Johannine Archives - Renewed Heart Ministries

A Unity That’s Big Enough

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Herb Montgomery

This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube

New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

Season 1, Episode 14: John 17.1-11. Lectionary A, Easter 7

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/NFukfGUUlEQ

or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment

Thanks in advance for watching!

Herb Montgomery | May 19, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

What we want is a unity that is safe for everyone. A unity that is compassionate. A unity that walks arm and arm with justice. A unity that’s big enough to wrap its arms around all our varied differences and call them “good.” A unity that at its heart holds the well-being of every member as its highest priority of value.

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.

For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.

Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.

For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.

I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.

All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.

I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17:1-11)

Our reading this week is John’s version of Jesus’ farewell prayer. This passage deeply influenced Christians during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., and it became the basis of the discussions and conclusions that became the orthodox doctrinal understanding of Jesus’ relation to God.

When Jesus’ followers are referenced in this prayer, it’s difficult to discern whether the prayer is talking about Jesus’ first disciples before his crucifixion or the whole Johannine community in the century afterwards.

The prayer is unique to John’s gospel. Some consider this prayer to be the Johannine community’s equivalent of the “Lord’s Prayer” in the synoptic gospels. The key words, phrases, and expressions in this prayer are all uniquely Johannine.

Firstly, this community defined eternal life or salvation as a special knowledge. Consider the following passages from this week’s reading:

Now this is eternal life: that they know you… (John 17:3)

Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. (John 17:7)

They knew with certainty… (John 17:8)

As an exercise, look up every time “knowing” is the important element emphasized in the book of John. When we acknowledge how central “knowing” was to the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, we discover the entire gospel is about gaining this knowing (gnosis) from Jesus. In fact, giving us this gnosis, the gospel of John tells us, is the entire reason Jesus came.

This is a very different emphasis from the one we read in Mark, Matthew and Luke.

Secondly, the early Johannine community didn’t treat a bodily resurrection as all that necessary for Jesus. In John 17, it is through the cross (death being the separating of the gnostic soul from the material body) that Jesus would be reunited with the Father. Looking to the cross and speaking to his Father, Jesus says, “I will remain in the world no longer . . . I am coming to you.”

This is one of the many reasons why a gnostic Jesus doesn’t quite fit the versions of Jesus we encounter in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There would come to be deep divides and differences between later gnostic Christianity and what would become orthodox Christianity, and these divides were what led many Church Fathers to deem gnostic forms of Christianity as heretical.

The gospel of John later seeks to correct the implication of this prayer in Jesus’ statement to Mary at the tomb:

“Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (John 20:17)

As I’ve shared as we’ve re-read the gospel of John, I prefer the more material Jesus we encounter Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There are still gems to mine from the gospel of John (the supremacy of Love is one), but I resonate much more with the synoptic Jesus, who is striving to make our concrete world, here and now, a safer, more compassionate, just home for everyone. I prefer that Jesus over the Johannine Jesus, who is primarily concerned with imparting a special knowledge that is the path or “way” and that ultimately liberates our spirits from our flesh.

I also find the synoptics speak more relevantly into our justice work today. If changing our present world is the goal, I’ll take Mark, Matthew and Luke. But if getting to heaven is the goal, then John’s gospel provides the most warm and fuzzy path to that end and it depends simply on knowing the Father the way Jesus came to reveal Him.

A third theme repeated in our reading this week is the theme of unity. Unity can be both life-giving and death-dealing. Like peace, unity based on silencing opposition or accommodating harm is death-dealing. And, like peace, unity that comes through justice, through ensuring everyone is being taken care of, is life-giving. As Ched Myers rightly states in his classic commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, “We may rightly be suspicious of theologies of reconciliation that promote Christian unity at the price of political silence.”

I don’t believe that unity has to mean the homogeneous conformity of everyone involved. We can have unity alongside a beautiful, heterogeneous diversity where our differences are celebrated as the rich variations that we have as a human family, and where none are excluded or made to feel “less than” because they are different from those the present system prioritizes and privileges.

If we want unity, we should be working for justice. We don’t want a unity that comes at any cost, a unity that results from people who are being hurt being told to sit down and keep silent.

For many of us, unity now will have to come through reconciliation. And that reconciliation will have to come through restitution for past injustices and the transformation of our present system that corrects harms being committed. Unity depends on change, then. It has to follow present harms being remedied and made right. Until then, unity can’t be life-giving if it calls us to ignore or passively accept the concrete harms that have been and are being done to people made vulnerable in our society.

If we are praying for a unity that is the fruit of justice being restored and rooted in care that ensures everyone has what they need to thrive, then I’m all for it. But death-dealing unity that is mere silence in the midst of harm is not what I interpret our reading this week to promote.

If we, alongside the Jesus in this week’s reading, are praying for this kind of unity, then and only then can we say, “Amen.”

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. What does unity mean for you? Share with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.

Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!

Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.

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Category: Esights, Liberation Theology Tags: Divinity, Ecological Justice, Economic Justice, Farewell, Feminism, Immigration Justice, Jesus, Johannine, Justice, Lectionary Reading, LGBTQ Justice, Liberation Theology, Racial Justice, Social Justice, Unity

Loving What Jesus Taught

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Herb Montgomery

This Week’s Episode of Just Talking Available on YouTube

New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

Season 1, Episode 13: John 14:15-21. Lectionary A, Easter 6

You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/QnXt34XGexc

or (@herbandtoddjusttalking)

Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment

Thanks in advance for watching!

