When the Most Wonderful Time of the Year is Dreadful

Healing Wounds from the Liturgical Calendar in the Gospel of John, Part 1

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It’s that time of year again when Christians talk about the blessings of liturgy and religious time marked by the church calendar. But if you subscribe to Once a Week, there’s a good chance that liturgical seasons like Advent are a source of hurt rather than hope, of pain rather than promise. Wouldn’t it be a unique grace from God if that spiritual pain was addressed in the Bible? Well, I’m writing to you this week to say that it is.

^{Photo by Max Beck on Unsplash}

Following the traditional fourfold Advent structure, this post is the first of a four-part series on the liturgical festivals in the Gospel of John through the lens of trauma. This isn’t about Advent or Christmas per se, as we will look at four Jewish feasts in the order they appear in John 5-10: Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, and Dedication. Fittingly, the fourth feast in ch. 10, Dedication or Hanukkah, has some association with the birth of Jesus in church history (although I’m definitely not entering that debate here!¹), and that fourth post will come out on December 24.

This first post tells a story of an early Christian community that suffered life-shattering religious abuse and trauma related to liturgical rhythms. It’s a high-level general account, and because we need to do a little extra background work first, I don’t have space to include any concrete contemporary parallels. But if you’ve been through spiritual abuse, you probably won’t need help making connections to your own experience.

Some Bible Background

The structure for this series comes from the four feasts which provide the narrative backbone of ch. 5-10 in John. Here are the mentions of these feasts in order:

Sabbath — John 5:1 After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. John 5:9 Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath,
Passover — John 6:4 Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was near.
Tabernacles/Shelters — John 7:2 The Jewish Festival of Shelters was near.
Dedication — John 10:22 Then the Festival of Dedication took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter.

The unnamed feast in 5:1 is likely serving to introduce the entire section of ch. 5-10, but it’s possible that it also highlights the narrative in 5:1-47 as occurring on a sort of high, festal Sabbath. As Francis Moloney, who gave me the inspiration for this series, explains, these feasts take us from Spring (Passover), to Autumn (Tabernacles), to Winter (Dedication), along with Sabbath which happens every week.² Once we see the prominent structuring role these feasts play in John, the first question is, why? A second question is, why start with Sabbath? Moloney answers the first question:

“Why would so much of the Gospel be given to this background? Well obviously the Gospel’s frontline concern, which is the presentation of the person of Jesus as the one who makes God known, is always there. But there other issues driving this part of the Gospel. And one of them is pastoral. Because if we accept, as we must, that the Jewish community has expelled the Johannine community from its midst³, they are now in a situation, wherever they may be in their journey, of no longer being able to celebrate their feasts with their former Jewish friends.”

Unlike the Jewish Christian audiences of Paul in Galatia, or the author of Hebrews, which needed to be encouraged against voluntarily returning to Judaism, the audience of John was involuntarily expelled from Judaism. They chose to believe in Jesus, but they didn’t chose to leave their communities. That decision was made for them. As Moloney goes on to say,

“To be expelled in a small community in Asia Minor, or wherever it might have been, meant that you had to go somewhere else to buy your bread. You had to go somewhere else to buy your meat. You had to find a completely new social circle, who hadn’t ostracized you, for your day-to-day life…So this being sent away from the synagogue makes a huge impact on their life. But most of all, most of all, the question arises in their mind, what about the God of Israel? “Have we lost contact with the God of Israel?” Because it was in the celebration of the Jewish feasts that the Jewish family, community, and the Jewish individual had this contact with the God of Israel.”

Simply put, we are talking about trauma: forced separation from community; coerced removal of social belonging; and epistemological crisis about God and relationship with him.⁴ John addresses this social trauma vis a vis the Jewish liturgical calendar, prominent aspects of Jewish life that were violently taken away from these Christians.

Severed from Sabbath

Which brings us to the second question: why start with Sabbath? I think the answer is simple: because the loss of weekly Sabbath observance caused greater pain. For spiritual abuse survivors today, it’s the pain felt every Sunday compared to the pain felt once a year on Christmas. Not only does John start with Sabbath in ch. 5, he also gives a similar Sabbath narrative in ch. 9, as well as a parallel liturgical account in ch. 20. Let’s start where John ends this Sabbath theme in ch. 20, because that is where the deepest healing is offered.

John 20 is a curious chapter. One key to discerning John’s intent (though by no means the only key) is observing what he repeats and emphasizes. For example, he has Mary Magdalene complain three times about the absent and missing body of Jesus (20:2, 13, 15). More than just a historical record, that threefold emphasis would have spoken powerfully to John’s audience which had been forced out of their Jewish community. Mary’s disconnection from the temple-body of Jesus, which pointed to the new temple community created out of a toxic religious environment, would resonate with Christians cut off from the synagogal center of post-70 A.D. Jewish life.

