The project is grounded in the postmodern biblical scholarship of Karen Armstrong, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and the Jesus Seminar, as well as the transforming work of Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, whose theology of Creation Spirituality has reclaimed Catholic mysticism for post-modern cosmology. Appendix One contains reimagined rituals of Holy Communion that reflect an invitation to commit to the ongoing salvation work of non-violent, distributive, justice-compassion.Appendix Two is a Bible study for Holy Week that explores in depth the meaning of kenosis.

The Year of Luke — now available on Kindle.

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In the Northern Hemisphere of Planet Earth, now is the time of the first harvest.  In the old European Celtic Wheel of the Year, the bread for the festival Communion Mass (Lammas, August 1) was made from the first grains – barley, wheat, rye.  This year, 2012, the great “bread basket of the world” – midwestern United States – has been in drought for months.  The winter wheat crop was good. But the summer corn and soybean crops are gone.

Economic uncertainty is a symptom; the disease is planet-wide: ecological breakdown, climate change, “global warming.”  Denying the facts of climate change has been a priority for right-wing business and Christian fundamentalist leaders.  Unlimited sums of money have been poured into research that surely would destroy the credibility of left-wing “socialists” determined to destroy the “freedom” of the people to make all the money they want to make; until Richard Muller, professor of physics of UC Berkeley took his “no strings attached half-million bucks” from the Koch Brothers and discovered the scientists were right – not only about climate change, but the fact that humans are the cause.  What really fries the right is that Prof. Muller was a climate change skeptic.

One of the prophets of our time is the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox. Fox is the founder of a theology called Creation Spirituality, which has at its core the revolutionary conviction that the Universe and everything in it is an original blessing, not an original sin.  At a recent conference sponsored by Evolve Chesapeake (a Creation Spirituality community), Fox discussed the necessity for “awakening imagination for transformation” – a mouthful of words that boils down to putting human creativity to work to solve the problem.  After all, as Professor Muller says, human creativity got us into this ecological mess and human creativity can get us out of it.

Fox suggests that super-capitalism – the hegemony of the very wealthy – runs on the suppression of our own creativity – i.e., wilful ignorance.  Wilful ignorance prompted Marie Antoinette to wonder why – if they don’t have bread– the people can’t eat cake instead?  Now as then, the economic precariousness of the working classes has not yet percolated up through the layers of protective investments to affect the well-being of the wealthy.  In a New York Times Op ed, “Corn for Food, Not Fuel,” Colin A. Carter and Henry I. Miller (July 30, 2012) write:

        By suspending renewable-fuel standards that were unwise from the start, the Environmental Protection Agency could divert vast amounts of corn from inefficient ethanol production back into the food chain, where market forces and common sense dictate it should go. The drought has now parched about 60 percent of the contiguous 48 states. As a result, global food prices are rising steeply. Corn futures prices on the Chicago exchange have risen about 60 percent since mid-June, hitting record levels, and other grains such as wheat and soybeans are also sharply higher. Livestock and dairy product prices will inevitably follow. . . . The price of corn is a critical variable in the world food equation, and food markets are on edge because American corn supplies are plummeting. The combination of the drought and American ethanol policy will lead in many parts of the world to widespread inflation, more hunger, less food security, slower economic growth and political instability, especially in poor countries.

“Who cares?” says the ghost of the clueless Marie Antoinette.  But inevitably, the shortage of cake (never mind the absence of bread) will become apparent, even to those who thought that the higher the price the greater the profit for them.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke reports a parable told by Jesus that has stumped the faithful for centuries.  But the meaning is perhaps not so mysterious, despite the ending – which may or may not be an addition supplied by Luke.  At the end of the parable of the money in trust, in which a landowner returns to find that one of his slaves had been too afraid of the master’s ruthlessness to risk investing the money entrusted to him, the boss says “I’m telling you, to everyone who has, more will be given and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken away.”  He then rewards his corporate allies ten-fold, and orders the execution of the members of the board who opposed his plan to merge with another company ( Luke 19:12-27).  Putting the parable in the current context, suppose your CEO, a known crook whom everyone hates, gives you a million dollars to invest in corn futures and ethanol production.  The only way to maintain your livelihood may be to bury the money in the atrium garden. You won’t get a raise – your colleagues who play the game will get their reward – but you will at least save your life. Or, as in the parable of the Shrewd Manager, if your boss is threatening to fire you because the profit margin isn’t satisfying the shareholders, make side-bets that pay off the creditors and save the business (Luke 16:1-8).

