April 2021

For St. John the evangelist, the story of Jesus ends on the cross. The crucifixion is the lifting up of Jesus in glory: it is His death, resurrection, ascension and giving of the Spirit all summed up in one event. The following episodes are part of the story of the disciples. Our Gospel passage today relates the circumstances surrounding the discovery that Jesus’ tomb is empty. It opens with the three characters – Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and the anonymous disciple whom Jesus loved – literally and symbolically in the dark. At the beginning, they do not understand the reason why Jesus’ body is missing: at the end, Mary and Peter still do not know, but the unnamed disciple comes to believe. Peter may well have a position of authority and his companion defers to him by allowing him to enter first, but the latter has priority of place in Jesus’ love. There are clues in the text that God has been at work. We are told that “the stone had been moved away” and that the cloth which had been over Jesus’ face was “rolled up”: this is a biblical way of expressing divine action. The signs of death – the stone, the cloths – have been deprived of their meaning; the tomb and the cloths are empty. We might contrast this scene with the raising of Lazarus, who is restored to the life he lost; Jesus is now in a different plane of existence altogether. Only John’s model “beloved disciple” realizes this.

An observation that we sometimes hear in relation to the Easter story is that things began to go wrong in the Church when the male disciples failed to listen to the women who reported that Jesus was risen. This comment is based on the other Gospel accounts, in which the women have been confronted either by angels or by the risen Jesus himself. In John’s version, Peter and the other disciple react to Mary Magdalene’s report by running to see the tomb for themselves. Mary, apparently, does not yet believe that Jesus is risen. There is an important underlying message: our belief in the resurrection relies on the testimony of those who experienced the risen Jesus for themselves. It is not enough that the apostles and others accept second-hand evidence: they have to preach the Gospel message from personal conviction. No one saw Jesus rise from the dead: the first preachers are witnesses to the resurrection; they are not witnesses of the resurrection. They have experienced the risen Lord for themselves in those encounters which we refer to as “appearances”. It is on their evidence that our belief in the risen Christ rests.

Today we are invited to renew our baptismal commitment as disciples of Jesus. The character in the fourth Gospel called “the disciple Jesus loved” represents the individual disciple, whoever he or she may be. That person’s understanding of Jesus grows in the course of the story. Our understanding of Jesus and our love for Him should also continue to grow throughout our lives. This is where the idea of struggle comes in. Our faith is not something static: it has to develop and grow, or it will die. From time to time our present ideas will not be enough anymore and we will have to leave them for a deeper understanding.