For many if not most Jewish communities after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, weekly synagogue gatherings on Sabbath replaced the central liturgical role of the temple. In that context, John also repeats the day of the week for Jesus’ resurrection appearances three times: “first day of the week” (20:1 ); “when it was evening on that first day of the week” (20:19); and “a week later” (20:26, literally “after eight days”). With some variation, these all refer to the same day, what we call Sunday, the day after the Jewish Sabbath. Why would this matter for John’s audience?

As we’ve seen, Sabbath, the weekly day of rest for Jews, is a recurring theme. One of the common threads to those main three Sabbath mentions is religious violence. In ch. 5 and ch. 7, the Ioudaioi, ie “the Jews,”⁵ want to kill Jesus because he caused the lame man to violate the Sabbath by carrying his mat. In ch. 9, the Ioudaioi cast out the man Jesus healed because, in part, Jesus performed the healing on the Sabbath. In ch. 7 Jesus recalls the ch. 5 conflict: “If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses won't be broken, are you angry at me because I made a man entirely well on the Sabbath?” (John 7:23). So, by John’s telling, Sabbath is intertwined with toxic religion, abuse of power, and spiritual violence.

Part of what John is doing with these narratives comes to the foreground when connect to another repeated emphasis: people feared these religious authorities because of their authoritarian control and excommunication of dissenters, those who professed belief in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God:

John 7:13 Still, nobody was talking publicly about him for fear of the Jews.
John 9:22 His parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jews, since the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him as the Messiah, he would be banned from the synagogue.
John 9:34 "You were born entirely in sin," they replied, "and are you trying to teach us?" Then they threw him out.
John 9:35 Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out
John 12:42 Nevertheless, many did believe in him even among the rulers, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, so that they would not be banned from the synagogue.
John 16:2 They will ban you from the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God.
John 19:38 After this, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus—but secretly because of his fear of the Jews—asked Pilate that he might remove Jesus's body.
John 20:19 The disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because they feared the Jews.

This prominent plot-line in John strongly suggests he crafted these details⁶ with his audience in mind, knowing that they had experienced something similar—they would feel the comfort from having their experiences identified in this Gospel. And they would be listening attentively to hope and healing offered in Jesus.

From Sabbath Wounds to Healed Sunday Scars

So, back to John 20. After Mary preaches the first Christian sermon, we read this:

“When it was evening on that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because they feared the Jews.” (John 20:19)

We can understand why the disciples would fear the religious authorities: their rabbi had just been judicially killed through Roman crucifixion for blasphemy and sedition. Logic would say they were next, as indeed we know from 12:10-11 where Lazarus’ life was also threatened.⁷ But what about the later Christian community hearing and reading John’s Gospel? I believe the answer is in the repeated day of the week. By the time of John’s final composition around A.D. 90, Christians gathered for worship on Sunday—the first day of the week by Jewish reckoning as opposed to the seventh day most of these early Christians grew up observing. But when they became Christians, their lifelong habit of commemorating God’s rest was torn away from them. Sabbath, God’s good gift of weekly celebration and rest in his goodness as Creator and Judge, became tainted with trauma.

Like Jesus, these Christian’s likely knew what it was like to be snitched on by friends and family to religious leaders, resulting in persecution (John 5:15-16). Like the healed blind man, they knew what it was like to be confused by Sabbath being intermingled with both deep inner healing (John 9:14) as well as deep spiritual/psychological/social pain (John 9:34).

Like the disciples at Jesus’ second Sunday group appearance, where they still locked the door even though Jesus had previously shown them his healed side and hands (20:26), these Christians knew what it was like to believe in Jesus’ healing power and yet still feel fear in their bodies.

In a word, these Christians knew what it was like to dread Sunday. To be triggered by corporate worship. To come together and still feel fear despite having other supposedly friendly bodies around them. They knew what researchers Turnbloom, Breen, Lamberger, and Seddo describe:

“Flashbacks, [unlike the initial one-time traumatic event], are a constant, uncontrollable threat that corrupts one’s everyday realities, turning life-giving events like liturgical rituals into moments of violence. This is particularly horrendous because, instead of being a source of joy and meaning, the liturgical rituals are transformed into the source of one’s ongoing trauma. When avoiding these flashbacks, one is simultaneously forced to avoid a source of grace. The resulting feelings of guilt, shame, and hopelessness are understandable. In essence, PTSD subverts liturgical efficacy because it transforms the liturgical signs meant to provocatively offer God’s love into liturgical signs that inflict the systemic violence perpetrated by the clergy.”⁸

As we explore further how John addresses religious trauma connected to the liturgical calendar, it is fitting to begin where John begins with Sabbath. Sunday is so regular for spiritual abuse survivors—literal clockwork trauma that rolls around every seven days. Into this painful remembrance, the Johannine Jesus preaches the message of the healed scars of Jesus.

