John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

We blew right past a lot of the mythological details in the passion narrative. Some believers focus much more on the details of John 19, and there are legendary tales regarding the mystical powers of the spear that pierced Jesus' side. Since this is rather like spending time dwelling on the actual powers of a harp played by the Norse god Bragi, we've quickly arrived at John 20, which is a somewhat altered resurrection story than what we find in the synoptic gospels. Again, we need not worry about comparing the details of who arrived where first and who said what; these are authorial creations intended to tell a story a certain way. We can turn our attention in other directions.

Most importantly, there is a resurrection. We observed previously that the suffering of the crucifixion was a result of remaining self-differentiated and maintaining integrity in the midst of anxious people who allowed fear to drive them. Here we see that suffering was not the end of the story. The outcome of suffering for the Jesus character is that he rises and assumes an exalted status. Perhaps we too might expect that on the other side of our suffering is a sense of renewed life, not on the other side of the grave, but while we are still alive and walking around.

The persecution we might face for creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves is painful, but we also gain something greater than that suffering -- namely, the more fully alive life that we create. We gain alignment with our deepest, most noble selves, which is a way of being that allows us to be more fully alive -- as the Jesus character seems to be in the resurrection story of the gospel of John. He is barely recognizable to people who knew him well, just as our way of aligning with our deepest, most noble selves may be barely recognizable to people who knew us when we were less fully alive.

There are a few other details in the story from which we might also draw some meaning. For instance, Mary arrives at the tomb, sees something she doesn't expect, makes some assumptions (based primarily on fear), and runs off in reaction to those assumptions. She finds two other people, who hear her anxious conclusions and run off in reaction to her story. These two people make their own assumptions and -- without fully understanding what is happening -- go home, satisfied with the reliability their conclusions. At this point in the story, none of these characters know what is happening, but they all are convinced that they have a full grasp of the situation. They aren't happy about it. In some cases, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. But they believe that they understand the situation fully.

We don't ever understand a situation fully. We might understand things accurately in part, but we can't know all that there is to know about a situation. There are historical events that contribute to a situation and yet their connection might remain unnoticed. Each person in a situation brings their own perspective and baggage into it, and we can never know fully what goes on in another person's head. Before our anxiety carries us off into Autopilot Reaction Land, it's worth remembering that we don't know all that there is to know. If we can remain curious and ask questions, we might just short circuit our anxiety, even if we still fail to grasp a situation completely.

The second portion of this passage from the first half of John 20 has a lot of mystical implications, which were probably very important to the community for which the gospel was originally written. The dialogue between Mary and Jesus indicates that the community thought some very specific things about a post-resurrection Jesus. These ideas are not based on factual data, but rather on the assumptions of a community -- what made sense to those people at that time. We follow the same process too, often arriving at strange conclusions.

For the community in which this gospel was written, it made sense for Jesus to be unrecognizable and to say, "Don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended." They essentially made things up about what a resurrected person might say, based on their assumptions about the world. Some people today think it makes sense to conclude that wild conspiracy theories have merit, or that alien visitation is a viable explanation for some experience. These conclusions make sense to the people making them, even if they don't hold water under objective scrutiny. People today believe a literal interpretation of biblical stories, even though such an interpretation is incompatible with what is demonstrably true about the world.

Anxiety can make us forget things we actually do know. When we are anxious, our brains find it easier to latch onto any explanation -- even explanations that don't make a lot of sense -- because we want our anxiety to go away. When we think we understand something, we feel like we can have some control. We can put tin foil on our heads to protect our thoughts. We can amass a stockpile of resources in a fallout shelter to prepare for a societal breakdown. We can do something based on what we think we know, forgetting that there are pieces of contradictory evidence we aren't considering.

Sometimes, we hold two mutually exclusive competing ideas in our head without even realizing it. We think that our bosses hate us no matter what we do, yet we keep trying to find ways to please them. We think that our spouses love us, yet we behave as if they are our enemies. We believe that we are part of a religion founded on unconditional love, yet we pronounce hateful judgment on people who seem different from us. Somehow, these contradictions make sense in our anxious mind.

Our anxiety makes us forget what we know about people or about ourselves or about reality, and we go off on some fear-driven tangent without even realizing that we aren't acting in accord with what we believe most deeply. If we are willing to stop and think through our behavior, based on a deeper connection with our clear guiding principles, our actions might more often align with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves.

Now, there's no way to know what the characters in this story believed most deeply. One thing that is clear, however, is that there is some emotional volatility at play. Their anxiety is powerful. Yet, at the end of this particular passage, Mary's behavior is very different from the ending of the gospel of Mark, in which the women run away scared and tell no one what they've seen. Mary finds a sense of hope and runs to share that hope with others.

