john

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

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John 5:1-9

   A man who has been ill for thirty-eight years lies by a pool that is believed to have healing powers.  He’s been trying to make his way to the healing waters of the pool, but he can’t do it without help, and he has no help.  Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” 

   “Well, duh!” seems to be the obvious answer.  Of course he wants to be made well.  The question seems almost cruel.  Is Jesus implying that the man isn’t well because he doesn’t want it enough?  In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bright-sided, she described her battle with breast cancer and the unrelenting message that you won’t recover unless you have a sufficiently positive attitude.  It was made clear to her, she said, that “If I don’t get better, it’s my fault. … It’s a clever blame-the-victim sort of thing.”  Given this message, we might wonder if the man’s response is defensive: “Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 

   Some alternative Greek manuscripts for John’s Gospel explain that it was believed that these waters had healing powers only when they were moving, mysteriously stirred up, and only the first person in the pool when the water begins to move would be healed.  This means every ailing person is competing with every other ailing person for a very limited opportunity.  Not the best system, but it’s the only system the man knows.  Of course he wants to be made well; otherwise he wouldn’t keep making regular trips to the pool.

   Jesus is not telling the man that he just needs a sunnier outlook or that he needs to pray a little harder.  It is cruel to tell people who are sick, or jobless, or unhoused, or refugees that they just aren’t thinking positively enough, they just aren’t trying hard enough, that whatever they are experiencing is their own fault.  And one thing we can say for certain about Jesus is that he wasn’t cruel.  Why, then, does he ask, “Do you want to be made well”? 

   Jesus spoke to people as though they could think, decide, make judgments.  He knows the man wants to be made well, so in essence, he’s asking, “Is this working for you?  Is sitting by this pool getting you what you want and need?”  And if that’s what Jesus is asking, then the man’s answer makes more sense; it sounds less like a bundle of excuses and more like a thoughtful, if exasperated reply.  I’m imagining he’s saying something like, “Does it work?  Just listen to how much it doesn’t work,” and then he describes the tedious process he’s endured for years.

  Jesus asks, “Is this really working for you?  Or are you ready to try something else?”  The closing verse of this passage points to this: “Now that day was a Sabbath.”  The story continues beyond this passage to explain why that’s a problem.  At this point in Christian history, it’s likely that both Jewish Christians and the traditional Jewish community intended to keep the Sabbath.  The struggle was over how to apply this – what did it mean to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?  So part of Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?” includes, “Is this system working for you?”  Not only the system that’s kept him coming back to this pool for years with no change in his condition, but the system that would prevent Jesus from healing him on the Sabbath, as well as preventing the man from carrying his bed away from the pool once he’s healed.

   Is this really working for you?  Ask anyone who’s been in a twelve-step group and they will tell you that Step 1 is honesty – honesty about your condition, honesty about the fact that what you’ve tried in the past isn’t working.  It is the question that every one of us, every group and every institution needs to answer in the negative before we can begin to change.  “Is this really working?”  If you can’t say, “Well, no, now that you mention it, it isn’t working,” there’s no reason to try something else.

   I believe we are to hear, first and foremost, Jesus asking us the question.  “Do you want to be made well?  Is what you are doing really working?  Is it working to give you health and wholeness?  Or are you ready to try something else?”  Not so we can heal ourselves with the power of positive thinking but so we can let go of whatever system or whatever beliefs or whatever we’ve been doing that is not working.  In our relationships.  In our work.  In our national life, in our economy, in our churches, in our care of creation and the climate, in our care of our fellow human beings.  In our relationships with other nations.  And in our health, and certainly in our health care delivery system, which is not so different from what existed back then in that it lets one person be pushed aside while another receives care.  Maybe this story isn’t so much about one man as it is about a system of healing out of whack. 

   Jesus offers us another way.  Let go of what isn’t working.  Try something else.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).
Patricia Cohen, “Author’s Personal Forecast: Not Always Sunny, But Pleasantly Skeptical,” October 10, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/10ehrenreich.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print.
Gerard Sloyan, Interpretation: John (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).

