As we press beyond the narrations, we have to find clues, vital details that hint at a more original insight than their present form would substantiate. In this chapter we seek to examine two such details: the role of Peter and the meaning of the third day.
We have in an earlier chapter attempted to measure the impact of the Easter Moment on Peter. Now it is important in the development of this study to reconstruct the impact of Peter upon the Easter Moment. That is not just a rhetorical trick but rather a genuine and real concern, because time and again the resurrection narratives seem to attest that in the unfolding of the resurrection drama there was a primacy for Peter.
It is attested first by Paul, who in relating the list of appearances given to him asserts, “He (Jesus) appeared first to Peter, then to the disciples.” Mark has the young man at the tomb say to the women, “Go tell the disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee.” Luke relates the story of the two men from Emmaus rushing back to Jerusalem to share with the disciples their experience of talking with the risen Lord and sharing a meal with him only to be told by the disciples that “the Lord has risen and appeared to Peter. ”
The twentieth chapter of St. John tells us that Mary Magdalene upon the discovery of the empty tomb “ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple” and related the news. The Evangelist then tells us how Peter and the other disciple ran to the tomb; the other disciple outran Peter and came first to the sepulcher, but hesitated there and did not enter. Then Simon Peter arrived, and he was first to go into the empty tomb. Continuing into the twenty-first chapter, we see that the author of the Fourth Gospel or the author of this addendum chapter took great pains to relate in graphic detail the confrontation between the risen Lord and Peter. “Simon, do you love me? Feed my sheep,” echoes three times as if it were a formula in a familiar liturgy.
Some biblical scholars suggest that Matthew’s addition to Mark’s story of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi was, in fact, a misplaced resurrection narrative. Jesus, recall, had asked the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They had replied with all of the popular suggestions: John the Baptist returned to life, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the other prophets of old, etc. Then Jesus made the question personal and existential, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter blurted out, “You are the Christ, the son of the Living God.” Matthew’s Gospel then adds, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earthwill be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” There is no doubt that such a passage was a powerful witness to the primacy of Peter.
One final text may well also bear eloquent testimony to Peter’s primary role in the Moment of Easter. It is written in the passion narrative of Luke. The scene is the last supper in the upper room. Jesus spoke to Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” When that verse is read from a post-resurrection perspective, it echoes with deeper and deeper possibilities.
There is no doubt that Peter was the leader of the early church. The book of Acts makes that abundantly clear. Paul’s conflict with Peter, which he relates in the Epistle to the Galatians, was an even earlier firsthand witness. The historic question is: did Peter’s primacy in the early church cause those who related the narratives of Easter to cast Peter in the primary role, or do we have preserved here a peculiar witness and dramatic hint that in some way Peter was the crucial person, the primary witness in whatever the Easter Moment was? At the very least the early church was asserting that the Easter Moment had a primary witness who could be interviewed. That is, in whatever realm of truth the Resurrection was, it was perceived or experienced in history by a specific human life. In any reconstruction of the Easter Moment, the primacy of the witness of Peter must, I am convinced, be taken into account.
To press into the second clue that might help us unlock the meaning of the Easter tradition, there is a consistent New Testament reference to a dating of the Easter Moment. It was the first day of the week or the third day after the crucifixion. The precise phrase, “on the third day,” as the dating of Easter is attested by Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The meaning of this phrase has been thoroughly debated in the world of New Testament scholarship. Is this a chronological reference? Those who see resurrection outside of an historic reality are troubled, I believe, by an historic dating process. Yet someone in history at a particular time had to be convinced of the reality of Jesus resurrected regardless of the historicity of the content of that resurrection. The particular time when that reality broke upon the conscious mind of that historic person might well have been the third day. Hence, the references to that date might be quite literal. But if those references are not literal, from where would this universal dating assumption have arisen?
Some point to a reference in Hosea (6:2) which says, “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up,” but there is no evidence that this verse shaped the resurrection tradition. There is the analogy in the book of Jonah (1:17) that states that Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights. This analogy was used by Matthew (12:40) as his apologetic explanation of Jesus’ being a sign like the sign of the prophet Jonah. “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt. 12:40). This is hardly determinative, for this verse is typical of Matthew’s country preacher proof text routine; and as with so many of Matthew’s proof texts, this one literallydoes not fit. No one who would count the time from sundown on Good Friday until dawn on Easter Sunday could possibly get three days and three nights. The time was literally thirty-six hours. Two nights and one day is the maximum one can arrive at even in Matthew’s version of the Easter event. So this Jonah text is neither illuminating nor particularly applicable.
There was a popular idea in Judaism that decomposition did not begin until the fourth day after death. Some Jewish tradition added to this the idea that the spirit of the deceased hovered around the body until the third day before departing, and the spirit’s departure marked the beginning of decomposition. This idea finds its way into the Fourth Gospel in the raising of Lazarus story (Jn. 11:1–53). When Jesus arrived, the Evangelist notes that Lazarus had already been dead four days. When Jesus ordered the stone removed from the tomb, Martha objected, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Doubtless the writer of this Gospel saw this detail as heightening the drama and the power of this miraculous event, but in the process he captured part of the folk wisdom of his day. How much that folk wisdom shaped the tradition of on the third day is a subject about which we can only speculate.
Professor Reginald Fuller has suggested another possibility for which he credits Maurice Goguel; but until Fuller’s suggestion, Goguel’s point had not been taken as very significant. In trying to recreate the first-century Jewish mind set that inevitably filtered and interpreted whatever it was that the disciples experienced on Easter, Goguel notes “several Talmudic texts where the idea occurs that the general resurrection (at the end of history) will occur three days after the endof the world.”13 These texts go on to suggest that the morning of the third day is the critical moment. It is highly possible that this understanding shaped the accounts of the Easter Moment from the very beginning.
I would like to suggest that many of these hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. We have already noted (Chapter 8) the impact of the new holy day (the first day of the week) upon the disciples. We have noted that this was so firmly entrenched in Christian tradition that by A.D. 56 Paul could refer to it without any further explanation (1 Cor. 16:2). We have sought to show that the Johannine phrase, “after eight days,” in his relating of the second resurrection appearance to the disciples suggests that in John’s mind the Easter Moment from the very beginning marked the first day of the week as a unique day for Christian worship. Could it be that there was a Moment on the first day of the week following the crucifixion that defied explanation and that this Moment did come to be understood in terms of the idea of the general resurrection on the third day after the end of time? Can we not at least suggest that here we have a both/and and not an either/or?
I am convinced that the Resurrection of our Lord was real, but I am not certain that history per se can contain this reality. Perhaps it was a metahistoric truth but perceived by people who lived in history, and these people must of necessity have perceived it at a particular moment of history. Hence, the primacy of Peter’s witness was tenaciously held onto as a way of saying, “The truth of Easter had a primary historic witness who can be interviewed.” Similarly, the universal agreement on the third day was a specific attempt to say that at a particular time the truth of Jesus’ Resurrection, a truth that is beyond history, was perceived in history in a mind-bending, vision-heightening moment. In that Moment time-limited people experienced timelessness, or in the words of Paul Tillich “the eternal now,” and finite human life was embraced by an infinity that they could only see in terms of Jesus.
We separate these two clues from the narrative and hold them while we explore for others. Perhaps in time some of these pieces will begin to fit together.