Jesus’ parables tell us how use our creativity to subvert the putative rulers of Earth.  Jesus got into trouble for suggesting that the way to assure that all of the people have food to eat is to share whatever they have.  And don’t assume that your traditional enemy has no soul.  The very powers that are supposed to have your best interest at heart will pass you by on the other side of the road while you die in the ditch (“The Good Samaritan” Luke 10:30-35).  To love your enemies is to have no enemies.

The much-misunderstood and dismissed Apostle Paul wrote in the first century:

        I don’t have to tell you that we are living in the most decisive moment in human history.  The hour has already passed for you to be roused from your sleep, because the time of ultimate fulfillment is nearer now than when we first put our unconditional confidence and trust in God.  The night is almost gone, the day is almost here.  Let us rid ourselves of the preoccupations of the darkness and clothe ourselves with the armor of light.  Let us conduct ourselves in ways befitting those who live in the full light of day, not in gluttony and drunkenness, now in promiscuous sexual behavior nor in uninhibited self-indulgence, not in contentiousness and envy.  But adopt the manner of life of our lord, Jesus, God’s Anointed, and make no concession to the lifestyle of this age and its pursuit of self-gratification. . . . For the empire of God is not about food and drink, but it is about the integrity and peace and joy that comes through God’s presence and power among us. Romans 13:11-14, 14:17.  The Authentic Letters of Paul (Polebridge Press, 2010).

The first step is to acknowledge the depth of the sin, but what does this mean in a secular world? Paul is not talking about petty trespass, like making love before marriage, or eating too much at a party.  Paul is not suggesting that the answer is easy piety – going to church, giving money to charity, volunteering at the soup kitchen.  When Paul talks about making no concession to the lifestyle of this age, he’s not implying the internet is evil, or technology is de-humanizing, or that abortion, divorce, and contraception will send you to hell.  That’s the easy stuff.  What’s not so easy is the integrity that comes through the presence and power of God.

The presence and power of God is radical fairness – distributive justice-compassion.  The only way to achieve that is through the radical abandonment of self-interest.  In Paul’s words, “no concession to the lifestyle of this age and its pursuit of self-gratification.”  This is the “inner work” that Matthew Fox calls the via negativa.  To do this inner work means acknowledging and owning the conditions that lead to fear for survival, greed, war, and the destruction of the Planet.  That “inner work” results in a transformation of attitude that then leads to creative ways to act with distributive justice-compassion – to a share world instead of a greed world.

In a share world, when corn is lost to drought, what is saved is not dedicated to conversion into fuel, but used for food.  In a share world, mountaintops are not destroyed to save the expense of deep-mining for coal. In a share world, land and water are not destroyed for short-term economic gain.  Paul claims that Jesus “made no concession to the lifestyle of this age and its pursuit of self-gratification.”  Indeed, Jesus got into major trouble for suggesting that while Cesar may have thought he was master of the universe, he in fact owned nothing but the coin with his name on it.  “God” owns the earth and everything in it.

Apocalypticism is on the rise, whether among religious fundamentalists or atheists.  For the religious – especially Christian fundamentalists – the end times have never seemed more imminent.  Even though the “little apocalypse” in the Gospel of Mark is clearly about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 66-70, the language has lent itself to every political, social, economic, and ecological disaster of the past two millennia of the common era.  “Wars and rumors of wars”; earthquakes, famines, persecutions, wild weather; and of course “phony messiahs and phony prophets will show up and they’ll provide signs and omens in an attempt to deceive, if possible, the chosen people.” Mark 13:22, The Complete Gospels (Polebridge Press, 2010).

One effective way to deceive the people is to suggest that misfortune is its own fault.  So poverty is the fault of the poor; drug and alcohol addiction are caused by moral weakness; unemployment is the result of laziness.  The result is denial on a global scale, across all social and economic strata of the seriousness and depth of what we are facing as a species.  Scientists are telling us that we have the ability to choose whether to listen to the primitive parts of our brains and respond to fear, or to use the intuitive, creative parts of our brains to assure that we continue to evolve. Indeed we are at a point where we can watch over our own evolution – choice not chance.

Matthew Fox reminds us that there is really only one question: How to love the world.  Pessimism, cynicism, and despair teach us how not to love the world.  These are sins that lead us – in Paul’s updated words – to make concessions to “the lifestyle of the age and its pursuit of self-gratification.”  The world is heavily invested in denial.  Denial is the choice to be deliberately ignorant of conditions that will overtake us in the end if we do not wake up.

Please pass the bread.
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“The J’Argon,”is a full-length, future-fiction fantasy published in 2000 by iUniverse.com, now also available as an e-Book from Amazon.  The J’Argon is the leader of a spiritual alliance that has voice but not vote in 22nd century global politics.  She is the Fourth J’Argon and the first woman to hold the title since the Covenant of the Word was formed in 2047.  Her long-time lover, partner, and soul friend, the Arch Deacon of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is a leader in the liberation underground.  The Year is 2157.  The United States has become a repressive theocracy, where a great evil holds sway.  The Arch Deacon must open his prophetic Christian mysticism to the J’Argon’s ancient earth-based magic and awaken his own adept power so that together they can defeat the Dragon.