By This Everyone Will Know

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John 13:31-35 

    A few weeks ago, I spoke at a California State Senate committee hearing in Sacramento, advocating for a bill that would prohibit discrimination in healthcare on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.  I stood in line at the mic after the bill’s author made her introduction, and we were instructed to give only our names and affiliation, and voice our support.  The person who invited me to this hearing asked me to wear my clergy collar, which I rarely do.  I realize the collar announces loud and clear what I am, but I find that when I wear one in public, people tend to avert their eyes.  This was the case that day in Sacramento.  I’m glad I spoke up, I’m glad I claimed the affiliation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and I’m even glad I wore the collar because it makes me look more official. But on elevators and in corridors, it felt as though people thought I might have something contagious.

   It makes me wonder what they think about clergy, but also, about Christians.  I ran across a short video called, “What Are Christians Known For?” An interviewer asked this very question of random people in random settings.  It wasn’t a scientific poll, but it had the feel of being pretty much where people are about Christians these days.  You may watch the video here:

   About half of the people responded the way I’d hoped: Forgiveness, compassion, loving our neighbors.  The other half responded with what I feared they might: Fanaticism, hypocrisy, killing off non-Christians.  I’m deeply grateful that at least some of the people interviewed mentioned Jesus, and even echoed his words in this passage in John’s Gospel.  These verses take place shortly before Jesus’ arrest. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet, a vivid demonstration of servanthood, hospitality, and love.  Then Jesus announces that one among them will betray him.  After Judas leaves, Jesus speaks the words in today’s lesson. 

   Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  He’s asking them to care for each other as he has cared for them.  It doesn’t end there, within the community of disciples, but it does start there and that’s hard enough.  We’ve just seen Judas, a disciple, turn on Jesus and the other disciples, for crying out loud.  John wrote his gospel in the context of the early church, which experienced conflict from without and within.  All of Paul’s letters to the ancient churches were about how to get along, how to treat each other within the community of faith.  Paul’s most famous words, that gorgeous chapter 13 from First Corinthians that practically everyone including me has read at their wedding is not about marriage; it’s about church.  It’s about telling people how to love each other in the church.

   In order to bring the good news of Christ to the rest of the world, the followers of Christ needed to take care of one another.  They need to love each other.  Note what Jesus doesn’t say.  He doesn’t say: “You will know them by their exacting adherence to correct doctrine.”  He doesn’t say, “You will know them by the way they read the Bible literally,” or “You will know them by who it is they condemn as sinners.”  Jesus doesn’t say, “You will know them by their lack of doubts, or by their lack of questions.”

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”   

   As the little video shows, people are watching us.  They may not be watching closely enough to know the difference between a Pentecostal, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic. But they’re watching to see how we act.  They’re watching to see if we love each other.  And of course, they’re watching to see if we extend that love beyond the doors of our churches.  But it has to start with the community.  The church’s purpose is love, not condemnation.  The church’s purpose is love, not judgment.  William Barclay writes, “More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.”

   It has to start with the community, but to end there is to miss the point.  The church does not exist to preserve or maintain itself, but rather, to be Body of Christ in the world, to go into the world to do the work God calls us to do. Amy Allen writes, “For John’s Jesus, this was showing the world the Light, to show what it meant to be a follower of Christ.  For Luke’s Jesus, this was showing the world aid and concern, helping the victims, eating with those different from you, and baptizing whole households, even slaves, women, and children. Being a disciple of Jesus in these circumstances meant loving into community the whole people of God – not simply loving those with whom one was already in communion.”

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  David Lose points out that these words “are simultaneously ridiculously easy to understand and ridiculously hard to do.”  And yet, Jesus would not have given us this new commandment if it had not been possible.  We gather in communities, in churches, precisely to figure out how it’s possible. 

 © Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved

Resources:

Amy Allen, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-beloved-community-read-through-acts-111-18-and-john-1331-35/

David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2542 

Ongoing Easter

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John 20:1-18

Back in 1984, everybody was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. A dear friend said I should read it and it would change my life. I did; it didn’t; and I don’t remember much of it, but I appreciated Persig’s explanation of the Buddhist concept of “mu,” which means “un-ask.” If someone asks a question that limits the way you can look at things, or that can only produce an unhelpful answer, you can answer, “mu,” which says there may be a better question.

