John 16: Birthing

As we've observed many times, no one was transcribing the conversations of a historical Jesus. The author of John often writes about the issues and experiences of his community and places predictive or instructive words in Jesus' mouth as a way of establishing authority. If Jesus said it, after all, it has to be right. The obvious problem, of course, is that nobody can even verify that there was a historical Jesus who matched the mythical character in the gospel narratives, much less verify what such a person actually said. Thus, the author of John uses the characters of the disciples in the story to provide additional validation. Toward the end of John 16, for example, the disciples are made to say, "We know that you know all things, and no one needs to question you," and so the reader is expected to believe what the characters in the story believe, through a sort of vicarious trust. It is not all that different from the readers of a Stephen King novel believing in vampires or ghosts because the characters in a fictional story encountered them.

We will set aside this sort of vicarious trust based on fictionalized accounts, even though there may be some historical basis for the account as the author of John recorded. Instead, we'll look at what the author of John wrote, keeping in mind that he and his community faced a great deal of hardship and persecution from the Roman Empire. (We won't get into the myriad causes of that persecution.)

As John 16 continues from the promise of an internal guidance system, the author of John has Jesus speak cryptically about the disciples not seeing him and then seeing him, and pain that will turn to joy. Then, the author has Jesus promise the disciples that anything they request in Jesus' name will be granted to them. Finally, as the chapter closes, the author asserts that Jesus has conquered the world. Let's take a look at these three aspects of this passage in more detail.

How Not to Be Seen

The bits about seeing Jesus and not seeing him and then seeing him again are even written as confusing enough that the disciples in the story don't understand it. Some would read this passage as foreshadowing for the resurrection story, and it certainly makes dramatic sense to view it that way. In this case, it is a literary device that is more or less useless to us in terms of practical application. There is something else here, however, that may point in a different direction. The author compares the experience of the disciples to that of a mother giving birth. Some commentators read this bit as a reference to the earth giving birth to the resurrected Jesus, or some other reference to a rebirth of the Christ figure. Just reading the passages indicates that this cannot be what is intended. The disciples are the ones in pain, and they are the ones who will metaphorically give birth to something that will bring them joy.

Perhaps the author is writing about the birth of the Christian sect, that the disciples will give birth to a new movement within Judaism and away from Judaism that will bring joy. The author of John didn't have the advantage of seeing what monstrosities religious organizations can become when they have power, but rather saw the command of Jesus to love radically as a game changer from previous religious traditions. This idea to love one another first and foremost is what conquered the world for the author of John. So, if the disciples are giving birth to a new religious movement, the author is writing from an optimistic perspective that hasn't been entirely borne out in the history (and current reality) of the Christian church. Certainly, a global political powerhouse designed to control a population through shame and fear does not seem like something that would bring its creators joy. Maybe I just don't find joy in the same things as some other folks. 

What if the author is not thinking in terms of a global political powerhouse designed to control a population through shame and fear, though? What if the author was thinking in terms of how people and communities grow and mature? We considered in the first portion of John 16 that the Jesus character had to disappear in order for the disciples to take the responsibility of living into his example of radical love. When the Exemplar is around, doing all the work, taking all the risks and responsibility, life is pretty easy for the followers. When they are suddenly faced with doing the work of radical love themselves, becoming personally responsible for living into the principles they have embraced, life can become a little more challenging. Painful even. But that sort of commitment to integrity pays big dividends in terms of personal satisfaction and joy. And that joy originates from an individual's own innermost being, so it cannot be taken away by anything external. And that intentional life of integrity has influence that reaches beyond the individual.

The author of John may be envisioning what he hopes for his community -- that they take seriously the example of radical love exemplified in their image of Jesus and that they take personal responsibility for living by that example, even when it seems difficult and painful. Then, his community would see Jesus again, not because of any sort of miraculous return, but because they had each become a living embodiment of radical love -- each one of them an Exemplar for others to learn from and imitate. Maybe conveying these ideas directly seemed less effective than contextualizing everything in the Jesus myth, but somehow many people have glossed right over any suggestion of personal responsibility in the author's words.

