Series: Lectionary Notes
tl;dr: This week's readings I struggled to land on one major theme but do have some scattered thoughts.
We've made it past the biggest day of the Christian year and now have the rest of the Easter season ahead of us, so it makes sense that this week we're continuing to reflect on the resurrection. Other than that, though, this week did not jump out to me with one really coherent idea to dwell on. I've got a handful of scattered ideas instead.
Psalm 16
I'm going to start with the psalm because it felt the most like the odd one out, particularly because there was little to no concept of resurrection of the dead in the Hebrew Bible. In the New Testament, the language is generally that of dying with Jesus and then being raised again. Here in Psalm 16, the closest we get is that God will not let the psalmist die:
For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.
Sheol may be a general metaphor to mean "the grave" broadly, or may be a more specific Israelite theory of the afterlife that everyone went to and consisted mostly of darkness for both the righteous and the unrighteous. There isn't a clear consensus on that. I'm inclined to think more of the former. What is clear is that it is nothing like the medieval concept of Hell with all the flames and eternal torture.
The psalmist here seems to think God will protect him from encountering death, rather than encountering it and overcoming it. Presumably they knew they would literally die at some point. With a couple of rare exceptions in the Hebrew Bible that holy people like Elijah were swept away without dying, death was - as it is now - a thing that comes for everybody. So I really don't think this is about escapist thinking that he won't die at all.
Based on all the context surrounding that line, I will speculate that this is about declaring God being on the side of the righteous, protecting them from the harms that the unrighteous want to inflict upon them. If we go into the other texts thinking of them purely as some entry into Heaven or Hell after death, this psalm doesn't really fit the theme at all. If we see the resurrection of Jesus primarily through a Christus Victor lens of overcoming death and evil and the power of Empire, it actually does fit a lot.
If not for that, the only way this text fits with the others is that it is quoted in the Acts text.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
This speech from Peter on Pentecost is fascinating when you consider that this was only a few weeks after denying Jesus multiple times, which we just included in the Easter readings last week. Now he is completely unafraid, making a bold speech about Jesus to a lot of people. He has a fully formed concept of death and resurrection. How much of this was some supernatural coming of the Holy Spirit? How much of it was witnessing the resurrection? How much of it was the advantage of time and the disciples together trying to understand what happened?
I believe the words of David that Peter quotes here are the same as the Psalm, but they're translated completely different at least in the NRSV. I have no idea why that would be the case. I wonder if the Septuagint Greek is completely different, as in that Peter was paraphrasing, or just a quirk of translation that Peter used the Septuagint but then our later translations went back and rephrased it entirely based on the original (the closest we have to original) Hebrew texts instead.
This line also stands out to me:
this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.
That's a loaded line on a couple of fronts.
First, what does it mean when Peter says it was planned by God? Does that mean God micro-managed history to exactly bring it about? Does it mean that God knew it would happen that exact way because God exists outside of time and saw what to Peter was the future? Or does it simply mean that God understood the nature of humanity and the Roman Empire and knew that it was inevitable that Jesus' challenges to their power would not go unpunished? I definitely tend toward the latter.
Then there's the second part. He says to "fellow Israelites" that "you" crucified and killed Jesus by the hands of those outside the law. Those outside the law are the Romans, so that part is easy enough, but that part about fellow Israelites killing Jesus? That's not really factually accurate. Sure there were definitely some of the religious leaders who were happy to collaborate with Rome, and I have to assume that's what is being called out here. It still makes me uncomfortable, though, looking back through the lens of history where it has been a little too easy for this to be interpreted in the "blood libel" sense that acts like all Jews killed Jesus and should be forever punished for it. It's simply not true that all Jews killed Jesus. Two weeks ago we were celebrating Palm Sunday where the majority of people were celebrating Jesus. The crucifixion account is clear that it all happens in the middle of the night, when the collaborators in on the plan would be awake but normal people would have no idea any of this was happening. Even if a lot of Jews in that first generation did all suddenly change their minds and collaborate with Rome to murder Jesus, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that means all their descendants should be punished for it.
1 Peter 1:3-9
We'll keep hanging out with Peter's interpretation of resurrection as we move to a later epistle. Peter's speech in Acts hits on how so many were witnesses to everything that happened. Now it's a while later and he's writing to people who did not personally witness it. He encourages them to still have that trust in Jesus anyway, that it will result in some inheritance and some salvation which is not very clearly defined in this text. Does he mean the Protestant Reformation era ideas that it is all about individuals going off to some Heaven after death? I don't see much evidence of that. But there's also not much of the usual anti-Empire material in here, either. Maybe it's in the wider texts, but in the interests of time to finish these notes, I did not go deep looking for more context.
John 20:19-31
Let's move on from Peter to a different disciple: Thomas. Like in 1 Peter, the main theme in here is believing even when you haven't seen. Thomas isn't ridiculed for wanting to see before he believes, but John - like Peter - writing later clearly wanted to give extra encouragement to his audience who did not personally witness the resurrection. John even says that at the end: he's writing this to help you believe that you may have life in his name. He even sets that up with some apostolic succession language, having Jesus promise that the apostles are trustworthy.
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