Wounded Lord: Reading John Through the Eyes of Thomas: A Pastoral and Theological Commentary on the Fourth Gospel

Wounded Lord

Reading John through the Eyes of Thomas

A Pastoral and Theological Commentary on the Fourth Gospel

Robert H. Smith

Edited by Donna Duensing

WOUNDED LORD

Reading John through the Eyes of Thomas: A Pastoral and Theological Commentary on the Fourth Gospel

Copyright © 2009 Donna Duensing. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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isbn 13: 978-1-60608-660-5

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7020-5

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Smith, Robert H., 1932–2006

Wounded lord : reading John through the eyes of Thomas : a pastoral and theological commentary on the fourth gospel / Robert H. Smith.

xiv + 202 p. ; 23 cm. — Includes bibliographical references.

isbn 13: 978-1-60608-660-5

1. Bible. N.T. John—Commentaries. I. Duensing, Donna. II. Title.

BS2615.53 S55 2009

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To all of Robert Smith’s students, those in the classroom and those in the wider church, who enriched his life with their quest for learning

Foreword

In Robert’s course on the Gospels, he would help students discover each particular writer’s Jesus: Matthew’s Jesus as the one who makes the world all right, Mark’s Jesus as the world’s exorcist, etc. During one of our afternoon walks when he was reflecting on his most recent class discussion, I asked: You talk about Matthew’s Jesus, Mark’s Jesus; how would you describe Robert’s Jesus?

He didn’t respond at that time. However, watching and living with him through the development of this book, I believe the Jesus of this book, through the eyes of Thomas, may be closest to Robert’s Jesus. In this way, he might be a twin of Thomas. Robert writes, "To believe in this Jesus means to take him, wounds and all, into our own lives. To believe means to participate in Christ’s own suffering on behalf of the true life of the world through the wounded Christ." This is how Robert lived his life, participating in Christ’s own suffering on behalf of the true life of the world.

Robert was passionate about providing resources for all who were called to proclaim—preachers and teachers alike. He served as Bible study leader at numerous synod assemblies, lay institutes of theology, and pastoral study groups. He desired to make the Jesus of the Gospels accessible to the person in the pew. For sixteen years he edited Preaching Helps, a feature of Currents in Theology and Mission, providing support to the numerous parish pastors whose vocation it is to proclaim the gospel in a fresh way week after week. He respected the work of those preachers and dedicated his scholarship to providing resources for their work. He listened to their struggles and attempted to respond to their questions. He frequently heard the request for resources for preaching the texts from the Gospel of John. The pastors told Robert that there were many excellent commentaries on John, but they were looking for a pastoral commentary that would bridge the academic and make this gospel accessible for preaching that equips the listeners for the living of these days.

This book grows out of his listening to the needs of his audience, especially the preachers. Throughout the writing of this manuscript, Robert engaged area pastors in conversations, offering drafts of chapters and asking for their review and suggestions. His passion was to have this material serve their needs. He also sought out responses from colleagues and his students.

Robert Smith was Professor of Greek and New Testament and I was Director of Contextual Education and Associate Professor of Ministry at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California. We were merely casual colleagues who respected one another’s work until 1991, the year in which both of our spouses died. That shared experience began a journey of a deepening friendship that led to our marrying in 1993. We treasured all of these diverse roles as colleagues, friends, and life partners. Over the years, our conversation became a bridge between our different perspectives and disciplines. Robert would use my perspective to check out whether or not I thought his approach was helpful to the parish pastor. In all of his teaching endeavors, the bottom line for Robert was for the student to discover and communicate the gospel.

As his life partner, I could see that this writing project was different from some of his others in the way that it consumed his thoughts, his living. Although he would normally shrink from invitations to preach, he would volunteer to preach on the second Sunday of Easter when the Thomas text from John appeared. Robert didn’t see a doubting Thomas, but rather a believing Thomas, a Thomas who was certain that the resurrected Christ still bore the marks of suffering in his body. This final writing project developed his idea of the importance of the Thomas story in the Gospel of John. He took to reading that gospel backwards, through the eyes of Thomas.

Robert wrote this manuscript while experiencing his own amount of suffering. In 2000 he was treated for stage-three breast cancer and went into complete remission. In the spring of 2004, he was diagnosed with an unusual form of lymphoma, unrelated to the breast cancer. This time he journeyed through an even more intense chemotherapy treatment. He was once more blessed with a complete remission. Unfortunately, in the spring of 2005 his doctors discovered that the chemotherapy regimen had resulted in a form of acute leukemia. He spent more than two of the next three months in the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. He took the manuscript with him into the hospital along with his toothbrush and New Yorker magazine. He lived with the manuscript in that hospital context. Robert invited a select few conversation partners into his germ-free zone, asking for their critique and input.

