John 7: Confrontational Jesus

In this chapter, I'm struck by how confrontational Jesus is. He's not teaching kindly, he's challenging and arguing directly. He seems frustrated by the unbelief and cynicism he encounters. He talks about how the world hates him because "because [he testifies] that what it does is evil" .

Prayer: God help me to be patient when I'm frustrated and keep the perspective. But at the same time, don't let me back down when clarity and directness are needed.

John 6: "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"

This is a tough chapter. Aside from Jesus's miracles of the loaves and fish, walking on water, etc., I find frustrating how Jesus is so comfortable confusing his dearest disciples. We are able to make more sense of his words, because we know how it all turned out. Also, we are aided by thousands of years of Christian apologists. But why would Jesus be so casual about confusing his friends? When he talks about eating flesh and drinking blood, it makes sense to us because we are familiar with the Last Supper. Why did Jesus wait until he had alienated so many before revealing what he meant? I can't say I'm surprised that people were repulsed by his request for self-cannibalism.

It almost seems, though, that Jesus didn't bring up the image of eating-body-and-drinking-blood until the disciples brought up Moses and the Manna in the desert:

28Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

29Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

30So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'^[c]"

32Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

34"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."

35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

41At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven'?"

43"Stop grumbling among yourselves," Jesus answered. 44"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.'^[d] Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

52Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

53Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."

He only mentions eating flesh and drinking blood in response to the Jews' inability to understand that he was speaking metaphorically. Notice at first he doesn't say "eat my body" first he says "Believe in the one He has sent." They then ask, essentially, "well Moses gave us Manna, what can you do?" Jesus then reduces the importance of manna because it was an earthly thing, but goes with their desire for food. "You want food? I'll give you food that lasts eternally." They couldn't believe it was as simple as "Believe in the one He has sent" so Jesus gives them a metaphor of eternal food. In verses 49 & 49, Jesus returns to the image of bread, to put it in a language they could understand. I wonder if the entire ceremony of communion, the whole image of eating flesh and drinking blood came because his disciples needed a physical manifestation.

Interesting...


Prayer: God, help me to look beyond the practical, everyday needs of life. Help me to hunger after eternal things, and not focus on earthly needs.

Matthew 12:34: For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

I love this verse, and it came up in the message this weekend. It made me think of the Malcolm Gladwell book Blink.

In it, he describes how we undervalue snap judgments. My big takeaway, though, was the necessity to train yourself well in order to prepare yourself for the snap judgment. For example, a group of lawyers studied the paper trail and vouched for the veracity of an ancient Greek statue. A group of art experts saw the statue and knew it was fake right away. They couldn't exactly explain why, but they were right. They were right because they had a lifetime of experience looking at such statues. They were prepared to snap the right way. The art-fan lawyers trusted their reasoning, but hadn't absorbed viscerally the subject well enough to spot it.

So what? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. We can't box off our faith. We can't leave it for Sunday. If we aren't striving to be who God made us all the time, we won't snap the right way when we are called upon. We need to be filling our heart with stuff we'd be proud to have leak out from time to time. If we're filling our heart with bile, we can't be surprised when our mouths reveal the worst in us.

John 5: "I do not accept praise from men, but I know you."

As an aside, I always enjoy seeing Bible references in American culture. Sometimes they are coincidences, but they always make me wonder. The National Naval Medical Center is in Bethesda, Maryland. According to Wikipedia (which marks the extent of my research), the town came before the hospital. And here in John 5, Bethesda is a pool around which "a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed." Did FDR know the reference when he selected the site? Curious...but cool. Our country is thick with faith. The deeper you search, the more you find. It's a treasure.

Back to business. I love when the Bible, and Jesus in particular, gets aggressive. I think our modern (or rather, post-modern) Christianity is too familiar and casual with Jesus. (Spoofed well here). The personal relationship with Jesus has become too comfortable and personalized. We keep the parts of the Bible that make us feel good about ourselves, or loved, or safe, and gloss over the nasty bits about God's awesome-beyond-all-imaginable-scope power. Most importantly, we focus on the benefits, and not so much on the challenges.

It's ironic, because the Pharisees were on Jesus's case for healing and teaching on the Sabbath. Many people will focus on how they are too legalistic, and rely on the law of Moses rather than on the Messiah in front of them. What stuck me, though, is our ability to fit God and faith and obedience into our own little frame. We make God into something finite which we can understand and process and hold over others. The Pharisees reduced Him to the law. Many "Christians" (that goes for a good many "Christ followers") reduce Him to the forgiveness. We see Him as the cool guy reaching out to sinners, and end up with a casual attitude against sin. Or, more importantly, we anthropomorphize Him into something too personal. We lose sight of the powerful God and focus on the intimate God.