The celebration of the Resurrection tends to raise the kind of questions that make me want to answer, “Mu.” Did the Resurrection really happen? Do you “believe” in the Resurrection? Do you need to believe in a literal, bodily Resurrection to be a good Christian, or to be any kind of Christian? At the risk of sounding like the Easter cow instead of the Easter bunny, “Mu, mu, mu.”

People have obsessed about these questions for centuries. We want the facts, right? But even the four gospels tell the story four different ways. How many women went to the tomb: one, two or three? How many angels? Did the disciples meet Jesus in Galilee or Jerusalem or both? All of which is glorious affirmation that neither the precise facts about the Resurrection nor the truth it reveals depends on what we believe. Easter isn’t like the musical “Peter Pan,” where the audience is asked to clap if they believe in fairies to save Tinkerbell’s life. We don’t change anything by our belief, our unbelief, or by telling the story with conflicting details.

Besides, as Frederick Buechner pointed out, “…even if somebody had been there with a television camera and taken a picture of Jesus walking out of the tomb, what would that be except, for many people, an interesting historical fact, just as it’s interesting to know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492? But what difference does that make to me? So what if a Jew in the year 30 A.D. was brought back from the dead? In other words, what’s important is not so much what happened in the half-light of daybreak on that day in 30 A.D., but what happens now. What matters is not what happened on Easter Sunday, but what happens in my life. Is there any sense that, for you and for me, Jesus exists, or the power that was in Jesus, the power that led people to see him as kind of transparency to holiness itself, to the mystery itself? If that is alive, that’s all that matters, and what happened on that day is of little consequence except in a minor historical way.”

We tell this enigmatic story with conflicting details every year not because Easter is the anniversary of something that happened 2,000 years ago. Easter is not over. It is ongoing. We see this in John’s Easter story. It’s Sunday morning and still dark. Mary Magdalene goes to tomb where she knows the body of the crucified Jesus was laid on Friday. She sees the tomb is empty and concludes someone has stolen the body. She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple, and they run to the tomb. The unnamed disciple “believes,” but we aren’t told what he believes. The disciples don’t yet understand; in any event, they turn around and head home.

Mary remains there, weeping. She sees a man she thinks is the gardener. He calls her by name, and something illogical, something impossible happens. The One who was certified dead greets her. Stunned, she can only say, “Rabbouni!” which is something like “Teacher!” She reaches for him, but Jesus says, “Don’t cling to me.” This seems harsh, but rather than a rebuke, try imagining it as a teaching moment. “Mary, you can’t cling to ‘Rabbouni,’ to what I was on Friday. You can’t hold on to what is dead and gone.” Jesus refers to “your father and my father; your God and my God.” He’s describing a new horizontal relationship, a new union with God that means new life. The point of Easter is not to believe something about the past, but to awaken to the gift of new life here. God is making us new, here, and now.

What does “new” look like? To the disciples, it looked like an uprising of hope. Brian D. McLaren imagines their conversation: “Do you realize what this means? Jesus was right after all!” “Not only that, but we never have to fear death again. And if that’s true, we never need to fear Caesar again.” “That means we can stand tall and speak the truth, just like Jesus did.” We see this awakening realization in all the post-resurrection accounts. Everything had changed. It’s not just that Jesus was resurrected. It felt as though they’d arisen, too. They’d been in a tomb of defeat and despair, but they were truly alive again, and a force to be reckoned with. But a force of hope, not hate.

“New” is for us, as well, but like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. Nadia Bolz-Weber writes, “New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage not to mention I was right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming – never even hoped for – but ends up being what we needed all along.”

The God who is love, who so loved the whole world, as John’s gospel put it, does not limit new life to people who can recite the Apostles’ Creed without crossing their fingers. “Do not cling to me,” said Jesus. God is free, and perhaps “new” includes recognizing the ways we have persuaded ourselves that God can be controlled by our own rules, creeds, and religious practices. John’s first witness to the Resurrection was a woman. It’s hard for us to appreciate how radical that is, but it affirms everything Jesus did in his earthly ministry to cross barriers and include outsiders. So not only can we no longer think of God as Protestant or Catholic, or white, Black or brown; we can no longer think God is more like nice middle-class folks or imagine that God prefers Christians to Muslims or vice versa. “New” means waking up to the fact that God is not on “our” side any more than God is on “their” side.

