2 Easter Sunday B April
15, 2012
Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1-2:2 John
20:19-31
The late French philosopher
Jacques Derrida provided an interesting insight on language. In his musings about the development of language
he made the claim that spoken language comes into being after written
language. On the surface, this seems
like it is absurd since we know that babies learn to speak before they
write. And in aboriginal cultures,
native peoples often speak but do not have written language. So how can written language come before oral
or spoken language? Well, his point is people
who only know spoken language and who do not have writing do not really know
the meaning of spoken language since they do not have writing to compare it
with. So spoken language only truly
becomes known as spoken language after writing has occurred; without writing
there was nothing to compare spoken language with to give it an identity.
This may seem like trivial and peevish philosophical sophistry, but I
think that the Gospel of John may indeed
be a very rich reflection and speculation upon the philosophy of word and language
in spoken and written forms. We assume
Jesus spoke words but those spoken words could not now be known unless at some point
they were written down. But the words that Jesus may have said occurred
before they were written down and they could not have been retained in culture or
tradition if they had not been written down.
The first verse of John’s Gospel: In the Beginning was the word and the
word was with God and the word was God.
This notion of word is an acknowledgement that human consciousness as we
know it, is created because of word ability.
Words are a human mystery; human beings have language ability. We think that we can pinpoint areas of the
brain that are active when speech and language are involved but there is still
a mystery as to why we have and use language in the ways that we do. Word ability defines the very
social distinction of human beings from other members of the animal kingdom.
Spoken word happens because a person is actually physically present to
create the oral sounds and the audible phenomenon of speech.
All of the Gospels including the Gospel of John presume that there was a
Jesus of Nazareth who once had a physical presence and that when he was
physically present, he spoke to many people.
He spoke to enough people words that could be remembered. But human memory is not like the technologies
of memory that we have today in being able to record the human voice in a
variety of ways.
The actual voice of Jesus as it was heard by his followers had to be
remembered. And the words of Jesus had
to be recounted by those who remembered them.
And when those who had heard Jesus speak recalled the words of Jesus,
they did so in a future time after Jesus and so they had to relate those words
to new situations. And so those
remembered words would be presented in different ways according to the
situations because the original context of the spoken words was gone. It is possible to remember the words of Jesus
but the setting of where those words were said have passed and so the remembered
words of Jesus had to interact with new environments and new people.
Those who heard the spoken words of Jesus were a direct link with Jesus
to people who did not experience the physical presence of Jesus. But what happened when those eyewitnesses of
Jesus began to die out? What happened to
the remembered words of Jesus? What
happens to the memories of what Jesus did in this life?
This dilemma is what the Gospel of John is dealing with. As a teaching on how embracing the notion of
word is, the writing of the Gospel of John makes a self reference to the
significance of the technology of writing as an important way for people of the
future to know Jesus of Nazareth as the risen Christ.
The punchline of the doubting Thomas story is this: “But these are written so that you may come
to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through
believing you may have life in his name.”
For Thomas, only seeing was believing.
The writer of John is making the case that one does not have to see
Jesus; one can still read words about Jesus and one can still believe. And this kind of belief is even a more
blessed state of faith than the faith of the eyewitnesses of Jesus of
Nazareth. The writer of John is trying
to accomplish quite some magic by essentially stating that the absence of Jesus
of Nazareth opens up another kind of presence for the risen Christ.
The eternal word of God creates and organizes all of human
consciousness. The eternal word is
evident in actual human flesh. The
eternal word is exemplified best in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. And he was word and he used words; he spoke
words and his words were creative. His
words created friendships and relationships; his words created community. And his words were spirit and life. Jesus is quoted in John’s Gospel as saying,
“My words are spirit and they are life.”
The words of Jesus created a community.
But could that community continue to have life? Could that community survive? Could the words of Jesus continue to be
spirit and life in the future of the world long after he was gone and when his
audible voice could not longer be heard?
Can Jesus only be known in his physical historical body and is he only
present when his audible words can be heard?
Is Jesus only present when his body and his scars are present to be
touched? Do you understand how the
early Christians were already grappling with the reality of the presence of
Christ long after the physical Jesus could no longer be heard, touched or felt?
Can writing, a technology of memory, actually create another significant
and real kind of presence?
How many lovers have dealt with the reality of “absence make the heart
grow fonder?” How many letter writing
lovers have had the imagination of faith to seemingly palpably know each
other’s presence through the writing of love letters, and then when they
settle in to live together as husband and wife grow to be completely distant
and absent from one another? Meaning is
turned on its head: Absence is presence; presence is absence.
Does the physical presence of a person and the ability to actually hear
their voice guarantee an enhanced presence characterized by recognition,
devotion and attention?
The writer of John’s Gospel uses the doubting Thomas story to illustrate
the experience of the enhanced presence of the Risen Christ that was deeply
felt in the community by people who did not see Jesus but who still believed.
They heard and read the words of Jesus and those words were spirit and
they were life. They had the reality of
effecting peace. They had the reality of
forgiving sins, not retaining sins; they had the reality of another kind of
presence that was real.
And it is to this real presence of Christ, you and I are invited today. The words of Jesus are still spirit and they
are still life for us. And that life is
a real presence to us. Amen.
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