Bishop Spong's Articles August 2010

In the second chapter, we find equally enigmatic words. Here we are told that at a wedding party Jesus actually changes water into wine so that the party can go on! Can any of us imagine a set of circumstances in which that narrative would be taken literally? Medieval alchemists spent centuries trying to turn iron into gold and failed. Given the price of good wine today, perhaps they would have been more successful if they had followed Jesus' example and tried to turn water into wine. Surely John did not think of this as a literal story and the suggestion later in the story that Jesus' freshly fermented beverage was so superior to that which was served first that it violated the social norm of the day, which was to serve the "good stuff" first and then when the guests were well drunk to bring out the "screw top gallon bottles." So we need to ask just what it was that John was seeking to communicate when he opens his second chapter with this story and calls it "the first sign" of Jesus' public ministry that "manifested forth his glory." Perhaps this author drops another clue that these words are not to be taken literally when he begins this particular narrative with the words, "On the third day," since these words would be deeply fraught with meaning in the company of believers to whom these words were addressed.

In the next episode described by John, Jesus is in Jerusalem and there he drives the money changers out of the Temple. In the earlier gospels, this story of the cleansing of the temple is the provocative final act that leads directly to the crucifixion. John, however, places it at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Once again the Jewish audience that first reads John's words would immediately identify this narrative with a reading from the book of Psalms (69:9), which stated that the Messiah would show zeal for the house of God — zeal indeed that would consume him. They also knew that John was using this episode not to describe something that happened, but to make a messianic claim. These readers would have been familiar with the account from the book of Zechariah, which said that when "the day of the Lord" came, "there would no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of Hosts (14:21)." That was destined to be only the first of many references that John w ould take from the book of Zechariah, a book that shaped the Jesus story far more than most of us have imagined.

Continuing the same theme in chapter three, John has Jesus say to a man named Nicodemus, "unless you are born anew, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. " Nicodemus is baffled because he hears these words literally and wonders how it is possible for a grown man to be born anew when he is old, "Can I climb back into my mother's womb and be born a second time?" Literalism makes no sense, but John is not writing a literal story.

In the fourth chapter of John, the author has Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well about water. The conversation began when he asked the woman to give him a drink from the well. When she demurred and retreated into the boundary that separates Jew from Samaritan, Jesus said to her, "If you knew who it was that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." The woman looked at him with the blank stare of literalism and said, in effect, "Man, you don't even have a bucket!" The Jesus of John's gospel then says, "Whoever drinks of the water I give will never thirst again." The woman still trapped in the prison of literalism responds, "That is great. Give me your water and I will never have to come again to this well. That would make my life easier."

As if that were not sufficient warning that this book is not to be read literally, John continues his theme when he relates the story of Jesus' disciples returning and interrupting this private conversation. They then urge Jesus to eat. To this urging, however, John's Jesus responds by saying, "I have food to eat of which you do not know." The disciples, still blinded by the literalism through which they hear his words, say to one another: "Has anyone brought him food?" The theme of anti-literalism goes on.

In the sixth chapter of John, Jesus is made to place his message into Eucharistic language and then to watch as his words are once again heard as if they are meant to be understood literally. Here he says: "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me." The literal-minded disciples are repelled by what seems to them to be a reference to cannibalism, and they begin to draw back and to cease following him. Time after time, the author of the Fourth Gospel displays the truth that this book is an interpretive book not a literal one. It is a symbolic book, not a historical book or a biographical story. No one can read the Fourth Gospel with literal eyes without missing the essence of his message. Yet, throughout Christian history, this book has been read with literal eyes and this literal misreading has been used to buttress the case for orthodoxy, binding creeds and such rationally incomprehensible ecclesiastical doctrines as the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity.

One other unique aspect found in John alone is the fact that Jesus time and again is quoted as calling himself by the name, which, according to the book of Exodus, God revealed to Moses as God's own at the burning bush. Tell them, God said to Moses on that occasion, that "I AM" sent you. So John now has Jesus say, "Before Abraham was, I AM!" When you see the Son of Man lifted up, then you will know I AM." There is no "he" in that latter statement, despite the fact that the translators add one because they do not understand what this gospel writer is trying to say. At the time of Jesus' arrest in the dark of night in the Valley of Kidron, John portrays Jesus as approaching the band of soldiers and Temple police led by Judas and asking, "Whom do you seek?" They respond, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus says, "I AM." Translators once again render that "I am he." John's context, however, renders that translation inoperative, for John goes on to state: "When he said I AM, they drew back and fell to the ground." It was strange behavior for an armed guard confronting an unarmed political prisoner if he had said something as mundane as "I am he." If, on the other hand John was portraying him as uttering and claiming the divine name as they were about to arrest him, then that would be quite another matter.