I often find myself missing the Catholic liturgy I saw when I worked for Sacred Heart (I can't say I took part in the liturgy, because I never took communion there). While many of the parishioners wouldn't understand my affection for it, I think that old-school churches can instill an image of the powerful God who demands obedience, even as He offers forgiveness. I'm talking pillars & pipe organs here. The great tradition of art & culture which has lifted humanity out of the sewers. God called us to give ourselves to Him on His terms. That means humbling ourselves. That means music meant to glorify Him, and reflect on His greatness, not just tug at heartstrings. Somehow the way we worship seems a bit too cute, too familiar. We want church the way we want everything else, with coffee and power chords and flashing lights.

I'm not calling for legalism, obviously. (I'm not really calling for anything). It just makes me nervous how we get very casual sometimes. Sometimes I walk into a beautiful church, and feel a different aspect of God's presence. Not the "I'm here with you, I forgive you, I lift you up through troubled times" side of God we often focus on. In a cathedral, it is the side of God who says:
41"I do not accept praise from men, 42but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God^[d]?

45"But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

Sometimes, I need to experience the God who isn't there to make me feel better, He's there to teach me how to live right, even though I'm a screw-up. Sometimes, I need to be in the presence of HE WHO CALLS ME OUT!

John 4: 'One sows and another reaps'

There's a lot in this book, from Jesus's willingness to be seen with a sinful woman, to the fact that he associates with Samaritans, to his healing of the official's son. What sticks with me, though is this passage:

31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."

32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"

34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

It's interesting to me that Jesus saw his times as the harvest. How shall we interpret this? He associates doing God's work with eating, particularly his conversation with the Samaritan woman. Bringing her to God is "harvesting" her. So how did she grow in preparation for the harvest? What made her ripe? What was the hard work done by others? What is the seed?

If I could pursue the analogy, I see it a couple possible ways: God planted us as the seed. The seed is neutral, just the nugget of identity. The "hard work" done by "others" is a combination of the values education we receive from our parents, one the one hand, and the historical church and writings which precede us. Moses did the hard work. The writers of the Torah did the hard work. Thomas Aquinas did the hard work. St. Augustine did the hard work. Jeremiah did the hard work. David did the hard work. Solomon did the hard work...Dante Alighieri...The Gospel writers...Paul the apostle...Nate Saint...St. Peter...Billy Graham...Thomas More...Martin Luther...G.K. Chesterton...C.S. Lewis...John Bunyan...Our Sunday School teachers.

We reap their harvest, and work for the next crop, and the next, and the next.

What if the seed is our sinfulness? What if the seed is what we took from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And after we fall, we wrestle with these questions, with our dual nature until we are reaped and returned. Salvation through Jesus is the harvest, while the old Hebraic law was the hard work. Laws regulating everything from what not to eat to whom not to sleep with. And closeness to God was measured by close adherence to the Law. Hard work, indeed. Jesus is the reaper, not minimizing the importance of the hard work which came before, but bringing it to its inevitable conclusion.

Just as you can't reap a harvest without the work which came before, Jesus's sacrifice comes only after the law has been planted in us. The law is inextricably linked to our forgiveness. Without the law, forgiveness is meaningless. Without growth, through hard work teaching and training our children in the Bible, and in moral instruction, reaping won't provide any nourishment.

Prayer: God help me to do the hard work. Help me to strive for you and show others what a Christ-filled life can look like. Let me do my share of the hard work.

John 3: Doing evil=hating light?

Ok, so I'm having a bit of trouble with this one:

19"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

20"For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

21"But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."

It's pretty commonly understood, I think, that we sinners can often fail, yet hate our own behavior. Didn't Paul say something to this effect?

15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)

I definitely see how while we are in the depths of our sin we avoid the light. In fact, when I have trouble praying, I take it as a sign that there is some sin or distraction in my life coming between me and God that I need to eliminate. But I don't know that everyone who does evil hates the light. Some of us who do evil hate the evil, even as we do it.

In other news...

OK, this is totally unrelated, but HOLY CRAP this is cool.

