Somebody with skin on
Commentary
Object:
It was a dark and stormy night. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed. Suddenly, Kimberly, our middle daughter, was standing next to our bed, sobbing in fear. My wife held and comforted her for a few minutes, and then I led her back to the room she shared with her older sister Kristyn. I tucked her tightly into the sandwich of her sheets and blankets, snugging things up for extra safety.
When the big boomers rolled again through the furious skies, Kimberly cried in redoubled terror. I soothed her as best I could, telling her that God was always there in the room, even when Mom and I were across the hall in our bedroom. That didn't seem to quiet Kimberly, and Kristyn, in her nearby bed, knew why. Sitting up, she declared, matter-of-factly, "But Dad, Kimberly wants somebody with skin on!"
Each of today's lectionary passages shares that desire. When Roman Centurion Cornelius prays to the unseen God of the Jews, Peter is dispatched to be God with skin on; and when faith invades Cornelius' house, the Spirit whistles through until it is embodied in all present. Later, when John writes against the growing Gnostic heresy tearing at the fabric of young congregations in what is now southwestern Turkey, he declares the proof of true faith as the testimony that Jesus is the love of God with skin on. All of this is but a reflection of Jesus' own final instructions to his disciples in the upper room of the Last Supper, when he urged them to remain in him and live in love. In this, the world would know God.
Acts 10:44-48
These few verses belie a monumental event that will transform the entire human race. Jesus appeared in history as a Jew, proclaiming the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies about the coming of the "day of the Lord," and the arrival of the kingdom of God. Even though not all Jews were of a common mind about Jesus, no one questioned the idea that Jesus emerged from and spoke within the context of Jewish religious identity. Thus, when a segment of Jewish society began proclaiming Jesus as risen from the dead, and the ever-living Messiah, it was an understandable mutation of Jewish identity.
When the Roman Centurion Cornelius became a believer in Jesus, lines of social clarity became blurred. Peter, leader among the disciples of Jesus who had become the key apostolic witnesses, had to be led against his will into an evangelistic encounter with Cornelius, even though Cornelius was about the most ready convert in history. Even then, Peter was astounded that without training in Jewish theology, Cornelius not only understood that Jesus was his Savior and the way to the one true God, but also that the Holy Spirit of God invaded Cornelius and his family, affirming his participation in the new family of faith. Before this time, ethnicity meant everything for true theology and faithful response to the God of creation and salvation. Now, suddenly, this God was accessible by all people of all ethnicities and backgrounds. This astounding turn of events is summarized in today's brief lectionary passage.
When Peter's exploits with the Roman Centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God's recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their creator through the strategically placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
1 John 5:1-6
It is obvious that 1 John is not a letter. It carries no identification of the author, puts forward no greeting, offers no personal notes or reminisces, includes no travel plans, responds to no particular life situations encountered by either the writer or the readers, and offers no concluding blessing. It is not a letter. The occasion for the three missives from John appears to be deep trouble in a church to which he is closely tied and to whose pastoral leader he has a deep bond of friendship. A critical separation is occurring between two parties. On the one side are "The Elder," Gaius, Demetrius, and the bulk of this particular congregation. On the other side are Diotrephes and a group of false teachers who were at one time allies and part of the congregational leadership team but are now abrasively identified by the Elder as "antichrists." The church experiencing these polarizing disputes is likely to be quite large (since there are multiple leaders lining up on both sides), fairly well educated (because the teachings being espoused are often quite technical and philosophical), established for some years (long enough to have a gradual evolving of leadership teams and doctrinal development), and probably not that far from Ephesus, since John was quite an old man by this time and yet seems to have had regular personal contacts with Gaius, the pastor on site.
