gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • Easter 7A (1 June 2014)

     

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Acts 1:6-14 & Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
    • 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
    • John 17:1-11

    First Reading: Jesus ascends to the Father

    The account of the ascension in Acts 1 has a close echo in Luke 24:

    Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:50–53 NRSV)

    So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:6–11 NRSV)

    Clearly these two sections need to be read together, and—just as clearly—what we have in the closing sentences of Luke 24 is a summary of the information provided (with more detail) in Acts 1.

    Interestingly, nowhere else in the NT do we find such an explicit description of the ascension/exaltation scene from the Easter tradition. The idea that Jesus was raised to glory with God, including variants that simply describe Jesus as being with the Father, is widely-attested in the NT. But no other NT writer attempts to describe the moment of glorification/exaltation.

    Turning a metaphor into a physical reality is a classic Lukan characteristic, but the desire to provide a witness statement attesting to the ascension (and deification) of Jesus may reflect Luke’s context in second century Roman society. Such statements were an essential part of the process for the Senate’s confirmation of the apotheosis of a recently-deceased emperor.

    Fur further discussion of the Ascension, see:

    Second Reading: 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

    This week concludes the series of readings from 1 Peter that have provided the Second Reading through the Easter season.

    As is often the case, the lectionary verses reflect some careful editing with the verses shown below in italics being omitted from the lectionary:

    Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.

    But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?” Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.
    Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among youto tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it—not for sordid gain but eagerly. Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away. In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

    Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.” (1Peter 4:12–5:11 NRSV)

    This passage reflects the experience and the perspective of an emerging Christianity community that is sufficiently established to be noticed (and persecuted) by their contemporaries, but does not yet have the protection offered by antiquity or allies in high places. Respectability matters, but there remains a willingness to embrace ostracism—even martyrdom—as the cost of membership in the sect.

    Gospel: Re-imaging Jesus in the twenty-first century

    This week’s Gospel reading from John 17:1-11 continues the recent lectionary focus on the farewell discourse in John 13:31-17:26. This sets the action in the time prior to Jesus’ arrest and execution. However, the lectionary is correct in choosing these passages for the time during Easter as the underlying assumptions are those of a risen and ascended Lord.

    After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

    This week, in particular, we have Jesus portrayed as a victorious hero who has (or will shortly) take his place among the Immortals and who will then be in a position to reward his followers with salvation and honors of various kinds. This representation offends our modern sensibilities which regard such personal distribution of the rewards of power as a form of official corruption, but in the ancient social order of the Hellenistic empires such action by a patron on behalf of their clients was both expected and accepted. We see much the same set of expectations in the devotional practices of the medieval church as saints were imagined to be powerful patrons who would intercede on behalf of their supplicants to secure additional benefits not otherwise available to the pious.

    The traditional ways of imagining the ascension of Jesus and the significance for humanity of Jesus taking his seat at the right hand of God reflect specific ancient perspectives which we for the most part no longer accept:

    • The universe as a muti-layered reality, with God being located in the highest level and various demonic powers inimical to our spiritual progress located at the intermediate levels to form a kind of psychic obstacle course that we must complete successfully before gaining access to God.
    • Jesus as a true Hero who has not only overcome those obstacles (and defeated the powers and rulers in the process) in order to claim his place at God’s right hand, but who can now act as a classic “Lord” (Gk: kyrios) and come to the aid of his devotees as a “Saviour” (Gk: soter).

    It is clear enough that our traditional images for telling the Jesus story (or even the God story) rely on ancient assumptions that simply do not function in our culture. The challenge is to go beyond the task of deconstruction and to find new ways to speak of God, new narratives to express the significance of Jesus, new lexicons for the liturgy and new phrases for our prayers.

    One way in which this is often done these days is to translate the spatial imagery of the external cosmos into the psychological categories of inner space. Those categories have their own limitations, but for many people they seem to work better than traditional metaphors.

    Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan is a contemporary composer and theologian whose work invites us to imagine God differently and to experience faith with some different accents. Richard’s song Ground and Source of All that Is just one of several new pieces that you may like to check out.

    Ground and source of all that is,
    one that anchors all our roots,
    Being of all ways and forms,
    deepest home and final truth.
    We live and move in you.
    We live and move in you.

    Lover of ten thousand names,
    holy presence all have known,
    Beauty ever welcoming,
    Mystery to stir the soul. We live …

    Nature by whose laws we live,
    author of our DNA,
    All compelling call to life,
    drawing one and all the same. We live …

    Energy of heav’nly sphere,
    spark within the insect mind,
    Unseen pulse to charge our plans,
    bringing order and surprise. We live …

    Call to kindness, call to serve,
    freedom for our chosen course,
    Guide and friend for all who dream,
    nourished by our ground and source. We live …

    For details of Richard’s work, including online ordering and sample sound tracks, visit Rivers Voice

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

    For liturgies and sermons each week, shaped by a progressive theology, check Rex Hunt’s web site

    Other recommended sites include:

    Music Suggestions

    See the following sites for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre:

  • Jesus Then and Jesus Now: A Sermon

    Introduction[1]

    Audio of the sermon at the 5.00pm Mass
    Opening Prayer
    Jesus, son of Mary, you come among us
    as one we think we know all too well.
    Open our eyes
    to see you again for the first time.
    Open our hearts
    to see God in one another.
    Open our hands
    to live with compassion.
    Amen.
    First Reading: Rumi, “What Jesus Runs Away From“
    Gospel: Mark 6:1–6a
    Blessing
    With open eyes, open hearts, and open hands,
    may we be a blessing to all we meet this week,
    in the name of Jesus. Amen.

     

    Let me begin by bringing greetings from the Christian community in Palestine, and especially those communities with which I am most familiar: St Luke’s Anglican Church in Haifa and the Sabeel community in Nazareth. This is a difficult time to be a Christian in the Middle East, and I would seek your prayers for my friends there, just as they offer their prayers for us.

    My task in the homilies this weekend is to reflect with you on the significance of Jesus for our kind of faith community here at St Mary’s in Exile. Rethinking Jesus is a big part of our project, I suspect; even if not always at the top of the agenda.

    As we say at the beginning of most liturgies, “We gather to reflect on our lives in light of the Christian mystery …”

    After five years, the conversation about what kind of community we are at SMX is not yet finished. My focus in this homily today is the part that Jesus plays in our collective and personal lives.

     

    The Book

    First of all, and especially in this context, it seems appropriate to begin with my recent book, Jesus Then and Jesus Now: Looking for Jesus, Finding Ourselves.

    Yes, it is yet another ‘Jesus book’—and there have been quite a few of them in recent years. As the sub-title seeks to suggest, this one has its own character and focus. It is as much about the meaning of Jesus for today, as it is about Jesus in the first century.

