Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

In our reading from John this morning, we have something strange and wonderful. Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—'Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” It appears that the Gospel of John is making a fascinating meta-gospel comment on the tradition of the Agony in the Garden found in the synoptic gospels! In the other gospels, Jesus takes the disciples to Gethsemane to pray before he’s betrayed and crucified, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention some version of Jesus praying that the cup of suffering pass from him, yet not his will, but the Father’s be done (Matthew 26:42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). John, however, is missing an Agony Narrative. In fact, what we read in John this morning is the closest John comes to it…and he comes close to it only to critique it. How marvelous!

But what are we to do with this sort of apparent contradiction? Clearly John has a perspective that differs a bit from the perspective of the other Gospellers—how are we to tell who’s right and who’s wrong here? How are we to resolve this binary opposition?

Well…let me start with suggesting that the right/wrong binary opposition question isn’t quite where it’s at here. John’s emphasis throughout his gospel is on Jesus as the Incarnate Word, and each of the other Gospels also emphasize a particular aspect of Jesus’ person and ministry. Those emphases are going to mean differences both subtle and overt, but the total picture of the person and ministry of Christ which all four gospels paint is a coherent whole, not because they’re all univocal on every detail, but because they fill in each other’s gaps. The emphasis on a human Christ suffering in the garden in the synoptic gospels is balanced with John’s emphasis on a divine Christ who knows and welcomes what’s coming because it means the salvation of the world, the glorification of God’s Name, the defeat of sin and death, of darkness and despair. And neither emphasis is wrong.

In fact, it’s because we have an understanding of both the human and divine natures of Christ through scripture, affirmed in tradition and the creeds, that someone like Saint Gregory of Nazianzus can speak of a commutation of attributes between Christ’s divinity and his humanity: what can be said of his humanity can be said of his divinity and vice versa, according to a right understanding of the relation of each to each, precisely because Jesus is “a man who is visibly (because he is spiritually discerned as) God” (Oration 30.21). The upshot of this commutability, of this union of God and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ means that God shares the life of humans and humans can share the life of God. Gregory writes concerning all Jesus’ human and transcendent titles: “Walk like God through all that are sublime, and with a fellow-feeling through all that involve the body; but better, treat all as God does, so that you may ascend from below to become God, because he came down from above for us. Above all, keep hold of this truth and apply it to all the loftier and lowlier names and you will never fail: Jesus Christ in body and spirit the same yesterday, today, and forever! Amen” (ibid).

So John’s critique of the synoptics is less about a contradiction and more about effecting a union.

The reality, dear Friend, is that Scripture is not univocal—it all upholds the same vision, but it does so via a chorus of voices, via a community of people and perspectives. The Bible isn’t so much an invitation to gloss over difference, to smooth all the rough edges in order to produce a monolithic or uniform voice, but a community in and with which we’re invited to engage, in and with which we’re invited to be united in harmony. Reading the Bible is not about a go-it-alone solitary enterprise, but an ongoing living conversation in and with a vast family that stretches across all of time and space, from here to eternity, and to which we are accountable as individuals and as church.

Beloved, what a marvelous and wondrous multi-faceted jewel of a gift we have in Scripture!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+