Obviously, hope is more uplifting than fear. Our hope can still be based on unrealistic or dishonest beliefs, though. In the story, of course, Mary accurately identifies a resurrected Jesus. This is just a story, not a historical account. In our own lives, we might be tempted to invest a lot of hope in things that we know aren't likely to happen. Hope in the impossible is not useful hope. In fact, hope in the impossible is most likely an anxious reaction in disguise. We feel powerless, so we place hope in something beyond our control.

An overwhelming majority of parents think that their high school athletes will have a career in professional sports, when it's obvious that only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes will go pro. Often, we expect that people in our lives are going to change into the people we want them to be. While we will surely influence people, we can't control how they will change as a result of our influence. We might hope for a mystical experience with something supernatural outside of ourselves, but every piece of evidence we have points to the conclusion that what we consider to be mystical experiences happen inside our own brains. We mistake internal chemical reactions that we don't understand for external supernatural experiences -- which we somehow believe we do understand.

It's important for us to share our hope with others, and it's important for us to maintain a sense of reality in the midst of our hopefulness. Realistic hope can prompt us toward actions that align with that dream of what could be. And it's important for us to share our anxiety with others too, if we're conscientious enough to share our anxiety with people who will help us shift out of autopilot and back toward a more intentional approach to how we manage our anxiety. Mary is a great example of connection in this passage. Everything that happens, she runs to tell someone. She isn't a great example of personal responsibility, though. We can forgive a fictional character in the throes of grief for not being grounded and centered. In our own lives, we can strive for a sense of connection with ourselves even as we foster connection with other people.

We can draw a lot of lessons from these short paragraphs, then. First -- even though our integrity may be seen as sedition and anxious people may persecute us for our intentional alignment with our deepest, most noble selves -- when we engage in fully alive lives, our experience might be beyond what we ever dreamed life could be.

Second, our anxiety can convince us that we know things we don't know. It's important for us to remember that we can't know everything. Our sense of curiosity can help us manage our reactivity.

Third, our anxiety can make us forget things we do know. We can become sharper about examining our beliefs and identifying when we are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in our heads. We can choose to follow the belief that aligns with our deepest values and let the other one go as a product of our anxiety.

Finally, hope is important, and it's most powerful when it's balanced with reality. When we hope for things that are impossible, we can't move toward them in any meaningful way. When we hope for things that are possible, we can act in accord with that hope and create more meaningful lives for ourselves and for the people around us.

John 11 How Are We Resurrection and Life?

The story of Lazarus in the gospel of John offers a lot of potential insight. That insight doesn't depend on the story having any historical or factual truth. We could acknowledge that there are a lot of mythological resurrection stories across a wide variety of ancient cultures. And we might suggest that there are plausible scientific explanations for how the event could have actually transpired. We might also recognize that none of the other biblical narratives about Jesus even hint at what would seem to be a very significant and astounding event. None of this actually equips us any better to live our lives, however. Determining that this is a fictional story is only a starting point for deriving value from it.

At the same time, the concept of resurrection is perhaps more significant than any particular story about resurrection. Certainly many of us can point to moments of rebirth or transformation. We might even say that we have had to "die" to some influences in order to be "reborn" into a healthier way of being. Some of us are aware that other people have helped us in the process of transformation, sometimes through their support and encouragement, and sometimes through actually working in our lives to connect us to new people and opportunities that springboard us into a transformative experience. Perhaps we have done that for others in the midst of their rebirth, in the midst of a process of morning some loss and rediscovering oneself. Resurrection as a metaphor is loaded with meaning.

Thus, the story of Lazarus and the people to whom he was connected can have meaning for us if we approach it not as a story about physical death and revivification (which is not something any of us should reasonably anticipate), but rather as a symbolic story with a more universally applicable meaning. The story becomes much richer from this perspective, beginning with the response of the Jesus character to the news of Lazarus' illness.

Of course, the story has been interpreted throughout Christian history as a commentary about the supernatural knowledge and power of Jesus. Jesus seems to know the present and future circumstances of Lazarus, and has confidence in his own power to produce miraculous effects. This is all relatively useless to us. Pretending that this kind of supernatural knowledge or power is available to us or to any other person is frankly delusional. Now, if we want to acknowledge the potential of a medical professional (or a team of medical professionals) to perform "miracles," that's fine; we just need to recognize that we have crossed into the realm of natural human capability rather than supernatural prowess.

