[Dialogue] 8/12/10, Spong: The Origins of The New Testament, Part XXXIII: The Gospel of John

Mon Aug 16 08:45:52 CDT 2010

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                  Thursday August 12, 2010                

The Origins of The New Testament, Part XXXIII
The Gospel of John

If I had to give my readers one clue and one clue only that would unlock the Fourth Gospel and allow its honesty and wonder to flow forth, it would be that in reading John one must always keep in mind that the author is not writing history or biography.  Indeed, this author is constantly poking fun at anyone who would take his message literally, misunderstand his use of symbols or attempt to literalize the words he has attributed to Jesus.  Can any of us imagine for one moment an itinerant prophet named John the Baptist literally saying the first time he meets Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world," and then claiming for this Jesus the status of a pre-existent divine being?  Yet that is what John the Baptist does in the first chapter of John.  It is a text that set s a pattern that this gospel writer will follow. What does it mean to name Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  What does it mean to claim for him a pre-existent status?  What experience is this author seeking to communicate?  That is the question with which one is confronted in the opening chapter of this book, and that is only the beginning.
        In the second chapter, we find equally enigmatic words.  Here we are told that at a wedding party Jesus actually changes water into wine so that the party can go on!  Can any of us imagine a set of circumstances in which that narrative would be taken literally?  Medieval alchemists spent centuries trying to turn iron into gold and failed. Given the price of good wine today, perhaps they would have been more successful if they had followed Jesus' example and tried to turn water into wine.  Surely John did not think of this as a literal story and the suggestion later in the story that Jesus' freshly fermented beverage was so superior to that which was served first that it violated the social norm of the day, which was to serve the "good stuff" first and then when the guests were well drunk to bring out the "screw top gallon bottles." So we need to ask just what it was that John was seeking to communicate when he opens his second chapter with this story and calls it "the first  sign" of Jesus' public ministry that "manifested forth his glory."  Perhaps this author drops another clue that these words are not to be taken literally when he begins this particular narrative with the words, "On the third day," since these words would be deeply fraught with meaning in the company of believers to whom these words were addressed.
    In the next episode described by John, Jesus is in Jerusalem and there he drives the money changers out of the Temple.  In the earlier gospels, this story of the cleansing of the temple is the provocative final act that leads directly to the crucifixion.  John, however, places it at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry.  Once again the Jewish audience that first reads John's words would immediately identify this narrative with a reading from the book of Psalms (69:9), which stated that the Messiah would show zeal for the house of God — zeal indeed that would consume him.  They also knew that John was using this episode not to describe something that happened, but to make a messianic claim. These readers would have been familiar with the account from the book of Zechariah, which said that when "the day of the Lord" came, "there would no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of Hosts (14:21)." That was destined to be only the first of many references that John w ould take from the book of Zechariah, a book that shaped the Jesus story far more than most of us have imagined.
    Continuing the same theme in chapter three, John has Jesus say to a man named Nicodemus, "unless you are born anew, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. "  Nicodemus is baffled because he hears these words literally and wonders how it is possible for a grown man to be born anew when he is old,  "Can I climb back into my mother's womb and be born a second time?"  Literalism makes no sense, but John is not writing a literal story.
    In the fourth chapter of John, the author has Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well about water.  The conversation began when he asked the woman to give him a drink from the well.  When she demurred and retreated into the boundary that separates Jew from Samaritan, Jesus said to her, "If you knew who it was that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."  The woman looked at him with the blank stare of literalism and said, in effect, "Man, you don't even have a bucket!"  The Jesus of John's gospel then says, "Whoever drinks of the water I give will never thirst again."  The woman still trapped in the prison of literalism responds, "That is great.  Give me your water and I will never have to come again to this well.  That would make my life easier."
    As if that were not sufficient warning that this book is not to be read literally, John continues his theme when he relates the story of Jesus' disciples returning and interrupting this private conversation.  They then urge Jesus to eat.  To this urging, however, John's Jesus responds by saying, "I have food to eat of which you do not know."  The disciples, still blinded by the literalism through which they hear his words, say to one another: "Has anyone brought him food?"  The theme of anti-literalism goes on.