It is probable that 1, 2, and 3 John were part of a single packet of correspondence written together and delivered all at one time by a man named Demetrius, who was being sent by and was representing the Elder, the author of these documents. Third John is the cover letter to Gaius, commending Demetrius as ambassador of the Elder, acting on his behalf in this crisis. Second John is the introductory letter to the congregation, encouraging faithfulness during these stressful times of dispute and tension, and setting the stage for a public reading of the summary teaching also enclosed. First John is that brief teaching intended to be read and discussed by the congregation, outlining correct and incorrect theologies that have surfaced in this debate and need clarification.
What is the heretical teaching that this competing group is putting forward? Although we do not have any actual writings that may have been circulated by the false teachers, or written reports of their oratory, we can read backward through John's main points of emphasis and decipher nuances of the heresy propounded. Over against what the others must have been teaching, John stresses these things:
There is clear continuity between Old & New Testament ages (1:1-4)
God has given a recent new revelation, the person of Jesus (1:2-3)
There is only one God and this divine being is entirely unified in character (1:5)
Sin is an obvious reality and cannot be ignored or presumed out of the human picture (1:6-10)
Jesus actually died and this happened as a sacrifice that had religious transactional qualities; it was redemptive (1:7; 2:1)
There is a unity of theology and ethics; what you believe must come out in your practices, or it is not truly held at all (2:3-6)
Followers of Jesus are, by their very nature and calling, concerned about the physical well-being of others (2:9-11)
Godly people need to deny worldly desires that constantly plague the human race (2:15-17)
The highest value of all is love expressed in relationships (3:10-15; 4:21)
Jesus actually died and this was an atoning sacrifice (3:16; 4:10)
The Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son (3:21--4:6)
Jesus is and remains truly flesh and blood (4:2; 5:6-8)
When these emphases in John's teaching monograph are consolidated, they appear to be a reaction to early Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a philosophic worldview that often parasitically attached itself to various religious expressions, twisting their key concepts in complex and mystical directions. During the second century, a number of Gnostic communities sprang up in the Christian church, particularly in its eastern regions.
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics -- non-relational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. Since the material world existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god served as creator. Of course, any god that would create material things was already compromised, and this applied as well to the God of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), that god was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all) have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, he needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to "seem" or "appear") believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram) who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of his intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, believed that Jesus was a very good human being who was adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!" This, of course, was the release or separation of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionists believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word for knowing or knowledge. Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent divine spirit can communicate the necessary knowledge to us. This is the meaning and identity of Jesus' life, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize we have.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused.
Third, we must release the divine spark within us through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, Jesus tells Judas that his planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for he alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies, releasing the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed.
The outcome of these philosophic ideas and the larger cosmology from which they emerge, is that human life took on a very different character for Christians who had been influenced by Gnosticism. Some evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior apparently was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others because such an investment messes us up material reality which in turn only pulls ourselves away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthens, capacities, and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies that hold our spirits in check and prevents those whose flesh is weakening from the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have been coupled with a type of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know, and we are on the track toward illumination and release, while they are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren't like us, but there is not thing we can do about it. We are enlightened, they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which are dividing at least the one congregation, and threatening the gospel John that knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instruction. Right at the start of his short lecture he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is the true Creator God and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder. Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble.
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that Jesus is the divine Son of God who actually became flesh and blood. Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the Gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not.
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh and blood and spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we ought also to care about each other. Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also fully engage in each other's lives for help and encouragement and care. In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother. Christianity does not remove us from pain, but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and pained existence with us, and ultimately crucified him.
Thus, salvation is physical and spiritual. We are already "children of God" (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the Creator. Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of "light" over against the "darkness" that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John's teaching ("Dear children, keep yourselves from idols"), often considered cryptic or ill-placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-Gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus "antichrists") of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, is merely self-absorbed childishness where "I" stand at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job there and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, "we love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
John 15:9-17
Although its literary development is markedly different from that of the Synoptic Gospels, there is a very clear pattern to John's rehearsal of thought and portrayal of Jesus' activities and teachings in this gospel. A significant transition in referential time takes place between chapters 12 and 13 (related to the coming of the "the hour" for Jesus; note 2:4; 4:23; 7:6; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1), and this change is further accentuated by the grouping of all of Jesus' "miraculous signs," as John calls them, into the first twelve chapters. For these reasons the first part of John's gospel is often called "The Book of Signs," while the last part wears well the name "The Book of Glory." A highly significant prologue opens the gospel (1:1-18), and an epilogue obviously written by another party and added after the initial gospel was completed (ch. 21) brings it to a close.