The kind of symbolic death and resurrection that we have suggested, however, might also be met with some responses like those of Jesus. When someone has experienced a loss -- or when they are in the process of "dying" to some habit or circumstance -- we might have some clarity that there can be some joy of impending transformation in the midst of mourning. We might resist the temptation to be infected by the anxiety of others and calmly respond with love in our own time. We also might choose to put ourselves in a position of vulnerability for the sake of connection with people we care about. Most of us are not going to be faced with a sect of people looking to stone us, but we still feel a sense of threat or vulnerability from time to time. It can seem safer to stay away from people who are experiencing a significant loss, and yet our own willingness to be vulnerable can contribute to transformation in the lives of others.

I'm not sure that the sequence of events is all that important, but in the gospel narrative, Jesus learns of Lazarus' struggle and the anxiety affecting his closest friends and relatives, and Jesus doesn't take on that anxiety and rush to Lazarus' side. Instead, he takes time to gather himself, to be grounded and centered, and to finish whatever tasks he had prioritized because of his own values and guiding principles. He trusted that Lazarus would emerge from his loss, and he accepted that those close to Lazarus were responsible for managing their own anxiety, whether they actually chose to do so or not. Eventually, though, Jesus' desire to be in meaningful connection with a friend prompted him to place himself in a position of vulnerability in order to care for Lazarus and others.

The followers closest to Jesus chose to follow his lead in allowing themselves to be vulnerable, even though they had to do some work managing their own anxiety. Jesus didn't demand or require his friends to accompany him. He simply told them what he would be doing, and he invited them along. It was up to the disciples to decide for themselves how they would respond to Jesus' decision. Some of them may have accompanied him out of anxiety, and others may have reached a point of calm clarity about the decision. Whatever the case, each individual's choice was his own responsibility.

The same is true in our lives. Our decisions will influence people around us, and we can be clear about what we choose to do and invite others along without being responsible for their decisions. We don't need the approval of others in order to make decisions that align with our deepest values, and we don't have to convince others that what we choose to do has integrity. Other people are responsible for what they do in response (or reaction) to our decisions, even when they seem unwilling or unable to make a responsible decision. Surely, our choices have consequences, and we may not know all of the consequences of our actions ahead of time. We may reconsider the decisions we make when new information becomes clear to us. There is no reason to judge ourselves when this happens. It's simply part of the journey.

Allowing other people to be personally responsible for managing their own anxiety and making their own decisions isn't always easy. If we take the story at face value, Jesus spends more time helping Martha process her anxiety than he does with Mary. Maybe he knew his own emotional limits and was worn down a bit by the first conversation. Maybe he knew the two women well enough that he believed he could expect more personal awareness from one than he could from the other.

The conversation with Martha turns into an assertion of Christian dogma, but that's to be expected from the author(s) of John. One might wonder, though, if there is still value in interpreting the Jesus character as an exemplar of our own best possible versions of ourselves. Could it be true that when we are living with integrity and intentionality by a clear set of guiding principles -- when we are connected with our deepest most noble selves -- we are transformative and life-giving to the people around us?

(If it needs to be restated at this point, our deepest values are not based on fear, but affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Becoming clear about these values is a long-term process of personal work, and we have delved into this in many other posts.)

This is not a question of supernatural power, of course, but a poetic framing of the natural power of intentional people. When we make decisions based on our deepest values, we create an environment in which others can do the same. When we clearly express the principles that guide our lives, we model a way for others to ground their own choices. When we exhibit calm and confident vulnerability, we influence the people around us toward managing their own anxiety a little better. It isn't our responsibility to tell other people what they should do, but it is our responsibility to be clear about why we make the decisions we make. And in sharing that clarity and those values with others, we make it more possible for them to live with greater integrity in their lives.

Moreover, when we trust in our own processes of "resurrection" -- our own journeys through mourning loss and transformation into a clearer reflection of a best possible version of ourselves -- we serve as models of resurrection to the people around us. When we live intentionally, we serve as models of life. When we are at our best, we are resurrection and life. Those who live intentionally by clear, life-affirming guiding principles will know what it means to truly live, even though they will experience loss from time to time. Joan Borysenko has written, "The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live." And it is attributed to Albie Sachs that, "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."

Our lives are not lived in isolation. We influence everyone around us. When we give control to our anxiety and fear, we influence people around us toward greater anxiety and fear. When we live intentionally with integrity to our deepest values, we influence people toward greater self-awareness and fulfillment. In any case, other people's responses or reactions are their responsibility, but the sort of influence we offer to others is our responsibility. If we choose to, we can be the resurrection and the life by which other people desperately long to be influenced. And if we are honest, there are time when we will desperately long for such influence in our lives. Best to seek out those people now and bask in their influence so that living in alignment with our principles is well-rehearsed when the time for transformation comes.