybe the Dog Hammerstall, whatever those things were.

Um writings that have things like that in them.

They're in their book of Mary.

There's a couple of um Gospels of Mary um that are in a collection of works called the Pseudopigrapha or the New Testament Apocrypha.

So those are two different collections.

So they didn't there's a gospel of Mary too.

Yeah.

So they didn't make it into the canon, and they're probably written in the late second, third centuries at the earliest, so they would be after all the materials that we have.

And we don't know really if they're um written by Mary or a woman at all.

I mean, we just don't we don't really know.

But uh the Gospel of Mary recounts Mary talking with the apostles.

In other words, she's actually telling them things that Jesus had told her.

And of course, Peter says, Well, you know, he didn't tell us that, so what, you know, he gets been out of shake about it.

And I forget who it is that tells me one of the other apostles tells him, Peter, get over it.

You know.

But uh, and some of those uh, especially with the Gospel of Mary, uh some of those um pieces of mythic, you know, which I think the first six pages of her gospel is missing, and then they have some some a page or two, you know, that they had found.

And they did that, they found those in Naghmadi, I think in Egypt.

Yeah, and when they found uh they found um what 5070 or something like that, uh, documents that uh were written.

Um some of those predated what we are have already found, but they don't go back to the beginning.

Well you know, it was a very patriarchal society, so it's no surprise that uh he was not at the center of things.

And and Peter, you know.

Um Jesus passed everything on to Peter, so you know patriarchy was going to be like well.

Yeah, well, really in about the first 300 years of the church, there were women priests, there were women bishops, there were deacons, there were teachers, there were missionaries, until Constantine.

And then when Constantine got involved with the church, then the guys began to follow the Roman way of doing things and that was discriminating in this woman.

You know, also the early bishops weren't necessarily appointed by the church, they were appointed by the people.

They were what they were appointed by the people uh in the church.

Yeah, right.

And also they had gifts, they had spiritual gifts too.

Like Phoebe was used, you know, she was trusted so much that she took the letter to the Romans to Paul who was in Rome.

Well, let's come back to John, shall we?

It's helpful, I think, to know that when you hear that the stone is rolled away, that it's not like a boulder that ancient crypts and you can see these in Jerusalem.

We saw one in Jordan.

Um, it's really just a stone in the shape of a circle.

So it's it's meant to be a doorway.

Uh, and you just push it and roll it away.

It's really there to um not permanently seal a tomb like a boulder would, but again, it's it's a it's a different kind of doorway.

Um the women aren't really sure how they're going to move the stone, but again, it's not a gigantic boulder, it's a ramp, it's it's a disc that you could push to seal a tomb so that animals couldn't get in.

It's still heavy, but it's rollable.

Um, and sometimes we don't know what to visualize.

But you know, most tombs aren't ginormous things.

They're laid out to have an opening that's probably like 30 inches square.

You could get in if you crawled.

It's not a really it's not a room like this.

Uh the way tombs usually work is that there's sort of two rooms.

There's a room just big enough to put a body in on a slab, and then there's an adjacent room that has like niches, so that once the body is decomposed, you could take the bones and put them in a box called an ossuary, or you could stack them in a niche, and then the family could use the whole tomb, you know, because bones take up a lot less space, especially when arranged, than a body does.

So once one body is decomposed, um you may not go in there till you need the tomb again, and then you'd move the other body into the niche.

If that does that make sense, um it's not quite like a columnarium, but it's a bone stack, and and people did this for a long, long time.

You can find this in in Spain and Portugal as well.

Um there's this really interesting scene that um, you know, we end up doing this on Easter, and I, you know, I don't really know what else the Easter message is.

Uh so you probably hear it from me on Easter, is that Mary doesn't recognize the resurrected Jesus, which is really interesting, and it's hard to know why that is.

Does he actually look different?

Or is she looking for some picture?

John's got this picture, which is great.

This is the picture we saw in Israel just on the roadside.

Pass it around.

Don't touch the screen, just hold the very edge.

This is the picture of what a tomb, you know, of a normal-looking tomb uh around the time of Jesus that we just happened to drive by in Israel.

Um, of course, if you go to the Holy Sepulchre, uh it was like that, and what happened is Constantine actually um sort of strip mined all around it so that the tomb was like a room.

It was built into a cliff, but he leveled the cliff all around it to kind of make it a freestanding room, and then he built a mausoleum around it that's called the eticule.

So you don't see that in Jerusalem, but that's likely just what's great in this area, and I think this is true in Turkey as well.

You know, civilization is so old that they're just finding stuff all over the place, and and again, they've built this highway and and there it is.

But other people didn't recognize Jesus either.

And that's really important, you know.

You see it in Luke as well, that those two guys don't recognize him on the walk to Emmaus until he breaks the bread.

So it it it makes people wonder did did Jesus um somehow cloud their understanding, or again, were they just not expecting him, so they couldn't see who was right in front of them.