Once the transition takes place to the "Book of Glory," only two major events happen. First, Jesus meets for an extended meal and conversation with his disciples. The monologue seems somewhat meandering and repetitive until the Hebrew chiastic manner of communication is overlaid. Then the farewell discourse, as it is known, becomes an obvious deeply moving invitation by Jesus for his followers to remain connected to him by way of the powerful "Paraclete" (a Greek term meaning "counselor" or "advocate") in the face of the troubling that will come upon them because of his imminent physical departure and the rising persecutions targeted toward them by the world that remains in darkness. In chiastic summary, the farewell discourse can be portrayed in this manner (for more on this see Wayne Brouwer, The Literary Structure of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading; SBL 2000):
Gathering scene (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love)
13:1-35
Prediction of disciple's denial
13:36-38
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power
14:1-14
Promise of the "Paraclete"
14:15-24
Troubling encounter with the world
14:25-31
"Abide in Me!" teaching
15:1-17
Troubling encounter with the world
15:18-16:4a
Promise of the "Paraclete"
16:4b-15
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power
16:16-28
Prediction of disciple's denial
16:29-33
Departing prayer (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love)
17:1-26
Second, Jesus moves through his passion into the resurrection. While the details of Jesus' trial and crucifixion are virtually identical with those given in the Synoptic Gospels, there are a number of little incidents reported that could only have been written by an eyewitness -- the name of the servant of the high priest who is wounded by Peter's sword (18:10), the reason for Peter's access into the area where Jesus was being tried (18:15), the words of the conversation between Annas and Jesus (18:19-24), and the transfer of Mary's care from Jesus to the beloved disciple (19:27).
Today's lectionary passage lies near the center of the farewell discourse chiasm, as noted above. It is part of the key element in which Jesus explains what it means to remain close to him, through the Paraclete, after he has returned to heaven. In essence, the evidence of remaining in Jesus, as branches cling to the vine, is the expression of love. Love, according to Jesus, is the meaning of God and critical to understanding our truest human nature as intended by God.
In 1967 a psychologist named Kinch reported a rather bizarre experiment conducted by university psychology graduate students. These males were part of what they considered to be the "in" crowd on campus. They moved in the right circles, dressed the right way, and went to the right places for nightlife parties.
But they all knew a particular young woman who wasn't in that circle. She was an "outsider," a "nobody," a person who didn't count -- at least to them and their kind.
Knowing the effects of behavior modification, they planned together to see how she would change if they treated her, for a time, as if she were part of their "in" crowd. They made an agreement that whenever they saw her they would compliment her and show an interest in her. Furthermore, they would take turns asking her out on dates.
The experiment took a strange turn. Under other circumstances they did not like her. They would not have talked to her prior to this, but only about her, and in condescending and cynical ways. Yet as the challenge progressed each of the men gradually found the young woman more likable, less foreign, less alien. The first fellow's date with her went okay, even though he had to keep telling himself she was more beautiful and better company than he truly felt.
By the time the third fellow asked her out, she had actually become part of their circle of friends. They thought it was kind of fun being with her. She wasn't so bad after all!
The fifth fellow never did get to date her, because the fourth fellow in line asked her to be his wife! What started as a rather cruel experiment ended up as an amazing testimony to the truth of the gospel words about the power of love.