In Jesus' Name

The apparent guarantee about receiving from God anything asked for in Jesus' name hasn't done anything to bolster a sense of personal responsibility. People read these promises from the author of John, placed in the mouth of the Jesus character, and they draw all sorts of conclusions about the magical formula of prayer. (For the sake of ease, let's define prayer here as petitionary -- asking a supernatural for something. All prayer may not fit into this category, but petitionary prayer is really what we're talking about.)

Some people even today believe that their financial, physical, emotional, and social well-being are ultimately dependent on their faith and their prayers. Some people even today believe that when something undesirable happens in their lives, God is punishing them or testing them. It would be a lot easier if passing the test involved taking more personal responsibility and trusting the advice of competent professionals, but usually passing such a "test of faith" seems to involve trusting or waiting on God to act on one's behalf. It's rather like being passive aggressive toward an imaginary supernatural, but doing it with an attitude of abject dependence.

I grew up in this sort of culture, in which prayers were believed to be answered directly by the supernatural, and I have the benefit of experiencing life on both sides of this belief. Now, with over a decade of prayerlessness under my belt, I can attest that life is better without prayer. What I may have expected God to do for me before, I now recognize as my own responsibility. Some things are beyond my control, of course, and for those things I can seek the advice of competent experts. Some things are even beyond the control of competent experts, and in those instances I can hope for a desirable outcome, realizing that it doesn't mean anything one way or the other about me or how acceptable or worthy I am. I know that things will go the way I want them to just as often whether I pray to God (in Jesus' name or otherwise) or I pray to my toaster -- I will get the experience of a Yes, No, or Wait answer regardless of the object of my prayer. In which case, why pray at all? 

I'm not sure how many believers read this commentary, but if there are prayerful people reading along, here is an experiment that you can conduct in your own life: Stop praying for two months. See how things go. Continue to be mindful, meditate, and be introspective if you like.) Also be aware of your own temptation to self-sabotage your life. Not relying on God to solve your problems for you means that you have to take responsibility for your own life. Try it for two months straight and keep track of your good days and bad days, your tragedies and celebrations. Then go back to petitioning God for two months. Keep track of your good days and your bad days, your tragedies and celebrations. Is there a difference? If so, maybe your experience of prayer has something to it that I never experienced. If the practical reality of your life is essentially the same whether you pray or not, maybe you would want to reevaluate your expectations of prayer.

In any case, we should also consider what it means to ask for something in Jesus' name. We have no idea what this may have meant to the author of John. Maybe he believed, as some people still do today, that one's prayers must include the words, "in Jesus' name," in order for them to be effective. As we have observed before, this is the very epitome of magic. If I do the right things, say the right magic words, make the right symbolic gestures -- Poof! I get the results I want. Such prayers are just a Christian version of magical incantations. Maybe that fits with the cultural beliefs of the late first century. 

Maybe the author of John had something else in mind, though. Maybe asking for something in Jesus' name is another way of saying, "If you are following the example of Jesus, if you have his heart and his mind, if you are walking in the way of compassion and radical love, the things you wind up desiring will flow naturally from that way of being." Maybe the author of John is even suggesting, "If you have the attitude of the Exemplar, and you recognize your own power in your life, you can accomplish things you never dreamed possible."

Conquering the World

Whatever he meant, though, the author follows up by directly admitting that much of the words he attributes to Jesus are figures of speech, in other words, not to be taken literally. He legitimizes the scattering of the disciples with predictive statements of Jesus (written over fifty years after any scattering might have occurred), and then he has Jesus proclaim that he has conquered the world. Indeed, some segments of the church do seem in many ways to still be on a crusade to conquer the world and make everyone behave the way certain religious leaders want them to behave, but the author of John had no clue how imperialistic and politically powerful Christianity would become. What could he have meant by asserting that Jesus had conquered the world?

Most likely, the world is a metaphor here for the widely accepted cultural and societal assumptions about what matters most and what gives life value. Today, we might interpret the world as the glorification of capitalism, the perceived importance of having an expensive home in an exclusive neighborhood and all the toys and entertainment devices one can possibly grab. The world may be the perceived separation of people based on skin color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexuality. The world is certainly the idea that wealth and power make life more worthwhile, that the promise of wealth and power are worth any sacrifices necessary. 