After 25 years as a legal secretary in Washington, D.C., Sea Raven moved to the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia in 2002.  She is now a volunteer chaplain with Hospice of the Panhandle in Martinsburg.  Her work as a free-lance writer, musician, and worship leader is grounded in post-modern Christian scholarship, and focused on justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. Sea Raven is an Associate of Westar (the Jesus Seminar); a board certified Associate Clinical Chaplain (College for Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy); and a designated Lay Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, Maryland.

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The “great discourses” from the Gospel of John end with the prayer of John’s Jesus for the protection of his followers from the hatred of “the world.”  Just as Jesus and God are one, so the followers of Jesus are one with Jesus and therefore with God, and those in the future who come to know Jesus through the message of the followers will also be admitted into the wholeness of God, Jesus, and the followers of Jesus.  Jesus consecrates himself – he prepares himself to be the sacrifice – that will in turn consecrate the followers and those who accept the followers’ message, and will reconcile and unify all these elements: God, Jesus, followers, and future believers.  This is the heart of John’s theology and the theology of the Church that eventually was established by the Council of Nicea in 325 c.e.  The rest of the story completes the metaphors of water and wine, baptism and communion, and the conferring of the Holy Spirit (the “spirit of truth”).

Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox worked out a theology that makes sense for post-modern, 21st century mystics who want to honor the Christ of John’s Gospel without forcing the text into impossible literalism.  Fox’s “Cosmic Christ” evokes responsibility for the condition of all forms of life on Planet Earth, and confers the power to carry out the work that arises from that responsibility.  Taking John’s Jesus at his word, when we know who Jesus was, we know God; we know the Christ – the wisdom and the spirit of truth that was one with God from the beginning.  We then can know our own selves at that same level of wisdom and truth.  We are then one with God, one with the Christ, and we ourselves then can take on the power and responsibility of being – embodying, incarnating – the Cosmic Christ.  Fox writes,

        Because we are Cosmic Christs and because we are called to birth the yet unborn Cosmic Christ, we are, like Jesus, prophets of order (justice) over chaos (disorder and injustice).  This is why [Meister] Eckhart can declare that “all virtue of the just and every work of the just is nothing other than the Son – who is the New Creation – being born from the Creator. In the depths of our being, where justice and work are one, we work one work and a New Creation with God.” . . . There is only one work – the work of the Cosmic Christ who declared in the person of Jesus, “I and the Creator are one . . . Whatever the Creator does the Son does too. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp. 138-139.

The difference in theology between the writer of John’s Gospel and progressive/liberal Christian exiles from traditional doctrine is that this identity with the Cosmic Christ is available to anyone who signs onto the work, whether that person accepts the first century myth of the resurrection or not.  The work is justice-compassion.  In Fox’s thought, justice must be combined with compassion, or it becomes chaos – injustice.  But beyond justice-compassion lies non-violent, radical fairness.  Non-violent, radical fairness makes justice-compassion distributive because retribution is no longer part of the discussion.  John’s envelope has now been pushed to its 1st century limits.

In 21st century terms, to encounter the hatred of the world, to experience oneself as alien in the world, as John’s Jesus describes his followers, means to be engaged in the struggle for distributive justice-compassion.  This struggle is not restricted to assuring economic safety-nets for the poor and elderly; those are the easy fights.  Where alienation and hatred are met head-on is in the attempt to understand that unjust systems are the underlying cause of war and violent crimes against persons or property; and in attempting to create life-affirming consequences that can interrupt those continuous loops of injustice that give rise to crime and war.  Taking the part of the shooter at Virginia Tech, or the one who opened fire on a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee, invites a collective social wrath that is justifiable from a systemic point of view, but completely misses redemption that is only possible in non-violent, radical fairness.  In contrast, the response of the Amish community toward the man who slaughtered their children in their own schoolhouse stunned conventional thinking, perhaps because it came from a spiritual ethic that seems to elude most of us.

The Gospel of John defines a life-and-death struggle between the world ruled by Satan and those who live in God’s love as revealed through the Anointed Jesus.  John’s Jesus goes to God, leaving his followers to deal with the world until he comes again.  The mandate is to love one another, and do the same work of distributive justice-compassion in this life that Jesus did.  The power to do that is granted through the Holy Spirit, conferred upon the followers at Jesus’ death. The promise is that Jesus will come back and take to God all who follow him, and believe that he was the one Anointed by God to restore God’s rule.  But the work is to be done here and now.