Application
C.S. Lewis captured the tension of light and darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God's creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races, quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent "paradise" story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth's Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its lord and lady. In a countermove the great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth's creation, and like the lord and lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God's first thought is to rescue, redeem, and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love.
An Alternative Application
John 15:9-17. Sometimes there are children who can show the teaching of Jesus about living in God's love in remarkable ways, as Dale Galloway related in his book Dream a New Dream. A friend's son was very shy, he said. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad's mother would see the children pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, would always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January Chad came home and said, "You know what, Mom? Valentine's Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!"
Chad's mother told Dale how terrible she felt. "Oh no!" she thought. "Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He's going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody will think of him. He'll come home all disappointed and just pull back further into his shell."
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made 31 valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad's face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. "I didn't forget anybody!" he said. "I gave them all one of my hearts!"
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. "I gave them all one of my hearts!" he said.
That is where Jesus wants to bring us. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of death that give way to circles of Life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham's poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the Son reflect about me:
He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout!
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!1
It's all about love. Of course, love begins with God. In Jesus. Somebody with skin on.
1. Edwin, Markham, "Epigrams."
When the big boomers rolled again through the furious skies, Kimberly cried in redoubled terror. I soothed her as best I could, telling her that God was always there in the room, even when Mom and I were across the hall in our bedroom. That didn't seem to quiet Kimberly, and Kristyn, in her nearby bed, knew why. Sitting up, she declared, matter-of-factly, "But Dad, Kimberly wants somebody with skin on!"
Each of today's lectionary passages shares that desire. When Roman Centurion Cornelius prays to the unseen God of the Jews, Peter is dispatched to be God with skin on; and when faith invades Cornelius' house, the Spirit whistles through until it is embodied in all present. Later, when John writes against the growing Gnostic heresy tearing at the fabric of young congregations in what is now southwestern Turkey, he declares the proof of true faith as the testimony that Jesus is the love of God with skin on. All of this is but a reflection of Jesus' own final instructions to his disciples in the upper room of the Last Supper, when he urged them to remain in him and live in love. In this, the world would know God.
Acts 10:44-48
These few verses belie a monumental event that will transform the entire human race. Jesus appeared in history as a Jew, proclaiming the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies about the coming of the "day of the Lord," and the arrival of the kingdom of God. Even though not all Jews were of a common mind about Jesus, no one questioned the idea that Jesus emerged from and spoke within the context of Jewish religious identity. Thus, when a segment of Jewish society began proclaiming Jesus as risen from the dead, and the ever-living Messiah, it was an understandable mutation of Jewish identity.
When the Roman Centurion Cornelius became a believer in Jesus, lines of social clarity became blurred. Peter, leader among the disciples of Jesus who had become the key apostolic witnesses, had to be led against his will into an evangelistic encounter with Cornelius, even though Cornelius was about the most ready convert in history. Even then, Peter was astounded that without training in Jewish theology, Cornelius not only understood that Jesus was his Savior and the way to the one true God, but also that the Holy Spirit of God invaded Cornelius and his family, affirming his participation in the new family of faith. Before this time, ethnicity meant everything for true theology and faithful response to the God of creation and salvation. Now, suddenly, this God was accessible by all people of all ethnicities and backgrounds. This astounding turn of events is summarized in today's brief lectionary passage.
When Peter's exploits with the Roman Centurion Cornelius at Caesarea nurtured the new Gentile mission of the church (Acts 10-11), Diaspora-born Paul (Saul by his other name) became the perfect candidate to partner with Barnabas in establishing an international congregation in the eastern Roman capital city of Antioch (Acts 12). Soon this congregation became the launching pad for the great mission journeys of Paul and his companions (Acts 13-19) that would forever relocate the expansion of the Christian church outside of Jerusalem and Palestine.
What had been a centripetal energizing motion during the first phase of God's recovery mission on planet earth (that is, drawing the nations toward a re-engagement with their creator through the strategically placed nation of Israel) was now shifted into a centrifugal motion of divine sending out to the nations in ever-widening circles of witness. The Christian church, born as a Jewish messianic sect, became a global religion.
