Atomic: Connected

Atomic: Connected

We are living in-between two times – the one we’ve known which is fading, and the one to come.  Church historian Phyllis Tickle notes that about every 500 years or so, the Church has a yard sale where they do some Spring cleaning and let go of some things that are not as useful as they once were.  It’s been 500 years since the Protestant Reformation began – the last major Church yard sale. We’re in another right now.  How do we know?  Not because the Church as a whole is proactively seeking to get rid of junk, but because the people the Church is trying to serve are doing it on their own.  Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who is credited with beginning the Reformation, did not get permission to split the Church from his superiors.  The yard sale – as yard sales usually are – was messy, chaotic, time consuming, and taxing.  The physical and emotional toll this major change took is incalculable.  Think how hard it can be to decide whether or not to part with some family artifact that everybody else knows if a tacky piece of junk.  You’ll probably have to pay somebody to take it away, yet for you it is priceless.  Yard sales are had in this regard.  The Reformation was a long lasting, very complex, excruciatingly painful yard sale that set all sorts of new thoughts and behaviors in motion which are still impacting the world today.

How do we know we’re in yard sale season?  Not because Church leadership is proactive, but because a growing number of folks who are not the authorities are cleaning house, starting with themselves.  People are voting with their feet and their finances in our country today.  While we may be fooled by a few signs of what appears to be growth in the American Church, the reality is that people are leaving it at an unprecedented rate.  Far more churches close every year than are being started.  Why?  The reports from those who have left have difficulty articulating it en mass, but the collective voice is saying that they feel the Church has lost its way, that it does not seem reflective of the loving Jesus it claims to model itself after, but has become in many ways the opposite: judgmental, dogmatic, rigid, unwelcoming, and more about politics than people.  The group that has left has good reason.  One of the catch phrases that speaks volumes is a very common phrase that has been shared many times by countless people when asked about faith, and more particularly about why they have left the church:
“I am spiritual, not religious.”

We’ve talked about the phenomenon a lot here at CrossWalk because we’re a church that recognizes and applauds the yard sale in Napa.  We are in process here: we discover and grow and recognize what needs to be hauled out to the lawn, and we do.  Over the last 20 years we have done a lot of deconstruction work, and have also been engaged in constructing what seems to make more sense biblically and theologically, what appears to be more aligned with the character and nature of Jesus, who was so clearly tied into the presence of God.  On this subject of spirituality we have a lot to say that I think will be helpful to a lot of folks who want to cultivate their spirituality.  Jesus certainly lived with a healthy spirituality, and he had some words to say about it to his disciples recorded in John 15: 1-17.

As I reflect on his words, I think of my Grandfather, Pieter Smit.  I am named after him.  He was a pastor for decades, serving in Kansas, Iowa, California, and Minnesota.  He was sharp as a tack, reading the latest books from popular Christian leaders right up until he died in his sleep at 95 years old.  One thing that he did which was incredible had to do with prayer.  He would rise every morning at 5:00 for coffee (of course) and prayer.  He had a personal prayer list he worked through every day which included every member of his family (including me) as well as friends near and far.  I think it took him an hour a day to pray through the list, which is a great exercise for connecting with God and loving people.  When you’re praying for someone, you’re thinking about them in helpful, supportive ways.  That’s a loving thing to do.  He would pray throughout the day, too, as the Apostle Paul instructed when he encouraged his readers to pray without ceasing.  There are a lot of spiritual activities – formally called spiritual disciplines – that foster an ongoing, growing personal relationship with God.  Utilizing contemplation, meditation, worship music, walking in nature, offering acts of service, reading spiritually-oriented materials, fasting, etc., are all examples of such disciplines.  Whatever you’re into that works for you, it only works if you actually work it into your life.  Put it in your calendar.  Make it a habit.  Lots of research has shown the connection between integrating spiritual disciplines and a higher quality of life.

Jesus was talking well beyond personal devotional time, however.  He was telling us to remain in him and be fruitful.  What does it look like to remain in the footsteps of Jesus?  I think it looks a lot like Jesus.  At CrossWalk, we are building our ministries around what we believe to be the ethos of Jesus, particularly as witnessed in the Gospel of John.  He was a lifelong learner, so we choose to stretch in our understanding of Jesus and God throughout our lives.  What are you doing to stretch your faith?  He was often engaged in serving people’s needs, so we choose to kneel in service of others.  How are you choosing to be engaged in the service of others?  He was a leader who proclaimed God to be loving and forgiving, so we choose to act as agents of grace in an often hyper-critical world.  How do you choose to be graceful toward others? Ever have a moment like Jesus had standing up for the woman caught in adultery and mistreated by the authorities?  He was also deeply rooted and motivated by his awareness of God’s Spirit working in and through him.  We choose to be incarnate similarly, allowing it to lead us to come alongside others in ways Jesus came alongside all he met.  How are you living this idea out of being truly infused with the Spirit?  He also chose to connect with God, which is what we’re looking at today, which is about all of this (plus one massive thing yet to come).  If we actually engage this stuff, I think we will also experience results similar to those Jesus experienced, which is what he was talking about when he mentioned the need to be fruitful.  He didn’t say that we’d be deemed healthy by how much inner peace we can muster in isolation.  It was about fruitfulness that was a byproduct of doing what Jesus did, of following the lead of the Spirit within.

The final big piece that I think we need to see in this text is easily missed in our culture because we are so oriented toward radical individualism.  To really be connected to God by following Jesus’ footsteps, we need to be in community.  This faith thing isn’t about the Gospel and me; it’s really about the Gospel and “we”.  You really can’t obey Jesus’ commandment to love one another unless there is another to love.  You can’t do this alone.  And, the command was to love one another the way Jesus loved, which is very likely somewhat different than the way you naturally express love.  You cannot learn this key piece alone – you need practice.  Others need you to practice on.  I know a man in his later years who is one of the most devoted men you could meet when it comes to knowing his Bible.  He works very hard to study it daily and live a moral life.  Because the Bible says we are to make disciples, he offers a Gospel message and invitation whenever he gets the chance, including his 90th birthday party which was attended entirely by Christians! That’s commitment!  He has also attended church faithfully most of his life.  I am confident that he can quote lots of scripture and tie it all together with a well-articulate theology which he has honed over the years.  Furthermore, he feels very confident about how he has lived his life of faith.  Yet he missed this last, most important commandment from Jesus to love one another the way Jesus loves.  Decades ago, this man’s son came out of the closet.  He was immediately shown to the door and essentially told that he was no longer his son so long as he was gay.  We think the son lives in Palm Springs.  They haven’t communicated at all for decades.  He had theological differences with his daughter, and now they are estranged.  This guy does not know how to love, and definitely doesn’t know how to love like Jesus.  When we are truly in community, however, we place ourselves in an environment where we can learn to be loved, learn how to love, be taught, be corrected, become the love of Jesus.

Nicolas Herman, on the other hand, was deeply devoted to God and to the church.  After serving in the military where he was injured, he joined a monastery out of his love for the Church.  He worked in the kitchen.  Over time he came to a provocative realization: he felt closer to God peeling potatoes and washing dishes than he did in chapel services.  Walking in the woods brought him more intimacy with God than Bible studies or prayer services.  He began to commune with God throughout the day, and because he did, his understanding and wisdom set him apart.  He would later put his thoughts down in the form of a short book (among many other writings he produced).  The book was named Practicing the Presence of God.  You may be more familiar with the name Nicolas took when he took his vows at the Carmelite monastery: Brother Lawrence.  In our radically individualistic American culture, this idea of finding God anywhere but church is music to our ears.  But that’s not what really took place for Lawrence.  It was his community that gave him a context in which to process his thoughts. It was his community that encouraged him to write. It was his community that invited others to come learn from him.  It was his community that helped him learn to love.  I would go so far as to say his capacity to know and experience the love of God was only possible because he was in a community that helped him know what love looked like.  The same is true for us.

Want to feel connected to God?  Personal spiritual disciplines are key.  So is modeling your life after Jesus.  And so is true community, because you can’t learn to love one another like Jesus loved if there’s no other to love.

Questions…

What spiritual practices are currently working for you?  How did you learn about them?  When/how do you practice these disciplines?

How are you doing staying connected with God by following in the footsteps of Jesus?  Which of the following come easily to you, and which ones are more difficult?  Stretch (lifelong learning), Kneel (service), Grace (spreading love and forgiveness), Incarnate (embodying the presence of God with everyone unconditionally), and Connect (making a concerted effort to stay with God).

How does community play a role in your connectedness to God?  How have you learned about your areas for transformation from community?  Why is “going solo” a bad idea for faith?

John 15:1-17 (The Message):

The Vine and the Branches

15 1-3 “I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.

4 “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.

5-8 “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.

9-10 “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

11-15 “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

16 “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.

17 “But remember the root command: Love one another.

Notes from Gail O’Day (New Interpreters Bible Commentary):

When one turns to Judaism, one finds vineyard symbolism that is consonant with the use of the symbol in John 15. In Sir 24:16–17, for example, Wisdom compares herself to a vine: “Like the vine I bud forth delights,/ and my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit” (NRSV). The song of the vineyard (Isa 5:1–7) offers the parade example of “vine” as a symbol for the people of God. In this text, “the house of Israel and the people of Judah” are explicitly identified as “the vineyard of the Lord” (v. 7). The failure of Judah to live in justice and righteousness is expressed through the metaphor of yielding fruit: God, the planter, expected grapes, but Judah produced only wild grapes (vv. 2, 4). These verses also make use of the language of clearing away (v. 5) and pruning (v. 6) to describe God’s actions toward the vineyard. Similar imagery reappears in Jer 2:21; Ezek 19:10–14; and Hos 10:1 (cf. Ps 80:8–19; Isa 27:2–6; Ezek 15:1–8; 17:7–8). Vine imagery remained a symbol for Israel in rabbinic Scripture interpretation, as well as in the synoptic Gospels (Matt 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–16). The vine imagery in John 15:1–17 should thus be read in the context of the rich use of this symbol in Jewish Scriptures and tradition.

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The unproductive branches of which v. 2 speaks are those people within the Christian faith community who do not bear fruit in love. This verse is not a polemic against Jewish apostasy, nor does it point back to Judas’s betrayal.515 Its concern is with those people who are already in relationship with Jesus (“every branch in me”).

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John 15:1–17 poses challenging questions to the contemporary Christian community about its self-identity. What does it mean for the church to live as the branches of Christ the vine? What would “church” look like if it embraced this model for its corporate life?

1. First, the image of community that emerges from John 15:1–17 is one of interrelationship, mutuality, and indwelling. To get the full sense of this interrelationship, it is helpful to visualize what the branches of a vine actually look like. In a vine, branches are almost completely indistinguishable from one another; it is impossible to determine where one branch stops and another branch starts. All run together as they grow out of the central vine. What this vine image suggests about community, then, is that there are no free-standing individuals in community, but branches who encircle one another completely. The fruitfulness of each individual branch depends on its relationship to the vine, nothing else. What matters for John is that each individual is rooted in Jesus and hence gives up individual status to become one of many encircling branches.

The communal life envisioned in the vine metaphor raises a strong challenge to contemporary Western models of individual autonomy and privatism. At the heart of the Johannine model is social interrelationship and corporate accountability. The vine and branches metaphor exhorts the community to steadfastness in its relationship to Jesus, a steadfastness that is measured by the community’s fruits (vv. 4–5). To bear fruit—that is, to act in love—is a decidedly corporate act. It is “rooted” in Jesus’ love for the community (v. 9) and issues in the community’s embrace of that love as the central commandment of its own life (vv. 10, 12, 17). To live as the branches of the vine is to belong to an organic unity shaped by the love of Jesus. The individual branch is subsumed into the communal work of bearing fruit, of living in love and so revealing itself to be one of Jesus’ disciples (vv. 8, 16). To live according to this model, then, the church would be a community in which members are known for the acts of love that they do in common with all other members. It would not be a community built around individual accomplishments, choices, or rights, but around the corporate accountability to the abiding presence of Jesus and corporate enactment of the love of God and Jesus.

2. Second, the metaphor of the vine suggests a radically non-hierarchical model for the church. As the description of a vine and its branches suggests, no branch has pride of place; no one branch can claim precedence or privilege over any other. The descriptions of the cutting and pruning of the branches in 15:2 and 6 underscore this point. Fruitfulness is the only differentiation among branches, and the discernment of fruitfulness falls to the gardener (God) alone, not to any of the branches. It is the gardener’s role to prune and shape the vine to enhance fruitfulness. All branches are thus the same before God, distinguishable only by their fruit. There is neither status nor rank among the branches. Hierarchy among the branches of the vine is precluded, because all members grow out of the one central vine and are tended equally by the one gardener.

This dimension of John’s metaphor also poses some serious challenges to the ways in which institutional church life is understood and maintained. For the Fourth Gospel, there is only one measure of one’s place in the faith community—to love as Jesus has loved—and all, great and small, ordained and lay, young and old, male and female are equally accountable to that one standard. Were the church to shape itself according to the Johannine metaphor, it would be a community in which decisions about power and governance would be made in the light of the radical egalitarian love of the vine image.

3. Third, this metaphor is stark in its anonymity. That is, the visual image of the branches lacks any and all distinctions in appearance, character, or gifts. The anonymity of this image is brought into sharp relief when compared with another NT ecclesial metaphor, the Pauline metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. First Corinthians 12 is irresistible in the anatomical fantasy it puts before the Corinthians: talking feet and ears, entire bodies composed exclusively of ears or eyes or noses. Unlike the Johannine metaphor, the Pauline image does not remove the differences among the various members of the body, but actually points to those differences as definitional of what it means to be a body. Each member is able to see the place that his or her individual gifts occupies in the corporate body (1 Cor 12:12–13, 27–30). Paul holds together the oneness of Christ and the diversity of gifts and members in the body metaphor.

The Johannine metaphor undercuts any celebration of individual gifts, and this, too, challenges contemporary Western understandings of personality, individualism, and self-expression. Were the church to live as the branches of Christ, individual distinctiveness would give way to the common embodiment of love. The distinctiveness of the community would derive solely from its relationship to God and Jesus, not the characteristics or even gifts of its members. The mark of the faithful community is how it loves, not who are its members. There is only one gift, to bear fruit, and any branch can do that if it remains with Jesus.

Atomic: With

The fancy word “incarnation” might be new to some, and depending on how much church background you have, might be so confusing that it might as well be new.  In Christian orthodoxy, the incarnation of Christ is the way the divine nature is expressed as it relates to Jesus.  If you’ve ever heard Jesus described as fully human and fully God, that’s incarnation.  The Word of God made flesh is a very powerful image when applied to a particular person – Jesus – and commands respect immediately. 

Unfortunately, our Christian ancestors who worked very hard to understand this dynamic relationship happening in the person of Jesus could not have realized that in their attempt to clearly explain, quantify, and codify what this means, they unwittingly turned Jesus into a demigod.  That’s a problem on two levels.  First, the Jewish tradition never would have signed off on the notion of their messiah being a demigod – the result of copulation between a mortal and a god.  The demigod notion is anathema to their theology and cosmology.  Second, the demigod position, while it certainly made sense to the non-Jewish audience who were familiar and comfortable with this way of thinking, automatically created a necessary distance between everyday people like you and me and Jesus (the demigod).  Our tradition essentially merged two theologies as they were trying to clarify and codify their belief in Jesus.

Jesus didn’t like the title Son of God (too demi-gaudy – see what I did there?).  His favorite title for himself was Son of Man, or, using our language, “every man.”  If he saw himself as truly human like the rest of us, the demigod denotation didn’t and doesn’t fit.  I don’t think Jesus was a demigod, and I don’t think he thought so, either.  Jesus is not Word made flesh in that way, which creates distance and exclusivity (one reason it’s popular).  Jesus is Word made flesh in an inclusive way that provides a guide and example for all of us, for every man and woman to learn from and follow.  I don’t think Jesus was anymore infused with God than anybody else in human history.  Take a deep breath – on its face it’s heretical (but it isn’t).  I do believe that Jesus at some point began believing in the divine presence within him, learned to cultivate it, leaned into it in ways that were deeply profound and incredibly powerful, impacting him and the world ever since. Instead of creating distance, his message was to share this very Good News with everyone: the divine breath in me is no less in you – see where that takes you.  This idea is what shows up at the very beginning of the Bible in the poetic metaphors of the creation stories.  The disciples-turned-apostles got it and lived it.  You and I are invited to get it and live it, too.

With this foundation – that you and I are no less divine than Jesus(!) but aren’t as aware or tied into it yet – we will take a look at what this sort of incarnation looks like lived out in a handful of scenarios.  What does it mean to be fully engaged when we are faced with times of loving adoration and celebration, betrayal, suffering, and even new beginnings?  Let’s look at three scenes – all including food and/or drink – because we live meal to meal.

Anointing the Anointed.  Not long after Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, Lazarus threw a dinner party.  The disciples were there, along with Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary (see John 12).  During the course of the meal Mary got out what was likely her dowry: very expensive perfume packaged in a fancy vase – easily portable and also easy to hide.  She dumped it on his feet and wiped it with her hair.  The place was filled with more fragrance than a Middle School Boy’s bathroom at a Homecoming Dance (I think we all bathed in Polo back in the day…).  Judas, the Treasurer, threw a fit: “What a waste!  We could have sold it and paved CrossWalk’s parking lot with that kind of money!”  Jesus, unphased and filled with the love of her gesture, put Judas in his place and chose to elevate and celebrate Mary’s gift. Allowing our indwelling divinity to guide and direct us leads us to really savor the moment for what it is.  In this case to really be in the joy of the moment, which some of us have a hard time doing.

Recently, someone was trying to give me a compliment about the number of lives I touch directly or indirectly (I don’t like writing this…).  I wasn’t going to have any of it.  I was hemming and hawing trying to wriggle away from a very loving gesture when someone else present broke in and said, “Just accept the compliment already!”  So I did.  Am I the only one who struggles to accept someone else’s gift of love and joy?  Jesus, fully embracing his divine nature and human nature together gave us a model: accept it and savor it.

That gift, by the way, was going to be so helpful in the days ahead.  Jesus would soon be arrested, tortured, and executed by crucifixion.  All the way through however, he would still smell the gift lingering in the air.  So would others around him.  So would Mary as she wept at the sight of it all.  How well do you allow the Spirit of God within you to let you embrace love and joy, and also to express love and joy?  In honor of Mary’s beautiful gift, go get a fancy, expensive piece of chocolate.  Smell it, letting it fill our senses.  Take and eat in remembrance of them both.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?  The Last Supper (John 13) features Jesus and the gang enjoying what we think is a Passover meal (the different Gospel accounts muddy this up a bit).  The fully human, fully divine Jesus notes a few things through the course of the evening.  First, since they couldn’t hire a foot-washer (nasty job) and nobody was willing to do it, Jesus took care of business personally, to the chagrin of all his pride-filled disciples.  How dumb they must have felt…  Second, he was fully aware that the disciple who was going to help orchestrate his arrest later that night was at the table.  Jesus never excused him from the fellowship, from the communion that was to come. Third, Jesus was also aware that there was another disciple present who was unwittingly not as committed or courageous as he claimed.  Jesus let him know, yet again, kept him at the communion table.  I find this to be incredibly profound, deeply moving, and really challenging.

There have been some funerals I chose not to attend.  I wanted to because of shared relationship.  But I didn’t because I reckoned that if the deceased were throwing a going away party, I would not be invited.  Mainly because at one time I was their pastor who they walked away from because my way of thinking was just too much for them to take, or I had the audacity to promote changing the name of the church from First Baptist to CrossWalk, or in a few cases, because I held them accountable.  While I may have wanted to pay my respects, I deemed it selfish, and chose not to go so as not to in any way take anything away from the deceased’s memorial.  I most cases, I think I was right.  Because that’s how human beings are, which is totally fine.  Why would you invite uncaring people, or your enemies, or people who claimed to be friends until things got too hot?  We wouldn’t.  Which is totally appropriate.

Sometimes, however, we don’t have that choice.  We are simply at table with those who are rude, selfish, duplicitous, and fair-weather fans.  Jesus showed us how to handle ourselves in such contexts.  In a word, he was graceful.  He doesn’t rip on the disciples for putting their stinky, manure-under-their-unkempt-toenails too near the food or faces.  He simply and lovingly served.  He didn’t kill Judas with his hands or words – he knew to do either would only hurt the situation and change nothing.  He didn’t roast Peter for an hour recalling all of his previous blunders to assure him that he would do so yet again before dawn.  They were all allowed around the table.  Toward them all, Jesus responded with grace.

Everybody wears their trail, you know? Where we’ve been is in us and on us all the time.  The sooner we realize this is true of ourselves and everyone else, the better.  Got a big attitude about someone?  Respect the trail they’ve been on and are on.  Choose to be graceful instead of perpetuating the problem.  (This does not mean we put up with abuse.  If that’s happening, get out!  Run for your life!)  What I’m saying is that we should model our lives on Jesus more than our federal politicians.  Hurtful, undignified rhetoric is horribly destructive and has served to increase hateful expression.  It works for them as it strengthens their relationship with their base.  You are not them, so don’t be.  If you call yourself a Jesus follower, a Christian, then realize that such designation is one that is higher than your political affiliation.  Don’t model your lives after them, but rather Jesus.  And, by the way, how about, from a Jesus position, you speak words of graceful accountability when you hear your party leaders go all Middle School…

In honor of Jesus’ willingness to be with those whose trails were clearly evident in and on their persons, find yourself some trail mix or a trail mix granola bar.  Take and eat as a remembrance of Jesus and his inclusivity, all born from his incarnation.

Welcome Wine.  The next scene worth looking at is one of horror: Jesus dying on the cross (John 19).  Very near his last breath, someone had the decency to give him some alcohol to ease his pain. Delivered through a sponge, Jesus welcomed it.  He was surely in agony.  To have that eased would have been entirely welcome.  Three things are happening here: First, Jesus expressed his need, second, Jesus’ mother, sisters, and two followers were especially helpful, and third, Jesus accepted their help.  How many of us try to tough it out when there are people who love us who would love to help?  Jesus, fully divine and fully human, said he was thirsty – that’s stating what he needed.  How well do you do that?  Family and friends present heard him and immediately met his need in the most helpful way.  Sometimes we are really dumb in painful, awkward moments when people right in front of us are struggling.  We often opt for expressing sympathy instead of empathy.  Check out this video to see the difference.  Finally, Jesus accepted the help offered.  Some of us get all prideful at this point, choosing self-imposed martyrdom of sorts instead.  Some of you need to take medication to help you survive and thrive but you are too prideful to accept it.  Follow Jesus and take the help that is offered.

Find some grape juice or wine, put some in a glass, and add a touch of vinegar.  In remembrance of the need expressed, the help offered, and the offer accepted, take and drink.

There is one more meal we’ll look at, but not yet.  Come back on Easter.

Questions to think about…

How are you at honoring others with words, gifts, acts of service, time, etc.?  How are you at receiving honor?  Which is easier?  Why?  How does our understanding of our own incarnation impact both of these?

What’s your MO when it comes to reacting or responding to rude people, people who you know betray you, or friends who don’t really have your back?  Are you passive?  Do you get in their face?  How does this line up with Jesus?  How does out understanding of our own incarnation – and everyone else’s – mess with the way we respond?

How good are you at asking for help?  When you hear of someone’s struggle, do you lean more toward sympathy or empathy?  How are you at receiving offers of help?  How does our understanding of our own incarnation – and that of others – shape your capacity to ask for help, offer empathy, and accept help?

Our coming to grips with our own inherent incarnation – and everyone else’s – can be an incredibly powerful influence in our lives.  How does knowing the Spirit of God is within us and those with whom we interact shapes our mindset, mouth, and motor skills?