John’s 1st century Gospel speaks to post-modern, 21st century cosmology to the extent that we experience God, the Christ, the Spirit, and humanity as one.  To the extent we experience ourselves as the embodiment – the incarnation – of the Cosmic Christ, we experience John Dominic Crossan’s kenotic god, whose presence is justice and life, and whose absence is injustice and death.
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In what may have been an addition to the original Gospel, the writer states unequivocally that Jesus is the true, real vine, and God is the vine-grower/farmer.  Throughout the Old Testament, the vine and the vineyard refer to the land and the people of Israel.  (Psalm 80; Hosea 10:1-2; Isaiah 5:1-7; Isaiah 27:2-6; Jeremiah 2:21; Ezekiel 15:1-6, 17, Ezekiel 19:10-14).  Whenever the people turn away from God’s demand for radical fairness (justice-compassion; righteousness), God threatens to either cut off the vine or burn the vineyard.  Ezekiel and Jeremiah assumed the Babylonian Exile was the result of the failure of the people to produce the fruit of God’s justice. Because of the refusal of the Judeans to accept Jesus as the Anointed One, John implies that Moses and the people of Israel have been overthrown as chosen and favored by God (cf Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John, pp. 82-83; see also Harper Collins Study Bible (NRSV) note 15:1-6, p. 2033).

The Elves avoid the implied anti-Semitism by attempting to change the subject to love whenever these passages are read as part of the Year B Easter season.  The Revised Common Lectionary pairs 1 John 4:7-21 with the Gospel reading of 15:1-8, softening the declaration that “I am the real vine.”  In the Epistle John writes, “Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God, for God is love.”  But the reading from the Epistle is also conveniently cherry-picked.  The Elves ignore the first 6 verses of chapter 4, which deal with “testing the spirits” to discern the “anti-Christ” that exists in the world among those who do not “listen to us” – i.e., those who believe in Jesus.  If the canon is to have any integrity at all, these contradictions must be dealt with.

Chapter 15 contains some of the most beloved words in Christian scripture: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.  I have said these things so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you. . . You did not choose me but I chose you.  And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.  I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another” (NRSV).  Pairing these words with the Epistle reading seems to universalize the message: “Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God, for God is love,” John’s letter explains.  But John wasn’t talking about everyone; he was talking about the community of people who accepted Jesus as the Messiah – or, in contemporary conservative language – those who accept Jesus as Lord.

Those who do not accept Jesus as Lord John describes in the very next paragraph as “the world”: “If the world hates you, don’t forget that it hated me first. . . . I have chosen you out of the world; that’s why the world hates you.”  This is an exclusive, defensive, and dangerous foundation for a religion, and it is the grounding language for the fundamental conviction that drives contemporary, 21st century, conservative Christians to claim persecution on the part of “liberals,” and threat to their freedom on the part of secular, humanitarian government.  Jesus concludes, “they hated me for no reason,” and it was God’s plan from the beginning.  “This has happened so the saying in their Law would be fulfilled – they hated me for no reason” (Psalms 35:19 and 69:4).

Once again, progressive practitioners of liberal religions – especially Christians – are confronted with the dilemma of whether to reclaim and reframe the theology and Christology of John’s Gospel.  The insights of liberal scholarship provide exiles from traditional doctrine the means for reinventing a Christianity that speaks to social justice based on the synoptics and the sayings gospel of Thomas.  But doing so weakens the liberal/progressive argument in two ways: First, what might be called the “spiritual high ground” is ceded to the fundamentalists.  By focusing on the nuts-and-bolts practicalities of transforming human life from fear and greed to love and sharing (homeless shelters, feeding programs, lobbying Congress), the mystic-minded are left to fend for themselves when it comes to extra-rational activities such as prayer, revelation, vision, and other numinous experiences.

Second, unless the Gospel of John is embraced, understood, and reframed, liberal/progressive religions will continue to write-off as deranged or irrelevant people who take the gospel literally.  The result is 21st century human progress held hostage to an anachronistic, irrelevant, erroneous 1st century cosmology.  We have only to look at how close the current Republican primary electoral process has come to selecting an anti-Semitic, Dominionist associate of Opus Dei as their candidate for the next president of the United States.