John 2: The frailty of man

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."
-Joseph Baretti

What stands out to me in John 2 is Jesus's awareness of the fickleness and fallibility of man. Here is the particular passage:

23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.^[c] 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

This show Jesus was all too aware of man's sinfulness. In fact, Jesus seems wary in verse 24: he "would not trust himself to them, for he knew all men." Notice it isn't "He knew these were some particularly sketchy guys." He knew all men. We are all sinful, and we each have in us the capacity for some bad things. At Cana also, he is hesitant to reveal himself. He says to his mother: 4"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come." He knows how parts of humanity will react to him: they will despise his purity. He even distrusted those who believed in his name for "he knew what was in a man". Turns out, he was right to be wary.

We all have to battle ourselves, our sinfulness. We all have our dark and petty affectations, our wounded pride. Men use faith and reason to battle their sexuality, women use faith and reason to contain their emotions. No political utopia can happen on this Earth that will remove our ability to be evil to each other. No economic social justice will take away man's ability to harm other men. All of us struggle to trust Him and let him purify, refine and guide us.

Prayer: God help me to be the man you created me to be. Help me to become the perfect man you created, before humanity's fall. I know it won't happen in this life, but challenge me, guide me, strengthen me, teach me, purify me. You know what is in a man. Clear out this temple. Destroy it, and raise it again in you.

In the Beginning was the Word...

As do so many pretentious types, I'm going to put my journal not on paper hidden in my nightstand, but on the web where I'll at least have the illusion of writing for others. Community Christian Church (which I attend) is encouraging its members to read and journal about the book of John throughout the month of November; one book per day. As you can tell by the date, I'm a tad behind schedule. So now you know a little more about me, huh?
As it happens, I find the first verses of John to be a very appropriate place to begin a journal:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Odd, huh? I've been thinking about this, and not in the way I imagine many other Christians do. (Before I go on, you need to know I love Western Civilization. I love history with the passion of the convert. I don't know nearly enough about it, so I still have the enthusiasm and ignorant bliss of puppy love). One thing that struck me about the verse is that it reminds me of the early success of Judaism. It is my understanding that Judaism (of which I know sadly little) was greatly boosted in its infancy by its reliance on Torah scholarship. The faith was able to spread in large part because it reached beyond the local household gods of the pagans to a God which was universal and omnipresent. Because Judaism held to the Torah so faithfully, there was a standard which was uniform, which could travel, which could be handed down to generations.

In other words, God set apart the Jews not only to be his chosen people ethnically, but also ideologically by their unique (as far as I know) reliance on the written word. So in a very literal sense, "In the Beginning was the Word..." not only in the sense of Father, Son and Spirit before creation, but also in the beginning of the Earthly realization of the Judeo-christian faith.

I wonder if the "Word" written about in these verses reveals something also about the nature of man as distinct from the rest of creation. Man was created in God's image, right? Well if the "Word was God", is there some aspect of the Word still in humanity? Is our ability to speak, read, write and communicate abstractly part of what makes us God's image?

In that light, how do I interpret verse 3?
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

If by "him" we are now talking not just God but Word, then part of creation is not just the coming-into-being but in the naming. Something was created not just when it was floating in the cosmos or crawling through the primordial muck, but when God (or Adam) named it; gave it its own word. Through naming an object, it begins to exist in the realm of ideas. Without a name, an object, though "made" does not exist in the realm of ideas.

Just as Winston Smith at Orwell's Ministry of Truth un-created concepts by removing dangerous words from the dictionary, can it be that this passage refers to the creation of concepts (and physical objects even) by the creation of that province of God and man, language?

4In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

In the word was life, and that life was the light of men. Our language, our ability to "wrestle with God" is the light of men.
(Dennis Prager, a radio host, blogger, Jewish thinker & author, and all-around Good Man, contrasts "Israel", which can mean to "wrestle with God", with "Islam", which means "submission". He (and I) prefer a God that wants to challenge and engage us rather than a God who wants to dominate us. I find that train of thought satisfying).
Anyway, that life (the word, language, history, poetry, literature, the Holy Scriptures) is the light of men. Amen to that.

OK, so there's blog post one. I'm sure most of these won't venture so annoyingly far afield. But since it's the inaugural, I thought I should explain the title. In coming posts, I will continue to wrestle with God, and words, and the light of life, until I stop, which will likely be any day now, knowing me.

Prayer: God help me to listen to you, to quiet myself and push out the distractions. Help me let you prune any branch in me which does not bear fruit. Let me serve you in all things, and refine me until I'm with you. Let that "life (which) was the life of men" shine a bit from within me.