    In the sixth chapter of John, Jesus is made to place his message into Eucharistic language and then to watch as his words are once again heard as if they are meant to be understood literally.  Here he says: "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me."  The literal-minded disciples are repelled by what seems to them to be a reference to cannibalism, and they begin to draw back and to cease following him.  Time after time, the author of the Fourth Gospel displays the truth that this book is an interpretive book not a literal one.  It is a symbolic book, not a historical book or a biographical story.  No one can read the Fourth Gospel with literal eyes without missing the essence of his message.  Yet, throughout Christian history, this book has been read with literal eyes and this literal misreading has been used to buttress the case for orthodoxy, binding creeds and such rationally incomprehensible ecclesiastical doctrines as the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity.
    One other unique aspect found in John alone is the fact that Jesus time and again is quoted as calling himself by the name, which, according to the book of Exodus, God revealed to Moses as God's own at the burning bush.  Tell them, God said to Moses on that occasion, that "I AM" sent you.  So John now has Jesus say, "Before Abraham was, I AM!" When you see the Son of Man lifted up, then you will know I AM."  There is no "he" in that latter statement, despite the fact that the translators add one because they do not understand what this gospel writer is trying to say.  At the time of Jesus' arrest in the dark of night in the Valley of Kidron, John portrays Jesus as approaching the band of soldiers and Temple police led by Judas and asking, "Whom do you seek?"  They respond, "Jesus of Nazareth."  Jesus says, "I AM."  Translators once again render that "I am he."  John's context, however, renders that translation inoperative, for John goes on to state: "When he said I AM, they  drew back and fell to the ground."  It was strange behavior for an armed guard confronting an unarmed political prisoner if he had said something as mundane as "I am he."  If, on the other hand John was portraying him as uttering and claiming the divine name as they were about to arrest him, then that would be quite another matter.
    "I AM" is a key concept in the Fourth Gospel repeated over and over again.  John alone has Jesus say such things as: "I am the bread of life; I am the door; I am the way, the truth and the life;  I am the vine; I am the good shepherd, and I am the resurrection."  Jesus even asserts through that "I AM" claim that he is the exclusive pathway to God, a statement that has been used throughout Christian history to justify the basest forms of religious imperialism and to fuel the most insensitive kind of missionary evangelism.
    John's gospel must not be literalized if it is to be understood.  It is a profound, even mystical, interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, written by a person deeply rooted in Palestinian Judaism and its words are designed to lead John's readers beyond literal words into a life-giving relationship with God.  History reveals what a high price has been paid because Christians have insisted on literalizing the words of this gospel.  At the Council of Nicea, a literalized understanding of John was used to justify the new orthodoxy of a man named Athanasius, which was destined to cloak the Christian story in a hierarchical authority system in which it became oppressive, insensitive and anything but life-giving.  When the shell of literalism is broken, however, the gospel of John enhances life, expands consciousness and calls us into a new relationship with the one whose deepest claim is to be a doorway into a new experience of that which is transcendent, holy and other.   The call of John's Jesus is not into an engagement with a supernatural being, created in our image, who somehow lives above the sky and who, in the person of Jesus, was thought to have masqueraded as a human being.  This is, of course, a caricature but only a little one.  John's gospel is a work to be entered, a message to be breathed, and a doorway into a life to be lived.  It was not written to enable us to play religion's oldest game, "My God is better than your God and I control the doorway into true belief.  No one can come to God except through my faith system"
    I once was repelled by the Fourth Gospel because I related to it as if it were a literal document.  When I broke the bondage of that mindset, I found in this gospel a real understanding not just of God and of Jesus, but of life itself.  Someday, I hope to spell out that thought in detail.  For now, I must content myself to sketching a new vision of this gospel that all can see.                                    

– John Shelby Spong

                  Question and Answer                  
With John Shelby Spong

Mitzi Roberts, via the Internet, writes:
    Thank you for your enlightenment.  I find the more we try to define God, the more likely it is that we are on the wrong page.  The more I read of your teachings, the more I know that we must not try to understand, but to accept that we will never understand on this plane.  The Bible tells a beautiful story and I love my Episcopal upbringing, but I don't have to take everything in the Bible and prayer book as "gospel."  At 76 years, it is so comforting.

Dear Mitzi,
    What a delightful 76-year-old you are!  Thank you for your letter. The only shame is that, in your "Episcopal upbringing," these things were not brought to your attention 76 years ago, for they were certainly known long before that.
    God is bigger than any human understanding of God.  No Bible, no creed, no doctrine and no dogma can finally define God.  It is a tragedy that so many religious people do not recognize this simple fact.
    The world outside religious circles has certainly been aware of this for years.  Don't you recall the line from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" about the Bible: "It ain't necessarily so."  The Christian life is a journey into the mystery of God.  The deeper we go into that journey, the more we realize that we have to go beyond the boundaries of all religious systems, including Christianity.

– John Shelby Spong

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