Stories of people deconstructing their faith are everywhere these days. I started doing it long before it was fashionable.
So did the Disciples – I’m speaking of the original 12. Yes, those guys.
We’re all familiar with Good Friday and Easter. Generally, people know Jesus died on Friday and rose from the dead on Sunday, but what to make of Saturday? For even devout Christians, the day in between can just get lost in mowing the lawn. But that in-between day meant something vastly different for the 12 than it does for us today.
Because we know how the story ends, we see something about the disciples they themselves couldn’t see on Saturday. We see them post-Easter. Post-Pentecost even, when they became firebrands for the Good News.
But on that In-between Saturday, they were anything but firebrands. There wasn’t even a sign that the next day, let alone weeks or months later, life would be otherwise. They were in an end without a beginning. Their hopes and dreams had crashed and burned along with all they thought they understood about Jesus, God, and their own identities.
What on earth were they doing on that Saturday? I think they were deconstructing their faith. We spend Saturday anticipating Easter, baskets of candy at the ready; they were not anticipating anything remotely along the lines of Resurrection Sunday. It was not in their capacity for understanding.
Sure, they’d seen Lazarus come alive out of the tomb after being dead 4 days. But it was Jesus who had resurrected Lazarus – something that had blown the circuits in their brains. There was the operative word – Jesus. He was there at Lazarus’ grave doing the incomprehensible. But now, Jesus himself was the one dead and in the tomb. The life giver was alive no more.
In 3 days their own lives had gone from hope to despair.
If their lives had changed that fast in 3 short days, it had certainly changed over the past 3 years. Three years before that fateful Friday they’d never even heard of Jesus. A couple of them were disciples of John the Baptizer, Jesus’ cousin. John introduced these followers to Jesus and Jesus started encountering other future followers one way or another.
Over the following months, a ragtag mix melded around Jesus, listened to him teach, heard him call them to follow him, left whatever they were doing to do just that, and watched him transform countless other lives as well. It was the most amazing 3 years one could possibly have lived.
They didn’t understand everything Jesus was telling them – not by a longshot – but they were getting the audacious idea that he was the promised Messiah, the One their people had been waiting to come for generations on end. And they were hooked. He’d called them into his inner circle, and they left everything to follow him. They were going to ride that train to glory.
The Sunday before that awful Friday, it had felt like everything really was coming together, that the much-anticipated kingdom was about to break out. Masses of people lined the streets of Jerusalem, the capital, welcoming Jesus with shouts worthy a conquering hero. They were ready to crown him king.
Of course, the Romans were still in the way. And the religious leaders were putting on a hostile show. But in no time, all these opponents would surely be swept away, and their Messiah would take his rightful place on the throne right there in Jerusalem, reestablishing the kingdom of Israel, ushering in a golden age like none other.
And yet, all week, as they were preparing for the high holy season of Passover, Jesus kept giving them mixed signals. First, he went crazy in the temple, driving out the money makers. Okay, that could fit with the hero image. Then he continued preaching about the end of the age, which they were sure meant when he would ascend the throne of David. But he also kept mixing in dark statements about times of great trouble.
They might have been confused about all that was happening, but they remained confident they were going to follow Jesus right up to the throne. James and John, two guys in his inner circle, had even been asking to sit on either side of him.
And yet, Jesus went on talking about how one of them was going to betray him and how they were all going to desert him. On Thursday, speaking directly of their team leader, Jesus said that Peter would disown him 3 times that very night. Peter, of all people, the guy who had been the first in their group to tell Jesus he was the Messiah. Nothing was making sense. Least of all to Peter.
At the Passover meal, Jesus started in again talking this dark stuff. Then right as they were eating, Judas got up and walked out. After the meal, Jesus left to pray, and the others followed. That was something he did a lot, getting off somewhere outdoors and praying. They were used to that. It didn’t seem unusual. There in the garden, Jesus asked his disciples to pray with him, but they were exhausted and fell asleep.
And then all hell broke loose – quite literally in a manner of speaking. Judas showed up with a mob bearing swords and clubs, kissed Jesus (what was that about?), and some temple soldiers arrested Jesus. At first the disciples, groggy and disoriented, put up a fight. Peter even cut off the ear of one of the men in the posse. But Jesus told Peter to put away his sword and then turned around and healed the guy attacking him. Restored his ear, just like that!
Then, just like that, they were gone.
Well, Jesus did disappear with the soldiers. But when I say “they” and “gone,” I’m talking about the disciples. They fled just as Jesus had predicted.