    A few times recently I have asked to describe the book. When that happens I like to outline the three major sections of the book in order to indicate its own particular logic:

    The first section draws on my involvement with historical research:

    • history of the Galilee and Second Temple Judaism more generally
    • the work of the Jesus Seminar, of which I am a long-time member
    • and my involvement with the archaeology dig at Bethsaida

    This part of the book is very much about getting a fix on ‘Jesus back then’ in first-century Galilee.

    The second section draws on my work as a lecturer in Biblical Studies, and focuses on selected Jesus themes in the NT Gospels:

    • Jesus and the kingdom of God
    • Jesus and the afterlife
    • Calling Jesus names
    • The death of Jesus

    This middle section of the book is very much about getting a fix on the Jesus tradition during first 100 years after Easter. What were people thinking about Jesus and saying about him in that formative period for Christianity?

    The final section draws on my personal perspectives as a person of faith myself, and it deals with the relevance of the person of Jesus and the traditions about Jesus for us here and now:

    • Jesus as one of us
    • The significance of Easter
    • Jesus in a world of many faiths
    • Being a follower of Jesus today

    This part of the book is much more theological and much more personal. It is probably also more controversial.

    Brevity is a key virtue in this context, so let me just say a few words about my reading of Jesus as a first-century Galilean Jew and then offer some reflections on the significance of Jesus for me as a progressive Christian.

     

    Jesus Then

    I locate Jesus within Torah-observant Jewish settler communities in the Galilee. “Settler” is a term I have chosen with intent. It disturbs both my Jewish and Palestinian friends, not mention other Christians.

    It is important to keep in mind that Jesus was neither an eco-theologian nor a first-century feminist. He was a person of his time and place, and he is a stranger to us and our values.

    We may well criticise creedal Christian for divinising Jesus too easily, but we also tend to domesticate him. We recruit Jesus into our social and political agendas.

    In very brief terms, then, I see Jesus (‘back then’) as coming from a small Jewish settler community at Nazareth, with maybe not more than a dozen or so families in the settlement. The people of that newly-established community were deeply attached to their Jewish identity. This included loyalty to the Temple and cultural resistance to Hellenism.

    Jesus of Nazareth was more like a prophet (Elijah, Elisah, Hosea, Jonah, et al) than a sage or rabbi.

    ‘Prophet’ may not be a perfect category, but it is better than most others and no better one comes to mind. This seems to have been his preferred self-description and to get us about as close to his own self-understanding as we are ever likely to reach.[2] His prophetic mission put him on a collision course with imperial Rome and its local puppets.

    However we may care to label him, Jesus seems to have been a catalyst for a Jewish renewal movement centred on the “reign of God”. He was, after all, a disciple and successor to John the Baptiser, so a focus on the kingdom is not surprising.

     

    Jesus Now

    Assuming that this description is reasonably accurate, and even if it is not, I still need to address the relevance of such a Jesus here and now.

    Because I am a Christian, Jesus is central to my understanding of God and my understanding of myself. To be like Jesus and to see the character of the Christ develop within me is my religion in a nutshell.

    It could have been otherwise, and most likely would have been otherwise had I not been born and raised in a family that took its Christian faith very seriously. But my family set me up to experience life through the lens of Christian faith, and thus Jesus has been at the very centre of my worldview from as early a stage as I can recall.

    One helpful way to explore the significance of ‘Jesus then’ and ‘Jesus now’ is offered to us by Marcus Borg, who speaks of the difference between  “Jesus before Easter” and “Jesus after Easter.”

    I think Borg is onto something very important for Christian faith in this idea, as the formula upholds the essential continuity of Jesus on both sides of Easter while also recognizing that Jesus is ‘something else’ after Easter than he had been before Easter. In using these terms we are not speaking about the ontological essence of Jesus, but rather our perceptions of Jesus and our reception of the blessings that God offers us in and through Jesus.

    The prophetic identity and mission of Jesus before Easter was expressed in his actions as he healed and exorcised, taught in private and public spaces, called disciples and sent them on mission to act on his behalf, as well as when he challenged and confronted those with privilege and power. His prophetic role is seen in his teaching activity, and especially in his aphorisms and parables. In addition, his prophetic character is anchored in his personal integrity; culminating in his death on the cross.

    That Jesus—the one we knew before Easter—continues to be a significant prophetic figure with much to say to us today. That faithful humanity is enough for us, and it is as a prophet that Jesus is honoured within Islam.

    Indeed, as I see it, the faithful humanity of Jesus is itself a prophetic act that cuts across the centuries and invites us to get ready for the coming reign of God. Jesus speaks for God, and he does not always need to use words.

    But something happened to Jesus at Easter.

    This is not the moment when Jesus became God, but it is the moment when we see Jesus differently. Jesus after Easter is a combination of radical transformation and profound continuity with Jesus of Nazareth.

    It is the same Jesus. The Jesus who cared about the poor and the sick, is the Jesus in whose face shines the eternal light of God. Yet something significant has changed.

    Jesus after Easter relinquishes his role as prophet, becoming instead an epiphany (revelation) of God. Not surprisingly then, the Easter traditions in the New Testament are as much about epiphany as they are about resurrection.

    Almost certainly none of the first disciples stopped to ask themselves what had become of Jesus’ flesh and bones. It seems crass even to contemplate such a question in this context. They had glimpsed the human face of God.[3] They knew the truth of the saying that to see Jesus is to see God (John 14:9).

    Perhaps we could modify this statement slightly. Can we suggest that to see Jesus after Easter is to see God, while to see Jesus before Easter is to catch a glimpse of God?

    Jesus after Easter is the Christian encounter with God.

    This God has a human face, and it is a Jewish face..

    This God is not just compassionate, but suffers and dies and rises again.

    This God knows what it is like be alone, cold, hungry, loved, mocked, and touched.

    This God sets a table and calls us to eat.

    This God overturns the crass transactions at the centre of our lives and challenges us to become houses of prayer for all nations.

    This God has become the Spirit poured out on all flesh, so that Paul could also say, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

     

    Conclusion

    As disciples of Jesus, as people who responds to the call of God who was deeply present in Jesus of Nazareth, how do we live out from that encounter with God in Jesus in our own time and place? This encounter with grace and love and forgiveness and life transforms and radicalizes my own life. How am I to put it into practice?

    However I answer that question to myself, it will not be a solo project. It will involve others and it will require me to be part of a community people seeking to fashion their own response to God in Jesus.

    We see this dynamic in the story of Jesus. The human face of God did not drop out of the sky in splendid isolation. Rather, the Word of God was born into a human family and nurtured within the village life of first-century Nazareth. Even in his death, Jesus was surrounded by people: the other victims, the perpetrators of the violence, the vested interests that stood to benefit from the violence, and the intimate circle of those who would most deeply feel the impact of his violent death.