He set his own suffering in a global context. He marveled at the amazing medical attention he was getting while, at the same time, he felt for the many others in the world that did not have access to the same quality of health care. He gave thanks for his 70+ years as he grieved the early deaths of young women and men in Iraq and other war-torn countries. I believe his own journey of faith was nourished by the Jesus revealed in the Gospel of John. Robert writes, What the pages of this gospel proclaim is not so much that ‘Jesus is like God’ but rather, ‘God is like this Jesus with his wounds.’

Robert was given nine more months of life after these last treatments; he lived each day abundantly. He was thrilled to be able to teach the Gospels class once again in the spring of 2006. He worked and re-worked this manuscript until the last hours of his life, bearing witness to the importance of his leaving these words behind, perhaps his final act of teaching for the students he treasured. Robert saw in John’s Jesus a wounded Christ who is able to meet the deepest needs of humankind.

In his last weeks of life, I asked him the question, In your years as a biblical scholar, you have read many visions and images of the afterlife. Is there a vision of life after death that catches your imagination? Robert’s response: I haven’t found that line of thinking helpful for me. I believe that in death, as in life, we are held in the hand of God.

On the morning of March 16, 2006, I believe Smith was held in those wounded hands of God as he was carried from this life to the next.

The Rev. Donna Duensing (Mrs. Robert Smith)

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the input of so many generous people, many of whom may go unnamed herein since Robert no doubt kept that list in his heart rather than on his manuscript disk!

Robert’s list would surely include his close friends and confidants who reviewed chapters and provided feedback: Thank you to San Francisco Bay Area pastors Steve Churchill, Ross Merkel, Mary Rowe and Brian Stein-Webber. Professor Gary Pence played a special role, co-teaching Robert’s final Gospels class at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS) with him, serving both as his conversation partner on the manuscript and as his dear friend to the end.

I am so grateful to those who helped me in the process of readying the manuscript for submission: Caleb Crainer, teaching assistant to Robert, and Orion Pitts, staff member of First United Lutheran, who incorporated Robert’s last edits; Ryan Roberts, PLTS student, who performed formatting magic; and Robert’s dear Graduate Theological Union colleagues and friends who continue to befriend me, especially professors John Donahue, John Endres, and Martha Stortz, who offer ongoing recommendations and endless support.

Dr. Everett Kalin, Robert’s New Testament colleague and friend since their junior college days and also my very supportive friend and counsel in this publishing journey, deserves a very special thank you.

And to Robert’s three daughters Roberta Brennan, Judy Campbell, and Maria Kukla: your dad said you were his real legacy, and so you are. Thank you for being there for me in such special ways through this project. I experienced his love and support through each of you. Judy, special thanks for responding to my plea for final edits on my material.

On behalf of Robert, I thank all who helped bring this project to fruition with my whole heart.

The Rev. Donna Duensing

Reading John through the Eyes of Thomas

On some levels, the Fourth Gospel seems almost naïve. Its Greek is probably the simplest in the New Testament and so John is often the first portion of the New Testament to be tackled by beginning Greek students. However, in many respects, the story that John tells is not only subtle but downright mysterious and even deeply puzzling.

In the last couple of years, the story of doubting Thomas (John 20:24–29) has become for me the key for unlocking at least some of the Johannine puzzle. I know that other doors of entry can be opened into the world of John, but this story about Thomas keeps pulling me back.

In the first place, this story is unique to the Gospel of John. The other evangelists have in their repertoire an ample supply of overlapping reports concerning events on the first Easter and on the days following. But not one of those other evangelists relates this story of the appearance to Thomas. And then, in addition to being unique, the narrative of the appearance to Thomas holds a climactic position in the design of the Fourth Gospel.

John 21 is almost universally understood to be a kind of epilogue, a chapter added at some point to the original body of the gospel. If that assumption is true, then the Thomas story is the final story in the narrative proper. And it is not simply chronologically or literarily last. It is the climax and fitting conclusion to the entire narrative that John has composed.

The plot of the Gospel of John comes to rest with this striking story. If this story is, in truth, the end or goal toward which the gospel has been moving ever since the prologue, then it deserves special attention and the most careful handling.

