Page - 40 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

40 | Claudia Setzer www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 35–47 The gospel begins with the image of Jesus as the hypostasised Word or Logos in chapter one. John the Baptist is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (1:23), announcing the coming Messiah. The Baptist later compares himself to the best man at a wedding, who stands aside and rejoices to hear the voice of the bridegroom (3:29). Numerous examples in John show “hearing the voice” or “hearing the word” as equivalent to true knowledge of Jesus and God. While some cannot hear his voice (5:37), for those who can hear, coming to faith via hearing is authentic faith. In John’s distinctive realised eschatology, hearing confers life in the present and the future: “anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life … the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God” (5:24–25). In an extended metaphor of the sheep passing through the door of the sheepfold, the sheep know the shepherd because they know his voice, and he calls them by name (10:26–28). When Jesus asks the Father to glorify his own name, the Father’s voice from heav- en booms out, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd hears it, and some say it thundered, perhaps reminiscent of God’s voice at Sinai. Jesus says to them “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out” (12:30–31). So in the imminent cosmic crisis, the Voice is God’s way of identifying his own. Right before his death, Jesus says to Pilate, “everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (18:37). By contrast, in an increasingly acrimonious exchange with Jews (who had believed in him) (8:31–47), Jesus tells them they cannot “know”, that is, understand, what he says because they cannot hear his words (v. 43) because they do not belong to God: “Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God” (v. 47). Seeing and hearing can act in concert (12:44–50; 19:35), as in the crucial scene where Mary Magdalene meets Jesus in the garden after the resurrection (20:11–18). Although Peter and the Beloved Disciple saw the empty tomb and the discarded bur- ial cloths, the first to actually meet the risen Jesus is Mary Magdalene. After Peter and the Beloved Disciple see the empty tomb, they depart, while she stays and us- ing multiple senses, sees, hears, and, extrapolating from verse seventeen, seemingly touches the risen Jesus. She has remained, crying in the garden and telling angels at the tomb, “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him”. She turns around and seeing Jesus does not recognise him, literally, “she turned around and saw (theōrei) Jesus standing there, but did not know (ēdei, from the verb eidō, “to see”) that it was Jesus” (20:14). She saw, but she did not see. He speaks, say- ing, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She still does not recognise him, thinks he is the gardener, and asks if he knows where Jesus’ body is. Only when he says her name, “Mary” (Mariam), does she recognise him. It is as if by speaking her name, he opens her eyes, as he opened the eyes of the blind man to see