    In between that communal birthing and dying we have the public years that leave no mark on the creeds and confessions of Constantine’s church. The hallmark of those years was that Jesus gathered a community of people around him. Our God is a gregarious god. She likes company!

    God’s preferred company are the broken and the misfits, the blind and the lame, the poor and the outcasts, widows and hemorrhaging women, parents with sick children, collaborators, and women with reputations. Cast the first stone, our God says, if you have no sin! Come as you are. Come and eat at my table.

    Given the importance of community in the life and ministry of Jesus, this is going to be a priority as I respond to my experience of God in Jesus. I am looking for a community of disciples of Jesus that is committed supporting each of its members in their personal and collective response to their encounter with God. As a priest I long to shape and serve such a community. As a Christian I want to be a part of such a community.

    In fact, I think I have found such a community here at SMX.

    Our is a community that reflects the character of our God, the God encountered in Jesus. We seek to be generous community, a church that takes our humanity seriously. This will not be a church where everything is tidy and all the questions have been answered. Most likely this will be a messy church, a church that is living with the questions rather than clinging to traditional answers, and a place where we do not have to be right in order to be loved.

    I suspect it is also the kind of church where God likes to be seen.

     

    Endnotes

    [1] A sermon for St Mary’s in Exile, Brisbane (24 & 25 May 2014).
    [2] For a more detailed discussion of this suggestion, see “One of the prophets,” chapter 4 in Gregory C. Jenks, Jesus Then and Jesus Now.
    [3] This phrase is an intentional homage to the influential book by Bishop John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (London: SCM, 1973; reprinted, 2012). I read this book as a theological student and the phrase has been a part of my personal perspective on Jesus ever since.

  • The Human Jesus

    [An extract from my recent book, Jesus Then and Jesus Now: Looking for Jesus, Finding Ourselves. Melbourne: Mosaic Press, 2014), pp. 124–30.]

    The humanity of Jesus is not to be considered as a philosophical puzzle and carefully dovetailed with his preexistent divinity, but observed in its ordinary expressions in everyday life. Taking the humanity of Jesus seriously means that we notice his ethnicity, his religion, his economic status, and his political situation. If such categories seem odd for a discussion of Jesus it may well be an indication of just how little significance we have attributed to the humanity of Jesus.

    A Palestinian Jesus

    This first attribute of the historical Jesus may come as a surprise since ‘Palestinian’ has largely become a pejorative term in recent Western discourse. I am, of course, using the term as a geographical descriptor, rather than an ethnic or a political identity. Jesus was indigenous to the land of Palestine,[1] and he lived there at a time when it was—once again—under the control of a foreign imperial power exercising its authority through local puppet rulers.

    One of the continuing tragedies of our time is the theft not only of the Palestinians’ land, but also their culture and history, so essential for their identity.[2] In the struggle for possession of their historical lands, the Palestinians have been represented as violent extremists, while the systematic violence directed towards them is overlooked or excused.[3]

    If we put aside the caricature of Palestinians as anti-Semitic terrorists, what might it mean to consider Jesus as a Palestinian? The first and most significant element may simply be to dislodge traditional assumptions and expectations. A ‘Palestinian Jesus’ is as incongruous to many people as the term ‘Palestinian Jew’ even though the latter term was not unusual prior to 1948.

    Yet, as Naim Ateek reminds us,[4] Jesus the Palestinian was an oppressed and marginalized person, as well as a liberation theologian. There are few peoples in the world more marginalized than the Palestinians, and Jesus shares their experience both as someone indigenous to Palestine and as someone who suffered undeserved violence from the imperial powers of his own time.

    Jesus the Palestinian is God doing theology from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. The imperial churches of Rome, Geneva, and Canterbury—to name just three historical expressions of Christianity—have always preferred to do their theology the other way around. The Palestinian Jesus challenges his followers to lay aside our inherited privileges and stand among the poor and the dispossessed, where God is more often to be found than in the cathedrals and chapels of Christendom.

    A Jewish Jesus

    Alongside the Palestinian Jesus we place the Jewish Jesus. They are the same person. Why does this surprise us? What assumptions and stereotypes continue to control our thinking if we find this a strange combination? Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. (Paul, on the other hand, was a Diaspora Jew.)

    For almost two thousand years the Jews were the despised ‘other’. In the Christian West, the devotees of Jesus the Jew hated his people and subjected them to shameful discrimination and violence. The horror of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany was not so much an aberration as the most extreme example of Christian anti-Semitism. Jesus would have been sent to a Nazi death camp had he been found in occupied Europe during the 1940s. Jesus was sent to the death camps. He was crucified again and again in the gas chambers and the ovens.

    The Jewish Jesus confronts our suspicion of the Jew, and of anyone who is different from us. The Jewish Jesus compels us to see that God’s mercy is more ancient than Christianity. The Jewish Jesus invites us to imagine a way of being religious that is not about orthodoxy, but service; forming communities that—in their best moments—live the covenant and provide a light to the nations.

    Jesus was a particular person, with a distinctive culture and a religion that refused to be domesticated by the dominant cultural and political powers of his day. As a Jew, as someone who shared the Jewish historical experience of oppression and loathing, Jesus challenges his own followers to embrace their own religious tradition without rejecting, fearing, or persecuting those of other faiths.

    Jesus the Jew resisted power and privilege, and that cost him his life. On Good Friday it seemed that privilege and power had won the contest, but three hundred years later the emperor of Rome was a devotee of Jesus. Exiled from their lands and dispersed among the nations, it seemed that the Jews were condemned to a destiny of diaspora and discrimination. Crucifixion was not the final word on Jesus, and dispersion was not the final word on the Jews.

    As a Palestinian Jew, Jesus holds together two identities that many Palestinians and Jews today see as opposed. To his Palestinian brothers and sisters, Jesus offers hope and an invitation to nonviolent resistance in the cause of human liberation. To his Jewish sisters and brothers, Jesus presents a Palestinian child and invites them to see in her a daughter, a sister, a beloved, and a child of Abraham.

    Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:36–37)

    A Small-Town Jesus

    Jesus of Nazareth was not a city person. In a world where so many people now live in cities,[5] with our toes touching concrete but rarely the bare earth, this makes him a stranger to us. Our unnatural lives also make us strangers to the earth. We are like caged chickens isolated in wire cells to make us more productive, and no longer able to follow our natural desire to scratch in the dirt.

    As we have seen, there were cities in the world that Jesus inhabited. Close to hand were modest Jewish cities such as Sepphoris and Tiberias. Not much farther away were the cosmopolitan cities of the Decapolis, as well as Caesarea Maritima, Ako-Ptolemais, or Tyre. The only city Jesus seems to have visited was Jerusalem. He died there.

