Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Page 28

fourth centuries. But it is helpful for us to see again their early critical and
reforming intent as we seek to hear them in our own day.
It is especially helpful to do so as we think here about the leadership
office of the pastor or priest in the current Christian community. We might
inquire how the reforming intent of the New Testament also reached to the
critique of leadership in the ancient Christian communities and how that
critique may still have something to say to us today.
In undertaking this inquiry, the four canonical Gospels themselves may
be especially helpful. It is fascinating to see that all four Gospels openly
criticize the primitive leaders. In the narratives of both the Synoptics and
John these leaders repeatedly do not understand, repeatedly get everything
wrong, in spite of Jesus intentionally teaching them. Compare, for example,
the question of Jesus in Mark 8:21— “Do you not yet understand?”
— with the question in John 14:9 — “Have I been with you all this
time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” In the passion accounts of
both the Synoptics and John, these leaders betray, deny and forsake Jesus.
Note the assertion of Mark 14:50 — “All of them deserted him and fled”
— alongside the saying of the farewell discourse in John 16:32 — “The
hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one
to his own home, and you will leave me alone.” While most of these very
leaders were probably dead when the Gospel books were written, some of
them were known to have once exercised leadership in some of the churches.
These figures — Peter and James and John among them — still had revered
names and remembered authority. If we then understand that the presence
of these names in the narratives should probably be taken as symbolic for
any leaders in the communities of the Gospel writers, we will see the force
of their critique.
And yet, here is the remarkable thing: none of the four Gospels seem
to propose any alternative, better leaders. They are not books of schism,
demanding a pure leadership. The Fourth Gospel may come closest to
suggesting an alternative, with its ideas of the unnamed witness to the
piercing of Jesus’ side (19:35) and of the “beloved disciple” who reaches the
tomb before Peter and who first comes to believe in the resurrection (20:2-
9). But even these figures — or single figure? — are not exempted from
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