Seventh Sunday of Easter Sunday after Ascension Day

Acts 1.6-14; Psalm 68.1-10,32-35*; 1 Peter 4.12-14; 5.6-11; John 17.1-11

“I AM not on the earth, but they’re on the earth.” With these words, Jesus anticipates a future event. Before he has been arrested or crucified, he speaks as if his resurrection and Ascension have already taken place. Past, present, and future collapse into each other, and time-bound history takes on an everlasting aspect.

I got here across an interesting argument that concepts from tragic drama will be applied to John 17.11. Much of it I disagreed with, however it did make me think, on this “Suspense Sunday”, about what John’s Gospel is. Greek tragedy was rooted in ancient Athens (4 centuries BC) — a less obvious forerunner of the Gospels than, say, Greek biography, which flourished across the time of the Gospels.

Aristotle explored how tragic drama works; how tragic plot and character communicate meaning; and the way heroes must be morally good, and portrayed in a way that is acceptable to their nature and station. For example, he says, the dramatist must not make a female character too clever or too strong (even Aristotle, like Homer, sometimes nods). Heroes have to be consistent. And “Tragedy mustn’t show virtuous men passing from good to bad fortune, since this doesn’t arouse fear or pity [the emotions that tragedy purges] but only a way of concern.”

Aristotle’s judgement casts doubt on the worth of applying tragic criteria to the Gospel. For the Passion is centred on the excessive suffering of somebody who’s wholly virtuous. It arouses outrage in us, not a tragic catharsis (purging) of emotion. In tragedy, the major character must suffer, but achieve this in consequence of some element of their personality (like anger, or inflexibility). This is usually called the “tragic flaw”, but the concept involved is more like “going astray”, or “making a mistake”. The suffering must arise from the hero’s character, but be excessive, beyond what their errors deserve.

John’s Gospel isn’t a tragedy. Though each genres — gospel and tragedy — have religious roots, ancient Greek tragedy was entertainment, albeit rooted in a company religious and cultural celebration. But one thing the 2 do have in common: each are supremely focused on creating an impact on the audience. Like tragedy, the Gospels (the Synoptics as much as John) are written to maximise the impact on hearers and readers.

This key element of tragedy or gospel — producing an effect upon the audience —can occur in theatre, or church, or alone at home. John isn’t writing, any greater than Sophocles, to precise personal, inner feelings about his subject material. Both are communicators with a high purpose: to encourage reflection on what it’s to be human within the context of the divine. Whether Sophocles intended his audiences to live higher lives due to his dramas, I have no idea.

Both tragedy and gospel require the protagonist to have stature (megethos). Both mingle elements of a story unfolding chronologically with one by which past, present, and future collapse into one another. Both include undeserved suffering. But the Gospel stands apart due to lowly stature of its protagonist, who yet turns defeat into victory. If time ran backwards, and Sophocles composed the story of Jesus for the Athenian stage, his audience can be outraged by Jesus’s suffering. Jesus the nice man, without megethos, being made to suffer could never be a “tragic hero”.

What sets Christianity other than tragedy is that we don’t receive the gospel as a way to be purged of our pity and fear. Jesus isn’t a mythological stranger but an actual friend, brother, and saviour. What he suffers inspires us to suffer with him. I doubt that ancient Greeks, watching Oedipus the King or Agamemnon on the theatre, felt a unity of being with those characters; or selected to model their life (and maybe death) upon people depicted within the drama.

I called this Sunday “Suspense Sunday” because, like Holy Saturday, it’s a day of waiting. Our sense of history is articulated by the actions and words with which we refill time. When nothing happens, and we simply wait, time shades into eternity, just because it does in Jesus on this Gospel verse. We read this Gospel on the eve of Pentecost, although it belongs, historically, in Holy Week. Jesus being “not on the earth” holds no terrors: because he knows, eternally, that we’re on the earth for him.