Easter – new life – is God’s ongoing work. It’s not just once a year and it’s not about church, although the church is the fellowship of Easter people. When Jesus sent Mary to go tell the disciples, in the Greek it says, “Continue to tell them.” Her never-ending mission, and ours, is to share her Easter experience and the things he taught. So while we do not corner the market on new life, we are the people who look for, celebrate and point to signs of Resurrection; signs that, as Desmond Tutu put it, goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death. When the Church gathers, it is to rise again, to believe again, to hope again, to live again. It is ongoing. We do not proclaim on Easter morning, “Christ was risen.” We proclaim, “Christ is risen!”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
William Placher, quoting Herman Samuel Reimarus, in Jesus the Savior (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6IKaLF4Fqc
Frederick Buechner, from an extended interview, by Kim Laughton, April 18, 2003, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2003/04/18/april-18-2003-frederick-buechner-extended-interview/8658/.
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).
Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).
John 3:16.
Ruth Burgess and Chris Pohill, Eggs and Ashes (Glasgow, Scotland: Wild Goose Publications, 2004).

Extravagant Compassion

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Lesson: John 12:1-8

The Lazarus story just before this chapter is a turning point. When the news about Lazarus gets around, people will think Jesus is some sort of savior, and the Romans will wreak havoc on everyone. The authorities decide “better to have one man die than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50). They plan to grab Jesus when he shows up in Jerusalem for Passover. Jesus’ days are numbered, and he knows it.

With this backdrop, Jesus is just outside of Jerusalem, having dinner with friends: Lazarus, his sisters Mary and Martha, and a few disciples. Without explanation, Mary breaks open a bottle of nard, an incredibly expensive perfumed ointment. Mary lets her hair down in a room full of men, which an honorable woman never does. Normally you’d anoint someone’s head, but Mary pours the nard on Jesus’ feet, and then she, a single woman, touches him, a single man; also just not done. Then in the oddest move of all she wipes off the perfume with her hair.

Just exactly what’s going on isn’t clear, but Mary has stepped far outside the bounds of convention, teetering on the edge of scandal. That’s why Judas reacts so strongly. He attacks Mary for wasting 300 denarii on nard. A typical worker earned 300 denarii in an entire year. Doesn’t Judas have a point? But Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Jim Wallis writes that somehow this verse has been translated, “There is nothing we can do about poverty, the poor will always be there, so why bother?” But what Jesus meant was, “You’ll always have the poor with you because you’re my disciples. You know who we spend time with. You’ll always be near the poor.” Jesus is quoting the Torah here, and the context is important. In Deuteronomy, God tells Moses: “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward those of your people who are poor and needy in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).

We’re told Judas isn’t being altruistic. The gospel writer is telling us to keep our eyes on this guy. But Jesus says, “Let it go, because my time is running out.” Whatever Mary’s original motivations, Jesus knows what waits for him in Jerusalem. He says she’s saved the nard for the day of his burial. In other words, he’s as good as dead, right now.

So, leave her alone, Jesus says, because her kind of love is what Jesus needs, and what the world needs. Mid-twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich sums up the story: “[Mary] has performed an act of holy waste growing out of the abundance of her heart. . . . Jesus (alone) knows that without the abundance of heart nothing great can happen … . He knows that calculating love is not love at all.” “The history of humankind,” Tillich continues, “is the history of men and women who wasted themselves and were not afraid to do so. They did not fear to waste themselves in the service of a new creation. They wasted out of the fullness of their hearts.”

The only other time we encounter Mary in John’s gospel is right after Lazarus has died. When Jesus saw her and the others weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The Greek words are unusually powerful; Jesus is really bent out of shape by the sorrow he witnesses. His extravagantly compassionate response is to bring Lazarus back from the dead. Maybe he can’t heal every leper and paralytic; maybe he can’t bring back every friend from the dead, but it doesn’t stop him from helping this time. It ended up getting him in hot water with the authorities, but he did not fear to waste himself in service of a new creation.