Did they not notice him until he broke the bread because maybe he had a specific way he broke the bread that other people didn't do?

You know, like he had a particular, like he held it up over his head or something.

You know, we don't we don't really know.

Um what is interesting though is that Mary, um, who knows him really well, she she thinks he's the gardener.

Yeah, but look at what they have been through.

In other words, they saw this horrific crucifixion.

They had no experience of resurrection.

They're grieving, they're mourning, they, you know, they think they don't know what happened to Jesus' body.

And Mary's involved in all of that, and maybe she doesn't even look real closely at the person, but you know, says, Well, that's the gardener, and uh that's him.

And also, resurrection changes a person's appearance.

Um, you know, when like we have an ha-a-ha moment, so to speak, or you know, when we really said yes to Jesus, I want to walk with you, I want to love you and be love you, but and it's more like it's a uh second coming or awakening, your countenance changes.

You know, it doesn't have to, I mean it's it looks bright and so forth.

So um it's I think Mary was looking for the dead Jesus.

So when you're looking for something and it's the wrong thing, you and it can be right in front of you until somebody says something that says, oh, it's right there in front of me the whole time, and I didn't see it.

I think it's interesting that John came to believe that he was before he saw him.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, but Mary had already told him that Jesus was missing.

Right.

Yeah.

So I I think it's really interesting that Mary not only doesn't recognize Jesus when she sees him, but thinks that he's the gardener.

Uh and in fact, that the resurrected Jesus has stolen the one that she loved.

I think that's really an important thing to kind of think about.

Um the resurrected Jesus stole has been.

She thinks that the gardener, who is actually the resurrected Jesus, has stolen the body of the Jesus she knew.

So the resurrected Jesus has done away with the historical one.

That's actually a pretty interesting thought to ponder.

Um I don't know about you, but I have gardeners.

In general, they're Hispanic.

I will let you know.

And whether here or in Florida or California, that's it.

So it's an interesting thought that Mary sees the resurrected Jesus and thinks he's the hired help.

And that's an interesting bit to consider how the resurrected Jesus might be imminent today.

It may not be in the clergy or the Pope, it may be in the people who mow your grass for$25.

I think that preaches pretty well.

And there's this other thought that I just I had a friend in seminary who preached this to us seminarians, and I've heard it over and over again, and I didn't want to sound like super callous about it, but you know, it comes back to this idea that she thinks the resurrected Jesus has stolen the Jesus that she loved.

And I was told a long time ago to be really careful before I went to seminary because learning will ruin a good preacher.

Many, many people were good preachers and then they went to seminary and it ruined them.

Because in seminary we learn things like biblical criticism.

These sorts of bits.

And uh it's interesting to think that Mary is really trying to hold on to the Jesus that she knew, and the resurrected Jesus says, Let me go.

And sometimes, this was the sermon I got in seminary that I continue to hold on to, that I think is the Easter message.

Sometimes the Jesus that we really want to hold on to, because you know, when we went to seminary, we got told, don't let him take your Jesus from you.

Don't let him take your Jesus from you with all that book learning.

Sometimes the Jesus we're holding on to is the dead one.

And the resurrected Jesus says, Let me go.

And I, you know, I have to tell you, I hold on to that thinking in the conversation that we sort of just had a little bit about uh women's roles in the church, but I also hold on to that conversation thinking about um the roles of openly gay people in the church.

So maybe the dead Jesus didn't have much to say about gay people.

He didn't ever say anything about it, actually.

But the question is, what does the risen Jesus have to say about it?

You know, as Christians, um we can spend a lot of time about the historical Jesus and what he did and where he said, but actually that's not the essence of our faith.

The risen Jesus is.

So if we're ever not sure what we should do, we don't ask the historical Jesus, we ask the risen one.

Oh Jesus I grew up with learning about as a child, it it's simple.

And sometimes it's easier.

Does it sound like that?

I think it sounds right.

And you know, I I have to say that, you know, um for me, I I think it's great when things are easy, but I also think um, you know, the disciples were really confused all the time.

All the time they're confused.

And these are the people, like you'd said right at the beginning, who were physically with him.

Sometimes it makes me think that if we really think we've got the guy figured out, maybe we're exactly wrong, because the people who knew him well didn't get him at all.

That just comes through in the story.

And I don't think you have to be a genius to have any kind of faith, but I think Jesus in general um was probably kind of difficult to be around because he he continues to challenge, you know, his friends thinking of who he is, and uh, and this I think is one of those stories about that.

Um, hey, let me go, I don't work for you.

Um that seems to be the thing.

I wonder what we hold on to so strong that might actually just be dead.

That's interesting that it's thinking in that direction because life is like that, and that you you know you have um you know who you are and what your talents are and all that, but then things that happen during life will change that.

And um for me the last couple of weeks was my first time in the Holy Land, and you come back because this is the first time you actually see the geography of it, you come back um enriched, but also this isn't what I thought that I knew, or and what's uh so then you just have to put all that together and refit it.

