Resentment

John’s gospel is the most difficult for me to wrap my head around.  Its structure and tone are quite different from the other three gospels—more abstract, more spiritual/philosophical, less dependent on narrative storytelling.  There is also a deep undercurrent of frustration and resentment that flashes into downright anger in places, one of which is today’s gospel reading, John 8:33-47.

This is one of several discourses with “the Jews” (sometimes further narrowed to Pharisees) in which the Evangelist shows Jesus lashing out at those who reject Jesus’ teaching.  “Abraham is our father,” the Jews assert, implying that they are proper Jews and Jesus isn’t.  If they were Abraham’s children, counters Jesus, they would do as Abraham would, and he wouldn’t be trying to kill a man “who has told you the truth that I heard from God.”

Strong stuff, but Jesus is just getting warmed up.  By rejecting what Abraham would have done, Jesus continues, his detractors are not children of Abraham (“true” Jews) but children of the devil instead.  The passage ends with a very uncompromising and absolutist declaration that “Whoever is from God hears the words of God.  The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.”  This is the type of statement seized on by Christian fundamentalists as justification for marginalizing opposing points of view.  Of course, there is a flaw in their argument:  the assumption is that their point of view accurately reflects the words of God, and that therefore opposing viewpoints are ungodly.

Historical context is necessary when reading a passage like this.  John’s gospel is the last of the four to be composed, and was put together at a time when followers of Christ were being expelled as heretics from Jewish congregations.  Up until that time, Christians self-identified as Jews—the next step in Judaism, to be sure, but fundamentally an internal Jewish sect.  In the wake of the Temple’s destruction, however, Judaism had to determine what defines the Jewish faith absent the Temple cult.  The Nazarene sect (followers of Jesus of Nazareth), among others, found itself on the “not Jewish” list.  Given the situation with the Episcopal Church and with wider Anglican Communion today, it is not difficult to imagine what it feels like to be told “You’re not one of us anymore… go away.”  I, too, would be full of resentment and anger, and more than willing to lash out at those who excluded me with condemning theological arguments.

So what to make of this uncompromising “either you’re in or you’re out” look at Christ’s teachings?  Today’s epistle, Romans 13:1-14, helps put it in context for me.  Paul is not big on compromises, and his letters are full of fire-and-brimstone condemnations of all kinds of behaviors, but he understands that underneath it all is the most fundamental, most elemental, of all Christ’s teaching:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  The commandments… are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

That is the lens through which I view all the interpretations of scripture, both New and Old Testaments:  how does this help me love my neighbor.  If an interpretation does harm to my neighbor, then something isn’t right with that interpretation.