In today’s passage, Mary echoes Jesus’ “holy waste,” his extravagant compassion, by anointing him with costly perfume. Perhaps what this story is reminding us is that extravagant compassion is what Jesus offered and it’s exactly what this world needs. We can’t right every injustice; we can’t heal every hatred, but that shouldn’t stop us from stepping in with extravagant compassion, with radical love and acceptance, when and where we can.

The extravagant, radical compassion approved and exhibited by Jesus himself stands in opposition to a growing movement among some conservatives, including Christians, pushing back against traditional Christian notions of empathy and compassion. In a New York Times op-ed, David French writes, “These attacks are rooted in the idea that progressives emotionally manipulate evangelicals into supporting causes they would otherwise reject. For example, if people respond to the foreign aid shutdown and the stop-work orders by talking about how children might suffer or die, then they’re exhibiting toxic empathy.” But as French points out, “So, yes, you say that children might die without a certain program when the very purpose of the program is to prevent children from dying. That’s not manipulation. It’s confronting individuals with facts. It’s making them understand exactly what they are choosing to do.”

Jesus chooses empathy. Jesus choose compassion. He chooses them because they are in fact what can save us, save our civilization, save our species, save our planet, save the world that God so loves.

Resources:
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Prophet Mary,” http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary.
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark, 2005).
Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).
Paul Tillich, “Holy Waste,” in The New Being: Existential Sermons (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, originally published in 1955; 2005 paperback edition).
David French, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” New York Times, February 13, 2025

What Is Truth?

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John 18:33-38

   Jesus faces Pontius Pilate.  The local religious authorities have hauled Jesus before the Roman prefect because the Romans can impose the death penalty for sedition, while the local authorities cannot.  Pilate questions Jesus.  “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 

   Some bibles translate this as, “My kingdom is not of this world…” as though, somehow, we could withdraw from our world, or even to imply that Jesus isn’t concerned with this world.  But the Greek says that Jesus’ kingdom is not derived from this world – and a better translation of the phrase “this world” here might be “this system,” or “the version of reality that most people accept.”  What Jesus is saying is that were he and his followers from Pilate’s world, from that version of reality, then naturally they, too, would use violence to keep him out of Pilate’s clutches.  But at Gethsemane, Jesus told Peter to put away his sword. 

   Jesus tells Pilate he came to testify to the truth.  The lectionary leaves off verse 38, Pilate’s response: “What is truth?”  Pilate has worked his way up the loyalty ladder of an empire founded on domination, violence, and lies to become governor of Judea.  It makes sense that he doesn’t recognize truth, or perhaps even value it.  “Pax Romana,” they called it, the Roman Peace.  That “peace” was maintained through forced military occupation of people who feared and despised the Romans.  The Romans crushed revolts and imposed burdensome taxes, impoverishing the common people.  Whose “pax” was this, exactly?  Whose peace?  You can just imagine the lies: “We’ll protect you from the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Barbarians!  Your miserable little country will be great again!”  You can picture the sycophants like Herod who jumped on board and were awarded power and wealth for their loyalty.    

   We’re not told whether Jesus answered Pilate’s question, but it is Jesus himself, standing there, that is the answer: the humble, beat-up man from Nazareth, looking nothing like what the world expects from a king, in front of the governor with his guards and retinue and all the trappings of empire.  With or without words, Jesus is saying, “The truth is not what you think it is.” 

   Martin Luther King described the truth about violence this way: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.  …  Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

   Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  He’s not creating insiders and outsiders here; he’s inviting all those who long for genuine truth to listen to him.  Listen to what he taught throughout his ministry about a loving God who longs for shalom for all of God’s creation.  Listen to his description of the alternate reality he called “the Kingdom of God,” a reality we can choose to inhabit here and now, in this world and this life, if we love our neighbors as ourselves.  Don’t listen to those who are willing to lie and resort to violence to get and keep power and wealth.  “My kingdom is not from here,” said Jesus.  It is not from here, but it is for here.  It lives in the world and confronts the violence and lies; not with more violence and lies, but with the truth that God is love.  Could there be a more timely message? 

   This Sunday is Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday in the church calendar.  Unlike the more traditional title, “Christ the King Sunday,” “Reign of Christ” points to Jesus’ kingdom as a state of being, a commitment to a particular way of seeing the world.  Those of us who are committed to living in this kingdom, however imperfectly we might do it, are called to witness to the truth.  We do not pretend to corner the market on truth or claim that any truth is pure and simple, because as someone put it, pure and simple truth is the luxury of the zealot.  But we trust the truth that God is love, and we do not abandon facts. 