    Back then, cities were places that promised opportunity, but delivered disease, exploitation, and poverty. Cities were the haunts of the powerful and the criminals. Cities were where the taxes went. Cities celebrated the international culture of the mobile and the privileged with their academies, their gymnasia, and their theatres. Cities offered palaces, temples, hippodromes, and the circus.

    Lots of village people were drawn to the city. Like the prodigal son, they consumed their inheritance and sank into the crowd of expendables at the bottom of the social order. Few of them made it back home to the embrace of a loving parent. Even fewer were laid in a new tomb when their lives were cut short by disease and violence.

    Soon after Easter, Christianity became—and has remained—a religion of the cities. From as early as the ministry of Paul, the centre of gravity for the Jesus movement shifted from the villages of Galilee to the cities of the Mediterranean rim. The word ‘pagan’ derives from the Latin paganus, a term for villager, rustic, or rural person. We have forgotten our roots. Jesus was a pagan, a rustic from an exceptionally small village. Yet we are so sophisticated, so at home in the city, so comfortable in the corridors of privilege.

    Luke’s version of the beatitudes strikes us as harsh and extreme, but for the vast majority of the world’s population these words may sound like good news.

    Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

    A Third-World Jesus

    From all that has been said so far, it is clear that Jesus seems to have more in common with the so-called ‘Third World’ (better said, the ‘Two-Thirds World’) than with either the big end of town or the aspirational suburbs of contemporary urban life. The kind of human being that Jesus seems to have been would be a beneficiary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG),[6] rather than a celebrity using his ‘name’ to raise donations to assist the poor. Looking at Jesus through the lens of the MDG is a worthwhile exercise, employed below.

    1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Jesus seems to have understood God’s compassion as especially directed towards the poor and the hungry. His program included meals where all were fed regardless of status or assets. At the heart of the so-called Lord’s Prayer is a petition for bread, along with the forgiveness of debts.[7] In every Eucharist we break the bread and share the cup, but the agape meal of earliest Christianity has been reduced to a symbolic taste.

    2. Achieve universal primary education. Growing up in a small village with no access to education, Jesus would have benefited from such a program. He seems to have been technically illiterate, as he read no books, cited no books, and wrote no books.[8] At the same time, he seems to have been a gifted oral poet.

    3. Promote gender equality and empower women. As religious progressives we would like to imagine Jesus as an advocate of gender equality and opportunity for women. Such a Jesus would be most congenial to us. It is not clear to what extent Jesus encouraged the participation of women in his covenant renewal movement, but we see the legacy of his kingdom message in Paul’s assertion that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

    4. Reduce child mortality. High rates of child mortality were sad realities for Jesus and his contemporaries. It has been estimated that half of all live births ended in death within the first twelve months, and that only half of those who survived the first year would live to see their fifth birthday.[9]

    5. Improve maternal health. This goal is closely related to the previous one, and it is surely a gift to us that the NT Gospels represent Jesus as consistently respectful to women and concerned for the well-being of his own mother. Whether or not that reflects the historical reality,[10] Jesus can serve as a model for other men to be concerned for the women in our families and our communities.

    6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Jesus acquired a reputation as a healer.[11] As with a modern disease such as HIV/AIDS, the problems Jesus cured were as much psychosocial as medical. He declared people clean and restored them to their communities.

    7. Ensure environmental sustainability. Jesus was not an environmental activist. However, he does seem to have lived close to nature. Poor people have little choice. A great many of his parables and aphorisms express his profound reflection on the natural world as a source of wisdom for the spiritual life. His underlying outlook of simple reliance on the generosity of the good father[12] suggests a relationship with the environment that rejected the dominion paradigms found in the Genesis creation myths.

    8. Global partnerships for development. This goal would have been incomprehensible to Jesus, yet central to his vision of the kingdom of God was a community that transgressed the conventional boundaries of family, village and ethnicity. He imagined the kingdom as an experience of community to which many would come from East and West (Matt 8:11). The double accounts of the feeding of the multitude in Mark and Matthew suggest that his ‘good news’ was understood to embrace both Jews and Gentiles. In his encounter with the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30 = Matt 15:21–28) Jesus seems to accept her instruction as he embraces the idea that God’s compassion extends even to those outside the covenant community. That is an insight many of his most enthusiastic followers have yet to grasp.

    An Expendable Jesus

    It is no surprise that a Jesus such as I am sketching here was also an expendable Jesus, like so many of his poor sisters and brothers back then and ever since. An expendable human is one whose worth—as perceived by those who are in a position to act upon it—is calculated on the basis the benefits that others can derive from them: economic production, consumer spending, military recruits, church growth statistics, and so on.

    As an expendable person, Jesus was eventually a victim of the systemic violence that was embodied in the Roman Empire and its Herodian puppet regimes. From the perspective of power and honour in his own time and place, Jesus was a failure, while someone such as Herod Antipas was a success. Antipas had John the Baptist killed and may have done the same to Jesus had Pilate not preempted him. The crucified Jesus dies in profound solidarity with the poor and the expendables across human history.

    The human Jesus is in many ways a forgotten Jesus. Recovering his legacy may be a precious gift that the Christian community can offer to a world that is in real need of spiritual wisdom about what it means to be authentically human.

    Footnotes

    [1] While it is sometimes asserted that the name ‘Palestine’ was only applied to these territories after Rome had suppressed the Bar-Kokba Revolt (132–35 c.e.), in fact the new Roman name for the former Jewish territories reflected ancient local practices going back to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (ca. 1150 b.c.e.). Herodotus (ca. 484–425 b.c.e.) refers to a “district of Syria called Palaistine” (Hist. 2:89), while Aristotle refers to the Dead Sea as “a lake in Palestine” (Meteorology 2.3).
    [2] For a recent attempt to reclaim the history of Palestine, see Whitelam, Rhythms of Time. See also his earlier work, Invention of Ancient Israel.
    [3] Revisionist Israeli scholars such as Ilan Pappe are doing both Jews and Palestinians an immense service by bringing much of this suppressed history into the public domain. See Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
    [4] Ateek, “Jonah, the First Palestinian Liberation Theologian”.
    [5] The UN Population Fund reports that in “2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population will be living in towns and cities. By 2030 this number will swell to almost 5 billion, with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia.” http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
    [6] See http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.
    [7] For texts and discussion, see 120 The Lords Prayer in the Jesus Database online. The version in Matt 6:9–13 seems more spiritualized than the less familiar version found on Luke 11:2–4.
    [8] In this observation I follow the general findings of the Jesus Seminar, which tended to see such literary elements in the Jesus traditions as evidence of a later phase of development.
    [9] For a brief discussion of these demographics, see Meyers, Discovering Eve, 112–13.
    [10] For a critical assessment of the enthusiasm to promote Jesus as sensitive to women’s issues, see Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus.
    [11] See http://www.jesusdatabase.org/index.php?title=Jesus_as_Healer.
    [12] See 082 Against Anxieties in the Jesus Database online.

