Resurrection Community

The Believing Eleven

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Peter Paul Rubens, The Rockox Altarpiece, 1613-1615 (center panel)

 

It is evening on the day of Resurrection-discovery. John tells us that ten of the disciples are hiding behind a secured door out of fear. Judas is deceased, and Thomas is away.

Jesus suddenly appears to the unprepared disciples, and shares with them his peace. He shows them his hands and his side, and then – as a direct consequence of seeing the places on his body associated with his death – the ten disciples rejoice when they see their Lord. In other words, their recognition of him, and that he was somehow alive again, brings them joy by restoring their belief in him.

When hearing this story from John’s Gospel on the second Sunday of Easter, we may be prone to considering it apart from what happens just before it. The disciples, who are hiding out of fear, have already received an eye-witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene, to whom Jesus revealed himself at the tomb that morning, had come and told the ten the Lord was alive, and that he had appeared to her. Clearly, and prior to Jesus’ unexpected appearance, the ten disciples are still doubting her personal witness. Even after receiving what should have been trusted testimony from Mary Magdalene, a fellow follower of Jesus.

So why – in popular imagination – isn’t this well-known Gospel reading from John 20 commonly referred to as the “doubting disciples” reading? Why should Thomas be singled out, when his joyful recognition of the risen Jesus depended on nothing more or less than what the 10 had needed, and received, before him?

And why have so many painters in the Western tradition privileged Thomas’ purported unbelief in the Risen Lord, rather than depict the earlier reluctance of the ten others to arrive at joyful confidence about the Lord’s astonishing return? Apparently, in many painters’ eyes (especially Caravaggio), more visual drama was to be found in images of a doubter’s hand placed within an open wound.

Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, 1601 (a famous traditional presentation of the event in John 20)

A further detail to notice, which our familiarity with so many paintings helps to obscure, has to do with how Thomas responds to Jesus. According to John, Jesus appears to the not-yet-believing ten, and – unbidden – shows them his hands and his side. Seeing the traces of his wounds on his risen body brings them joy. Jesus then appears unexpectedly a week later, this time showing himself to the one not present on the prior occasion. And just as he had done previously, Jesus offers Thomas the same opportunity he had provided to the others.

We should therefore not be misled by Thomas’ oft-quoted comment to the other disciples, prior to his own epiphany, about what he needed in order to believe. According to the text, Jesus – upon appearing in the same house a second time – bids Thomas to touch him. Yet, Thomas immediately responds to Jesus’ words without any mention in the Gospel of him having physical contact with the risen Lord’s wounds. Jesus then asks Thomas a rhetorical question, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Naturally, Thomas’ implied answer is ‘yes.’

For all these reasons, we will do better to find a different and more positive descriptive phrase by which to refer to this well-known passage from John 20. “Jesus meets the disciples according to their needs,” though wordy, would do better.

P. Steffensen’s altarpiece painting behind the altar of Zion Lutheran Church, Copenhagen

 

This post is based on the traditional Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Easter (April 7 in 2024), John 20:19-31. The story within it concludes with these words: “Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’.”

Note: The altarpiece paintings by P. Steffensen and Rubens provide an interesting counterpoint to the prevailing tendency of painters to focus on Thomas placing his hand in the side of the Risen Jesus.

 

Resurrection Finds Us

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Stanley Spencer, Resurrection, Tidying (1945)

 

Stanley Spencer’s church cemetery visitors find themselves surprised by being found! They experience being found through a resurrection encounter with those who have gone before.

The resurrection of Jesus is not usually something we go looking for. The risen Jesus comes and finds us. This is the pattern we see in so many of the stories of Jesus’s first resurrection appearances to his friends and followers. The disciples and others don’t go looking for him except at first, when they go to the tomb. And even then, they are seeking Jesus’ mortal remains rather than his risen presence. He comes and finds them, just as he finds us, often in the context of fellowship. And like them, we are always surprised.

