FINDINGS III By Harry T. Cook

 

  

Easter VI - B May 13, 2012    

John 15: 9-17    

 

 

 

   

  

  

Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
5/7/12

For many a homiletic provider and consumer, the Sundays after Easter can become somewhat ponderous as both the preacher and the listener must wade through the complex texts in the latter passages of the Fourth Gospel -- many of them from the "I am" sections with plenty of Johannine word-play theology woven throughout them.

The key, it seems to me, is to treat such passages as historical artifacts and to examine them, to the degree we are able at this remove of two millennia, in situ. Archaeologists at a dig will try to determine information about a particular shard from the level at which it was uncovered and from the nature of other finds from the same or adjacent levels.

Of the passage at hand (John 15: 9-17), it can be said with some certainty that it emerged from a mixed community or communities of Jews and Gentiles caught in the backwash of a radically altered Judaism, due to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the consequent dismantlement of its ritual apparatus early in the last third of the First Century. What emerged were synagogue Judaism and the rise of the rabbinical class. The Johannine thing, while not unrelated to them, was evolving as a different entity.

Throughout the Fourth Gospel sometimes not-so-veiled antipathy toward continuing Judaism is visible -- as in John 20:19 ("The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews"), as if "Jews" had become the generic name given to all of the new movement's detractors.

The Gospel of John, and such passages as the one before us in this analysis, can be said in part to reflect a time of tension and uncertainty in late First Century communities out of which it came. The "laying down of life" referred to at 15:13 may indicate that martyrdom was to be a preferred response in that community -- an individual taking the fall for the sake of the community's survival. The author of the gospel clearly believed that is what Jesus had done -- or had been done to him in the carrying out of a pre-ordained design.

One interesting departure from the Johannine norm in this passage is the shift from "servants" to "friends" (see 15:15). The word is actually "slaves." From slaves to friends through the love than which there is no greater -- an impulse characterized neither by sweetness nor intensity, but rather by will to care for another as a duty.

Now that the disciples have been pronounced "friends" within the circle of his care, it is said that they can know all Jesus knows. And what Jesus knows, the text intimates, is what his Father told him. So now the "Friends of Jesus" know what God said. Hmm. No wonder the stout-hearted evangelicals claim to know "the truth."

There is a catch, however. See v. 14: "You are my friends if you do what I command you." The big word there is the conditional "if." No friendship (perhaps no care, either?) apart from keeping the commandments. What commandments?

The word at that place is the rough New Testament equivalent of the Hebrew "mitzvah." Thus if Jesus is supposed to have known what God knew, then the commandments mentioned here might include the 613 of Torah along with some of those added by Jesus, according to the Gospels of Thomas, Matthew and Luke, viz., "Turn the other cheek," "Walk the second mile," Give up your shirt as well as your coat," "Forgive 70 times seven" (as often as it takes), "Love your neighbor," "Love your enemy" and "Do to others what you would have done to yourself."

The purpose of the "commandments" is enunciated in v. 17: "I am giving you these commandments so that you may (be equipped to) love one another."

Such love may involve the laying down of one's life -- which may have been a vocation experienced by those who had literally signed over their honor to the new movement of which the Fourth Gospel was in part a product. It does seem as if a community is the center of this passage, i.e. those aspiring to a discipleship of caring friendship. That will be the means of empowering such a community "to go and bear fruit" -- becoming, that is, a communal witness to what is possible for human beings, despite our penchant for grasping self-centeredness that only leads to greater conflict and strife.

Footnote: One cannot spend much time with the canonical gospels and fail to notice the radical differences between words attributed to Jesus in John and in Mark, Matthew and Luke. The "I am" sayings we encounter in the fourth gospel are largely poetic* with some parallelisms not unlike those often found in psalms.
 
The working hypothesis of many, but by no means all, who work with these texts is that the Jesus sayings approximated in Mark, Matthew and Luke (as well as in the Gospel of Thomas) are probably closer to what may actually have been spoken by a Jesus figure ca. 25-35 C.E.

Can the kind of caring implied by the term agaph in any way be seen as mandating the laying down of a life? And, if so, how literally would that "laying down" have to be? Much of institutionalized religion in our era calls for commitment of one kind or another, often financial or volunteered time and effort as well as public assent to the religion's belief system.

Where would the vocation of laying down one's life fit into this picture? For the conventional American church-going Christian, hardly at all.

Actual physical martyrdom is a thing mostly sung about in hymns on red-letter days. It is a thing depicted in stained-glass that encloses decorously appointed ecclesiastical space in which duly bathed and properly coiffed worshippers gather in suit-and-tie, hose-and-heels fashion to hear sometimes inoffensive and unchallenging sermons between Sunday breakfast and Sunday luncheon. These are they who cannot fathom the bloodlust of the suicide bomber dying gloriously, a martyr for the jihad of Allah.

When the alms basin is passed, the tithe proffered this week is a tad on the thin side, times being tough, you know. And, no, Father, I'll be unable to show up for duty at the soup kitchen next Sunday. I'll be out of town at a golf tournament. Maybe next year. Oh, and that thing you mentioned about the homeless shelter. I don't want to catch anything, what with the flu epidemic. So I'll send over a dozen cookies.

You are my friends if you keep my commandments. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. Well, yes, of course. But I wonder what they're having today at coffee hour?    

 

* See R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John, p. 540-547 and R. Brown, Anchor Bible vol. 29, The Gospel according to John, pp. CXXXII-CXXXV.

 

 


� Copyright 2012, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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