  • Easter 6A (25 May 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Acts 17:22-31 & Psalm 66:8-20
    • 1 Peter 3:13-22
    • John 14:15-21

    First Reading: Paul proclaims the resurrection to the Athenians

    The speech attributed to Paul in Acts 17 tells us more about the theology of Luke than the rhetoric of Paul. In keeping with the historiographical principles of the time, Luke composes the kind of speech his hero (Paul) would have delivered had he enjoyed the opportunity of giving an address to the leading scholars of Athens. It is a classic scene, and the speech is certainly fitting for the narrative purpose although—like most of Luke’s compositions (eg. the Nazareth sermon in Luke 4)—rather thin on content when we examine it closely.

    Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:22–31 NRSV)

    In just a few words, Luke gives us the impression of Paul presenting a cogent apologia for the new faith at the very centre of the intellectual world of his time. This fits with his desire to present Christianity as a respectable option for his readers, and it is paired at various points in his narrative with depictions of both the Jewish and pagan opponents of Christianity as undisciplined rabble.

    Within the logic of the lectionary, this passage is the most universalistic of the proclamations of the resurrection message. Between last week and this week, we have travelled from Jerusalem to Athens; from Stephen’s dying vision of the risen and exalted Son of Man, to Paul’s invocation of the Greek sages in support of the Christian gospel. Where the Jerusalem authorities turn into a murderous mob (with even Saul/Paul acting as an accessory), here the sophisticated sages of Athens express a willingness to hear more—though some (most?) remained unconvinced:

    When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this. At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. (Acts 17:32–34 NRSV)

    Second Reading: Christ preaches to the spirits in prison

    If the representation of Paul preaching to the Athenian sages—and basing his address on pagan poets—can be understood as an appeal to universal spiritual wisdom, then this week’s excerpt from 1 Peter goes one step further by presenting Jesus as proclaiming salvation to the lost souls in Hades during the time between Good Friday and Easter morning:

    Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. (1Peter 3:13–22 NRSV)

    The idea of Jesus’ Descent into Hell—also known as the Harrowing of Hell—is an interesting twist to the resurrection traditions. For a brief discussion of this traditional motif, which survives in the statement “he descended to the dead” in the Apostles’ Creed but flourishes in Orthodox iconography, see the Holy Saturday page. This ancient tradition survives as a marginal motif in Western Christianity, but surely implies there are no limits to the reach of the Good News since Christ himself has proclaimed the victory of the Cross to all the souls lost in Hades. Paul preaches resurrection to the Greeks, but Jesus preaches liberation to “the spirits in prison.” Can we imagine anyone not embracing such an opportunity for release? What limits dare we place on God’s generosity when the ancient traditions imagine not even death itself as a barrier to conversion?

    Gospel: The promise of the Spirit

    As we get towards the end of the Easter season the lectionary texts shift focus from the resurrection of Jesus to the presence of the Spirit as the mode of the risen One’s continuing engagement with the community that bears his name. This week we have the promise of an Advocate (the Spirit of Truth) to be a continuous presence with the community and/or the individual disciple. Next week the focus will be on the ascended Lord: the one whose departure/elevation is a prior condition for the Spirit’s outpouring. The following week is the feast of Pentecost when the focus falls directly on the presence of the Spirit of God/Jesus.

    There is some confusion within the NT gospels concerning precisely when the Spirit was gifted to the community:

    • MARK barely mentions the theme, but we cannot be sure just how the original version of the Gospel according to Mark ended. We know from chapter 13 that Mark is aware of the early Christian belief that they were blessed with an inner presence of God’s own Spirit:

    As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. [Mark 13:9-13]

    • MATTHEW promises the presence of Christ himself, rather than the Spirit:

    Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:16-20]

    • JOHN explores the theme of the promised Spirit through the extended monologue of the Supper Discourse and then has Jesus bestow the Holy Spirit on the disciples gathered in the locked room on Easter night:

    When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” [John 20:19-23]

    • LUKE-ACTS develops the theme of the promised Spirit so that the coming of the Spirit is delayed until the Jewish festival of Pentecost, some 7 weeks after Easter. In the meantime the Spirit is promised and the disciples are told to wait in Jerusalem for the blessing which God would send them:

    While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. [Acts 1:4-9]

    In these texts we can see the truth of a particular religious experience being expressed and interpreted with a mixture of history and metaphor. All these early Christian communities understood themselves to be the recipients of the Spirit’s presence. However, in creating stories to explain the origins of this experience and to guide their contemporary practice, they employed various combinations of metaphor and history. Neither the history nor the metaphor is consistent across the various canonical texts.

    Jesus Database

    Liturgies and Prayers

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    Other recommended sites include:

    Music Suggestions

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  • Easter 5A (18 May 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Acts 7:55-60 & Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
    • 1 Peter 2:2-10
    • John 14:1-14

    First Reading: Acts 7:55-60

    The death scene from the martyrdom of Stephen may seem an odd choice for a Sunday reading in the Easter season, but embedded in this story is the claim that Stephen had a vision of the risen and exalted Lord:

    But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.” (Acts 7:55–60 NRSV)

    This story is also notable for its passing reference to Saul, who will later become known as Paul. This is the very first reference to Paul in a book which will be dominated by his character as the narrative proceeds. It is noteworthy that Saul/Paul first appears in the story as an accessory to the murder of Stephen.

    Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10

    This week’s selection from 1 Peter is out of sequence, perhaps due to verses 19-25 being picked early to exploit the link with last week’s “good shepherd” theme.

    This passage continues to reflect the developing interest in Christianity as a self-conscious religion, with its own rituals, priests, etc. The theological method that comes through is one that weaves together isolated statements from the Jewish Scriptures to create the impression of deep continuity with ancient biblical “prophecies.” Such use of Scripture is close to the pesher hermeneutics of the reclusive community at Qumran, whose long-lost library is known to us as the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

    This is not suggest that there were formal links between the Qumran sect and the writers of the NT, but simply to observe that the kind of theological method underlying 1 Peter presupposes a scribal elite with the inclination and the opportunity to engage in pesher hermeneutics. Such a development is not likely to have happened in the earliest decades of Christianity, but is more likely to be a natural dynamic with a maturing Christian movement in the decades around the end of the first century.

    Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

    Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:

    “See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious;
    and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

    To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,

    “The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the very head of the corner,”

    and

    “A stone that makes them stumble,
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

    They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

    Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
    once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.” (1Peter 2:2–10 NRSV)

    Gospel of John

    Insiders and outsiders in the Farewell Discourse

    During the second half of the Easter season the major lectionaries draw heavily on John’s Gospel, and especially on the so-called Farewell Discourse in 13:31 to 17:26.

    • Easter 4: John 10:1-10
    • Easter 5: John 14:1-14
    • Easter 6: John 14:15-21
    • Easter 7: John 17:1-11
    • Pentecost: John 20:19-23 (or 7:37-52)

    Chapters 14-17 have no parallel in the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). There is nothing like this is in any of the other Jesus traditions found in the canonical writings, although there may be close parallels in some of the gnostic writings outside the NT.

    The idea of a farewell discourse by a departing hero is well-known from biblical and non-biblical writings in antiquity. In particular, the many “Testament” texts among the OT Pseudepigrapha should be noted: TAdam, TJob, TMoses, TSolomon, T3Patriarchs, T12Patriarchs.

    Where the Synoptics chose to present Jesus delivering a farewell discourse on eschatological themes (predicting the end of the world and instructing his followers how to prepare themselves for its sudden arrival), GJohn has Jesus discoursing on themes closer to the interests of the Johannine communities.

    We know from the Johannine epistles (1John. 2John and 3John) that the groups associated with the name of John were divided over the humanity of Jesus and the question of how the Spirit’s anointing could be known. In response to a split that had apparently taken place in their ranks, the elder who writes the Letters of John urges them to keep the commandments held from the beginning, to trust that the Spirit has indeed been bestowed on them all, and especially to practice love for one another. In so doing they will know the truth and their joy will be complete.

    Many of those same concerns can be seen in John 14-17. However, rather than a simple line of thought that proceeds from one issue to the next, the materials seem to loop around and cover the same points over and over again. Some scholars have suggested that this reflects a process of development as these meditations on Christ were elaborated over a period of time:

    • (new) commandment: 13:34-35; 14:15; 14:21; 15:10; 15:12-14
    • untroubled hearts: 14:1; 14:27
    • going/coming: 13:33; 13:16; 14:2-4; 14:18-20; 14:28; 16:4-7,10; 16:16-24
    • promised Spirit: 14:16-17; 14:25-26; 15:26; 16:7-11; 16:12-16

    What we seem to have in these traditions are not recollections of things once said by Jesus, but reflections on the significance of Jesus as the divine Son present in the lives of his disciples and active in the life of the community through his Spirit. Not surprisingly, such themes also strike those responsible for our modern lectionaries as appropriate questions for the final weeks of the Easter season.

    As we draw closer to Pentecost during the second half of Easter, themes relating to the Spirit will displace stories of appearances by the risen Lord and the empty tomb. While that may simply be a function of the lack of new stories to use, it also reflects the ancient Christian tradition that the Spirit was the continuing presence of the risen One in their midst. For example, in 1 Cor 15:45, Paul writes: “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

    If these texts, including this week’s Gospel, were shaped in a context of conflict between opposing factions of the early Jesus movement, it is not surprising to find some extravagant claims being made. In the heat of such conflict, extreme positions can be adopted (rather like a theological ambit claim) which do not really represent the considered position of the claimant.

    The (only) way, the (only) truth, and the (only) life

    John 14:6 may be one of those theological ambit claims that we would not wish to uphold in the contemporary multi-faith world at the beginning of the third millennium. It is, after all, widely recognized that Christian attitudes to other religions must undergo profound change as the churches come to terms with the results of historical Jesus studies—not to mention other domains of human discovery and experience.

    On the other hand, more conservative Christian groups may indeed wish to uphold traditional Christian claims to exclusive possession of truth and a monopoly on salvation.
    In his book, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to reveal the God of Love (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), John Shelby Spong includes John 14:6 in his list of “terrible texts” that have been employed to promote hate rather than divine love. These notes will draw on Bishop Spong’s discussion of this verse.

    Early in his discussion of John 14:6, Spong comments:

    “No one comes to Father but by me” is a text that invariably comes up when I am lecturing on the vision of an interfaith future. It seems to be a hurdle that people must get over to break the spell of their romantic imperialism. So the question becomes: Does this text actually support this claim? The answer to that question is simple: It does only if one is profoundly ignorant of the New Testament scholarship of the last two hundred years, only if one literalizes the Bible and finally only if one knows nothing about the Fourth Gospel in which alone this text occurs. (p. 233)

    Spong begins his discussion by noting that the first half of this verse (“I am the way, the truth and the life …”) is one of a series of “I AM” statements found in the Gospel of John, and which are integral to the highly developed christology that this Gospel offers the reader:

    • I am the bread of life (John 6:35)
    • I am the light of the world (John 8:12)
    • I am the gate of the sheepfold (John 10:7)
    • I am the good shepherd (John 10:11)
    • I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25)
    • I am the way, the truth and life (John 14:6)
    • I am the true vine (John 15:1 NB: Spong actually cites 15:7 but 15:1 is a better example.)

    Allowing himself some licence to exaggerate, Spong continues:

    Of course, Jesus never literally said any of these things. For someone to wander around the Jewish state in the first century, announcing himself to be the bread of life, the resurrection or the light of the world would have brought out people in white coats with butterfly nets to take him away. None of the earlier gospel writers give us any indication that any of them had ever heard it suggested before that Jesus taught this way. The “I am” sayings are clearly the contribution of the Fourth Gospel. What then do they mean? Why did John add these sayings to the ongoing Christian tradition? The answer is found in the period of history in which the Fourth Gospel was written. (p. 234)

    The history that Spong then cites is the divergence of Torah-observant Jewish synagogue communities and the Christ-centered Kingdom communities during the second half of the first century, and especially in the aftermath of the Jewish war with Rome in 66-73 CE. That growing sense of mutual alienation is well-attested, but it does not really explain the high christological themes that are so typical of John and so different from what we find in Mark, Matthew and Luke.

    It seems to me that the particular form of the Jesus tradition found in John, and especially its exclusive claims to offer secure access to God’s salvation, reflect internal divisions and conflict within the Johannine communities, and between the communities of John and other Jesus communities (those groups associated with Paul and Thomas come to mind for starters), even more than the familiar tensions between Christians and Jews after 70 CE. Recognizing the intra-communal nature of the primary conflicts in the Johannine literature, also softens the implicit anti-Semitism of the Fourth Gospel.

    Even so, at least one of the communities with which the Johannine churches found themselves in sustained conflict was undoubtedly the Torah-observant Jewish synagogue. The familiar Johannine portrait of Jesus in dispute with “the Jews” (see 2:18 and numerous other examples) whose ultimate ancestor was none other than “the Devil” (8:44-47) and who typically expelled the followers of Jesus from their synagogues (9:22), must surely reflect the historical experience of some Christian groups in the final quarter of the first century.

