INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B - SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

ACTS 4:32-35.   Readings from The Acts of The Apostles take the place of Old Testament passages during the seven week Easter Season. Written perhaps as long as fifty years after the resurrection, Acts contains the church's recollection of events rather than contemporary, eye-witness reports.

In this brief passage we catch a glimpse of the life of the early Christian community.

Motivated by the Holy Spirit, they generously shared what property they possessed.  One of the most important early converts and benefactors was Joseph Barnabas.  He was a Levite, a member of the official priesthood who served at regular intervals in the temple rituals.

PSALM 133.  This brief psalm may have been sung by worshippers approaching the temple to celebrate the blessings of belonging to the Jewish community.  For Christians, its significance lies in the closing words: the blessing of faith is eternal life.

1 JOHN 1:1-2:2.   The three letters of John were written early in the second century to counter a serious heresy which denied that Jesus, the divine Son of God, had actually been crucified and raised from the grave.  The witness of the apostles, John claims, is that these things actually happened. The forgiveness of sin and our life in fellowship with God entirely depend on this faith.

JOHN 20:19-31.  The story of Thomas, the disciple who at first doubted the resurrection, was told to encourage those who had not witnessed that all-important event, yet still believed. The Gospel was written some sixty years after the event. Few witnesses remained.  The author himself may not have been among those few, but sought to preserve the testimony of the apostles.                                   

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

ACTS 4:32-35.   Readings from The Acts of The Apostles take the place of Old Testament passages during the seven-week Easter Season. Written perhaps as long as fifty years after the resurrection, Acts contains the church's recollection of events rather than contemporary, eye-witness reports. The central message of Acts is the kerygma, or teaching, of the Apostolic Church and its spread from Jerusalem to Rome under the leadership of both Peter and Paul. Prominent in the presentation of the apostolic kerygma are the several versions of the "sermon" preached by one or other of the apostles and Stephen. These are not verbatim reports, but the standardized teaching of the church of the second generation, circa 85 or perhaps even later.

Some competition between the two apostles, Peter and Paul, may be discovered between the lines of Acts. They may have had their differences and their supporting enthusiasts, but the true hero of the story is the Holy Spirit. Peter and Paul are always successful in their various missions because they are under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, nothing can go wrong, not even death itself, although the death of neither Peter or Paul is recorded in scripture.

The essential message of Acts deals with the issue of why the Jewish religion in its Christian reinterpretation makes sense to Gentiles. The eschaton, the end-times or Second Coming of Christ, is no longer at hand. This unfulfilled future is not a problem because the present is the time of the Spirit. The church is preparing to live in the world under the authority and guidance of the Holy Spirit. This may lead to martyrdom like that of Stephen (Acts 7) and James (Acts 12), but the blood of the martyrs only increased the fervour of their fellow Christians as they marched inexorably from Jerusalem to Rome declaring that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar.

In this brief passage we catch a glimpse of the life of the early Christian community. Motivated by the Holy Spirit, they generously shared what property they possessed.  One of the most important early converts and benefactors was Joseph Barnabas.  He was a Levite, a member of the minor priesthood who served at regular intervals in the temple rituals. They performed the more menial tasks in the temple cultus, preparing the sacrifices, singing in the choir and guarding the temple precincts, a secondary role distinctly inferior to that of the priests who officiated at worship.

Barnabas was a Cypriot and quite wealthy, if we are to take this reading at face value. He played an important part in bringing Paul to prominence as the apostle to the Gentiles. Acts 13:1-3 and 14:1, 14 portray Barnabas as Paul's senior partner in evangelizing Cyprus. In 15:36-41 he split with Paul over the reluctance of John Mark, Barnabas' cousin, to accompany them into more dangerous territory in Asia Minor. Barnabas appears to have had close association with the Jerusalem church where he was known as "the son of encouragement" (4:36). His name does not appear to have the meaning attributed to it. Could this name possibly have been given this interpretation to distinguish him from Barabbas?