Jesus’ practical teachings in the synoptic gospels are the grounding for a change in paradigm from greed to sharing, from fear to love.  John’s Jesus is the Cosmic Christ, the genuine light, who enters the world as the divine word and wisdom.  John’s Cosmic Christ is the vine, and those who embody the paradigm are the branches – the incarnation of the Cosmic Christ.  Theologian Matthew Fox who wrote the book on The Cosmic Christ, puts it this way:

        These revelations of “I-am-ness” [the way, the truth, the life; the real vine] challenge us to name (or claim) our lives and beings in a similar fashion.  How are we the bread of life or living [water] to each other?  How are we the light of the world, the real vine, the resurrection and the life? . . . To struggle to birth one’s own “I am” is also to experience the divine “I am.” . . . Is not the purpose of the incarnation in Jesus to reveal the imminence of the Cosmic Christ in the sufferings and dignity of each creature of the earth?  As we discover our own “I am” and the ecstasy and pain of the Divine One in us, we gradually grow into an “I-am-with” others (Emmanuel, “God-with-us”).  We grow into compassion and in doing so the divine “I am” takes on flesh once again.  Since God alone is the Compassionate One, as we grow into compassion we also grow into our divinity.

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp. 154-155.

John’s Jesus is judgmental throughout chapter 15: “. . . without me you can’t do anything.  Those who don’t remain attached to me are thrown away like dead branches; they’re collected and tossed into the fire, and burned. . . . if you obey my commandments you’ll live in my love . . .” These words cannot be taken literally.  Instead, the question is, What are the consequences of knowing the truth, but not living it out?  Jesus says, “If I hadn’t come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin but as it is, they have no excuse for their sin. . . If I hadn’t performed these feats . . . they wouldn’t be guilty of sin.  But as it is, they have witnessed and come to hate both me and my Father. . . .”

Last week’s commentary cited The Authentic Letters of Paul, for a definition of “sin” (Greek: hamartia).  The Westar scholars translate the word as “the corrupting seduction of power,” or the “seductive power of corruption.”  Neither John’s Jesus nor the Apostle Paul is talking about rotting corpses.  They are talking about the kind of corruption that arises between people, and in government or economic empires that leads to systems of injustice.  In that context, John’s Jesus is saying that once anyone is aware of the seductive power of corruption, there is no excuse for continuing to participate in it.  Here is the basis for prophetic words from contemporary preachers like Jeremiah Wright; from liberal media such as the New York Times; and from Christians who live out the mandate to love others, such as the Sojourners Community, led by Jim Wallis.

The parallels between Jesus’ words in John 15:18-25 and the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans – written 50 years earlier – are striking (Romans 8:1-11):

        . . . For the rule of the spirit of life that was in the Anointed Jesus has liberated you from being ruled by seductive corruption and death.  For by sending God’s own “son” – a participant like us, in an earthly life attended by seductive corruption – to deal with that corrupting power, God did what the law of Moses – weakened by the conflicted character of earthly existence – was incapable of doing: God condemned the corrupting power that attends our earthly life so that the just requirement of the Mosaic law might be fulfilled in us who live not according to the ambitions of a self-serving earthly life, but according to God’s purposes and power. . . . To set your minds on worldly things means death, but to set your mind on God’s power and purpose means life and peace . . . It is not possible for those who are pre-occupied with worldly self-advancement to please God . . . If anyone does not have the spirit that was in the Anointed, that one is not one of his.  But if the Anointed lives in you, although your body is in the grip of death because of the seductive power of corruption, you spirit is alive because of God’s reliability.  And if the power of the One who raised Jesus from among the dead resides in you, the One who raised the Anointed from among the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through the power and presence of God that resides in you.  The Authentic Letters of Paul pp.228-229.

Paul is not talking about life after death.  Paul is talking about embracing the challenge of distributive justice-compassion –“the great work” – here and now.  John’s Jesus assures us that “the spirit of truth will testify on my behalf,” not about the insane claim that he was God, nor about the resuscitation of a corpse.  The spirit of truth testifies to the unjust systems that hold sway in the world, and will not let us remain silent.  “And you are going to testify because you were with me from the beginning,” Jesus says.

I am the vine, you are the branches.  In vino veritas
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John 14 is the core of traditional Christian theology.  When the Revised Common Lectionary is followed, John 14 explains Jesus’ death and resurrection (5th and 6th Sundays of Easter, Years A and C), and the coming of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost, Year C) after his post-resurrection, apocalyptic, bodily ascension into the sky, as reported by the intrepid Dr. Luke (24:44-53).  John 14 is most often read at the bedsides of the dying, at funerals, and to comfort grieving families.  The phrase “s/he went to be with the Lord” – a clear reference to 14:3 – is common in 21st century obituaries.  “Don’t worry,” John’s Jesus is supposedly saying, “There are plenty of places to stay in my Father’s house. . . . and where I am there you will be too.”

