Empty Tomb
Yesterday’s readings were from the Gospel according to John, of course, as always at a funeral; but the epistle was from 1 Corinthians 15, which always stirs to mind the significant differences between Saint Paul and the gospel writers. Not that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John themselves agree, there are interesting differences among them also. But a funeral, like Sundays, is the Day of the Resurrection all over again. It’s Easter, and nowhere in all his writings does Paul mention the empty tomb that is meant to be so startling in all four gospels -- and also in some cultures, notably England, where decorated empty tombs are seen everywhere on Easter morning.
So, why doesn’t Paul mention the empty tomb? The answer, at least partially from a historical critical point of view, might be that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 a generation before the gospels were written; and in the case of John, perhaps two generations before: Paul hadn’t heard about an empty tomb, that story came along later in the oral tradition that the gospel writers used to assemble their evangelical stories about Jesus.
Did the gospel writers know about Paul, and specifically did they know about 1 Corinthians? The similarity between what Paul says about the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-26) and what Mark says about it (Mark 14:22-24) could suggest that the synoptic writers may have known Paul’s writings. And they may have wondered why Paul doesn’t mention an empty tomb, especially seeing that Paul knew personally Simon Peter and James the Lord’s Brother. If they knew the empty tomb story, indeed, experienced it personally themselves, wouldn’t they have told Paul? And if Paul had heard it, especially from Peter and James, it’s so powerful and significant that he wouldn’t possibly have left it out, would he?
Anyone who studies the Bible intelligently discovers that there may be differences between Historie, documentable history as we understand it and insist upon, and Heilsgeschichte, holy history of the developing relationship between a people and their God; and that holy history develops in and over time. So it needn’t bother an intelligent Christian to wonder if the empty tomb story came later for whatever reasons of gospel agenda; how else to testify concretely and credibly to the resurrection of Jesus?
But if the empty tomb story came later, after Paul, the resurrection appearances did not, in fact, they originate with Paul (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Mark as originally written has no resurrection appearances, but Matthew, Luke and John do have. And the unrecognized Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-22, especially v.16), and the unrecognized Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach (John chapter 21, especially verses 21:4 and 21:12), not to mention that some didn’t recognize Jesus on the mountain (Matthew 28:17) -- all this is consistent with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says we do not bury the body that is to be, but that God raises up a body that He chooses, and that just as there is a physical body (which dies and is buried) there is a spiritual body. Paul does not say that there are then no bones still buried, or ashes still scattered. He says that later there is a spiritual body and that it is as God decides.
But what does Paul mean then at 1 Corinthians 15:50-54?
We can discuss that in Sunday School class.
But not tomorrow morning. In Sunday School tomorrow morning we’re talking about the Gospel according to Mark.
TW+