Herb Montgomery | May 12, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

“I don’t want it to be said of me that what I loved was the hope of heaven, not Jesus, because loving Jesus means actually loving the things he taught and following them. And so, in the spirit of this week’s reading, I have to ask myself: do I really love Jesus—the political, social, economic Jesus of the gospels? Or am I simply addicted to the religious candy that my religion about Jesus offers, if I only believe?”

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” (John 14:15-21*)

I grew up hearing Christians interpret the Spirit as Advocate as an intermediary interposing between sinful humans and a holy God. Today, I reject any interpretation of this language that places humanity and divinity on polar opposites and a mediator in between. I experienced that bearing bad fruit in my own life and I believe it produces bad fruit societally as well.

This reading is from the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, and we should remember that as we consider this language. Repeatedly over the past few weeks, we have seen how the Johannine community characterized the Pharisees and Jewish leaders. We have also noted the tensions between Pharisaical Judaism and the early Gnosticism that the Johannine community was part of.

Consider the following passages in John, where being removed from the synagogue is a penalty for Jewish people who follow the Johannine Jesus.

“His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Anointed would be put out of the synagogue.” (John 9:22)

“Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.” (John 12:42)

John’s Jesus also repeats the warning in John 12, “They will put you out of the synagogues” (John 16:2).

In this context, characterizing the Spirit as an Advocate would have meant something to this community. The Spirit would not have mediated between them and God but between them and other members of their own religious communities. We must hold all of these references in John in tension with the fact that most of the history between Judaism and Christianity is not characterized by Jews persecuting Christians but by Christians persecuting Jews. The gospel of John was also written when Gentile Christians wanted to distance themselves from their Jewish siblings under the Roman Empire.

We find a different nuance in the synoptic gospels. The early Jesus community was comprised of those on the undersides and margins of their society who were in deep need of advocacy or justice socially, politically, and economically. This is the context in which I understand the work of the Spirit as Advocate to bear the most life-giving fruit. The synoptics characterize the Spirit as an Advocate between humans in matters of justice. For the original audiences of the synoptics, “advocate” would have called to mind actual legal proceedings that elites in Judea and also from the larger Roman society initated against Jesus’ followers:

“When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 13:11)

“When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:19-20)

“So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” (Luke 21:14-15)

“When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.” (Luke 12:11-12)

A representation of the Divine that places God against us with us in need of an Advocate before God ignores this context, the social context in which these passages were originally written.

Lastly, in this week’s reading we see an important if-then statement: If you love Jesus, then follow his teachings.

To be honest, it is a lot easier to revere Jesus and to worship Jesus in word and song than it is to choose every day to follow the ethics and values we find in the Jesus story. In the Jesus story we find a Jesus who taught inclusion of the marginalized, resource-sharing with the poor, wealth redistribution from the rich, nonviolent resistance for the oppressed, treating others the way we would like to be treated ourselves, and an ethic expressed through justice above all else.

It’s much easier for privileged, powerful, and propertied Christians to religiously worship a Jesus who promises us a beautiful afterlife, than it is for us to socially, politically, and economically follow the ethics and values our Jesus taught as challenging but fruitful means of reshaping the injustices, oppressions and violence of our present society.

I’m reminded of the poem “A Dead Man’s Dream” by Carl Wendell Hines, Jr. Hines who wrote this poem in 1965 after the assassination of Malcolm X. After Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968 his poem also came to be associated with Dr. King.

“Now that he is safely dead,
Let us praise him.
Build monuments to his glory.
Sing Hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient heroes.
For they cannot rise to challenge the images
That we might fashion from their lives.
It is easier to build monuments
Than to build a better world.

So now that he is safely dead,
We, with eased consciences will
Teach our children that he was a great man,
Knowing that the cause for which he
Lived is still a cause
And the dream for which he died is still a dream.
A dead man’s dream.”

To apply this poem to Jesus of Nazareth for Christians leads to some haunting questions. Have we simply built churches as monuments to Jesus? What images of Jesus that Christianity has shaped would Jesus challenge if he physically walked the earth today? Have we built a religion when we should have been building a different world, a safe, compassionate, just world big enough for all of our differences and where each us treat each other the way we would like to be treated? Have we taught the message of Jesus’ greatness while ignoring the truths he taught and the solidarity with the marginalized he modeled that made him so great?

The phrases that give me pause in this week’s reading are: “If you love me, keep my commands” and “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”

Forget a religion or gospel about Jesus for a moment. What was the gospel our Jesus himself taught in the story? Are the things we as Christians so passionate about the same things that Jesus was passionate about? Are the things this Jesus was so passionate about, the themes and truths that he taught and emphasized, the centerpieces of our teaching and action?

Some Christians today are intentionally endeavoring to answer in the affirmative. There are also large portions of Christianity that are known instead for their hate and bigotry. For these Christians, the Jesus of the gospels (even John) is strangely silent on the issues they are most vocal about, and the themes Jesus focused most intently on would threaten their social privileges too much. This kind of Christianity has to avoid or deprioritize the gospels because within those stories we run headlong into Jesus’ teachings.

I have to allow myself to be confronted by this contradiction regularly. It’s much easier for me to focus on the parts of the New Testament that subtly redirect me toward cosmological claims about Jesus rather than to Jesus’ call for obedience to his teachings. I don’t want it to be said of me that what I loved was the hope of heaven, not Jesus, because loving Jesus means actually loving the things he taught and following them. And so, in the spirit of this week’s reading, I have to ask myself: do I really love Jesus—the political, social, economic Jesus of the gospels? Or am I simply addicted to the religious candy that my religion about Jesus offers, if I only believe?