Um and it's it's a growing, which is beautiful because you're changing and growing and better understanding, but that had to have happened with the people around Jesus because they had to adjust and change who he was and what he was there for and how they were going to interact with that.

Yeah.

I think I think you said it much more better than what I was hoping to say, which is that I think we um sometimes really settle for a picture of who Jesus is, and uh, we settle to our detriment.

Because I I think it's a life journey to figure out really what he needs for us.

And if we we we settle, we're skipping the fact that the journey really should continue.

Um because uh, you know, every time we learn something else, we have to go back and readjust what it means.

For me, I think that's yeah, yeah.

No, and I think it certainly does that.

Um anyway, it's it's interesting because I've had a lot of you know, you had to come back for me, since it was my first time in the book, I had to come back and you ponder over where it was we were and where that is geographically, um and how that's the chosen land.

That's the place that God chose to send him to.

Do you notice that Pentecost happens on Easter in John?

There's no delay when the resurrected Jesus shows up and he walks through a wall, you know, so he's got a body, but it doesn't obey the rules our bodies obey.

He can eat food, but he can walk through walls.

He blows on the disciples and says, receive the Holy Spirit.

So he doesn't wait until Pentecost.

This is really different from Luke.

The resurrected Jesus immediately blows on the disciples.

Um, and you know, we've talked about this before that spirit really just means a movement of air.

So it's like Jesus is saying, breathe in the air, I have to breathe.

You know, inhale what I'm exhaling to you, right?

This is this idea of in Genesis 2 when God makes the person out of the clay and breathes the breath in that makes the clay alive.

Like that's really the strong image that Jesus does here.

And um he tells them uh, whatever you forgive is forgiven, and whatever you don't isn't.

Which is an interesting thought, isn't it?

And and then of course, Thomas isn't there.

Thomas is the patron saint of the scientific method because he wants verifiable results.

So we often call him doubting Thomas because of that incident, but that's really not a good description of him because Thomas is called the twin.

And remember earlier, when they want to go to Jerusalem, when they want to go to Lazarus, Thomas says, let's go with him and we'll die with him.

So I think we do a disservice to Thomas to call him the doubter, he's the patron saint of the scientific method, which we totally understand in this community, right?

And and he says, if I don't see the holes and touch them, I won't believe.

And what does that mean?

Well, you could see the holes and it could be an apparition, right?

So he wants to have some real experience of resurrection.

And um I think we could approach it two ways.

One way we could approach it is that Thomas wants to know that the resurrection miracle is literally physically true, so he needs to touch the body.

But I think another way to consider this is that um what Thomas wants to know is that these mortal wounds, the precise injuries that take Jesus' life away, if he touches them, is he going to feel death or is he going to feel life all around them?

To me, that's really what resurrection is about, is that these places that should be mortal wounds aren't filled with death, they're somehow surrounded by life.

So, you know, when we think about this as a parish and what this means, right, to me it means that somebody who's lost their spouse of 50 years, that's a mortal wound, I think, is able to say to someone who's just lost their spouse, go ahead and put your hand in my side.

Uh, and and hopefully the experience is not just, oh well, life goes on, but that actually it's in our woundedness, strangely, that we're able to find life bigger than we thought.

I don't mean life is better after loss, I don't mean that.

I mean that there are these real resurrection experiences that happen now.

You know, that's pretty fascinating.

When I lost my father, I was very close to him.

And we drove down to like a call at 2 o'clock in the morning, and my sister said, You've got to come.

He's been at the nursing home, and he just got bad real fast.

We drove down there like crazy people, and when I got there, he had already passed.

And um, so I just got I walked into the parallel and got to see the body being brought out, and I turned around and he was being carried out and you know wherever it is that we've taken him.

And I have this vivid memory of feeling he was gone.

However, there was something left that I just took a deep breath and I thought, but he's still with me.

I mean, I I I guess maybe, you know, and this is just my dad, but and I'm sure we all experience that to some extent when we knew somebody.

I I felt something completely somewhat different when I the very first time I saw a dead body, it was my mother.

And I remember going up and looking at her in the casket, and my thought was she's not there.

Yeah, I had that one into somebody's um, I was visiting a really dear man, and I knew she was about to die, so I always checked the hospital before I came because I didn't want to walk into it, you know, and and but I but I somehow missed it that morning.

I walked in and it was like she was gone, you know, it was okay and she wasn't there, but I didn't worry about where she was the person that she after I saw my mother and it wasn't and she wasn't there for me.

Um I never wanted to see my father because it's just like it's a bit and going to their grave.

So I I don't do that because they're not there for me at all.

That that's just a social kind of matter.

It's just a little place, you know.

But but it's really it really happens more inside the way for me.

I have to see it because it gives me closure.

Three days after we came back, she had a dream or standing at the end of the bed.

And he said everything is okay, and you're alright, and everything's gonna be okay with you.

Yeah, with him I had several which were like dreams, but they weren't great.

I mean it felt so real that he was there.