 In Galatians 3:28, Paul reported that Barnabas was "led astray" with Peter when representatives from Jerusalem protested the mixed Gentile-Jewish table fellowship in Antioch. The Letter the Hebrews and the 2nd century pseudographical Letter of Barnabas were mistakenly attributed to him, although the latter was included in one of the most important early manuscripts of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaticus. There are Anglican churches named for him as "St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr."

Tradition surrounding his martyrdom may be more hagiography than history; but his NT appearances would make a good sermon base for Low Sunday, the Sunday after Easter.

PSALM 133.  This brief psalm, one of a collection fifteen known as Songs of Ascents (Pss. 120-134), believed to have been sung by pilgrims approaching the temple to celebrate the blessings of belonging to the Jewish community. Accidentally or intentionally during Holy Week, Christians often forget that the first Christians were Jews who felt deeply about the temple as the central sanctuary and gathering place for Jews from all over the Roman world. At the time of Christ, there may have been more Jews in the Diaspora than in Palestine. Naturally, they spoke many languages. From the 2nd century BCE, they had their scriptures in both Greek and Hebrew. This reality gives additional meaning to the words of the opening verse of this psalm.

But to what word in vs. 1 does the pronoun "it" at the beginning of vs. 2 refer? Surely "unity" is the referent. The similes that follow in vss. 2-3 depict two very different images. Some scholars tend to regard the text as corrupt, but nevertheless, it makes sense when fully explained.

The first of these similes may not say much to modern readers. It refers to the sacred oil used in the anointing of the high priest. Aaron, brother of Moses, was regarded as founder of the hereditary priesthood. In this illustration, the oil of anointing dribbled down from his head to his beard and onto the rich collar of his robe. Exodus 30:22-30 contains a description of how this oil was made and reserved for this special purpose. In the temple worship, the high priest played a particularly significant role which would have been obvious to every worshipper. Could John have had this image

in mind when he told the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus' feet?

As for the second simile, dew is one of the more important meteorological phenomena of Palestine. In the dry climate of the mountainous region between the coastal plain and the Jordan River, dew provides moisture crucial to the production of food. Jerusalem stands on five hills, or low mountains, one of which is Mount Zion. Snow-capped much of the year, Mount Hermon lies far to the north. Its cooling breezes and  plentiful water supply moderates the climate of Galilee, but do not reach as far south as Jerusalem. A town in the foothills of Mount Hermon is called Ijon (1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Chron.: 16:4), which caused some scholars to state that the reference to Zion is a gloss in the text. This may not be so, since the dews of Hermon and of Zion could both parallel the perfumed oil lavishly poured on the head of the high priest.

For Christians, the significance of the psalm lies in the closing words: the blessing of faith is eternal life. Thus the Easter message comes through vividly in yet another reinterpretation of the well-loved scriptures of the Hebrew tradition.

1 JOHN 1:1-2:2.   Although scholarly consensus may yet conclude otherwise, the three letters of John appear to have been written very late in the 1st century CE or early in the 2nd century to counter a serious heresy, probably an early form of Gnosticism or Docetism.  This heresy denied that Jesus, the fully divine Son of God, had actually lived a fully human life, had been crucified and raised from the

dead. Such a system had no place for the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection. It also held to a rather superior view of sinlessness as characteristic of those who had adopted this misinterpretation of the gospel.

Most likely these sectarians came from a Greek philosophical background with its separation of body and spirit. Rooted in the Jewish tradition of a unity of body and spirit, the apostolic community had rejected such polarization. Open friction had developed within an unnamed Christian congregation. The issue had quickly become an argument as to whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. John expressed the specific juxtaposition of the two arguments in 4:2. Behavioral issues described in 2:7-8 and 3:10-11 had also come with this excessively sophisticated view of the Christian message. The two factions had forgotten how to love each other despite their theological differences.

