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Jen Johnson
It’s the week after Easter. Now what?
I’m getting a Master’s degree in religion on the one-class-at-a-time plan (expected graduation date: before I die) and in the biblical studies class I’m taking right now we’re studying the gospels. The reading is fascinating, full of information about the Q source—which sounds like the title of a ‘60s spy novel—and who wrote which gospel and why, and gospels which didn’t make the cut like the Gospel of Thomas, which if you plan to read, first drink some Red Bull and second don’t read it. But in the midst of it all was a section on the “Passion” narratives—the extensive parts of each gospel that talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus and that have a relatively high degree of similarity.
This stopped my hurried reading and made me think: “These observations tend to support the conclusion that the Passion narratives are the earliest sustained accounts of Jesus’ memory, indicating that the part of Jesus’ life most requiring interpretation was its last hours.”
Much of the rest of the gospels are collections of sayings and stories in varying order, but when we get to the accounts of Jesus’ death, things slow way down. All the other stuff was important enough for the early community to tell and re-tell, to eventually write down, to grapple with. But it’s likely the Passion accounts were recorded first, and much more precisely, because the first community of believers was trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
On this side of Easter I’m asking myself the same question. The lilies from the florist are turning brown, the Peeps are getting crunchy, but the story remains—an executed God, a humiliated king, a confusing third day. Christmas is easy—we love the eight-pound, six-ounce baby Jesus. We love candlelight and peace on earth. But what do we do with the sweaty, bloody adult Jesus crying in pain? With earthquakes and darkness? With a bunch of women and some fishermen saying he came back? With everything we knew about nature and human nature and the nature of God completely overturned?
Every year the story is too big for me, long after the church and the brunch and the candy. Every year I’m still trying to figure out what happened. This week it was good to know I’m not alone.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Steven Depolo
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Jen Johnson
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