And um and I had like three kinds of experiences, and I don't know how you explain all that.

Well, that but they're real, no doubt.

They're real because when I have had friends dying, and even animals, they always check back with me.

You know, we're okay.

So that's not made up.

Yeah, you know, thank you.

That's okay.

Sure, I know a woman because I've been hanging back made up.

Okay, and everybody's gone.

But you know, for Catherine.

For her.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is even beyond people who are dead.

I mean, I think this is a way of thinking about actually the vulnerabilities and the wounds we attract during life.

And um, I think, you know, there's always this opportunity to think about whether or not those those sort of wounds to us result in death with a capital D.

And obviously, God is not worried about us dying.

Let's just be honest about that.

We're all gonna die, and God's not worried about that, because there's nothing wrong with dying.

What God's worried about is death with a capital D, which is this experience, I think, in life of being dead.

You know, I mean, that's sort of the New Testament language, is we can live like dead folk.

And um, this is where this experience, I think, is really um, it's vexing for me because I wish it weren't like this, uh, but it seems very true to my own story is that the resurrected Jesus doesn't come back ironclad, he comes back eternally wounded.

So those wounds don't go away.

And in Revelation, the description we're going to get is the lamb has been slain, so it like has a moral wound, but it's not dead.

And when Jesus ascends to heaven, he brings his wounds into eternity.

I mean, that's that's the idea, is that God doesn't close, the wounds don't go away, the scars remain.

Well, Mike, even in I think, I don't know which book this is, but where Moses builds the golden serpent, um, the people are are continue to be wounded, but they're not, they don't die as a result.

So they're the wounds are still there.

I think you heard a really little pithy homily about that in Jordan, right?

You know, if you know the story of the snake on the pole, the snakes bite the people, and God doesn't send the snakes away, they just aren't killed by the venom.

And that's an interesting thought, right?

Is that the the death sting comes out even though the bites continue.

Um uses that language, I think, very intentionally, that the Son of Man is lifted up just like Moses lifted the soul this the snake in the wilderness.

But you know, it's it it doesn't end travails.

And it, you know, I I um happen to be a really big fan of Brene Brown, and I think another way to think of this is about we often worry that being vulnerable and authentic is going to kill us, and it often does injure us, but the life is bigger because of it, you know.

And she quotes this Leonard Cohn song, we all have cracks, it's how the light gets in, and I would add it it's how the light gets out.

And I I think that's a way to read this this sort of story, and you know, I I I'll tell you what's interesting as a community uh here at St.

Thomas is that we often um are worried about our mortal wounds, and I think it makes sense that, hey, you know, we only give trust to people who have demonstrated that they're trustworthy.

You know, uh God doesn't ask us to be silly and uh bear our soul to people who haven't deserved, haven't earned the right to hear it.

But at the same time, there is something about as a community um being willing to trust one another with our woundedness.

Uh, and and just the story to tell is I know easily five families right now at the parish who are dealing with extreme difficulty with their children, um, disappointment, and loss, and mental illness, and rebellion, and of course they um can't really put that on public display because people will judge them as parents.

Instead of being able to say, oh me too, or hey, put your hand in my side and feel feel that uh there's life around that, oddly enough.

I don't know if that makes sense to what I'm saying.

Uh and and that's one of these hard things is that we we um we wear all of this armor which protects us, but is really heavy and debilitating to have to carry around.

And so the the the question is how do we as a resurrected community take our armor off?

I think.

A couple of things.

One, if you wound me, I can forgive it, I can forget it.

So if it is inflicted upon me, I can accept it.

If it's self-inflicted, I cannot forgive that.

I've not been able to forgive self-inflicted wounds.

What do you mean?

Would you say a little bit more?

I don't want you to get over detail.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, if when I look back at things that I did that I wasn't proud that I did, I cannot forgive myself for that.

But if right, but oh absolutely.

But if you were I have had friends who have done things that were really ugly, but I can forgive them completely.

Yeah, but I can't forgive the things that I've done.

Now, to add to that, children who have have had a problem who have been problematic, and I think everybody here has to have a child at one point or another who've been problematic, that's still an extension of me.

Yeah.

So I can't really just easily forgive that.

Oh, that's okay.

You know, it's like you know, you you know, you're you're reflecting on you're part of me, so you're reflecting on me.

Not so much outwardly, but inwardly.

Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense, and I think it's completely this is why I I think Bernay Brown is really helpful for me is the vocabulary.

It's really the difference between guilt and shame.

And I think the things that we struggle with most are the things that we're ashamed of, which is this idea that there's something wrong with me.

And I think the most shame-inducing thing there is is having children, because we think if I were a better father, my child would do X or Y or Z, and that didn't happen, so there's something wrong with me.

And I'll tell you, I think this is why the evangelical church is so strong.

The church says there is something wrong with you.

You are fundamentally screwed up.

And if you accept Jesus as your savior, it'll get fixed.

The problem is, uh I really trusted that and I didn't ever feel fixed.