    To the extent that all the various Jesus movements were variants of Judaism, this affirmation of Jesus’ unique status as the entry point to God’s salvation must be understood within the context of a “fierce conversation” about the most secure way for Jews of the time to experience God’s blessing. In the course of their engagement in that debate, the Johannine protagonists have tabled their ambit claim for Jesus:

    • Jesus is the eternal Logos in human form
    • Moses mediated the Torah, but Jesus brings grace and truth
    • ritual water becomes the new wine of the Spirit
    • rival claims by Judeans and Samaritans dissolve when he has come
    • the bread of heaven provided by him surpasses what Moses provided
    • Jesus is the source of the divine Spirit in his followers
    • a person born blind can see while the Pharisees are blind
    • as authentic shepherd Jesus cares for his people and they respond to his voice
    • not even death can resist Jesus
    • Jesus remains serenely in control of events as his trial proceeds
    • Jesus is the way, the truth and the life
    • no-one gets to God except through him

    The christology of the Johannine communities is highly developed and consistently expressed.

    Although Spong does not focus so strongly on the particular dynamics of the Johannine communities around the end of the first century, he sketches a similar account of their rhetorical strategy:

    So the battle raged on, as all battles do when religious feelings are at stake. The gospel of John was the product of these excommunciated revisionists. That is why references appear in this gospel to the followers of Jesus being put out of the synagogue (see 9:22 and 12:42). That is why this gospel reinterprets the opening chapter of the Torah (compare John 1 with Gen. 1). That is also why this gospel, over and over again, claims the divine name “I am” for Jesus of Nazareth. The Christians (formerly the revisionist Jews) were saying, “We have met the holy God who was once revealed to Moses and who has now been revealed anew, and perhaps more fully, in Jesus. We are not separated from the God of our fathers and mothers as the orthodox party was asserting. Jesus is the very way through which we walk into the same divine mystery that our ancestors in faith also knew. We know of no other way that we can come to the God of our fathers and mothers except through this Jesus.” (p. 236)

    Spong concludes with this reflection on the significance of this text then and since:

    That was a testimony to their experience. It was not a prescription claiming that they possessed the only doorway into the only God. It is amazing to me that this attempt on the part of the early disciples of Jesus to validate their experience journeying through Jesus into the mystery of the God they had known in Israel would someday be used to judge all other religious traditions as unworthy, wrong or even evil. Yet that is the path this text has followed as Christianity moved from minority status into majority power.
    There is a difference between my experience of God and who God is. There is a differece between affirming that I walk into the mystery of God through the doorway called Jesus and that in my experience this is the only doorway that works in my journey, [and] that I must then declare it to be the only doorway that exists for all people, the only doorway through which anyone can walk. Imagine the idolatry present in the suggestion that God must be bound by my knowledge and my experience! Yet that claim has been made and is still being made by imperialistic Christians today. The text written by persecuted minority members of the early Christian community to justify their claim to be part of the larger people of God becomes a text that is interpreted to be a claim that issues in religious imperialism. Is it not interesting how little attention is paid to a text that proclaims an open and inclusive faith? It is found in the words attributed to Peter in Acts 10:34ff: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
    We live in a religiously pluralistic world, but there is only one God. This God is not Christian, nor is this God an adherent of any religious system. All religious systems are human creations by which people in different times and different places seek to journey into that which is ultimately holy and other. Until that simple lesson is heard, human beings will continue to destroy each other in the name of the “one true God.” (p. 236f)

    Jesus Database

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    Music Suggestions

    See the following sites for recommendations from a variety of contemporary genre:

  • Easter 4A (11 May 2014)

    Contents

    Lectionary

    • Acts 2:42-47 & Psalm 23
    • 1 Peter 2:19-25
    • John 10:1-10

    First Reading: Acts 2:42-47

    The first reading this week is the final of the series of excerpts from Peter’s great sermon in Luke’s account of the Pentecost miracle:

    They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
    Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42–47 NRSV)

    This is vintage narrative, perhaps drawing on authentic traditions about radical community dynamics in the earliest Christian circles, known to Luke from the surviving letters of Paul. As a summary this passage suggests a larger pattern of known behaviours, although in reality we have very few specific stories to justify this impression lodged in our imagination by the story-teller’s art. Luke’s carefully crafted words create a positive impression of the first Christians as people devoted to:

    • the apostles’ teaching (Greek, didache – correct belief mattered to them, and to Theophilus, the intended reader)
    • their common life together (Greek, koinonion)
    • the breaking of the bread (presumably the common meal of the Eucharist, or “supper of the Lord”), and
    • the prayers (as a pious Jewish sect they were careful to observe the times for prayer)

    This four point summary is slightly elaborated in the next paragraph, together with a comment on the (positive) impact which this behaviour was having on other people.

    No matter what Theophilus may have heard about the Christians in his own time and place, Luke would have him know how well they conducted themselves at the beginning and what a positive response they earned from their fellow citizens.

    Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:19-25

    Unlike the pious believers in the Jerusalem community, the recipients of 1 Peter have not gained the approbation of their peers. Instead, they experience opposition and persecution, just as Jesus himself had done:

    For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

    “He committed no sin,
    and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

    When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. (1Peter 2:19–25 NRSV)

    The final sentence of this passage links nicely with the good shepherd theme in John 10.

    Gospel: Searching for the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John

    The detailed voting results of the Jesus Seminar do not report any voting on this passage, but the commentary in The Five Gospels (p. 435f) reads as follows:

    The words of Jesus in vv. 25-30 pick up the theme of the good shepherd elaborated in vv. 1-18 and develop it along well-known Johannine lines. As in previous sections, there is no echo here of the authentic voice of Jesus.

    The dismissal of these Johannine verses as a “theme of the good shepherd” does not take into account the possibility that John 10 (like John 15) might preserve traditional material deriving from Jesus. Certainly, if there was any material in the Gospel of John that has a claim to be considered for inclusion in the database of historical Jesus materials it would be the two brief parables now found in John 10:1-5.

    The notes this week will draw on the discussion of parable and allegory in John 10 from Raymond Brown’s Anchor Bible commentary (Doubleday, 66. Vol 1, pp 390ff).

    Brown sets out to show that John 10:1-5 “consists of several parables,” while verses 7-30 represent allegorical explanations of those same parables. He notes the following twin-parable structure in these verses:

    The Gate: 1-3a (parable) + 7-10 (explanation)
    The Shepherd: 3b-5 (parable) + 11-18 (explanation)

    Later, vss. 26-30 will offer additional explantion of The Sheep that occur in both parables.