We don’t find the resurrection just as we don’t find God. Neither God nor the risen Jesus are lost, even if we may be. And so, we are found by both, and then we find ourselves as persons who have been found. This is instructive, for it corresponds with our apprehension of and encounter with beauty, which we also misleadingly credit ourselves with ‘finding.’ Really, beauty finds us. For our perception and recognition of beauty depends not on a ‘power’ that we possess to pursue and attain it, but rather on our ability to receive and recognize what is, and what is given. The same is true in our apprehension of and encounter with the grace of the resurrection.

Motivated by our sense of need, we seek to find something or someone to fill the hole at the center of our lives. Though it is a challenge for many of us, being open to being found by the Risen Lord not only meets our need, but can fill us with great joy.

Alleluia. Christ is Risen!

 

Stanley Spencer’s, Resurrection, Tidying, is one of a large series of paintings based on the theme of Resurrection, which span the years of his mature work.

Beauty and Resurrection

Stanley Spencer_the-resurrection-reunion-of-families-1945

Stanley Spencer’s church cemetery visitors find themselves surprised by being found! They experience being found through a resurrection encounter with those who have gone before.

The resurrection of Jesus is not usually something we go looking for. The risen Jesus comes and finds us. This is the pattern we see in so many of the stories of Jesus’s first resurrection appearances to his friends and followers. The disciples and others don’t go looking for him except at first, when they go to the tomb. And even then, they are seeking Jesus’ mortal remains rather than his risen presence. He comes and finds them, just as he finds us, often in the context of fellowship. And like them, we are always surprised.

We don’t find the resurrection just as we don’t find God. Neither God nor the risen Jesus are lost, even if we may be. And so, we are found by both, and then we find ourselves as persons who have been found. This is instructive, for it corresponds with our apprehension of, and encounter with, beauty —which we also misleadingly credit ourselves with ‘finding.’ Really, beauty finds us. For our perception and recognition of beauty depends not on a ‘power’ that we possess to pursue and attain it, but rather on our ability to receive and recognize what is, and what is given. The same is true in our apprehension of, and encounter with, the grace of the resurrection.

 

Stanley Spencer, The Resurrection – Reunion of Families, 1945.

Community Permeated By Beauty

Stanley Spencer_the-resurrection

Stanley Spencer painted several Resurrections. They portray his vision of the new community, of which we have been made a part. He does not imagine resurrection as a one-by-one event, paralleling our human experience of how people are individually and serially born, receive Baptism and die. Instead, Spencer sees resurrection as a community event, which may be more true to Scripture than what most of us anticipate.

Here we see several people in a churchyard busily tending the graves of departed loved ones. Suddenly, they are surprised by a reunion with those who have gone before. Departed fellow-members of the Body of Christ, their arms joyfully upraised in a dance, gather with the eucharistic community here on earth. Resurrection is an interactive celebration, involving not just those we have known and remember, but also those we have never met.

Spencer’s resurrection paintings reverse what we imagine. At death, we think of individual persons lifted-up, out of this world, into his presence with those on the other side. But Spencer depicts our reunion with them as taking place on this side! And he is profoundly right. For when we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are baptized into the communion of saints, with whom we are now in active fellowship. Some of them first lived centuries ago. Others live with us today. Yet, in every eucharistic moment, we are all one and together, in the community of Jesus’ resurrection. His resurrection community is permeated by beauty, by the beauty of his holiness.

But who has seen or touched the resurrection of Jesus? Spencer helps us see the answer: All of us! All who now live in the fellowship of his resurrection. John speaks for us in his first letter, when he refers to “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, … and touched with our own hands, concerning the word of life.” We think of the resurrection as something that happened to Jesus. Yet, we would not be celebrating his resurrection unless it also happened to the disciples.

His resurrection transforms every one of us. Not just one-by-one, and away, to dwell with the departed. Resurrection brings the company of the departed here, into our midst. Through Baptism, we can expect transformation within us, as individuals. We should also expect transformation between us in community! For in our fellowship with one another, we see and touch the beauty Jesus’ resurrection.

 

Resurrection: Rejoicing (1947), by Stanely Spencer (1891-1959). For the quote from John, see 1 John 1:1. Click here for a link to my Easter Sunday homily, on which this is based.