"I AM" is a key concept in the Fourth Gospel repeated over and over again. John alone has Jesus say such things as: "I am the bread of life; I am the door; I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the vine; I am the good shepherd, and I am the resurrection." Jesus even asserts through that "I AM" claim that he is the exclusive pathway to God, a statement that has been used throughout Christian history to justify the basest forms of religious imperialism and to fuel the most insensitive kind of missionary evangelism.

John's gospel must not be literalized if it is to be understood. It is a profound, even mystical, interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, written by a person deeply rooted in Palestinian Judaism and its words are designed to lead John's readers beyond literal words into a life-giving relationship with God. History reveals what a high price has been paid because Christians have insisted on literalizing the words of this gospel. At the Council of Nicea, a literalized understanding of John was used to justify the new orthodoxy of a man named Athanasius, which was destined to cloak the Christian story in a hierarchical authority system in which it became oppressive, insensitive and anything but life-giving. When the shell of literalism is broken, however, the gospel of John enhances life, expands consciousness and calls us into a new relationship with the one whose deepest claim is to be a doorway into a new experience of that which is transcendent, holy and other. The call of John's Jesus is not into an engagement with a supernatural being, created in our image, who somehow lives above the sky and who, in the person of Jesus, was thought to have masqueraded as a human being. This is, of course, a caricature but only a little one. John's gospel is a work to be entered, a message to be breathed, and a doorway into a life to be lived. It was not written to enable us to play religion's oldest game, "My God is better than your God and I control the doorway into true belief. No one can come to God except through my faith system"

I once was repelled by the Fourth Gospel because I related to it as if it were a literal document. When I broke the bondage of that mindset, I found in this gospel a real understanding not just of God and of Jesus, but of life itself. Someday, I hope to spell out that thought in detail. For now, I must content myself to sketching a new vision of this gospel that all can see.

– John Shelby Spong

 

Dear Mitzi,

What a delightful 76-year-old you are! Thank you for your letter. The only shame is that, in your "Episcopal upbringing," these things were not brought to your attention 76 years ago, for they were certainly known long before that.

God is bigger than any human understanding of God. No Bible, no creed, no doctrine and no dogma can finally define God. It is a tragedy that so many religious people do not recognize this simple fact.

The world outside religious circles has certainly been aware of this for years. Don't you recall the line from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" about the Bible: "It ain't necessarily so." The Christian life is a journey into the mystery of God. The deeper we go into that journey, the more we realize that we have to go beyond the boundaries of all religious systems, including Christianity.

 

– John Shelby Spong

 

Note first the dramatic place in his drama to which the author of the Fourth Gospel has assigned the story of the raising of Lazarus. It is for John the catalyst that leads directly to the crucifixion. He then both compares and contrasts this Lazarus story with the raising of Jesus from the dead, which will be the grand climax that will conclude his gospel.

We begin our probe of this story by raising the question: Is it possible that the author of the Fourth Gospel ever entertained the possibility that there was even a shred of historical data underlying his account of raising Lazarus from the grave? The answer to that question is simple. Not a chance! Consider these facts: Mary and Martha, two sisters who lived in Bethany, have been figures in the Christian memory for quite a while, even starring in the gospel of Luke. Nowhere in that earlier tradition, however, was it recorded that they had a brother named Lazarus. John has clearly created Lazarus for his own literary purposes. Next John describes the raising of Lazarus from the dead as an event that was quite public. Crowds, consisting of both the friends and enemies of Jesus, have gathered to mourn the passing of Lazarus. This was not a miraculous event done in private, the details of which might, in the course of time, be exaggerated. There were eye witnesses ga lore. The lead-up to this story sets the stage for this event to be the source of great wonder. Jesus, we are told, postponed his journey to Bethany until the news came that Lazarus was actually dead. When he finally does arrive, the burial of Lazarus has been completed since it was the fourth day after his death. Both Martha and Mary express their displeasure by berating Jesus for not coming earlier when, they suggest, he could perhaps have used his powers to save Lazarus and to restore him to health. There is no hint anywhere in the Christian tradition that anyone anywhere had ever heard about this episode before. Embrace what that means. Here is a public event attended by a great crowd in which a man, dead for four days, has already been buried in a cave with a great stone covering its entrance. Jesus, the itinerant preacher, now proceeds to reverse this death even though the corpse was already in the decaying process. To accomplish the miracle this teacher, over the protests of the sisters of the dead man ("already he stinketh," the King James version has Martha say), orders the stone removed and he calls Lazarus to come forth. The mesmerized crowd then watches as the corpse of Lazarus, bound in the burial bands of cloth that secured both his hands and his feet and into which the burial spice of myrrh had been generously poured, comes staggering out of the cave. Jesus then orders them to "unbind him and let him go." If this were history, can you imagine how the account of this event could have been so deeply suppressed that no hint of it would have appeared in any Christian circle until John decided to write about it some three generations later? No, the raising of Lazarus is not an event that occurred in history. Then how are we to read this story? What was its origin?