1 John 5:1-6
It is obvious that 1 John is not a letter. It carries no identification of the author, puts forward no greeting, offers no personal notes or reminisces, includes no travel plans, responds to no particular life situations encountered by either the writer or the readers, and offers no concluding blessing. It is not a letter. The occasion for the three missives from John appears to be deep trouble in a church to which he is closely tied and to whose pastoral leader he has a deep bond of friendship. A critical separation is occurring between two parties. On the one side are "The Elder," Gaius, Demetrius, and the bulk of this particular congregation. On the other side are Diotrephes and a group of false teachers who were at one time allies and part of the congregational leadership team but are now abrasively identified by the Elder as "antichrists." The church experiencing these polarizing disputes is likely to be quite large (since there are multiple leaders lining up on both sides), fairly well educated (because the teachings being espoused are often quite technical and philosophical), established for some years (long enough to have a gradual evolving of leadership teams and doctrinal development), and probably not that far from Ephesus, since John was quite an old man by this time and yet seems to have had regular personal contacts with Gaius, the pastor on site.
It is probable that 1, 2, and 3 John were part of a single packet of correspondence written together and delivered all at one time by a man named Demetrius, who was being sent by and was representing the Elder, the author of these documents. Third John is the cover letter to Gaius, commending Demetrius as ambassador of the Elder, acting on his behalf in this crisis. Second John is the introductory letter to the congregation, encouraging faithfulness during these stressful times of dispute and tension, and setting the stage for a public reading of the summary teaching also enclosed. First John is that brief teaching intended to be read and discussed by the congregation, outlining correct and incorrect theologies that have surfaced in this debate and need clarification.
What is the heretical teaching that this competing group is putting forward? Although we do not have any actual writings that may have been circulated by the false teachers, or written reports of their oratory, we can read backward through John's main points of emphasis and decipher nuances of the heresy propounded. Over against what the others must have been teaching, John stresses these things:
There is clear continuity between Old & New Testament ages (1:1-4)
God has given a recent new revelation, the person of Jesus (1:2-3)
There is only one God and this divine being is entirely unified in character (1:5)
Sin is an obvious reality and cannot be ignored or presumed out of the human picture (1:6-10)
Jesus actually died and this happened as a sacrifice that had religious transactional qualities; it was redemptive (1:7; 2:1)
There is a unity of theology and ethics; what you believe must come out in your practices, or it is not truly held at all (2:3-6)
Followers of Jesus are, by their very nature and calling, concerned about the physical well-being of others (2:9-11)
Godly people need to deny worldly desires that constantly plague the human race (2:15-17)
The highest value of all is love expressed in relationships (3:10-15; 4:21)
Jesus actually died and this was an atoning sacrifice (3:16; 4:10)
The Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son (3:21--4:6)
Jesus is and remains truly flesh and blood (4:2; 5:6-8)
When these emphases in John's teaching monograph are consolidated, they appear to be a reaction to early Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a philosophic worldview that often parasitically attached itself to various religious expressions, twisting their key concepts in complex and mystical directions. During the second century, a number of Gnostic communities sprang up in the Christian church, particularly in its eastern regions.
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics -- non-relational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. Since the material world existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god served as creator. Of course, any god that would create material things was already compromised, and this applied as well to the God of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), that god was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all) have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, he needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to "seem" or "appear") believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram) who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of his intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, believed that Jesus was a very good human being who was adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!" This, of course, was the release or separation of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionists believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word for knowing or knowledge. Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent divine spirit can communicate the necessary knowledge to us. This is the meaning and identity of Jesus' life, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize we have.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused.
Third, we must release the divine spark within us through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, Jesus tells Judas that his planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for he alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies, releasing the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed.