Judas disappeared on his own. Later they’d discover he’d killed himself.
Peter showed up where Jesus was being held prisoner. Kinda held back in the shadows. But then he did the very thing he said he’d never do. To those who looked suspiciously at him there in the courtyard, he denied he’d ever been connected with Jesus. Three times, no less. Just like Jesus had said. As that blasted rooster crowed, Peter wept bitterly, overwhelmed beyond description.
Others seem to have hung around from a distance, dazed, overpowered by fear. Like witnesses of the macabre – everything inside them telling them to flee, but their feet won’t move, so they watch transfixed from the shadows. Only John seems to have come in closer, standing as he did with Jesus’ mother gazing up at his hero hanging on the disgraceful cross.
After Jesus died, other followers took his body down and placed him in a tomb not far away.
And then the records go silent.
All we can gather is that some of the disciples huddled together, secreted away out of fear of the authorities. But what was being said among them? What were they thinking?
I think they were deconstructing their faith.
Google “deconstructing your faith” and it says to take apart a structure of beliefs. You take a fresh look at what you believe about your faith and start throwing out anything that “appears contradictory, harmful, or unsubstantiated by evidence.”
Judas certainly did that. Threw it all away. He couldn’t handle what he had done. He couldn’t handle that his rabbi hadn’t lived up to all that he had promised. Judas had expected the Messiah and all he got was a mess.
The disciples had spent three years listening to Jesus, trying to connect what he was saying with all they’d ever learned from the Law and the Prophets. Over generations the prophecies of the Messiah had become shrouded in national glory. Some of what Jesus said fit, some didn’t. Jesus dying at the hands of brutal Roman soldiers, a crown of thorns on his head instead of a royal crown, lying dead cold in a tomb. None of that was in the cards. None of that fit with what they had come to believe.
I’d like to say that all that changed on Easter Sunday morning when they discovered that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. But I think their deconstructing lasted longer. Sure, they believed Jesus was truly alive that Sunday. Thomas, who was absent, took another week, but he too believed when he finally saw Jesus. But for all of them, there were a lot of pieces of the puzzle yet to fit in.
They’d spend the next 40 days hanging out with Jesus, doing just that. Then when Jesus floated up into the sky and disappeared into the clouds, they had to process something new, and not just defying gravity. He told them to wait for the Spirit to descend – they had no idea what to expect, so they spent those 10 days still sorting things out. And then the Spirit did descend on Pentecost and a whole new set of experiences had to be incorporated into that puzzle of faith.
This process of fitting new pieces into the puzzle of their faith continues for years after. You certainly see it as they wrestle with what to do with non-Jews becoming followers of Jesus – something they resist for years to come. You see it as they struggle with Jesus not returning as quickly as they had anticipated. You see it as they, to use Paul’s words, work out their faith with fear and trembling.
What they discover over a lifetime of following Jesus is that their faith is constantly being challenged, stretched, put on trial. For faith is a living thing. It is something that breathes and grows – and doesn’t always fit expectations. Theirs – or ours.
For those who like their faith set in concrete, it gets frustrating when pieces of our faith refuse to fit in. We want simple arithmetic and God gives us calculus. We want facts and the Spirit shows us mystery. We want clear vision and Paul tells us we are looking through a glass darkly.
I really believe Jesus himself calls us to the task of deconstruction. He wants us to wrestle with our faith, not to get stuck or complacent. What he doesn’t want us to do is give up.
Judas gave up. Peter and the others did not. They all deconstructed, but only Judas did not finish the process. For as Jesus had done to the money makers at the Temple, he calls us to throw out that which does not belong while clinging to that which holds true. Judas just threw out. The others threw out and clung.
Even when everything doesn’t fit, don’t give up. A faith not worth examining is a faith not worth having. And an examined faith is never finished.
I do have problems with the definition of deconstruction that throws out mystery, by the way. By mystery I mean those things that we cannot compute. For a God that I can fully understand with my finite mind is not a very big God at all. Certainly not big enough to address the other imponderables in my life. I sense we will spend eternity exploring the fathomless depths of who God is and never reach the end.
That is where the remaining disciples stood on Sunday – or whenever they first encountered Jesus after the resurrection. They had spent Saturday questioning everything. What dawned on them on Sunday was that whatever else might be true, they could believe in the resurrected Jesus. And if they believed that much, they could trust him to lead them the rest of the way.
To examine the full story for yourself, you can read these passages in the Bible: Matthew 21-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24, John 12-21, Acts 1.
Are you in the process of deconstructing your faith and want to talk it over with me? Write me here.
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