The only condition for this promise is to keep Jesus’ commandment to love one another (13:34-35).  John’s Jesus says, “Those who accept my commandments and obey them – they love me.  And those who love me will be loved by my Father; moreover, I will love them and reveal myself to them . . . Those who don’t love me won’t obey my words” and will not be part of that heavenly home.  As a reward for accepting Jesus as the way to God, the truth about God and the life in God’s realm, Jesus says “At my request the Father [God] will provide you with yet another advocate [in addition to Jesus], the spirit of truth who will be with you forever.”  The power of the Holy Spirit to do miracles even greater than Jesus himself comes to those who believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead and will come again.  The magic words, “whatever you ask in my name, I will do for you” were so important to the gospel writer that he repeats the mantra using the magical power of three: first in 14:13; then in 16:23 (which recapitulates 14), and finally in 15:7.  To underline the exclusivity of the promise of both a place in God’s heaven and the receipt of the holy spirit, Jesus says, “The world is unable to accept this spirit because it neither perceives nor recognizes him.  You recognize him because he dwells with you and will be within you.”

The Gospel of John set the stage for exclusive theologies ranging from Catholicism to Calvinism to fundamentalisms that have resulted in pogroms, witch trials, accusations of heresy, mass murders by fire (autos-da-fey), the wholesale slaughter of indigenous populations of people world wide, and the continued insistence that the “church” holds the ultimate authority over the health and welfare of women.  The mandate extends to threats of nuclear war in a cynical defense of Israel.  In a total corruption of the eternal longing for justice that produced the original prophecies of Daniel (which framed the apocalypticism of all four gospels) and the later Revelation of John, fundamentalist Christians believe that Israel’s ultimate conversion to their theology will bring Jesus back to end the world and usher in the “Kingdom of God.”

What possible use can progressive, liberal Christians make of John 14?  Certainly none of the gospels can be read literally, and most assuredly, not the gospel of John – as we have seen.  As always, when attempting to reclaim ancient writings for contemporary minds, reading meaning back into it from our own point of view is not only a temptation, but is probably inevitable – even for scholars who know how to keep a wary eye on the work.  The disastrous results that can come from such anachronism were spelled out above.

The first order of business is to realize and accept the fact that the Gospel of John reflects the cosmology of the 1st and 2nd centuries, c.e., not the cosmology of the 21st century. We have known since Copernicus that if there is a god out there somewhere, it shares the “heavens” with a lot of other stuff.  Further, we know without a doubt that Jesus was seriously dead.  All the gospels make that point emphatically – the resurrection stories are not ghost stories.  John’s own parable of the raising of Lazarus graphically foreshadows Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Nor are we talking about some kind of Zombie-like resuscitated corpse, still lurching along the highways and byways, terrorizing or shaming people into salvation.

Second, all of the gospels reflect the times they were written in and for.  Specifically, the gospel of John was an extended, impassioned, possibly desperate argument whose purpose was likely twofold: first to convince the community that the longed-for One, prophesied to be sent by God to restore God’s kingdom of distributive justice-compassion was indeed Jesus, who had been executed by the Romans; and second to somehow keep the community who did believe it from exile.

The way to possibly reclaim Chapter 14 (in fact all three of these chapters at the heart of the gospel) is to revisit the Prologue.

        In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom.  The divine word and wisdom was there with God, and it was what God was. . . . In it was life, and this life was the light of humanity.  Light was shining in the darkness, and darkness did not master it. . . . Genuine light – the kind that enlightens everyone – was coming into the world . . . but its own people were not receptive to it.  But to all who did embrace it, to those who believed in it, it gave the right to become children of God. . . . The Law was given through Moses; mercy and truth came through Jesus the Anointed One.  No one has ever seen God; the only son, close to the Father’s heart – he has disclosed (it).

God is defined as “divine word and wisdom,” revealed to everyone in the life and teachings of Jesus.  John says, echoing the apostle Paul, “the Law was given through Moses [but] mercy and truth [justice-compassion] came through the Anointed One.”  So the very nature of God is seen to be not the easy justice of retribution and pay-back, but the far more difficult distributive justice that includes mercy, compassion, and a transformation of thought: water into wine; food that nourishes the spirit because it is the work of establishing or restoring God’s radical fairness.  John 14 may be taken as an illustration of John Dominic Crossan’s definition of a kenotic God – whose presence is justice and life, and whose absence is injustice and death.  Certainly that is the meaning that might be taken by 21st century non-theists, reluctant to condemn anyone for not “believing” literally the legend about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Living in the absence of justice has been and continues to be a living death.  Just ask the parents of Trayvon Martin; the ancestors of Emmet Till; refugees in the borderlands of Somalia and Sudan; Karilyn Bales.