Atomic: Death

Atomic: Death (John 11)

They were terrified.  They had a right to be.  It was nearing the end of the First Century C.E. and the Romans were cracking down on insurrectionists – people who were rounded up and killed due to their loyalties that competed with Rome.  Jesus-following Jews in Ephesus were no strangers to such persecution.  They remembered the horror of Emperor Nero; their current Caesar, Domitian, so believed himself to be divinely imbued that he demanded to be addressed as “Lord and God”.  One can only imagine this size of his ego and correlated tyranny aimed at those he felt were against him.  This left the early Christian community looking over their shoulders – they only had each other and their deep-seated belief that the faith that was causing them their trouble was true.

The original characters remembered in the Gospel of John were no strangers to terror, either.  Roman oppression was real and often resulted in torture and/or execution.  Jesus and his followers knew of this danger, which is why they kept their distance from Jerusalem, where Rome was especially present and where the Jewish leadership – who were increasingly at odds with Jesus – ruled ancient Judaism.  In John 11 we find the story of the raising of Lazarus, which inspired faithful action on the part of those who experienced it and heard about it.  Martha and her sister, Mary, lost their brother to some form of illness and were in their deepest grief when Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus drew his last breath.  Jesus had similar exchanges with both as they heard of his arrival and went to be with him.  Jesus offered comfort and words of hope that would have been akin to “he’s in a better place” sort of talk.  But that wasn’t common at that time – there wasn’t a lot to go on to support such hopeful talk.  Death was quite final according to the ruling Jewish Sadducees.  Day four marked the moment – the day when all hope in resuscitation was lost. Jesus was known for healing and miracles and had even brought some folk back to life – but four days in?  Unheard of. Unhoped for.

Meadow Pollack was one of seventeen people killed in the Parkland shooting at a Florida high school on February 14, 2018.  Her loved ones who have survived without her for a little over a year now have been forced to walk in the awful space of loss, much like Napa’s Housley family is doing right now.  One of Meadow’s best friends, Sydney Aiello, was at school that terrible day but not in the building where her dear friend was gunned down.  Since that day she had grieved deeply, struggled with survivor’s guilt, and was also diagnosed with PTSD which kept her from moving forward toward a college education – she quite naturally felt too vulnerable in classroom environments.  Grief sometimes is too much to bear, messing with our brain chemicals so much that our despair leads to hopeless acts.  Such was the case for Sydney, who took her own life this weekend.  The feeling of “I can’t go on” was so great that she chose not to.  Her loss is to be deeply mourned, but do not fall victim to some Christian doctrine that would have us judge and condemn her.  God’s grace is not in any way, shape, or form conditioned by our various expressions of pain.  Sydney, I fully believe, is in the arms of a loving God who empathized with her and loves her completely and eternally.

That level of despair and hopelessness was clearly evident four days into Lazarus’ death as crowds of people came to pay their respects with deep, expressive mourning.  A handful of translations get it right when they describe Jesus’ anger at the scene of such agony.  He wasn’t angry at the people.  He was angry that the reality of death was so powerful that it robbed these mourners of the larger reality of the ongoing, never-ending presence of God that was the animating force behind Jesus’ teaching and miracles.  He had seen and experienced what was there the whole time – and was articulated in the Jewish tradition but neglected – God was fully present during this life and well into the next experience of life post-death.  Such a perspective has the power to change the atmosphere at times of suffering as was present on the fourth day.  He knew why he waited to get there on that particular day, and it was time to play his biggest card yet.  He called to a grave he ordered unsealed, “Lazarus, come out!”, and Lazarus walked out.  I don’t know what exactly happened or how we can get our brains around such a miracle.  This we know: a guy was presumed dead and then lived again because of the power of God working through Jesus on that day.  He would eventually die again, of course, but I think it’s safe to assume that the second funeral had a much different feel than the first.  Death lost its sting.  There was life beyond the grave.

The original hearers of this story for whom the Gospel of John was written never knew Jesus or Lazarus, yet this story undoubtedly gave them confidence to hang their hat and hope on.  No matter what this life held in store for them, something better awaited them beyond the grave.

What does this do for you, by the way?  I don’t think John was fabricating the story.  I think something happened here that resulted in Lazarus’ resuscitation. It was compelling enough for early believers to embrace.  What about you?  Do you believe in the reality of God and the hope beyond the grave?  I do.  Aside: I’ve learned that when I open myself up to the reality of the presence of God that permeates this life and necessarily extends into what’s next that I am infused with more and more hope.  It has to be cultivated and managed, of course, because our cultural biases want to use the scientific method on absolutely everything, even though the method itself is not suited for everything.  Curiosity within the scientific community is growing, which is good, but it is slow to trickle down.  Relationship with God is a real relationship that requires ongoing care and feeding – when we don’t, it suffers and sometimes dies.  When it does, hope often dies along with it.

As you can imagine, many of the original characters in the story believed in Jesus as a clearly anointed servant of God.  They let their belief in the finality of death die so that something new cold be born in its place.  Yet others saw the same thing as a threat to snuff out – this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Jewish leadership, who ramped up their plot to kill Jesus after hearing of Lazarus’ return to life.  They maintained their belief in the finality of death and never allowed anything to be born anew in their thinking and perspective.  The new idea was a threat to be reckoned with, which they did.  This happens all the time.

Hundreds and hundreds of years after John’s Gospel was written, there was significant difference of opinion regarding how to interpret the Bible and apply it to life and faith.  The Protestant Reformation was an obvious example of this, ignited by Martin Luther.  This led to new theological insights and practices.  New leaders emerged to guide the new expressions of the Church into maturity.  John Calvin is one name with which you might be familiar.  Huldrych Zwingli was another.  These two served as leaders over Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland, respectively, creating a social order that was no longer controlled by Catholicism.  A new day of freedom had dawned.  Things were different now.  Until Felix Manz began reading the Bible for himself and came to a “new” insight about baptism: it was never meant to be performed in infancy, but rather for only those who confessed their belief in Jesus and his message.  He and others thought it would be cool to be baptized as believers, so they went for it.  Unfortunately, their actions were seen as challenges to the new order.  Manz became the first anabaptist to be martyred – drowned in the same waters he was baptized in.  Many more would follow, including his wife.

Michael Servetus, a brilliant scientist from Spain (he discovered the circulation of blood) was also a well known and highly respected Protestant theologian.  He was especially disturbed by the doctrine of the Trinity and infant baptism promoted by the Catholic Church, which wanted him dead because of it.  Fleeing for his life, he went to find refuge in Geneva, hoping to find support for his free thinking from John Calvin.  He was not aware, however, that Calvin was in favor of infant baptism and the doctrine of the Trinity.  After Servetus attended a church service to hear Calvin, he was arrested.  Shortly thereafter he was burned at the stake in Geneva on a pire of his own books and green wood to prolong his suffering.

What an interesting mix of responses to the Good News!  Some take it to a certain point and then find themselves deciding with the Sadducees, hands bloodied with martyrs of their own choosing.  Some, like Servetus and Manz, choose to build their lives on new insight that seems aligned with the grace of God even if it opposes the orthodoxy of the day.  They did so because they saw beyond the power structures that ruled the day and instead focused their attention on the true source of the greatest power – God – who was guiding their thoughts and steps.  It was reported that they both calmly and with faith suffered their death, confidently looking beyond the grave for their hope.  Faith for them wasn’t simply finding a good theological reason for feeling inner peace.  The power of God changed the way they thought about life, their timeline – everything.

A year ago our church lost a saint – Debbie Fatherree – who succumbed to a brain tumor that we knew from the outset would likely result in her much-too-soon death.  Her spirit to the very end of her painful journey was filled with hope, love, and resolve.  She was curious about what was beyond death’s door, but confident that is was going to be good.  She lived her last 18 months fighting for her life and yet living fully – working to inspire others toward their health all along the way.  She lived with such hopefulness because she experienced the raising of Lazarus herself.  She was once Lazarus.  She was once dead.  Through the power of God working through Alcoholics Anonymous she was dead and lived again.  That power was proof enough to her that there was more going on in the world than just flesh and blood.  She allowed that hope to change her orientation to life itself.

One thing that is surely true – death comes before resurrection.  Lazarus was dead before he was brought back to new life.  You may get some foretastes of the presence of God in part in this life, but the banquet doesn’t come until we go through the door of death.  Experiencing more and more of those foretastes requires death as well.  As was the case with the notable Protestant martyrs and with Debbie Fatherree, embracing the reality of life after the grave deeply impacts how we understand our lives now.

Growing up, my family liked to get out on the water for water skiing and inner tubing.  We had a boat we bought used that had a little sign next to the steering wheel which said, “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”  When we don’t take Jesus and his message seriously, this is the dominant idea in our culture.  Others who hold the same values will celebrate your accumulation of wealth and stuff.  But can I tell you something from my perspective as one who is very familiar with death and what happens to your wealth and stuff?  You really don’t take it with you.  Most of your stuff will quickly be donated or sold, and your accumulated wealth will lose your direct influence immediately.  Your legacy will die quickly if you lived primarily with yourself and your own creature comforts in mind.  When Jesus was confronted with people with this sign next to the steering wheel of their lives, he flat out challenged them to rethink everything, because their focus on wealth was killing them and others unbeknownst to them.

When we take Jesus’ message seriously about life extending beyond the grave, our vision changes.  We realize that our goal for life must be bigger than our few decades, and our scope must be bigger than our own little circle.  When we take Jesus’ message seriously, we are born anew to a different worldview that sees with God’s eyes.  We see beyond our own needs alone and begin to see the needs of those around us near and far.  Realizing that they are as much God’s children as we are, we are – and must be – moved.  This changes our dreams, our calendars, and our budgets to include them because they are included in God’s.  We don’t do it out of coercion but rather love, as we come to grips that God’s love for us is the same for them.  Our love for God changes our hearts to love what God loves and put our lives behind it.  This is ultimately why Manz and Servetus made their claims in spite of opposition that would threaten their lives – they knew they had a proclamation to make for the freedom of many more beyond them.  This is why Debbie Fatherree invested so much time in the lives of others – she had all the time in the world even with a brain tumor that would end her life – her timeline was eternal, not temporal.  We are invited thusly.

Do you believe in Jesus and his message that we see proclaimed in the story of the raising of Lazarus?

So what?

Study Notes (Gail O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible)

As a first step in reflecting on this text, it is important to acknowledge the question that many hearers of the story of the raising of Lazarus will ask: Did this really happen? As the Overview discussed, there is no more reason to reject this story on tradition-historical grounds than there is to reject any of the other Gospel stories of Jesus raising someone from the dead or, indeed, of any of the accounts of Jesus’ miracles. Yet the question of whether it happened is usually not merely a question about the historicity of the event; beneath it lies a question about the very metaphysical possibility of the event. That is, the question that lingers in many hearers’ minds is “Can we really believe that something like this happened?”

For some people, even those who are eyewitnesses of events that others around them attribute to the miraculous, it is simply impossible to accept that the supernatural can overlap with the natural, that anything can occur for which there is no rational explanation. It is always a matter of reason over faith, of the known over the “might be.” Yet for many people, the experiences of their lives have led them to accept that there is genuine mystery in the world, that the world is full of evidence that the supernatural does overlap with the natural, that the line between the two is permeable. For religious people, this mystery, the overlap between the natural and the supernatural, is seen as evidence of God’s transcendence of the categories by which God’s creatures understand the world to be ordered and of God’s intervention in the workings of creation. It is thus a question of faith whether one can acknowledge the possibility and, indeed, reality of God’s miraculous intervention in creation.

It is against this background that the question, “Could it happen?” of the Lazarus story can be engaged. There is no way to prove the “facts” of this miracle. Rather, the Fourth Evangelist (and all the Gospel writers) confronts his readers with the ultimate clash between views of historical and metaphysical reality in order to lead them to make a decision about how they understand the world to be ordered. The only answer to the question of whether this miracle could have occurred is another question: Can we believe that God, acting through Jesus, has power over the course of life and death?

The Fourth Evangelist engages this question head on in John 11:1–44. As noted in the Commentary, the theological heart of this story is in vv. 25–26, because these verses explain the meaning and import of the miracle of vv. 43–44. The miracle of the raising of Lazarus from the dead concretely illustrates the truths that Jesus declares in vv. 25–26, but it is these truths, not the miracle, that have the lasting significance for the life of faith.

What truths do these verses offer the reader? First, they offer the truth of the identity of Jesus. When Jesus identifies himself with the images of the resurrection and the life (v. 25a), he uses those metaphors to give concrete expression to his unity with the Father, to show what it means that Jesus and God are one. Even though this “I am” saying has a predicate nominative supplied, it is closer in meaning to the absolute “I am” sayings (those without a predicate nominative; see also Fig. 10, “The ‘I AM’ Sayings in John,” 602), because Jesus’ self-revelation as the resurrection and the life points to his sharing fully in the power of God. The magnitude of this claim cannot be overstated, because it announces that God’s power over life and death, a central belief of OT faith (e.g., 2 Kgs 5:7; Ezek 39:3–12) is now shared with Jesus (see Commentary on 5:21–29). When one sees and hears Jesus, one does not see and hear God in some static sense (as frequently seems to be communicated in doctrinal formulations), but one sees God’s will for the salvation of the world at work in the world.

Jesus’ self-revelation as the resurrection and the life is the decisive eschatological announcement of this Gospel. His full share in God’s power over life and death marks the beginning of God’s new age, the age in which God’s hope for the world becomes a reality. What God wills and hopes for the life of the world is now available in Jesus—that is, the defeat of death’s power to remove people from life with God. Who Jesus is, not only what Jesus does (i.e., the works of God as in John 9), marks this decisive shift in God’s relationship with the world. As the resurrection and the life, Jesus defeats death in the future and in the present. The power of death to separate people from God is reduced to nothing by the presence of the power of God in Jesus. This defeat is no longer merely eschatological promise; it is eschatological reality.

Jesus defeats the power of death because in him the world meets the power of the love of God incarnate (cf. Rom 8:35–39). God’s full sharing of power over life and death with Jesus is an expression of God’s love for Jesus and for the world. Because God loves Jesus, God has given all things to him (3:35), culminating in the power over life and death. Because God loves Jesus, God has given him the glory that is revealed in the raising of Lazarus, in the defeat of death (11:4; 17:24). Because God loves the world, God gives Jesus to the world for its salvation (3:16–17), so that the world might come to know fully God’s love for it and live grounded in that love (17:23). Jesus’ own death is a measure of this love (10:17; 15:12), because in it Jesus’ power as the resurrection and the life comes to fullest expression.

Yet this decisive christological announcement is only half of the truth that vv. 25–26 offers the Gospel reader. These verses also offer readers the opportunity to claim that truth for their own lives. Significantly, then, who Jesus is in relationship to God is linked with who Jesus is for believers. As noted in the commentary, the hinge of the parallel phrases in vv. 25b and 26a is the expression “the one who believes in me.” Jesus’ words point to the “So what?” of his identity for the life of the believer.

Verses 25b and 26a are the most far-reaching promise anywhere in the Gospel of what relationship with Jesus offers those who embrace it. They are of a piece with the promises of living water (4:10, 14; 7:37–38), living bread (6:33, 35, 51), and even eternal life (3:15; 6:47; 10:28), but they supersede all those earlier promises by confronting head on the question of death. They are not idle words of hope, because they name the greatest threat to full relationship with God: death. They offer a vision of life to the believer in which his or her days do not need to be reckoned by the inevitable power of death, but instead by the irrevocable promise of life with God. The two parts of vv. 25b and 26a invite the believer to a vision of life in which one remains in the full presence of God during life and after death. The physical reality of death is denied power over one’s life with God, as is the metaphysical reality of death.

This promise is also an invitation, made explicit in Jesus’ question in v. 26b. The way to experience the power of God’s love for the world that defeats death, to receive the promises of God as the reality of God, is to believe in Jesus. When Jesus asks Martha, “Do you believe this?” he asks her to believe both that he is the resurrection and the life and that as the resurrection and the life he defeats the power of death. That is, he asks her whether she believes in the fullness of his relationship with God and the effects of that relationship on the life of the world.

Faith, therefore, is not assent to a series of faith statements, but assent to the truth of Jesus’ relationship with God and the decisive change that relationship means for the lives of those who believe. Schnackenburg has eloquently expressed what it means to answer yes to Jesus’ question of v. 26b: “The content [of faith] is what Jesus means for believers, and therefore faith is fundamentally an attachment to this messenger of God.… The relevance of faith lies not in the power of faith as such, but in the fact that faith creates communion with Jesus and that through Jesus believers receive the gift of life.”

Jesus’ claim in vv. 25–26, the claim to which he invites Martha’s (and the church’s) assent, is that the eschatological reality of God that is present in Jesus has decisively altered human experience of life and death. Martha confesses her faith in Jesus as the Son of God (v. 27), yet v. 39 shows that she is not really convinced about the “So what?” of her christological confession. Martha’s attempt to stop Jesus from opening Lazarus’s tomb (v. 39) shows that the full impact of that eschatological claim is beyond her comprehension (see Commentary). Martha serves as a mirror for the contemporary Christian, because the church responds to Jesus’ claims of vv. 25–26 in ways that often are as hesitant as Martha’s words in v. 39.

For example, Jesus’ “I am” statement of v. 25a, one of the christological high points of the Gospel, loses much of its eschatological and soteriological significance if the only time the church engages it is at Easter or funerals. The church preaches about death and resurrection at the time of death, but shies away from such topics in the midst of life. Yet it is in the everyday rhythms of life that the church most needs to talk about Jesus’ power as the resurrection and the life, so that death can indeed lose its sting. To proclaim the power of resurrection only at the time of death is both to impoverish the proclamation and to weaken the power of its witness in the face of death. There is thus a critical need to include conversations about death and the theological significance of Jesus as the resurrection and the life in the ongoing theological reflection of the church, not just in its reflection about death.

In the moment of crisis, at the funeral of a loved one, the immediate need is for pastoral care and reassurance about the power of the resurrection. Indeed, funerals do provide gospel witness to the power of God in Jesus. But a funeral is not the moment for believers to reassess their lives in the light of the new eschatological reality in which the incarnation enables the church to live, because the power of grief and loss is so palpable. Why, then, does the church so often save its most powerful proclamation about death and resurrection for funerals?

Jesus’ powerful announcement to Martha suggests that the church needs to embrace Jesus as the resurrection and the life not only at times of death, but also in the daily moments of human lives, because these moments, too, whether one names them so or not, are also lived in the face of death. John 11 asks the church to reflect that Jesus is the resurrection and the life not just for the crisis moment of death, but for all moments in life. Jesus as the resurrection and the life is the decisive eschatological announcement, because he announces that the world is now definitively under God’s care and power. John 11:25–26 invites the church to claim that death is indeed an inescapable part of the believer’s life, but that it also belongs to the ongoing, life-giving power of God in Jesus (“even though they die, will live,” v. 25b). And Jesus’ words here invite the church to claim that God’s life-giving power in Jesus is the power that determines the believer’s existence, not the power of death (“everyone who lives and believes in me will never die”). John 11 thus offers a promise about how those who believe in Jesus will live their lives, not just about how they will end them.

It is the church’s responsibility to reintegrate death into the mainstream of its theological and pastoral reflection and experience. The goal of such a reintegration is not to eliminate the pain at the death of those we love—that would be a gnostic exercise in denial—but to help the church experience the life of faith grounded in the affirmation that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. The promises of God in Jesus offered in the face of death can equip the church to understand the promises of God in Jesus offered in the midst of life.

The Commentary on 11:45–54 noted the repeated instances of irony in the Fourth Evangelist’s presentation of the Sanhedrin’s decision to kill Jesus. This use of irony raises two important issues for the Gospel interpreter. First, it confronts the interpreter with the paradox of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus as the catalyst for his death sentence. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is the catalyst for his death sentence (see Commentary on 2:13–21), but by explicitly naming the Lazarus miracle as the precipitating cause of the Sanhedrin meeting, the Evangelist expands the arena of Jesus’ threat to the Jewish authorities’ power. That is, Jesus’ challenge is not interpreted simply as his challenge to the political power of the religious establishment; it is presented as a challenge to the very way in which the presence of God is known and approached in the world. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus demonstrated that all of Jesus’ claims about his unity with God are true: He does share God’s power for life; he does embody the fulfillment of God’s promises (see Commentary on 11:1–44).

The governing irony of the juxtaposition of the Lazarus miracle and the Sanhedrin decision is that even as the authorities resolve to kill Jesus, they are powerless in the presence of the one who is the resurrection and the life. Before performing the miracle, Jesus explicitly stated that Lazarus’s illness was not for death, but for the glory of God (11:4). Faced with that glory, the religious leadership nonetheless resorts to planning his death. Jesus’ gift of life is the most radical and dangerous threat to the authorities’ power, yet all of their political machinations will only enhance Jesus’ power for life, not impede it. The truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus gives exceeds all hopes and anticipations, and because Jesus’ gift of life redefines the power of death, all agents of death are rendered impotent in his presence. The Fourth Evangelist’s ironic commentary tells the reader that this decision for death contains the seeds of life for those who believe. It is a brilliant way of reinforcing the bold message of 11:1–44: Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, death has lost its sting.

Yet this thoroughly ironic treatment of Jesus’ death sentence confronts the interpreter with a second issue: How is the relationship between “history” and “interpretation” to be negotiated in this text? The Evangelist’s interpretive work is undisguised in this passage; he provides explicit narrative commentary on the theological meaning of the event he is recounting (vv. 51–52); he arranges details of the story to highlight his ironic reading. Yet as the Commentary on these verses has shown, they also offer glimpses of the workings of the Sanhedrin that stand up well next to other sources about life in first-century Palestine under Roman rule.

It is critical that the interpreter of the Fourth Gospel not fall into the anachronistic trap, shaped by Enlightenment understandings of science and history, of drawing a line between history and interpretation. The Fourth Evangelist did not separate recounting the story from interpreting the story, and that unity of purpose shapes all aspects of the Gospel. Details that give the reader a glimpse into the religious life of early and mid-first-century Palestine, stories that come from common traditions about Jesus, find their way into this Gospel, but they do so through the Fourth Evangelist’s literary and theological lens. The irony with which the account of Caiaphas’s pronouncement is laced is evidence not that the Fourth Evangelist had no regard for history, or even that he made the story up, but rather that he understood God’s purposes to be at work even in history and constructed his narrative so that his readers could see that, too.