I always felt like there's something still wrong with me.

And um I I I think uh that's why that narrative is so compelling.

You are fundamentally worthless.

You're couched in original sin.

I mean, I think we struggle with that.

You know, I I didn't I don't know anybody that doesn't wrestle with shame.

That the idea there's something fundamentally wrong with me.

I look at some other people and I say, wow, like there's nothing wrong with you at all.

Like you're great, but it's really hard.

Hard to look in the mirror and have that.

And I think that's where there's this idea about, I mean, that's part of I think the resurrected woundedness that we're really invited to cultivate.

It's exactly where those scars and those feelings and shame and and failing are, is where God would really like to surround us with life.

Well, you know, the interesting thing about that is that there is no mention of original sin in the Bible.

And it does not become a doctrine until the time of Augustine, which is already in the early 400s, yeah.

So in that sense, you can look at original sin as being a man-made doctrine.

Because human beings sat around and they talked about it and they followed Augustine, whom they admired, and so it became a doctrine of the church, which is very harmful to people.

What was the point?

Of the original sin?

No, no, of them declaring original sin in 400.

What was the point?

Well, I think that to be honest with you, I think the phenomenology of it is that we can resonate with that language.

Aha.

Like there's always been something wrong with me, and the explanation is that's because Adam did this thing, and human beings were fundamentally compromised in their goodness.

Human beings are born screwed up.

And so, you know, only God can fix that.

And I you don't have to let her.

She's ridiculous, don't you?

You know.

I I think um I I think that's why that story uh was adopted because people found it resonated with them.

I I I I think though it's it's not a good story because I I think there's other explanations for that feeling.

So it is an explanation.

Hey, I feel like there's something really wrong with me, but I think we have an alternative.

Instead of that being true, that could be a feeling.

So if you feel bad, here's a reason to feel bad.

Here's why you feel bad, because you are.

You're messed up.

Then what were they baptizing for?

Well, they were being that's when they stopped baptizing grown-ups.

They started baptizing babies to wash that off.

But see, I tell you, I didn't think it matters when you're baptized.

I think part of what we struggle with is feelings of shame.

And frankly, the way of hearing shame is a good way to hear it is I'm not blank enough.

I'm not smart enough, athletic enough, good looking enough, thin enough, heavy enough, tall enough, short enough, I don't measure up to some kind of standard, which means there's something wrong with who I am.

And there's this really interesting thing, right, that people who have eating disorders always think they're fat, even when they're emaciated.

And this goes back, I think, to why Mary can't recognize the resurrected Jesus.

There's something wrong with her vision, not with him.

And this, I think, is the idea about what everlasting life looks like in John, is it's adjusting our vision.

I I think we were baptism sponsors at St.

B's for a long time.

I loved doing that because you're present and you're part of, and you set up the celebration for baptizing a child, and it's just striking me that I just loved it because I was baptized again, also.

And I think the Episcopal Church may do this, but when in the Catholic Church they go around sprinkling with everybody, you already do that.

I'm sure it just happens again.

And just to and I think, oh, I got a drop of water.

You know, that that's so kind of silly in a way, but you you feel that re-cleansing.

So I guess that I mean I never thought about it that way, but it's so refreshing, it's so you know, enlightening and so much better.

And you kind of there's like a cloud nine.

I never thought about it that way.

Why was it?

Okay, John did not see the vision of Christ.

Can't he believe that he wasn't?

Is there something with that that that that we should be looking at?

Well, I think, you know, John, a part of that story, and Jesus says, you know, you've seen and believed, blessed are those who haven't seen and believed, that's clearly being written to the community that's gathered after the historical Jesus is gone.

So that's written to people who had no experience, and that includes us.

And I I think that's the idea is, and I think Marcus Borg tells it really well, is that um the interesting thing about this story is their experience of Jesus was greater after he had died than while he was alive.

And and I I think that really is sort of the the the Christian message, and um obviously we don't see this.

I think the question is whether or not the the narrative and the story, whether we can resonate with it or not.

And I think that's really the fundamental criterion with whether or not people believe is not, oh, okay, this fact pattern happened, but I my life resonates with that story, or I look forward to the further resonance of that story.

Yeah, our challenge is to look at our situations and look for the truth, as you can say.

In other words, um it may be a simple thing like reprioritizing your priorities, reordering your priorities.

There are a lot of things that come before us that we don't see Jesus in because we're not looking for the right Jesus.

So, you know, maybe Mary is giving some indication of that because she definitely looked at the old judges.

Right, you know, and so and we get into those situations too where we get sidetracked or we get distracted or we start taking the wrong path, and then we have to say, wait a minute, you know, this is not leading me to God.

So what is it that I'm missing?

What is it that I need to do?

What do I need to change?

What do you know, what do I need to help?

So it's something I think we can.

So we so we need we need to kind of change our vision disease.

We are a resurrection people ourselves.

And so, you know, we can we can be a panel growth.

