St. John's Surprise Narrative of the Ascension and Pentecost

It might come as a shock to learn how little time a seminarian has to master the required courses for ordination. Things have changed considerably since my seminary years, 1962-1974, when I entered as a high school freshman, completed a junior college degree in Classical Latin and Greek [just as the American Church was switching to English], and one year as a religious novice where no academic credit was offered. Thus, I had been a seminarian/novice for seven years before taking the plunge into “major seminary studies” required, which in September 1969 would have been acquiring a B.A. from the School of Philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, and an M.A. in Theology from the Washington Theological Union in the space of five years. I made it by the skin of my teeth as I failed one of the four written comprehensive questions but passed the other three for ordination. The questions I failed dealt with Canon Law or Church Law. Anyone who knows me from those days can believe that.
 
I reviewed my WTU transcript just now because I wanted to prove to myself a strange part of my history: I never, in twelve years of seminary training, had a course in [1] saying Mass or in [2] St. John’s Gospel. Guilty on both counts. I mentioned the Mass omission to my superior a few days before ordination. He laughed, “you’ve seen enough of them.” So, following my ordination day I proceeded to offer daily Masses all through Washington for the high schools I had given retreats to over the past five years before flying to Buffalo for my “official First Mass” in my family’s parish.
 
My superior was right; it was easier than I thought to step into the celebrant’s role, at least in terms of managing your nerves. But I didn’t kid myself about my unremarkable theological proficiency, either, and I actually read many more theology books after graduation/ordination [and in 2000 I started reviewing them for Amazon.] What surprised me the most in my own research was the amazing mystery of St. John’s Gospel. Seminaries tend to teach a required course on the “synoptic Gospels” of Mark, Matthew, and Luke because their style and sources are similar. Also, they are the Gospels for the A-B-C Cycles in the new Missal of 1970. I can’t recall if my seminary, the WTU, offered a Johannine elective but in either case I didn’t take a course in the Fourth Gospel. So, I didn’t discover till later in life that John’s Gospel is different, and I mean really different, from the other three. Why the differences?
 
The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written. Later Church councils and synods would declare that New Testament revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle or his secretary, so to speak. We don’t know precisely who authored the Gospel of John [or the four other New Testament books that carry the name “John,” including Revelation.] This Gospel is famous for its inclusion of “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” believed to be John but without a formal identification. It is highly unlikely that if John had written this Gospel in his own hand, he would have referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This has led modern scholarship to examine other possibilities; I tend to side with those who see this Gospel as the compilation of the Apostle’s teaching by a masterful individual [or even a school of John’s disciples] written years later, at a time when the Church needed to reset its doctrinal and fraternal bearings.
 
Mark is believed to be first, around 65 A.D., before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Today’s consensus of scholars’ dates John’s Gospel to around 100 A.D. The Church was almost a century old; there was no need for yet another biography of Jesus. What was needed in 100 A.D. was a Gospel to tackle serious theological errors that had cropped up over time. In addition, the author [authors?] of this Gospel wished to convey to Christians once again how Jesus had desired fraternity and charity between his followers. A good example: John skips the “consecration of the bread and wine” at the Last Supper [the account was well known and probably in liturgical use already by then] and replaced it with Jesus’ washing the feet of the Twelve—a message that one cannot worthily celebrate the rites of Christianity without simultaneously embracing the poor, the hungry, the outcasts. How ironic that Pope Leo, in this Easter Season, has pressed this point in his preaching to the world at large.
 
A few weeks ago, I posted about the sacred triangle of feasts that concluded the Easter season this coming weekend. [May 23-24] with the Feast of Pentecost. In reviewing the Lectionary for this weekend’s feast, I note that there is a separate Vigil Mass for Saturday evening, May 23. The readings, strangely, do not describe the Pentecost event per se, though the Old Testament selections are quite colorful in their own way. My guess is that most churches will use the Pentecost Sunday readings, where we have two renderings of the descent of the Spirit. The First Reading from Acts 2 is Luke’s account of the descent of the Spirit upon the Apostles in the upper room, enabling them to speak in multiple tongues. If you have time, read Acts 2 in its entirety; it is probably the closest example we will ever possess of early Apostolic preaching. [Credit where credit is due: my longtime friend and theological advisor, Dr. Carol Stanton, reminded me this week of the venerable tradition that Mary was with the Apostles at this profound moment of the birth of the Church as the Body of Christ on earth. Luke does not include her, and John narrates an explicit powerful Pentecostal role for Mary, but not where you would expect to find it.
 