More notes from other scholars…

q  Jesus did not refrain from setting out in order for Lazarus to die.  He was likely dead by the time the messenger arrived.  One day for the messenger to get to Jesus, two days wherever Jesus was ministering, and one day for Jesus to travel to Lazarus equals four days. 188

q  Disciples don’t understand Jesus’ insistence on going to Lazarus, since shortly before the Jewish opponents had tried to stone him.  Also, since Jesus is saying the illness will not end in death, why risk it? 188

q  Walking in darkness and light.  Jesus had only a limited widow of time to do his ministry.  This is a challenge to the disciples to continue walking with him, even into the darkness, since he is the Light of the world. 188

q  “Sleep” was a common reference to death.  Jesus waking Lazarus up from this sleep is a teaching for believers: we are to view death as a sleep from which we shall be awakened through Jesus. 189

q  A common belief was that the soul would return to the body every day for three days hoping to return to it.  After three days, the soul could recognize that as the color in the face has disappeared, so the soul would never reenter.  The fourth day, then, represented certain death. 190

q  Martha’s reaction is not critical of Jesus – just an expression of her grief.  Her statement of faith is significant: even her brother’s death will not reduce her faith in Jesus. 190

q  Jesus’ revelation is an assurance to Martha of the resurrection to the kingdom of God in its consummation through him who is the Resurrection, and of life in the kingdom of God in the present time through him who is the Life.  191

q  Deeply moved/anger and tears suggest Jesus’ upset over the human condition of sin and death which he would soon prove to overcome. The tears were not, however, for Lazarus. 194

Borchert

q  Four day period significant.  Jewish belief was that the soul would hover around the body for three days hoping to reenter.  By the fourth day, the body’s color would leave and the soul would be shut out and force it to go to Sheol.  Hope would be lost at that point.  354

q  Jesus’ statement that Lazarus would rise indicates that Jesus’ power extends even to Sheol.  356

q  Martha’s confession was not one of genuine understanding, for when they came to the tomb, Martha’s statement about Lazarus’ stench indicates she was only thinking on the eternal level of the resurrection.  357

q  Evangelicals need to be reminded by this account that verbal confessions are not to be synonymous with life commitment.  Lip service is not the goal.  “Verbal confessions and life commitments are not always partners with each other.”  357

Brown

q  Lazarus.  A man deeply loved by Jesus; brother to Mary and Martha.

q  Not end in death.  An allusion to a greater principle Jesus was stating: with belief in him, a person’s story never ends in death.

q  God’s Son glorified.  Jesus clearly identifies himself as the Son of God, and indicates that the ensuing events will serve to validate the claim.

q  Going back to Judea.  The disciples’ allegiance indicated that their belief was more than intellectual – this represented a volitional component.

q  Martha.  Lazarus’ sister was stricken with grief.  She already had a significant level of intellectual and volitional belief in Jesus.  All three dimensions were about to experience growth, especially the emotional dimension.

q  Resurrection.  Pharisaic teaching represented the popularly held belief that the Messiah would raise the dead at the last day.

q  I am.  These two words of self-identification speak volumes to Jews – Jesus was declaring himself to be God incarnate.

q  Resurrection and the life.  Jesus was stating that not only is he the one who will provide for the resurrection on that last day, but that, as the author of life, he offers a qualitative experience of eternal life in the present for those who believe.

q  Martha’s confession and contradiction.  She confessed an intellectual belief, but her emotional belief was weak, as her lack of trust in Jesus to bring about Lazarus’ resurrection is evidenced by her declaration that her brother now stinks as a result of being dead for days and not having been embalmed.

q  Jesus, deeply moved and troubled, wept.  Jesus’ upset is related not only to compassion felt toward those in mourning, but also to their desperation resulting from their lack of faith regarding the resurrection.

q  Four days.  Jewish belief held that a deceased person’s soul would attempt for three days to reenter the body, and that when color would leave the person’s body, this symbolized the door’s closing, at which point the soul would enter Sheol, the place of the dead.

q  Jesus’ prayer.  Not PR, but a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God.

q  Take away the stone… take off the grave clothes.  God chooses to use willing people in his plan of redemption.  Both of these requests were directed toward bystanders.

q  Lazarus, come out!  Jesus’ word has authority even over certain death.  All who witnessed this no longer only believed intellectually in Jesus – they felt certain that Jesus was able to deliver salvation even from death, which signifies the emotional dimension of belief.

O’Day

q  Believes in me yet dies emphasizes Jesus’ impact on our view of death.  For Jesus to be the life means that the believer’s present  is also determined by Jesus’ power for life.  689

q  “Unless one believes in Jesus and his word, the transformed life he offers is rendered void.” 689

q  “Faith is not assent to a series of faith statements, but assent to the truth of Jesus’ relationship with God and the decisive change that relationship means for the lives of those who believe.” 694 

q  “Jesus’ words invite the church to claim that God’s life-giving power in Jesus is the power that determines the believer’s existence, not the power of death.  John 11 thus offers a promise about how those who believe in Jesus will live their lives, not just about how they will end them.”  695

Atomic: Trust

Who do you trust to give you guidance when it comes to faith and spirituality? Given how pervasive church baggage, and even worse, abuse are, it’s not always easy to figure out. It turns out, it’s not a new question. In fact, I think it’s the question that lies behind Jesus’ stories in John 10.

It’s a long, meandering passage, so, to save some space, I’ll let you give it a read on your own. Even if you don’t read it, you’ll likely recognize the main image Jesus uses: the good shepherd. He tells a series of stories and metaphors all about sheep, shepherds and thieves, most of which his audience doesn’t get.

If I’m honest, I don’t really blame them. The stories are all over the place. He keeps changing the metaphors and dodging questions that pop up. As storytelling goes, Jesus does a terrible job.

That’s probably because it’s not a modern story. It doesn’t fit our way of thinking. We expect stories to be clear, linear and with no wasted words. But Jesus’ stories are Semitic stories. They have their own way of working. They wander instead of being linear. They work on different levels rather than having one point. You have to walk around them for awhile. Often, you’ll walk in with one understanding and walk out with a completely different one.

So, to do Jesus’ shepherd stories justice, we have to walk around them. We’ll see what pops up and how it helps us know who to trust when it comes to faith.

Level One: Fight or Flight

There’s one level of the stories that speaks to one our most basic evolutionary tendencies: fight or flight. What kind of spiritual leader should we run from and/or resist? Wisdom on this pops up all throughout these shepherd stories.

First, check out the context of what comes right before John 10, when Jesus is talking to the religious leaders:

Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you wouldn’t have any sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

John 9:41

Essentially, what Jesus is saying is that when it comes to spiritual insight, if you think you have a lot of it, you probably don’t. Jesus probably didn’t know it, but he was on to a pretty helpful principle of social psychology called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This principle says that in general, people who think they have an area of life figured out rarely actually do. The more know you about or have experienced something, the more you realize you don’t know about it.

This is what Jesus is saying about spiritual leaders. If you meet someone who thinks they know everything about God, they’re probably not worth trusting with your spirituality.

Next, Jesus gives us an obvious, but vital insight:

I assure you that whoever doesn’t enter into the sheep pen through the gate but climbs over the wall is a thief and an outlaw.

John 10:1

This image is almost insultingly simple. If a spiritual leader looks like they’re being shady, they probably are. Trust your gut here. In religion, we write off our gut and let leaders get away with all sorts of sheep related shenanigans. Because it’s church, we give them the benefit of the doubt. Or if they’ve been helpful to us in the past, we think there’s no way they could be doing something out of line. Or everyone around us seems to be ok with what’s going on.

Sometimes we need a jarringly simple image to wake us up. If it seems like someone is breaking into the sheep pen, there’s a good chance that’s what’s happening.

Jesus has one final, and brutal, insight about poor spiritual leaders:

The thief enters only to steal, kill, and destroy.

John 10:10

Steal, kill, destroy. That’s some strong language. While those things certainly happen in church, don’t get caught up in the literal list. Poor spiritual leaders use others for personal gain.

People are objectified and expendable. This may happen maliciously, or it may be that a leader hasn’t dealt with their own wounds or pain. Some leaders simply want to see their institution or system survive, and they’re willing to sacrifice others for it. Whatever the reason, it’s toxic and certainly not worth our trust.

Level 2: Follow

Jesus’ shepherd stories speak to another basic need of ours: having someone to follow. At various stages of our lives, we need guides to show us how to move forward, and our spirituality is no different. So, the shepherd imagery speaks to the kind of leaders that are worth following, and how Jesus embodies those values.

This first place this pops up is easy to miss:

Jesus was in the temple, walking in the covered porch named for Solomon.

John 10:23

So Jesus liked porches. What does this have to do with who we can trust? Well, Solomon’s porch was an important place. It was the last place in the temple complex that everyone was allowed: men, women, Jew, Gentile. Everyone.

Jesus doesn’t wall himself off from anyone. When we think about who to trust, we should ask if everyone is allowed in their spaces and systems. If their spirituality is based on exclusion, then they’re probably tapping into some sense of superiority, not something sacred.

Next, Jesus says something pretty unique in religious circles:

If I don’t do the works of my Father, don’t believe me.

John 10:37

In a world of people shouting, “because God says so,” Jesus says, “If I’m not embodying something holy and worth following, you shouldn’t believe me.” He invites critique and expects authenticity from anyone who would offer spiritual guidance.

He does this right as some of the crowd wants to know if he has the qualifications to lead Israel. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in their titles though, and instead tells them to just look at what he does. And if it’s not from God, everyone should walk away.

Lastly, he gets to the heart of spiritual leaders worth trusting:

I came so that they could have life—indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest.

John 10:10

Jesus’ ministry was in service of something bigger: life to the fullest. He suggests he can be trusted because he’s just a means to the end that is a big, connected, deeply rooted life.

He also picks this up when he switches metaphors and calls himself a gate. He’s meant to lead us somewhere: the sacred.

At the risk of oversimplifying it, we can figure out if someone is worth trusting simply by asking, “Are they connecting me to the sacred?”

In church, we normally stop here. Trust Jesus. We’ve been told that’s the whole deal. But there’s more. There’s at least one more level here.

Level 3: Freedom

We tend to miss what was really revolutionary in these shepherd stories. What was controversial wasn’t that Jesus was trying to claim the authority of the religious leaders. It’s that he was trying to give it to everyone.

Check out these very similar sounding lines:

Whenever he has gathered all of his sheep, he goes before them and they follow him, because they know his voice.

John 10:4

I know my own sheep and they know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. 

John 10:14-15

For Jesus, being connected to God comes down to knowing. He’s not talking about cognitive knowledge, like we often think. Semitic knowledge was experiential. It was mystical. It meant trusting your experience.

Who do you trust when it comes to connecting with God? You trust you. Trust what you know to be true about God, not what you’re told. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that’s going to stick anyway.

I don’t think we choose what we believe or find compelling about God. We may be able to blindly defer to spiritual authorities and traditions for awhile, but those beliefs don’t have roots. When life gets hard, they’ll get pulled up.

This has been true in my life. My faith has changed a lot, but what I’ve known – deeply known – to be true and compelling about faith hasn’t changed. At the core of every meaningful faith experience has been love and awe. There were times where I falsely accepted the limits of fundamentalism to those things. I put conditions on my ability to be loved or to love others, like my LGBTQ neighbors. But, at its essence, what I’ve always known to be true in my spirituality hasn’t changed, only my understanding of it has.

So trust your experience. As a friend of mine says, we’re busy trying to show how much faith we have in God, but God is trying to show us how much faith s/he has in us.

But Jesus wasn’t done. Right when the crowd was about to kill him because they thought he was equating himself to God, he throws this out:

Jesus replied, “Isn’t it written in your Law, I have said, you are gods? Scripture calls those to whom God’s word came gods.

John 10:34-35

Jesus radically rethinks the divine human relationship by going…back in history? He quotes Psalm 82:6, which says, “You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High.”

He’s essentially saying, “If you’re going to stone me, you better stone everyone.” He reaches back into their collective history and levels the playing field. He’s not just saying he’s especially connected to God. He’s saying everyone is.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we are literally God. Please don’t go start a cult. It’s that we all have access to the sacred. So much so that the Psalmist, and Jesus, are willing to label us “gods.”

Now, before we all get big heads, there’s one more helpful insight that pops up:

I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen.

John 10:16

If we’re tempted to think that Jesus’ radical message of divine connection makes us and our tribe special, Jesus stops us in our tracks. He says he has other flocks. Spirituality is always bigger than we think.

While Jesus may call you a “little g” god, it doesn’t mean you’re the expert on spirituality. It means you have a piece no one else has. Your connection to the sacred can’t be replicated. And neither can your neighbors’. So we come together with our collective pieces of and perspective on God to get a bigger picture. We’re neither deferring to spiritual authorities, nor acting like we are one ourselves.

When we bring our collective insights, something really beautiful happens. We begin to experience what Jesus was leading us to all along: life to the fullest.

Questions to think about…

1. Who are the people on your personal advisory team?  Who do you trust to give you relationship advice?  Parenting advice?  Financial advice? Medical advice?  Movie advice?  What convinced you that these people were worthy of your trust?

1. Who are the people you trust to guide you in your faith and spirituality?  What convinced you that these people were worthy of your trust?

1. Jesus was essentially slamming the Jewish leadership, saying they were not worthy of trust for a range of reasons.  One of the first things Jesus noted was that they were know-it-alls.  The Dunning-Kruger Effect understood from modern psychology essentially validates the idea that when people act like they have mastered something, it likely means there is much they don’t know.  When have you experienced being around a know-it-all?

1. How do you determine if a person is a know-it-all versus a person who knows a lot?

1. Jesus later advises his audience against following leaders who don’t pass the “smell test” – there’s just something fishy about them.  Have you ever experienced this with a person you trusted?  How did you know something was up?  How early did you realize something was amiss?

1. Jesus shifts to more a more positive approach, speaking into the types of leadership criteria that warrants trust.  First, Jesus led by example, hanging out on Solomon’s Porch where everyone was welcome.  Why would this be a sign of someone worthy of following?

1. Later, Jesus essentially told people to look at the actions of the leaders they are considering following to see if their behavior matches what we know to be true of the character and nature of God.  What would that include?

1. How do you relate to Jesus comment about the sheep knowing the shepherd’s voice?  What do you suppose he means?  How has this been true for you?

1. How do you make sense of Jesus’s statement about some sheep knowing his voice?  Who do you think he is referring to?  What would this have meant to the original audience?  What do you think it means for us today – what do we do with this?  What is the criteria for determining who is included?  Is there a criteria, or does this simply mean “everyone” is the same, or?

1. Reflect on all of the questions we’ve pondered here.  What is the stickiest take-away for you today?

Study Notes (Gail O'Day, New Interpreters Bible)

The image of Jesus as the good shepherd has a perennial hold on Christian imagination and piety. Some of the most popular pictures of Jesus are those that depict him as a shepherd, leading a flock of sheep. This picture of Jesus has influenced the church’s images of its leaders, so that in many traditions the ordained minister is referred to as the “pastor,” and ministerial care of the congregation is referred to as “pastoral care.” Behind both of these understandings of ministerial vocation is the sense that the minister is called to lead in the image of Jesus’ leadership, to be the shepherd as Jesus is shepherd. Because these images play such an important role in the life of the church, it is critical for the interpreter of John 10 to distinguish among the various uses of shepherd imagery in the NT. The move to pastoral images of ministry, for example, belongs more to other NT texts (e.g., John 21:15–19; Acts 20:28–29; 1 Pet 5:2–3) than to the interpretation of John 10. The pastoral images of John 10 are primarily christological and ecclesiological, focusing on Jesus’ identity and his relationship to the sheep.

Because the picture of Jesus as good shepherd has such a rich tradition in the life of the church (for other NT examples of this image, see Heb 13:20; 1 Pet 2:25; 3:4), there is a tendency to read John 10 as if Jesus’ self-revelation as the good shepherd is the only christological image in the discourse. As a result, the christological imagery of the gate (vv. 7–10) is subsumed into the imagery of the good shepherd (vv. 11–16). This move runs contrary to the text itself, however. The two “I am” statements of John 10 present the reader with two christological images whose theological integrity must be preserved. When the shepherd image is emphasized in isolation from the gate image, the picture of Jesus in John 10 becomes too easy to appropriate and loses its christological edge. When the gate imagery is dropped, the christological focus of the shepherd imagery can become anthropocentric. That is, Jesus as the good shepherd becomes a model for other shepherds who would lead the “sheep.” The text becomes as much about “us” as leaders as it is about Jesus as the shepherd. When the gate imagery is retained, however, this slide from the christological to the anthropocentric is more difficult.

The heavy concentration of OT pastoral images in this discourse, particularly images associated with God in the OT texts, points the reader to the discourse’s christological heart: Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to God’s people. Yet Jesus is more than the good shepherd for whom Israel waits (Ezekiel 34), because he is also the gate for the sheep. Jesus is the way to life (the gate), and he leads the way to life (the good shepherd). While these are closely related, they are not the same thing. Jesus is the way to life because he is himself life (v. 10; cf. 14:6). Jesus leads the way to the life because he lays down his own life (vv. 11, 14–15). These are non-transferrable attributes; they derive from the heart of Jesus’ identity as the one sent by God.

The “I am” statements of John 10, then, deepen the array of images of Jesus available to the church. The images of Jesus as the gate and the good shepherd are intensely relational; they have no meaning without the presence of the sheep. These “I am” statements do not simply reveal who Jesus is, but more specifically reveal who Jesus is in relationship to those who follow him. The identity of Jesus and the identity of the community that gathers around him are inextricably linked.

The relational dimension of the christological images provides the bridge to the ecclesiological dimension of this imagery. The identity of the community is determined by the shepherd’s (Jesus’) relationship to it and its relationship to the shepherd (Jesus). There is, then, an anthropological dimension to the shepherd discourse, but it is an anthropology completely dependent on the discourse’s christology and expressed exclusively in communal terms. For the community of faith, human identity is determined by Jesus’ identity. Who Jesus is with and for the community determines who the community is.

What image of community life does this discourse present? Nowhere in this discourse are any who follow Jesus depicted as shepherds or even assistant shepherds. Rather, all who gather around Jesus receive their identity as members of the flock. The community that gathers around Jesus are the ones who share in the mutual knowledge of God and Jesus, whose relationship to Jesus is modeled on Jesus’ relationship to God (v. 15). Listening to Jesus’ voice is the source of its unity (v. 16). By taking Jesus as its point of access to God, the community receives abundant life (v. 10).

Most important, however, the community that gathers around Jesus receives its identity through Jesus’ gift of his life for them. In the end, to be a member of Jesus’ flock is to know oneself as being among those for whom Jesus is willing to die. The christological and ecclesiological images of the shepherd discourse become one around the death of Jesus. The death of Jesus also holds together the metaphors of gate and shepherd and shows how Jesus can be both things. In the freely chosen act of his death, Jesus shows the way to life (gate) and offers abundant life by the example of his love (shepherd). It is important that Jesus says he lays down his life for the sheep, not for his sheep (v. 15), just as in 6:51 he speaks of giving his flesh for the life of the world. It is an inclusive, rather than an exclusive, gift, just like God’s love for the world (3:16). Jesus makes the love of God fully available by expressing that love in his death (vv. 17–18).

The shepherd discourse thus provides the contemporary church with the occasion to reflect on several critical theological themes. First, it asks the church to attend to the christological heart of its identity. Who the church is cannot be separated from who Jesus is. Reflection on church identity, then, always needs to be part of a serious christological conversation, a conversation that takes Jesus’ gift of his life as its starting point. Second, this discourse provides an occasion to reassess the assumptions that accompany the use of shepherd and pastoral imagery within the church, particularly about the church’s leaders. When that imagery sets the church’s “shepherds” apart from the rest of the sheep, the power of the pastoral imagery of community in John 10 is diminished, if not lost. Jesus uses pastoral imagery in this discourse to depict the lives of all believers, not just some, in relationship to him.

Finally, the discourse provides the church with a fresh vantage point from which to reflect on community practices. What does it mean for the church to live as Jesus’ sheep? What does a church that understands itself as Jesus’ sheep look like? How will its identity be manifested in the world? Jesus the good shepherd chose to make his identity manifest to the world through his death. The shepherd discourse calls the church to live out its life according to the model of community envisioned here by Jesus, a model grounded in the mutuality of love embodied in the relationship of Jesus and God. This model of community will be developed further in the Farewell Discourse, but the first glimpse of the community for which Jesus gave his life is available in this text.

John 10:22–42 brings the interpreter face to face with the decisive theological issue of this Gospel: the relationship of God and Jesus. As the commentary has shown, this passage says nothing about this relationship that has not been said before, but it says it in direct and concise formulations: “The Father and I are one”; “the Father is in me and I in the Father.”

There is a temptation to interpret these words according to the norms of later trinitarian doctrine, to read them according to what they became in the life of the church, rather than what they say in their own context. To do so, however, is to distort and diminish the theological and christological witness of this important text. The Gospel of John was an important resource for the theologians of the second and third centuries as they struggled to think through the interrelationship of the three persons of God, but their questions were not the Fourth Evangelist’s questions, nor were their intrachurch controversies his. As the Commentary on 10:30 shows, John was talking about the functional unity of God and Jesus in their work and power, not a metaphysical unity of nature and person. Later christology expressed this unity metaphysically by speaking of the one nature or substance, categories absent from John. The Fourth Evangelist’s primary concern was to articulate the relationship of God and Jesus in the context of Jewish-Christian relations, not Christian-Christian relations in the debates over christology.

The most important difference between the discussions of the early church fathers and the Fourth Evangelist about the relationship of God and Jesus is that the church fathers were developing doctrine and the Fourth Evangelist was telling a story. This does not mean that the Fourth Evangelist’s reflections are inherently any less theological, but because they are cast in a story, they have a very different theological intent. John 10:30 and 38 thus belong to John’s story of Jesus and cannot be abstracted from that context without altering their meaning. When Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” it does not come as any surprise to the Gospel reader, because that reality has been acted out throughout the Gospel narrative. Jesus has done the works of God, spoken the words of God, identified himself with the I AM of God. The relationship of God and Jesus is not a metaphysical puzzle for the Fourth Evangelist, but evidence of God’s love for the world (3:16–17). The wonder of the incarnation is that God is palpably available to the world in the person of Jesus, that those who believe in Jesus, who see the works of God in Jesus, have access to God in ways never before possible (14:7–11).

The question of the identity of the persons of God and Jesus would make no sense to the Fourth Evangelist, because he is clear throughout that Jesus’ incarnation and presence in the world are wholly the result of God’s initiative: God gave; God sent. The two distinct characters, God and Jesus, are essential to John’s proclamation of the gospel. In fact, much of the trinitarian conversation about natures and persons would probably sound to the Fourth Evangelist like the “Jews’ ” erroneous charge of blasphemy in 10:33, a conversation that misses the point about the unity of God and Jesus.

One non-negotiable point that John and the early framers of doctrine have in common, however, is that Jesus’ relationship to God is the crux and stumbling block of Christian faith. For the Fourth Evangelist, that relationship is the dividing line between Jews and Christians, and hence is the focal point of most of the controversy between Jesus and the religious authorities. For the second-, third-, and fourth-century theologians, it was the dividing line between orthodoxy and heresy. For contemporary Christians, it is the source of Christians’ distinctive religious identity in their conversations with one another and with people of different religious faiths.

In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus does not claim to be a second God or somehow to replace God or to “make himself” God. Rather, Jesus claims to know God as no human has ever known God, to be one with God in will and work for the salvation of the world. This truth, and the believer’s experience of it, is the ultimate shaping factor in the Fourth Gospel narrative. Everything, from the hymnic beginning (1:1–18) to Thomas’s confession at 20:28, works to show forth the incarnate presence of God in Jesus.

It thus requires a significant amount of interpretive imagination and effort to allow John 10:22–42 to speak to the church about the relationship of God and Jesus in its own voice, and not in the voice of church doctrine. In order to understand Jesus’ claims in 10:30 and 38 about his relationship with God, it is critical that the interpreter keep them grounded in the whole story of the Fourth Gospel. Jesus’ acts of healing and giving life, his words of teaching all demonstrate and embody the presence of God in the world. Taken out of that larger context, the theological and christological claims of John 10:30 and 38 become doctrinal propositions. Within that narrative context, however, they have a life and vitality that they cannot have as doctrinal propositions. They serve to guide the reader back into the story of Jesus, to remind the reader of the shape and character of the “grace upon grace” (1:16) that is available when Jesus makes God known.

Atomic: Q&A (John 9)

Think about some of the key things you have learned to do in your life that you can remember.  Riding a bike.  Driving a car.  Learning to play a musical instrument. Picking up a hobby.  Playing sports.  In every case, there is an incredibly awkward phase that makes us feel very insecure, with seemingly every part of us freaking out.  We’re usually lousy at the early stages and have to work through our insecurities, face into our ignorance, trust the new thing, and move forward with more and more learning. 

Q: How do you recognize this pattern in the types of learning described above?

Deeper things are like this as well.  Marriage-level relationships, adult parent-child relationships, workplace relationships – all of these come with learning new things about ourselves, discovering things we need to unlearn, embracing the new despite our fears and opposition (internally and externally), and moving forward.

Q: How have you lived out this pattern in the types of relationships described above?

Read John 9.