I think that can actually I think that can actually to John.

You need to have an intimate relationship with God.

You know, the CHI wire on the um the crucifixion Christ on the cross and Christ on the cross suffering.

Yeah, you know, it's it's uh the the it shows the wound in the side and the suffering.

And the the risen one is more like the difference.

There's a lot of talk about that.

Like at St.

Ps is when the Carmelites put in the resurrected Jesus.

He's on the cross, but he's he's he's coming off the cross.

So uh I think the old Catholic Church, or anyway I grew where I grew up where I grew, is focused on the suffering.

But St.

Madison II, that has to me, that has been a while ago.

That has changed.

But it's always good to remember that that is not just the Catholic Church.

We can get stuck to me in that suffering.

We can get stuck in there and not not see ourselves in there as rising and being able to come out of suffering just that happens in our lives.

Because after all, we have a risen up and we're falling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We beat ourselves up.

Yes, yeah.

Instead of being the risen Christ.

Yeah, yeah.

Can I ask a question in the reading?

Um reason it this reading, which is 21-7, says the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Yeah.

It's never defined who that was.

And it may not be, and from what I've read about this, it it wasn't one of the twelve.

You are who this this disciple wasn't one of the twelve, and the implication is that it's everybody.

No, there's really not a lot.

There's really nobody knows.

Um tradition has said it's John, the author.

Um I I would tell you a careful read though that resists that is that um the brothers are always called James and John, the brother of James.

So when you list people in the Bible, the most important one comes first.

Um James is more important than John, of the two brothers.

Um James actually is one of the first martyrs.

He gets killed really fast.

So we don't really know.

I mean, James doesn't really do much after the resurrection because he gets killed in a in a hot second.

Um you know, some people say this is uh one of the one of the um the ladies.

I'm gonna resist that reading because you know, Jesus sees his mother on the cross and says, Woman, here's your son, son here's your mother.

So um probably not.

I have read commentaries that say the one who loves us, who the one who Jesus loves is us.

So I don't know the answer to that.

Um you know there's that sticky wicket there where when Jesus is talking to Peter, uh Peter says, What about that one?

And Jesus says, What is it to you if uh he'll be around when I come back?

And again, that could be the church.

So who who knows the answer to it?

I think it's hidden in the Vatican Library or somewhere.

Probably.

Yes.

Along with Jesus', you know, wife and uh lineage.

Another thing was the knights of Templars took all this stuff and buried it somewhere.

Yeah, if there was any stuff.

Umerology, just because you mentioned it, you know, they catch 153 fish, and I don't really know the significance of that number.

It is the sum of the first 17 integers.

And and that sounds strange, but um weird stuff like that happens all around, these strange symbolic numbers.

I don't know what it means.

Um you know, uh it's funny in the Gospels, the other Gospels, this catch of fish, I mean, this in Luke, um, it's when Jesus calls Peter to follow him as a disciple, and in John it happens after the resurrection, and what do you know?

It's when Jesus asked Peter to follow him as a disciple.

I mean, it totally opposite when it happens at the beginning of Jesus' ministry or at the end of his earthly ministry in John, you know, totally different use of the story.

Um, and and we do get to hear that business about, you know, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, and um you know, some people say, well, look, that's because Peter's the first pope or the bishop of Rome, but I think, you know, it it uh is certainly an invitation for people who follow Jesus to tend after um God's sheep as well, you know, that we're we're called to shepherd one another.

Was it helpful to read the other gospels um side by side?

I I don't know if you notice that they all disagree about who is at the cross.

Um in Matthew there's two Marys, and in Mark there's two Marys in Salome, and in Luke there's two Marys in Joanna, and in John there's two Marys, and sometimes it's Mary Mother of Jesus, and sometimes it's Mary Magdalene, and sometimes it's a different Mary.

So sometimes it's both of them.

And sometimes it's both.

So uh look, there's at least three women named Mary there, and there's a Salome and a Joanna, so you know we've got at least five women there at the cross.

Um you know, I would tell you, I don't know if you noticed, but they all really seem to have different depictions about Jesus' suffering.

Like in Luke and in John, he doesn't seem to really be in that much pain.

He doesn't really emphasize that.

Mark and Matthew, though, he like he cries and breathes his last and the sky gets dark.

I mean, that seems to be well more suffering to me.

Um, you know, and there's things like earthquakes and there's guards at the tomb in Matthew, but there's not guards at the tomb in the other ones.

So they they all do this a little different, you know.

Um I don't know if you noticed in Mark, uh, when Jesus shows up, the women run away in terror, and that's the end of the book.

That's the shorter ending, which means probably the original one.

It bothered people, so you know, they wrote a longer one later where you know the women aren't just running away screaming.

But that's an interesting Easter message, isn't it?

You know, the women come and there's Jesus, and then they run around screaming and and go on home and have a good Easter.

Was it Peter?

Who jumped who was naked jumped out of the boat?

Yeah, yeah.

What was that all about?