The outcome of these philosophic ideas and the larger cosmology from which they emerge, is that human life took on a very different character for Christians who had been influenced by Gnosticism. Some evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior apparently was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others because such an investment messes us up material reality which in turn only pulls ourselves away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthens, capacities, and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies that hold our spirits in check and prevents those whose flesh is weakening from the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have been coupled with a type of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know, and we are on the track toward illumination and release, while they are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren't like us, but there is not thing we can do about it. We are enlightened, they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which are dividing at least the one congregation, and threatening the gospel John that knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instruction. Right at the start of his short lecture he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is the true Creator God and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder. Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble.
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that Jesus is the divine Son of God who actually became flesh and blood. Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the Gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not.
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh and blood and spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we ought also to care about each other. Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also fully engage in each other's lives for help and encouragement and care. In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother. Christianity does not remove us from pain, but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and pained existence with us, and ultimately crucified him.
Thus, salvation is physical and spiritual. We are already "children of God" (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the Creator. Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of "light" over against the "darkness" that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John's teaching ("Dear children, keep yourselves from idols"), often considered cryptic or ill-placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-Gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus "antichrists") of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, is merely self-absorbed childishness where "I" stand at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job there and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, "we love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
John 15:9-17
Although its literary development is markedly different from that of the Synoptic Gospels, there is a very clear pattern to John's rehearsal of thought and portrayal of Jesus' activities and teachings in this gospel. A significant transition in referential time takes place between chapters 12 and 13 (related to the coming of the "the hour" for Jesus; note 2:4; 4:23; 7:6; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1), and this change is further accentuated by the grouping of all of Jesus' "miraculous signs," as John calls them, into the first twelve chapters. For these reasons the first part of John's gospel is often called "The Book of Signs," while the last part wears well the name "The Book of Glory." A highly significant prologue opens the gospel (1:1-18), and an epilogue obviously written by another party and added after the initial gospel was completed (ch. 21) brings it to a close.
Once the transition takes place to the "Book of Glory," only two major events happen. First, Jesus meets for an extended meal and conversation with his disciples. The monologue seems somewhat meandering and repetitive until the Hebrew chiastic manner of communication is overlaid. Then the farewell discourse, as it is known, becomes an obvious deeply moving invitation by Jesus for his followers to remain connected to him by way of the powerful "Paraclete" (a Greek term meaning "counselor" or "advocate") in the face of the troubling that will come upon them because of his imminent physical departure and the rising persecutions targeted toward them by the world that remains in darkness. In chiastic summary, the farewell discourse can be portrayed in this manner (for more on this see Wayne Brouwer, The Literary Structure of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading; SBL 2000):
Gathering scene (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love)
13:1-35
Prediction of disciple's denial
13:36-38
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power
14:1-14
Promise of the "Paraclete"
14:15-24
Troubling encounter with the world
14:25-31
"Abide in Me!" teaching
15:1-17
Troubling encounter with the world
15:18-16:4a
Promise of the "Paraclete"
16:4b-15
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power
16:16-28
Prediction of disciple's denial
16:29-33
Departing prayer (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love)
17:1-26
Second, Jesus moves through his passion into the resurrection. While the details of Jesus' trial and crucifixion are virtually identical with those given in the Synoptic Gospels, there are a number of little incidents reported that could only have been written by an eyewitness -- the name of the servant of the high priest who is wounded by Peter's sword (18:10), the reason for Peter's access into the area where Jesus was being tried (18:15), the words of the conversation between Annas and Jesus (18:19-24), and the transfer of Mary's care from Jesus to the beloved disciple (19:27).
Today's lectionary passage lies near the center of the farewell discourse chiasm, as noted above. It is part of the key element in which Jesus explains what it means to remain close to him, through the Paraclete, after he has returned to heaven. In essence, the evidence of remaining in Jesus, as branches cling to the vine, is the expression of love. Love, according to Jesus, is the meaning of God and critical to understanding our truest human nature as intended by God.