In the Gospel of John’s telling of the story of the man born blind who gets healed by Jesus, we see the same pattern emerge.  This story is more than a “simple” healing story – it is one that we can all relate to on one level or another.  For instance, we recall that the Johannine community of Jewish Jesus followers was ousted from the synagogue because they had learned and believed Jesus’ teachings which in some cases were very unorthodox.  The status quo didn’t tolerate the “new” ideas of Jesus and, as it nearly always goes with systems, the system kicked out what didn’t fit.  This had to be absolutely heart-breaking for this community.  They were being told, essentially, that God was not truly with them in their interpretation.  While they were being judged as ungodly and unwanted, they were experiencing the presence of God – they knew God was with them, despite what the “system” was telling them.  This pattern happened repeatedly in the early Christian movement (and with Jesus, of course): the new insight comes that challenges the previous ways of thinking (and all who believe in it), followed by tension, followed by the system trying to kick out the new thing (which often goes “binary”), and, if the system cannot absorb and integrate the “new”, it is kicked out into the cold to survive on its own, if possible.  Lots of good ideas and movements die there.  We have all been the blind man in the story in one way or another.  We all have known what it is like to face a system that doesn’t want to change.  Maybe it’s internal – like riding a bike when your body is telling you you’re an idiot – or perhaps it’s much more complex – like learning to literally marry two systems into one when you commit at the highest level of covenant relationship.

Q: What are some of your experiences of being the “new” in a system?  How did it go?  How does knowing that this is the way systems work affect your thinking and feeling about it?

The story, of course, is not just about systems theory – that concept wasn’t formalized until our current era.  This story of systems change is imbedded in a story about Jesus, a story that was probably a mish-mash of many stories represented by this one single story about the power of God at work through Jesus (thus providing legitimacy), and about one man’s awakening to the implications of his new capacity to see.  It starts with trusting what Jesus was saying and living into it.  It’s not as if Jesus and the disciples dog-piled an unsuspecting blind dude so Jesus could “punk” him by smearing the spit-mud on his eyes!  The blind man was a willing participant.  Nothing in the system had really been working for him his whole life (except that he was still alive, I guess).  That doesn’t mean there wasn’t something to lose in saying yes to Jesus’ invitation.  There surely was.  This might have represented the 100th time someone had a miracle cure – could he handle one more round of dashed hope?  Moving even toward health and faith is a legitimate risk.  We are used to the system that we’re in.  It’s home for us, even in terms of faith.  There are variables that help us move forward: inner conviction that change is needed, a sense that the future is worth the risk, and someone to be with us on the journey, among others.  This man evidenced great courage, his capacity to see was in play, and he was supported by Jesus (who would have been renown for healing by that time).  It worked!  He could see!  In truth, he saw everything differently.

Q: How have you had moment(s) like this when you “saw the light”?

Over the next hours he began to see more and more differently about the system he had been in, what Jesus had invited him into, and who he was becoming.  All wrapped in a story about faith.  In perfect form, the system challenged the “new” even though it was legitimate, because it was going to challenge the health of the system.  Even though it was a sick one, it was working and did not want to die.  It fought back.  It kicked the man out.  Jesus returned to him, reintroduced himself (!), and invited him to keep moving forward in following him. 

Q: How have you experienced the backlash of even faith systems after you started living out of your new vision?

This one story of a blind man’s restored sight is the metaphor of life and faith.  In terms of faith, there is much to see here.  While I don’t think we are born blind, I do believe we all have grown up in systems that train blindness and support our blindness.  The same Spirit of God that was at work in Jesus – the “Christ” part of Jesus Christ – is always inviting us to see, to trust, to follow toward healing.  Always.  When we say yes, my experience has been that it truly does open our eyes.  There is a reason why the first verse of Amazing Grace ends with “was blind, but now I see” – this is the way spiritual renewal, realized resurrection goes.  The “born again” thing from John chapter three is another way to articulate the same thing.

I know personally and as a pastor for nearly 25 years that we share the blind man’s path as we face the system that do not want us to change.  It fights back in myriad ways, even on good, healing things of God.  For many, this is an insurmountable impasse, and they shift back into their former state, the new vision fading to black over time.  For a relative few (honestly) the inner conviction, dream of a brighter future, and a sense of being supported coalesce into breakthrough.  New life and new vision propel the person forward to their next phase of resurrected life.  We stay there until we are invited again (and again and again and again) to trust once more to see anew, because we will find ourselves in more systems in which we find great comfort and stability.  The process continues.

Q: How do we know if we are stuck, blind once again, in need of saying yes to the perennial invitation?

To paraphrase a friend of mine who pastors a church in Santa Clara, Jesus was never interested in creating Christians. He was inviting people to simply follow him.  We as a church should not care much about making Christians.  We should, however, be clear on inviting people to follow.  The old-school word is disciples – learners and followers of Jesus.  For us it is the same.  The Spirit of God that inspired and informed Jesus is still coming alongside, still inviting us to trust and follow.  For our whole lives.  For our lives.  For all people’s lives.  For our healing.  For the healing of the world.  And so the invitation is before you…

Q: Do you want to see?

Study Notes:

Beasley-Murray (Word Biblical Commentary)

q  Sins of the parents visited on children a common thought, and even scripturally affirmed (Ex. 20:15; Dt. 5:9) 154

q  Some thought was present about children sinning before birth, using Jacob and Esau as examples of a struggle in the womb. 155

q  Light of the world reference is that Jesus is such for all humanity. 155

q  Saliva, especially that of a first-time father, was thought to have healing powers. 155

q  The washing in the pool of Siloam (Shiloah) may have been a fulfiment of scripture affirming Jesus’ position as the Messiah: “The scepter shall not depart from Juday until Shiloh comes (Gen 49:10). 156

q  The interrogation by the man’s neighbors signifies that something significant happened.  Interestingly, Jesus, who is absent from these discussions, is the centerpiece.  156

q  Jesus’ decision to perform this on the Sabbath created the dilemma: he broke Sabbath law (Dt. 13:1-5), but how could a sinner perform such signs? 157

q  The blind man was slowly beginning to see more and more – Jesus was a prophet, which was tied to Messianic prophecies. 157

q  The parents’ fear of the Jews was tied to the prophecy piece.  Being a miracle worker wasn’t too disruptive, but agreeing with their son that Jesus was a prophet may have meant expulsion from the synagogue. 157

q  “Give glory to God” is a demand to confess his sin of lying about his blindness and subsequent healing, and to admit the authorities are right and Jesus is a sinner. 158

q  The Pharisees illumine the disappearance of impartiality: they have made up their mind about Jesus, because they made up their mind about Moses – they know where Moses came from. 158

q  The amazing thing is the unbelief of the Pharisees, which the man is pointing out.  The Pharisees condemn themselves by noting the sinfulness of the man born blind, and therefore the truly miraculous nature of Jesus in healing him.  He is getting more and more bold with those who are opposing Jesus.  159

q  Jesus reveals himself as the Son of Man – the Messiah.  Compare the Samaritan woman.  The man’s response is to fall prostrate and kiss his feet.  159

q  Judgment is concomitant to grace.  To those who desire to see, Jesus gives light.  To those who do not, Jesus condemns to their chosen darkness. 160

q  This narrative exemplifies the progression from sight to insight, and also to judgment. 161

q  For those in contexts that are unreceptive to the Light, this text serves as comfort. 162

Borchert (New American Commentary)

q  For children with symptoms of sin, it was the parents’ obligation to confess on their behalf. 313

q  Jesus shifted the focus from placing blame on God to the grace of God in the face of need. 313

q  Jesus’ day/night discourse has a double meaning which the disciple’s do not yet grasp. 314

q  In giving the man specific instruction, Jesus makes the connection between experiencing God’s power and obedience. 315

q  Siloam=sent.  This is indicative of Jesus’ mission and his command. 315

q  Pool is also the source for water for Jerusalem, and specifically for the Feast of Tabernacles.  Even in times of siege, the pool provided water (Hezekiah). 315

q  The original intent of the text was not to support baptism, even though it was used later. 316

q  The crowd was looking for quick and easy answers to complicated questions. 316

q  Not wanting to give more attention to Jesus, the Pharisees shifted their attack to the man. 319

q  The man’s statement “This I know” is akin to a sworn testimony. 321

q  The man’s backlash on the Pharisees is because they failed to recognize the healing of congenital blindness, and the healer. 322

q  “This statement (30-33), therefore, is the man’s affirmation of the need for authenticity with God and his testimony was that the healer must be a God-authenticated person.” 323

q  Irony is that the Pharisees missed the point of the Tabernacles – hope and joy – and were, rather, still in a spirit of bondage as were those who died in the wildnerness even though they crossed the sea as a result of the Passover. 323

q  Believing meant the active commitment of himself to the Son of Man.  He had already believed without seeing, itself a sign of the believers who were to come after the resurrection. 324

Brown (Yale-Anchor Study Bible)

q  Blindness in the first century.  Popular theology held that people blind from birth had lost their sight because of sin on the part of their parents.

q  Washing in the Pool of Siloam.  Water as a miraculous agent was not unknown (Elijah and Naaman).

q  Confession of faith.  I once was blind, but now I see.  This simple confession was likely used by the early church as they celebrated baptism.

q  Light of the world.  Jesus was indicating that what was really being played out was a battle between good and evil, and that he would overcome.

O’Day (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary)

q  “In the Fourth Gospel, “sin” is not a moral category about behavior, but is a theological category about one’s response to the revelation of God in Jesus (8:21, 24; 9:39-41; 16:9)”. 653

q  Jesus’ making clay was significant, because kneading was one of the thirty-nine categories of work forbidden on the Sabbath. 654

q  The interrogation provides the opportunity for the formerly blind man to bear witness to the healing. 656

q  The progression of the man’s ability to see is related to faith.  The point is that our belief must develop similarly. 656

q  Part of the man’s boldness was in his refusal to play the Pharisee’s game of legal interpretation.  The man kept at this original scheme, simply repeating what had happened to him. 659

q  The Pharisees get the tables turned on them, and they become the interrogates, bring much joy to the contemporary readers of John. 659

q  “For the Fourth Gospel, faithfulness to the grace and truth available in Jesus, not faithfulness to the law, is the decisive mark of true discipleship.” 659

q  Jesus not driving anyone away who comes to Him is in contrast to the attitude of the Pharisees. 660

q  Man’s belief progression: the healer, the prophet, the Son of Man. 661

q  His worship of God ironically fulfills the Pharisees’ request that he give glory to God. 661

q  Contemporary readers would recognize that “their confession of Jesus will secure them in community with him at the same time it excludes them from their former religious home.” 661

q  Jesus redefines sins as not the presence of an illness, nor the violation of the law, but as one’s resistance to Jesus. 661

q  “The story of the blind man has been used as a symbol of faith and new life throughout the history of the church.  The healing of the blind man appears as a baptismal symbol in second-century frescoes in the catacombs in Rome (as do the stories of the Samaritan woman and the healing of the man in John 5).  These same stories were used in Lenten baptismal liturgies dating at least as far back as the fourth and fifth centuries.  The blind man’s movement from darkness to light and his confession of his faith in Jesus provided a vehicle through which the church could celebrate the power of new life that begins in baptism.  The blind man’s word in John 9:25 also offer eloquent testimony to the transforming power of God’s grace in the hymn “Amazing Grace”: “I once was blind, but now I see.”” 665

Atomic: Truth

I was listening to a Radiolab podcast this week called “Loops”.  In it the story of three mathematicians’ work was briefly described.  Gottlob Frege was as much a philosopher as he was a mathematician.  He was convinced that math could inform logic, and logic could essentially eliminate the need for intuition and mystery in life.  Everything was explainable if you just worked your pencils hard enough.  He was largely overlooked during his life, but was later celebrated for his contribution by other well known mathematicians, including Bertrand Russel, who valued Frege deeply even though he came up with a scenario that Frege’s axiom could not handle, illustrated in the story of a town where all the men were clean-shaven.  Those who did not shave themselves were shaven by the town’s barber.  The logic works for every many in town but one: the barber.  If the barber shaves himself, he does not get shaved by the barber.  Wait a second…  Another mathematician/logician, Kurt Gödel, worked to address the unsolvable with mathematical references.  For instance, it is a held mathematical truth that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers.  And yet, it is impossible to know for sure because we can never get to the end of numbers to test the theory!  Like the Barber story, he simplified the problem with a single sentence: This sentence is untrue.  See the problem?  His work opened the door for thinking in news ways with the freedom that some troubling axioms cannot be disproved.

We humans like to keep things nice and orderly.  It helps us feel like we’re in control.  We’ve done a lot with this regarding religion.  Gödel was a theist who read the Bible every Sunday morning.  He said that he thought religion itself was good, but that religions were bad.  Why?  Likely because religions have a way of defining themselves so clearly that they leave no room for God.  Jesus was devout in living out the Jewish faith, and yet it was the living out his faith that eventually got him killed.  He favored religion over religions; he had room for God to be God – a great freedom that eluded the many who were content with their defined, exclusive religions.

In one dense exchange, Jesus spoke with a mix of Jewish people in Jerusalem – some who believed in Jesus and others who did not.  One thing he said makes its way now and again into graduation and political rally speeches alike.  It’s a good stand-alone statement, but, as is the case nearly always, knowing the context brings greater understanding and depth.  See if you can pick out the phrase in the exchange:

     Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
     “But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?”
     Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free. Yes, I realize that you are descendants of Abraham. And yet some of you are trying to kill me because there’s no room in your hearts for my message. I am telling you what I saw when I was with my Father. But you are following the advice of your father.”
     “Our father is Abraham!” they declared.
     “No,” Jesus replied, “for if you were really the children of Abraham, you would follow his example. Instead, you are trying to kill me because I told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham never did such a thing. No, you are imitating your real father.”
     They replied, “We aren’t illegitimate children! God himself is our true Father.”
     Jesus told them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, because I have come to you from God. I am not here on my own, but he sent me. Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. So when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe me! Which of you can truthfully accuse me of sin? And since I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? Anyone who belongs to God listens gladly to the words of God. But you don’t listen because you don’t belong to God.” – John 8:31-47 (NLT)

Like so many in John’s Gospel, we see once again a group of people who aren’t on Jesus’ wavelength.  This particular group has become comfortable in their understanding of religion as being secured by the results of their 23 and Me results – they are genetically Jewish.  Moreover, since they follow the traditions of Judaism, they are surely legitimate.  Yet Jesus here is calling them to see themselves differently.  He is suggesting that they have adopted a different father than the one of their genes.  Rather than following God, they have unwittingly been following the way of the world.  The way of the world was “home” to them – they had built their identity on it even though it was a false one.  Unfortunately, because they associated their nation and their faith with God, and assumed God endorsed both, they naturally felt quite justified in whatever they did.  Kind of like some in our country who are so convinced that the United States is a Christian nation, so that God must surely be blessing us wherever we go and in whatever we do, even if that means horrible things for the people we meet.  Slavery, genocide, imperialism, followed by systemic inequality and inequity for select “browner” citizens – all endorsed by God?  I don’t think so.  I don’t think Jesus thought so for his contemporaries, either.

Of course, we must remember that this Gospel was written from the perspective of a group of Jesus followers who had been ousted by their Jewish community.  Surely that informs their remembrance!  From their vantage point, they understood at a different level just how prescient Jesus’ words were about the truth revealed in their killing him.  Their religion would lead them to tear Jesus apart instead of honoring the heart of God who longs to brings things together, to re-ligament – the true goal of religion.

It’s not that Jesus was anti-religion; it was that he understood that God was the point of it all, and where religion was supposed to always point.  Sometimes, however, religion itself makes itself the focal point of worship.  When that happens, a whole lot of ugly follows.  The historical examples of this are too numerous to recount here.

What was Jesus getting at, then, with his Abrahamic conversation?  Abraham wasn’t devoid of cultic practices, but he did sense a call from God to leave his comfortable homeland behind him to start something new and different.  He was trusting the voice of God who was leading him, not a script or the orthodoxy he was leaving behind.  This new thing was based on a relationship with the Divine who was not bound by geographical constraints. God was faithful everywhere.  God was with Abraham everywhere.  God was faithfully good everywhere.  Following the voice of God led to good things for him and those under his care.

Jesus was living out a similar reality.  The truth that set him free – and anyone else – is that this God is deeply with us, in us, for us, guiding us, energizing us, comforting us, and so much more.  This inner relationship led to faithful expressions on Jesus’ and Abraham’s part.  Jesus’ practice of the Jewish faith had things in order – the religion was made for humanity to become more connected to God.  Humanity was not made for religion, as if it was ever meant to be the constraining straight-jacket so many find it to be when the cart gets before the horse.  This is why Jesus was so often in trouble with religious folks who recognized his breaking rules.  Jesus was called by God – a higher authority than the Law.  To freely live the way Jesus lived, however, means we become more open, more stretchy in our understanding of God, relying on the indwelling of God to guide us.

The Apostle Paul never met Jesus, but he surely encountered Christ.  He understood that they whole point of religion was to connect people to God in relationship, not religiosity, not dogma, not exclusivism.  Read some of the things Paul said:

     In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. – Colossians 3:11 (NLT)

     But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. – Galatians 1:16 (NIV)

     Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? – 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NRSV)

Paul was beaten repeatedly for daring to live in this new reality.  Freedom always challenges forms of oppression.  When we let go of our limited thinking about God, we find life.  More from Paul:

     …recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. – 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (The Message)

If we aren’t paying attention, our relationship with God (as with other important relationships) will drift into mechanics and lose the heart, the life that we once enjoyed.  We will find ourselves going through the motions, still caring, but not animated like we once were.  When we find ourselves there, we will be comfortably at rest in religion, which is not the same as being alive in Christ with Christ alive in us. 

Where are you in this regard?  How do you monitor your spiritual health?  Do you know that God is within you?  How are you living as though it were true?  How are you allowing that reality to change the way you see yourself, value yourself, care for yourself?  How are you letting the reality that God is also in the people we encounter affect you?  How are you thinking and behaving is if it were true? 

Bob Goff let this reality really sink in, and it changed him.  Because it changed him, incredible good is happening in more and more people around the world.  In a chapter about making the most of the time we have with people – even if only three minutes at a time – he offers the following insights:

     When we draw a circle around the whole world like grace did and say everybody is in, God’s love gives us bigger identities than we used to have.  With our newer, bigger, identities, we can draw even bigger arcs around people’s lives. We start to see that our time here isn’t meant to be spent forming opinions about the people we meet.  It’s an opportunity to draw the kind of circles around them that grace has drawn around us, until everybody is on the inside.

     We don’t decide who in line is in and who’s out, and we don’t need to waste any more time engaging in the kinds of arguments some people get sucked into. People who are becoming love don’t swing at every pitch. We start by meeting people just three minutes at a time. – Bob Goff, Everybody Always

To conclude, a benediction from Paul:

Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope! – Romans 15:13 (The Message)

Reflections from Gail O’Day (New Interpreters Bible)

John 8 presents the reader of the Gospel of John with some of the Gospel’s most difficult interpretive issues. The Jesus who emerges from these verses speaks with staggeringly sharp invective to his opponents and holds nothing back in his attack on his theological adversaries. It is very difficult to harmonize this picture of Jesus with the images of him that shape our theological imaginations: Jesus as the one who eats with outcasts and sinners, who cares for the lost sheep, who is the model of how we are to love. Complicating this picture of Jesus is the fact that he speaks this scathing language to a group John identifies as the “Jews,” so that Jesus’ words in this chapter have become a pivotal text in discussions of Christian anti-Semitism.

Because this text has played such a controversial role in shaping Jewish-Christian relationships, it is the interpreter’s moral responsibility to look the language of this chapter and the image of Jesus squarely in the face. It does no good simply to whitewash the intensity of the invective, nor does it do any good to continue to treat the anti-“Jews” language in this text as if it were license for anti-Semitism. The interpreter is called to ask hard questions of this text in order to discover what it is saying and what it is not saying. The interpreter must work diligently and carefully to understand the text in its original social and historical context in order to avoid making simplistic and destructive extrapolations to contemporary church settings. The commentary has attempted to provide the interpreter with some of the historical, social, and cultural contexts necessary to begin this work. This Reflections section will begin by reviewing the historical and social data as they pertain directly to the appropriation of this text and then, on the basis of this review, to examine the critical issues with which this text confronts the interpreter.

Two historical/social issues bear directly on the appropriation of John 8: the relationship of the Johannine community to establishment Judaism and the role of invective in first-century intra-Jewish debates. As has been noted many times in this commentary, the relationship between Johannine Jewish Christians and Judaism is one of the decisive issues for the shape and perspective of the Fourth Gospel. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus’ antagonists are regularly identified as the “Jews.” The work of J. Louis Martyn and others has helped us to see that a rupture(s) with the synagogue occurred sometime in the last quarter of the first century that decisively changed the fabric of Johannine Christians’ religious lives.

Prior to the decisive break, Johannine Christians were able to hold together their participation in the liturgical and cultural world of Judaism and their faith in Jesus. (It is important to note that this joint identity was not unique to Johannine Christians. For example, in Acts 2, Luke depicts the developing Christian community as participating in temple worship as well as conducting their own worship services.) The exact course of events that led to the break cannot be charted, but the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE was one of the pivotal factors.

Without the Temple, Judaism was forced to reconstitute itself around a different center, and the Jewish Scriptures became that center. The synagogues, therefore, took on more importance, because they were the sites where Scripture was taught and preached. Moreover, those Jews who professed faith in Jesus also took the Scriptures to be of the utmost importance, because they understood Jesus to be the fulfillment of God’s promises as made known to God’s people through Scripture. The conflict was joined, therefore, around the question of who could lay claim to God’s promises and to the status of God’s people. This conflict is apparent in the adversarial language of Matthew 23, for example, but the group of Christians who seemed to have experienced this conflict and struggle most intensely in their day-to-day lives was the community of Christians for whom the Fourth Gospel was written. The Fourth Gospel makes repeated reference to Christians’ being cast out of the synagogue (9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and the fear and danger this produced in the community’s life.

The Johannine Christians thus understood themselves to be outcasts, people whom the Jewish establishment no longer considered to be Jews, a community forcibly removed from its roots and the symbols that formed its identity. Their self-identity was as a marginalized community that stood powerless in the face of the power of the dominant religious group, the Jews. The Gospel of John contains many attempts by the Fourth Evangelist to reclaim his community’s relationship to its Jewish roots. The Fourth Evangelist makes repeated references to Jewish feasts and demonstrates the ways in which Jesus is the true fulfillment of those feasts (e.g., 7:37–38; 8:12). Most of the Fourth Evangelist’s primary metaphors and images are drawn from the language of the Jewish Scriptures, and John 4, 6, and 8 revolve around comparisons between Jesus and Jacob, Moses, and Abraham, respectively. The wealth and depth of Jewish scriptural allusions in the Fourth Gospel show that the Fourth Evangelist is not antagonistic to Jewish traditions. Rather, he is antagonistic to the Jewish power structures and political forces that have attempted to cut his community off from these traditions.

The virulent language of chap. 8 must be read against this backdrop of being cast out of the synagogue, of being excluded from the religious centers that had once helped to define one’s religious and communal identity. The language of this chapter is the language of the minority group spoken in protest to the majority culture. The Johannine Jewish Christians had no way to back up this language—that is, they had no power to take any actions comparable to their own exclusion from the synagogue. They were outnumbered by the Jewish community and had no political resources at their disposal. Their only “power” rested in the force of their rhetoric, in their ability to denounce those who had excluded them.

In the Commentary on 8:44–47, Qumran texts were cited in order to place the invective of these verses in their full cultural context. The Qumran community, too, used very strong language to speak against other Jews whom they sensed were depriving them of their religious heritage and polluting God’s promises to God’s people. One important difference between the Qumran sectarians and the Johannine community is that the Qumran sectarians initially chose to exclude themselves from the Jerusalem community, whereas the Johannine community was forcibly excluded. The persecution that the Qumran community endured after their separation, however, was not of its choosing and positioned them as a community oppressed by establishment Judaism, like the community for which the Fourth Evangelist wrote. The Qumran analogue is important, because it helps the interpreter to see how the language about the Jews in chap. 8 functions as intra-Jewish invective in its own cultural and historical setting.

