An hour after my dad died in October 2010 we came home to a voicemail on our landline. It was from the hospice informing us that in the week before his death my dad had entered a competition of which he was the winner. He’d won £5,000! Needless to say, the timing of it amazed us.
Some things in life are like that aren’t they? We say they’re ‘stranger than fiction’ or we say ‘you couldn’t make it up’. If this is true of our lives how much more might it be true for the life of the incarnate Son of God?
I’m sure I’m not the only one who, after discovering some of the symbol-laden significance of much of Jesus’ life, is dogged by a version of the thought that it all ‘seems a little too convenient to be true’. I find this to be true particularly with John’s gospel. John makes such masterful use of symbols and numbers that I sometimes find myself wondering if he’s not being flexible with the facts.
There are coincidences with nature like the sky darkening at the exact moment of Christ’s death, there are loaded symbolic allusions such as Mary mistaking Jesus, the second Adam, for a gardener on Easter Sunday (and we might also add his addressing her as ‘woman’ immediately upon rising from the sleep of death). There are coincidences with numbers such as the Samaritan woman in John 4 who’s had 6 partners/husbands and now speaks to the seventh, Jesus (there’s also a scriptural tradition of meeting spouses around wells). There are symbolic resonances across disconnected events; there are six water jars at the wedding in Cana, with a seventh appearing in the next chapter, the same Samaritan woman. There are historical details that fulfil direct prophecy of course, but then there’s also convenient theological ‘rhymes’ such as Herod’s massacre of the innocents and the Holy Family needing to flee to Egypt. Some of these may be John’s choice of words (he didn’t need to call the area around Jesus’ tomb a ‘garden’), many are the specific choice of Jesus who seeks to act out prophecy’s fulfilment and tell stories that re-tell Old Testament narratives (see Peter Williams ‘The Surprising Genius of Jesus).
Many of the symbolic references get missed by a cursory reading and indeed part of the joy of Bible study is discovering these previously unnoticed details. Some get missed due to a limited knowledge of the scriptures but much also gets missed by a cultural blindness. I’ve only ever been taught that the blood and water pouring from Jesus’ side was to signify that he had indeed died; which is exactly the kind of thing a disenchanted, materialist culture such as ours would see in such a detail. It’s unlikely that John would have had this as his reason for including it however. Luke might have done but this detail isn’t in Luke. Water and blood flow from Jesus’ side, which happened after Jesus declared himself to be the one from whom will flow living water, something he said at a festival in which priests would pour out basins of wine and water in an anticipated fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy that a river of God’s presence would open up from the side gate of the temple.
One could go on and on.
Is it a happy coincidence that the Israelites used a hyssop branch to paint their doorposts with the lamb’s blood on the eve of the Passover and that Jesus, when he thirsted on the cross, was given a sponge on the end of a hyssop branch? Or was it an accident that the wine he’s offered is ‘sour’ wine, after Jesus had spoken about offering a new wineskin for new wine? Some of the events that occur are things that can only have been intentionally designed by God, such as choosing to take the risen Christ into heaven from a mountain in a cloud - a clear reference to both the High Priest disappearing into the Most Holy Place behind a cloud of incense, and a mirror of Moses ascending Sinai and passing into a cloud.
Sometimes these symbolic coincidences cause me to worship, other times they’ve provoked a reaction of doubt and disbelief. It all seems too good to be true. I have at least some sympathy for the quest for the ‘historic Jesus’ of modern scholarship. It isn’t only the miracles but the many, many symbolic and historic conveniences in Jesus’ story that can provide us with a problem. Except that, as I began this blog, some things in life really are stranger than fiction.
Take another example from my family. My eldest sister is born on the 20th of October, I’m born on the 8th of February, my youngest brother is born on the 28th July, 20 + 8 = 28. If I were my brother I would most definitely use that numerology to my advantage: the birth of the family’s perfect son is a combination of both the previous two children. It’s as though in his birth he is the fulfilment of my parents’ longings. Imagine if my brother goes on to do something significant for his community or nation. Later historians would be forgiven for doubting some of the details of his biography. It might all seem a little too convenient for him to be born on that date. And yet every family has rhyming moments, or symbolic repetitions such as these. Indeed life is full of them.
It is not too much of a stretch then to consider that when the eternal Son of God stepped into human history, all of heaven and nature begins to dance to his tune. Donkeys took their place on the stage appointed for them, at just the right time. Hyssop branches braced themselves, fig trees dried up, a fish swallowed a coin and took up its position, weak nets were repaired in readiness for an unusually large catch, and shoals of fish shed their numbers to ensure their precision would meet heaven’s quota (153, not one less or one more). I like to think that much of nature recognised its creator’s voice, clouds put on weight and weather fronts merely moved into position readying themselves for the Son of God’s command. But many hapless humans simply carried out their wicked schemes as before without any thought to divine purpose. The Roman soldiers weren’t intending to fulfil a psalm when they gambled for Jesus’ clothes after all. An Israelite farmer wasn’t meaning to be part of a political cartoon when he succumbed to market opportunity and purchased a herd of pigs in the region known as the Gerasenes.
The left hemisphere of our brain teaches us to see only objects, the right to see only people. With one mind we see a rock in the sky orbiting the earth, with another we see a man in that same moon. Some people see God’s fingerprints on every part of their lives, others see only coincidences and happenstance. Who’s right, who’s wrong? Ultimately the meanings we make of our lives are shaped by our cultural context, our time in history and our distinct personalities. Our scepticism in the face of scripture’s stories is, it seems, just as much learnt traits as are our ability to see patterns in nature.
The next time you spot some part of your life that seems serendipitous you could either scratch your head and wonder what it all means, or you could let it reinforce for you how to see the providential pieces in Jesus’ story. While some things in life may appear to be stranger than fiction other things, the things in the gospels perhaps, are the fulfilment of all the fiction we could ever write in the first place. In Christ’s coming our myths became true as even story itself joined nature in whistling along to the tune the Son of God was telling.