Jesus in the gospel of John is also a metaphor. The Jesus character is an exemplar of radical love that places people and community as more important than possessions, an exemplar of fully inhabiting one's identity and deriving satisfaction from living authentically rather than from living according to an externally derived set of criteria, an exemplar of engaging in building relationships and focusing on human connection rather than engaging in building empires and focusing on stockpiles of useless distractions from the messiness of human connection. 

Perhaps the author of John believed that people would recognize the futility of the socially perpetuated myth of wealth and power if they experienced the fullness of human connection and authenticity available to people. Perhaps he believed that people would be wise enough to choose what is deeply meaningful and satisfying in life over what is ephemeral and fatuous. Millions of people seem not to be wise enough even to understand that this is the choice before them. 

Here is an opportunity for clarity in your life. No supernatural is going to do the things for you that are your responsibility to do. All of the wealth and power in the world will not make your life more satisfying; these things just bring different kinds of anxieties. Your willingness to prioritize building connection within yourself and with the human beings around you is the key that unlocks meaningfulness and satisfaction in life. Your willingness to grow into greater authenticity with confidence is what allows you to transcend the pettiness of living from distraction to distraction until you're put in a box. Connection and authenticity can be painful, more painful than the numbness of being disconnected and irresponsible. But along with that pain comes the opportunity to give birth to something amazing -- You.

John 6: Fully Consuming Our Values (or how a Humanist interprets symbolic cannibalism)

As with the previous chapter, John 6 is arranged as a miracle story followed by theological commentary. It's possible to take shorter passages and comment on them as distinct ideas, but the text obviously connects the ideas of Jesus providing food for the masses and claiming to be "bread of life". While we strolled through the gospel of Mark, we took a look at some possible lessons from the story of the five thousand being fed. The version of the story in John doesn't diverge all that much from the story as it appeared in Mark, so we can perhaps just make a few comments about that miracle story and move on into this "bread of life" business.

Some have implied that the feeding of the five thousand suggests a creation miracle. This is one possibility, since there's nothing to require miracle stories to match practical reality. Certainly, the people in the story seem to think that it is an impressive trick, because the author has them pursuing Jesus to see more magic. One might wonder, though, what is the point of creating so much more than needed? Twelve baskets full of food is wastefully more than what was necessary to feed the people there. Either the character of Jesus is a poor judge of appetite, or the twelve baskets are symbolic rather than literal. As to what they symbolize, your guess is as good as anyone else's.

It is apparent from the story, however, that people are impressed enough with Jesus' ability to meet their physical needs that they want to coerce or force him into a position of leadership of their own design. Quite possibly they are revolutionaries, ready to find someone to lead them against Rome. Maybe they are less willing to work for their own well-being if there is someone for whom it is effortless. Strange that the crowds will travel great distances and inconvenience themselves in order for someone else to provide for them. Maybe we are simply meant to see these people as those who couldn't provide for themselves—people who were able to pursue Jesus around the countryside because they had no prospects for work that would provide for their basic needs. Or maybe they are just characters in a story that represent something. Maybe the reader is meant to identify with this wonderstruck crowd.

There's some indication that the Jesus character in the gospel of John is positioned as a "new Moses," a spiritual leader who is superior to Moses and who will lead the people of his generation into freedom. In the Hebrew scriptures, the Israelites are led by Moses out of Egypt and into a barren wilderness, where they eat manna (literally "what is it?"), which Moses tells them is the bread that the Lord has given them to eat. So this passage equating Jesus with a provider of food connects him to Moses covertly, but the author(s) of John make this connection explicit in the theological exposition that follows the miracle story.

Incidentally, we're more or less skimming past the bit about the Jesus character walking on water. There simply isn't much to the scene aside from a fanciful bit of Christian mythology. Perhaps this is intended to demonstrate that Jesus is God, since in a Jewish context, God is the one who controls nature. This is an understandable assertion given the beliefs of Christians, but there just isn't much else to draw from it except that Christians find their supernaturally divine version of Jesus to be compelling.