John’s Jesus possessed within himself the confidence in the nature of God as distributive justice-compassion that eliminated any anxiety about death, whether physical or metaphorical.  The judgment that is expressed regarding those who do not believe that to encounter Jesus was to encounter God is simply the statement of a fact of life: those who do not love one another, who hate others, and do not live in distributive justice-compassion will suffer the consequences.  They will not experience the peace that Jesus says he will leave behind.  “What I give you is not a worldly gift,” he says.  The world with its systems of injustice and greed is not interested in creating systems of justice and sharing.  To create such a world requires a radical abandonment of self-interest that few are willing to attempt.

Chapter 16 is possibly a later edition to the gospel, which seems to elaborate on and explain the discourse in 14.  Chapter 16 concentrates on the “advocate” – the Holy spirit – which can only come to Jesus’ followers when he leaves.  John’s Jesus begins by saying, “I’ve told you these things to keep you from being misled.  They are going to throw you out of the congregations . . . they are going to do these things because they never knew the Father [God] or me.”  In a paragraph that the Westar scholars footnote “is notoriously difficult to understand,” Jesus says, “When the advocate [holy spirit/spirit of truth] comes, he will show the world how wrong it is about sin, righteousness, and judgment: about sin because they don’t believe in me; about righteousness because I am going to the Father and you won’t see me anymore; about judgment because the ruler of this world stands condemned” (The Complete Gospels, p. 243).

In The Authentic Letters of Paul, the scholars define “sin” (Greek: hamartia) as “the corrupting seduction of power,” or the “seductive power of corruption.”  Paul is not talking about rotting corpses.  He is talking about the kind of corruption that arises between people, and in government or economic empires that leads to systems of injustice.  John 16:9 uses the same word – hamartia.  Human beings are actually born with the “spirit of truth” that tells us immediately what is just and unjust.  We lose our ability to discern what is truly just and fair when we succumb to the power of selling out for what looks like our own self-interest.  So in that paragraph, in plain English, Jesus is saying that the spirit of truth (the advocate) shows us how wrong the world is about the seductive power of corruption, justice as retribution and pay-back, and the consequences for this error.  It is not about “believing” the impossible, literal resurrection of Jesus, nor is it about “believing” that Jesus was the literal “son of God.”  Instead, “the ruler of this world” – where injustice holds sway – stands condemned to reap the consequences: war, famine, disease, and death in exchange for plundering the environment, coveting our neighbor’s homes and territories, and murdering whole populations because they don’t look like us.

Jesus’ disciples finally get it in 16:29: “Now you’re using plain language rather than talking in riddles.  Now we see that you know everything and don’t need anyone to question you.  That’s why we believe that you have come from God.”  Jesus responds, “I have told you all this so that you can enjoy peace in me.  In the world, you’re going to face persecution.  But be brave! I have triumphed over the world.”
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In contrast to the synoptic Gospels, John is clear that Jesus’ last meal with his disciples was not the Passover meal.  Instead, it was the night before the day of preparation for the Passover, when the lambs for the ritual meal were sacrificed.  In John’s narrative, that particular day of preparation was also the day before the Sabbath – so that particular Sabbath was a high holy day for the Jews (see John 19:31).  This detail is important for understanding the symbolism for this writer of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Indeed, every detail from 13:1 to the end of the gospel is significant.  Unfortunately, the gospel is nearly always cherry-picked in order to make a point of religious piety.  The “last supper” is assumed to be the Passover meal.  The breaking of bread and the pouring of the cup of wine described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (and memorialized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25) gets conflated with the foot washing described by John.  Maundy Thursday liturgies then become problematic: do we wash feet? serve Communion? dramatize our complicit shame as we leave the darkened church one-by-one?

The chapters following the last meal contain the heart of John’s argument that Jesus was the Anointed One sent by God to fulfill the longing of the Jewish people for deliverance from injustice, foretold for first century Jews in the book of Daniel.  Raymond E. Brown proposes that Chapters 15-17 are not part of the evening meal; but are further reports of Jesus’ teachings added in to emphasize who Jesus was.  Brown’s opinion is that 16 is a duplicate of the teaching in 14, and 17 follows logically from 15, so the sequence should be 14, 16, 15, 17.

For now, consider the last meal described in Chapter 13.  There is no ritual of bread and cup.  There is only the demonstration of a radical abandonment of self-interest.  John writes, “Now that the devil had planted it in the mind of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to turn him in, at supper Jesus could tell that the Father had left everything up to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to God.”  Here is the apocalyptic claim.  The One who would bring liberation from the Empire of Rome had come from God, and would be returning to God.  There is no more time to waste in explanation – only a profound demonstration will do.  So – apparently in the middle of the meal – Jesus gets up, assumes the role of a slave, and washes the disciples’ feet.