   Yale historian Tim Snyder writes, “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

   To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  Pilate would have been familiar with, and probably adept at, delivering the occupied Judeans “bread and circuses,” the phrase a late first century Roman poet used to describe pacifying the populace with food and entertainment.  Bread and circuses are not truth.  The truth, as Jesus said elsewhere, will set you free.   

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1967).

Kathy Gill, “Tim Snyder: On Fascism and Fear,” July 8, 2024, The Moderate Voice, https://themoderatevoice.com/timothy-snyder-on-fascism-and-fear/

Doubting Thomas

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John 20:19-31

In John’s gospel, all the disciples except Thomas were there the first Easter night when Jesus appeared mysteriously, somehow passing through the locked doors and solid walls of the room where they cowered in fear after the crucifixion. Jesus showed them the wounds on his hands and side. We don’t know where Thomas was, but when he finally shows up at disciple headquarters, he says he’s not buying their crazy story about Jesus’ rising from the dead until he sees it for himself. Just like they did, by the way. Once he’s seen Jesus, he makes the chief confession in John’s gospel, calling Jesus not only “My Lord,” but also “my God.” Jesus takes the opportunity to bless all the disciples who believe without seeing. This is a blessing for future disciples, for the ones who will read this passage – for us.

You might be thinking, “Huh. Maybe I don’t deserve this blessing because I’m not sure what I believe.” “Believing” is a major theme in John’s gospel, but this is important: John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” something. The Greek word for “believe” might better be translated as “trust,” or “to give one’s heart to.” Again and again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “believe,” he means rely on, trust in, live as though your life depends on it. Frederick Buechner captured the difference by distinguishing between “believing IN” and “believing.” “Believing in God,” wrote Buechner, “is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud’s method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet. … Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn’t leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.”

Believing is less a position than a journey. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

So when Jesus says, “Believe in me,” he’s not asking whether you can recite the Apostle’s Creed without crossing your fingers. He’s asking whether you will trust that God so loves the whole world that more than anything God wants us to love each other the way God loves us. He’s asking whether it affects who you are and what you do with your life. In her book, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes, “A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer … asked me, …‘Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?’ ‘Oh, Una,’” she answered. “’I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.’”

Jesus isn’t condemning Thomas for his doubts. He’s inviting the rest of us on the journey of trusting, of basing our lives on our belief with all our doubts. So, please: Can we let Thomas off the hook, and all of the rest of us, as well? Maybe give him a new nickname?

Joanna Adams tells a story I could have told. She writes, “There was a time in my early 20s when I was a full card-carrying member in the circle of Doubting Thomases. My doubt simply got the best of my faith, and I left the church completely, thinking it was for good. I had such a difficult time making sense of it all. I stayed away until my longing for God became too much for me. I sought the council of a minister at a Presbyterian church near our home. I walked into his office and sat down, saying, ‘I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I don’t know what I believe about the virgin birth, the resurrection, the lordship of Christ.’

“The minister answered, ‘I accept that. I wonder if you would like to try to figure these things out with people who are on a similar journey.’

“’O yes,’ I said, ‘I would like that very much.’

“And he answered, ‘Well then, you are welcome here.’

Adams writes, “Those words, ‘Well then, you are welcome here,’ have been the pivot on which my entire life has turned. I was welcomed in love and invited to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

That sounds like Resurrection to me.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Sir, We Wish to See Jesus

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John 12:20-33

By the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus has become something of a celebrity, and so some Greeks approach his disciples and ask to see him. They approach Philip, who, although he’s Galilean, has a Greek name. Maybe he’s more accustomed to Gentiles. The Greeks say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” When Philip relays their request, Jesus answers with a response that seems unrelated to what they asked, typical in John’s Gospel. If the Greeks are actually right there, eavesdropping, and if they do hear Jesus’ answer, I’ll bet they’re confused.