The Gospel of the same Pentecost Mass, from John, describes the Apostolic Pentecost in a separate way. To understand why, we need to look at the manner John narrates the entire Passion-Resurrection in a highly distinctive fashion. As the final evangelist, John recounts these days as the summary of Jesus’ ministry and the beginning of the age of deliverance. Or, to paraphrase Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Jesus settled all “salvation business” during his last weekend.
 
How radical is John’s ending narrative? For starters, his is the only Gospel that does not equate the Last Supper with Passover. The Last Supper is the night before Passover, because John wishes to emphasize that the newly arriving Kingdom of God has ushered in the fulfillment of the Old Law. Henceforth, the redemptive meal will be his own body and blood. All four Gospels have a variant of Jesus’ Last Supper promise: “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” To make the point almost painfully clear, by moving Jesus’ death ahead by one day, John has synchronized the crucifixion with the temple butchering of the lambs for the family Passover observances that night. The old order is finished. According to John, Jesus, while hanging on the cross, requests the wine that is tendered: “When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” What was finished? The old world as we knew it. The Kingdom of God is now at hand. Jesus had explained this to Martha earlier in the Gospel, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
 
We know that Jesus died on the cross, but it is only in modern times—with more research into ancient manuscripts—that we have John’s exact script of the death moment. The Paulist Biblical Commentary [p. 1173] provides an emphatic explanation that the phrase “to give up one’s spirit” is an idiomatic expression of death that has been inaccurately applied to the translation of Jesus’ death. The correct rendering would be that “he handed over his spirit,” which makes this utterance a Pentecost event. But who are the recipients of the Spirit here? The two faithful witnesses, Mary and her newly designated son, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is no coincidence that upon Jesus’ death, the soldier lanced his side and there came forth blood and water, the early symbols of Baptism and Eucharist, soaking the two at the foot of the cross. By reworking the narrative here, John has produced one of the most powerful statements of Jesus and his Church, apparently at a time when the Church needed desperately to be reminded of its true nature.
 
John continues this remarkable narrative on Easter Sunday. In one instance, Jesus meets Mary Magdalene in the morning who falls to her feet to clutch him. But Jesus says in John 20:17, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” And yet in the evening Jesus joins the Apostles in the upper room and shows them his wounded hands, feet, and side. Later he even says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” In the Johannine timeline, Jesus was glorified by his Father on Easter, the glorification synonymous with ascension. And, upon greeting the Apostles on Easter night, in John 20:22-23 Jesus exercises his second Pentecostal event: “He breathed on them and said to them ‘Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
 
John’s account of the Easter-Ascension-Pentecost triangle has raised some interesting questions. Foremost, since the Beloved Disciple is first to receive the Spirit [along with Mary] at the foot of the cross, does this imply an early division between the Disciple’s [John’s] followers and Peter’s? Father Raymond Brown’s The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times [1978] remains a popular seller today. I read it so many years ago that I’ve forgotten what his conclusions are, but you might be interested in other reviewers’ rather strong opinions on the subject on the book’s Amazon’s site.
 
However, if you look at the “second ending” of John’s Gospel, Chapter 21, particularly John 21:20-23, one can detect Jesus at work smoothing things out between Peter and the beloved disciple, at least to Peter’s apparent satisfaction, in the hope that whatever divisions existed in 100 A.D. might be healed.
 
If nothing else, I hope today’s post leaves two impressions. The first is the importance of study. During my lifetime I have seen a lot of “skimming off the cream” in Bible studies. [And yes, I have been guilty of that, too.] For example, a study group gathers and reads a text—Sunday’s Gospel, for example—and then the leader says, “OK, what are your thoughts on this text?” My question is: how can one meaningfully “think” about a text without the necessary background? There are fruitful required personal prayer and study that must happen before we gather to break open the Word of God.
 
Second, there are countless biblical pamphlets, books, podcasts, and other social media site that claim to make Bible study so easy. It isn’t. Don’t be afraid to rachet up your game. Here is a challenge: The Gospel of John [1998] by Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B. from the Sacra Pagina series of commentaries. It’s 594 pages. You can sample the introduction for free on the book’s Amazon site. It may not be for you. But of course, the Pentecost gifts of the Spirit include wisdom, understanding, fortitude, and knowledge—you are wiser than you know.