Mary Coloe observes features in the narrative of John 20:19-29 that suggest a parallel with corporate worship in the early church.⁹ A few of the easiest parallels to note are the repeated gatherings on Sunday (20:19 and 26), they gather inside a home (implied by locking the doors), and the greeting of “Peace” (20:19, 26), as in “the passing of the peace,” all of which the early church practiced when they gathered each week for worship.

Significantly, then, John gives his readers a powerful symbol of religious trauma healing connected to these Sunday gatherings: the scars of Jesus.

While Jesus’ wounds speak to all forms of suffering, especially evil inflicted by other humans, there is special resonance for evil perpetrated against God’s people in the name of God. For that’s what the religious system thought it was doing by killing Jesus and persecuting his followers (John 16:2).

Additionally, while there is place in John for seeing Sunday as a day of rest—seen in Jesus’ words “It is finished”(tetelestai) which echo the divine finishing of creation (synteleō) before God rested (Genesis 2:1-2)—John also emphasizes Sunday as a day of healing. A day of remembering religious wounds and Spirit-healed scars. A day where Christians recall Christ conquering the world of toxic religion through his sacrificial death for the sheep (16:33). All of this, of course, is presented in Johannine symbolism. It’s never this straightforward, and it shouldn’t be, because part of the healing comes from the slow, Spirit-led meditation.

“It is the nature of symbol to resist immediate understanding and to engage the reader with puzzling questions. Symbols are subtle, and their meaning will only be revealed through repeated reading of the text, with each reading deepening the insights and awakening new perceptions to be brought to future reading.”¹⁰

But after attending somewhat to the symbol, here’s more of a straightforward message I hear Jesus offering his disciples, then and now:

“Sunday is the day you, my brothers and sisters, celebrate my victory over toxic religion and rest in the healing power of my religious scars.”

Oh, that that message would be proclaimed every Sunday in every church around the world! Over the years I’ve heard Christians suggest using the customary Easter greeting year-round: “The Lord is risen”; “He is risen indeed!” Perhaps the Johannine community would suggest an additional option:

“He is healed;” “He is healed indeed!”

If Isaiah, and Peter after him, said “by his wounds you are healed,” the message of the Johannine Jesus is similar but shifted for trauma survivors: “by his healed wounds you are healed.”

Quote from Edward Wong

“[T]he scars give the wounded past of Jesus a different future, a future that is not marked by the torturers nor their inflicted wounds but by the scars of divine healing that prevail over pain and suffering.”¹¹

Question

As I asked recently in my Subscribe chat, how do you experience Christian holidays, ie, “holy days” which might feel more harmful than holy?

1 If interested, cf this article, “Dating the Birth of Jesus Christ on Hanukkah.” Full disclosure, I haven’t read it, but it looked decently long and scholarly.

2 Francis Moloney, “Session 6: Celebrating Jewish Feasts,” at Broken Bay Bible Conference, Gospel of John: Joy Made Complete, September 12, 2014.

3 I’m with Moloney in reading John this way, but it’s highly disputed question as to whether or not anything can be known definitively about the history of John’s audience. Many scholars see a key indicator in the repeated references to synagogue expulsion in cf 9:22, 34; 12:42; and 16:2.

4 There is much more going on here than this series will be able to explore. One scholar who has recently studied these similar themes is Chris Blumhofer. Following Alasdair MacIntyre, he explains this trauma in John in terms of an epistemological crisis. It’s a fitting phrase, if on the more philosophical side. See Blumhofer, “The Gospel of John and the Future of Israel,” PhD Dissertation (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2017).

5 In a different session of the Broken Bay Bible Conference linked above, Moloney gives the best description of “The Jews” in John’s Gospel that I’ve come across so far: they are “a closed ideological religious system.” He says, “You know, we can all become a closed religious system. A closed religious system that is not open to the ongoing and surprising revelation of God to us in and through Jesus Christ, and the church, and one another, etc. We are all capable of being ‘The Jews.’”

6 Crafted, not fabricated or made up.

7 See Mary Coloe, Dwelling in the Household of God: Johannine Ecclesiology and Spirituality (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2007), 176.

8 David Farina Turnbloom, Megan Breen, Noah Lamberger and Kate Seddo, “Liturgy in the Shadow of Trauma,” Religions 13(7):583, p. 6.

9 See Coloe, Dwelling, 171-181.

10 Coloe, Dwelling, 200.

11 Edward Wong, “From Wounds to Scars: The Embodiment of a Forwarded Past through the Body Marks of Jesus in John 20,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 46(2), 2023, 212.