There is only one other figure named Lazarus who appears in the New Testament. He is a character in a parable that only Luke records. We call it the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who is sometimes named Dives. This Lucan parable is about judgment. Lazarus, a beggar at the gate of the rich man, dies. So does the rich man, who apparently never "sees" this beggar. Lazarus is carried into the "bosom of Abraham" and the rich man is removed to the tortures of the condemned. In torment, Dives asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water to ease his thirst. Abraham responds that one cannot get to Dives from where Lazarus is. Then Dives asks him to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers to amend their lives lest they too come to this place of torment. Abraham replies, "They have Moses and the prophets to warn them." If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, "they will not listen even if one is raised from the dead." John takes this Lucan parable, historicize s it and demonstrates its truth in the life of Jesus. The raising of Lazarus does not create faith or change behavior; it actually serves to make the crucifixion of Jesus inevitable. The character we call Lazarus is a literary creation of the author of the Fourth Gospel, based on a parable, which John uses to stand as a symbol for those who see God in Jesus, respond to that experience and move from their religious past into the new consciousness that became available in Jesus.

Moving on now to look at "the beloved disciple," we note several other crucial items in this narrative. First, this character called Lazarus is the only person whom the author of the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus loved. The message that comes to Jesus from Mary and Martha, notifying him of their brother's illness and urging him to come quickly, is this. "Lord, he whom you love is ill." Next this text says, "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." Later Jesus is portrayed as weeping as he makes his way to the tomb, causing the crowd to say, "See how he loved him." If Jesus had a single "beloved disciple," it is interesting that this gospel never suggests that it could be anyone other than this literary character known as Lazarus. Second, it is also true that the designation of "one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved" does not enter the Johannine narrative until after the story of the raising of Lazarus. Only then is the "beloved discip le" pictured as present at the Last Supper "lying close to the heart of Jesus." He is the one whom Peter implores to ask Jesus to identify the name of the traitor. We next confront the beloved disciple in John's text at the foot of the cross and hear the dying Jesus commend his mother to the care of this person. Could the mother of Jesus be a symbol for Judaism, the mother of Christianity, and could the beloved disciple be a symbol of one who sees the meaning of Jesus so deeply that he can carry Jesus' message into a new context in the Gentile world without losing "his mother" Judaism in the process? Rudolf Bultmann, probably the greatest New Testament scholar in the 20th century, seems to think so and has advanced this possibility in his monumental commentary entitled simply: The Gospel of John.

The next time "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is mentioned in this gospel is in the Easter story. There we are told that he comes with Peter to the tomb that Mary Magdalene has reported to be empty, her suspicion being that the grave had been robbed, which would represent the final insult to the memory of Jesus. Peter and "the beloved disciple" run together, Peter the older, the one who is rooted in the tradition of Judaism, runs more slowly. The beloved disciple is younger, the one who will guide the Jesus message into its universal future, so he runs more quickly and arrives at the tomb first. He does not go in, but pauses at the entrance. Judaism must enter the new place before the Christian movement can do so. The new tradition must be built on the old. It cannot be born except out of the old. Religion always evolves by transcending the limits of the past and giving birth to a new consciousness. So Peter, arriving later and presumably out of breath, enters the t omb. He sees the signs. The grave clothes are neatly lying in place exactly where the head, the hands and the feet of the deceased Lord would have been. This resurrection was not to be like that of Lazarus, a resuscitation back to life in this world and still bound by the grave clothes. This was a transformative experience in which death is transcended, limits are crossed and new life is achieved. "The disciple whom Jesus loved" then follows Peter into the tomb. Like Peter, he also sees, but he takes the vital next step — this seeing causes him to believe! They both return home and that evening John's gospel says that Jesus appeared to them, along with all of the other disciples. This raised Jesus was portrayed as being intensely physical, but at the same time we are told that he entered the house despite the fact that the doors were shut and the windows barred. Once inside, we are told, he breathed on them the life-giving breath of God. It was that same brea th that had brought Adam into being at the first creation. This was the new creation and it was the beloved disciple who first steps into it. The beloved disciple is clearly a symbol, not a person. He represents those lives in which the meaning of Jesus leaps the boundaries of yesterday's religious understanding, by which people have always sought to control the wonder of the being that Jesus came to bring.