I find myself asking in the first place why we need this story. Why does the evangelist not conclude the gospel with the report of Jesus’ appearing to the Ten? That narrative has the look and feel of a conclusion. The resurrected Jesus appears through locked doors, breathes out the Spirit on the disciples, blesses them with peace, and then commissions them to a ministry of forgiveness (John 20:19–23). What need is there to continue? Hasn’t the evangelist now told us everything? What essential thing has not yet been said or sufficiently emphasized? What indispensable note is struck by the Thomas story?

Instead of simply repeating old interpretations of Thomas, what we need to do is to take a fresh look both at his doubt and at his well-known confession. Endless repetition has elevated the notion that Thomas had a sluggish mind and a skeptic’s heart to the level of an exegetical dogma. But is it really true that John’s Thomas was simply an ancient skeptic who haughtily demanded special treatment before he would come to faith? What exactly did Thomas doubt? And then we need to revisit his confession of faith. What does it signify that he finally cries out, My Lord and my God?

I think that a very large part of the tradition has misunderstood both Thomas’ request and his subsequent confession of faith. If that is the case, then I fear we have misconstrued the heart of the Fourth Gospel. A fresh consideration of Thomas will entail raising questions about what the Fourth Gospel teaches about faith and discipleship and about Jesus in relation to God.

An Experiment in Reading Thomas

In John’s account of the first Easter morning, the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, who then tells the male disciples, I have seen the Lord (e9w&raka to_n ku/rion, John 20:18). Jesus appears that same night to the gathered disciples, minus Thomas. They subsequently report their experience to Thomas with words almost identical to those of Mary: We have seen the Lord (e9wra&kamen to_n ku/rion, 20:25a). These brief declarations of Mary and the Ten are of course shorthand for the whole story of their rich encounters with the resurrected Jesus, which have just been narrated (20:1–18; 20:19–23). Readers easily fill in the blanks.

Thomas listens to the testimony of his fellow disciples and then utters his famous demand: Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe (20:25b).

This condition laid down by Thomas is, of course, the reason he has come to be called the doubter. But does tradition deal fairly with Thomas? What does he mean by saying, I will not believe? What is it exactly that he is not prepared to believe?

Not prepared to believe that the tomb is empty? Not prepared to believe that Mary Magdalene and the Ten saw Jesus in human form? Not prepared to believe that Jesus himself has appeared to them in visible form? That he has, for the benefit of his disciples, put on display his hands and side and so is bodily and tangible?

Not prepared to believe that Jesus has opened his mouth and produced words in a voice recognizably his own? That this Jesus, fresh from the grave, materialized in their midst in solid human form, when all points of entry to the room were not standing open but were shut and securely locked?

We are jumping to conclusions if we say that it was all of these (or some combination of two or three or four of these) that Thomas was not prepared to believe. We should not only note what Thomas is reported as saying, but also what he does not say. So, for example he does not say, I want to see Jesus with my own two eyes just as Mary Magdalene did. I want to see him, and I want to take hold of him and carry on a conversation with him as she did. And then I want to see him float through the locked door or pass through the solid wall the way he appeared to my fellow disciples. Lacking that, I will not believe!

But that is not what Thomas requests. He asks for something different, something quite specific and really odd. He says, I want to see the wounds, wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, and I want to touch those wounds.

Even the most careful readers of John’s gospel regularly overlook the fact that this Thomas story is the only narrative in the entire New Testament to speak of wounds on the body of the resurrected Jesus. Only John’s gospel mentions that nails were used in affixing Jesus’ body to the tree and that a spear thrust opened a wound in his side. The other Gospels have not one single word about piercing nail or thrusting spear or wounds on Jesus’ resurrected body.

Isn’t it odd that the resurrected body of Jesus should have wounds? Isn’t resurrection by definition a glorification, a transfiguration, a total healing? Shouldn’t resurrection remove every trace of old weakness, every hint of prior vulnerability? (See 1 Cor 15:35–57.)

Thomas makes his demand and then Jesus appears and, without any rebuking, he offers Thomas precisely what he desires. At that point, Thomas utters his confession, My Lord and my God (20:28).

Now we need to purge our imaginations of our ordinary assumptions and ask the question, What exactly is the meaning of Thomas’ famous confession? The usual answer imagines that Thomas is saying something like this:

You—mysterious presence moving easily through locked doors—you are my Lord and my God.

You—unconquered, almighty, and exalted One—you are my Lord and my God.