Well, um, you know, they wear this outer garment that would have been pretty heavy to swim with, I suppose.

Um I didn't know symbolically what else it could mean.

Um maybe he's setting his whole life, maybe?

Could be that, yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, all of these things, I don't think there's like a Bible code that we have to crack, but I do think it's important to take the Bible seriously enough not to always take it literally.

So is there, you know, there's an opportunity to say what does it mean?

Otherwise, why would the writer have included it?

And I didn't think the writer included it to let people know Peter was okay to like go skinny dipping for the Lord, because that's really not something you should go do.

I think shedding, yeah, I think uh maybe shedding some of our armor or shedding our other way to um to more rapidly approach Jesus makes sense.

I mean, I whether that's right or I mean whether that's what the author had in mind or not, it it's coherent and makes sense to me as a message.

So yeah.

You know, and you know, and the other thing is we don't really know how often these were rewritten before they even came in final form.

You know, because they were all kind of probably changed a little bit or redacted.

I don't know.

We should hope so.

I mean, it's bad storytelling if they weren't.

Right.

Along those lines, my thought is that that over the over the many um that people have uh even even when this is written, my thought is they were very thoughtful.

Yeah, every word that was put down here is put down here for a reason.

Maybe we don't understand it.

But people thought about this.

They didn't just this isn't just like the first draft, if you will.

Yeah.

When this was written, what, about a hundred CE?

What's what we think, yeah, about a hundred.

So, what was available to the people who were worshiping in the cave under St.

George's Church?

It's a great question.

We don't we don't exactly know because a lot of the books um that we now call part of the Bible were um were regional, especially for a while, and we didn't know how universal.

I mean, Meg mentioned this Nag Hammadi library, and there's books in there like the Gospel of Mary.

Well, I can tell you for sure, only people in Egypt were reading that library.

Nobody else either cared or knew about them.

Um same with the Gospel of Thomas that you've heard about.

That was in Egypt only.

And one of the criterion for whether books made it into the New Testament Bible or not was how many people relatively were reading them.

So if books were only in Egypt, they in general didn't make it into the Bible.

The books that made it into the Bible were ones that were being widely circulated in Italy, in Turkey, and Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, if that sort of makes sense.

What they didn't want to do is universalize books that weren't universal.

So um we're not really, really sure.

I mean, we most scholars will tell you that Matthew had Mark when he wrote his gospel, and Luke had Mark when he wrote his gospel, but um we don't know if John had Mark.

If he did, he left a lot of the stories of Mark out.

There's only a few that John includes that are in Mark, but in a totally different telling and in a different sequence.

Do we know where these physically were they were written?

We don't, and that's I think that's the hard bit.

So what did Christians have in in the year 70 or in the year 100, regardless of where they were?

Probably they had the Septuagint, that's the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and that's the only thing we can probably really say.

Um Mark was probably written around 70, but we don't know how widely that was disseminated and necessarily where.

Also, all those Bibles were done by hand, so there weren't a lot of them.

And most people were illiterate, so you know that you you the way it worked is people didn't have a Bible study where they pre-read or they sat and read.

These things were read aloud, and that was the homily.

To just read it.

So it's it is it's really hard to know.

And and remember that the earliest parts of the New Testament aren't the gospels anywhere, they're the letters of Paul, which don't really say much about Jesus, to tell you the truth.

They're really more about what Jesus meant instead of what he did.

Which means they they took for granted that people knew what he did.

Because they'd been, I guess, um, been disseminated by word of mouth.

I think that's right.

I think we presume they were orally informed.

Yeah.

So so can you say again that the either the Paul or about who is in Christ about people?

Yeah, and in some ways I think that's a good thing to remember is that Paul is really about what difference does the resurrected Christ make?

And that's the starting point for the early church.

What's the power, literally, of Jesus instead of what are the things he said and did to be Emulated, what's the power?

And uh, you know, I don't I didn't mean that like in a tyranny thing, but you know, my my preferred definition for the word religion comes from a teacher of mine in Emory that religion is a way a way of orienting your life around experiences of ultimate power.

Orienting or life around around experiences of ultimate power.

So that involves, you know, ritual and ethics, it involves calendar and holy days, you know, and every religion has that because those are ways you orient yourself around ultimate power.

And and if your ultimate power is the United States government, then your holy book is probably the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and you've got national holidays.

I mean, so you can sort of pick whatever you want, and it works out okay.

And if ultimate power is the God who created everything and wants, you know, uh to be present in all of your doings and thinkings, well then there's different rituals and there's different texts and there's different exercises for that.

Right.

Never never did either, and that's really correct, it sounds to me.

I mean, there's really long definitions, that's the short one.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and but I think it's I think it's probably helpful.

So, you know, when people say, well, God wants a relationship, not a religion, I just think that's poppycock.

That's what religion is.

It's a it's a structured relationship.

And and frankly, we need structure and relationships.

That's why we have etiquette and manners.