    Brown is not blind to the presence of early Christian catechesis in the present form of these verses, but he also wishes to leave open the possibility that the original impetus for that tradition might derive from Jesus himself:

    In the Synoptic Gospels also, most scholars recognize that in the explanations of the parables … there has been a certain expansion in the interests of early Christian catechesis; but, as we tried to prove in our article cited above [“Parable and Allegory Reconsidered” Novum Testamentum 5 (1962) 36-45] underneath this catechetical expansion and application one finds traces of an explanation that may very well stem from Jesus himself. So too in John x, while not all the explanations of 7 ff. need come from the one time or the one situation, there is no reason to rule out the possibility that we may find among them the traces of Jesus’ own simple allegorical explanation of the parables in x 1-5.

    The possibility that we may have a set of twin parables here is consistent with what we know from earlier forms of the Jesus tradition such as the Sayings Gospel Q. Brown cites the examples of 461 The Tower Builder and 462 The Warring King in Luke 14:28-32 as well as 107 The Lost Sheep and 464 The Lost Coin in Luke 15:3-10. These last two are perhaps part of a triple set that includes 465 The Prodigal Son in vss 11-32, although the prodigal represents a much more developed story than the usual brief parable.

    Not surprisingly, given the close relationship of these parables to the story of the blind man healed by Jesus in John 9, these twin Johannine parables are both related to the theme of imperfect perception.

    The Gate

    The parable of The Gate picks up further traditional themes known from the Synoptic Gospels.

    Brown suggests that Mark 13:34 already preserves the metaphor of the gatekeeper, although it is hardly an image applied to Jesus in that context:

    It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake–for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake. [Mark 13:34-37]

    Brown might be on firmer ground when he identified the theme of the coming thief as playing a part in this Johannine tradition. The unexpected arrival of Jesus “like a thief in the night” was a widely attested Christian theme: 012 Knowing the Danger.

    Brown suggests that the original point of the parable of The Gate (vss. 1-3a) was an attack on the religious leadership of Judean society. The charge that they do not come in through the gate but gain access by other devious means implies that they are bandits and thieves who take advantage of the population for their own profit. Such a criticism seems to be implied by the tradition of the incident in the Temple when Jesus condemned the authorities as having turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves:

    Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” [Mark 11:15-17]
    = Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” [Matt 21:12-13]
    = Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.” [Luke 19:45-46]

    Such a polemical interpretation of this little parable would seem appropriate in the context of John 9:1-10:21, while also offering a good fit with the circumstances in Jesus’ own life time.

    The Shepherd

    The parable of The Shepherd (vss. 3b-5) tends to focus more on the relationship between shepherd and sheep, and this represents a theme with ancient antecedents in the biblical tradition as well as in the ancient world. It is possible that Ezekiel’s criticism of the the leaders of Jerusalem as abusive and self-serving shepherds who prey upon the sheep lies behind this parable.

    The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them–to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.

    Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.

    For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

    As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?

    Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
    I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.

    I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely. I will make them and the region around my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. The trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase. They shall be secure on their soil; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and save them from the hands of those who enslaved them. They shall no more be plunder for the nations, nor shall the animals of the land devour them; they shall live in safety, and no one shall make them afraid. I will provide for them a splendid vegetation so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the insults of the nations. They shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture and I am your God, says the Lord God. [Ezekiel 34:1-31]

    If we are correct in linking the second parable with this passage in Ezekiel it would support the idea that these twin parables were originally part of Jesus’ polemic against the Jerusalem authorities.

    In the subsequent tradition this original point has been modified so that the story is understood as an affirmation of Jesus himself as the gate (vss. 7-10) and the ideal (true) shepherd (vss. 11-18). This reapplication of an earlier tradition is effected in several steps:

    (1) First, Jesus asserts his special status as the gate — the metaphor is now personalized and applied directly to him:

    So again Jesus said to them,
    “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”

    The Gate is no longer simply the proper entry point avoided by thieves and robbers who reveal their true identity by their failure to enter at the appropriate place. Now the Gate is an attribute of Jesus personally; as also seen in the classic Johannine formula in 14:6:

    Jesus said to him,
    “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
    No one comes to the Father except through me.”

    In contrast to Jesus (here considered not as ideal shepherd but as the entry point to salvation), the authorities (and by implication all who rejected the claims about Jesus made by his followers) are “thieves and bandits,” with a special rebuke perhaps intended for the Pharisees who had featured in the larger story of Jesus healing the man born blind:

    All who came before me are thieves and bandits;
    but the sheep did not listen to them [i.e., the Pharisees?]. (vs. 8)

    (2) The next step in the reapplication of the earlier tradition is to identify the blessings given to those who enter salvation through Jesus:

    I am the gate.
    Whoever enters by me will be saved,
    and will come in and go out and find pasture. (vs. 9)

    Those who make Jesus their entry point to God will, according to the evangelist, be saved (a word with social and political connotations in the hellenistic world where rulers were saviors who brought divine blessings to their people). The idyllic quality of this salvation is portrayed with an image of pastoral contentment: the flock will “come in and go out and find pasture.”

    (3) Verse 10 may provide a conclusion to these catechetical explanations on the parable of The Gate:

    The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
    I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (vs. 10)

    (4) We now see a series of further elaborations that develop and explain the parable of The Shepherd, and these will simply be noted here as they lie outside the scope of next Sunday’s readings:

    In verses 11-13 Jesus is the model shepherd who will even die for his sheep, unlike hired hands who have no feeling for the sheep or wolves who simply devour the sheep:

    I am the good shepherd.
    The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
    The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep,
    sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away
    –and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
    The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.

    This is a development not seen in earlier expressions of the shepherd theme, and it has to be seen as reflecting a post-Easter perspective.

    In verses 14-16 the ideal character of Jesus as the shepherd is seen in his intimate knowledge of the sheep:

    I am the good shepherd.
    I know my own and my own know me,
    just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.
    And I lay down my life for the sheep.
    I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
    I must bring them also,
    and they will listen to my voice.
    So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

    In this elaboration of the shepherd tradition we see a continued development of the death theme, the introduction of typical Johannine Father/Son language, and an awareness of the Christian mission to the Gentiles.

    Brown sees verses 17-18 as a short commentary on the theme of dying for the sheep:

    For this reason the Father loves me,
    because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.
    No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.
    I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.
    I have received this command from my Father.

    Here we have moved well away from the original thrust of the twin parables in vss. 1-5, with the focus now firmly on Jesus as the divine Son who has power not only to lay down his life but — uniquely in the NT — also to take it up again. Usually, the resurrection is described as an action by God from which Jesus benefited but here it is seen as something within Jesus’ own divine powers.

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