William D. Paine

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.

 

Note:  I have begun using Zemanta to add useful links and pictures to my entries.  Most of the non-citation links take you to relevant Wikipedia articles; I strongly caution that Wikipedia is often not reliable factually, but can serve as a useful starting point for further research on a topic. 

I’ve written before about the difficulty of walking in Christ’s footsteps.  Jesus’ teachings are challenging, to say the least, and today’s readings point once again to some of the most challenging of them all.

The Old Testament reading, 2 Kings 6:1-23, is a rather long and rambling collection of deeds by the prophet Elisha.  Towards the end, it relates an episode where Elisha, with God’s help, blinds a Syrian army raiding

Israel and leads them into a trap where they are captured by the Israeli army.  The king then asks Elisha, “Shall I slay them?” (which would have been the normal way to deal with a captured force in those days) but the prophet tells him no, to instead give them food and drink and send them back to their master in Syria.  An unexpected act of kindness and mercy leads to an unexpected outcome: “And the Syrians came no more on raids into the land of Israel.”

Paul’s epistle, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, is hardly a gentle remonstrance, rather a typical Pauline scold.  The thrust of his message is to handle disputes between Christians (“the saints”) within the community internally, not by lawsuit, but there are some subtexts that I find intriguing in Paul’s arguments.  For example, it is clear that one of the justifications made to Paul about why these lawsuits are being filed is that the members of community don’t feel adequate to the task of judging the merits of the disputes.  Roman law, like law today, was highly bureaucratic and complex, behind which stood the awesome edifice of ultimate authority, the State.  Roman citizens naturally deferred to authority not only in law but in daily life; a pater familias, after all, held the right of high and low justice against all in his household, a right that was both very arbitrary and yet also codified into Roman law.  Members of the Christian community, Paul argues, are not to be so slavishly devoted to authority, but are by God’s grace fully capable of judging disputes for themselves and amongst themselves:

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?  And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?  Do you not know that we are to judge angels?  How much more matters pertaining to this life!

This speaks to my individual conscience in a way that is hard to avoid:  Authority can’t determine for me right and wrong, good and bad, friend or enemy.  I am responsible for my choices, for making these judgments about myself and others.

Finally, there is the Gospel reading, Matthew 5:38-48, which contains the famous “turn the other cheek” lesson.  As I’ve written before, this admonition is greatly misunderstood as a lesson in passivity, an invitation to be a doormat for every bully and strongman that comes along.  Rather, it is an invitation to step outside the conventional and do the unexpected.  Jesus references Jewish law (“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”) but then asks his disciples to set authority aside and look into their own hearts for a response in tune with God’s grace.  The key, Jesus explains, is quite simple:  “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Really?  I struggle to be merely adequate, let alone perfect!  I can’t do this.  Yet, Paul says I can, that God’s grace gives me the ability to do things I’ve never contemplated doing before, and that it is my responsibility to step into the hard choices.  Elisha’s mercy towards the Syrians produced the right result because it was the right thing to do, even if unexpected and unconventional.

So where does this take me?  Perfection is an ideal easy to give up on and, no matter how inspired I may be by the pursuit of perfection, I honestly can’t say that I believe it to be possible.  But this is what God, through Jesus, does:  he reminds me that I am not perfect, that it is at my own peril that I grow complacent with my relationship with God and my level of commitment to living the Christ-like life.  There will always be a further step to take, a further hill to climb.  I sometimes feel like Moses, standing on the mountain and seeing, with sight that goes beyond what eyes can see, the promised land, but denied the actuality of it.  But that’s God’s other promise, also through Jesus:  I will get there, through the gateway of death, after a life lived in joyful tension between perfection and reality.