You know, what what we want are our etiquette and manners that that help build relationships instead of cut them off.

And I think that's always the question are, you know, do our does our religion and our structure does it connect us or does it restrict us?

And and I think that's always the question we have to ask.

Yeah, because as we connect with power, you know, and holidays and services and all this other stuff, when you really walk with God and trust God, when you really seek God on a personal level, then you'll see these little things of power happen in your life.

You know, it's like you get to a point where you say, God has done everything, but uh I can do it.

I I tried every way to cooperate with you, but I just it's just not I have to let go of you.

And then it will work out in a simple way to imagine, you know, and you know that is God working for you, you know, but you have to nurture that relationship with God every day.

Every day you need to spend time with God and uh so because of God.

So in other words, you can't say, okay, God, I'm here, now come down and visit me.

You say, God, I'm here, I adore you, I love you, I am listening for you.

If you have anything to say to me, uh, you know, you have a period of quiet and silence, and you listen, and then you talk about maybe what you know what's bothering you or whatever.

But the point is, what God honored is that you take the time to be with him inside.

Start with 10 minutes.

If you don't do it all right.

And in time, you will begin to see a chat who and you didn't you want a more time.

I I I I just I just need to say I don't think that's always true for everybody.

I don't I think it's very true in your experience, but I think the truth is that the faith closet has a lot of garments in it, and some of them fit us at certain times in our life, and we enjoy them, and some of them actually wrap us up.

And there's enough garments in the faith closet that if we try it on and it doesn't fit, we can put it back.

So I think for some people, sitting in silence is really helpful.

For most of my life, it has not been helpful.

There are times where I'm starting to enjoy it, but I think saying that we have to do that is not helpful to us.

I think it has been helpful for many people at different points in their life, but it is, you know, I just I think there's enough variety in who we are and in faith practices and frankly how God works that there's there's a lot of mystery and interchange.

So I agree it's been helpful for a lot of people, but I don't want to universalize one faith practice.

And I I misspoke when I said you have to show up.

In other words, if you show up, God honors that.

And we all have different spiritual types.

We're going to be discussing that at the Women's Forum next week.

You know, because some people are really attracted to that time of silence.

Others want to be in their Bible all the time and doing what that says, and I mean that there are four different ways we'll be looking at, which you know, you'll identify with one mainly, but you'll also find you check in with some of the others, too.

I took a centering prayer workshop one time and sent me over the edge.

Yeah.

I mean, really, I'm lucky I wouldn't hospitalize.

I mean, we would sit there and they would say you only have to sit there for ten minutes.

And by the end of the ten minutes, I was just, you know, jumping out of my skin.

I cannot do that.

In the good ADHD.

But no, I know.

But isn't that the good news?

Is you didn't need to do that.

You don't need to.

Some people do, and and you may not be one of them.

And you might be later in your life, and you're not now, and that's just fine.

And for some people, like you, you know, it's it's a wonderful experience.

It ju yeah, like you said, it's it's different for everybody.

But you also have something that helps you focus your memory, too.

In other words, you may have some scripture verses or you may have a spiritual book that you're reading, and it prods your thought.

In other words, if you you can't uh you're not it's not recommended that you sit there in total absolute silence and not think anything.

That's a heresy called quietism.

But the thing is this, you you are talking to God.

There are times when you are quiet or an idea pops in your head, and so you take the time to think about that.

Is God saying that to me?

You know, so it's more of an active time than just sitting there and going nothing.

You know, I I can't sit there and do nothing either.

But some people do and find it really helpful.

I mean, I think that's the thing is there is just such a a treasure trove of variety, especially I think in the Episcopal Church, we try to say, listen, it's the big tent, and there's a lot of acts in here.

And again, you may not the candle altar may not be for you, but it's been for a lot of people, so here it's available for you.

You know, I think some people and and from different religions, but they'll say it's the intention that matters, not how you do it.

I had a series of text by uh Merton, and he was talking to young seminarians trying to know how to get to God.

And he said he thought that the main thing was that your intention was that you wanted to experience the relationship with God, and that you persisted in doing the best you could, whatever it was, that he felt God would reward them with his presence.

So I think the remarkable alternative is that God honors honors us by showing up whether we invite God or not.

I mean, you know, isn't that good?

I think the whole reason we have spiritual practices is so we can appreciate God showing up uninvited.

We can appreciate it more.

The truth is, I mean, God comes bidden or unbidden, and uh, and that's how God honors us.

And and what I would like to be ready for that arrival so I can savor it more.

Um, but even if I'm not, God's going to show up.

I mean, I just I think that's the nice part about grace.

And you may be able to think about it later, you know, because I find that when God wants to get my attention, he usually has to tell me ten times.

Yeah, and that's the good news, isn't it?

Is that if God can work with these obtuse people, there's hope for us.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed John, because we're done.

Now we're going to read one and two John for next week.

It's great that we're taking really small bites here, I hope.

And I hope you're enjoying it.

And and um that said, we'll see you next week.