Do you ever have those times when you want
to stick out your tongue, and then, in a very child-like way, say, “Nana nana
nana?”
More than ten years ago, I took a
course. I don’t remember the name of the
course or who taught it. I don’t
remember what book I was reading or what we were discussing at the time. What I remember is offering a different
interpretation to a gospel text and being rebuffed for it. What I expressed was pretty much
dismissed. If you know me, you know that
when I express my thoughts, I feel very vulnerable, and being dismissed in this
way brought up feelings of foolishness and shame. Hmmm.
No wonder I'm still holding onto it.
The
text was from the gospel of John 19:25-27:
Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his
mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26When
Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he
said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27Then
he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple
took her into his own home.
My question was around this disciple whom Jesus
loved. Maybe it was a woman. The text mentions three women standing at the
foot of the cross and then Jesus says, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the
disciple, “Here is your mother.”
Traditionally, people have referred to John as the disciple that Jesus
loved. John is also traditionally
credited with the writing of the gospel.
What if it wasn’t John? What if the text is actually referring to one
of the women standing at the foot of the cross?
After all, we know from the other gospels that all the male disciples
ran and hid. It was only the women who
stayed with Jesus at the cross. The
passage refers to three women but it seems people would like to insert a fourth
person, a male person. Also, if it was
John that stayed, why didn’t he also help with the burial of Jesus, along with
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
The course I’m currently taking on the scriptures of
the New Testament offered a reading by Sandra M. Schneiders, from a book
called, “Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth
Gospel.” Schneiders states that most
people will say the beloved disciple must be male, because Jesus says, “Woman,
here is your son.” Schneiders has a
different theory.
“First, most commentators agree that, whoever the
Beloved Disciple was historically, in this scene the figure is not merely or
even primarily an individual who is personally and priviately united to the
mother of Jesus but a representative figure symbolic of some group that is to
be united in a special way with her. In
that case the meaning of the verse is, ‘Woman, behold the one who is to be to
you what I [Jesus] have been.” Since
Jesus is Mary’s son, the community represented by the Beloved Disciple becomes
Mary’s new “son,” that is, shares the same relationship to her as Jesus had
during his earthly life.”
Schneider’s ultimate theory is that the Beloved
Disciple is not one person, but is representative of an ideal disciple, which
could be either male or female.
The article goes into much more detail about the
Beloved Disciple, other unnamed disciples, the author of the gospel, and even a "redactor," one who may have modified the gospel later to make it more acceptable to the
Greater Church of the time, specifically in removing women from key leadership roles. I found it
quite fascinating, especially since it confirmed my original suspicions, voiced
and dismissed. Now, it was only a guess
at the time and I had no way of substantiating my theory, but I feel as if my
original thought may not have been as foolish as it originally seemed. "Na Na Na Na Na Na."