After recounting the tale of miraculous provision of bread and fish for five thousand ill-prepared revolutionaries and Jesus’ escape from their seditionist desires by walking across the sea, the author of John expresses something about the identity of Jesus and the requirements of participating in the kingdom of heaven. We might gain some insight from this passage about our own identities and how we build a better world. True to an internal formula of the fourth gospel, the author conveys this teaching through discourses between Jesus and the hungry crowd, Jesus and the Jews, and Jesus and his disciples. The distinction in these verses centers around “bread that perishes” versus “true bread from heaven.” With the hungry crowd, the author establishes that there really is no comparison between Moses and Jesus, though both spiritual leaders provided sustenance. According to John’s author, Jesus turns the traditional concept of manna on its head. No longer is manna contextualized as heaven-sent, life-giving provision, but it is rather one more example of food that perishes. Everyone who ate of the manna in the wilderness died; by contrast, there is a spiritual bread which nourishes more deeply and abundantly.

Jesus is portrayed here as cunningly insightful with regard to the crowd’s intentions. As with other conversations in the gospel of John, Jesus expresses dismay that people continually want to be amazed with signs and miracles—more eager to have things done for them through supernatural means than they are to assume personal responsibility for their own spiritual maturity. Thus, “bread” in John 6 quickly becomes about much more than physical food; Jesus suggests that preoccupation with one’s appetite for material things will cease to have priority once one gets a taste of more substantive spiritual food. An unfortunate quality of the “bread of life” Jesus offers is that it is a bit more challenging than his listeners are willing to accept, and it is perhaps a challenge to the Jewish authorities that seek to define the spiritual lives of their flocks through precise legalism. While many believers find a reflection of the communion ritual or an assertion of the redemptive power of Jesus’ crucifixion, it’s more likely that the bread of life offered here is a way of being—a path of genuine, fearless love—that threatens to undermine societal structures of control and power.

This isn’t stated explicitly in the gospel, however; the gospel writer simply has Jesus proclaim that he is the bread of life. When the Jewish authorities start to get upset that Jesus claims to have come from heaven, he exacerbates their frustration by claiming that people need to eat his flesh as if it were bread. In fact, he claims that he offers nourishment for the entire world. Jesus even goes a step further and claims that people can only experience heaven if they eat his flesh and drink his blood. At this, even Jesus’ disciples blanch (which in and of itself is enough to suggest that this passage symbolizes something other than a communion ritual, with which an early Christian audience would presumably have been familiar). Beyond that, Jesus then clarifies that he is not talking about physical nourishment but about spiritual nourishment, noting that the spiritual way of life he promoted was something that many people simply could not stomach.

Miraculous provision of food and causing a stir at the temple is all very inspiring, but people even today seem less interested in a teaching that challenges them to live with greater integrity and intentionality. Some Christian thinkers have also seen this passage as dealing with something beyond an uncontroversial communion ceremony. Martin Luther considered this discourse to be a teaching about faith. “Belief in” Jesus is what is meant by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. At the time that Luther was writing on this passage, however, it was apparently unimportant to define what it meant to “believe in” Jesus. Luther doesn’t go into specifics.

While not likely, it’s possible that the gospel writer intended to convey that faith in Jesus is the one true way to an eternal spiritual life that begins at the moment of one’s death, having little to do with one’s actual earthly existence save the singular decision to believe and perhaps the drive to persuade others to make a similar singular decision in anticipation of earthly death. The portrayal of Jesus' commandments, however, suggests something beyond a mere decision to believe. There is a call to live differently, which may or may not have any connection with a belief in an afterlife. There are behavioral implications to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus, and it is likely that the author of John had strong reasons for pointing this out to his own community.

So, we can read John 6 from a perspective that acknowledges Jesus as a model of expected behavior. In the story of the ancient Israelites, Yahweh (through Moses) had provided physical sustenance. Yet, physical sustenance does not provide life; it only delays death. Deep, meaningful, satisfying life must come from something deeper, more meaningful, and more satisfying than mere physical sustenance. Spiritual sustenance is gained through commitment to a way of being, represented here by Jesus’ life and actions. (We can also acknowledge different people who provide equally powerful examples of an inspiring way of being.)