What is the significance of this historical context for the contemporary interpreter of John 8? First, it reminds the interpreter that one must attend to the specific situation of a biblical text in order to make the move to potential contemporary appropriations. The issues in John 8 have a very specific cultural context, and the only way that this text can have a place in the life of the church is if the specificity of that original context is honored. One must understand the originating context and then look for modern analogues to that context. That is especially critical with a text, like this one, that has had such a disturbing place in the history of interpretation.

Second, attention to the historical and social contexts of John 8 compels the interpreter to work more carefully at assessing the function of the negative language for the original readers and thus assists the interpreter in distinguishing among the many painful issues with which this text confronts the modern reader. It helps the interpreter to see that simple condemnations of Johannine anti-Semitism, for example, do not begin to touch the complexity of this text. In order to honor the complexity of this text, the interpreter must begin to think separately about two distinct issues that are often treated as one issue in contemporary conversations about this text: (1) the relation of John 8 to Christian anti-Semitism; and (2) the social function of religious invective. It is to the contemporary dimensions of these two issues for the life of Christian faith that we now turn.

1. As the historical review made clear, the Fourth Evangelist understood his community to be persecuted by the power and theological politics of the Jewish establishment. Moreover, this community was itself without power in the face of what it understood to be its oppressors. The harshly negative language about the Jews in this chapter, then, needs to be taken first and foremost as the language of a group without the means—economic, political, military (note the references to the police sent by the Pharisees in 7:32, 45; cf. also 18:3)—to act out its virulence. It is the language of a Jewish-rooted minority that is no longer allowed to claim its Judaism, speaking against those who have denied them their heritage.

When the words of John 8 become the weapons contemporary Christians use in a crusade against Judaism, this critical social fabric is overlooked and, indeed, distorted. First, contemporary Christians have come a long way from the intimate ties with Judaism that shaped the Johannine community. The majority of Christians today are Gentile by heritage, not Jewish, and so the language of John 8 belongs to a context foreign to contemporary Christian experience. When Jesus speaks about the Jews the way he does in John 8, giving voice to the Johannine community’s needs and anger, it is intra-family language. Contemporary Gentile Christians who use this language against Jews are not members of the family and hence their language carries a different weight. Contemporary Christians have not been hurt by the Jewish religious establishment the way the Johannine Christians perceived themselves to be, rejected by those they took to be their brothers and sisters in faith, so that the pathos that drove this language in its own context is missing in ours.

Second, and more crucially, Christians, particularly in North America and Europe, are no longer the minority group, rejected by the Jewish religious establishment because of their beliefs, but are the majority group whose religious practices and values dominate contemporary culture. The balance of power between Christians and Jews is the exact opposite of the situation in which the Fourth Evangelist lived and wrote, and for contemporary Christians to point to John 8 as justification for their attitude toward Judaism is a false and dangerous appropriation of the biblical text.

The danger of the misappropriation of the Fourth Gospel’s type of invective in a situation where the power relationships between Christians and Jews are reversed was tragically evident in the actions of the Third Reich toward Europe’s Jewish population. In that situation, the Germans had the military, economic, and political power to act out the language of hate. It was no longer a question of a minority group’s using strong language to defend its right to exist and worship as it chose, but the majority culture’s exercising its might to exterminate a less powerful group it found offensive and falsely perceived as a threat.

For the Fourth Evangelist, the situation was one of a spiritual and theological battle, in which the Jewish religious authorities were dictating the shape of the Johannine Christians’ faith lives. No such situation holds today; Christianity is not at risk because of Judaism, and for contemporary Christians to overlook this critical social distinction is to do misservice to the gifts and promises of God that Jews and Christians share. The Fourth Evangelist experienced his community as being on the verge of losing access to those gifts, and so the Johannine Jesus speaks with intensity about the Christians’ claim to those gifts and promises as distinct from Jewish claims. Jewish-Christian relations are completely different today, however, and the Fourth Gospel’s invective against the Jews has no meaning in a world where Christian claims and practices rest secure.

2. When the questions of anti-Semitism and religious invective are distinguished from one another, it becomes possible to look at the social and theological function of the language of John 8 as an issue in its own right. One then can ask how this language serves the needs of this religious community. What does this language accomplish? What are its implications for contemporary Christian communities?

As noted earlier, the primary theological function of the invective in John 8 is to defend the Christian community’s claims against the perceived assault of the Jewish religious establishment. Its closely related social function is to establish the identity of this faith community over against those who deny the community’s right to exist. The absolute character of this language and the sharp lines it draws between those who share the community’s beliefs and those who do not are frequently pointed to by scholars as evidence of the sectarian quality of Johannine faith. That is, the Johannine community understood itself as a minority religious group at odds with the dominant religious culture. If Johannine sectarianism is perceived as a primarily intra-Christian phenomenon, then the description is not altogether apt, because Johannine christology and theology are not wholly distinct from other early Christian traditions. If, however, Johannine sectarianism is perceived as Jewish sectarianism, as the above discussion would suggest, then the designation is both apt and helpful in clarifying the social function of the invective in John 8. The way in which the minority, religiously oppressed community of the Fourth Gospel grounded its identity was to reject those who had rejected them first and so establish the boundaries of their community.

The social intent that drives the invective of John 8 is not an isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, the rigidity of community identification it reflects and the language of hate that often accompanies it is evident across the globe in racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts. The divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland is an excellent example of the odd mix of religion, power politics, and community identity that fuels the invective of John 8.

The invective of John 8 confronts the interpreter with very disturbing questions—questions whose answers may be even more difficult to determine than the questions about John 8 and the “Jews.” The primary question is this: Is it necessary to exclude others so absolutely and hatefully in order to establish community identity? This may have been the only avenue that presented itself to the Fourth Evangelist and his community, but is it the only avenue available to us? The NT contains a variety of models of community formation. Paul, for example, who also struggled earnestly with the relation of the developing Christian community and Judaism, developed a model of community formation that attempted to break down barriers rather than to strengthen them (e.g., Gal 3:28). Contemporary Christians, therefore, have a rich set of options as they think about their identity as a faith community, options that move beyond the strident language of John 8.

For an oppressed community like that for whom the Fourth Evangelist wrote, the language of John 8 may have restored a sense of their own power and dignity in the face of persecution. It may be that for communities in similar situations, this language still presents a viable model of community. Yet even when the language is contextualized that way, one still feels a sense of pain and regret at the damage that language like that found in John 8 can cause. The invective found in John 8, and the misuse that later generations of Christians made of it, may bear its most powerful witness as a cautionary tale for present and future Christian communities.

Welcome, LGBTQ, and Everyone Else

In light of the recent United Methodist Convention decision to exclude LGBTQ people and punish pastors who are or officiate same-gender marriage ceremonies, it seemed wise to remind whoever listens to this that there is another way to study and interpret the Bible that offers plenty of room for inclusion. The same interpretive method (hermeneutic) makes room for equality and equity for all who have been kept down some. Women, immigrants, people of color, divorcees - all are welcome at the table AS EQUALS at CrossWalk. Spread the word!

Note: This teaching was offered in March, 2015, which was similar to a message given in 2009. In November 2018, Pastor Pete officiated a same gender marriage ceremony and was subsequently released from his leadership role with the denomination’s region, Growing Healthy Churches, which is part of the American Baptist Churches, USA. Not long after, we were encouraged to leave the region., which we did. We are still part of the very broad American Baptist Convention, and will tie in with a like-minded region in the near future.

Atomic: Sinless?

In this teaching, Steve Lewis offers rich perspective on a very familiar Jesus story that provided the oft quoted, "You who are sinless among you, cast the first stone." Enjoy!

Atomic: Eat!

Why do you practice your faith the way that you do?  Have you ever practiced part of your faith because you thought that doing so would get or keep God on your side?  Or perhaps to encourage God to answer a prayer?  It’s pretty normal to practice faith this way.  But it comes with an undercurrent that might go unrecognized that could lead to some surprising, negative results.  Gratefully, Jesus came to offer a different orientation…

After a dramatic narrative where Jesus heals a lame man on the Sabbath, followed by a heated exchange with Jewish leaders and a soliloquy discourse of sorts in John 5, we find another incredible story in John 6, followed by an interesting exchange and another soliloquy.  Here’s how it went down:

     After this, Jesus crossed over to the far side of the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went, because they saw his miraculous signs as he healed the sick. Then Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him. (It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.) Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.
     Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!”
     Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?”
     “Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.) Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted. After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, “Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.” So they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves.
     When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself. (John 6:1-14 NLT)

The feeding story shows up in all four Gospels, which is a pretty good indication that the story stuck in the minds of the earliest communities of Jesus followers.  It’s a pretty amazing story, for sure.  Who wouldn’t remember it?  How could anybody forget such a miraculous display?

Depending who you read, however, determines how you understand what miracle took place.  At face value, it appears that Jesus took five dinner rolls and a couple of sardines, said one hell of a prayer, and voila – the loaves and fishes multiplied like the trouble with tribbles on Star Trek (anybody with me?), producing way more than was needed.  John tells us that this was around the time of year that Passover was celebrated, which would bring to the mind of all good Jewish people on the hillside the time in their history when God provided the bread-like manna from heaven as the people made their exodus from Egypt toward Israel.  They would see in Jesus a reflection of Moses, the first to be used of God to pull off some pretty amazing miracles of God’s extraordinary breaking into our ordinary lives.  Bread was once again coming from heaven!  What an endorsement of Jesus’ identity!  And the bread was made of barley, considered a “sinners offering” – what a communication about grace for all!

There is a different interpretation that focuses the spotlight on a different kind of miracle, which has God doing something amazing in a different kind of way.  Have any of you ever gone to the coast for the day?  Maybe Bodega or Stinson or Goat Rock?  Let’s say you leave Napa around 9:30 or so, and you plan to head back around 3:00.  What do you pack?  If you say a swimsuit, sunscreen, and a beach umbrella, that tells us all that you are a tourist.  A parka?  Hand warmers?  Insulated boots?  Now we’re talking NorCal beaches…  I digress.  You would pack whatever beach gear suits you.  What else?  You would likely bring something to drink and something to eat, right?  Or at least money to buy food and drink on the way?  Jewish people in antiquity were apparently known for their lunchboxes.  It’s what the boy was carrying.  A small basket just big enough to hold enough for the day, carried by a strap over your shoulder.  What do you think?  If people are going to spend the day listening to Jesus talk on a hillside by the lake, do you think they would go without packing food?  Of course not!  In this view, the miracle is that they shared with each other instead of holding onto their resources for themselves alone, encouraged by the generosity of the kid who gave up his lunch.  The crowd was generous enough to allow for the leftovers to be collected – 12 lunch baskets full.  A nod to provisions for the 12 disciples?  A metaphor for the feeding of the 12 tribes of Israel?  Or one basket for every inch of a footlong Subway sandwich?  Okay, nobody thinks the last one has merit…  Our nature is to hoard, not give.  It’s still miraculous, the stirring of God in their midst.  Maybe this miracle is more like one needed today where there is more than enough food to feed all the people in the world, and yet one in seven people do not have enough food for a healthy life, and one third of available food is wasted. Do it again, God!

Miracles are never the point in and of themselves – they are meant to point to something else.  The crowd, in this case, got ahead of themselves and wanted to run with the little they knew – they had a miracle worker in their midst! – and needed to slow down, take a deep breath, and go deeper.

Jesus followed up with them:

“I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.” (John 6:26-27 NLT)

Jesus goes on to build on what he is saying here, but they don’t get it.  He talks of the importance of eating the bread as a symbol of his body.  People freaked out. We would, too, if we took him literally.  What he was getting at was deeply connected to spending energy on seeking the eternal life he came to proclaim – a life infused by the eternal Spirit of God, not heaven after life is over.  What he was getting at is actually quite profound, and it has to do with who is eating.

Have you ever wondered why primitive cultures lit up burnt offerings in worship to God?  Grain offerings.  Birds.  Goats.  Cows.  Sheep.  Humans.  It was to appease the gods with a meal of sorts, something to satisfy the gods’ wrath by satisfying their hunger for vengeance. Literally.  That’s how people thought.  That’s still how a lot of people think.  Maybe we don’t literally burn stuff, but we are very naturally transactional in our thinking about God, largely related to our lizard brains and religious traditions which continue to perpetuate the view.  So, we wheel and deal to get what we want.  We even buy a line of Christian orthodoxy which erroneously boils things down to saying the magic words to insure you get into heaven.  Hint: it’s off point and against everything Jesus was actually about.

When Jesus was saying that we had to eat the bread as if it were his body, he was turning the tables on the whole paradigm.  Instead of us sacrificing stuff to get God to not kill us or perhaps help us, God is wanting to be taken within us, to be ingested, to become a part of us as intimately as possible.  Actually, the Spirit of God is already intimately part of us – the bread is perhaps a reminder for us to believe it and live in its truth.  Stop trying to get God to not kill you – that’s never been God’s intent.  Stop trying to win God’s favor – you’ve always had it.  Live in the identity that God is forever with you, loving you, longing to restore you when you’re a wreck, celebrating when you reach new heights.

What does that look like?  The story itself gives us some examples to work with.  First, we have Jesus, who simply raises the consciousness of the disciples with a good question.  Philip let’s everybody know they’re running short on cash to clarify what won’t be happening.  Andrew recognizes what is available, what might be built on.  He brings a kid to Jesus.  The nameless little boy offers his meals for the day – was he there with his family to listen?  Now he simply offers what he has on center stage.  Crowd members respond in kind, inspired by the kid’s act of love born out of something within he cannot yet articulate.  All characters stirred by the same spirit operating within them to do their part to make something beautiful happen.

What can you offer?  What questions can you raise to bring awareness to the needs around you?  How can you be helpful in bringing clarity to the situation?  How can you be used to bring someone else into the equation who might love getting involved?  How might you offer what you have in faith, something you may deem insignificant yet might make a world of difference?  How might you be someone in the crowd who “gets it” and responds to the prompt of the spirit to do the inspired thing?

To eat the bread – to really eat the bread – is to accept the very real presence of God anew in your life while at the same time embracing the opportunity to respond with the love you’ve been given.  Take and eat, and then use its energy to draw others to do the same.

Stuff to think about…

1.       How do you interpret the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000?  Why?

2.       What is the message of the miracle if the loaves and fishes literally multiplied before everyone’s eyes?  What is the upside of this interpretation?  What is the downside?

3.       What is the message of the miracle if the loaves and fishes did not multiply, but rather the hearts of the people miraculously opened up?  What is the upside of this interpretation?  What is the downside?

4.       How did you resonate with the characters in the story?  Which one seems to hit home right now for you?

5.       What do you learn from the other characters in the story?  How do they inform your sense of what God might be calling you to do?

Select Academic Notes…

Gail O’Day, The New Interpreters Bible

6:5–15. The miracle story proper contains elements standard in the miracle story form: an introduction (vv. 5–9), the miracle itself (vv. 10–11), the aftermath and results of the miracle (vv. 12–15). The miracle is initiated by Jesus (v. 5). Just as Jesus initiated contact with the Samaritan woman (4:9) and initiated the healing of the man by the pool (5:6), so also here he anticipates the hunger of the crowd. His question, “Where are we to buy food?” is asked to test Philip (v. 6). Jesus knows the answer to the question—he knows what he is going to do—and he wants to discover whether Philip does. As noted earlier, the whence of Jesus’ gifts is an important christological question in the Fourth Gospel (e.g., 2:9; 4:11); if one knows the source of Jesus’ gifts, one comes close to recognizing Jesus’ identity (cf. 4:10). Neither Philip (v. 7) nor Andrew (vv. 8–9) is able to answer Jesus’ question, however. Instead of seeing that Jesus’ question is about himself, the two disciples interpret the question on the most conventional level and so give conventional answers: There is neither money nor food enough to feed so many people.

This exchange between Jesus and his disciples prepares for the miracle in several ways. Philip’s and Andrew’s responses communicate how daunting the size of the crowd is and hence the huge quantity of food that would be required to feed them. More important, the disciples’ answers show how traditional categories cannot comprehend in advance what Jesus has to give. Conventional expectations offer no solutions to the crowd’s needs; Jesus alone knows how to meet those needs.

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The gathering of twelve baskets full of fragments (v. 13) is standard in the tradition (Matt 14:20; Mark 6:43; Luke 9:17) and serves to emphasize the prodigiousness of the miracle; not only did the people eat their fill, but there were leftovers as well (cf. 2:6; 4:13–14). (Seven baskets of fragments are collected in Matt 15:37 and Mark 8:8). Jesus’ words in v. 12 are unique to the Johannine version of the miracle and make an important connection between this story and the manna story of Exodus 16. In Exod 16:19, Moses asked that the people not leave any extra manna around, but the people disobeyed Moses and the leftover manna “bred worms and became foul” (Exod 16:20 NRSV). Jesus’ words in 6:12 seem to caution against a repetition of Exodus 16. The connection between the feeding miracle and the manna story, so pivotal to 6:25–59, is thus introduced early on.

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In v. 15 Jesus displays his omniscience (cf. 1:48; 2:23–25; 4:16–18) by knowing in advance the crowd’s intent. The people’s desire to make Jesus king by force resolves the ambiguity of v. 14 and confirms that the people’s response cannot be trusted. The kingship of Jesus is an important theme in the Fourth Gospel, first introduced in 1:49. Israel’s desire for a king is part of its messianic expectations, the hope for a second David. Jesus will be “king” in the Fourth Gospel, but he will be king according to his definition of kingship (18:36–38), not forced to fit the world’s definition. The kingship theme reaches its resolution in the crucifixion narrative of John 18–19. (See Reflections at 6:16–24.)

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Jesus’ words in v. 20 are the key to understanding the miracle of 6:16–21. The words “I am [ἐγώ εἰμι egō eimi]; do not be afraid” are found in all three accounts (Matt 14:27; Mark 6:50) and hence belong to the common fund of oral tradition, but they have a particular meaning in the christological context of the Fourth Gospel. A good case can be made that egō eimi should not be translated as a simple identification formula (“It is I,” NIV and NRSV), but should be translated as an absolute egō eimi saying, “I am” (see Fig. 10, “The ‘I AM’ Sayings in John,” 602). As Jesus walks across the water, he identifies himself to his disciples with the divine name, “I AM.” The background for this use of the divine name can be found in the LXX of Second Isaiah (Isa 43:25; 51:12; 52:6). The Fourth Evangelist portrays Jesus as speaking the way Yahweh speaks in Second Isaiah. This reading of egō eimi is supported by Jesus’ second words to his disciples, “Do not be afraid.” These words, too, are spoken by Yahweh in Second Isaiah. They are the words of the salvation oracle, words of comfort spoken to end the distress of God’s people (e.g., Isa 43:1; 44:2, 8). “Do not be afraid” is also a standard element of theophanies (e.g., Gen 15:1; Matt 28:5; Luke 2:10). Jesus’ words in v. 20 confirm that his walking on water is a theophany and that this “manifestation of the divine” is the source of the disciples’ fear.

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…The Fourth Gospel does not narrate the stilling of the storm (cf. Matt 14:32; Mark 6:51) because John 6:16–21 is not a nature miracle, a demonstration of Jesus’ power over the forces of nature. It is a miracle of theophany, of the revelation of the divine in Jesus.

The theophanic focus of this narrative is confirmed by the density of OT allusions and images in this passage. In addition to the echoes of Second Isaiah in v. 20, the story builds on a variety of OT texts that describe God as the one who walks upon the water (Job 9:8 LXX) and who makes a path through the sea (Isa 43:2, 16; Pss 77:19; 107:23–32). God’s dominion over the waters of chaos is a symbol in the OT of God’s sovereignty and care, and in John 6:16–21 that symbolism is applied to Jesus. This story thus illustrates the truth of John 5:19–20: Jesus shares in God’s work and identity. Many of the sea allusions in the OT texts that form the background of vv. 16–21 also contain allusions to Israel’s safe crossing of the Reed Sea at the exodus (e.g., Isa 43:2), and those exodus allusions are appropriate for the setting of this miracle in John 6.

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Reflections…

The two miracles of John 6:1–15 and 16–21 present the interpreter with two vivid enactments of the revelation of God’s grace and glory in Jesus. On the one hand, this grace and glory are revealed outside conventional human experience and expectations—in the miraculous feeding of over five thousand people with five loaves and two fish; in Jesus’ miraculous walking on water. On the other hand, the occasions where Jesus’ grace is offered and his glory revealed are familiar occasions of human need—the need for food, the need for safety and rescue from danger. The fears and needs that Jesus’ miracles meet belong to the common fund of human experience.

As in the healing of 4:46–54, Jesus’ grace is not revealed in a “spiritual” gift, but in a tangible, physical gift. A hungry crowd sat on the grass and ate bread and fish. Their spiritual needs were not the presenting problem for Jesus; their physical needs were (6:5). The interpreter, therefore, needs to be careful lest he or she adopt a purely symbolic interpretation of John 6:1–15 and cast its corporeality aside. The miraculous feeding dramatically demonstrates that Jesus has gifts and resources to meet the full range of human needs. He supplies the daily bread that people need to sustain life (cf. Matt 6:11; Luke 11:3). The feeding of the crowd thus confirms that Jesus is the source of life (cf. 6:33, 35, 58).

Jesus’ feeding miracle so impresses the crowd that they declare him to be a prophet (6:14) and intend to make him king (6:15). The crowd’s reaction shows how difficult it is to receive Jesus’ gifts on his terms without translating them immediately into one’s own categories. Jesus’ gift of food, the offer of his grace, provided the crowd with a glimpse of his identity, but they immediately tried to twist that identity to serve their own purposes. To make Jesus king is to take his grace and twist it to conform to pre-existent systems of power and authority. To make Jesus king is to judge him according to human glory (5:44) rather than to see in him God’s glory. When Jesus withdrew from the crowd (6:15), he showed that he would offer his gift of grace without claiming worldly power. In that moment his glory was revealed, because true glory has nothing to do with worldly power. In John 6:1–15, Jesus’ gift of grace thus becomes the vehicle for the revelation of his glory.

In John 6:16–21, by contrast, the revelation of Jesus’ glory is the vehicle for his gift of grace. If the crowd’s intention to make Jesus king distorts Jesus’ glory, then Jesus’ walking on water and his words to his disciples (“I am; do not fear”) counterbalance that distortion with a true picture of his glory. In 6:16–21, Jesus reveals himself to his disciples as one with God, sharing in God’s actions (e.g., Job 9:8; Isa 43:2), identifying himself with God’s name (e.g., Isa 43:25), speaking God’s words. Yet this manifestation of the divine in Jesus is not bravura, not a moment of glory for the sake of glory, but a moment of glory for the sake of grace. Jesus reveals himself to his disciples in order to allay their fears, to ensure their safe passage, to remind them that God has been, is, and will be their rescue. Jesus’ glory is not revealed for power, but for grace-filled pastoral care.

These two miracle stories raise important questions about the balance between grace and glory. In 6:1–15, the heart of the story is Jesus’ grace, Jesus’ extraordinary, unprecedented gift. Yet the crowd is intrigued by the possibilities of glory, and they want to force Jesus to be king. John 6:16–21 narrates the most dramatic self-revelation of Jesus to this point in the Gospel; yet it occurs in the solitude of his disciples’ fears. Jesus will not allow his grace to be controlled by the crowd’s desire for glory, and so he hides himself. But he will not hold back his glory from those in need, because this is his mission: to make God known (1:18). How believers hold the grace and glory of Jesus in balance is critical to the life of faith. The grace is destroyed if one tries to harness it for false power and authority, and the glory is lost if one does not recognize its presence in the quiet places of Jesus’ grace. Both the grace and the glory are essential to God’s revelation in Jesus: “and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14).

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Figure 10: The “I AM” Sayings in John

Absolute “I AM” sayings without a predicate nominative:

4:26                     Jesus said to her, “I AM, the one who is speaking to you.”

