Acts 1.6-14; Psalm 68.1-10,32-35*; 1 Peter 4.12-14; 5.6-11; John 17.1-11

“I AM no longer in the world, but they are in the world.” With these words, Jesus anticipates a future event. Before he has been arrested or crucified, he speaks as if his resurrection and ascension had already taken place. Past, present, and future collapse into one another, and time-bound history takes on an eternal aspect.

I came across an interesting argument that concepts from tragic drama can be applied to John 17.11. Much of it I disagreed with, but it did make me think, on this “Suspense Sunday”, about what John’s Gospel is. Greek tragedy was rooted in ancient Athens (four centuries BC) — a less obvious forerunner of the Gospels than, say, Greek biography, which flourished around the time of the Gospels.

Aristotle explored how tragic drama works; how tragic plot and character communicate meaning; and how heroes should be morally good, and portrayed in a way that is appropriate to their nature and station. For example, he says, the dramatist must not make a female character too clever or too strong (even Aristotle, like Homer, sometimes nods). Heroes must be consistent. And “Tragedy should not show virtuous men passing from good to bad fortune, since this does not arouse fear or pity [the emotions that tragedy purges] but only a sense of outrage.”

Aristotle’s judgement casts doubt on the value of applying tragic criteria to the Gospel. For the Passion is centred on the excessive suffering of someone who is wholly virtuous. It arouses outrage in us, not a tragic catharsis (purging) of emotion. In tragedy, the main character must suffer, but do so in consequence of some element of their personality (like anger, or inflexibility). This is sometimes called the “tragic flaw”, but the idea involved is more like “going astray”, or “making a mistake”. The suffering must arise from the hero’s character, but be excessive, beyond what their errors deserve.

John’s Gospel is not a tragedy. Though both genres — Gospel and tragedy — have religious roots, ancient Greek tragedy was entertainment, albeit rooted in a corporate religious and cultural celebration. But one thing the two do have in common: both are supremely focused on creating an impact on the audience. Like tragedy, the Gospels (the Synoptics as much as John) are written to maximise the impact on hearers and readers.

This key element of tragedy or gospel — producing an effect upon the audience —can happen in theatre, or church, or alone at home. John is not writing, any more than Sophocles, to express personal, inner feelings about his subject matter. Both are communicators with a high purpose: to inspire reflection on what it is to be human in the context of the divine. Whether Sophocles intended his audiences to live better lives because of his dramas, I do not know.

Both tragedy and Gospel require the protagonist to have stature (megethos). Both mingle elements of a story unfolding chronologically with one in which past, present, and future collapse into each other. Both include undeserved suffering. But the Gospel stands apart because of the lowly stature of its protagonist, who yet turns defeat into victory. If time ran backwards, and Sophocles composed the story of Jesus for the Athenian stage, his audience would be outraged by Jesus’s suffering. Jesus the good man, without megethos, being made to suffer could never be a “tragic hero”.

What sets Christianity apart from tragedy is that we do not receive the gospel in order to be purged of our pity and fear. Jesus is not a mythological stranger, but a real friend, brother, and saviour. What he suffers inspires us to suffer with him. I doubt that ancient Greeks, watching Oedipus the King or Agamemnon at the theatre, felt a unity of being with those characters; or chose to model their life (and perhaps death) on people depicted in the drama.

I called this Sunday “Suspense Sunday” because, like Holy Saturday, it is a day of waiting. Our sense of history is articulated by the actions and words with which we fill up time. When nothing happens, and we simply wait, time shades into eternity, just as it does in Jesus in this Gospel verse. We read this Gospel on the eve of Pentecost, even though it belongs, historically, in Holy Week. Jesus’s being “no longer in the world” holds no terrors: because he knows, eternally, that we are in the world for him.