This beloved disciple is mentioned once more in the Epilogue to John's gospel. By the time this chapter was written and added to the text of this gospel, the literalizing process had already begun and John's symbol of the "beloved disciple" is identified with a particular one of the twelve who has clearly died. The theory apparently had developed that this beloved disciple was supposed to live until Jesus' second coming. So his death had to be explained and the Epilogue seeks to do so. The point is then made that Jesus does come again every time another person enters the new life, the new consciousness that Jesus came to bring. Lazarus and the beloved disciple are one and the same, symbols of those raised to new life, those who in Christ are able to step beyond traditional religious thinking into a new consciousness.

– John Shelby Spong

 

Dear Anne,

You need first to separate religious conviction from hostility. One does not allow hostility to be expressed toward oneself that is demeaning and destructive, even when people package their hostility in the rhetoric of religion. Religious hostility is no less hostile than non-religious hostility! You must see it and call it for what it is. You simply tell these friends that you do not want to discuss these subjects, that their persistent attempts to do so are not acceptable, that you do not welcome it and that if they continue in this behavior, even though they are "dear friends," they will be putting your friendship at risk. That should get their attention.

Once you have gotten their attention, you then explain that there are some subjects on which your mind, based on your best study, are settled and thus are no longer up for consideration or further debate even though you are aware that they do not agree with you. This will certainly put them on notice, and then it is up to them to act in such a way as to continue their friendship with you.

What I think all people need to understand is that the pious rhetoric of religion, including quotations from the Bible, do not make hostility acceptable. Religious rudeness is still rude, religious anger is still anger and boorish people who are religious are still boorish. No one is required to absorb anger even when it is perfumed with a religious scent.

I hope this helps.

 

– John Shelby Spong

Earlier in my career, I made an extensive study of all of the resurrection narratives in the New Testament. This study resulted in the publication of a book entitled Resurrection: Myth or Reality?. In that book, I tried to sort out the elements that seemed to culminate in the enormous power that was connected with the Easter moment. I asked four questions: Who was it who stood in the center of the resurrection experience? Where were the disciples when the experience of resurrection dawned? When was the moment in time in which the meaning of resurrection broke through in the lives of the disciples? What was the context, the setting, in which the Easter experience emerged? I then began to explore the clues present in the New Testament that might lead to new conclusions about this central exp erience in our faith story.

As I worked through not only all of the specific resurrection texts, but also anything else that might throw light on the Easter experience, recognizing that every word in Paul and in each gospel was actually written as post-Easter narratives, I came to these conclusions.

Peter is the crucial, central figure in the Easter story. Peter is singled out as the one who first saw. Paul says, "He appeared first to Cephas." Mark, the first gospel to be written, has the messenger say, "Go tell the disciples and Peter." Luke has the disciples claim, "The Lord has risen and has appeared to Peter." John portrays Peter as the first one who entered the tomb and saw its emptiness, including the burial clothes neatly placed where his hands and feet would once presumably have been. In Matthew and in other parts of the gospel text, Peter is the one who makes the first confession at Caesarea Philippi. He is always listed first when the disciples are named. In John's gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying to Peter, "When you are converted strengthen your brethren," as if Peter would be the first one who would enable the others to see. The primacy of Peter in the entire gospel tradition seems to me to rest on the fact that Peter was the f irst one whose eyes were opened to see both the meaning of Jesus and his resurrection. Then I searched every Peter story in the gospels looking for resurrection clues. I believe that they are there, from the story of Peter after the feeding of the multitude in John, saying "Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the word of eternal life," to Peter demanding to be washed all over when Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. All Peter stories I concluded ought to be read as resurrection stories for they show Peter's coming to faith very clearly. So I filed my first conclusion. Peter stood at the center of the resurrection tradition.