6:20                     But he said to them, “I AM; do not be afraid.”

8:24                     “I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I AM.”

8:28                     “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me.”

8:58                     “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

13:19                   “I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I AM.”

18:5, 7                 Jesus replied, “I AM.” When he said to them, “I am,” they stepped back and fell to the ground.

“I AM” sayings with a predicate nominative:

6:35                     “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

6:51                     “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

8:12                     “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

9:5                       “I am the light of the world.”

10:7, 9                 “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”

10:11, 14            “I am the good shepherd.”

11:25–6              “I am the resurrection and the life.”

14:6                     “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

15:1, 5                 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.”

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George Beasley-Murray, Word Biblical Commentary

The Feeding of The Multitude (6:1–15)

That the event was an act of compassion on the part of Jesus is not mentioned by John (contrast Mark 8:2–3), but may have been assumed. The Christological emphasis within the chapter is emphasized from the outset in the initiative taken by Jesus (v 5), his knowledge of what he intends to do (v 6), and even his distribution of the bread and the fish (v 11; no mention is made of distribution through the apostles).

The statement as to the nearness of the Passover (v 4), the identification of Jesus as the prophet who should come (cf. Deut 18:15), and the discussion on the bread from heaven within the discourse (vv 31–33) combine to indicate that the feeding miracle is understood as falling within the fulfillment of the hope of a second Exodus. This flows together with the thought of the event as a celebration of the feast of the kingdom of God, promised in the Scriptures (Isa 25:6–9). The eschatological significance of the sign is thus doubly underscored, and is part of its fundamental connection with the Lord’s Supper, which also is eschatologically oriented (cf. especially Luke 22:16, 18, 20, 29–30; within the discourse vv 39, 40, and esp. 54).

14–15 That the feeding was not a purely natural event, prompted for example through an encouragement to share available resources, but an act of God is assumed throughout the narrative, and underscored by the response of the crowd described in vv 14–15. It is scarcely to be doubted that the Evangelist viewed the attempt to make Jesus king as causally connected with the sign. The step from a prophet like Moses (v 14), the first Redeemer and worker of miracles, to a messianic deliverer was a short one for enthusiasts in contemporary Israel to make. Horsley has traced popular messianic movements in Israelite history that reflected the continuity of the hope among the populace, especially the peasantry, of a king who should lead them in a movement of liberation from their oppressors—from the kind of tyrant that Herod was, as well as from the Romans in the time of Jesus. Josephus speaks of leaders of popular revolts in this era, who “donned the diadem” or “claimed the kingship” or “were proclaimed king” by their followers; these, comments Horsley, were “clearly messianic pretenders, to be understood against the background of longstanding Jewish tradition of popular anointed kingship” (“Popular Messianic Movements around the Time of Jesus,” 484). Montefiore, in an article linking these expectations to the feeding miracle, suggested that the falling away of the disciples in 6:66 is strongly connected with this feature; Jesus’ refusal to accede to the multitude’s demands must be reckoned as one of the turning points in his ministry, for from this time Jesus and the crowds parted company (“Revolt in the Desert?” 140–41). Dodd strongly supported this understanding of the event; he suggested that the danger of Jesus being made a leader of a movement of revolt by the turbulent Galileans was a feature that the evangelists preferred to gloss over, but which John chose to preserve (Historical Tradition, 213–15, 221–22). In that the Evangelist did choose to mention it, the function of the discourse to reveal the nature of Jesus’ messiahship and his function as giver of spiritual bread of the kingdom of God is very much in place. This may well have contributed to the Evangelist’s decision to place the sacramental teaching in this setting and not in the Upper Room.

The Walking On The Sea (6:16–21)

The reason for the disciples’ departure alone is not stated by the Evangelist in v 16, but it is fairly evident: they were sent by Jesus out of the dangerous situation described in v 15. The disciples, too, were Jews, sharing their contemporaries’ understanding of the Messiah and his work, and they needed to be prevented from becoming embroiled in a threatened messianic uprising.

19 Contrary to Bernard (185) and many others since his writing, we are not to understand that when the disciples saw Jesus walking ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης, he was walking beside the sea. Certainly we read in 21:1 an appearance of the risen Lord ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης, where the context makes it plain that Jesus was on the shore (21:4 states that Jesus stood εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν “on the beach”). Mark 6:47 uses precisely the same wording as the Fourth Evangelist, following the declaration that the boat was “in the midst of the sea” (6:47); Matthew writes first that Jesus was walking ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν (accusative), then that he was walking ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης (Matt 14:25). Had our Evangelist wished to correct an earlier misstatement or misunderstanding of the event, he could easily have written that Jesus was walking παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν (so Giffort, “ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης,” 36; for examples of that phrase cf. Mark 1:14; Acts 10:6). In reality he was concerned to do something quite different, as v 20 makes plain; there he records Jesus as appearing to his disciples on the sea with the words Ἐγώ εἰμι. He may have had in mind Job 9:8, but more obviously Ps 77:16, 19, which speaks of God coming in powerful theophany to the aid of his people at the Exodus: “The waters saw the, O God, they saw the and writhed in anguish.… Thy path was through the sea, thy way through mighty waters.…” The Evangelist was describing an event in which he saw Jesus as the revelation of God coming to his disciples in distress—in the second Exodus!

20 For the meaning of Ἐγώ εἰμι, see the lengthy note of Bultmann, 225–26, in which he conveniently summarizes the ways in which the phrase was used in the ancient world. He distinguishes four chief usages: (i) as a presentation formula, which replies to the question, “Who are you?” and in which the speaker introduces himself as so and so; (ii) as a qualificatory formula, which answers the question, “What are you?”, to which the reply is, “I am that and that”; (iii) as an identification formula, in which the speaker identifies himself with another person or object; (iv) as a recognition formula, answering the question, “Who is the one expected, asked for, spoken to?”, to which the reply is, “I am he.” In this last, unlike the previous three, the ἐγώ is predicate, not subject. In Bultmann’s view, the Ἐγώ εἰμι statements of John 6:35, 41, 48, 51; 8:12; 10:7, 9, 11, 14; 15:1, 5 employ the recognition formula, while those of 11:25 and 14:6 are probably an identification formula.

The absolute use of the expression is particularly striking (in 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19). While it is clear that in 6:20 Jesus is identifying himself to the fearful disciples, the usage in the passages just mentioned indicates a unique relation to God, recalling the divine name in Exod 3:14 and the affirmations of Deutero-Isaiah (e.g., 43:10–11; 45:5–6, 18, 21–22). In these affirmations of Jesus we find not identification of himself with God, but an expression of himself as “God’s eschatological revealer in whom God utters himself” (Schnackenburg, 2:88). The combinations of Ἐγώ εἰμι with various symbols (Jesus as the bread of life, light of the world, door (of the sheep), the good shepherd, the resurrection, the way, the truth and the life, the vine—seven utterances!) may be said to summarize his role in revelation and in salvation. For further discussions Isa 43:10 is particularly significant in this regard: “You are my witnesses, says the Lord … that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.” This last phrase, in Hebrew אני הוא (anî hû), is rendered in the LXX as ἐγώ εἰμι. In this context “I am he” is an abbreviation for the expression in the next line, “I, I am the Lord”; not surprisingly אני הוא “I am he,” can appear as a substitute for אני יהוה (anî Yhwh), “I am the Lord.” There is indeed evidence that the expression אני הוא came to be regarded as the name of God. Isa 43:25, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions” appears in the LXX as ἐγώ εἰμι ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ἐξαλείφων τὰς ἀνομίας σου, “I am ‘I Am,’ who blots out your transgressions.” There were other related developments in the use of the divine name among the Jews which must be noticed later; it suffices here to observe that there was a direct line from אני הוא through the LXX ἐγώ εἰμι to the ἐγώ εἰμι of the Fourth Gospel (so E. Zimmermann, “Das absolute Ἐγώ εἰμι,” 270–71). The occurrences of ἐγώ εἰμι in sayings of Jesus indicate not an identification of himself with God but a solidarity or union with him, expressions of himself as “God’s eschatological Revealer in whom God utters himself” (Schnackenburg, 2:88). The combinations of ἐγώ εἰμι with various symbols may be said to summarize his role in revelation and salvation. For further discussions concerning the expression see E. Schweizer, Ἐγώ εἰμι (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1939); D. Daube, “The ‘I am’ of the Messianic Presence,” The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, 325–29; Dodd, Interpretation, 93–96, 349–50; H. Zimmermann, “Das absolute Ἐγώ εἰμι als die ntliche Offenbarungsformel,” BZ NF 4 (1960) 54–69, 266–76; Brown, 533–38; Schnackenburg, 2:79–89.

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Atomic: Courage

Lauren Ng offers today’s teaching. What a difference having courage in one’s identity, in the one who we serve, and in the one who sends us can make in our lives on in the world!

Atomic: Blind

Someone once said that people don’t see things the way they are, they see things the way they are.  When the disciples passed her on their way back to Jesus from a nearby village, they saw a very lost soul.  A heretic, actually, defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma.”  If they had been forthcoming with their biases and prejudice, they may have made it known that they actually loathed her based solely on her faith.  In their opinion, she was loathsome, rejected by God, not worthy of respect (or even acknowledgement).  When they passed her, they were undoubtedly silent.  Little did they realize that she was coming from where they were going – a Jewish historical site – Jacob’s Well in the middle of a country that was no longer their own: Samaria.  They would soon discover that they had seen things as they were, but not as they were.

Jesus had just finished speaking with her – a conversation he initiated.  A triple foul by all accounts.  First, she was a woman, and he was recognized as a Rabbi.  In First Century Israel, that didn’t happen.  Second, she was a woman who was Samaritan – a people group ancient Jews loved to hate because they wove the religion of surrounding cultures into their version of Judaism, creating a hybrid religion that won them the term “bastards” in every Jewish circle.  Half breeds.  Thus, the silent treatment on the part of the disciples.  Third, she was a woman, a Samaritan, and one with a difficult past.  A past so disturbing that it resulted in her being at the well at the wrong time of day, and all alone.  Alone because the women of the village did not welcome her earlier in the morning when it was cool, when they all traveled together in community to get water for the day.  She knew she wasn’t welcome.  All they could see was her checkered, questionable past – multiple husbands, and now living with a man to whom she was not married.  So many reasons to distance themselves from her, to exile her to the hellish heat of the day to labor in isolation.  To everyone else, she was a label, or labels, as it were.  Because people saw things as they were.

Jesus saw things as they were, however, through a lens corrected by God.  A woman?  Yes.  Samaritan faith?  Check.  Hard past life?  Yep.  But so much more than that, Jesus saw a sister, a beloved human being made in the image of God.  Inherently worthy of respect.  Innately valuable beyond measure. This holy one deserved the honor of being recognized as present with him, not to be ignored.  This child of God was worthy of being included in conversation, not condemned in silence.  This daughter was meant to be embraced, not exiled.  Seeing her with the eyes of God, his words, tone, and heart followed suit.  He broke the ice, asking for water, which took their chat to deeper things of God and life.  Reading everything about her clearly, he gave insight into her life, which signaled to her that she was dealing with someone with a bit more God going on than most.  Wanting to shift attention off of her painful past, she decided to talk religion, taking a shot at a central contentious issue dividing the two religious perspectives.  As their conversation ensued, Jesus respected her (and himself) enough not to engage in theological battle, but to agree on truth they could both believe in.  Much more than avoiding a fight, Jesus cultivated shalom as he showed her tremendous honor in sharing with her the nature of God and what God desires for everyone: people living in and by the Spirit of God, worshiping God in their lifestyle, in their attitude, and in their behavior.  Not an argument about who’s belief is more right, but a shared striving toward believing in the right way – a more genuine orthodoxy than most dared to voice.  To top it all off, Jesus let her know that he was the one anointed by God to bring this good news. He was the Messiah, the Christ many were hoping for, and she was the first person he told according to John’s Gospel.  She had come crawling to that well thirsty for life and love.  She left more hydrated than she could have ever dreamed – when she ran back to the village, she left her water jar behind.  She was so full of life that when she told her hateful and hurtful village what happened, her charisma overcame their prejudice and led them right to the feet of Jesus to hear for themselves and eventually believe.

When we see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus, we are no longer bound by the blindness of our own self-loathing or the lens of the cultural context that shapes our sight.  Shame gives way to grace.  Loneliness finds itself in the company of God.  The mourning of a painful past is given in exchange for the gladness of hope.  When we give into such love, we claim the words of the prophet: God gives beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning, peace for despair (Isaiah 61:3).  We you and me and the collective we embrace this love that is always available to us, and is there waiting for us without condition.  We are blinded by the Light of God to finally see ourselves as we really are: glorious and beloved.

When we choose to see things as they are – as God sees – empathy moves us to love deeply, across party, cultural, religious, and gender lines with great love, respect, and dignity.  When faced with people of differing ethnicity, religious beliefs, and life experience, may we see so clearly as Jesus did, and may we love so dearly.  All moved by the Spirit of our faith, because, as Bob Goff noted in his book, Everybody Always, “loving people the way Jesus did is always great theology” (72).  When we choose to see through the eyes of Jesus, we are blinded by the Light of God to finally see others as they really are: glorious and beloved and worthy of our love and respect.

Atomic: Stretch

The encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 is rich, deep, and full of linguistic surprises for English-readers. The first surprise is that the highly educated member of the Jewish leadership council (the Sanhedrin), came to Jesus in the dark. More than an indication of the time of day, this was telling us about his level of awareness and consciousness.  He knew a lot, and yet was not yet awake to what Jesus was seeing.  The ensuing conversation was going to serve as a wake-up call.  Nicodemus likely hit the snooze button many times en route to his awakening – as we all do.  This presents an opportunity for all readers to ask themselves, how awake are we?  In my experience, honestly asking the question is the first and greatest step toward becoming more awake and staying awake.  When we don’t ask the question, we are very likely to settle into the cozy comforter of where we currently are.  We may never even hit the snooze button, because we won’t even hear the alarm.  I used to have trouble waking up – particularly in high school.  I set up a mechanical timer to turn on my stereo at my wake-up time, which would force me to get out of bed to turn it off.  If I had to physically get out of bed, I would stay up.  Hitting the snooze button was too easy – I needed help waking up.  How awake are you?  Or are you setting yourself up by your lifestyle to remain asleep in the dark?

Nicodemus heard the alarm with Jesus’ words: “Unless a person is born [again, from above], it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom.” The Greek word, anōthen, is where we get the English word for “again”.  But Greek doesn’t always translate easily into English, and things are missed.  In this case, anōthen could be translated as either “again” or “from above” – two very different renderings.  In his darkened state of mind, Nicodemus was stuck on the former understanding, while the enlightened Jesus was referring to the latter.  Nicodemus was going to be stuck from the get-go because nobody can literally re-enter the womb, as he notes.  Jesus was talking about a new perspective that hails from something more than what meets the eye.  God is Spirit.  To see God requires a new kind of eyes.  This gives all readers pause to ask, which eyes are we using in our faith?  Are we focused on flesh-and-blood when we really need to develop more spiritual vision?

After reminding Nicodemus of what he surely knew but hadn’t recently accessed, Jesus gave the most succinct statement about what faith is all about than anywhere else in scripture: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again” (John 3:16-17, The Message).  To put it in a very short statement, Jesus is telling us to believe in love if we want to really, truly live.  This may sound more like a Coke commercial, but it is actually deeply theological and infinitely practical.  Once again, our English language does not serve us well in translating the Greek.  The central subject is love – God’s love (agapaō in Greek), which is the highest source of all love.  The goal is a quality of life (aiōnios in Greek) that is heavenly – the best we can hope for.  The means by which we experience that life is in believing.

The Greek word, “pisteuō”, is what gives us “believe”.  In our modern understanding, we generally equate believing with intellectual agreement.  For many Christians, believing means agreement about orthodox positions about Jesus.  The Greek word, however, actually has three facets of meaning.  Like a three-legged stool, in order for the word to stand, all three legs have to be in place.  Intellectual agreement is the first of those legs.  A second is emotional assent, and the third is vocational.  The emotional leg has to do with a gut-level conviction, a passion about the subject of belief. Think of being in love with a person.  On paper, the object of your love may not be any different than 6M other people, yet there is something about that one that stirs your heart.  That’s what we’re talking about.  The vocational challenges our tendency to settle for lip service.  Back to being in love with someone…  When we are in love with someone, or someone is in love with us, we know it not because of a rational argument or strong feelings of passion.  We know it because of action.  The love notes, the hand-holding, the new priority of our time and energy – all are expressions of our intellectually founded and emotionally impassioned love.  None of my college friends had to wonder if I was in love when I met Lynne.  They knew it because they rarely saw me anymore.  Why?  I was in love.  This is how we need to think about believing in God.

How do we fall in love with God?  How can we fall in love with someone/thing so abstract?  The love referred to is the Greek agapaō from which we get agape love.  Agape is the highest form of love – it simply exists.  It is the foundation of all other loves, in a sense.  In a later letter to the churches, John says that God is love – that God’s character and nature are that love.  So many times in the Old Testament, when a person would experience God they would give God a new name that described their experience.  Many of those experiences and subsequent names reflect that love, and it was nearly always a surprise.  Isn’t that really how falling in love works?  It’s more than sex appeal.  At some point, we begin to see someone in new ways, with new eyes, with new appreciation.  When we’re open to it, we see beauty all over the place in this person, which takes us deeper into love.  I would submit to you that creation itself – and all people in it – reflect the creative force we call God.  Incredible beauty.  When we sow into what we know is love, we see lovely things come from it, which only motivates more love.  This God-as-Love is bigger than the universe, yet more intimately infused in us than we can ever really appreciate.  God is both far away and as near as can be.

What happens when the three-legged-stool of believing is focused on the source of life itself?  A life that is more and more infused with the same life-giving nature of love that is the generating force of creation itself.  Why is it a whole and lasting life, as Eugene Peterson’s translation suggests?  Because the life is rooted in that which lasts forever, and love, by its very nature, is interested in being whole, not fragmented.  If you want a life that is rich, deep, whole, and ties into the very fabric of the universe (which means it makes a positive difference for all of creation), Jesus is telling us to follow in his footsteps that bring all three legs of belief into motion.  It is not always aligned with the surrounding culture, but it is good and works for everyone.

If you read the full text of John 3, you will come across some very negative language, and the use of words like condemnation, judgment, and wrath.  It’s not as ugly as it sounds.  First, realize that the eternal life promised in John 3:16 has nothing to do with afterlife – it’s all referring to life lived on planet earth.  Same with the negative stuff.  If we’re not sowing into life and love, then we’re not going to reap the fruit of life and love.  Instead of harmony and wholeness, we’re stuck with discord and fragmentation.  No need for God to meddle – this is just common sense.

A final note about light and darkness.  As noted, Jesus’ most succinct statement of what faith is supposed to be about is wrapped up in John 3:16-17.  It’s predicated on understanding God as agape writ as large as the cosmos itself.  But we are lizard brained creatures, and we easily resort to more fear-based faith where God is a judge waiting to bring down the hammer on all the evildoers.  Both messages exist in the entire Bible because the authors of all the books of the Bible are human beings who struggle with the tension.  Nicodemus was in the dark in part because he was rooted in that fear-based faith.  Are we?  Is our motivation to be faithful based on the fear of God’s retribution if we fail?  Or is our motivation for faith based on our increasing love and appreciation for the countless expressions of God and love and life that call us to engage it all in loving, life-giving ways?  The former cowers in shadow.  The latter dances in the light.  Which one are you choosing?  Which one is stretching you?

Atomic: More

There is so much more to the story of Jesus turning water into wine than a really cool – and apropos – party trick.  The writer of the Gospel of John, of course, using different source material for his remembrance of Jesus, is the only one with this story and, since he writes with greater theological depth using symbolism throughout, we must take time to notice.  Not to do so would be akin to walking as fast as possible through the Louvre in an effort to see it all.  In the end, you may have seen everything, and yet you didn’t really see much of anything.  This Gospel is a masterpiece.  Rush if you wish, but know that if you do, you are only opting for the most obvious and basic gift it offers, and are missing the heart of the book and in fact, the reason for its writing.

There is so much more to this story than meets the eye in a casual reading of John’s second chapter.  The context of a wedding that brings to memory and imagination not just this moment, but THE moment to come at the consummation of history when the great marriage finally takes place between the Creator and the Created.  The entrance of Jesus just when the wine was running out, when joy was running out, just in time – at the right time – to help and send a message to all about the hopeful presence of God.  Mom/Mary who brought the shortcoming to consciousness, and then instructed the servants to be faithful to Jesus’ instructions.  Faithful servants who found themselves in the miracle – not just bystanders.  A head waiter who probably needed to tell the bridegroom that Jesus’ label was finer than the Charles Shaw that ran out.  An unknown number of guests who were responsible for the wine running out who were now enjoying great wine unawares of its origin.  This was all part of the first sign.  A sign that communicated great hope when it seemed to be running out – more than more-than-enough.  Inherent statements not just about the focal point, Jesus’ connection to the Spirit of God, but about how we engage and interface with the Spirit working in our midst.  It seems experiencing “more” is an option.  We can get in on it or we can just stand around and suck (wine).  But wait, there’s more…

John’s Gospel then brings a strange twist: Jesus going nuts in the Temple, overturning tables and causing a great mess.  John is the only Gospel that puts the story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry instead of the end.  Most contemporary scholars agree that John probably was off on the timeline, but did so purposefully to provide a allusion to what was to come: conflict with the Temple’s leadership.  Spoiler: Jesus ends up getting killed thanks to the Temple leadership’s scheming.

Why include this story here, so closely tied with the wonderful, joyful wedding at Cana?  It’s because Jesus wasn’t just about keeping the good times going at a wedding – he came to get the good times going for all.  Jesus was an underdog.  Jesus was a champion of the underdog – the poor, the foreigner, the outcast, the judged, the widows, the children – all of whom were in their own way at risk.  When Jesus cleared the Temple, he was sweeping away a filthy expression of human greed in the most inappropriate space.  The Temple was supposed to be a space where people could feel connected to God.  It had become a “den of robbers” where the poorest of the poor were taken advantage of to line the pockets of those in power.  Jesus’ ministry was much more than a feel-good campaign with free food and great wine.  His ministry was deeply political and provocative all for the sake of calling out injustice and standing up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.  Jesus’ mission wasn’t simply about getting people to heaven, it was much more than that – it was about helping as many people on earth experience as much heaven here and now as possible.  An experience of equality and equity, of being loved and respected, of being given dignity.  This is an intractable part of what Jesus was about. To not see this and not accept it as part of the package Jesus came to offer is like entering a marriage only for the purpose of procreation.  Sex.  It’s like saying to Jesus, “I’m a yes so long as we’re only talking about sex (and on my terms) – I’m not really interested in anything beyond that.”  I’m afraid the popular cultural understanding of what it means to be a person of faith – to be a Christian – is like this, where we essentially want God for our enjoyment alone, with little regard for relationship or wanting to be involved with what God wants. Just give me some more wine, please, and please stop saying things that upset the status quo. We know we’re not guilty of such spiritual hedonism when we join God in God’s work in the world out of love for God and the world.

I hope you see that Jesus is so much more, and invites you into so much more.  The Good News is that God is with us now and forever, bringing joyous hope where we thought it was running out, and inviting us to get in on the action so that we can experience it all more fully.  Bringing that hope means bringing it to those who don’t have so much hope, which draws attention to such a reality, which also draws attention to the system which allows and perpetuates the disparity to continue.  Sometimes that means flipping some tables.  Yet that’s where Jesus is, because that’s where the Spirit of God is, because God’s heart is for everyone, and when the deck is stacked against some, God moves in their direction.

