Reading the Gospels Together

Some Conclusion – Part 2

So where do we go from there? I think there are some positive conclusions we might arrive at from our experience of reading the gospels together. One of those positive conclusions is to be forced to think deeper about these gospels and why their authors wrote them in the first place. If it is impossible for us to know “what really happened” the truth is that it was also impossible for them to know “what really happened” too. That’s the way things unfold for all human beings. In actuality every event that happens in any of our lives, once it has happened, it disappears and is no longer fully available to us. What we have is only a memory of it and our response to it. Sometimes our memory might be quite vivid and even accurate but it is not the actual event. And the further we move in time from any event the less vivid it becomes. Our memories can even trick us. We can never fully retrieve the event – “what really happened.” That does not mean that the events of our life are not real or that they do not have impact on our lives but simply that they are not available to us for examination in a strictly objective way. In a very real way “what really happened” is not nearly as important as the impact of what happened has on our life anyway. Some things have little lasting impact and others have huge impact. The historic events surrounding Jesus were all real events that really happened but we can no longer get at them objectively and neither could the gospel writers. What lasts is the impact of those events. So as we attempt to think deeper about the gospels the first thing we need to realize is that our hope that somehow we, or anyone else, can finally get at “what really happened” is not available to us. It was not available to the gospel writers either. And perhaps the greater truth is that getting at “what really happened” was not the reason the gospel writers wrote their gospels anyway. They were not seeking to be historians or biographers or news reporters or court recorders – none of whom, by the way, are able to be totally objective anyway. There is no recording of “what really happened” that is not already an interpretation by the one writing it.

So, if the gospel writers were not attempting to tell us “what really happened” what were they attempting to do and how did they go about their work? What if the gospel writer’s real attempt was to bear witness to a powerful event that happened through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that changed their lives and motivated them to proclaim the good news they encountered in this experience? What if they came to believe that God encountered them in this event of Jesus? What if they came to believe that in the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus God spoke to them? What if they were living in a community that shared stories of Jesus – stories of healings and teaching and most importantly the story of Jesus betrayed by human hands and crucified, of Jesus being really dead, and of God raising him from the dead, and of Jesus appearing in bodily form to his disciples? What if they heard stories of how shocking it was for those first witnesses to believe but that they did believe and risked their lives to tell the story?

And what if you were Mark? You know many of the stories but they come to you in a random sort of order. Of course you know that Jesus was baptized at the beginning of his ministry and that he died at the end but most of the rest of the stories are just random bits and pieces. And what if you were living in a community where life had grown dark and bleak. The Jewish people have seemed to have lost their minds and their way rebelling against the mighty Roman Empire. And now the city of Jerusalem is in ruins. The Temple has been destroyed. The mighty fist of Rome has prevailed and people were wondering if perhaps God has forsaken his people. Even Christian people are perplexed and wondering if the world is coming to an end – or perhaps Jesus is coming soon – but it has been a long time since his death and resurrection and some are losing heart. Many are losing their courage to follow Jesus. So you gather up the stories and you arrange them to proclaim the message you think the people in your community need to hear. You have no idea what the “right” order should be for most of the stories – but you do know the message you want to deliver. So you arrange the stories to reflect your own community’s needs and to convey the message you feel compelled to proclaim. You think of the best way you can begin this story you are arranging. Maybe you know something about the birth stories of Jesus and maybe you don’t. But you settle on the story of Jesus’ baptism and you tell the story as powerfully as you are able. And you move on from there arranging the story to proclaim the message. You want those who are living in discouragement and despair to know that it was like that for the first followers too. You want those who are feeling threatened to deny, betray, and even abandon Jesus in this dark and troubled time to realize that those same threats plagued the first followers. And so you construct your message out of the stories and you shape that message to lead to the darkness of the cross. You want your readers to focus all their attention on Jesus, the Crucified Messiah. If you and your readers are living in a dark time then you need to know that Jesus walked that road too and that ultimately he was abandoned by everyone who should have stood up for him. And so you bring your readers to the cross on a dark afternoon. You dangle a bit of hope before them in the women who watch and then you decide on the most powerful way that you might grab their attention and compel them, once again, to follow this Jesus. You draw them right into your story by letting even the women fail. Of course you know that they know that leaving these frightened women at the tomb saying nothing is not what really happened – they and you are Christians after all. You know and you know they know that these women found courage and became witnesses. And you hope that your readers will do the same – in fact you have persuaded them to do just that! And what we have come to call a gospel has been born. And in their own ways Matthew, Luke, and John have also constructed their gospels much as Mark did. They have had their own communities and their own circumstances in mind. And they have shaped their own stories to speak to those circumstances. And each gave birth to a gospel of their own. All four gospels reflect the same historical events of Jesus ministry, death, and resurrection. But all four gospels shape that reflection in different ways and tell their readers different things in order to speak to the needs of their readers. And we can be thankful for that. Our needs are not always the same either. Sometimes one gospel might speak to us better than another. And taken all together they speak to us in remarkably helpful ways. So, the first positive conclusion we might come to is to realize that the intent of all four gospel writers was to speak to their community and to the needs of that community to proclaim the gospel to their hearers. They are preachers of the good news!