In 1967 a psychologist named Kinch reported a rather bizarre experiment conducted by university psychology graduate students. These males were part of what they considered to be the "in" crowd on campus. They moved in the right circles, dressed the right way, and went to the right places for nightlife parties.
But they all knew a particular young woman who wasn't in that circle. She was an "outsider," a "nobody," a person who didn't count -- at least to them and their kind.
Knowing the effects of behavior modification, they planned together to see how she would change if they treated her, for a time, as if she were part of their "in" crowd. They made an agreement that whenever they saw her they would compliment her and show an interest in her. Furthermore, they would take turns asking her out on dates.
The experiment took a strange turn. Under other circumstances they did not like her. They would not have talked to her prior to this, but only about her, and in condescending and cynical ways. Yet as the challenge progressed each of the men gradually found the young woman more likable, less foreign, less alien. The first fellow's date with her went okay, even though he had to keep telling himself she was more beautiful and better company than he truly felt.
By the time the third fellow asked her out, she had actually become part of their circle of friends. They thought it was kind of fun being with her. She wasn't so bad after all!
The fifth fellow never did get to date her, because the fourth fellow in line asked her to be his wife! What started as a rather cruel experiment ended up as an amazing testimony to the truth of the gospel words about the power of love.
Application
C.S. Lewis captured the tension of light and darkness in spiritual combat in his space trilogy about Venus. The planet Mars, in his tale, is populated by an ancient race of God's creatures who never gave in to the lure of evil and remain holy and just. Earth, as we know, has fallen under the domain of the dark shadows, and the great Creator has posted warning signs around it in space. It is off limits to other races, quarantined until the end of time.
Venus, though, is a freshly birthed planet with a more recent "paradise" story of creaturely development. A newly formed pair similar to Earth's Adam and Eve dance about in innocent delight.
The evil power in the universe will not allow a divine masterpiece to go long unmarred, however, and he sends a vicious Earth scientist named Weston to introduce sin on Venus by corrupting its lord and lady. In a countermove the great Creator sends an ambassador of his own to Venus. The universe holds its breath as the future of this bright world hangs in the balance.
In these novels Lewis pictured the tension in every human heart. Like Adam and Eve at Earth's creation, and like the lord and lady of Venus, we are surrounded by dark powers, yet long for the light of redemption and love. Most of our lives we struggle to see more clearly.
Still, life gets lost for us, often, in the shadows. But grace breaks through, now and again, in moments of insight and illumination, and those are the moments we have to hang onto. That is why John 3:16 has become one of the most widely known verses of the Bible. It summarizes the scriptural message as that of God looking for us in love.
Like a mother who brings a child into this world, God is protective of the lives birthed on planet Earth. When sin stains and decadence destroys, God's first thought is to rescue, redeem, and recover the children God so dearly loves.
This is a theme repeated throughout the Bible. If God is saying anything through its pages, at least this much is clear: it is the whisper of divine love.
An Alternative Application
John 15:9-17. Sometimes there are children who can show the teaching of Jesus about living in God's love in remarkable ways, as Dale Galloway related in his book Dream a New Dream. A friend's son was very shy, he said. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad's mother would see the children pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, would always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January Chad came home and said, "You know what, Mom? Valentine's Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!"
Chad's mother told Dale how terrible she felt. "Oh no!" she thought. "Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He's going to make valentines for everyone else, but nobody will think of him. He'll come home all disappointed and just pull back further into his shell."
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made 31 valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad's face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. "I didn't forget anybody!" he said. "I gave them all one of my hearts!"
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. "I gave them all one of my hearts!" he said.
That is where Jesus wants to bring us. Circles of hatred erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of death that give way to circles of Life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham's poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the Son reflect about me:
He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout!
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!1
It's all about love. Of course, love begins with God. In Jesus. Somebody with skin on.
1. Edwin, Markham, "Epigrams."