The Greeks said they wanted to “see” Jesus, and in John “seeing” is code for understanding. They want to see Jesus, and perhaps, to follow him. This seems to be a sign for Jesus: the fact that people outside Judaism are looking for him means his hour has come. He says a grain of wheat will remain just that, a single grain, unless it falls into the earth and dies, and then it produces much fruit. And then he teaches that those who love their lives, who maintain the status quo, protect and conserve their lives, will lose them. But those who reject their lives – elsewhere he says, “lose their lives for my sake” – will find them, will have real life, a full life, a wholehearted life. I wonder if the Greeks were looking for that.

What does Jesus mean? Barbara Brown Taylor offers this possibility: “[T]he hardest spiritual work in the world is to love your neighbor as yourself – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. All you have to do,” she says, “is recognize another you ‘out there’ – your other self in the world – for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself. To become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to your self.”

Loving others, really loving others, is to understand what it means to die to self. Don’t we experience the truth of this in our lives; don’t we see for ourselves that sacrificing for love, letting our hearts break open for love like a seed that breaks open, leads to more life? We see it in families where parents give up time, money, old dreams, and personal ambition so that their children might flourish. We see it where spouses set aside their own wants or needs to help their partner become who they are meant to be. We see it when someone cares for a frail parent, or a spouse with dementia; we see it when people show up for each other in a crisis. We see it when people stand up to injustice that doesn’t impact them personally. In a thousand places and ways we know this to be true. These may not sound like big deaths. They are the small deaths we experience throughout our lives when we love in big ways. But through them we live out the truth of Jesus’ words over and over again. Our “dying” multiplies, grows, spreads, and results in life.

If you want to see Jesus, it helps to know what you’re looking for. We see Jesus when we see profound love, love for another or for many others that is powerful enough that some part of the self must die, the part that gets in the way of love. We see Jesus when we recognize that this kind of death leads to more life. And so based on what Jesus taught, we see Jesus …
• … when someone dies to refusing to forgive.
• … when someone dies to arrogance and self-righteousness.
• … when someone dies to greed.
• … when someone dies to revenge.
• … when someone dies to violence as a solution.
• … when someone dies to the need to control or manipulate.
• … when someone dies to the need for power, privilege, and prestige.
• … when someone dies to hate.

“Sir, we would see Jesus.” In many older church sanctuaries, this Bible verse is carved into the interior of the pulpit, where only the preacher can see it. Of course, this reflects a time when the person reading the verse, the person standing in the pulpit, was invariably addressed as “Sir,” never “Miss” or “Madam.” Still, the idea is to remind the person who occupies the pulpit that this is the desire of everyone sitting in the pews: to see Jesus; to encounter Jesus, the one in whom we best encounter the love of God. But here’s the thing: This is great advice, but not just for preachers. It is also our calling as the church, as those who call ourselves the body of Christ in the world: to let the world see Jesus, in us.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York, HarperCollins: 2009).
Janet H. Hunt, “When Dying Means Living,” March 18, 2012, http://words.dancingwiththeword.com/2012/03/when-dying-means-living.html

The Disruptive Jesus

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John 2:13-22

The story we call “the cleansing of the temple” appears in all four gospels. That’s a pretty good clue that it actually happened. But while Matthew, Mark, and Luke put it at the end of Jesus’ ministry, just before the arrest that leads to his crucifixion, John puts it up front, soon after Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana. As one commentator puts it, John uses the words of the other three gospels but never the tune.

It was at the wedding at Cana that Jesus turned water into wine. John gives us an important detail: the water was in stone jars, which meant it was used for the rites of purification. By the time of Jesus, there was an elaborate system of purification. Some things were considered pure or clean, and others impure or unclean. Women were unclean seven days after the birth of a son, 14 days after the birth of a daughter. Dead bodies were unclean; certain foods were unclean; the list had grown very, very long. The system created a world with sharp social boundaries between pure and impure, righteous and sinner, whole and not whole, male and female, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. Changing this water into wine was symbolic of breaking down these barriers.

The Temple was the heart of the purity system. The animals being sold there were required for sacrifice. Moneychangers were an essential part of the system because it was idolatrous to use Roman coins stamped with the emperor’s image to buy your sacrifice. The moneychangers were giving pure tokens in exchange for impure money. When you added up the temple tax required of every Jewish male, the cost of animals for required sacrifices, the fee for the money changers, and the travel costs associated with coming to Jerusalem at least once a year, the whole thing added up to big business. It also meant the poorer you were, and the less able you were, the less access you had to a good relationship with God.