Some of you have opted for more already.  You’ve chosen to be like the servants who filled the water jars and took the new wine to the emcee.  Some of you are like the emcee, who let people know what they were tasting because they might not otherwise.  Or you are like Mary who encouraged faithfulness on the part of others.  Maybe you’re even like Jesus, being used of the Spirit to bring hope and joy and equality and equity where it was needed.  Or maybe you’re just standing around sucking.  I hope you always choose more.

Atomic: Seeing

Have you ever had a truly life-altering experience that changed the way you looked at literally everything?  Have you ever tried to share your new insights with people who have not shared your experience?  Have you ever felt like there was no room for your perspective?  Have you ever been removed from a circle you once thought would always welcome you?  Have you ever come into the company of people who have shared your experiences, who understand and welcome your perspective and insights?

For the faith community that is represented in the Gospel of John, every one of the above questions would be answered with an emphatic “YES!”  This group of devoted Jewish men and women – likely living in the city of Ephesus where Judaism was well-represented and supported – were eventually kicked out of their faith community because they experienced something life-changing from the Spirit of God as they lived their Jewish faith from the insights of their fully Jewish model, Jesus.  By the time the oral traditions and scraps of written remembrances were recorded, the close of the first century C.E. was upon them.  Their experiences of God and that of their former community deeply informed what was written and why.

The Gospel of John begins with a poem that would have piqued the interest of any Jewish person as it would recall the opening of Genesis: In the beginning… The Word to which John’s Gospel refers is more than speech – it represents the logic, the mind of God, the ethos of God that provided the impetus for all of creation from the beginning: love.  An ethos which stood in stark contrast to many reigning beliefs that saw the gods and God very differently: vengeful; barely tolerant of the puny, noisy, messy, foolish human beings running amuck on the earth far below.  The view of God as the generative, creative, loving, life-and-light-giving Ground of Being created a very different foundation from which to build a life.  This perspective, which embraces the idea that everything and everyone everywhere is imbued with the Word means everyone and everything has inherent worth and deserves to be treated with dignity by virtue of being a reflection and repository of the presence of God.  Such an idea is dangerous to those who would prefer to measure the love that God has for others based on their personal biases and desires.  Human beings are innately aware of threats.  Our reptilian brains kick into gear when we sense that our security is being challenged – even the security of destructive systems that are themselves a threat to our potential for life.  To weather the storm that reaction-based fear brings from deeply-entrenched systems tests mettle.  What made the Johannine community so steadfast even as they endured the intense pain of being kicked out of the family?

I was born in Missouri, the Show Me State.  When someone says they’re from Missouri even though they’ve lived in Napa their entire lives, they are saying that they need to be convinced in the veracity of what they are being invited to consider.  They need to see for themselves whether or not a thing or idea is true before they buy in.  In a sense, everybody is from Missouri, but we generally don’t know it until we come upon something that, to embrace, would truly challenge our security.  John’s community had experienced something so compelling that they could not not believe and embrace following Jesus.  Individually, they had life-altering experiences that caused them to see everything differently.  Once seen, they couldn’t “unsee” it.

What they saw was what John’s prologue poem was communicating: the Word came to give light and life to everything and everyone.  The Light they saw could not be understood by those who had yet to see; nor could it extinguish the light.  This enlightened perspective was there to stay for this community of faith.  So powerful was their experience that being ostracized from their faith family of origin – and even death because of their new way of seeing – could not and did not dissuade them.  They carried on in hope, proclaiming what they believed as best they could, spreading the Word, bearing light, sharing life.

I think there is merit to a “seeing is believing” way of life.  Apparently, this was a key piece in John’s theology as well.  In the first fifty verses of his Gospel, references to seeing show up twenty-three times by my count.  What they were seeing changed the way they believed.  What were they seeing?  The very Word of God at work before their eyes – a different kind of seeing than simply that which our optic nerves and surrounding components can perceive.  They experienced God.  It is possible to forget even the most incredible experiences of God – that’s a fact (see The Transforming Moment by John Loder). If you are placing yourself in the community of other people who have had similar experiences of God, however, the odds are good that you will not only maintain your belief, but that it will grow as your experience is supported by mutual sharing.  (Side note: Coals grow cold when separated from the fire.  They stay red-hot when in the company of others.  Beware trying to practice your faith in isolation!)

Seeing is believing leads to believing is seeing – we begin to see what was always there, now visible because of our belief.  Those in John’s community (and beyond) began seeing God in their midst in everything and everyone because of their belief.  This only served to increase their faith – and resolve – as they moved forward with their lives in community.  They experienced Light shining even while surrounded by the worst forms of darkness and all its violence and death.  This is the vision of faith John wants us to see from the very beginning, because this ethos has been around since the very beginning, because in the beginning, there was simply the Word, the ethos, of God.

The great question for us as we dive into John is this: have we seen the Light?  You will be faced with this question in different ways throughout this Gospel, which was the intent of the author.  During my pre-adult life, I thought I had it – I thought my faith was what it was supposed to be.  A good knowledge of the Bible after having grown up in the church, and a pretty good understanding of the ethic of the Christian faith.  The point was to live according to the precepts of the faith as taught and lived by Jesus.  I only discovered that what I had was only religion after I saw the “more” possible in someone else.  Not that religion alone is all bad – it’s just that it misses out on so much more.  The relationship piece is a real thing, and this reality makes an enormous difference in one’s understanding of the religion and how to employ its ethics.  I think it is fair to say that the Gospel of John is surely on board with this way of thinking.  That belief would allow people to become children of God is a nod to saying that we can experience and be more, but that “more” is predicated on seeing – that’s where the greater power lies.  John the Baptist and the new disciples of Jesus all saw, and their lives were forever changed.

Seeing requires an atomic change.  Very small yet very big at the same time.  The smallest, simplest shift, yet so difficult because of how much we rely on the eyes of intellect and reason so much more than any other receptor.  It’s not that the faith is anti-intellectual or unreasonable – quite the opposite, really.  It’s just that seeing the movement of God requires us to let go of our need to control or understand fully before allowing ourselves to see.  I think it is somewhat akin to various aspects of love.  Love is unreasonable, and yet once we love someone – various types of love for various types of relationships – we know we do.  Our love is not necessary logical or reasonable, yet it is there in all of its power just the same.  Seeing is like that.  We have to lower our guard to be open to Someone else.  Once we do, we have a greater shot at seeing the Divine in our midst.

I have no formula for you – only encouragement to be open to it and pursue it.  It has changed my life over and over again for the better.  It has changed the lives of countless others as well, including the Apostle Paul, who is noted as the author of a letter to the church in ancient Ephesus where he wrote:

     All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
     God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan…

     Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. – Ephesians 1:3-11, 15-17 (NLT)

May you find yourself truly seeing this week as you open your eyes to the “more” which has been in front of you, in you, around you the whole time, longing to be seen and believed.

Atomic: Introduction

James Clear had a dream to play professional baseball like his dad, who played in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals.  But that dream was severely challenged the last day of his sophomore year in high school when he got hit between the eyes with a baseball bat that flew from a classmate’s hands after a full swing.  At first, he seemed surprisingly okay.  But as swelling set in, he found himself struggling to stay alive.  He made it through the worst night of an induced coma, which allowed him to be signed off for surgery.  He discovered that his injury was going to make daily life very difficult for a long time.  Cognitive ability was diminished, large motor skills had to be relearned, he temporarily lost his sense of smell, and when he blew his nose, one of his eyeballs nearly popped out.

But James was determined not to let his injury keep him down.  He worked his tail off and made his varsity baseball team his senior year.  Somehow, he got picked up by Denison University to play baseball for them, which felt like a great achievement in and of itself.  He knew that if he hoped to play, it would require a series of tiny decisions to make the dream of playing college ball a reality.  In many ways, he became “opposite freshman” – he got to bed early to develop good sleep habits, kept his room neat and tidy, and integrated study habits that allowed him to get straight A’s.  Six years after his injury, he was selected as the top male athlete at Denison University, named to the ESPN Academic All-America Team which was bestowed upon only thirty-three students nationwide, and received the President’s Medal – the university’s highest academic honor.

While he never played professional baseball, he did begin going after a new dream.  He began sharing his insights about forming tiny habits that make big differences in an online newsletter.  In a relatively small amount of time, he had hundreds of thousands of people subscribing to his work.  That led to the development of his company which trains leaders to develop better habits that impact their work and life.  It also led to the writing of his book, Atomic Habits, which details his strategy and offers practiced insights into developing tiny habits that create the possibility of significant benefits.  One of his convictions is that willpower is overrated.  We blame our lack of willpower for not sticking with things like dieting, exercise, financial habits, etc.  While it does play a modest role, Clear’s findings suggest that we are more behavioral than we’d like to think, and that our habits actually dictate our lives more than we would care to admit.  For him, then, if we change our habits in tiny ways, we change our path, our stripes, everything.  He uses the example of a plane taking off from SFO headed for JFK.  If the plane is off course by only three percent – imperceptible at the beginning – the plane will end up landing at Dulles in D.C. instead of New York.  Tiny changes in our habits make big differences.  Change our habits, change our lives.

Habits are routines or behaviors that we repeat regularly, and in many cases automatically.  I would bet that most of us repeat a similar set of habits every day in our morning routine. Without giving you more detail than you can stomach, my mornings usually include feeding our dog, Banjo, making and eating breakfast, downing my first cup of coffee while reading, getting cleaned up for the day, and away I go.  The order in which I do these tasks is now habitual.  I don’t even think about them.  They work for me.  Some habits, however, are not so good.  I have been known on occasion to overeat unhealthy-yet-delicious food when I’m under a lot of stress.  Or find myself getting distracted with “shiny things” when I need to focus.  Or binge Netflix to the neglect of household projects that need to get done.    Some habits are very good and healthy.  Lynne and I take walks pretty frequently – almost daily when the weather is good.  That’s a good habit.  When we walk, we nearly always hold hands, which is good for our relationship in many ways.  All of these are habits that we have intentionally or otherwise cultivated.  Very small things, really, that have their affect on our lives.

Jesus developed habits – some were instilled in him and others he put in place.  Before he began his adult ministry, we read that he “grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people” (Luke 2:52 NLT).  Wisdom – he learned.  Stature – he matured. Favor with God – he was in the Spirit’s flow. Favor with people – he was well liked for the best reasons.  In the Letter to the Ephesians regarding roles played in the church, we read that pastors and teachers have the responsibility “to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12 NLT).  My hope is to help you follow in the footsteps of Jesus, that you would grow in wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and all people.  There are lots of things I do as pastor, but this is my highest priority.  There are habits that can be cultivated which will foster such fruit, and one in particular that I want to encourage you to integrate now, or perhaps tweak what you are doing for a six-month experiment (which sounds big, but is actually quite tiny, and may only require a couple of minutes). 

There is one habit in particular that may have more impact than others in creating healthy, vigorous soil which can then allow for healthy growth in terms of your faith development, which is really your life development.  Some of you already do it, some have tried it but don’t anymore, and others have never tried it for some very good reasons.  The one habit I’m talking about is devoting time to cultivate your relationship with God in a very particular way.  It will do much to help you in every aspect of your life, and it will be slightly different than what you’re used to doing.  It will require some tiny habits to be formed.

In what we call the Old Testament we find the story of a young boy named Samuel who was under the care of Israel’s priest, Eli:

     One night, Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the Tabernacle near the Ark of God. Suddenly the Lord called out, “Samuel!”
     “Yes?” Samuel replied. “What is it?” He got up and ran to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?”
     “I didn’t call you,” Eli replied. “Go back to bed.” So he did.
     Then the Lord called out again, “Samuel!”
     Again Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?”
     “I didn’t call you, my son,” Eli said. “Go back to bed.”
     Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before. So the Lord called a third time, and once more Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. Did you call me?”
     Then Eli realized it was the Lord who was calling the boy. So he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went back to bed.
     And the Lord came and called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”
     And Samuel replied, “Speak, your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:2-10 NLT)

I find it incredibly interesting that the words were included, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before.”  Of course!  This has little to do with Samuel’s level of commitment to God or his giving assent to the Jewish faith.  It has everything to do with the level of familiarity in his relationship with God.  When I first saw Lynne, I was devoted!  But I didn’t know her voice until I spent time with her.  Surely there are voices you hear and within a split second you know who you’re listening too.  Samuel needed to be instructed on how to develop the relationship with God, to learn God’s voice.  God was speaking, but Samuel didn’t know it yet. You cannot recognize the voice if you never know the voice. 

One of the enduring, time-proven methods of learning to recognize God’s voice is through a practice called Lectio Divina, a Benedictine approach to the Bible which translates “Divine Reading.”  I want to encourage you to develop this habit, with a twist.  Normally, this approach avoids academics, and opts for God to speak through the text itself even if what is being received has nothing to do with the text’s original intent.  That’s what I want to tweak just a little bit.

The Apostle Paul told his protégé, Timothy, to keep up the practices which would form his faith:

     But you, Timothy, certainly know what I teach, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance. You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured. You know all about how I was persecuted in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra—but the Lord rescued me from all of it. Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived.
     But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. (2 Timothy 3:10-17 NLT)

I am asking you to build a routine of Lectio Divina Plus into your life with the help of tiny habits.  I’m asking you all to read just a portion of scripture together, hopefully every day.  Not a lot – the whole exercise might take as little as 10 minutes (or even two!), yet you might find yourself making room for more.  The text I’d like you to read is the text that I will speak on the following week.  So, for this week, I am asking you to read the first chapter of the Gospel of John every day.  It will take you around six minutes.  Before you read, use Eli’s advised quote, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”  Read the text slowly, highlighting what jumps out at you along the way.  After you read it, jot a note about what jumped out at you – not an academic question, but rather what your take-home message might be.  What you are doing is trusting that the Spirit of God is at work in the process, speaking to you through nudges and impressions from the scripture itself.  By the way, I did this my sophomore year in college.  Every day it seemed like something new was jumping out at me.  It works.

Here’s the twist, though.  There is room for study and academics.  At my Wednesday PraXis gatherings, I will share with you key insights from academia that will help you see the text more deeply.  I will also make those notes available online, so if you can’t make it, you still get the goods.  Note: I did my doctoral thesis out of the Gospel of John – I know it pretty well!  We will truly learn from each other on Wednesdays, and your input will shape what I bring back to you on Sundays. 

When you approach the Bible in this way – Lectio Divina first and research second – you get the most bang for your buck.  You’re allowing the Spirit to speak into your life however God wants and needs, and you are also honoring the intent of the author in appreciating what he wrote in context.

To build this routine into your life is going to require messing with current habits.  Here are some quick tips from Atomic Habits to help you get and stay on track.

·       Set the time you are going to do this each day.  According to a research project conducted in Great Britain on the subject of exercise, your likelihood of actually doing this more than doubles simply by writing down when and where you will do this.  This is called implementation intention.  Write down something like this: “I will do Lectio Divina at “X” time daily for at least 10 minutes.” 

·       Stack this habit onto a preexisting habit.  When we attach our desired habit to a preexisting habit, we create a cue to encourage the new one to stick.  For me, attaching Lectio Divina to my first cup of coffee makes the reading even easier, plus, since I love my first cup of coffee, it adds a built-in reward.  Add writing a few notes to the exercise, and you’ve got yourself a nicely stacked set of habits.  It might look like this: pour coffee > Lectio Divina > write down reflections.  You are employing the Diderot Effect.

·       Set your tools out where you’re going to do this to make it easier.  Placing a reminder of what you want to do in plain sight has proven to be incredibly powerful in getting your habit to stick because you’re are reminded of it and you have made it easier to make routine.

James Clear was able to excel in college (and in baseball, too) because he made tiny shifts that allowed bigger changes to take place.  There is no greater resource at your disposal than your life.  Being connected to the very source of our lives and the well from which we draw wisdom will mature us in all the best ways, help us be in lockstep with God, and make a positive impact in the world.  Or we could stick with our current habits and remain unchanged: keep doin’ what you’re doin’ to keep gettin’ what you’re getting’!

A Christmas Carol: Keeping Christmas

Before Ebenezer Scrooge was done with his visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he pledged to keep Christmas the whole year through, and to keep all three ghosts with him as well.  The evidence suggests that he lived up to his commitment given the way he behaved in the final scene of Dickens’ classic novella: charitable, humble, generous, penitent, joyful, gracious.  Scrooge is a fictitious character, of course, but Dickens tells us that his transformation stuck, presumably for the rest of his life.  What might he have done to ensure that he remained born again?  What might we do?

I think a clue Dickens may have given us is Scrooge’s statement that he would keep the ghosts with him.  I wonder if Scrooge reflected regularly on the visits of the ghosts and the lessons he drew from them.  For the Ghost of Christmas past, I wonder if he may have journaled something like this:

     There were choices others made that affected me.  My father, for so many years, left me to the care of my boarding school – even over the Christmas holiday.  This is not what I wanted.  I was hurt, alone, and felt abandoned.  In my apprenticeship years, Fezziwig made a different choice than my father.  My old boss was generous and joyful at Christmas – what a time we had!  During that time in my life I even fell in love – I made the choice to make room for Belle.  But over time, my fear of being poor won the battle over my priorities, and I slowly and surely let my relationship with Belle – my love – die.  I chose who I became.  So I choose to be mindful of the forces that came together to form me: the choices others made that affected me deeply both positively and negatively, and the choices I made that set me on my course.  I choose to be mindful of the choices I make.

There would be times when Ebenezer would have been tempted to revert back to his old ways.  Fears would creep up of being left alone and he would perhaps find himself in spaces of low self-esteem that would trigger his self-protective modes of being.  Or the market might stumble and his fear of poverty would trigger his miserliness to come to the surface.  At those moments, having a journal entry like the one above might just help him remember where he had come from and serve to help him keep Christmas.

For the Ghost of Christmas Present, I wonder if his journal entry might have included a variation of this:

     While I walked around the streets of London, I saw that everyone was in a festive mood, enjoying each other and the season in every way.  Good cheer all around.  At Bob Cratchit’s home there was only love, even though the feast was meager.  Even though I gave no reason for receiving honor that night, Bob granted it anyway.  Tiny Tim, who had every reason to be bitter, was instead full of love and faith.  My Nephew Fred and his friends were carrying on with great joy at the dinner I was invited to.  Meanwhile, that very night I was cold and alone in my room; bitter, angry, and suspicious of the world around me, guarding the wealth that was not serving me or anyone else.  I was the one missing out on life and love and joy.  That was the choice I was making.  It was hurting me, and it was refusing blessing on those closest to me. In truth, I could have made Bob’s Christmas so much the merrier, and I could have brought joy to Fred by accepting his invitation.  I hurt myself, and I hurt them.  I will choose to live in the moment, to choose joy and love, and to offer what I have for the joy of others.

There would come times in Ebenezer’s life when he would wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or get discouraged because it wouldn’t feel like his changes were making any real difference, or maybe the people he helped disappointed him in some way.  Fred might forget to be so cheery, or Bob might buy an expensive toy for himself when his family’s needs were not yet met.  At those moments, going back to what he experienced that night with the Ghost of Christmas Present just might serve to strengthen his resolve even when he didn’t feel like it.

For the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, perhaps his diary had these words within it:

     What an awful visit this was – a clarion call to pay attention to what my apathy was causing and perpetuating.  No more Tiny Tim because Bob couldn’t afford the medical care he needed.  No more me, and no one mourning the loss of my life.  I learned that the life I led was a dead end.  I didn’t take my wealth with me, didn’t do anything with it, and the world was no better for it.  All due to choices I made.  I woke up determined not to make those same choices.  I choose to stay awake today.  I will use what I have to make a difference in the world – with those I know and care about, and with those who I don’t know.  I will be generous with what I have for their sake and mine.

There would come moments for Scrooge when he would forget that his days were numbered and that his wealth would not move with him into the next life.  He would forget that death comes for everyone and that our legacy will not be in our titles or possessions, but rather what we did with our titles and possessions beyond self-indulgence.  In those moments of forgetfulness he may have been less inclined toward generosity and selflessness.  Being able to turn back and remember what happened that night and the insight he gained would perhaps serve to correct his vision and get him back on track.

Put yourself in Scrooge’s shoes.  Imagine taking the same journey with the same ghosts.  What do you imagine your visits being like?  What would you be journaling after each?

There is an interesting note in the Christmas Story in Luke’s Gospel.  After Mary gave birth, the shepherds who were tending their flock came to visit, recounting their angelic visit.  Luke tells us that “Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often” (Luke 2:19).  I think she was onto something here.  And I think we need to learn from her.  I am sure there were many moments going forward when Mary would remember all that had happened along her journey.  Her reflection undoubtedly kept her centered as she followed Jesus through his highs and lows, not always certain which experiences Jesus thought were highs or lows.

The idea of remembering one’s identity with great intention was and is a key practice in our (and every) faith tradition.  It appears that we human beings have a tendency to forget who we are and who we are called to become.  We get tempted by the pressures of the moment, or the day, or the season, and find ourselves off track.  In the Hebrew scriptures the remembering is directed in two ways.  First, especially when the people got off track and found themselves in a mess, the prayers of the people were asking God to remember who God was, primarily so that God wouldn’t resort to being too harsh on the people God claimed to love!  Remember your children, remember your people, remember your promise, Oh God! 

Remembering was also a part of the rhythm of the life of faith directed to help people recall who they were and where they had come from.  The intention required to set aside time for personal prayer and reflection, time to gather with others in the faith to remember we’re not alone, time to do things we don’t otherwise do – take communion, sing songs, learn, meditate, give away our time and money – all of these and more serve to remind us of who we are so that we can keep Christmas.  Keeping Christmas is bigger than December 25th, bigger than it’s twelve days, bigger than Advent, bigger than the gift-giving marketing that begins showing up at Walmart in August.  Keeping Christmas is a reminder to keep the Christ part of our daily mass, our daily lives.  God didn’t simply break into our world in Jesus on one particular day.  The point of that was that God breaks into life everyday in every situation.  God cannot not break into life because the presence of God is interwoven into life itself, into the creation that was sourced from God somehow in the beginning.  Keeping Christmas is about remembering, re-membering, keeping whole and together that which might otherwise get fragmented.  Religion’s real purpose is to re-ligament, to keep things connected that would otherwise fall apart.

There is great value in pondering.  Reflecting on our lives as we live life helps us maintain perspective, stay centered, and choose wisely.  We are more likely to make choices that help us become who we long to become and live out of our True Selves.  In light of Scrooge who surely must have been intentional about remembering where he came from, and in light of Mary who pondered things in her heart, how are you going to keep Christmas?

Questions:

1.       How are you keeping Christmas?

2.       How are you keeping the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come with you?

3.       How are you pondering deep things in your heart as you move forward in life?

A Christmas Carol: Christmas Day Reborn

The final scene from Charles Dickens’ classic novela, A Christmas Carol, gives us a lasting testament to the changed life of the central character, Ebenezer Scrooge.  The contrast could not be more pronounced from the opening scene where, you may recall, Scrooge literally and figuratively “Bah Humbuged” everything that hinted of Christmas specifically, and by extension all things that resembled human compassion and decency in general.  The harsh, rude rejection of his nephew Fred’s invitation to Christmas dinner, the insensitive and inhumane attitude toward the men collecting funds for the poor, and the cold, willfully unaware mistreatment of his underpaid struggling family-man employee, Bob Cratchit all painted a picture of a man who was interested entirely and solely in himself.  No hint of charity appeared to exist in the lonely old man.

A visit from the ghost of his seven-years-dead business partner, Jacob Marley, warned him of three spirits who would be visiting him soon: the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, all with the goal of waking Scrooge up to himself, everyone else, and what makes life worth living.  With each visit Scrooge’s assumptions and biases are highlighted and challenged by the ghosts, and with each encounter, Ebenezer’s heart slowly softens as his vision gets corrected. By the end of the last spirit’s exchange, our hard-nosed curmudgeon declared himself to be a changed man who would not be the same.  His lips communicated that he was a changed man.  Would the new dawn serve to give testimony to a truly changed heart, mind, and life?  How would we know if he was really a changed man?