Secondly, I pursued the "where" question. The New Testament is divided between the competing claims for primacy in the resurrection tradition between Galilee and Jerusalem. Mark has the Easter messenger direct the disciples to return to Galilee with the promise that, "there you will see him." Matthew says that it was only in Galilee that the raised Christ ever appeared to the disciples. Luke, however, counters this Galilean tradition by asserting that the appearance of the risen Christ occurred only in Jerusalem and its environs, thus overtly refuting the Galilean tradition. John supports Luke by insisting on the primacy of Jerusalem, but then to the end of John's gospel was attached the Epilogue that centers the resurrection squarely in Galilee. A deeper analysis of these competing texts, however, reveals that the Galilee tradition was not only earlier, but it was the more primitive and the more original. It is noteworthy that all the Jesus sightings, the visions, th e aspects of his bodily physicality, the feeling of his flesh and the touching of his wounds are associated with the later and clearly secondary Jerusalem tradition. So Galilee emerged from this study as the answer to the question about where the disciples were when the resurrection experience dawned. Building on that conclusion, I then looked at other stories that might also contain Easter references, from the disciples mistaking him for a ghost coming to them out of the darkness, to Jesus walking on the water, to the account of the transfiguration, which portrays him as translucent. I noted that all of these were set in Galilee.

I came next to the "when" question and confronted the familiar time symbol "three days." A study of the New Testament reveals that this symbol is wobbly at best. Paul and Mark say "On the third day." Matthew and Luke change that time designation to "after three days," a variation that sounds similar, but clearly is not, for "on" and "after" do not result in the same day. According to a literal reading of the gospels, the time from burial on Good Friday to the empty tomb at dawn on Sunday morning is only 36 hours, or a day and a half. Mark, however, has the messenger say only that they will see him in Galilee, but Galilee is a seven- to ten-day journey from Jerusalem, so this "seeing" could not possibly occur inside the literal "three day" symbol, whether it is "on" or "after." Luke stretches the appearance stories to forty days, culminating with the first account of the ascension. John has resurrection appearance stories occur in Jerusalem over a period of eight days, but then in the Johannine Epilogue the resurrection appearances seem to cover a period of months. These were the data that drove me to conclude that the phrase "three days" is not only a symbol, but one that was never intended to be a literal measure of time. That insight opened me to the possibility that the time between the crucifixion and the Easter experience needs to be expanded at least to months. My third conclusion thus became that I needed to destabilize and de-literalize the symbolic time marker of three days and to extend the time between crucifixion and resurrection significantly.

Finally, when I searched for the context in which resurrection dawned, I found the key phrase in Luke, "He was known to us in the breaking of bread." That valuable clue led me to look at all the feeding stories in the gospels for resurrection clues. So I examined the stories about the feeding of the multitude with a limited number of loaves and fishes, I examined the various accounts of the Last Supper, and I even looked at the parables of Jesus that focused on a great banquet. In each of these places I found elements of the interpretive meal in which the risen Jesus made himself known and present.

My study drove me to these conclusions: First, whatever Easter was, Peter stood at the center of it and was the first to "see" and was thus the one who opened the eyes of the others so that they could also see. Secondly, Galilee was the original setting in which the meaning of Easter dawned, while the Jerusalem tradition was secondary. That is why the Jerusalem stories feature a supernaturalized Jesus and insist on the resurrection being understood as a resuscitated Jesus. Third, I concluded that the moment of Easter dawned slowly and over a period of months after the crucifixion. Finally, I became convinced that the common meal of the church was designed to be a liturgical reenactment of what the original resurrection experience was, so that liturgical meal must have played a role in the beginning. With these conclusions in hand, I returned to the gospels in search of a resurrection narrative that was based on these four principles.

I found it only in the Epilogue to the Fourth Gospel, which I now regard as the most authentic, and maybe even the earliest, of the resurrection narratives in the New Testament. It is about Peter fighting his way through to a new understanding. It is set in Galilee. It clearly occurs some time after the crucifixion. It concludes by suggesting that it was during a beachside, early morning Eucharist that the experience of their living Lord broke through first to Peter, then to the twelve.

The Epilogue of John thus grew in significance for me. Further study opened me to the possibility that this narrative might well have been an earlier tradition that floated freely during the oral period and found two very different resting places, first in Luke and then in the Epilogue of John. My supposition is that someone, perhaps a member of the Johannine School, recognized its authenticity and decided to attach it to the Fourth Gospel. That decision preserved, I believe, the earliest and most authentic memory of the dawning of Easter and, at the same time, true to the Johannine principle, it was clear that this experience could never be literalized, for it was not bound inside either time or space. It is fitting that with this story the Fourth Gospel is drawn to its second conclusion and that is why John says that "to know Jesus is eternal life."

&nda sh; John Shelby Spong

 

Dear John:

In a word, I believe nothing will happen. I assume it's inevitable already. Our image of God is always too small. Our problem is that we cannot think in God categories. God is the same. Our image of God expands every time we discover something more about life, the universe or our own humanity.

– John Shelby Spong