Jesus was not the first to cry out against this system. Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Micah asked, “Will God be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10,000 rivers of oil? …. God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The prophet Amos raised a similar cry, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,” says God, “but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” But the system persisted, so Jesus lost his temper. He drove the moneychangers and the animals out of the Temple and overturned their tables.

I’m very careful with this passage. Anyone who has ever lived with a person who explodes knows that the last thing that people with bad tempers need is biblical approval of their temper tantrums. I think we need a bit more humility than Jesus when it comes to a situation like this. As much as I affirm that we’re all to be more Christ-like, perhaps this is one of those times when we should ask, “What did Jesus mean?” instead of “What would Jesus do?”

There are several layers of interpretation possible here. Some commentators see a prophetic prediction of the destruction of the temple that occurred in 70 AD. Others understand the story as a restoration of the temple to its sacred purpose, as a place of prayer for all people, without exploitation. A third approach suggests that Jesus fulfills all the functions of the temple building as the place to meet God.

All these interpretations are compelling, but we also see that Jesus disrupts things. He challenged the rules that named things and people pure or impure in almost everything he did. Debie Thomas writes, “Jesus is not about ‘business as usual.’ Jesus is not a protector of the status quo. Jesus has no interest in propping up institutions of faith that elevate comfort and complacency over holiness and justice.”

That leaves us with a handful of questions. What are we passionate about when it comes to our faith? Have we settled for a way of being Christian that is more safe, casual, and comfortable than it is disorienting, challenging, and transformative? One of my heroes is Janie Spahr, the tireless evangelist for LGBTQ+ rights in the church. Janie says, “If you ever have the chance to get in trouble for the sake of Jesus — Do it.”

Are you willing to get in trouble for Jesus? Am I? These are terrific Lenten questions.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Debie Thomas, “Not in God’s House,” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2937-not-in-god-s-house
Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (New York: HarperColins, 1994)

Come and See

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Lesson: John 1:43-52

“Come and see.” If you heard those words in an everyday context, I’m guessing you’d be curious. You’d probably stop what you’re doing and go see.

“Come and see” is a theme throughout John’s Gospel. From the early disciples to the Pharisee named Nicodemus, to the Samaritan women at the well, to the man born blind, to Pilate and Thomas, characters in John’s Gospel see Jesus. Seeing in John’s gospel, truly seeing, is followed by believing. John’s point is that the faith of the disciples was not naïve gullibility. It was a response to what they saw and experienced. Just before this passage, Jesus speaks these words to Andrew. “Come and see.” Andrew and his brother Simon Peter do see, and they decide to follow Jesus. Jesus then comes to Galilee and bids Philip, “Follow me.” Philip not only follows, but he seeks out Nathaniel to invite him to do the same.

Nathaniel’s first response is skeptical, even insulting. Scholars think maybe his comment, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” reflects a small town rivalry between Nathaniel’s town, Cana, and Nazareth. But Philip invites him, “Come and see,” and Nathaniel’s skepticism is overcome by the actual encounter with Jesus. He goes from skeptical and sarcastic to utterly convinced. He is transformed. Jesus seems to have that effect on people.

Come and see. Many progressive Christians, and I count myself among them, shy away from evangelism, both the word and the deed. But this passage shows we’re not called to cram our faith down anyone’s throat or question their eternal destiny or threaten them with hellfire, but instead, simply to offer an invitation to come and see. Come and see what God is still doing in and through Jesus and the community of disciples who have chosen to follow him.

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes about the team that put together the website for the church she served in Denver. Most churches have a “What we believe” tab on their websites, and they debated what theirs would say. They toyed with having a tab that, when you clicked on it, went straight to the Nicene Creed. Quite wisely, in my opinion, they rejected that idea. Finally, one person said, “Why don’t we just have it say, ‘If you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do.’”

“‘If you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do.’”

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is January 15. As Dr. King reminded us, “…love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. … By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”

What might happen if congregations were able to say, “Come and see how love is transforming us. Come and see love at work, creating, building up, turning enemies into friends”?

“‘If you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do.’”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.