Chronicles of Canterbury
the
Chronicles of Canterbury april 2018
From the Rector
Trusting in the Apostolic Witnesses to Easter
J
esus said, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20-21) These words in John’s Gospel comes from Jesus’ so-called “High Priestly Prayer.” The whole thing goes much longer, lasting 26 verses, but in it we encounter a highly evolved theological exposition of Christ’s saving identity and relationship to the Father. According to John, Jesus utters this prayer on Maundy Thursday, and then goes to Gethsemane, where he will be arrested. The difference between John’s Gospel and the other three is tremendous. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’ prayer before being arrested is a single verse, in which all he does is ask God not to make him drink of “the bitter cup” of suffering and death – unless it is God’s will that he do so. In the past century or more, mainstream scholars have argued that this difference and the apparently greater
complexity of John’s Gospel in general, suggest that the book was written much later than Matthew, Mark and Luke. What’s more, it has been frequently argued by many modern scholars that John’s Gospel contains numerous sayings which Jesus didn’t actually say, and the high priestly prayer could be an example of this. But, I am not so sure I agree. Now to be clear, we have numerous ancient manuscripts to study John from, and there are differences between them. It appears some later manuscripts have minor additions to them. Things added after the original work was composed perhaps. Yet, none of those additions are particularly meaningful to our understanding of Christ. Moreover, some of the most advanced theological writing about Christ are found in the letters of Paul, and they were written before any of the Gospels See RECTOR on page 11
ECW Spring Event
Neighbor to Neighbor
R
oyce Hathcock likes to play basketball. Growing up in inner-city Phoenix with his single mother 2 Easter: Ancient & New and his grandmother, he spent a lot of his spare 4 Come Out to Camden St. time shooting hoops. At age 16, he joined a friend on the court 5 Lunch at the Circus for practice so he could make the 6 Your Pledge Dollars team at his new high school. what’s inside
7 A Hidden Garden
8 A Mission for Matthew 9 OWLS 10 Briefly 11 Lifelong Disciple
One day his friend’s coach came around and invited him to play at the gym at a local church. Royce had never set foot in a church, but well, it was basketball after all. “I was weirded out by church people,” says Royce, thinking back to that pivotal day. He joined the coach on the court and played; then at midnight, they took a break. They had a snack, then the coach passed around Bibles, a book Royce had never opened. He was asked to read
1
a verse from the Bible, and though a word in the passage his eyes fell on read “comforter,” Royce read it as “confronter.” Confront. That’s exactly what it felt like Jesus was doing in his life. “My friend had met Christ but I was not exposed to that world,” he recalls. But in time, as he learned about Jesus’ message, he began to embrace this new idea. “I had my two worlds,” he says, “home and church.” His mother had never been to church either, but as he grew, she saw him change, and by Easter that year, she, too, became a Christian. “She started singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school. God let me know that He loves everybody,” even a knucklehead kid from the inner city who never knew his dad.
See ECW on page 3