You can’t experience abundant life in small doses, only attempting to exhibit deep love, compassion, and justice when it's convenient. Instead, you have to absorb deeply the very human identity of being loving, compassionate, and just in order to experience abundant life. In the terms of the author of John, you have to take in the very essence of the way of being Jesus represents. “Believing in” Jesus thus becomes synonymous with trusting that the way of life he promotes is possible and preferable. “Believing in” Jesus means recognizing that one must set aside all objections and fears, and consume his way of being into the deepest core of oneself. You don't have to believe that Jesus was a historical fact or that he was any more divine that anyone else in order to wholeheartedly imbibe a loving, compassionate, just way of being.

Incidentally, interpreting the passage this way also takes into consideration the author’s frustration with demands for miracles—actions that ordinary people can't perform. Expecting miracles causes people to rely on some external means of fixing their problems, an external provision of abundant life. What the Jesus character suggests is that there is some personal responsibility for abundant life, fueled internally by individual willingness to transform one’s way of being.

This is as difficult a teaching as cannibalism. Some people have managed to justify actually eating flesh and drinking blood. Fewer people have lived with fearless love as a primary guiding principle. This is an offensive suggestion for both those who have nothing and those who believe they have much to protect, as challenging a call to those people who are oppressed as to those people who benefit from the oppression of others. Living by a principle of universal and fearless love might be exactly what is intended by abundant life, and yet it seems to require more from an individual than it offers to that individual. This is why one must take in that identity completely—to figuratively consume everything about a loving, compassionate, just way of being—to believe in the possibility and desirability of that identity without reservation. Otherwise, our own doubts and fears will always stand in the way of abundant life.

We have to decide where we are in this story about us. Are you a member of the crowd waiting for someone else to be responsible for providing you with a deeply satisfying experience of life? Abundant life can't be given, it has to be lived out. Perhaps you're ready to recognize your own responsibility for living into an identity that reflects a best possible version of yourself. 

Are you in superficial agreement with guiding principles about being loving, compassionate, and just, but doubtful that you can live out those principles in the world? Our guiding principles are there to guide us. When we set them aside for what seem like more reasonable courses of action, we are letting fear get in the way of what we claim to believe. Perhaps you're ready to imbibe your principles more deeply—to take them in completely so that you draw on those values with confidence and conviction.

Are you finding it a challenge to live with integrity and intentionality by guiding principles that contribute to greater well-being in the world, because you seem to give a lot more universal and fearless love than you get in return? Sometimes we have to seek out relationships with other people who are as deeply committed to their guiding principles. And when we aren't getting what we want, it may be because we aren't asking for what we want. If it matters to you that your life reflects your deepest values, perhaps you're ready to seek out the kinds of people who will empower and encourage you in a meaningful way. These aren't always the people who have known us the longest. At the same time, no one can provide the kind of support and encouragement you most want if you don't let people know what you want and need.

A Little Experiment: Act the part. Our actions are fueled by our beliefs, and yet sometimes we have to act on our values even before we are completely confident in our ability to do so. This week, take responsibility for a behavior that reflects a best possible version of yourself, even if you think it won't go so well. If you know what a best possible version of yourself would do, then your behavior will build your confidence in that vision of who you can be.

Another Experiment: Imbibe deeply. If you've done the work in previous weeks of writing down your guiding principles, read over them every day and notice when you have opportunities to live them out. When we make decisions on auto-pilot, we are more likely to let our fear or anxiety guide us. When we are more intentional and thoughtful, our guiding principles can play a bigger part of our decision-making.

One More Experiment: Speak up. Have a conversation with someone you typically expect encouragement and empowerment from. Let that person know what you are trying to change in terms of living more intentionally and with greater integrity to your deepest values. Also, let that person know what you would like from them. They may be excited to be a part of your journey. They may say, no thanks. This can be very difficult to hear, but either way, you will know better what to expect from that relationship.