You—solid, visible, and tangible, once dead but now again living and speaking and therefore truly raised from the grave—you are my Lord and my God.

The confession of Thomas (My Lord and my God) is the parade example of what has been called John’s high Christology. John is regularly interpreted as far surpassing the other evangelists in the honors he heaps upon Jesus, in the titles and privileges he ascribes to Jesus.

It is said that John elevates Jesus to divine status, placing him on the divine side of reality, identifying him with the power and might, insight, and even omniscience of God. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel has been described as a god striding across the earth, feet not quite touching the ground. Christian faith according to John is then defined as joining the evangelist in ascribing the highest dignity to Jesus, confessing his divinity, calling him Christ and Son, Lord and God. Christian faith comes to mean holding a high Christology and confessing Jesus with appropriately high titles.

But does John’s gospel exhibit an unremittingly high Christology, and does it define faith as simply acquiescing to the announcement that the resurrected Jesus is the glorious ruler of the universe?

In this story at the climax of John’s gospel, I hear Thomas saying loudly and clearly, I will not confess as ‘my Lord and my God’ anyone, even one who has been seen as resurrected and glorified, if that one does not have wounds. Thomas is saying, I will not believe or trust or confess Jesus as prophet or Christ, as Savior of the World or Son of God—even if he has vacated his tomb—unless he has wounds. When Jesus appears, Thomas sees wounds on the resurrected body. Then and only then does he confess Jesus as my Lord and my God.

It is a habit of long standing in the church to portray Thomas as the most obtuse of disciples. He had to be shamed into faith by a special revelation of the resurrected Jesus. Overwhelmed by the indisputable evidence of eye and hand, Thomas at last fell to his knees and confessed the supreme power (Lord) and divine status (God) of Jesus.

That common reading of Thomas does not begin to do justice to the Fourth Evangelist and his proclamation of Jesus. Thomas is not being held up to our scorn. He is presented not as a person of stubborn doubt but as a model of deep and impressive discernment. John presents Thomas as one who asks exactly the right question and then utters the truest confession.

John is using this story of Thomas to declare that a Jesus without wounds, and that means a Jesus without the cross, is not adequate to meet the deepest needs of humankind. With this story of Thomas, John is proclaiming that a cross-less Christ, an unwounded Christ, an eternally living but merely powerful Christ, is not the answer. Such a Christ might in fact be the problem.

Problems with a Cross-less Christ

Understanding John’s Jesus as a cross-less Christ has contributed powerfully to Christian triumphalism. High Christology of the cross-less sort pits us believers against them, the non-believing. We define ourselves as privileged insiders in every way superior to outsiders. The conviction of superiority, of being special, resting on religious grounds, has disastrous effects not only in personal relationships but also among denominations, in relating to other religions (Islam and Judaism, in particular), even in the posture we adopt as a Christian nation in the large and diverse family of nations.

Of course, some contemporary Christians are perfectly content with a high Christology that asserts that Jesus is the one and only way to God, not merely eclipsing but absolutely excluding all other paths and all other redeemers or revealers. They believe that they find in John’s Gospel a clear biblical basis for their own Christian exclusivism and therefore for an aggressive or even militant posture in relation to other faiths and also toward fellow Christians who happen to think somewhat differently. Dialogue as an approach to the other is for them a form of unfaith.

On the other hand, many of our contemporaries want to dissociate themselves from any hint of Christian imperialism, the crusading mentality, or ecclesiastical triumphalism. But since they agree with the view that John’s gospel is itself exclusivistic and triumphalistic, they seek ways to bring it into harmony with our more enlightened, more tolerant mindset. Some counsel omitting offending paragraphs or words when it is time to read from John in public on Sunday morning. Others read the text as it stands but then feel compelled to go on in a sermon or lesson to apologize for the narrow-mindedness of the evangelist who, after all, lived in another, less enlightened age than our own.

Too much of American Christianity has clasped to its bosom a powerful but cross-less Christ. That kind of high Christology will always have as its corollary a cross-less discipleship. A high and mighty cross-less Christ, Son of a high and mighty God, will produce followers who believe they should enjoy the benefits of a special relationship with this glorious Christ. These believers will look to the cross-less Christ for the blessings of success and privilege and power for themselves, their clan or party, their nation. Possessing such gifts becomes evidence that they enjoy divine approval. Narrowly focusing on these gifts and seeking them in prayer is sanctioned by the cross-less Christ. The great question becomes: How can we get the ear of this powerful Christ so that he will fulfill