Peter (of course) doesn’t get it.  The Master never washes the feet of the disciples.  To do so disrespects the whole relationship.  So he says “no way you’ll wash my feet!”  And Jesus says, unless I do, you won’t have anything in common with me.”  The NRSV says “. . . you have no share with me.”  These words have been misunderstood since John first put them to parchment.  Peter still doesn’t get it, nor have many since.  This demonstration is not about being physically or mentally clean of “sin” or the dust of the road.  Jesus’ action means there is no hierarchy among the followers of Jesus’ Way.  Jesus says, “So if I am your master and teacher and have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.”  Paul put it best in Galatians 3:28-29: “You are no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or freeborn, no longer [even] male and female.  Instead you all have the same status in the service of God’s Anointed, Jesus.”  No priests, no bosses, no financial “masters of the universe” who claim higher worth than anyone else; most especially no dominion over anyone regardless of gender or circumstance.  Jesus spells out how things work in the normal course of civilization: “Slaves are never better than their masters; messengers are never superior to those who send them.”  Instead he proposes the radicality of the kingdom of God.  “If you understand this, congratulations if you can do it” – meaning, follow his example, not the way things are always done; and good luck with that!

Jesus then refers to Psalm 41: “The one who has shared my food has turned on me.”  We think that means Judas, and at one level it does.  But look at what Psalm 41 is talking about.  This psalm deals with those who consider the poor – not the poor themselves, but those who “consider” the poor – i.e., those who do God’s work.  After the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus’ disciples were confused when Jesus said he had food they knew nothing about (John 4:31-38).  That “food” is doing the work that God sent Jesus to do.  In the context of the apocalyptic legend of Daniel, the “food” that nourishes the spirit is deliverance from oppression; the restoration of God’s rule – God’s kingdom – God’s distributive justice-compassion.  In the Psalm, the narrator confesses that he has not considered the poor.  His enemies are certain that the worst will happen to him as a result.  “They think that a deadly thing has fastened on me, that I will not rise again from where I lie.  Even my friend in whom I trusted who ate of my bread has exalted at my misfortune . . . But [God] has upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in [God’s] presence forever” (emphasis mine).  Like Job, who knew he was a man of God, and maintained that identification no matter what happened to him, John’s Jesus claims his own integrity as the son, the servant, and the messenger of God:  I AM, he says.   “[I]f they receive anyone I send, they are receiving me; and if they receive me, they are receiving the one who sent me.”

Then Jesus becomes upset, and acts out the scene described in Psalm 41 by dipping bread in his dish and handing it to Judas.  At that moment, in a direct contradiction of the meaning of the bread broken and shared in the synoptics, “Satan took possession of him,” and Judas leaves as soon as he has eaten the bread.  “Satan” is God’s adversary – the personification of how the world usually works.  Judas was unable to make the transition Jesus tried to demonstrate when he washed the disciples’ feet.  Peter verbalized the confusion, but Judas acted on it.

When Judas had gone, Jesus says he is going where no one can follow – which seems to be a contradiction because we know the argument that is coming in Chapter 14: “If I go to prepare a place for you, I’ll return and embrace you, so where I am you can be too.”  But the words that actually close the scene make clear what Jesus was trying to say all during dinner:  “I am giving you a new commandment: love each other.  Just as I’ve loved you, you are to love each other.  Then everyone will recognize you as my disciples – if you love each other.”

The scholars comment in The Complete Gospels: “The ethic in this gospel has been reduced from the other gospels’ ethic of love of neighbor, even of enemy, and is restricted to love within the Christian community” (note, p. 239).  That may well have been the case for John, whose community was under threat of being thrown out of the local synagogue.  The problem with that interpretation for contemporary believers is two-fold:  In the spirit of Psalm 41, John may have been claiming a level of integrity that he found lacking in those who did not accept Jesus as the Anointed One – leaving one of the most beloved of scripture verses standing for an exclusivity that the Jesus “everyone knows” would have rejected.  Even worse, such a context risks reducing the commandment to the kind of verbal street defiance generally not acceptable in church sanctuaries.

Given the passion of John’s argument, and doing our best to avoid reading later Christian dogma back into John’s time and place, the scholars’ point is provocative and illuminating.  But if 21st century progressive Christians can claim any part of this chapter as definitive for social and political transformation, then the more traditional interpretation must be used and expanded.  John’s Jesus says, “. . . you are to do as I’ve done to you . . . If they receive anyone I send, they are receiving me . . . Just as I have loved you, you are to love each other.” Anyone – not just believers in Jesus – who are able to give up the kind of power conveyed by following society’s rules and can serve and love one another, will also serve and love others in the same way.  Jesus’ reversal of roles demonstrated a radical abandonment of self-interest that includes relinquishing dominion over creation itself – biblical absolutists notwithstanding.  And it is here and now, not in some “sweet bye and bye.”
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