In this introductory passage, John claims that the witness of the apostles revealed what actually happened.  Only the distinction between darkness and light could adequately describe the difference between the apostolic tradition and the new heresy. The forgiveness of sin and eternal life in fellowship with God entirely depend on faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

John also sets forth an interesting correlation between believing the truth and confessing our sins. If one doesn't believe, sin doesn't matter. But the apostolic gospel held firmly to the belief that Christ died for our sins. The teaching of the apostolic church had been uniform in keeping with the prophetic tradition of Isaiah 53. Jesus had become the vicarious sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Reconciliation of humanity to God, the redemption of the world or the saving of individuals all came

from one source: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The most grievous sin of all was to reject this truth. John summed up this conviction in a few words in 2:1-2. What is more, he unequivocally declared Jesus' role as mediator with God for those who confessed their sin as well as the atoning sacrifice for the whole world.

In effect, John was saying that the atonement - at-one-ment - is both the heart of the apostolic gospel and the means by which we are made aware of our sinful nature and of the truth that redeems us from sin. Thus far, he had kept the discussion on a fairly intellectual level. He had said nothing about the love of God that makes all of this possible. That was yet to come in the next few sentences and paragraphs.

JOHN 20:19-31.  The story of Thomas, the disciple who at first doubted the resurrection, was told to encourage those who had not witnessed that all-important event, yet still believed. He should be the patron saint of our post-Christendom times. Doubt about the resurrection has captured the minds of many church folk, yet we still struggle to make sense of it, believing that this gospel truth does have something to say to us. One only has to read the writings of John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby

Spong, Karen Armstrong or Michael Baigent to get a sense of how deeply the malaise of doubt dominates our times. Compassion-less conflicts with the literalist and fundamentalist dogmas spewed forth to combat this doubt only exacerbates our problems among those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ in the 21^st century.

John's Gospel was written some sixty years after the resurrection event. Few witnesses of the actual event remained, but countless lurid stories abounded about this greatest of miracles.  The author himself may not or may not have been among those few, but sought to preserve the testimony of the apostles. True to the Jewish tradition, he did so with a dramatic story.

The details of his narrative contain many difficulties for the modern mind steeped in Enlightenment Age views of the nature of reality. Does one doubt the truth of the story because of factual details? For instance, people do not go through locked doors (vss. 19, 26). Does breathing on a group of people inspire them with the Holy Spirit (vs. 22)?  Is this the way to transfer the divine gift of forgiving sins (vs. 23)? Does seeing the stigmata in the hands of Christ, but not touching them, produce faith (vs. 27-28)?  By the way, where was Thomas during the week's interlude between these two appearances in the upper room (vss. 19, 26)?

Whatever the apostles, Thomas included, may have experienced in the upper room during those events, the point of the story comes in the final words of Jesus to Thomas (vs. 29). No other gospel tells of this post-resurrection appearance. John had his own audience in mind as he told this story, wherever he may have acquired it. The romantic quality of the narrative speaks to a greater truth than the apparent details he put into it.

Who Jesus is for every generation comes from faith, not from literal records of mysterious events. Computer generation of images can replicate a story for easy visual entertainment, but we recognize such technical tricks as virtual realities.  The medium carries a message, but we must not mistake the medium for the message.  In a sense, this is the essential methodology of all the resurrection narratives. They are like virtual reality narratives of fundamental truth. Their meaning lies beyond the details in the same way that symbols point to reality beyond themselves. As John Shelby Spong

pointed out, the stories of Jesus' resurrection appearances changed people's lives. "It was as if the being of Jesus was limitless. The more he gave his being away, the more he had being to give. So the endless depths of being, the being of God, if you will, appeared to be present in him." (Why Christianity Must Change Or Die? HarperSanFrancisco, 1998; 223)

Thus, the details of this story - this virtual reality - tell us that after his resurrection, Jesus became a spiritual reality to those who had known him best. By their contact with him during his ministry, through the horrors of his crucifixion and the joys of experiencing his presence again, they came to believe that he was indeed the Messiah/Christ, the Son of God, and more than that, "Lord and God." He was and still is present to all people in every generation who shared this faith. He had forgiven their sins and would forgive the sins of everyone else who came to believe in him through their witness. The spiritual power he gave them was the power to believe and to share their faith with all who would listen to them or read what they wrote. But faith was only a means to an even greater end: life eternal, the limitless being that has no beginning and no end (vs. 31).

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