The final chapter begins with Scrooge realizing that he is not dead, but alive – really, really alive – and for the first time in forever, even giddy with joy.  He soon discovers that he has been reborn in time for Christmas morning.  His first order of business?  He spends money on an excessively large gift for Bob Cratchit and his family – a large prize turkey for the poor family’s dinner.  Ebenezer even provided a financial incentive for the boy who arranged it, and cab fare for the poulterer to cover delivery.  His first act of the day gives us an allusion to what would follow.

As Scrooge enters the world as a new man, we stroll the streets of London with him, noting his entirely changed mood.  He sings with the carolers he earlier no doubt scorned and wished a “Merry Christmas” to all he passed.  He happened upon the same men who had asked him the day before for a charitable contribution.  They were not particularly delighted to see him given their first encounter.  Ebenezer did more than announce his intention to provide a generous gift: he also acknowledged that he was aware that his name was likely not music to their ears, and that his gift included many-a back contribution from Christmases long passed.  A gift with a confession.

We continue following our born again companion and witness him working his way into his nephew’s home to give Fred a gift – the gift of himself at Christmas dinner, which is the only thing he ever wanted from his uncle.  Dickens included a subtle, additional gift in his written work.  He didn’t assume that he would be welcome.  He asked, “Will you let me in, Fred?”  This simple question communicates volumes about the attitude which was born from a changed heart.  The question itself is a confession – he knew he had been a pig (film adaptations include Ebenezer apologizing to Fred’s wife for his cold-heartedness).  Fred and the rest were more than delighted to let him in.  The festivities commenced, and Scrooge’s participation gave further evidence that his words that morning still rang true.

A final, beautiful scene follows the very next morning where we find Scrooge at his office – early – to make sure he is in his seat before Bob Cratchit arrives.  Bob arrives late due to too much merriment the night before, we learn, and Ebenezer lets him know of his tardiness.  But instead of a reprimand, Scrooge informs Bob that he is to be given a raise, that he will find support for Tiny Tim in him, and is ordered to immediately go buy more coal so as to appropriately heat the office.  Cratchit is dumbfounded.  Once again, we hear from the employer’s mouth a confession that he was making up for many years of humbug.  Two gifts dovetailing into an unmistakable testimony of his changed heart, mind, and life.  A narrator’s voice concludes the story sharing that Scrooge made good on his word in every way and more, that he became as good a man as was ever known in London, and became like a second father to Tiny Tim.  Ebenezer Scrooge stayed reborn.  He truly kept Christmas in his heart the whole year through.  He lived with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come as constant companions which produced fruit of a continually changed heart that changed his mind and behavior.  Or was it his changed behavior that altered his mind and heart?  Or was it his changed mind that transformed his behavior and heart? Yes, yes, and yes.

While the story of the Wise Men is often depicted as part of the Christmas scene in the nativity scenes we place in our homes, they actually would have showed up much later – sometime within a couple of years of Jesus’ birth.  Anachronistic for sure, they still offer some insight for our story today.

     Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”
     King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”
     “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they said, “for this is what the prophet wrote:
          ‘And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah,
          are not least among the ruling cities of Judah,
          for a ruler will come from you
          who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.’”
     Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. Then he told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!”
     After this interview the wise men went their way. And the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were filled with joy! They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
     When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. – Matthew 2:1-12 (NLT)

These star-gazing scholars from the East looked to the heavens for signs of God’s activity.  They received their own heavenly visitation announcing Christmas – a new star – which in their way of thinking meant that a new king had been born.  Their thinking led to action: at great expense and with effort from an entourage, they made their journey toward Israel, one which would take many weeks or months to complete.  Along the way countless discussions would have ensued about who they were going to visit, and as they learned more and more about the Roman Empire’s occupation of Israel, their hearts most surely began to stretch as they considered what a newborn king might mean about the movement of God.  Upon discovering where the baby was to be born and finding him living in deep poverty, perhaps what happened to them was similar to Scrooge – their eyes, mind, heart, and hands opening further and further?  The gifts themselves were confessions.  All gifts that were appropriate to give to royalty – of great value – they each carried special meaning.  Gold fit for a king.  Frankincense used in priestly ways to connect God and people in prayerful worship.  Myrrh saved for proper burial – a prophetic gift needed in due time.  Gold, frankincense, and myrrh for a man who would be seen as a prophet, priest, and king.  Thoughtful gifts that confessed an intentional mind at work.  Heartfelt gifts that evoked passion in the preparing and giving.  Expensive gifts that required extra care in handling to insure they arrived safe and sound.  More than simply tangible gifts, the confessions imbued in them added great depth and nuance that could not have been missed by Mary and Joseph, by us, or especially by them!

There is much present within these two dovetailing stories for us to chew on.  On a very practical level, as you give gifts this Christmas, I wonder if it might be wise for us to take a moment and reflect on what we would like to confess with the giving of the gift.  While the tangible expression is itself sometimes important, I wonder if we, as givers, would benefit much more from the giving if we dialed into the deeper “why” behind the what we give.  My hunch is it might enhance everything about the giving experience for us and the recipient.

Ebenezer Scrooge pledged to keep Christmas the whole year through.  The Magi kept Christmas their entire journey back to Baghdad and likely the rest of their lives.  At times I believe this keeping of Christmas is effortless.  When we are reminded of the most important things in life, we often find ourselves at our best, deepest, and most thoughtful.  At other times, however, I think we need to be more intentional, setting reminders, carving out time, placing triggers to make sure we stay centered when life’s busyness seems to distract and derail us.  James Finley, on speaking about meditation in an every day mindfulness sort of way, offers this:

     Perhaps by trial and error, with no one to guide us, we find our own way to respond to the unconsummated longings of our awakened heart. We, in effect, discover our own personal ways to meditate. By meditation I mean, in this context, any act habitually entered into with our whole heart as a way of awakening and sustaining a more interior meditative awareness of the present moment. The meditation practice we might find ourselves gravitating toward could be baking bread, tending the roses, or taking long, slow walks to no place in particular. Or we might find ourselves being interiorly drawn to painting or to reading or writing poetry or listening to certain kinds of music. Our meditation practice may be that of being alone, truly alone, without any addictive props or escapes. Or our practice may be that of being with the person in whose presence we awakened to what is most real and vital in our life. . . . We cannot explain it, but when we give ourselves over to these simple acts, we are taken to a deeper place. We become once again more grounded and settled in a meditative awareness of the depth of the life we are living.

For Ebenezer Scrooge and everyone everywhere for all time, Christmas is more than a day.  Christmas is a mindset, an opportunity to live fully conscious and as present as possible to the life we are living in cooperation with all other people and the entirety of creation itself – all in a never-ending dance with God who created it all, who showed up in the most peculiar place so long ago, reminding us to pay attention, because you just never know where God might show up next.

A Christmas Carol: The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come

The last Ghost to visit our softening central character is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.  Dickens paints the picture of this phantom borrowing from popular images of the Grim Reaper.  A dark, shadowy, hooded, silent, larger-than-life character with long bony fingers that merely point in the direction where attention should be given.  This journey revolves around the death of two people and the responses elicited.  Hospitality workers who were under one of the deceased’s employ, along with his undertaker are witnessed pawning off some goods they lifted from the dead man’s home and person.  No remorse at his death – only a little hope that from it they might profit.  Another scene shows men Scrooge knows at the Stock Exchange, speaking of the death of a man they all knew.  Not one of them felt or displayed any remorse, and they joked that the only reason they might attend a funeral would be to gain a free lunch. Yet another scene depicts a young couple who were in great despair because they were late in paying their mortgage debt, which could very well mean that they were headed for debtor’s prison.  The husband speaks news to the wife: the man servicing their loan died!  They had more time to get their money together while a new mortgage servicer was determined.  The man’s death was truly good news for it meant life for them.  Scrooge, not amused that not one person could be found with any remorse that this unknown man’s life was over, asked to be shown someone who truly mourned the loss of another’s life.

Scrooge recognized Bob Cratchit’s house from the previous ghost’s visit.  Inside that home there was no shortage of mourning.  Not for the old man who died, but for Tiny Tim.  The whole family wept.  Eavesdropping on the scene, we learn that Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, expressed condolences to Bob, and even offered to help set up his older son with an apprenticeship.  Scrooge himself was overcome as well, before heading to a final scene in a run-down, overgrown cemetery, where Scrooge was directed toward one grave in particular.  Before he dared look, however, he had some questions to ask of the ghost:

     “Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?... Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!...

     Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was.  I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!...

     Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”

The story of Jesus’ birth features a visit from a different Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.  Mary and Joseph, in particular, were both visited separately with unwelcome news.  They were going to have a son, but not in a way that brings with it baby showers and well-wishers.  Mary’s visit went like this:

     In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”
     Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”
     Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”
     The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. For the word of God will never fail.” – Luke 1:26-37 (NLT)

Joseph’s experience went like this:

     This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
     As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:18-21 (NLT)

For Joseph and Mary, the forecast was a genuine mixed bag.  Good news for humanity that required them to embrace some very bad news personally.  Bad news that was going to exact a heavy toll on their lives yet would be better for them and everyone else in the long run.  In each case, they both expressed their intent with their lips: Mary uttered her beautiful, simple, pure faithful vow, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” Joseph chose to not speak words of rejection to Mary but welcomed her instead.

Joseph and Mary, like Scrooge, were faced with questions only they could answer: what do I want my life to mean?  Will my life have made any real difference?  Will anyone mourn my passing?  Worse, will some be glad I’ve died?

These are excellent questions for every person to entertain throughout life.  Last week we laid to rest Barbara Springsteadah, a wonderful woman of faith who was remembered for more than being an avid Niners fan, Warriors fan, and Cheetoh’s fan.  One phrase prevailed to describe Barabara: “unconditional love.”  She did not live a life of luxury or wealth.  Yet her life deeply impacted those she touched, and her example lives on as one to follow.  Especially toward the end of Barb’s life, you would hear about the hope that drove her: she was looking forward to where she was going next.  Somehow Barb’s belief in the love of God was so complete and real that she didn’t live marked by fear, but rather compelled to love.

Sometimes we are won to faith out of fear of what will happen after death.  Obviously, fear is a huge motivator for all living creatures, and has definitely been used by people of faith to inform decisions from the beginning of time.  Jesus and his disciples used a mixture of fear and hope in their rhetoric to wake people up to the most important questions of life.  I would encourage you, however, to move away from a fear-based faith as fast as you possibly can.  Fear begets fear, not love.  Instead, I would encourage you to immerse yourself in the love of God that compelled Jesus and his disciples to love others radically and in some cases recklessly.  Scrooge came face to face with the reality of his impending doom, but much more than that, he finally saw clearly how shallow and self-centered his life had become, and what little and poor legacy it left behind.  This story is about a shift away from being motivated by fear, and more and more about being motivated by love.  When love is the driving force, everything changes.  The way we think about ourselves, our resources, and our legacy changes. The way we treat others changes: those who work for us, those we work with, those we call family, even those we don’t know yet – we think of them differently when motivated by love.

Nancy Rynes was an atheist, not believing at all in anything beyond the grave.  But then she came face to face with death when she was struck by an SUV while riding her bicycle.  She had an out-of-body experience where she saw herself under the SUV, writhing in pain.  But she also experienced what she believed to be the presence of God which was marked by warm light and deep love (hear her tell her story here). She was so overwhelmed by the experience that it changed her life and belief.  Knowing that what is to come is love beyond limits and imagination, she is now choosing to live in more deeply loving ways, and is choosing not to live motivated by fear.

What and Who we call God is the very source of Life, our Ground of Being.  God’s character and nature, more than anything else, is described as love in great depth.  Love is our birthplace.  Love is our destination.  Love is what generates life. Love is the legacy worth leaving behind. 

What are you building your life on?  Are you more motivated by love or fear?  Who are the people who work for you?  Who are the people you work with?  Who do you call family? Who are the people you do not yet know but are connected to you?  In each of these cases, how are you relating?  In light of where you’ve come from and where you’re going, what is your response to the vision cast by the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?  May it mirror our transforming protagonist:

     “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

A Christmas Carol: The Ghost of Christmas Present

It’s easy to get frustrated.  And incapacitated.  One study suggests coffee is bad for us.  Another says it will ward off dementia and Alzheimers.  What’s a sleep-deprived man to do?  Coffee is just the beginning, of course.  There are even more pressing issues (if you can believe it).  Like global warming.  Or border control.  Or Black Lives Matter. Or affordable housing.  Or Income disparity. Or gender inequality. Or discrimination based on sexual orientation. Or…  Lots of issues, all of which are incredibly complex.  It is easy to get frustrated, which can easily lead to doing absolutely nothing (with a grumpy expression on our face).  A Christmas Carol is a story about a very frustrated older man.  In this week’s episode, we encounter the second of three spirits who visited the crusty curmudgeon.

The second spirit to visit Scrooge was the Ghost of Christmas Present, which brought us from the past directly into Ebenezer’s daily reality.  From the first look, we got a clue about what kind of ride our primary character was in for.  The Ghost was wearing a massive green robe with white fur fringe, bare-chested to boot.  This dude is clearly ready to party!  He’s got great hair, too, and charisma that will bring joy to any room.  He carried a torch that imbued a special, sweet smoke wherever he directed that immediately lightened the mood.  Hmmm.  Apparently a giant doobie…  More than simply being the Life of the party, there is one detail that is so intentionally included that we must notice it: “Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.”  What a peculiar addition.

I think Dickens gave us this detail as a reminder of whose birth we are celebrating on Christmas Day:  the Prince of Peace.  Before he was even born, a Jewish priest uttered a prophecy about the one to come: “Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace” (Zechariah, in Luke 1:78-79 | NLT).    The angels referred to this quality when they gave the birth announcement from heaven:

     That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”

     Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.” – Luke 2:8-14 (NLT)

Eight days after Jesus was born his parents took him to the Temple to be circumcised – a Jewish ritual that extends nearly to the beginning of the faith.  An elderly, devout Jewish man named Simeon happened to be hanging around when they were there.  He experienced God telling him that he would not die until he laid eyes on the Messiah, the anointed one who was going to bring redemption to Israel.  When he saw them, he said, “Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32 |NLT).

Peace was perhaps the greatest gift that this child came to bring.  A moment of rest – a day off – but more than that.  Peace with God translating into peace with each other.  A day off of violence to choose love and joy instead.  The Apostle Paul spoke to his audiences about this peace that passes understanding.  A peace that enters during our lifetimes during the worst of times, giving us hope of Peace to come.  The scabbard didn’t hold a sword, and it hadn’t from the beginning.

The test of this peace came at Bob Cratchit’s home on Christmas Day.  His whole family would eventually be present, which gave him great joy.  Everyone tried to look their best, even though they were very, very poor.  Mrs. Cratchit did the best she could, as most Victorian women in England would: only being able to afford one dress, they would wear them inside out when the wear and tear exacted its toll.  On this day, she adorned her dress with bows to hide the stains and sections that were threadbare. 

Bob attended a mass before coming home for Christmas dinner, taking his youngest son, Tiny Tim, with him.  Asked how the lad did in the service, Bob shared with welled-up eyes:

     “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

After a great dinner together the Cratchit family gathered around the hearth to tell stories, sing songs, and raise a glass.  Bob Cratchit even chose to toast his stingy, mean boss, Ebenezer Scrooge, as the founder of their feast.  His wife vehemently protested.  Bob’s response?  It’s Christmas. A day when we walk around with rusty, sword-less scabbards.

Dickens paints the scene as the evening wore on: “There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirits torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.”  The love and warmth in that scene began to affect Scrooge’s icy heart.  He wondered about Tiny Tim’s fate:

     “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

     Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit and was overcome with penitence and grief.

     “Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked can’t until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

The message sunk in for Ebenezer.  After the Cratchit home the spirit took them to his nephew’s home where dinner was commencing – the same dinner Scrooge refused to attend.  Speaking of his uncle, Fred remarked, “He’s a comical old fellow, that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him… I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence?”

Some things were beginning to clear up for old Ebenezer.  Like Paul’s blindness falling like scales from his eyes, Scrooge was beginning to see just how poorly he had been seeing.  His attitude and perspective – his vision – was coming into greater clarity.  As has been noted, people don’t see things as they are, people see things as they are.  As Scrooge was seeing his employee and his family, and his nephew and friends with reborn eyes, he was also beginning to see himself for who he was, for who he had chosen to become.  He began to appreciate just how cold-hearted he was as the spirit swept him to places where it would be easy to be hardened – a miner’s settlement and a ship at sea.  In both truly bitter environments the inhabitants there sang their songs of Christmas, of joy, of peace.

The closing scene of this stave brought with it a tragic visual hiding within the spirit’s robe:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread…

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

     “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

     “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

Ebenezer was truly humbled.  And that was a good thing.  Dickens was hoping that the humbling would extend beyond his fictitious character to the real-life Scrooges who hid behind their rationalizing why they needn’t lift a finger to help those who suffered.  Some would do it claiming to be Christians all the while.  To those the spirit gave comment:

      “There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

The world Dickens was addressing is reminiscent of the world into which Jesus was born.  While Simeon was beyond joyful that he could die in peace having seen Jesus with his own eyes, he spoke truly prophetic words to Mary – allusions to what lay ahead for this child who would one day wear a rusty, empty scabbard as well: “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul” (Luke 2:34-35 | NLT).

Both stories sting.  Dickens’ wonderful novella caricatures a part of us we all try to manage, to keep under wraps, yet sometimes emerges from our respective shadows.  Surely his original audience recoiled a bit at the suggestion that they were part of the problem.  Surely the same happens today when we think of some of the great challenges we face in our current time.  The point of the work was to help people see, to move them, to wake them from the slumber of their comfortable state. To open their eyes with the aid of an engaging tale.

In Victorian England, as in First Century Israel, information was hard to come by.  It was difficult to gain broad perspective on what was happening because so much information was inaccessible.  The lack of information created a feeling of being truly stymied. Today we have a different problem but the same feeling.  Now we have so much information, it’s hard to know what to believe.  And, with our political leaders constantly leveraging their binary rhetoric to their advantage, or even calling into question our ability to know anything for sure, we may feel overwhelmed in our sense of incapacity.  We know so much we don’t know anything.  So we don’t do much of anything. And we feel kinda guilty yet a little justified at the same time because of our overstimulation.

But to do nothing – especially at Christmas – is to ignore Christmas itself.  Except for some nods to rulers for the sake of dating the story, nearly all of the key characters in the birth narratives of Jesus are very, very poor.  The Good News of Jesus’ coming came to an elderly couple (powerless), young woman (powerless), a young man (the news of which was emasculating), and a bunch of lowest-rung-on-the-corporate-ladder smelly late-shift shepherds (POWERLESS!)!  All poor.  The only wealthy people of note?  King Herod, who was threatened to the point of calling for infanticide, and the wealthy Wise Men from the East, who were insightful enough to approach such an impoverished newborn king with great humility and deep generosity.  The shepherds ran to see the scene and tell their part of the story.  The Wise Men traveled for weeks or months to pay homage.  They didn’t sit back and do nothing because they just weren’t sure what to do.  They took the next step.

This stave was crafted to show us ourselves and call us on the carpet.  To not let us off the hook because it’s hard to understand due to a lack of information, too much information, or unreliable information.  And this chapter was offered to push us beyond feeling guilty about the status quo.  It calls us to respond with reflection.  Contemplation followed by action.

This story is about more than a stingy man learning to loosen his purse strings.  A Christmas Carol is about a boy that grew into an older man who, along the way became something much less than anyone’s dream.  He only had financial wealth – and even that he didn’t enjoy.  This story is about the hope of birth, and rebirth.  Through innumerable moments throughout his life Ebenezer chose to be more closed than open, more rigid than flexible, more fearful and angry than hopeful and loving.  His world got smaller and dimmer every year, leaving him literally cold and alone.  He needed the Ghost of Christmas Present to open his eyes to what was there all along.  Bob Cratchit wasn’t simply an employee he had to pay, but a husband and father who loved his family and managed to stay out of debtor’s prison even with the extra care a special needs child demanded.  Even though mistreated by his employer, Bob still raised a glass to Scrooge – a great sign of maturity and grace.  Ebenezer needed to see his nephew, Fred, for more than a fool who spends too much money on a Christmas Feast – funds that could have been invested.  Instead, he found a genuinely warm, mature man who intentionally took time to celebrate life with those he loved, who even committed to loving his uncle every year despite the near-certain rejection.  Ebenezer needed to see black-dust-encrusted coal miners and sailors soaked to the bone from the cold sea waves they fought – all of whom sang songs of Christmas, songs of hope, songs of love breaking into the world.  On that day love prevailed and showed itself for what it is: the very source of Life.  The Source Scrooge had been trying to live apart from the majority of his life.  It had caught up with him.  He didn’t know how much until he saw with new eyes what was always there.

I’ve had this experience along numerous lines throughout my life.  Not really understanding at all the feel of racial prejudice until my friend Adolphus Lacey and I roomed together during a choir tour in Iowa.  Simply put, I was clearly treated with great respect and trust, and he was looked upon and spoken to with fear and a hint of disdain.  He and I were both headed toward becoming pastors.  I can say the same for gender equality, having witnessed incredibly sharp women getting overlooked simply because they were women.  I’ve been given new eyes regarding poverty as I have come to see the issue as deeply complex which cannot be addressed with generalities about laziness and evil “users of the system”.  I have, with the help of a ghost in all of these and the ones to come, been given new eyes with which to see religion itself – so often diminishing its call to loving service and instead opting for rigid moral policing.  Over many years my lenses have been corrected in regards to homosexuality.  There was a brief period of my life – as a pastor – when I thought homosexuality was inherently sinful and needed to be categorized like we might do with alcoholism.  Some people are born predisposed to alcoholism and have to manage it their whole lives – I thought the same regarding sexual orientation.  It was easy to adopt such a view when surrounded by people who believed the same and interpreted biblical verses to validate their views with God’s stamp of approval.  But over time which allowed for deep study of the biblical texts, theological reflection, listening to those who struggled, discernment, and experience, my understanding changed.  My eyes saw things I simply couldn’t see before.  My understanding turned into action.  First simply sharing what I learned.  Then taking a stand.  Then living out my stated beliefs in action as I officiated a same gender wedding ceremony between two CrossWalk members who could not have been better candidates to provide me this first opportunity.  Of course, living out this belief caused serious backlash from my broader faith community which does not see things the same way.  With my action came the loss of a fairly prestigious leadership position with our denomination’s regional entity and the income that accompanied it.  Strained relationships, of course, came as well.  I have no regrets about my decision and am, in fact, proud of it and even grateful for it.  And yet I mourn and grieve even though in the long run it will all turn out for the best.  This is the more regular course for most of who do not get all three ghosts in one night.

The greater truth of Dickens’ classic is that we all are visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future all the time. Some traditions refer to the Spirit of God as the Holy Ghost.  I believe this Spirit is constantly with us, urging us to see through the eyes of God, through the eyes of Love, that we might truly live full and free.  Deeper than a feeling, Love is the undercurrent of creation itself, and was manifested in the birth of a child in the most peculiar circumstance over 2,000 years ago.  Those who can see even a little still sing of it.  Perhaps the continual singing will foster new seeing as well.

What are you going to do to understand the complexities of the serious challenges we face today (and have faced with limited success since the dawn of humanity)?  Poverty.  Income disparity. Immigration. Undocumented immigrants. Racial prejudice. Gender inequality.  LGBTQ discrimination.  The list goes on.  What are you doing to gain a fuller perspective?  What are you doing in response to what you are learning?  How are you being Christmas – being and bringing Good News to our real-life characters who inhabit our world who need to know that the heart of God beats for them as it did when Jesus was born?

A Christmas Carol: The Ghost of Christmas Past

CrossWalker and local hospital chaplain Dr. Steve Lewis offers today’s teaching on the interplay between Dickens’ classic and the Christmas story.